Words of Welcome

  Psalm 27 Angelic and divine visitations in the biblical story often begin with the words: “Be not afraid.” That’s because heavenly visitations don’t happen every day, so they take us by surprise. The word we hear in Psalm 27 offers us a word of assurance in difficult times. The psalmist proclaims that God is our light and salvation. Therefore, “whom shall I fear?” Now, if we’re honest, aren’t we afraid of at least a few things? It might be spiders or snakes or heights, but fear is part of life. The question is, what do we do with our fears?   In my Christmas Eve meditation, I mentioned the story of Charlie Brown who pays a visit to Lucy’s psychiatrist booth because he’s feeling a bit depressed and doesn’t know why.  Lucy tries to diagnose Charlie Brown’s problem by naming a series of phobias that range from a fear of cats to climbing stairs. Finally, Lucy leans across the counter and asks Charlie Brown: “Do you have pantophobia ?” After she defines, “ pantophobia...

Isaiah 43:1-7 Just a few days back some of us crossed the mighty Mississippi on our way to and from the General Assembly in Des Moines. As far as I know, nobody tried to wade across the river. It’s too deep and too wide to wade across. We either drove across bridges or took a plane to Iowa, because unlike Moses or Joshua or Elijah, none of us appears to have the power to divide the waters.  Whether it’s a river, a lake, or a sea, water plays an important role in the biblical story. The very first sentences of Genesis declare: “when God began to create heaven and earth—the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and wind from God sweeping over the water—God said ‘Let there be light.” (Gen. 1:1-3 Tanakh ). That was the first day of creation, but on the third day of creation, God separated the waters so that dry land could appear ( Gen. 1:9 ).  Throughout the biblical story, people cross bodies of water, are baptized in water...

Note:  This sermon was shared as part of our annual outdoor service, which is less formal. Because of the nature of the text for the day, it is laid out as a more participatory sermon. Psalm 23 “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” These opening words of the 23rd Psalm are deeply embedded in many hearts and minds. We turn to this Psalm in times of grief and doubt and fear. We look to this Psalm in the hope that the Lord is with us, restoring and protecting us, as we journey in life. Since most of us are deeply familiar with this Psalm, and because we’ve gathered for worship in a different space, I want to make this a more participatory sermon. We’ve already heard the Psalm read from the NRSV, but I’m going to read it again a couple of times from other translations, including the King James, and then I have some questions for us to discuss. 

Matthew 28:16-20 Today is, according to the church calendar, Trinity Sunday. On the matter of the Trinity, Disciples of Christ are not of one mind. Thomas and Alexander Campbell were Trinitarians, and Barton Stone was not. One of our important second generation Disciple leaders was  Isaac Errett,  who served as pastor of the Jefferson Avenue and Beaubien Street Church in Detroit during the 1860s. He wrote a pamphlet titled Our Position. In that pamphlet he wrote that while Disciples accept the biblical statements about the “trinity of persons in the Godhead, we repudiate alike the philosophical and theological speculations of Trinitarians and Unitarians, and all unauthorized forms of speech on a question which transcends human reason, and on which it becomes us to speak ‘in words which the Holy Spirit teaches’” [ Historical Documents Advocating Christian Union ,  pp. 297-298].  In other words, we’re going to stick with Bible terms! Of course there are some amon...

Psalm 77:1-2, 11-20 In the words of Isaac Watts’ hymn, which we sang earlier this morning, we capture the message of Psalm 77: O God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come, our shelter from the stormy blast, and our eternal home.  When times of trouble strike, and they will strike, where do you turn? To whom do you look for guidance and protection? Do you turn to God, who is “our help in ages past, our hope for years to come?” As we have been moving through the Psalms, we’ve discovered that they invite us to cry out in laments. They give us permission to rage and complain. It’s okay that our souls refuse to be comforted. It’s not a sin to have doubts. Here in Psalm 77 the Psalmist cries out to God demanding to be heard. After issuing a torrent of complaints, the Psalmist then remembers that God has been our help in ages past. Recognizing the prospect that life can be challenging, Martin Luther wrote a hymn that picked up on another Psalm, Psalm 46...

Revelation 21:1-6 One of the consistent messages of the Book of Revelation is that God is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end of all things. To borrow from Aristotle, God is the first cause. Or, as the Prologue to the Gospel of John puts it:  “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” And, everything that exists was created through and by this  Word. Finally, a few verses later we learn that this “Word became flesh and dwelt among us” ( Jn. 1:1-18 ). Not only is God the beginning of all things, but according to the Book of Revelation God is also the completion of all things.    If God is the beginning and the end of all things, should we not also say that God is also present in all things at all times? As Rick Lowery reminded us yesterday in his sermon at the Festival of Faith, in a moment of theological crisis, the people of Israel learned that God is not limited to a piece of land, but that God is th...

Revelation 1:4b-8 Over the next few days we’ll have an opportunity to consider the blessings that have been poured out upon us by God. It really doesn’t matter where we gather. The important thing is to stop and offer words of praise to God, “from whom all blessings flow.” We’ll have at least two community opportunities to share in words of Thanksgiving before Thursday. Tonight the Troy-area Interfaith Group is hosting a service at the Islamic Association of Greater Detroit in Rochester Hills. Then on Tuesday evening the Troy Clergy Group is sponsoring a service at Northminster Presbyterian. We also have the opportunity this morning to offer up symbols of gratitude to God through signs of our commitment to the life and ministry of this congregation. These celebrations occur under the shadow of the recent terrorist attacks in Mali, Beirut, Nigeria, and Paris, that have raised our anxiety levels. Fear seems to be taking hold of many in our midst, and there are people and grou...

