Words of Welcome

1 Thessalonians 5:12-28 We have reached the Third Sunday of Advent. We have lit the rose-colored candle, which symbolizes the message of joy. The Psalm for the day declares that “The Lord has done great things for us, and we rejoiced.” Then in the closing verses of the Psalm, the people sing: “May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy. Those who go out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, carrying their sheaves” ( Psalm 126:5-6 ). As we gather to celebrate this message of Joy, we hear the words of Paul to the church at Thessalonika. If you want to get a sense of what the church looked like in its earliest days, this letter to a Macedonian church is a good place to go, since this is believed to be the oldest part of the New Testament. What we have read are Paul’s final exhortations and benediction. There’s a flurry of information here that can overwhelm the reader and leave the preacher puzzled as to how to deal with it. Fortun...

Isaiah 35:1-10 Advent is a season of expectation and anticipation. Signs of Christmas are all around us, but it hasn’t arrived. We’re still waiting to join together in celebrating the coming of the promised one, the one born in Bethlehem who will inaugurate the realm of God.   On this third Sunday of Advent, we look forward with great anticipation to the coming of the day of everlasting joy. We recognize that this day hasn’t been revealed, but we find hope in the promise that a day will come when we “shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”

Philippians 4:4-7 I was looking forward to preaching this sermon.  Not only has it been a couple of weeks since last I got the opportunity, but joy a great theme to preach on this close to Christmas.  The service itself is designed to highlight this theme.  We’ve already lit the candle of joy, and all our hymns speak of joy as well.   But, the joy of this Advent and Christmas season has been interrupted by the horrific tragedy that hit our nation on Friday.  I think that most of us are still reeling from the shock of learning that a young man entered an elementary school and killed twenty-six people, twenty of whom were small children, before turning his gun on himself.  We can’t hear a word from God this morning without acknowledging the grief and anger that wraps our nation.    We began worship this morning listening to the voices of our children singing the Friendly Beast song.  They blessed us not only with their songs, but...

Isaiah 35:1-10 The Mitchell Report was released on Thursday. It told us what we already knew, there are problems in Baseball. It also told us that Barry Bonds isn’t the only one implicated in the scandal. Yes, Baseball, America’s sport, is broken. We also learned this week that the CIA destroyed tapes that showed agents using waterboarding to get information. Waterboarding is considered torture by the Geneva Conventions. There were bombings in a number of nations and shootings at a church in Colorado. It would seem that we live in a broken world. As psychiatrist Paul Tournier pointed out many years ago: "Its ills are innumerable; it writhes in pain."1 In the words of Frederick Buechner: The world floods in on all of us. The world can be kind, and it can be cruel. It can be beautiful, and it can be appalling. It can give us good reason to hope and good reason to give up hope.2 Life it seems fragmented and unpredictable, and as a result we often become reactors to the world...