Sermon Archive

Text: Isaiah 9:2-7, Luke 2:1-14 So for one last time, I climb up here, to speak of Christmas as closes this year. It has been fun, to bring you in time sermons delivered completely in rhyme. You may think it’s hard, to compose stuff in verse, but truth be told it’s almost the reverse. The lines, the phrase, the rhyme rings true, and it gives focus and helps us to listen too! But no matter how fancy the method of delivery, the message is still central amidst this Christmas livery. So please, lend me your ears, as Shakespeare once said, and I’ll try not to bore you or fill you with dread. I come back to the hope that the prophet once expressed, who offered encouraging words when all were depressed. We think our times today are challenging and tough, But to be honest, our ancestors had it much more rough. They lived in a time where their future was in doubt, where Israel was kicked around by nations about. Truth was their power was really quite small, Next to Egyptians or Assyrians, ...

Text: Isaiah 40:1-11 I remember once at an Advent worship service at Vancouver School of Theology, where Jim Lindenberger, the Old Testament professor was preaching. During the fall months at VST each of the faculty are responsible for the conduct and flow of the community worship, each taking turns in both leading and preaching, along with a group of students. In this case, when it came time for the Gospel reading, Jim announced “Isaiah 40” as the reading of the gospel. At first read it might seem a bit odd. We’ve taken “gospel” to mean the four collections of stories about the life and work of Jesus… namely Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Even in a scholarly direction, there’s also the non-canonical gospels that are out there… Thomas, Peter, the Ebionites… but that’s not what Jim was after. He announced that the gospel would be the passage from Isaiah 40… not because it was considered to be a “gospel” in the classic sense of the word, but because Isaiah 40’s powerful message is one o...

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...

Text: Deuteronomy 26:1-11 It’s funny. We all have our thanksgiving traditions… but we often forget that Thanksgiving as a holiday is something that is almost exclusively North American. In the United States, the last Thursday of November is Thanksgiving Day… for us, well… it’s tomorrow. While they bear the same name, Canadians are far less concerned with stories of Pilgrims, Plymouth Rock, or how to grow corn. Instead, when the celebration “came north” it was moved earlier in the year because of an understandably shorter growing season, and was specifically oriented around the harvest. In Canada, thanksgiving has far less to do with the national identity as it does with simply being grateful that stuff actually grew in this harsh northern climate. My parents still valiantly try to grow Tomatoes in Calgary, and while they may claim some success… the reddish green marbles they start covering to avoid the August frosts would beg to differ… You may also notice that I’ve not mentioned a...

Psalm 19 One year ago last week, Sarah, Megan and I had just returned home from a day out. We had returned home later than we normally do. The sun had set, and the twilight was deepening, and the first bright stars were shining through. Megan pointed straight up and asked “Daddy, what star is that?” I was embarrassed, because I couldn’t remember. Up until this point, Megan was only interested in Venus, the shining planet often referred to as the evening star. Yet Venus had long since dipped into the sun’s glare, and so I didn’t know… but I did have my brand new iPhone. So I downloaded an astronomy app, pointed the device at the sky, and was able to tell Megan that it was a star called “Vega.” If she hadn’t asked that question, we would not have our two telescopes, nor would we have thought to have a star named in memory of her baby sister. In the time since, my whole family has engaged in admiring the wonders of the heavens. This past summer Sarah, Megan and I went camping on Manit...

Exodus 12:1-14 By now Hurricane Irene is now a memory, all that is left is to clean up the mess and try to make the best of it. Those who live around the western Atlantic are keeping an eye on Hurricane Katia, and what path she might take, and Tropical Storm Lee seems have parked himself off the coast of Louisiana. At this point it is still early to tell, and there is still three months left in what is proving to be a moderately active hurricane season, but aside from Irene’s notable exception, damage so far has not been as severe as the even busier 2005 Season. As severe as these storms are, they do pass over, and the survivors pick up carry on. A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to sing at the Naramata Centre’s Music Week with a massed choir of more than 170 voices. It was the first time in six years that I had a chance to do that, and I remember when we were there in 2005, we sang a piece called “The Storm is Passing Over.” Ironically, it would be merely a few weeks later t...

