Sermons
Who’s a preacher? What’s a sermon?
This Sunday we spent some time working out what exactly a preacher is, who is preacher and what is a sermon. It was fun. The sermons were drawn from our Gospel lesson and revolve around the age old question, how do people hear something unless someone tells it to them? There was an opportunity to spend quite a bit of time discussing the question, is general revelation, i.e. nature, creation…
Remember bad and good
Several weeks ago the Presbyterian Church in Canada asked congregations to consider doing something to recognize that August 4, 2014 is the 100th anniversary of the beginning of World War I. The reminder that this is a centennial year was a good one, I was aware of it in the “non-preaching” part of my brain but not necessarily in the “preaching” part.* I am always concerned about services like this…
Expectations
There is something about our expectations. I don’t for a moment think that I’m on to something new but there is real value in reminding ourselves that generally speaking, dashed expectations create the greatest disappointments for us, even more than what might be called actual disappointments. It seems odd but it seems to be the case. I wonder if this is the source of a fascinating study . . ….
Daddy
This Sunday there is only one sermon attached because I only preached one, and what is more I preached it at a different church than usual. Don’t worry, I haven’t left Knox and St. Mark’s, I was invited back to First Presbyterian Church in Regina, what fun! First Presbyterian is the church that is most responsible for making me a preacher. Needless to say, they are not responsible for any…
The Extravagant Sower
Well I said that last week was the latest that I had ever put up a blog post so it is a good thing that I am a bit earlier this week . . . by a day or so 🙂 The sermons for this Sunday were another revisit of a parable I have preached on before, the Parable of the Sower, as it is sometimes called. It was another…
Grace and mystery
The title of this blog post isn’t as useful as some but the sermon title, “Do we have to sin? Should we?” wasn’t all that great either. Sometime I’ll have to write a blog post just on sermon titles and what I think they do or can do. What these sermons are about is the mystery of reckoning ourselves dead to sin. What does that even mean? The actual verse…
Let’s discuss the Trinity
So why on earth would we want to spend any time talking about the Trinity? It is hard to understand and when you begin to understand it at all you realize that there are parts of it that you will never understand, because no one understands it all. The Trinity is fundamentally beyond us in the same way eternity is fundamentally beyond us so why bother? Simple. The parts that…
Pentecost!
Pentecost is one of those events that has some aspects that are so striking that some of the other, perhaps even more, significant bit s are lost. Many people are familiar at some level with the story of Pentecost: the tongues of fire, the indoor wind storm, people hearing in their own language words spoken by people who don’t speak that language, accusations of early morning drunkenness, etc. Most of…
The Ascension
This Sunday we have another opportunity to look at one of the very well known stories of the New Testament, the Ascension. This is when Jesus, post-resurrection, returned to the Father, to heaven, leaving this world behind. And, leaving his disciples behind. There are several things we can take from the Ascension or at least there are several things we can talk about. We can remember that Jesus did us…
No good deed goes unpunished, really?
There is something so attractive about the “proverb” that titles this post. Just let it roll off your tongue for a moment, “no good deed goes unpunished.” Doesn’t it just feed into that sense of justice that we all have to such a wondrous degree when we are the target of injustice? You all know what this is about, everyone has experienced having a favour thrown back in your face…