Sermon Archive

Text: Romans 5:1-11 I think one of the challenges that I have been finding this Lent is to find a way to stick to this overall theme of Healthy Spirituality. When combined with the various things that are also happening on these various Sundays, it can be a bit hard to try and maintain that focus. Our first Sunday in Lent was led by the Prayer and Praise Group, last week was Baden Powell or Scouting Sunday… this week it’s the Annual Meeting. It’s part of this time of year… but it is also reality. Our Spirituality, our relationship with God, does not happen in a vacuum, it happens in the midst of all of this busy-ness that we experience in everyday life. The real challenge is how we integrate it into our everyday living, how we carry it into the workplace, how we live it out in our homes, wherever we are. Over the past two weeks, I have been trying to highlight elements of healthy Spirituality. At it’s best, our relationship with God should be as natural as breathing, and is simply part...

Text: Genesis 12:1-4 As most of you know, I spent much of my formative years in the Scouting movement. I was even a part of Beavers just as it was transitioning from being an experimental program to an official national part of Scouts. I continued on up through Cubs, Scouts, and then Ventures. Had it been available, I may have continued on through Rovers as well. I know that some of you have also had the benefit of this experience. What most of you probably don’t know is that the reason I am doing what I am doing now… being a Presbyterian Minister… has a lot to do with my involvement with Scouts from an early age. Actually, probably far more than anybody here realizes. It may be one of the reasons why I’ve been encouraging and supporting our congregation’s sponsorship of the 4th Clarkson Group. Let me give you a bit of history on this. In 1978, my Dad did a year-long teacher exchange, taking the whole family, my brother, myself, my Mom to live in Niagara Falls for one year. The idea wa...

Text: Genesis 2:14-17; 3:1-13 Lent is one of those seasons where perhaps people are bit a more aware that at least something happens in those days leading up to Easter. The trouble is, we’re never quite sure of what that something actually is. The visible signs, at least in churches like ours, are a bit more obvious: the colours have changed. We have the seasonal banners up, a different pulpit hanging, a tablecloth… even the colour on the screens is different… and it’s all purple. Okay… big deal! So what? Unlike the climate seasons that we all love to talk about, the seasons of the church calendar are ones that we choose to participate in. We have some deal of control as to whether or not we buy into the idea. By contrast, we don’t really have that much control as to whether we want to participate in winter… it’s there, and we either deal with it or become snowbirds and head south. The seasons of the church year are ones that we can be intentional about… that we can choose to participa...

Transfiguration Sunday Texts: Matthew 17:1-9 ; Exodus 24:12-18 Note: This sermon was accompanied by a series of pictures that my wife and I had taken at the summit of Haleakala, Maui, Hawaii that simply ran in the background while I preached this. Follow this link to a page for similar pictures. As some of you probably know, at the end of October last year, my parents generously flew my family out to visit them on the island of Maui in Hawaii. It was only a week’s stay, but certainly worth the long airplane trip to a warm, tropical paradise in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. I’m not sure how many of you have ever been to Maui, but one of the major geographic features on the island is the dormant volcano that makes up the entirety of the east part of the island. In the Hawaiian language, it’s called Haleakala, which roughly translates to “House of the Sun.” It rises more than ten thousand feet above sea-level, and more than 25,000 feet above the sea floor. It may be all well and good, ...

Text: Matthew 4:12-23 Let me begin with a story… “Now it came to pass that a group existed who called themselves fishermen. And lo, there were many fish in the waters all around. In fact, the whole area was surrounded by streams and lakes filled with fish. And the fish were hungry. Week after week, month after month, and year after year, those who called themselves fishermen met in meetings and talked about their call to fish, the abundance of fish, and how they might go about fishing. Year after year they carefully defined what fishing means, defended fishing as an occupation, and declared that fishing is always to be a primary task of fishermen. Continually, they searched for new and better methods of fishing and for new and better definitions of fishing. Further they said, “The fishing industry exists by fishing as fire exists by burning.” They loved slogans such as “Fishing is the task of every fisherman.” They sponsored special meetings called “Fishermen’s Campaigns” and “T...

Text: John 1:35-42 As a season in the church year, Epiphany often goes ignored. We tend to view it as the breathing space that we have between Christmas and Lent, when we begin making preparations for Easter. Many of us go away on holidays, taking advantage of or fleeing from the winter weather. This isn’t such a bad thing, but it can mean that we miss some of the finer points of the gospel message. Up until this point, Epiphany has been about God being revealed in a broad context. We have nations and kings following a star bearing symbolic gifts for the Christ Child, we have the heavens being opened, and the divine voice over the waters of the Jordan at Baptism. This is epic scale stuff… at it fits. We tend to think of God in these really big, expansive ways. But not here… not with this story. There’s no big flash, no shining star, no descending dove… none of that. It’s funny, because John’s Gospel starts out with this big expansive stuff… “In the beginning was the Word…” but in this ...

Text: Matthew 3:13-17 In doing my research this week, I came across something that reminded me of the challenges of climbing into this pulpit Sunday after Sunday. A well-respected, highly-educated teacher of the faith got up into the pulpit and said “I don’t know how to preach.” Chances are most of his congregation would look at him incredulously and wondered what had gotten into him. After all, William Willimon is considered to be one of the finest preachers living in North America today. I have books of his stuff on my own shelves. He has made a career on the craft of preaching for over thirty years! Yet, here he was, from a pulpit, saying, “I don’t know how to preach.” In fact, he says that after 30 years, he says that he knows less about preaching a sermon than when he first began. I’m only eleven years into this, and I’m starting to understand what he’s talking about. When it comes to communicating, there are so many distractions and obstacles that seem to get in the way. It isn...