Sermons
He went but is he gone?
Today was my last Sunday at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Grenfell. It felt odd in a way. It’s not that I’ve been there so long; rather, it’s that the times I’ve been there have been memorable. Sometimes they’ve been memorable, because I’ve made a mistake, which isn’t too surprising,what it’s a different church with a different service setup, easy to make an error or two. So what do I do…
Where does peace come from?
Peace is like the weather, everyone talks about it but no one does anything about it. That’s a bit of an overstatement but not too much. I have met very few people who don’t want peace; in their lives, their relationships, their world. So if we all want it, or at least many of us, why is it so elusive? I think it could very well be another instance of…
How do you know that?
Another question to consider. As you know by now if you have listened to me preach, or for that matter if you have simply scrolled through sermon titles, you know I ask a lot of questions in my sermon titles. I like to think I often provide answers to questions in my sermons but that is for other people, like you, to judge. This week’s question is an interesting one…
Are there women in the Bible?
Just to reassure you I am well aware we do not have Mothering Sunday in Canada . . . but we should. Not only is it easier to spell, “Where does the apostrophe go?!” it doesn’t leave out anyone. As I mention in the sermon, I have an ambivalent relationship with non-Liturgical Sundays, e.g. Mothers’ Day, Fathers’ Day, etc. I was talking this over with some of the people who…
Three things
Today’s Gospel lesson is familiar to many. It goes by various names but the crux of the matter is Jesus asking Peter three times, “do you love me more than these?” (John 21:15ff NRSV) The mirroring of Peter’s denial of knowing let alone loving Jesus the night before the crucifixion is unmistakable and unmissable. But as one of my homiletics professors used to ask, “So what?” So what if Jesus…
“Peace be with you.” Really?
I think it is fair to say that peace is in short supply at the moment. We have several wars going on that are anything but cold. We have an atmosphere of divisive and antagonistic politics pervading virtually everything. So how do we deal with Jesus’ words, “Peace be with you”? He says this three times in our Gospel lesson (John 20:19-31). First of all, he says it twice to…
What a day!
Today was the last Sunday the congregation of St. Mark’s Presbyterian worshipped at the building at 80 High Street, Moose Jaw. Needless to say it wasn’t the usual Easter Sunday service. That being said it was a very good Easter Sunday, at least in my view. The sermon title was “What a day!” which is another of those ambiguous phrases where everything depends on which word is emphasized. It is…
One of those days?
The sermon today is drawn from the common phrase, it’s “one of those days.” I can’t speak for anyone but myself but I don’t find myself describing days where good thing follows good thing follows good thing as “one of those days.” The phrase seems to be saved for days where it is bad thing after bad thing. I went another step, when it hit me that a day filled…
Do we really know?
If we don’t ask; so we ever know what someone else is thinking? Do we ever know the motivation behind someone’s actions? The short answer is, of course, no. We do not know what another human being is thinking or what motivates them without asking. However, this does not seem to stop us from trying. Until we have some form of mind-reading we are stuck with asking each other about…
Lost stories
We love stories. There seems to be something essentially human about stories. Reading them, listening to them, writing them . . . all of these actions help us understand why Jesus told stories to help people understand what he was teaching. We call these stories “parables” but really, that’s just a fancy name for a story that is making a point. As you’ll hear in the sermon, I divert (sort…