Job 42:1-6, 10-17 We’re only exploring a few passages from the book of Job, but even so you may be feeling a bit unsettled by what we’ve heard so far. The God we’ve met appears to control everything, and that means God is responsible not only for the good things but the bad things. Though it does appear that God uses a hired hand, The Adversary, to do the dirty work. At the same time, we’ve been hearing from Job, who has been suffering greatly despite his claims to be innocent and righteous before God. The question we’ve been hearing all along is: “why me?” And that question leads to another: Who is God?  The Bible is a sacred text, but it is also a very complex book. At times it seems to argue with itself. In many ways the message of Job offers a counter weight to the message 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 will reap what you sow. When we read Job, we hear him cry...

Job 38:1-7, 34-41 For thirty-seven chapters Job and his friends have been debating the question: “why me?” That’s a question that many of us ask at one point or another. Bad things happen and we want an explanation. Sometimes, as is the case with the answers provided by Job’s friends, the answers don’t make sense. Sometimes we even want to take up the conversation with God, but we’re not sure we’re up to the task.  Last Sunday we listened to Job as he challenged God to appear in court and answer his questions. He believed he was innocent, but he was also terrified of the possibility that God might actually show up. One of Job’s friends assures Job that he needn’t worry about God showing up. God was too busy to bother with his futile questioning.  Elihu is the fourth “friend” to enter the debate with Job. In many ways these four friends, demonstrate the principle that with friends like this, who needs enemies! Elihu feels the need to defend God’s honor. He tel...

2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10   Life is messy, and as people of faith, we try to make sense of this messiness by seeking God’s guidance and wisdom. When we come to share in worship, we give thanks to God for being present with us through life’s ups and downs. Even when we’re not sure how God is present, we know in our hearts that God is with us. This may be the 4th of July weekend, but the message of Christmas in July is that Emmanuel – God with us – has come in the person of Jesus, so that we might experience that presence anew. Our journey through 1 and 2 Samuel had brought us to a turning point in the history of Israel. The civil war that had engulfed David’s supporters and those who had gathered around Saul’s son Ishbotheth, had come to an end, and David was the last man standing.  The elders of Israel gathered at Hebron, and anointed David as their shepherd and ruler.  As Eugene Peterson puts it: “The shepherd boy of Bethlehem becomes the shepherd king of Israel.”...

2 Peter 1:3-11 All good things must come to an end, and so while there is much more to say about salvation we come to the end of our journey this morning. Over the past several weeks we’ve discovered that salvation is a complex idea. Because it can be seen as otherworldly it can seem irrelevant and even off-putting. Let’s stick with the here-and-now. But, as we’ve seen salvation is about more than Jesus dying for our personal sins so we can get to heaven. Salvation includes reconciliation, liberation, healing, and taking on a new identity in Christ. As we celebrate Ascension Sunday, it’s appropriate that we focus on salvation as union with God, or as we read in 2 Peter, in Christ we are becoming “participants in the divine nature.”   Eastern Christianity tends to be more mystical than western forms. They place great emphasis on becoming one with God, and they use the Greek word  theosis  to describe this union.  Theosis  can be translated as de...

Exodus 33:12-23 Is it okay to argue with God?  Moses thought so.  So did Abraham. You might say that to argue with God is to intercede with God. And it seems as if God invites us to bring our concerns into God’s presence. As we bring our journey through Exodus to a close, the people are about to leave Sinai. They can see the light at the end of the tunnel.  There’s only one problem, God isn’t sure whether to continue on with them.  God has had enough dealing with this “stiff-necked people,” and while God hasn’t unleashed his wrath on them, he’s not sure how long this can continue.  Apparently, that Golden Calf affair was the last straw. If God isn’t sure whether it’s a good idea to continue on, Moses won’t hear of it.  To Moses, there’s no point going on to the Promised Land without God. This story pictures God as something of a frustrated parent.  Like parents often do, God has thrown up his hands because these children won’t sto...

Luke 19:41-44 For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.  There is: A time to weep, and a time to laugh; A time to mourn, and a time to dance . ( Ecclesiastes 3:1, 4  NRSV) For Jesus, as he stood on the hillside overlooking Jerusalem, it was a time to weep.    There is another occasion in the Gospel of Luke, where Jesus weeps over the city of Jerusalem.  When a group of Pharisees comes to warn him of a plot to kill him, he laments Jerusalem’s habit of killing the prophets and stoning those sent to it.  Jesus declares that he wanted to “gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing”  ( Luke 14:31-35 ). Five chapters later, as the procession into Jerusalem we call Palm Sunday is underway, Jesus stops to take in the view.  There lying in front of him is the city of David.  Standing in the center of the city is the Temple that Herod rebuilt a...

Genesis 32:22-31 When I was a kid, my mother decided I needed to learn how to defend myself and so she signed me up for wrestling camp.  Although I’d rather have been at basketball camp, for the next six Saturdays I learned to wrestle.  Since I never became a very proficient wrestler, I got knocked out in the first round of the tournament that ended the camp.  Much to my relief!   There’s another kind of wrestling besides the one I learned at camp.  They call it professional wrestling, and in professional wrestling, which I used to watch on Saturday afternoons, neither desire nor proficiency is the key to success.  That’s because the outcome is determined by a script.    When it comes to wrestling Jacob wasn’t a professional!  No, he was a competitive wrestler, who when challenged would fight to win.  He’d been that way since he shared his mother’s womb with his twin brother.  His parents named him Jacob because ...