Sermons
Let’s look at something else we all know!
I have mentioned it more than once in the past that one of the best things we can do, at least now and then, is to look and think about what we already know. I’ve made, or at least attempted to make, the case several times that it is looking at what we already know that we discover that no matter how well we know it (whatever “it” might be)…
Everything comes from something
So you may be looking at the title of this blog and saying to yourself, “Duh! Of course!” and I wouldn’t blame you a bit if you did. Saying that everything comes from something hardly counts as a new insight. If I understand the law of conservation of mass then once you have everything (see creation, ex nihilo), then it is just a matter of one thing becoming another thing…
Another taboo talked about
I think it was last week that I mentioned that we are not supposed to talk about religion or politics . . . well there is another thing we aren’t supposed to talk about and that is money. Soooo, this week I preached about money. By the way, I am not on some sort of taboo-busting, taboo-discussing trend, I go where the Lectionary leads as much as possible and sometimes…
Politics? Yes I went there, but not how you might have thought
I know, I know, I know. The two topics you should never talk about are religion and politics. Now I am more or less forced to talk about the former but to bring the latter in too . . . well, what was I thinking? What I was thinking, was a slightly different take on 1 Timothy 2:1,2. I have always been slightly uncomfortable with this passage. I get that…
Stop being so binary!
I like logical fallacies. Well, let me clarify. I don’t like “doing” logical fallacies. I like recognizing them and knowing that they have names and cool things like that. Heather is much better at identifying logical fallacies when they pop up, as they do so often in public discourse, but I find my fair share. There are all sorts of logical fallacies out there, some of the more common are:…
A micro primer on hermeneutics
This Sunday’s sermons come from the Lectionary’s Gospel lesson, which is taken from Luke, in fact Luke 14:25-33 (click here for the texts). The actual title of the sermons is “Hyperbole” and what I was attempting to do was to provide some guidance into how we interpret, or at least hear, the hyperbolic statements and stories; especially from Jesus. Dealing with hyperbole is just one part of hermeneutics, which is…
Does what we do matter?
BREAKING As noted in my last post, I have no idea why there are two media players showing, at least in some browsers, so if the first one you try doesn’t work try again, or even again. Sorry for this, I’ll have to check with my blog consultant and try to get this fixed. Until such time as I get this fixed, if you click here, you will be taken…
Do I dare address hypocrisy?
Well the short answer is that I do dare. Hypocrisy is one of the more fraught topics that frequently comes up. Much like my introduction to preaching on prayer, there are all the same potential problems preaching about prayer; there is such pressure to be perfect in relation to the topic. If there is pressure to have a perfect prayer life, the pressure to never practice hypocrisy is even greater!…
More thinking? Really?
You may be wondering why we are doing more thinking about faith, although quite possibly you aren’t. Faith is one of those extremely large topics that can be thought about and talked about with profit for a very, very long time. Today’s sermons are a little wide ranging but one of the points I am trying to address is the absurdity of subjecting “faith,” in particular religious faith, to all…
Let’s talk about faith . . .
Finally! Caught up, here’s hoping I won’t have to ever do that again. This week we are in Hebrews 11, the “Faith chapter” as it was often called when I was in Bible school, so it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that we are talking about faith. What makes this week’s sermons interesting is that the title is very much what they are, i.e. “Let’s talk about faith ….