Words of Welcome

Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, UK  Psalm 84 I have been going to church all my life. I was baptized as an infant at St. Luke’s of the Mountains Episcopal Church in LaCrescenta, California. I was an acolyte at St. Barnabas Episcopal Church of Dunsmuir. I was confirmed at age twelve at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Klamath Falls, where I was an acolyte, lay reader, and choir member. I was baptized once more in a creek in Oregon at age seventeen, after I moved to the Foursquare Church. I was then ordained at age twenty-seven at Temple City Christian Church. That should qualify as dwelling in the house of the Lord all my life, “for a day in [God’s] courts is better than a thousand elsewhere.”   What is true of me might be true of you as well. Your story might be different in its details, but you have been dwelling in the House of the Lord your entire life. In fact, I know that at least a couple of our members were on the cradle roll of Central Woodward w...

John 12:13-25 What does it mean to be the Church of Jesus?  Could that be the question raised by Jesus’ actions in the Temple?  In this story, Jesus makes a rather bold claim on the Temple. This is his “father’s house,” and it’s been turned into a marketplace.  The house of God, which Jesus was claiming for his father, was supposed to be the place where God could be encountered.  The Temple in Jerusalem was a magnificent building, much like a grand medieval cathedral. Herod the Great had begun rebuilding the Temple put up after the end of the Exile. This replacement for Solomon’s Temple was small and uninspiring. It would never do in an age when grand temples were being built across the Roman Empire. Herod built palaces and fortresses, but he also needed a Temple that could be a showplace to not only impress his subjects, who resented him for being an outsider appointed by the Romans, but also the tourists who passed through the city. The Temple Jesus ...

1 Corinthians 6:12-20 I don’t like to meddle in people’s lives, that is, unless, of course, they’re family members. That’s a whole different story! The reason I don’t like meddling from the pulpit is that when you start pointing fingers at the moral and ethical lapses of your church members, they’ve been known to point fingers back at you. So, when it comes to things like sex and food and drink – I try to leave things well enough alone. Of course, Paul doesn’t have any of my qualms. He’s quite happy to point fingers, and he isn’t afraid of having them pointed back at him. Alas, he’s braver than me! 1. The Personal: Sex, food, and Other Addictions The Corinthian letters, one of which we’re dealing with today, deal with a lot of moral and ethical issues. It seems that this church had more than its share of problems, with and sex and food right at the top of their list of concerns. It shouldn’t be surprising to us that this congregation struggled with what we would call addictive behavior...