Sermon Archive

Text: Psalm 150 Get on a bus, or subway and I can almost guarantee that someone, somewhere in that car is wearing a pair of white headphones. (They look something like this)…They’re usually attached to an iPod... For those of you don’t know what an iPod is, it is a small piece of technology that can fits in your pocket that one can play music on. While that’s not particularly revolutionary, it’s the simple volume of stuff these tiny little things can hold. The latest version of the iPod can hold 15,000 songs, 25,000 photographs or 150 hours worth of video. If you think of it this way, it can hold as many songs as normally would be found on more than one-thousand compact discs, or roughly 800 pounds of vinyl records! It weighs just a couple of ounces, and can have one’s entire music library on it. Theoretically you could hit “play” have it run twenty four hours a day, and not have it repeat a single song for more than forty days! Music has become very easy to share and to play these day...

Easter Sunday 2006 Text: Mark 16:1-8 So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. It’s not supposed to end like that!! What do you mean that they went out and fled from the tomb and said nothing to anyone? It is an ending that we hardly expect, especially since we have been building towards this for so long. Easter morning is finally here, we come out with our trumpets, our voices, expecting a big angel chorus, shining lights, fireworks and spectacle… and all we get is that those who went to the tomb ran away in fear. It’s as if the story simply stops mid-sentence. What a letdown! After all, this is Easter Sunday! Early in the morning Mary Magdalene, Mary the Mother of James, and Salome go out to the tomb where Jesus was laid to rest. They brought herbs and spices with them so that they could anoint his body as was the funeral customs. The Sabbath was over, and so now this task that normally wo...

Psalm 22 Mark 15:21-41 “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me??” What does it feel like to be abandoned? This day is for all of us who know the desperation and despair of being totally alone. It has been said that one of the first major crises for a child is separation from their parents. The time when a baby cries out, and their parents either do not hear, or do not come. Somehow as we grow older, we encounter this same crises over and over again in different forms. Psychologists and psychiatrists spend a great deal of their time analyzing human anxiety, and separation and abandonment is perhaps one of the greatest ones to touch the human soul. Yet separation is more than just a sense of anxiety, it is a genuine theological crisis that every single one of us faces. At some point in our lives, each one of us will feel as if we are abandoned, whether it is by a friend, our family, society, or even God. It is a theological crisis, because we struggle with what it means. Our sense of a...

Text: Mark 14:1-15:47 It is an extraordinarily long read… at least in comparison to what we’re used to on any given Sunday. Initially, I had tried to cut down the reading from Mark’s gospel to something a bit more manageable, something that wouldn’t cut into my sermon time… but then again, maybe that is the point. So often, we tend to slice up our readings, that we don’t get the whole story. With it being Holy Week, the whole story is far more important the individual slices. It begins today, as we recall the great triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. The common people are waving Palm branches, throwing their cloaks down in front of this teacher from the north. Whispers of the Messiah has come to them… an heir to the throne of David, and the people have been waiting so long for this. They have struggled under the weight of Roman occupation for years… and before that Greek kings, and before that the Babylonians… and before that… well, it has gone on for far too long… The expectatio...

Text: 1 Corinthians 1:18-25 As the season of Lent progresses, we draw ever closer to cross. The stories of the betrayal and arrest of Jesus are coming. It becomes increasingly more difficult to watch, and we are tempted to simply jump over it all and head straight for Easter morning. Admittedly, I have been trying to draw the joy, the good news, out of the stories that we have heard over the past few weeks instead of focusing upon the doom and gloom that seems so prevalent in the season. Yes, the temptation is there to simply skip ahead to Easter, but we can’t… there is this cross that lies in the way… and at some point we need to take a closer look at it. After all, we cannot have Easter without the Cross. Maybe to shed a bit more light on it, this week I’m shifting away from Mark’s storytelling, turning to Paul’s letter writing. This, admittedly, may or may not be helpful… Paul’s writing style is the bane of most language arts teachers that I know. Part of it gets lost in translation...

Text: Mark 8:31-38 One of the things about the sequence of stories in Lent is that if I am not careful, I could myself into a theological corner. Last week, of course, the proclamation was less about resisting temptation but embracing Lent as an opportunity to prepare for the joy at Easter. Lent, of course, has a reputation of being the most sombre, solemn, and frankly downright gloomy seasons of the church year. Where Advent is a time for hope in preparation for Christmas, Lent tends to be more a time of feeling sorry for ourselves, humbled at what God did for us through Jesus on Good Friday. The question is, does it have to be? As Mark reminded us last week it was far more important of the proclamation that Jesus made: that the time is now! The kingdom of God is right in front of us, all we need to do is open our eyes and see it… and live in the joy of the good news. This is Mark’s proclamation of the gospel. Yet this week’s reading… also from Mark… seems to have a much more grim ton...

Text: Mark 1:9-15 Today is a rather unique challenge. As part of our work with the Nurture Committee, we wanted to have an opportunity to have “family” worship services… to be a bit intentional of having everyone involved and present for the whole service. I remember when I was in Sunday school, my least favourite time of the worship service was the sermon. God has a wonderful sense of humour… I will do my best to keep this part interesting… but it will be a challenge. Why? Well… Today is also the first Sunday in Lent, which short of Good Friday is perhaps the gloomiest of all possible days in the church calendar year. Given that Presbyterians have a reputation of being a bit glum, in theory we should be right in our element… but I would hope otherwise. I’ll be honest, I think I have to practice in front of a mirror to get the right, dour expression. Maybe this is a good thing, but I can never hold it for very long without my face getting sore. So… a bit of a history lesson first: The ...