Sermons
First Sunday of Advent 2019
Here we are. The first Sunday of Advent. The first Sunday of a new liturgical year, Year A if you are keeping score at home. A time for new beginnings. I am always very grateful the first Sunday of Advent is the Sunday of Hope. I can’t think of a better way to begin a new thing than with hope. Whether it is a new year, a new job, a…
Two different sermons
In case you think this post’s title “Two different sermons” is some cutesy thing it isn’t. The Liturgical Sunday for today is the Twenty-Third Sunday after Pentecost but St. Mark’s is having a “Hanging of the Greens” service next Sunday so . . . The Knox Presbyterian Sunday is Pentecost 23 and the St. Mark’s Presbyterian Sunday is the Reign of Christ. So you can decide which one you want…
God of the living
Today was Remembrance Sunday, at least for us. There a a lot of ways one can go with Remembrance Sunday, it is complicated when it coincides with Remembrance Day but there are some givens regardless of the calendar date. We observed two minutes of silence, which is a very long time for most of us. We sang “O Canada” unaccompanied, I like both piano and organ but there is something…
Who gets called
I have been enjoying putting myself into biblical stories lately. Well, maybe “enjoying” isn’t the exact word because it isn’t always enjoyable, even when it is very valuable. I don’t do it very well. I find it difficult to imagine myself into these stories, or any stories for that matter. I don’t know if it is an overly cerebral approach to anything written or if it is a lack of…
Hearing and humility
I wasn’t entirely sure where this week’s texts were going to take me/us but I wasn’t surprised when the longer I looked at them and thought about them and sat with them that the Luke text became the focus. As I mention, this week in the Lectionary is a challenge for me because I have a very strong personal connection to the Old Testament lesson, Joel 2:23-32. There is nothing…
Which days are those?
Days. The good old days. The bad old days. Better days. Back in the day. We talk about days a lot, which makes sense, a day is a handy and flexibly measure. There are all sorts of ways to define a day, 24 hours, sunup to sundown, one sleep to the next sleep. We also encounter days in literature, A Long Day’s Journey Into Night. Music, “It’s Been A Hard…
Thanksgiving!
It’s Thanksgiving Sunday, at least in Canada, so it seemed like a good idea to reflect on being thankful . . . as long as the Lectionary provided an appropriate text. As is so often the case there was an appropriate text but not the obvious one. The Gospel lesson is the story of Jesus healing ten lepers and only one coming back to give praise to God and to…
Not ashamed
Shame. Embarrassment. These are not words we like applied to us. I have never met anyone who wants to feel ashamed. I have met many people who have gone to the most extraordinary lengths to avoid it. Paul in his second letter to Timothy¹ writes to say “Do not be ashamed” (2 Timothy 1:8a NRSV). If only it was simply a matter of reading a letter and never being ashamed…
Contentment and giving
Contentment is a tricky word. For some people, the connotations of contentment include a fatalistic “settling” for what is and giving up on anything else or anything better. I hasten to point out, this is not what is meant by contentment, especially not when Paul uses it in 2 Timothy. Contentment isn’t settling for what you have, it is being aware of what you have and being grateful for it…
All means all
It seems for lots of us, the shorter the word the easier it is to misunderstand or even misuse it. Today we are talking about what the word “all” might mean for us in a particular context. The Lectionary’s Epistle lesson for this Sunday is 1 Timothy 2:1-7, we focused primarily on the first three verses. “1 First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be…