Words of Welcome

  Edwards Hickes, Peacable Kingdom Romans 15:4-13 This morning, we lit the Candle of Peace, which reminds us that this is not only the Second Sunday of Advent, it is Peace Sunday. Peace is something we all hope for, but which always seems beyond our grasp. World War I was supposed to be the war that ended all wars. Twenty years later, an even bigger war took place. This year, Peace Sunday falls on December 7th, the day Franklin Roosevelt declared would live in infamy. Having visited the Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor on two occasions, I felt the presence of those lives lost that day. But that war didn’t bring an end to human wars. Many more were to come. There were wars in Korea and then Vietnam. I remember in the 1990s, after the fall of the Soviet Union, there was talk of a peace dividend for the American defense budget. But that talk didn’t last long because war came to the Balkans, Afghanistan, and Iraq. For nearly four years, we’ve watched the Russians devastate Ukraine, h...

Mark 10:2-16 We are broken people who live in a broken world. That’s not a message we like to hear, but it’s true. This message is revealed in the opening chapters of Genesis. While things start okay, things go downhill after Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit. After their exile from the garden, one of their sons, Cain, kills his brother Abel because God prefers Abel’s gift over Cain’s. Things get so bad that God, in frustration, decides to send a flood and start over with Noah. But even then, things don’t get much better. That’s just the way things are. Noah and his descendants were just as broken as his ancestors. The problem of brokenness remains part of our reality to this day.   We see this brokenness revealed in our relationships as families, communities, nation, and the world. It’s like a virus that eats away at our inner being. Every aspect of human life seems to be vulnerable to this malignancy of the human spirit. This includes the most intimate of human rela...