Words of Welcome

    Isaiah 64:1-9; Mark 13:24-37 I have good news to share with you this morning. Advent has arrived and with it a new liturgical year begins. Today we begin a new journey that invites us to once again hear the story of God’s presence among us, as that presence is revealed in the life of Jesus and the ministry of the Holy Spirit. If we pay close attention to the story as it unfolds, we discover that when God visits us, God tends to shake things up. In the words of the third prophet we call Isaiah, in his prayer of repentance, he calls on God to tear open the heavens and come down so that the mountains would quake and God’s name would be made known to a distracted world. Yes, when God comes down, the nations tremble.  The season of Advent invites us to prepare for the coming of the Lord. The Gospel of Mark begins with the announcement that God is sending a messenger to prepare the way for the coming of the Lord by making the pathway for the Lord straight ( Mk 1:1-3 ). ...

  Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7 While I once lived in a small town when I was a child, I’ve lived most of my adult life in cities. I started life in Los Angeles and lived briefly in San Francisco, but my first true memories are connected to my childhood in the small town of Mount Shasta. Although I tasted small-town life before I ever experienced city life, I know what it means to be a city boy, if you count the suburbs as the city! So, what responsibility do we have as suburbanites for the welfare of the city? That’s our question for today! We’ve heard a word from the prophet Jeremiah, who wrote a letter to Jewish exiles living in Babylon. These exiles included the elders, priests, prophets, and everyone else whom Nebuchadnezzar sent to Babylon in the first wave of exiles who accompanied King Jeconiah and his mother. This was before the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple a decade later. At that point, the exiles still hoped they could return to their homes in Jerusalem. Nevertheless...

  John the Baptist, Rosary Basilica, Lourdes Isaiah 40:1-11 Imagine this scene: You’re standing in the heavenly courts when God gets up to speak. God tells the heavenly council: “Comfort, O comfort my people.” Yes, “speak tenderly to Jerusalem” because the city has paid the penalty. Therefore, the time for healing has begun.      Then a voice from the council responds: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God” so that “the glory of the Lord shall be revealed.” That’s good news for exiles living in Babylon because that means it’s time for God to lead them home on a brand-new freeway!   Then a third voice offers a word of caution. While God is faithful, people are a lot like grass that withers when “the breath of the Lord blows upon it.” Nevertheless, despite our tendency to fall short of God’s expectations, God’s word stands forever. In this, there is hope.  So, let us go to the mountain a...

Isaiah 55:10-13 You know the theme song from the Sound of Music:         The hills are alive with the sound of music; With songs they have sung for a thousand years. The hills fill my heart with the sound of music.          My heart wants to sing ev'ry song it hears. These words may create a certain picture in our minds of Julie Andrews running across a mountain meadow in the Austrian Alps, singing to her heart’s content. But she has nothing on the prophet we know as Second Isaiah.  Isaiah joyfully declares to a group of exiles:    “For you shall go out in joy and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands” (Is. 55: 12).  When you hear these words from the prophet do you catch a vision of joy and peace? Do you hear a song of joy and peace spreading across the mountains and through the trees? ...

Ezekiel 37:1-14  God grabbed the prophet Ezekiel and dropped him into the middle of a valley filled with bones that had been bleached by the sun of any sign of life. They were so dry that even the marrow was gone. Then, as Ezekiel took in this sight, God posed this question: “Can these bones live?” How would you answer that question?  I know that part of me would have answered with a tinge of sarcasm, “are you kidding?” But hopefully, I would follow Ezekiel’s example and simply say: “O Lord God, You  know.” That is a prayer of faith that allows for God to do what I may think is impossible.  Each of the Lenten lectionary readings from the Old Testament, speak of acting in faith. Sometimes, the texts describe situations, like  in the Garden,  where the people  demonstrate a lack of faith in God, but there are other texts that tell a different story of faith, like the story of the  call of Abram and Sarai  to migrate to a strange l...

Lamentations 3:22-33 I don’t think I’ve ever preached from this book of poems called Lamentations that sits between Jeremiah and Ezekiel.  Jeremiah and Ezekiel spoke for God during the time of exile, offering both words of judgment and hope.  Although tradition suggests that Jeremiah is the author of these poems, that’s rather unlikely, but it’s clear that they were written during the exile.  They speak of that day when the people of Judah watched the Babylonians destroy the city of Jerusalem and  its Temple, and then carry off its king and the leading members of society into exile. These were trying times and so a book of Lamentations seems appropriate.   Although we may not use words like “lamentations” or “lament” very often in our daily speech, because they have a variety of meanings they can be useful words.   Lament can mean “I’m sorry.”  I’ve done my share of this kind of lamenting. It can also refer to mourning or gri...

Isaiah 64:1-9 Pearl Harbor, Katrina, 9-11, Mumbai, Ike, the economic devastation that has hit this state, nation, and world; these are images that have seared our thoughts and memories. When we face catastrophic events such as these, it’s difficult to know how to respond. Thinking back to Katrina, do you remember watching New Orleans evacuate? Or, more recently, we watched as Galveston and then Houston evacuated in the face of Ike? At least in the case of Katrina, the ones who were left behind were the ones least able to care for themselves. But even those who escaped experienced a sense of exile. And to live in exile is to live with a sense of rootlessness and insecurity. Nature isn’t the only force that pushes people into exile. There are refugee camps around the world, from Darfur to the Palestinian Territories, and beyond. To live in exile is to lose control of one’s life. It is a time when the future is dark, cloudy, and foreboding. In such a situation, it is common t...

Jeremiah 31:1-6 It may have come early this year, but today is Easter Sunday. Therefore, it’s time to celebrate. Easter is one of those holidays that combines religious and nonreligious elements, and you get to choose which part to emphasize. For many people, it’s a time to color eggs and hide them; a time to eat chocolate bunnies, and it’s a time to bring out our new spring clothes. Yes, today is a day to wear our spring best; maybe, even put on a new hat. Back in the day, if you can believe the movies, Easter was the day when people got all dressed up and paraded their new stuff in front of their neighbors. Irving Berlin wrote the music for a movie with the title Easter Parade , starring Judy Garland and Fred Astaire. Now that musical really didn’t have anything to do with Easter, but apparently they did have fashion parades back in the old days – before any of us were around. Easter is also a celebration of spring. We celebrate the rebirth of nature, of the flowers and the trees, wh...