Sermon Archive

Revelation 21:1-6; Matthew 6:24-34 I remember when I was in Cornwall, where the Annual General Meetings were an occasion where the congregation stayed away in droves. Seriously… on the one Sunday where people could come and participate in the life and work of the congregation, there was a more-than-measurable dip in the congregation’s attendance. From the vantage point of the pulpit, it was extremely obvious… it was almost on part with the Sundays that follow Christmas or Easter… what us clergy types have come to call “cannon” Sundays. You know, the type of Sunday where the attendance is so low, that one could fire a cannon off in the sanctuary and not hit anybody. Oddly enough one of the principle reasons that people stayed away in droves is that the ministers had a habit of getting mad that people didn’t show up, but take it out on those who did. A lesson learned for me… praise people for coming out and participating in this reflection of the congregation’s life. Encourage members in...

Matthew 5:38-48 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ but I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…” There it is. My job is done… that’s my sermon for the week. Truly the shortest lesson. But… wait… hang on for a second. But… but… but… We have a hard time wrapping our head around this. We say “but” a lot, because we want to make exceptions. We want Jesus to “clarify” his statement by saying under which conditions we should love our enemies. We get lost in all these “buts” –looking for the exception, and having a hard time accepting that Jesus could have truly meant this without qualification. If there was a lesson that is so simple in the saying, and yet so complex in all of its ramifications, Jesus call for us to love our enemies would certainly be it. This is not something that we can weasel our way out of. Even the most skeptical scholars agree that this command to love our enemies was a totally unique te...

A Question of Integrity Text: Matthew 5:21-37 There is a section in the gospel of Matthew that seems to be a collection of some of the hardest things that Jesus ever said. It’s as if Matthew wasn’t quite sure where to put them, and seemed to shove them all in one place. Mark and Luke do report Jesus saying something similar, but they’re more scattered here and there. With Matthew, it’s as if we’re getting them all out of the way at once. Unfortunately it also means that we will tend to focus on one particular saying to the expense of the others. Most of the time, it’s that whole “if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out…” bit. A rather uncomfortable image to be sure… and perhaps one to distract us more than it should. Matthew had a good reason to put all these together, and it was more than just convenience. He uses these sayings to teach a particularly pointed lesson to the early church. As much as we refer to the letters of Paul as lessons to the early church, the gospels played ju...