Sermon Archive

Reflections on the Advent Readings As some of you may know, a group of us went to see the Dead Sea Scrolls on November 21st. Being Saturday, it was quite busy… I was fascinated by how the display was set up. For those of you who were there, or who have been to see the scrolls on your own you’ll know what I’m talking about. The entry are has this massive wall of what are made to look like bricks, each inscribed with a quote from what are often called the “Sectarian” scrolls found at Qumran. The quotes were written in Hebrew, and Greek, inscribed into the surface, and then the saying was translated into both English and French. It’s quite impressive, to be sure. The display continues, trying to set the time period into context. It shows artefacts from the period, including pottery, coinage, maps, pictures… the kinds of things that you might expect to see. As one gets closer and closer to where the scrolls actually are, the lights are getting gradually darker and darker. The grand-ness of...

John 18:31-38 It seems to be such a contrast of images. Today is Christ the King Sunday, the last day of worship before Advent begins… it is in all respects New Year’s Eve for Christians. Throughout the year we have walked through all the different seasons of the church, anticipating the coming of Christ, celebrating his arrival at Christmas… his revealing in Epiphany… his sacrifice in Lent, and the glory of Easter. During the season of Pentecost… we focus on how we respond to God’s grace… and just as we’re getting ready to start the cycle all over again, we have this powerful image of Christ as King. This is all well and good… but when we do encounter Jesus in John’s Gospel, he is anything but king-like. We find Jesus standing before Governor Pontius Pilate; a prisoner, bound and humiliated. He awaits a horrible, suffocating death upon a bare wood cross. The only crown he will wear is one of thorns, and only stripes of office he will carry are the cruel welts from a whip. It would ...

Text : Revelation 21:1-6a The first day of November is called All Saints Day… for the most part it’s not a day that we celebrate all that much. We celebrate the night before quite well… for those of you who are parents or grandparents, the real challenge is to make sure our children don’t make themselves sick from eating too much candy. Yet before Halloween, there was All Saints Day… a day that the church celebrated all those often unknown and un-named people who had so cheerfully and passionately built up the body of Christ in their lifetimes. There were those saints who had specific dates devoted to them… St. Valentines in February, St. Patrick in March, St. John the Baptist in June… but for every well-known “official” saint there are thousands of unsung faithful people. All Saints Day became a way to include all of them… and has now been celebrated for 1400 years… although these days we tend to pay more attention to the night before! Usually we try to celebrate All Saints on the Sun...

Text : John 8:31-36 I have been finding through the Bible for Dummies course that we have been doing that those who come really appreciate the work that I’ve been doing to give the historical background as to how the Bible came together… as well as where each book finds itself located in history. This is more than just a “when was it written” kind of approach, but understanding the events that were going on when a particular book or section of the Bible, and how they addressed those events… If anything the Bible makes far more sense when we really get a feel for what both the people of Israel experienced through the Hebrew Bible, as well as the genuine struggles that the early church faced. Even so, it would be a mistake for us to think that those experiences and struggles ended in the early 2nd century. After all, it may surprise you to learn that the Creeds that we say around Baptism and Communion you won’t find anywhere in the Bible. Why? Because they came later… when the church fac...

Text : John 8:31-36 I have been finding through the Bible for Dummies course that we have been doing that those who come really appreciate the work that I’ve been doing to give the historical background as to how the Bible came together… as well as where each book finds itself located in history. This is more than just a “when was it written” kind of approach, but understanding the events that were going on when a particular book or section of the Bible, and how they addressed those events… If anything the Bible makes far more sense when we really get a feel for what both the people of Israel experienced through the Hebrew Bible, as well as the genuine struggles that the early church faced. Even so, it would be a mistake for us to think that those experiences and struggles ended in the early 2nd century. After all, it may surprise you to learn that the Creeds that we say around Baptism and Communion you won’t find anywhere in the Bible. Why? Because they came later… when the church fac...

Texts: Mark 10:35-45 At some point early on in my career, I stumbled across a saying that I try to take to heart every week when preparing sermons. It is a real caution, and a reminder of the responsibility that comes with this pulpit every week. The saying is quite simple, really… but its implications are far reaching. It goes something like this: “Beware of finding a Jesus that is entirely congenial to you.” In other words, be careful because there is a human tendency to want to see Jesus in a way that is entirely friendly to us. Although it’s far more than just a nice, safe Jesus who seems agree that everything we do is okay in God’s eyes... that somehow Jesus fits our image, our ideas, our thoughts as to what should be, and not the other way around. Perhaps it’s better to say, beware of finding the Jesus you want to find. It has been a struggle for a very long time… wanting to essentially create or shape God in our image, instead of the other way around. One of the most frequent ch...

Text: Matthew 6:25-34 Thanksgiving Sunday 2009 Sometimes there are certain passages from the Bible that it seems nearly pointless to write a sermon on because on the surface they seem so self-explanatory. I look at the passage, my keyboard, and the screen and I wonder to myself as to how to make this sound any more relevant than it already is. On Thanksgiving Sunday, we shift gears away from the Gospel of Mark over to Matthew, who offers a very timely and very wise reflection on worry. It may seem a little strange to be talking about worry on Thanksgiving weekend, but at the same time I think the timing is very apt. It seems to be really out of place. After all, with all of the big family dinners going on, there’s so much to be done, so much to be put in place and so much more to do… and Jesus is telling us to not to worry about it? But then again, maybe that’s the idea. These days worry is what dominates our life… anxieties about trying to keep up with all the work that we need to do,...