Sermon Archive

Text : James 1:17-27 Any time that we hear from the Epistle of James, I think those of us with deep protestant roots begin to twitch. We know from history, the main voice of the protestant movement, Martin Luther, hated James with a passion. Much of Martin Luther’s cries for change had come out of observing the church abusing its power, by selling tickets to heaven… or his own personal angst of realizing that he could never truly earn God’s favour through his pious acts alone. It was our faith, not what we did that determined our end state with God. Yet when Luther would argue this in the debating forums of the church, his opponents would frequently quote James back at him. It’s not surprising that he hated it… …but 500 years later we are hopefully removed from the politics and polemics of the Reformation to actually try and see what James was trying to get at… because chances are James might personally agree with a lot of what Luther had to say… but for James it wasn’t about getting o...

Text: Ephesians 6:10-20 I have a confession to make… Not every passage in the Bible comes as a natural favourite. There are some passages that personally have to struggle with and try to come to terms with. Sometimes they are the so-called texts of terror, such as Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac, sometimes they are the minutiae of the kosher laws in the depths of Leviticus, and sometimes it’s not so much as the passage itself, but in how it has been used and abused through interpretation down through the centuries. As I have learned, there is no such thing as the “plain meaning” of the text, because all of us come to a passage carrying our own personal baggage. Our experiences and understandings inform how we hear something, whether we’re aware of it or not. Sometimes, our own experiences can help us to connect to a story or passage, and quite often those same experiences can actually get in the way. For me, on a personal level, it’s the whole armour of God that comes out of Ephesian...

Text: 1 Kings 2:10-12; 3:3-14 If you had one single wish, what would that be? If God could grant you any one thing in life, what would that be? Would it be the usual suspects? Wealth? Power? Fame? I think given many of the life experiences that we have had, one wish we might have would be a chance to once again see and talked to a loved one who had died. Maybe a chance to go to a place that we have never been… maybe wish to change a painful experience in the past. There are many stories out there where people are given the chance to wish for whatever they wanted. We know the variants on the Aladdin stories that have been made into film… drawn from Mediaeval tales from the Middle-East… but even these are not as ancient as the story this morning of young Solomon… It’s funny, this is a Biblical story that we really aren’t all that familiar with, and yet all of its themes have a great resonance with us. I’m surprised that we do not tell it more than we do. It’s really a very simple story: ...

Text: Ephesians 4:25-5:2 Last week during the announcements, I eluded to the Saga of the Hot Water system in the home that Sarah and I moved into at the end of May. I think everyone goes through an experience like this at some point… but at the same time it is no less frustrating. The story goes like this. Two weeks ago, I was downstairs cleaning out the rabbit cage when I noticed a small wet spot underneath our hot water system for the house. Some of you may have heard me go on about this thing from when we moved in. It’s the latest in home heating, an on-demand hot water heater that also provides heat to the forced air part of the house. In other words… it’s a fancy, high-tech boiler that is really no bigger than the banner hanging from the front of this pulpit. Anyway, I noticed a small drip on the floor and checked it out. Maybe a pipe was sweating… but later that evening the small puddle was a lot larger, and the drips were much worse… so I took the cover off of the heating unit a...

Text: Mark 4:26-34 With moving into a new house, Sarah and I have been confronted with a new reality. We have moved from being part of a townhouse condominium complex to actually owning our own property. We now have our own lawn, small little front garden, and the freedom to do with it what we choose. Some of you might remember me commenting that when it comes to gardening, it is a skill better exercised by someone other than me. If they had a TV show on Canada’s Worst Gardener, I’d be a shoe-in. Lesley can tell you that the only plant that has managed to survive in my office is one that doesn’t really need watering. The only reason that it has lived this long is because she tends to it. But now we have our own lawn… and not just any lawn, the most sickly, pale green pathetic lawn you’ve ever seen. Right now we don’t even own a lawnmower… but this lawn has been so pathetic that we don’t need it, at least not yet. The evidence points out that this was a hastily sodded piece of land. We ...

Practical Reflections on the Trinity In the flow of the Christian calendar, there are certain celebrations that are bound to be much more exciting and inspiring than others. Christmas and Easter certainly come to mind. Pentecost, reign of Christ, any Sunday through Advent… any of these at least have that sense of anticipation that God is up to something. They help us engage in the familiar stories and really give us a sense of grounding in what our faith means, and how it matters to our life. But not today… I have to admit that Trinity Sunday has been one of those low-water marks for me on the preaching scale. Explaining the intricacies of doctrine from the pulpit, is not exactly something that I enjoy doing… precisely because I know that listening to it is about as much fun as watching paint dry. I don’t especially relish the idea of preaching a sermon that becomes a cure for insomnia. I would rather not have the chorus raised from the congregation to be the sounds of snoring. Let’s b...

Text : Ezekiel 37:1-14 Happy Pentecost!!! You’ve heard me mention this before, but of all of the high-holy-days of the church, this one has to be the most important forgotten holiday that we celebrate. Sure, we are all familiar with Christmas and Easter, but today is Pentecost… the very day when we celebrate God’s gift of the Holy Spirit. In the Christian church, Pentecost is older than Christmas! It was celebrated alongside Easter right from the word go… but it wouldn’t be until some three hundred years later when Christmas would become part of the scene. So quickly we forget. But then again, Pentecost is not something one can easily nail down either. We can’t attach it to winter solstice or spring celebrations in other cultures. It stands alone mid-way through Spring… and because it floats around like Easter does, it sometimes falls on Mother’s Day or the May two-four weekend. No wonder we end up missing it. Over time, Pentecost has become the best-kept secret of our faith… so secret...