Words of Welcome

Romans 12:9-21 Sometimes you come across a passage of Scripture that could take several months of sermons to explore.  This is true of today’s reading.  With sentences coming at us in rapid-fire fashion, it demands a great degree of reflection.  Since I’m not planning an extended series at this moment, I will try to refrain from dwelling too long in every nook and cranny of Paul’s message.   Each statement is an imperative sentence that speaks to what it means to live the Christian life.  It’s fitting that this reading comes on Labor Day Weekend, because it will take a lot of work to fulfill Paul’s expectations.   The key to this passage is the call to “let love be genuine” (vs. 9).  Everything that follows is an expression of genuine love.  It’s not romantic love.  It’s not just friendship.  It’s Agape love.  When it comes to defining love, I’ve been turning to theologian Tom Oord for help.  His basic definition...

Philippians 2:1-13 During the Christmas season we sing joyous songs that declare in very explicit terms the nature of our joy, which is:  God has visited us in the person of Jesus, the babe born in Bethlehem.  We sing these songs, even if we’re not feeling particularly joyful at that moment.  We can even sing some of them from memory.  So, we sing:  Joy to the World, the Lord is come!   Let earth receive her king! Let every heart prepare him room, and heaven and nature sing,  and heaven and nature sing, and heaven and nature sing. I’m not sure that Paul and Silas were singing “Joy to the World” in their Philippian jail cell, nor would he have been singing it in another prison cell as he wrote his letter to the Philippian church.  That’s because Isaac Watts didn’t write it until 1719.  But, Paul did have this sense about what it means to find joy in difficult situations.   In the first chapter of his le...

Luke 11:1-13 I bring you greetings from the Disciples of Christ General Assembly held this past week in Fort Worth. While there weren’t 10,000 Disciples gathered in Fort Worth, there was probably close to 7,000 present. That’s a whole lot of people. The 10,000 Disciples comes from a call put out by our General Minister and President Sharon Watkins for 10,000 Disciples to pray for the church and its ministry. We who gathered in Fort Worth this past week did just that. We prayed and we sang, we listened and we shared in the Supper of the Lord. We brought gifts and we did business. We argued and debated, and yes, we prayed. Like every General Assembly there were issues that divided the body. Issues like the Iraq war. Although the resolution placing the church on record as opposing the Iraq War passed, the house was divided, and prayer was needed. Our moderator, Bill Lee, an African American pastor from Virginia, did just that, he called us to pray for healing in the body. He prayed that w...