Words of Welcome

Underground Railroad Memorial, Detroit   Joshua 3:7-17 “Shall we gather at the river, where bright angel feet have trod, with its crystal tide forever flowing by the throne of God?”  The people of God had finally reached their destination. The Promised Land lay on the other side of the Jordan. Joshua gathers the people at the river’s edge and tells them to follow the Ark of the Covenant into the river. The Ark of the Covenant is the sign of God’s presence with the people. If you’ve seen the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark , you know what the Ark looks like. Joshua tells the people that when the feet of the priests carrying the Ark touch the water, the river will part, so they can pass to the other side on dry land. We gather this morning at the river’s edge to prepare for own river crossing experience. It’s called a sabbatical, and for the next three months you and I, in different ways, will be reflecting on the River Crossings theme. Just so you won’t forg...

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...

Joshua 24:1-15 When Moses was nearing the end of his life, he gathered the people of Israel, so he could prepare them to cross the Jordan River and take possession of the Promised Land. Even though Moses wouldn’t cross over with them he wanted them to know that God would be with them (Deut. 1:1-8 ). Now it was Moses’s successor, Joshua, who was nearing the end of his life. Like Moses he gathered the people of Israel to prepare them for a new future without his leadership. Again, the message is God is faithful and God will be with you as you move into that new future. He does this by retelling the story of Israel. He begins with Abraham and takes the people on a journey through time.  Joshua reminds the people how God led Abraham to Canaan from the land beyond the Euphrates, making a covenant with the promise of many descendants. We hear again the stories of Isaac, Jacob, and Esau, as well as the sojourn in Egypt that leads to the call of Moses and Aaron, who led the ...

Last stop in Wyoming - Journey East 2008 Joshua 5:9-12 If you’ve ever moved across the country, you know what it’s like to finally arrive at your new home. Even if your furniture and housewares are a few days behind you, it feels good to enter the new house and begin to settle in.   We’ve made a few long distance moves as a family over the years, with the longest being the last one that brought us from Santa Barbara to Troy. It took a few days of travel to get here. We stayed in a few motels and of course ate at a variety of restaurants, including a few fast-food joints. We crossed deserts, rivers, mountains, and plains. When we arrived in Troy, we were welcomed with a good meal and a house that had been cleaned and prepared with food staples and paper goods. Yes, it was good to enter the house we would call our own.   

John 6:58-69 Has a preacher ever said something that offended you so much that you never went back to that church?  I hope that none of you will take offense at what I say today, or if you do, I hope you’ll come back next week!   And what about Jesus, is there anything that he said that offends you?   I’d be surprised if you said no.  After all, Jesus did have a tendency to say things that got him into trouble.  Remember how his sermon back at his hometown synagogue went?  He was just coming off being baptized by John and had begun to gain a following.  But as they say – you can’t always go home.  On that evening, after Jesus read the text from Isaiah, he began to preach and before too long, the people were getting restless and just a bit angry with what he had to say.  So, instead of celebrating a triumphant homecoming, the hometown crowd tried to throw him a cliff.  Fortunately, Jesus escaped this fate and head...

Deuteronomy 34:1-9 At the end of my junior year our swing choir, of which I was a member, was singing at the senior assembly. The song we sang was The Way We Were, which goes like this: Mem'ries, Light the corners of my mind Misty water-colored memories of the way we were Scattered pictures, of the smiles we left behind Smiles we gave to one another, for the way we were Can it be that it was all so simple then? Or has time re-written every line? If we had the chance to do it all again Tell me, would we? Could we? It seemed like everyone in the choir got a bit teary-eyed as we sang. Our emotions were a bit divided, of course. The seniors amongst us looked forward with excitement to the new opportunities that graduation would bring, and yet they also knew that their journey might mean never seeing good friends again. And, as for us juniors, while we looked forward to finally being seniors, we weren’t quite ready to let go of our senior friends. And so for a moment, at least, sadness...