Words of Welcome

Luke 9:57-62; Psalm 82 Today is Transfiguration Sunday, a day when we remember God’s mountaintop affirmation of Jesus’ ministry.  It is a moment in Jesus’ life, when he receives the  mantle of Moses the Lawgiver and Elijah the Prophet.  As was true at Jesus’ baptism, God points to Jesus and says – that’s my child, the one who reveals my nature and purposes.   This is also the beginning of our Week of Compassion emphasis, which invites us to contribute to the welfare of those in need both in the United States and around the world.  Last year, the Motown Mission project at Northwestern Christian Church received a grant from Week of Compassion that enabled the work teams to renovate the church so it can be of greater service to the neighborhood. Today is also, at least for us, Economic Justice Sunday.  It’s not on the liturgical calendar, but it is an emphasis of the Metropolitan Coalition of Congregations . This Coalition, which Luke Allen...

Psalm 30 There was a time when many churches frowned upon dancing.  That’s because they considered it too sensual.  This was especially true of mixed dancing, which might lead to promiscuity. That’s why we didn’t have dances at my college.  We had “stand up concerts.”  Although they looked a lot like dances, we could pretend they weren’t.  After I graduated, things loosened up, but there was this concern that people might think these Christian college students were up to no good!   Now, as for me and dancing, you probably won’t catch me out on the dance floor very often.  It’s not a theological thing.  But, as Cheryl will attest, I can’t dance!  My feet and my arms and my body will not move with the music in an appropriate fashion.      Although Psalm 30 speaks of God taking us from mourning to dancing, the Psalmist isn’t referring to a Valentine’s Dance.  Instead, the Psalmist is calling for us to celebrat...

1 Corinthians 9:16-23 Rene Descartes declared these famous words – in Latin of course – Cogito ergo sum .   That is, “I think, therefore I am.”   According to this famous philosopher the ability to reason and to think defined human identity.  Many people, especially today, would find his definition rather limited, because it seems to exclude a lot that makes us who we are.     But who are you?  What makes you, you?    I can’t answer this question for you, but I can say something about my own identity.   I do like to think, but I’m more than my ability to reason.   I am a middle-aged, well-educated, middle-class European-American male, who has been happily married for going on twenty-nine years and who is a father of one adult child who also happens present in the room.  My maternal grandfather was an immigrant from Holland, while ancestors on my father’s side came to Massachusetts’s Bay Colony not long after its establ...

Mark 1:21-28 Jesus walks into the synagogue at Capernaum, immediately heads to the pulpit, and without so much as asking for permission from the synagogue leaders,  starts preaching.  After that, the place falls into chaos.   That’s because, no sooner had Jesus started preaching, when suddenly, a man stood up in the sanctuary, and started shouting Jesus.  The man, whom Mark says was possessed by an evil spirit, screamed at Jesus, demanding to know what Jesus would do with “us?”    Are you going to destroy us?  After all, “I know who you are.”  Yes, “you are the holy one of God.”    Picture yourself in such a congregation.  How would you have responded to all of this commotion?  Would you have been amazed and shaken, as Mark suggests was the case for this congregation?  I expect that like us, this congregation liked things to be done “decently and in order.”  What would you make of both the preacher an...

1 Samuel 3:1-10 When Teddy Roosevelt became President in 1901 he was the first President since James Buchanan who hadn’t been directly involved in the Civil War.  Though Grover Cleveland did pay a substitute to take his place in the Union Army. Bill Clinton was the first post-World War II generation President, and since Barack Obama’s election in 2008, it appears that the torch may be in the process of being passed once again. Passing the torch of responsibility from one generation to the next is inevitable –   in politics, in business, in sports, and in the church. At Central Woodward, we’re blessed with members who can remember the earliest days of this congregation, back when it sat on Woodward Avenue.  It’s good to hear your stories, and we’re hoping to get them down on video soon.  But a new day is dawning, and new generations are taking up the mantle of leadership.  And that’s the way it should be. The story of Eli and Samuel that we h...

Genesis 1:1-5    “The end of something is better than its beginning.” (Ecclesiastes 7:8 Common English Bible)    I thought you’d want to hear this word from Ecclesiastes, since we’re moving into a new year.  Beginnings are important, but endings are even more important.  A few years ago the Lions won all their preseason games and everyone expected good things, and then they lost the next sixteen in a row.  This year, the Lions had an up and down season, but they ended up in the playoffs – that was a much better conclusion.     Each of us has a story of beginnings to tell, what we don’t know is how things will turn out.   My own life began on March 3, 1958 in Los Angeles.   Five years later, I began my formal schooling as kindergartner in Mt. Shasta.  From then on,  for the next seventeen Septembers, I would begin a new school year.  After taking off two Septembers, I restarted school in January 1982,...

Titus 2:11-14 The other day I was asked why we’re reading from Titus 2 on Christmas Eve.   My conversation partner wanted to know what this passage has to do with Christmas.  I have to admit that on the surface it doesn’t seem to fit very well.  It doesn’t say anything about the birth of Jesus, and as far as I know it hasn’t inspired any Christmas carols, but sometimes what we see on the surface is deceiving.  When we look more closely at this passage,  we hear the announcement of “the glorious appearing of our great God and savior Jesus Christ.”   And as the letter writer declares, this is the blessed hope for which we have been waiting.  With Christ comes the grace of God that inspires and empowers us to live into the message of Christmas.  I imagine that most of us have come here tonight expecting to be drawn into the presence of the God who Scripture says appeared to the world in the babe born in Bethlehem.  Most of us come ...