Words of Welcome

"The Adoration of the Child" by Gerrit van Honthorst, 1590-1656 Hebrews 1:1-4 The time has come to celebrate the birth of a child born in a nondescript village on the margins of a great and powerful empire. Many children probably were born that very night. The Monty Python movie Life of Brian even tells the story of another child born that very night in the same town as Jesus. The question that tonight holds, is what makes this child so special? If, as any parent will tell you, their child is the most important or special child ever born, why should we pay attention this child among all the children  born that night?

Matthew 17:1-9 For the past several weeks we’ve been with Jesus on a mountain being instructed in the ways of God’s realm. This morning we’re taking a brief detour to another mountain, where Jesus’ identity is more fully revealed to us. In this scene from Matthew’s gospel we watch as Jesus is transfigured and transformed, so that we might see more fully the presence of God in him. As we attend to this story, it becomes clear that understanding the gospels requires a bit of an imagination. Without imagination you might end up doing what Jefferson did and start cutting out the parts of the gospel that don’t seem to make sense to the rational mind. Now, I’m a rather analytical, rationalist type, and so this takes some doing on my part. Since I’m not much into poetry (though I do love music) and I don’t read a lot of novels (though I do like movies), I struggle with poet W.H. Auden’s suggestion that Christians need to be poets. Although I struggle with this word of wisdom, I believe he’s...

Isaiah 6:1-8 We love celebrities. We enjoy reading about them and watching the news reports. Oh, I know, you may not want to admit it, but we’re all at least a little bit interested in the “lifestyles of the rich and famous.” In fact, most of us secretly hope that someday we’ll run into a celebrity. Of course, if we do have such an encounter, it’s possible that we’d become a bit tongue tied or say or do the wrong thing. Now, I’ve had a couple of celebrity sightings and encounters in my life, but for the most part I’ve kept quiet – so as not to say the wrong thing. On one occasion I was sitting in the surgery waiting room at a Santa Barbara hospital with a family from the church. Looking out the window of the room I noticed John Cleese pacing the hall outside. If you don’t know who John Cleese is, he’s a British actor and comedian who has appeared in Monty Python movies and more recently as Q in some of the James Bond movies. We would soon learn that the reason he was there w...