Sermons
Prayer
This week’s sermon title is “Let’s talk prayer” which means it could be preached virtually any Sunday 🙂 In this case, the Lectionary has us looking at Luke 11 where the so-called shorter Lord’s Prayer is found. The passage continues to verse 13 which means it includes a couple of Jesus’ funniest illustrations as well as some words about persistence in prayer. One of the most significant things about prayer,…
Another choice
This Sunday we are looking at another choice; the choice between “being” and “doing.” Now I’m sure some of you out there are snorting and saying, “Look! Another false dichotomy.” and you wouldn’t be wrong. This is a false dichotomy or at the very least, a unnecessarily forced choice. The sermon comes from the well known story of Mary and Martha, taken from the book of Luke (Luke 10:38-42). In…
Who is my neighbour?
Today’s Gospel lesson includes one of the best known stories in the Bible; the story of the Good Samaritan. At its heart this story is one of inclusion. The story begins with someone, a lawyer, asking Jesus how to inherit eternal life. Jesus asks how the lawyer thinks it works. The lawyer says to love God with all your heart, strength, mind and soul and love your neighbour as yourself….
What is the opposite of faith?
There is something essentially human about taking the easy way. It is such a part of being human that we have turned it into a vice. What once was a path to efficiency and minimizing effort has become something to be avoided. There are very few of us who haven’t heard some variation on “don’t take the easy way out.” I want to go on record that I have told…
One law is enough
This Sunday we talked about laws and law. There is something fundamentally human about the need to make laws or rules and something equally fundamentally human about trying to circumvent those laws or rules. I wonder if this second tendency is the source of Paul’s observation in Romans 5:20 “But law came in, with the result that the trespass multiplied; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (NRSV)….
Stop with the categories
It is virtually impossible for us, as humans, to keep from putting people and things into categories. Categorization isn’t bad or evil, it is just a thing that we all do. I have read that one of the actions that we do best is pattern recognition, which is all about categories. We put what we recognize into one category and what we don’t in another; friends go here and family…
Debt and grace
I preach about grace fairly often. This shouldn’t be too much of a surprise, after all grace is one of the hallmarks of following Jesus so it shows up in the Lectionary texts with some frequency. I also very much enjoy preaching about grace because it is one of the hardest things for me, and I expect for others, to keep remembering. Over and over again I find myself living…
Why talk about dying?
Let me begin by saying how good it is to be back! I had a wonderful time away, Portland, OR is a very lovely city and Heather is the very best person to explore anything with. So why would I preach about dying after a delightful trip? The usual answer works here too, because it is in the Lectionary. This week’s texts actually have two stories about dying and, what…
Pentecost!
Just to clear things up from the get-go, there is only one sermon below because today was a joint service with the folks from St. Mark’s Presbyterian joining up with Knox Presbyterian congregation to celebrate the Knox Sunday School year. It seems especially appropriate to have a joint service on Pentecost Sunday so I was very happy it worked that way. Also, I am not in the pulpit for the…
The gifts of Acts – part five
We’ve made it to the end of the season of Easter and our look at how the book of Acts is filled with gifts. This week we are looking at the gift of “God at work.” The Lectionary has us reading about Paul and Silas and their short stay in prison as a consequence of Paul exorcising an irritating demon. This story has earthquakes, pseudo-prison breaks, suicide prevention, redemption ….