Luke 2:22-40 This Sunday we are in the Christmas season, which means that, for the world we live in, Christmas is over. All around we see the debris of Christmas, while here in the church we’re saying, “At last – we have arrived and we are just getting started!” Because there is much more to Christmas than the shopping and the gift exchanging. It’s after the rush is over that we have the chance to really see that. This first Sunday of Christmas is a day to get some perspective on it. This is a good day to get some perspective on giving and receiving. I read an article once that said, from an economist’s point of view, Christmas gift giving is irrational. It said, “ill-chosen gifts caused between $4 billion and $13 billion a year in economic waste.” I didn’t want to know that. But I know it’s true, for I have personally been in the […]
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Love and Happiness
Mark 1:4-11 There are a few passages from scripture that are so well known and loved that they almost become etched on our hearts. “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want,” is one of them. “For God so loved the world he gave his only begotten Son,” is another. These are special; no one should mess with these. “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,” is also one of these, I think. But when I read this story of the baptism of Jesus in the Common English Bible translation, it had me in a whole new way. “You are my Son, whom I dearly love; in you I find happiness.” What beautiful language. Maybe not poetic in the way that the King James Bible is poetic, but clear and direct and beautiful in its message to us. You are my Son, whom I dearly love. In you I […]
Continue readingNo Longer Strangers, Part 1: The Family
Ephesians 1:3-14 This week we begin a new series focusing on Christian community. Using the letter to Ephesians to explore this basic question: how to live as a community of faith in the best ways we can. The church has changed an awful lot over the past 2000 years, but something that has not really changed is the struggle we have to be an authentic Christian community. Ever since the beginning, this has been a hard task for the church, because it is a fight against our tribal instincts. Human beings have always had a tendency to cluster into groups of people who are “like us.” In whatever ways are important to us, whatever values are foremost in our minds, these are the markers we look for in creating community. And this is precisely what the church of Jesus Christ is working to overcome. The very radical thing that the […]
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