Sermon Archive

Acts 17:22-32 ~ Paul’s Sermon at Athens The Rev. Sarah Fanning – April 27, 2008 Pulpit Exchange - Clarkson Road Presbyterian Church, Mississauga About seven years ago, I was standing in line at the local Starbucks when I ran into a man I had met a few times at various workshops and training events when I was working for CIBC in Hamilton. Lee and I exchanges greetings and engaged in the usual sort of niceties that are expected in conversations between people who are essentially strangers. One of the topics that’s usually covered in such moments is the subject of employment; so naturally, Lee asked if I was still working for CIBC. I paused; hesitated a bit, and then told him, “No, I’m a minister, with a church.” He physically recoiled from me and his response was shocking. With scorn practically dripping from his lips, he sneered, “You don’t really believe all that crap do you?” I was absolutely stunned. Fortunately by that time my coffee was ready. I stammered something like, “Well, ye...

Text: 1 Peter 2:2-10 The last time the Mission and Outreach committee went to Evangel Hall was last October. It was the third time that I had gone since coming to Clarkson Road, but only the second where we would actually help lead the evening worship service. In the times that we have gone, there have been a few familiar faces that we have come to know. During the initial crush of serving the meal, there’s not really a chance to sit down and talk with people… but as the evening progresses and things slow down, we do get a chance to sit down and talk… or perhaps more importantly, listen. One of the regular volunteers is an older woman… for the life of me her name escapes me at the moment. She has been there every time that we have gone. Thin, short, and enough wrinkles on her face to hold many stories of a hard life. We know her as the one who guards the coffee machines fiercely, ensuring that volunteers like us always us a new cup for “health reasons” she’d say. She’s there because Ev...

Text: John 10:1-11 ~ Good Shepherd Sunday Sheep to most of us are animals we see from a distance when we drive at 100 kilometres an hour through the countryside. We may get closer to them occasionally at petting zoos, the CNE and the like. Living in Toronto, sheep are not something we experience every day. They produce wool and are good to eat. So images of sheep for us are more about clothing and delicious food than anything else. Jesus uses sheep imagery in our Gospel reading and unfortunately, because we’ve heard it often enough, it has become a romantic nice story about sheep and their shepherd in another time and culture. The impact of the relationship between the shepherd and their sheep is lost on us because most of us simply haven’t had this experience. When we first met, my wife to be, Sarah, lived in a rural area of Ontario just outside of London, in a town called Thamesford. Even after Sarah and I got married, she continued to serve in that pastoral charge until we mov...

Text: Luke 24:13-35 I think one of the things I enjoy about the Biblical stories is that there are often so many different layers that we often miss. We tend to take the stories at absolute face value, being a dispassionate accounting of events, without realizing that the writer is also infusing the story with their own experience of faith. There are so many layers of meaning wrapped into the Biblical witness that we miss that it’s really worthwhile to take a closer look… even with something that we think is familiar. As with most of the seven resurrection stories, each of the gospel writers includes at least one encounter with the risen Christ that is unique to that Gospel only. For Luke, it’s the Road to Emmaus. In the same way that the story of Thomas always comes up on the 2nd Sunday of Easter, a tradition has developed that we walk the Road to Emmaus on the 3rd. It’s not a bad practice, really, especially when one considers that that this is the only resurrection story that has us...

Text: John 20:19-29 I have always felt that Thomas has never really gotten a fair shake. For years we have used him as an example of how we should not doubt, but how we should simply believe stuff at face value, without asking questions. In Sunday school I was always one who asked all kinds of questions, much to the chagrin of my church school teachers. Not so much that they felt that I shouldn’t ask questions, but it was the kind of thing that if it wasn’t in the lesson plan, they’d be out of their depth. Sometimes the story of Thomas was brought up, because Thomas was put in such a bad light that nobody wanted to be a “doubting Thomas.” Unfortunately, that branding has really kept us from learning anything from the story other than “Shut up and believe what we tell you.” We’ve gotten to the point that we have come to believe doubt is a sin. To put it simply, it seems as though there is no room for doubt within the church. And sadly, I have heard it said that if you are a person of...

Text: Matthew 28:1-10 I remember once as a student sending a ladies group at a church into shock. I was doing my internship, and they asked me to come to talk to them about the history of Christmas. I certainly agreed, prepared some notes and handouts and away I went. I began the presentation by sharing with them that the church survived for the first few hundred years of its existence without actually celebrating anything on December 25th. The gasps were audible… I then became a bit worried that I might be burnt at the stake. I went on to explain that it’s entirely true… the earliest historical evidence of Christmas being celebrated in Rome was in 354 AD. It never became widespread until even a few decades after that… all at a time when Christianity was not only legal, but had become the official religion of the Roman Empire. By contrast, we know that Easter has been celebrated since day one. The precise method for determining when Easter falls took a bit of time to develop, but East...

Text: John 18:28-19:42 I remember once when I was a student, I was out for my field placement day at the church that I was assigned to during Holy Week. My mentor, the minister that served there, was normally quiet and reserved. He had a great deal of quiet wisdom and integrity, and even in retirement has a great deal of respect from the church at large. During Holy Week he seemed particularly fidgety, and came across as being rather nervous. When I asked him about it, he expressed that he was a bit antsy about preaching on Good Friday. “How do you preach on the most significant event in human history?” he asked as he paced back in forth in front of his bookshelf. I took his question to be rhetorical, because as a student it would be awfully presumptuous of me to hand this well respected veteran of the pulpit a simple answer. It also struck me that his nervous energy was directed not at Easter Sunday, when the largest crowd would be present in the church, but at Good Friday when the a...