Words of Welcome

Colossians 1:11-20 It’s only the last Sunday of November, but for the church this is it. This is the last Sunday of the church year, and next Sunday when we get together to decorate the church before the service we’ll be starting over with a new year. Because it’s tradition to sum up the year gone by, I thought it might be worthwhile to sum things up this morning. Now don’t worry, I’m not going to give you a statistical report, or even list all the things we’ve done this past year. Some of you might be needing a nap, but I’d rather not put you to sleep just yet. Instead we’re going to consider this grand statement from the letter to the Colossians. There’s some question as to whether Paul wrote this letter, but for now we’re going to assume he did. It really doesn’t matter who wrote it because the statement holds true whatever the case may be. In this brief passage, we hear a call to kneel before our Lord and embrace him as our king. 1. THE PROBLEM OF POWER Today is Christ the King S...

2 Corinthians 9:6-15 Every day we get bombarded with requests for help and assistance. The causes might be good, but how do you decide when and where to give? Of course, these appeals come even faster the closer we get to Christmas. Although we must be careful and discerning in our giving, we also must be aware of the temptation to close the heart and wallet, and become overly protective of our assets. When we do this, we fall prey to the miserliness that cut Mr. Scrooge off from humanity. Paul made an appeal to the Corinthian Church, that might not have gone over very well. He told them that he was coming south and was taking up a collection for the church in Jerusalem, which was experiencing famine. I’m not sure, but it seems like he was hearing some grumbling about having to give to strangers when there were troubles enough at home. In answering them, Paul focuses on the heart of the giver, the provisions of God, and the blessings of giving. 1. THE HEART OF THE GIVER Paul does tal...

Luke 20:27-38 No, I’m not confused about the seasons of the year. I realize that Christmas and not Easter is just around the corner. If nothing else all those ads that keep popping up remind me that I need to get busy with my Christmas shopping. Besides there are a lot of other holidays to get through before the Easter Bunny hops out. But here we are, singing Easter songs in the middle of November. There’s a reason for my madness, and that reason is this passage from the Gospel of Luke. Because it talks about resurrection, I thought it would be great to sing some Easter songs out of season. When we meet up with Jesus in this passage, he’s having a discussion with a group of Sadducees. The Sadducees were a group of religious and social conservatives who didn’t believe in the resurrection. Their Bible was essentially limited to the first five books of the Old Testament, and they didn’t think you could find the resurrection in these books. And so Jesus, who had a broader sense of God’s re...

Luke 19:1-10 It’s not Christmas yet, although with Halloween now out of the way, the Christmas stuff has begun to emerge. But when I read about Jesus’ encounter with Zacchaeus, that famously short chief tax collector from Jericho, I can’t help but think of Ebenezer Scrooge. You know the story. On Christmas Eve, that rich penny-pinching money lender, is visited by three ghosts. By the next morning he’s a new man. Instead of taking money from the poor, he gives it away. Now Scrooge didn’t go looking for this encounter, but according to Luke Zacchaeus did. We’re not told why, just that he did. In fact, Zacchaeus goes to great lengths to see Jesus, going as far as climbing a tree so he could see the Master when he walked by. The amazing thing is that not only did he see Jesus, but Jesus saw him. That glance upwards changed his life forever. 1. Salvation – now and then This is supposed to be a stewardship sermon, but this is really a salvation story. But in this story, salvation isn’t just...

Luke 18:9-14 "The bigger they are, the harder they fall!" That could be the mantra of this season’s college football teams. Every time a team reaches number 1 or number 2 it loses. LSU, USC, South Florida, Cal. It’s like no one wants to be in the BCS Championship game. After USC got beat by lowly Stanford, it looked like Cal was in the driver’s seat to win the Pac10, especially after they squeaked out a win over my Oregon Ducks. Then LSU lost to Kentucky of all teams and Cal looked up and began to celebrate – only they went on to lose that same day to Oregon State. Even though #2 Boston College held on and won this week, it still has been a topsy turvy fall. And you know what? We like it that way. Unless it’s our team on top, we like to see the big guy lose. For some reason we don’t like the person or the business or the country or the team that’s arrogant, self-important, or snobbish. As Jesus tells the story, two guys went up to the temple to pray. One guy was very righteou...

Luke 18:1-8 You’ve heard it said: "Be careful what you pray for, you just might get it!" That’s a scary thought isn’t it? We don’t always think too deeply about what we pray for, and so we might end up praying for things that are better off not being stated. Well when Evan Baxter – a news anchor turned congressman who ran on a platform pledging to change the world – got on his knees the night before his first day in Congress he prayed for help. What Evan didn’t expect was that God would take his prayer seriously. Not only did God hear, but God answered it by giving Evan Baxter the tools he needed to change the world – in a sort of Noahic way. God delivered some tools, a load of wood, plans, and just a bit of incentive to build an ark. I know that some of you have seen Evan Almighty , so you know what I’m talking about. Evan Almighty is a nice family comedy with a good message that’s now out on DVD. That’s my commercial interruption. The point of the movie is pretty simple – ...

2 Timothy 1:1-14 Back in the 1970s America gathered around its TV sets, fixated by a mini-series about an African American family. Alex Haley’s Roots was one of the most important events in TV history, in part because of the size of an audience it drew, but more importantly because it brought to life the struggles of African Americans as they made their way through life in America. For the first time White America caught sight of the dark side of its history. Roots did something else; it encouraged people to explore and to own their own histories. In telling the story of his own family, from the time his ancestor Kunta Kinte was captured and brought to America on a slave ship up to his own day, he showed us the importance of passing on our stories. Owning our family history – warts and all – is key to knowing who we are as individuals. Each of us has a family history, full of stories, both bad and good. They tell of both struggles and triumphs; they will contain even a few skeletons i...