Sermon Archive

Text: Luke 11:1-13 Since the dawn of time, people have been searching for tools they could use to help them through life. Tools like money, success, and power, have been seen as the keys to joy, and happiness. The problem is, we’ve failed to realize that there are other ‘tools’ besides these things. We’ve forgotten that God has given each of us many ‘tools’ to help us life our lives to the fullest. We’ve become so focussed on pursuing things like money, success, and power, that we overlook the wonderful gifts that God has given to us. One of the many ‘tools’ we are all given is the ability to pray. In particular, God has given us the ‘tool’ which we call the Lord’s Prayer. This piece of scripture has brought a great deal of comfort, insight, guidance, and a sense of God’s love to millions of people. The Lord’s Prayer is a ‘tool’ in that it is meant to be used - it is a set of words that are meant to be read, thought about, and discussed. The Lord’s Prayer is an instrument through which...

Text: Amos 8:1-12 Amos is not a happy camper. Quite often when readings like this come up in the cycle of suggested readings, the temptation is to simply hit the delete key and ignore it. Just go with the New Testament text, and let the prophet yell in silence. It isn’t so much that we want to intentionally ignore this text, but it seems so disruptive, so hopeless that it’s still lingering there when we’re reading the other passages. The story from Luke about Mary and Martha is much more familiar and much more comfortable, but the anger from Amos is unsettling. Maybe that’s where our attention needs to be. We have a tendency to take prophets literally… yet ironically, if we do that all the time we miss all of the subtleties, all the genuine power of what they have to say. As a prophet, Amos rarely seems to have anything good to say about Israel’s spiritual life. Yet that was very much reflective of the times in which he lived. By the time Amos arrived on the scene, the great empire of ...

Text : Luke 10:25-37 There is a real problem with familiarity. Stories that are simply part of the cultural consciousness, it seems pointless to retell them, because everybody knows them. Many Biblical stories fall into this category, tales that are so familiar that even people who are not familiar with Christian traditions are aware of them. The Good Samaritan is certainly one of them. We have >good Samaritan laws’ which protect people from being liable for damage when they are trying to help. There is a Christian Charity organization called “The Samaritan’s Purse.” On the spell checker on my computer, I didn’t have to put in “Samaritan” because it was already there... complete with definition: “A person who voluntarily offers help in times of trouble.” We have associated this name with someone who does good deeds, and it is the good and, well, neighbourly thing to do. The only problem is that as good and as noble as this understanding is... we are far too familiar with the parabl...