Listen to Reading and Sermon 12For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. 13For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body — Jews or Greeks, slaves or free — and we [...]
Listen to Reading and Sermon
12For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. 13For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body — Jews or Greeks, slaves or free — and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.
Audio reading and sermon (http://sunshinecathedral.org/sermons/audio/20100124_6.mp3)
// < ![CDATA[ YAHOO.util.Event.onDOMReady(function() { YAHOO.sunshine.setBtn("20100124_1"); }); // ]]> Listen to Readings and Sermon The Good News Written From the wisdom of Abraham Heschel: The beginning of faith is not a feeling for the mystery of living or a sense of awe, wonder and amazement. The root of religion is the question what to do [...]
Listen to Readings and Sermon
The Good News Written
From the wisdom of Abraham Heschel:
The beginning of faith is not a feeling for the mystery of living or a sense of awe, wonder and amazement. The root of religion is the question what to do with the feeling for the mystery of living, what to do with awe, wonder and amazement.
Religion begins with a consciousness that something is asked of us.
It is in that tense, eternal asking in which the soul is caught and in which humanity’s answer is elicited.
Luke 4.14 – 21 (NRSV)
14Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee , and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. 15He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone. 16When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: 18“The Spirit of [God] is upon me, [who] has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. [God] has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, 19to proclaim the year of [divine] favor.” 20And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
The Good News Proclaimed
Preached by the Reverend Doctor Mona West at the Sunshine Cathedral on Sunday, January 24, 2010.
In 2004 the United Church of Christ launched a marketing campaign called “God is Still Speaking”. The purpose of the campaign was to increase membership in churches and increase united Church of Christ name recognition by sending a clear message that God (and the UCC) is in the business of welcoming all people. A primary target of this campaign is the LGBT community.
The heart of the beginning of this campaign was a series of provocative television commercials that got this message of radical inclusivity across. Many of you may have seen the first one to air called “The Bouncer”. The ad showed bouncers — much like the ones you would find in nightclubs — outside a church building. They were allowing white, well-dressed different gender couples, and nuclear families in, but they were “bouncing” or rejecting a number of other people: an African American female, A Latino male, two men holding hands and a person using a wheelchair. The text displayed on the screen read, “Jesus didn’t turn people away. Neither do we.”
The idea for the campaign came from a quote by Gracie Allen: “Never put a period where God has placed a comma.” One denominational leader said that the UCC wanted to build on the concept of earlier theologians that there is “more light and more truth yet to come from God’s Holy Word.” Continue reading »
