Sermon Archive

Presbyterians Sharing Sunday Text: Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15 A mentor of mine once described the Presbyterian Church in Canada as a “Congregationalist church with a Presbyterian system of government.” He said it with a sense of irony, but with a hope that individual congregations would be able to overcome that tendency and look beyond their own walls. I was a student at the time, so I don’t think I fully got what he was talking about. More than thirteen years later, I’ve learned that there is a certain degree of truth to what he said. The Presbyterian Church in Canada at its ideal is an organization that collectively thinks on a regional level. When the reformers first started developing the idea of a Presbyterian-style way of doing things, the focus was very much an over-arching, big-picture kind of approach. Have a central court or council of ministers and elders from the congregation who would be able to oversee a vision for the city or the region that they were in. Think regionally wa...

Text : Luke 16:1-13 It’s wrong. It’s all wrong… a crook is complemented for his crookedness? It doesn’t make sense! When we read the Bible, we expect neat, tidy little stories. We expect short little statements, brief guidelines of how to live our lives. No loose ends, no tangled threads. But here is a story about a dishonest manager, a story riddled with irony, apparent contradictions, combined with an outcome that just doesn’t make sense. What a mess! No matter what kind of approach we take to explain this parable, we invariably get stuck somewhere. There are no good guys, no happy endings, just a frustrating and confusing conclusion. This parable reminds us of how troubling the words of Jesus can be. Jesus, through the dishonest manager reveals something about God’s grace and love in a far more troubling —yet assuring— light. When faced with financial crisis, people will often do strange things. More than fifteen years ago, I worked for a small games store in Calgary. Hired just aft...

Text: Luke 15:1-10 Today, it seems, is an exercise in contrasts. If some of the scripture lessons we’ve had lately haven’t been that well known, the one that I read this morning goes to the opposite ends of the scale. Along with the parable of the Prodigal Son, the Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin are amongst the most familiar and most comforting images that come out of the Gospels. They have evoked images of Jesus as the Good Shepherd, laughing, with a young lamb draped over his shoulders. It is a powerful and comforting image, tying in with so many other images from scripture, it has managed to soak into our collective consciousness. There have been many hymns written about this... stories that talk about the welcoming of the repentant sinner coming home. It would seem that I would have nothing else to say about this passage at all, because it is so well known, no additional explanation is necessary. There we go! Sermon’s done... onto the closing prayer, and we can go home for the day!...

A Reflection for Rally Sunday Jeremiah 18:1-11 The potter’s wheel is a piece of technology that literally dates back thousands of years. Sure, with modern technology, pottery wheels run smoother with electrical motors, are more comfortable to sit at, and are likely made from sturdier materials. Yet at its base, a pottery wheel has been a technological innovation that has been part of human society for thousands of years. The basic principles have not really changed. A potter uses a wheel that spins horizontally, most older mechanisms had it powered by gears and a foot pedal. With a jar of water handy, the potter then would take a lump of clay, throw it onto the center of the wheel, and then begin to work with it and shape it into some form. The same process can be used to make a plate, a cup, a jug, a bowl, a vase… just about anything is possible. The primary thing that they seem to have in common is that anything made on a pottery wheel is intended to be a vessel to hold something… mo...

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...