Sermon Archive

Text: Matthew 13:1-9 There is such a thing as being too familiar with a story. Where we have heard something so often that we think we know what the message is, and so we don’t often hear it. For an out-of-season example, it may surprise many of you to learn that there never was a donkey specifically present in the written accounts of the Christmas story… yet nativity plays and drawings always seem to have a donkey, sheep or other animals. The story is too familiar, and we have simply added lots of things that aren’t there. The same deal with this morning’s parable of the sower. The parable of the sower is so well known, literally thousands of sermons have been written on these few short verses in the gospels. We hear the same tale over and over again. We hear it so many times that we think we know what it says, and we tune it out. Been there. Heard that. Next lesson. But what if being too familiar with a story in the Bible prevents us from hearing what God is saying to us? After...

Matthew 11:16-19;25-30 “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” These are words of comfort, words of hope. This verse is certainly very familiar, and is used in a number of different circumstances in church life: words of invitation and assurance… words of welcome at Communion… words of comfort at funerals… Even at the beginning of summer, when we have been working hard all winter long, these seem to be rather appropriate for this holiday weekend in July. Compared to some of the more difficult passages in the Bible, it is a welcome and refreshing change. Instead of digging through the text to pull out the meaning like we did with Paul last week, Jesus throws it out front for us: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” Umm… there you go… there’s the good news! I’m not sure if I can really add to that… Sermon’s done! If only we could get away that easily. As much as we are...

Text: Romans 6:12-23 This past week we brought to a close our exploration of different world religions. We finished up with Protestant Christianity, partly because it would be in theory the most familiar to us as we are part of that tradition. However, given the diversity of the various protestant traditions, there is a lot that we don’t know that is under the broad umbrella of being “protestant.” My hope for the series was to provide at least a broad overview of the various major world religious traditions so that people can have a sense of how those belief systems originated and developed. It would also help for us to understand what similarities there are between the traditions, but also what makes each of them unique in their witness to the world. Of course, when it comes to our own tradition, there are a number of things we can point to as being similar. The curiously-named “Golden Rule” – do to others as you would want them to do to you appears in nearly all religious traditi...

Text: Acts 1:1-11 There is a political cartoon that was published in the so-called aftermath of Harold Camping’s failed prediction of the rapture. It shows a group of people standing on the shoreline, looking up, holding banners about the May 21st “scheduled” Judgment Day. One of them makes a comment that they’ve been told to keep looking up, while in the background you can see an artist’s impression of Camping in the background counting money. It’s funny, but it also seems true. Two weeks ago, I said that I had little doubt that Family Radio would make some kind of statement that they’re still right, even if their math was off. I don’t know if you’ve followed it, but now October 21st is the set date. Well… that’s not quite true. May 21st was supposed to be Judgment Day, with October 21st being the day that the rest of the world would be consumed. So Camping is basically telling his followers to keep looking up. I find that so ironic, especially in light of today’s theme, and the...

Text: Psalm 31:1-5;15-16 “My times are in your hand…” – Psalm 31:15 Well. How about this. We’re all still here! Well, maybe not… it is the long weekend after all and I would expect that many have gone off to their cottage or camping to spend some good quality time with their families and friends. But what I meant is we’re pretty much all still here. Unless you’ve really been ignoring the media over the past few months, and over this past week in particular, there has been a very vocal fringe group in the United States called Family Radio which identified Judgement Day as being May 21st, 2011. They paid for signs and billboards all across North America, including several Canadian cities. It was posted up with great certitude and urgency, with even a flared seal-like stamp with the words “The Bible guarantees it!” in large bold letters. Followers quit their jobs, sold their houses, gave away their possessions… and seemed to be encouraging others to do the same. So here we are. Ma...

Acts 8:26-40 If you peruse the evangelism section in most Christian bookstores, it is easy to find all kinds of resources on the subject. Ways to hold tent revival meetings, outreach suppers, membership drives… it’s all kinds of gimmicks, it seems to be able to get people to come in through the doors. Many of these resources will tell you that if you just follow this particular plan, this specific set of instructions, then you will see unprecedented growth in your congregation… etc. etc. etc. The problem is, there is a multitude of these resources out there, but in practice, hardly any of them seem to work… particularly in our mainline protestant denominations. The problem with these evangelism books is that they presume that everyone wants to do evangelism… so they tell us step-by-step how to do it. To be honest, research has shown that people would rather get a root canal then to even think about evangelism. Many of us have been raised that there are certain topics that you do no...

Text: John 20:19-31 After being in this pulpit for more than six years now, I’ve made the point on numerous occasions that the disciple Thomas has never gotten a fair shake. He has long been branded the “doubter” the unfaithful one who had to see and touch in order to believe that Jesus had risen from the dead. We’ve taken this message that doubt is a sign of failing faith, and that we must be blindly loyal, and never ask any questions ever. Many of us were raised that way, let’s be honest. 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...