Sermons

We don’t talk about angels very much, and I’m afraid I’m not going to talk about them a lot this Sunday, but they will come up. The book of Hebrews is a very interesting book, we don’t even know for certain who wrote it. Nonetheless, it is well worth the time we might put in to ...

We all know we are supposed to share.* We even do it at least now and then but today is Presbyterians Sharing Sunday for the Presbyterian Church in Canada so it is worth taking a closer look at what this might mean. Presbyterians Sharing is the name of the combined efforts of Presbyterians all across Canada ...

Wisdom. This is another word, from a quite short list of religiously significant words, that hasn’t been debased or redefined into uselessness. Wisdom still means something to almost everyone even if it is hard to define. It is a word with generally positive connotations and something virtually everyone wants. We want political and other leaders to ...

Sometimes we think “if only I had enough self-control I wouldn’t say anything dumb or hurtful.” It is a really good thing to not want to be hurtful and it’s not a bad idea to try not to say dumb things but there’s only one problem; this seems to be beyond us. I don’t want to ...

Favouritism is one of those things many people find maddening . . . including me! I am well aware of my own privilege and do my best to not take advantage of it so when I see other people flagrantly favourited for no good reason I am never happy about it. Neither was James, the writer ...

Dictionaries are usually considered terrible places to go for theological or spiritual definitions and this is another case. The picture of all the dictionaries was chosen because I like books, including dictionaries, and I own at least two of the books pictured. So if I’m not going to go to a dictionary for a definition of ...

There is something about walls and borders and barriers many of us find appealing. They allow us to know who is in and who is out. They give us boundaries, which can be a comfort. But there can be something dangerous in looking at the world through a lens of “in or out.” It can ...

It seems to take some of us quite a while to learn that if we don’t ask for what we need, we probably won’t ever get it. This makes sense in children who are trying to figure out how the world works but it makes less sense when you are well into adulthood and still ...

Sometimes we win and sometimes we lose and sometimes we do both. King David was in the position of doing both when the rebellion his son Absalom fomented was put down. Absalom was David’s favourite child, it was obvious to everyone, and while playing favourites is a bad idea for parents in general it is a ...

King David wasn’t perfect. This isn’t particularly surprising as none of us are either, but David was rather spectacularly imperfect in some ways. The Old Testament lesson for this Sunday is the story of the prophet Nathan confronting King David over his adultery with Bathseba and the cold-blooded murder of her husband, Uriah. Murder is a ...