Sermons

Thirst is one of those things we can all relate to. Everyone has been thirsty at some point in their life. Water is something we are all familiar with. The Lectionary texts for this Sunday have a couple of stories about water and thirst. In the Old Testament lesson, the Israelite people complain about the lack ...

Very few of us like being kept in the dark about where we are going. There might have been a time when we were happy to jump into a car with our friends who were going “somewhere” without knowing where “somewhere” was . . . but lots of us, certainly me, are past that sort ...

 Mountaintop experiences . . . everyone has had them. Some people have even had them on the top of physical mountains. I’m not one of those people. I have never been on top of a mountain, I’ve barely been on the top of a hill. But I have had “mountaintop” experiences. “Mountaintop experiences” are the shorthand ...

 Today was Heritage Sunday in the Presbyterian Church in Canada. I don’t always “do” anything with Sundays outside of the Liturgical year but this one had an interesting tie-in with the Gospel lesson for today. I don’t know if anyone else sees it, but I saw a connection between the Law that Jesus addresses in ...

 Of all the strange things the internet has thrown up one of the strangest to me is the “influencer.” As far as I understand it, this is a person who gets paid to take pictures and videos of themselves using a product and then posting those pictures and videos on social media. There are lots ...

The Beatitudes are some of the best known parts of the Bible. They are found in the Sermon on the Mount which, according to John Stott, “is probably the best-known part of the teaching of Jesus, though arguably it is the least understood, and certainly it is the least obeyed.” I’ll just leave this here ...

I’m back. I was graciously allowed to take a couple of weeks out of the pulpit to rest and recharge after a tremendously busy Advent season. I realize Advent and Christmas are busy for most people but we have worked pretty hard to “de-busy” this time of year so when it struck me I’d been ...

Last Sunday I was honoured to officiate at the funeral of Sean Kergan. With the permission of the family I am posting the message (homily, meditation, whatever it is properly called) I gave. If you have lost someone you love or were close to—family, friend, co-worker—I hope this may prove a comfort to you.   Message at the ...

The first Sunday of a new calendar year so it would make sense to preach about New Year’s, or resolutions or beginnings but instead, the Lectionary led me to preach about Jesus. It is very easy for us to reduce Jesus to a simple binary with “human” on the one side and “God” on the other ...

 This is the last Sunday before the New Year and it seems a good time to take a look back . . . but why? What do we hope to accomplish by looking backwards? Aren’t we supposed to be living in the moment? How does looking backward work with mindfulness? First and foremost, let’s not fall ...