Matthew 9:1-8

Back in the late 1950s, Payton Jordan, a football coach at Occidental College, pulled aside a young athlete named Jack Kemp, and told him that of all the players on the team, Kemp was the one who really had a chance to go someplace. He had the talent; if he had the discipline and the drive, he might even be a pro football player someday. Many of you will know that not only did Kemp become a star football player - quarterback for the Buffalo Bills - but he also became a Congressman, a Senator, a Cabinet member, and ran for Vice-President of the United States.

I bring greetings from Pam and our family. It was 16 years ago this weekend that our daughter Stephanie was born and her birth celebrated by you our family of faith here at Cicero UMC.

I also bring greetings in the name of our Lord Jesus from Bishop Violet Fisher, resident bishop of the New York West Area of the UMC. We are one of over 400 UM Churches in the North Central NY Annual Conference. Over 70,000 Saint in these churches are our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Matthew 8: 23-24

After the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, attention was drawn once again to a little church that stands in the shadows of the great skyscrapers in the financial district of Manhattan. It is the John Street United Methodist Church, the first Methodist chapel in America, originally formed in the 1760s, with the current building erected in 1841. Religious and secular writers alike commented on the witness of the church that stood firm while the great buildings around it were destroyed or structurally compromised. Heather Hansen, of the United Methodist General Board of Global Ministries wrote these words:

Genesis 12: 1-9; Matthew 8: 14-22

With so many of our American neighbors stationed at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, we have become more acutely aware of the realities of service to our country. When someone signs up with the Armed Forces, there is a contract that he or she will be ready and willing to go wherever needed. And we are also aware of what that means to families - it is a great hardship to have a son, a daughter, a mother, a father overseas. It is a sacrifice that the rest of us must never take for granted.

Micah 6:6-8; Matthew 8: 1-13

It was a warm and meaningful Communion service. The Word had been spoken and sung beautifully; the sense of God's presence was powerful; there was a strong sense of bonding as the congregation came forward to receive the bread and the wine. At the conclusion, to make sure no one in the church had been forgotten, the pastor asked, "Has everyone been fed?" And the response of one of the faithful was something many people would remember for a long, long time: "No, Pastor. Millions outside are still waiting."

Isaiah 60: 1-6

This morning in the church is the first Sunday in the season of Epiphany, which has the unfortunate effect of being an in-between time. It's an in-between time in the sense that we have just finished the mad rush of Christmas planning, and now we get this brief breather before all the thinking about Lent and Holy Week and Easter has to begin. Meanwhile, nature, which in these parts likes to throw a lot of white stuff at us this time of year, invites us to think in terms of hibernation - cocooning ourselves in a nice warm blanket in front of a fire, or, in our home, on a warm register - and waiting out the winter, so we can seize the good weather when it comes in the spring.