Sermon Archive

Text: Exodus 3:1-15; 4:1-17 “You’ve chosen the wrong messenger! Send someone else…” Wow… what a letdown! After all this, all Moses can says is, “Please Lord, send somebody else!” We find ourselves at the end of one of the most profound stories from Hebrew Scripture. It is the tale of a wandering shepherd who comes face to face with the living God, and then sets out on a mission to free the Slaves of Egypt. It is a powerful story –so powerful that it has been brought to the big screen on three different occasions… one of which we saw a clip of this morning. It is so powerful, in fact, that we use one of its images to give a brand logo for our denomination. The burning bush, along with the Latin phrase Nec Tamen Consumebateur, can be found at the front of most sanctuaries in the Presbyterian Church in Canada… on fire and yet not consumed. It is the primary image on this pulpit and on our largest stained-glass window… and has been the main design element for both our website and the styli...

Text : Exodus 1:8-2:10 I’m grateful that you are here this morning, given the competition we have from the closing ceremonies of the Olympics in Beijing. I caught the opening moments of the ceremony, and I have to say that I couldn’t help but marvel at the scale of the production. It’s huge… literally a cast of thousands… and of course, from the land and people that invented fireworks, they’re telling their story on an epic scale. It’s an interesting comparison as we worship today, in our rather humble surroundings. But the story that we tell today is one we know… we have the opening notes of the book of Exodus… the original big-budget epic. Even though some of the stories from Genesis have a cosmic scale to them, Exodus has all of the themes that really makes it work. There will be spectacular special-effects, there will be a cast of thousands, there will be a sweeping that tells of the forging of a new nation, there will be the cry for freedom answered by the living God. But notice w...

Text: Isaiah 56:1; 6-8 One of the biggest challenges of being the church today is that we no longer hold the social status we once did. To be honest, I don’t think that is such a bad thing, but at the same time there are many of us who have living memories of the church in its heyday. What’s more, fond memory is always better than living reality, so we do tend to tell the good stories, and downplay the bad. I think it’s human nature… But at the same time, the type of thinking that “then” is somehow better than “now” can be crippling. Isaiah’s words were delivered to a people who had very much fallen into that kind of a trap… and I can’t help but think that we have a lot more in common When this congregation was founded in 1957, Canada was in the midst of a population explosion, new communities were springing up, and new churches were appearing along with them. Churches were social community centers, and important places for networking and social interaction… It wasn’t a question of if ...

Text: Isaiah 56:1; 6-8 One of the biggest challenges of being the church today is that we no longer hold the social status we once did. To be honest, I don’t think that is such a bad thing, but at the same time there are many of us who have living memories of the church in its heyday. What’s more, fond memory is always better than living reality, so we do tend to tell the good stories, and downplay the bad. I think it’s human nature… But at the same time, the type of thinking that “then” is somehow better than “now” can be crippling. Isaiah’s words were delivered to a people who had very much fallen into that kind of a trap… and I can’t help but think that we have a lot more in common When this congregation was founded in 1957, Canada was in the midst of a population explosion, new communities were springing up, and new churches were appearing along with them. Churches were social community centers, and important places for networking and social interaction… It wasn’t a question of if ...

Preaching to the Remnant Text: Isaiah 56:1; 6-8 One of the biggest challenges of being the church today is that we no longer hold the social status we once did. To be honest, I don’t think that is such a bad thing, but at the same time there are many of us who have living memories of the church in its heyday. What’s more, fond memory is always better than living reality, so we do tend to tell the good stories, and downplay the bad. I think it’s human nature… But at the same time, the type of thinking that “then” is somehow better than “now” can be crippling. Isaiah’s words were delivered to a people who had very much fallen into that kind of a trap… and I can’t help but think that we have a lot more in common When this congregation was founded in 1957, Canada was in the midst of a population explosion, new communities were springing up, and new churches were appearing along with them. Churches were social community centers, and important places for networking and social interaction… It...

Text: 1 Kings 19:9-18 Burnout. At some point in our lives, every one of us is going to experience it. It can be either short or long-term… it could just mean that we need an extended vacation, or it could mean that we need to look at a complete change in careers. It’s that point at which we feel we are truly spinning our wheels, desperate for a break… In more serious cases, there is a genuine anxiety over even returning to work, and even genuine clinical depression. Whatever its severity, burnout comes when no matter what amount of work that we do, no matter how many hours we put into it, we either aren’t getting enough done, or more importantly we get no satisfaction out of it… we’re burnt out. I suppose now would be a good time to say that I am NOT talking about myself. I’m back from vacation, so if I were feeling burnt out now, I think there’d be a serious problem. Although I will admit that prior to that vacation, things were beginning to fray along the edges. It had been eight mon...

Text : Genesis 32:22-31 The hardest funeral I ever had to do was not for a friend, nor someone I knew well. It was not for a child, nor the beloved son or daughter of a member of the congregation. It was not for someone who was the victim of crime or an accident… It was hard, but not for the emotional reasons you might think… but the best way I can describe is to tell the story. When I served as associate minister in Cornwall, one summer I received a call from a funeral home for an older woman… I wouldn’t say elderly, but older… who had recently died. She had left a husband, and two sisters… I didn’t have much more family information than that. When I went to visit with the family to prepare for the service, I met with the two sisters and the husband. The husband wasn’t really all that responsive, perhaps overcome with grief, he’d acknowledge a few things, but generally didn’t say a great deal. Most of my conversation was with the two sisters… When I do funerals, it has been my practic...