Words of Welcome

Luke 7:1-10 Several weeks ago Pope Francis stirred up some more controversy.  As you may have noticed, he seems to be very good at doing this.  What caught people by surprise this time was who he included among the redeemed in Jesus.  He didn’t just include good Catholics or Christians in general.  He didn’t even stop with people who participate in the world’s great religions.  No, he didn’t stop until he included even the atheist who does good. Here’s what he said. "The Lord created us in His image and likeness, and we are the image of the Lord, and He does good and all of us have this commandment at heart: do good and do not do evil. All of us. ‘But, Father, this is not Catholic! He cannot do good.’ Yes, he can  . . .  "The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone! ‘Father, the atheists?’ Even the atheists. Everyone!" ... We must meet one another doing good. ‘But I don’t...

Luke 11:1-4; Luke 12:22-34 We’ve come to the third petition of the Lord’s Prayer.  In the previous two petitions we’ve asked God to make God’s name holy in our lives, and we’ve asked that God’s reign would be made known in our midst, even as we seek to know and do God’s will.  Having made these requests, which focus on God holiness and God’s reign on earth as well as in heaven, we make our first request of God.  And in this request, we focus on our most basic of needs – our daily bread.  Yes, food, water, shelter, these are the basics, and so it’s not surprising that this is where Jesus begins.         The idea that God is the provider of our daily bread goes back at least to the Exodus story, where the people of Israel find themselves wandering for forty years in the desert of Sinai.  Reading the story, you might think that the people expected a quick trip across the desert, and on into the promised land.  Yes, just a hop, ...

Mark 1:14-20 I know that some of you here today, maybe Lance or Elmer, could tell some really good fish stories. You could talk about dragging a shed out onto the ice and doing some really fun ice fishing; or maybe you could tell us about going out on Lake Huron and catching a really big bass. Something like that. Alas I can’t join you in telling such tales. I’ve lived my life near rivers and streams and lakes and oceans, but I’ve only caught one small fish, and that was when I was but a child. Since I can’t tell a good fish story, I’m going to rely on a famous author. In The Old Man and the Sea , Ernest Hemingway told the story of Santiago the fisherman. Santiago was an old and experienced fisherman, but at one point he’d gone out to sea eighty-four straight times without catching a thing. He would have given up, except this young boy kept cajoling him and encouraging him to keep going in the hope of making that last big catch. Yes, it was that boy’s faith in his fishi...

Luke 10:25-37 I grew up in small towns where we knew most of our neighbors, especially our neighbors with kids. Because everyone knew everyone else, our parents didn’t worry too much about us, as long as we let them know where we were going. We couldn’t get into too much trouble, because there was always a parent present to keep an eye on you and you knew that your Moms would talk to each other. But that was another time and another place, but it illustrates something about neighborliness – neighbors know each other and they watch out for each other. There is a flip side of this idyllic scene that illustrates the problem of not recognizing each other as neighbors. I read a story about a stabbing in a convenience store. A couple of thugs stabbed a woman to death, but no one stopped to help. A video store camera records customers stepping over the dying woman and one person even took a picture with a cell phone camera. Now that’s not very neighborly, is it? Every day we read about a neig...