Words of Welcome

  William Blake, Job and His Family  Job 42:1-6, 10-17 We’ve explored a few passages from the second half of the book of Job. What we’ve heard so far is a bit unsettling. We’ve met a God who is willing to make people suffer just to prove a point. Although God uses a hired hand to do this, God is said to be responsible for this “evil that the Lord had brought upon him” (Job 42:11). As we’ve seen, this doesn’t sit well with Job. He wants to know why he has suffered at the hand of God. After all, he is innocent and righteous before God. So why are bad things happening to a good person like Job? Although the Bible is a sacred text, it’s also a very complex and human book. At times it even argues with itself. So, many of us read Job as a response to the conventional wisdom found in the Book of Proverbs. The message of Proverbs is quite simple. If you do the right thing, good things should happen. If you do bad things, then you’ll reap what you sow. That message makes sense on ...

1 Thessalonians 5:12-28 We have reached the Third Sunday of Advent. We have lit the rose-colored candle, which symbolizes the message of joy. The Psalm for the day declares that “The Lord has done great things for us, and we rejoiced.” Then in the closing verses of the Psalm, the people sing: “May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy. Those who go out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, carrying their sheaves” ( Psalm 126:5-6 ). As we gather to celebrate this message of Joy, we hear the words of Paul to the church at Thessalonika. If you want to get a sense of what the church looked like in its earliest days, this letter to a Macedonian church is a good place to go, since this is believed to be the oldest part of the New Testament. What we have read are Paul’s final exhortations and benediction. There’s a flurry of information here that can overwhelm the reader and leave the preacher puzzled as to how to deal with it. Fortun...

Luke 18:35-43 When we get sick, we may ask for prayers, but we probably will also go to the doctor. That’s probably a smart move. But, according to the letter of James, if you’re sick you “should call for the elders and have them pray over you, anointing you with oil in the name of the Lord. The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up; and any one who has committed sins will be forgiven” ( James 5:14-15 ). The Gospels tell us that Jesus was a healer. Morton Kelsey has pointed out that the gospel writers devote 20% of their accounts to Jesus’ healing ministry. When Jesus came to town it’s quite likely that he healed someone. That might make him a healing evangelist like Aimee Semple McPherson.