Words of Welcome

Luke 12:4-7    Several decades before the American Revolution, a preacher got up to preach a sermon that has lived on in infamy.  Some of you may have read it as a high school student.  Perhaps you liked what you read, but I expect that it didn’t resonate with most of you. That preacher was named Jonathan Edwards and the context was the First Great Awakening that shook the American colonies in the 1740s.  It was titled “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” You might think that a sermon like this was preached by a backwoods fire and brimstone preacher.  The fact is, the person who delivered this sermon is one of America’s greatest intellects.  It was an expression of a revival that swept New England, dividing the region’s Congregationalists into Old Lights and New Lights.   The question of the day was whether the people and even their spiritual leaders were actually Christians.  Although Jonathan Edwards did speak of God’s mercy,...

Matthew 2:1-12 One of the first songs most of us learned as children was this old English lullaby: Twinkle, twinkle, little star, How I wonder what you are. Up above the world so high,   Like a diamond in the sky. It’s not a Christmas carol or even an Epiphany hymn, but the third stanza seems to fit today’s service:   Then the traveller in the dark, Thanks you for your tiny spark, He could not see which way to go,   If you did not twinkle so. Light pollution makes it difficult to see the stars in the night, but if you get away from civilization, maybe go up into the mountains, you might get a sense of how the stars looked to the ancient world.  No wonder ancient travelers looked to the stars for guidance.  If you knew the movement of the stars, you’d know where you were and where you were going.  They were the original GPS, and they weren’t nearly as annoying!    According to Matthew, Magi – Zoroastrian priest...