Words of Welcome

Exodus 12:1-4, 11-14 We gather tonight around the Lord’s Table to remember Jesus’ last meal with his disciples. During that meal Jesus took bread and wine, blessed them, and gave the elements to his disciples. He told them to continue sharing this meal in remembrance of him until he returned ( 1 Cor. 11:23-26 ). The roots of this meal of remembrance are found in the Passover celebration. The reading from Exodus 12 describes the origins of that meal, which celebrated God’s deliverance of the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt.  According to Exodus 12, this meal featured three items—roasted lamb, unleavened bread, and bitter herbs. It’s a fairly simple meal, which took some time to prepare, but once the meat was cooked and the bread baked, it could be eaten on the run. There is another part of the story that needs to be mentioned. Not only did God direct the people to prepare a meal, but God told them to take some of the blood from the slaughtered lamb and put it...

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.   

Exodus 12:1-14 We have perfected eating on the run.  It doesn’t matter whether it’s running through the drive-thru window at the local fast-food restaurant or tossing a frozen dinner into the microwave!  When it comes to fast food, think about how far we’ve come from the early days of the TV dinner.  If you have to put those aluminum trays in the oven for 30 minutes, you might as well cook a full meal!!  Although the original Passover meal didn’t go quite as quickly as our modern fast food meals, you might say that the people of Israel were eating on the run the day they left Egypt for the Promised Land.  Isn’t that why they ate unleavened bread? 

John 1:29-42 In the final scene of Jesus’ trial before Pilate, as John tells the story, the Roman Governor turns to the people, and says, “Behold the Man” (Jn. 19:5 KJV). Or, as the Latin Vulgate renders it: “ Ecce Homo .” This phrase loses something in its modern renditions. “Here is the man” doesn’t carry near the power of “Behold the Man.” When you hear this phrase in the King James, you can feel the tension in the crowd. There he is, the governor, standing before the people, holding in his hands the power of life and death, and turning to the people, as if he’s presiding over the arena and inviting them to decide: Thumbs up or thumbs down? Which is it? It is only the Second Sunday after Epiphany, and we’re still contemplating the revelation of God’s presence in the world. Good Friday seems so far off, and yet this Good Friday scene stands behind the testimony of John the Baptist. Even as Pilate shouts out with all the imperial might behind him – “Behold the Man” – the Baptizer ...