Sermon Archive

Mark 13:24-37 Two weeks ago, I preached about reconsidering time – last week, I preached about Ezekiel’s hope. In some ways I worry that I have already stolen my own thunder with today, the first Sunday in Advent. Mark’s gospel encompasses both themes, around both time and hope… and I’ve really already preached on both… and recently! So do I just repeat what I’ve said, and hope it sinks in? Probably not. I have heard of some preachers who preached the same sermon 5 weeks in a row to see if anybody was paying attention, but I am not really doing that today. Yet, some of the themes are common, and they really do bear repeating, and repeating often. For us, the decorations are coming up. The plans are all being made. Christmas is now less than a month away and we are in the first Sunday of Advent… the anticipation of Christ’s coming. But while our decorations are all filled with snowflakes, pieces of greenery, generally yuletide… this isn’t the kind of preparation that Mark was antici...

Ezekiel 34:11-16; 20-24 Some of the most powerful and profound insights that we find Bible come out of times of great hardship and anxiety. Point blank: it seems as if when there is worry and trouble, the words that truly endure are the ones that focus on hope, that look forward, even when the people themselves are literally standing in charred ash. It not to say that there weren’t voices of concern or pessimism about the future at the time… in fact, they were probably all too abundant… but the words that truly endure, are the ones that look ahead with a sense of hope and optimism… proclaiming loudly that God is clearly at work, even when all around seems to be hopeless. Ezekiel knew this more than most. As a prophet, he lived in perhaps one of the most devastating times that the people of Israel had ever experienced: the outright failure, collapse, and destruction of the entire nation of Israel. Ezekiel himself would be dragged into exile, to an encampment south of the city of Bab...

1 Thessalonians 5:1-11 One Sunday morning back in May, I wrote a sermon that was deliberately poking a bit of fun at a US preacher whose end-time prediction of May 21st hadn’t come true the day before I preached. Admittedly, it was like shooting fish in a barrel, because I preached that sermon on May 22nd. I had nothing to lose, had the world indeed come to an end, I wouldn’t have to preach anyway. Of course, a careful reading of said prediction said that the faithful would be taken up on May 21st, and the world would formally come to an end on October 21st of this year. Given that we’re still here, it shows how accurate Mr. Camping’s math was. Again, he’s an easy target, and while it may be worthwhile poking a bit of fun at these predictions and their accuracy, I need to be fair about something: Early Christians genuinely believed that Christ would return in their lifetime, in very real terms. It was a source of great worry amongst at least some of that very small group of believers...