Sermon Archive

Text: Luke 11:1-13 Since the dawn of time, people have been searching for tools they could use to help them through life. Tools like money, success, and power, have been seen as the keys to joy, and happiness. The problem is, we’ve failed to realize that there are other ‘tools’ besides these things. We’ve forgotten that God has given each of us many ‘tools’ to help us life our lives to the fullest. We’ve become so focussed on pursuing things like money, success, and power, that we overlook the wonderful gifts that God has given to us. One of the many ‘tools’ we are all given is the ability to pray. In particular, God has given us the ‘tool’ which we call the Lord’s Prayer. This piece of scripture has brought a great deal of comfort, insight, guidance, and a sense of God’s love to millions of people. The Lord’s Prayer is a ‘tool’ in that it is meant to be used - it is a set of words that are meant to be read, thought about, and discussed. The Lord’s Prayer is an instrument through which...

Text: Amos 8:1-12 Amos is not a happy camper. Quite often when readings like this come up in the cycle of suggested readings, the temptation is to simply hit the delete key and ignore it. Just go with the New Testament text, and let the prophet yell in silence. It isn’t so much that we want to intentionally ignore this text, but it seems so disruptive, so hopeless that it’s still lingering there when we’re reading the other passages. The story from Luke about Mary and Martha is much more familiar and much more comfortable, but the anger from Amos is unsettling. Maybe that’s where our attention needs to be. We have a tendency to take prophets literally… yet ironically, if we do that all the time we miss all of the subtleties, all the genuine power of what they have to say. As a prophet, Amos rarely seems to have anything good to say about Israel’s spiritual life. Yet that was very much reflective of the times in which he lived. By the time Amos arrived on the scene, the great empire of ...

Text : Luke 10:25-37 There is a real problem with familiarity. Stories that are simply part of the cultural consciousness, it seems pointless to retell them, because everybody knows them. Many Biblical stories fall into this category, tales that are so familiar that even people who are not familiar with Christian traditions are aware of them. The Good Samaritan is certainly one of them. We have >good Samaritan laws’ which protect people from being liable for damage when they are trying to help. There is a Christian Charity organization called “The Samaritan’s Purse.” On the spell checker on my computer, I didn’t have to put in “Samaritan” because it was already there... complete with definition: “A person who voluntarily offers help in times of trouble.” We have associated this name with someone who does good deeds, and it is the good and, well, neighbourly thing to do. The only problem is that as good and as noble as this understanding is... we are far too familiar with the parabl...

Text: Galatians 3:23-29 One of the laments I heard periodically in a previous pastoral charge was that “We haven’t had enough baptisms lately. We haven’t had people join the church. We should be doing more to get new members on our church rolls. Maybe we should make things easier to join.” I found myself disagreeing with them… In part because I think one of the hardest things to do is to join the church… Sure… the ceremonies seem easy… We’d have people stand up and declare their intention to become part of the congregation. At first, the congregation seemed willing enough to have new people join… quite enthusiastically actually. Everyone would smile and seems pleased to these new people in their midst. But then weeks later, after repeated attempts, the new member has not really become a member. No group was found that adopted her. She made no real friends, despite repeated attempts. A few months later, someone asks, “Whatever happened to that nice young woman who joined the church last...

Text: Luke 7:36-8:3 This is the second week in a row that we’ve celebrated the Sacrament of Baptism. I have to admit that it’s the first time in my career that I’ve ever had that happen. Timing wise it would have not been able to work out that we would have both on the same day. In retrospect, that’s not a bad thing at all… if anything it keeps the gift of baptism front-and-centre quite literally for a bit longer than it normally would be for us. It speaks to the gift that God gives us, and when we celebrate it together, serves as a reminder as to what God does for us… plus it’s a reminder to us that God’s gift comes first. Everything else we do as a part of our faith flows out from this sense of gratitude of what God has already done. I think that’s often something we forget. An awful lot of time and energy is invested in trying to earn our way into God’s good graces… and conversely, looking down our noses at those that don’t measure up to the standards that we begin to create. The en...

Note: Due to the length of the service on June 10th, I edited this sermon on-the-fly to allow for time. The entirety of what I intended to preach is what follows. -JC Text: Galatians 1:11-24 Preachers are often well known for their personal hobby horses. That one favourite topic that we like to rock back and forth on until the wood rots, or the horse itself collapses out from under us. The late Jerry Falwell was well-known for them, the Apostle Paul had his own recurring themes as the “light to the Gentiles.” And yes, I have my own that I seem to get stuck on… I fully admit that… but I would like to think that it’s something that emerges out of the text, rather than my personal agenda. At least, that’s the defence we use when we are accused of riding our own hobby horses. So I’ll be blunt, here’s one of mine: I believe that we do our faith an incredible disservice when we place figures in the Biblical story on a pedestal. I believe that we do our faith an incredible disservice when we ...

On Sunday, June 3rd, Clarkson Road Presbyterian Church had a pair of guest speakers who preached on Psalm 22 as a way to reflect on the work of the Compass. Unfortunately, I didn't have access to their written work for posting to the sermon archive. Instead, I include here an article written by Ande MacDougall-Clumpus for a journalism class while he goes to school at Dalhousie University in Halifax. We had intended to place it in the newsletter, but due to size and space restrictions we could not do it justice. As such, here is the article in its entirety for the entry in last week's Sermon. --The Rev. John Crowdis Driving down any residential street in Lorne Park, a community in Mississauga, Ontario, one will see three-story houses with two-car garages and manicured lawns; it is difficult to spot an estate with a value of less than half a million dollars. SUVs, BMWs and Audis fill the driveways in these neighbourhoods, and children wearing designer clothes populate the local ...