Sermon Archive

Text: Deuteronomy 26:1-11 It’s funny. We all have our thanksgiving traditions… but we often forget that Thanksgiving as a holiday is something that is almost exclusively North American. In the United States, the last Thursday of November is Thanksgiving Day… for us, well… it’s tomorrow. While they bear the same name, Canadians are far less concerned with stories of Pilgrims, Plymouth Rock, or how to grow corn. Instead, when the celebration “came north” it was moved earlier in the year because of an understandably shorter growing season, and was specifically oriented around the harvest. In Canada, thanksgiving has far less to do with the national identity as it does with simply being grateful that stuff actually grew in this harsh northern climate. My parents still valiantly try to grow Tomatoes in Calgary, and while they may claim some success… the reddish green marbles they start covering to avoid the August frosts would beg to differ… You may also notice that I’ve not mentioned a...

Psalm 19 One year ago last week, Sarah, Megan and I had just returned home from a day out. We had returned home later than we normally do. The sun had set, and the twilight was deepening, and the first bright stars were shining through. Megan pointed straight up and asked “Daddy, what star is that?” I was embarrassed, because I couldn’t remember. Up until this point, Megan was only interested in Venus, the shining planet often referred to as the evening star. Yet Venus had long since dipped into the sun’s glare, and so I didn’t know… but I did have my brand new iPhone. So I downloaded an astronomy app, pointed the device at the sky, and was able to tell Megan that it was a star called “Vega.” If she hadn’t asked that question, we would not have our two telescopes, nor would we have thought to have a star named in memory of her baby sister. In the time since, my whole family has engaged in admiring the wonders of the heavens. This past summer Sarah, Megan and I went camping on Manit...

Exodus 12:1-14 By now Hurricane Irene is now a memory, all that is left is to clean up the mess and try to make the best of it. Those who live around the western Atlantic are keeping an eye on Hurricane Katia, and what path she might take, and Tropical Storm Lee seems have parked himself off the coast of Louisiana. At this point it is still early to tell, and there is still three months left in what is proving to be a moderately active hurricane season, but aside from Irene’s notable exception, damage so far has not been as severe as the even busier 2005 Season. As severe as these storms are, they do pass over, and the survivors pick up carry on. A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to sing at the Naramata Centre’s Music Week with a massed choir of more than 170 voices. It was the first time in six years that I had a chance to do that, and I remember when we were there in 2005, we sang a piece called “The Storm is Passing Over.” Ironically, it would be merely a few weeks later t...

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...