Sermon Archive

Text : Jeremiah 2:4-13 I thought since Jeremiah figured so prominently in last week’s sermon, and will again be the central them in next week’s Rally Sunday service, it might be a good idea to keep things a little consistent. Stick with Jeremiah, build on what’s already there, and it might build up some theological momentum for what is to come next week. Sounds like a plan. Yet with any good text, it has a power all of its own. This isn’t just a transition from one part of the book to the other, but a living, breathing text all of its own that is seldom heard. Preachers, more often than not, seem to go after the Gospel text. Maybe it’s because it’s more familiar, If last week we had Jeremiah’s call, this week we have the whole reason why God sought out Jeremiah in the first place. As Christians, most of the time when we read the prophets, we tend to think of them as proclaiming something that is to come later at some distant time in the future. Yet the prophets didn’t work in ...

Text : Jeremiah 1:4-10 Have you ever noticed that with a great deal of Biblical characters, particularly with the Old Testament, none of them ever seem to want to take on what God calls them to? They always seem to provide a litany of excuses as to why they’re not suitable for the task, and that really God should be looking for someone else… someone better suited than they. When Moses encounters God in the burning bush, he’s pretty blunt… tells God off and says, “please, send someone else!” Yet we know how that turned out. Moses is basically dragged kicking and screaming back to Egypt where he confronts pharaoh, and it leads to the freedom of his people. Imagine what would have happened had God actually listened to all the excuses that Moses provided, I would suspect that the Hebrews might still be living in slavery… and the world that we have today would be much different. Yet Moses isn’t the only one. Jeremiah is just as good at putting up excuses as to why he can’t be a prophet as M...

Text: Luke 12:49-56 Professor Stanley Hauerwas, a well known Christian Scholar, often opened his classes at the beginning of the year a story like this. When he was at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, he often began a course on marriage by reading a letter to the students. A complaint to authorities, it went something like this, “Our son had done well. He had gone to good schools, had gone through the military, had gotten out, had looked like he had a very promising career ahead. Unfortunately, he has joined some eastern religious sect. Now he does not want to have anything to do with us, because we are people of ‘the world.’ He is never going to marry because now he claims his true family is this funny group of people he associates with. We are heartsick. We don’t know what to do about this, please help us!” Then he would ask the class, “Who wrote this letter?” So who do you think wrote this letter? The students replied that the letter was written by concerned parents, whose adu...

Text: Isaiah 1:1; 10-20 Corruption, it seems, has been in the news a lot as of late. We think of Conrad Black’s recent conviction, and last year’s convictions over the Enron scandal in the US. Recently it’s been made public that some Chinese factories use substandard if not dangerous ingredients for consumer goods. Apparently, those who were supposed to be responsible for oversight of these factories have taken bribes to look the other way. We have heard stories of bribery and corruption that are hampering efforts to rebuild governments in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet as we know from scandals in our own government and businesses, it is neither limited to somewhere “over there” and it’s certainly nothing new. Bribery and corruption has been a chronic problem that has plagued society for thousands of years. It is perhaps the one thing that eats away at a nations own ability to care for its people, because individuals use or abuse power for their own personal gain. Yet when it comes to this ...

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...