Sermons

Bob Dylan had a song a long time ago called “You gotta serve somebody” or something similar. It is a binary I’m inclined to accept. At least when I think of it the terms or our Romans passage for today (Romans 6:12-23), especially the last verse, “For the wages of sin is death, but the ...

This Sunday is Fathers Day (or Father’s Day or Fathers’ Day, I’m never sure). It will come as no surprise to anyone who has been following this blog for any length of time that Fathe… Day didn’t come up. I’m not opposed to celebrating mothers and fathers, or grandparents, aunties, unties, uncles, or any other ...

I think most people are in favour of laughter. Most of the time we say laughing is a good thing. But, there are some times when it isn’t. What kind of laughter isn’t good? derisive laughter sarcastic laughter laughter at other’s misfortune I’m sure you can add a few more. Anyone who has been laughed at for failing when they ...

I thought of titling this post, “Trinity Sunday in light of systemic oppression” but it seemed too academic and distant from what is going on all over the world these days. The pain and suffering of our BIPOC* neighbours and friends is unavoidable in these days of protest. It is simply not possible to miss ...

Pentecost is one of those days that can be tricky to handle. What is there to say about Pentecost that hasn’t been said a thousand times before. Is there anything to say about it other than maybe it is the birthday of the church, or tongues of fire are pretty cool, or even back then ...

We all think we want to know the future. We think if we knew the future we could avoid unpleasant experiences, prepare for things better, win lotteries, etc., etc., etc. But do we really want to know the future? Do we really want that much responsibility? For that matter, would knowing the future really help? ...

 I preface all of this by noting we are not talking about diction today. If I would have more creativity at my fingertips when I needed a sermon title I would have probably said something about conversation rather than talking but sometimes we do all we can and subsequently wish we could have done more. St. ...

Two of the most common questions we have at significant points of our lives are “what are we looking for?” and “where are we going?” Most of the time we don’t ask these questions because already know the answers. But there are times when we really need to know. If we need to know because we ...

Sheep and shepherds. If there is a prevailing image in the Bible it might just be this one. There are 218 uses of “sheep” in the NRSV and and another 113 of “shepherd” or “shepherds.” I don’t know how that stacks up against any other significant word in the Bible but that’s a lot. So ...

This Sunday we have another one of those things that is from the Bible but not everyone knows the origin, namely, “Doubting Thomas.” I have known several (many?) people use the phrase who were very surprised to find out it was from the Bible. That doesn’t make them bad people or anything, rather it highlights ...