Text: Matthew 13:1-9 There is such a thing as being too familiar with a story. Where we have heard something so often that we think we know what the message is, and so we don’t often hear it. For an out-of-season example, it may surprise many of you to learn that there never was a donkey specifically present in the written accounts of the Christmas story… yet nativity plays and drawings always seem to have a donkey, sheep or other animals. The story is too familiar, and we have simply added lots of things that aren’t there. The same deal with this morning’s parable of the sower. The parable of the sower is so well known, literally thousands of sermons have been written on these few short verses in the gospels. We hear the same tale over and over again. We hear it so many times that we think we know what it says, and we tune it out. Been there. Heard that. Next lesson. But what if being too familiar with a story in the Bible prevents us from hearing what God is saying to us? After...

Matthew 11:16-19;25-30 “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” These are words of comfort, words of hope. This verse is certainly very familiar, and is used in a number of different circumstances in church life: words of invitation and assurance… words of welcome at Communion… words of comfort at funerals… Even at the beginning of summer, when we have been working hard all winter long, these seem to be rather appropriate for this holiday weekend in July. Compared to some of the more difficult passages in the Bible, it is a welcome and refreshing change. Instead of digging through the text to pull out the meaning like we did with Paul last week, Jesus throws it out front for us: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” Umm… there you go… there’s the good news! I’m not sure if I can really add to that… Sermon’s done! If only we could get away that easily. As much as we are...

Text: Romans 6:12-23 This past week we brought to a close our exploration of different world religions. We finished up with Protestant Christianity, partly because it would be in theory the most familiar to us as we are part of that tradition. However, given the diversity of the various protestant traditions, there is a lot that we don’t know that is under the broad umbrella of being “protestant.” My hope for the series was to provide at least a broad overview of the various major world religious traditions so that people can have a sense of how those belief systems originated and developed. It would also help for us to understand what similarities there are between the traditions, but also what makes each of them unique in their witness to the world. Of course, when it comes to our own tradition, there are a number of things we can point to as being similar. The curiously-named “Golden Rule” – do to others as you would want them to do to you appears in nearly all religious traditi...

Text: Acts 1:1-11 There is a political cartoon that was published in the so-called aftermath of Harold Camping’s failed prediction of the rapture. It shows a group of people standing on the shoreline, looking up, holding banners about the May 21st “scheduled” Judgment Day. One of them makes a comment that they’ve been told to keep looking up, while in the background you can see an artist’s impression of Camping in the background counting money. It’s funny, but it also seems true. Two weeks ago, I said that I had little doubt that Family Radio would make some kind of statement that they’re still right, even if their math was off. I don’t know if you’ve followed it, but now October 21st is the set date. Well… that’s not quite true. May 21st was supposed to be Judgment Day, with October 21st being the day that the rest of the world would be consumed. So Camping is basically telling his followers to keep looking up. I find that so ironic, especially in light of today’s theme, and the...

Text: Psalm 31:1-5;15-16 “My times are in your hand…” – Psalm 31:15 Well. How about this. We’re all still here! Well, maybe not… it is the long weekend after all and I would expect that many have gone off to their cottage or camping to spend some good quality time with their families and friends. But what I meant is we’re pretty much all still here. Unless you’ve really been ignoring the media over the past few months, and over this past week in particular, there has been a very vocal fringe group in the United States called Family Radio which identified Judgement Day as being May 21st, 2011. They paid for signs and billboards all across North America, including several Canadian cities. It was posted up with great certitude and urgency, with even a flared seal-like stamp with the words “The Bible guarantees it!” in large bold letters. Followers quit their jobs, sold their houses, gave away their possessions… and seemed to be encouraging others to do the same. So here we are. Ma...