Words of Welcome

    Matthew 18:21-35 This past Friday, the nation observed the twenty-fifth anniversary of the attacks of 9-11. It’s likely that if you are over forty, you will remember, perhaps vividly, where you were when you first heard the news. I remember that day very clearly. I was living on the West Coast in Santa Barbara. Like most Tuesday mornings, I joined three men from the church for breakfast at a restaurant just around the corner from the parsonage. When I returned to the house before heading next door to the office, I checked the news on the TV just as a plane hit the second Twin Tower in New York. I remember standing there in shock. Later that morning, my United Methodist colleague stopped by the office. Since I was president of the local interfaith clergy association, LLoyd wanted to discuss how the faith community could respond to this tragedy. Lloyd offered his church as the site for a service on the Sunday evening following. Then Lloyd and I began reaching out to our co...

Matthew 6:7-15; Luke 6:37-42     As much as we like to say the words “don’t judge,” every one of us has served as judge and jury.  I think it must be human nature!   Maybe it’s the way some person dresses or the car they drive.  Driving a Toyota in Michigan might get you stares, while driving a Prius in Southern California will get you words of praise.   Yes, we love Jesus’s command:  “don’t judge, lest you be judged.”  But, we all find it difficult to remove the log that sits there in our own eyes, even as we try to pick out the speck in the eye of the other.      As we come to the fourth petition of the Lord’s Prayer, having prayed that God would hallow God’s name, that God would reveal God’s reign, and having asked that God would provide us our daily bread, we come to the matter of forgiveness.  How should we hear this promise of forgiveness, which seems to be contingent on our willingness to forgive ...