What is religion anyway?
Today’s sermon title is rather odd. Even if it is a rhetorical question it is still odd, at least when a preacher asks it. But I did ask it. And I do ask it.
This Sunday’s message comes from Trinity Presbyterian, in Grenfell, Saskatchewan. As you may have noticed here and there we (St. Mark’s Presbyterian) have entered into an agreement with Trinity where I go there to preach on the first Sunday of the month and Zoom the service back to . . . well to anyone who has the link. There were a couple of technological wrinkles I’m sure will be ironed out for the next service. One of them was missing the few notes I had for the sermon. I frequently don’t preach with any notes at all, as I have mentioned before, but I like to have things like definitions in front of me. I didn’t so you will hear a bit of thrashing around as I tried to recreate this definition from memory; “Religion: the belief in and worship of a superhuman power or powers, especially a God or gods.” I’m sorry I can’t cite it because MS Word gave it to me from somewhere.
The point I hope I eventually got to was that religion is pretty simple really, “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” (James 1:17 NRSV)
Blessings,
PS This sermon is longer than I frequently preach and I am here to say it should have been shorter but I allowed myself to focus on some of the challenges around the service and that never helps me be concise. It is still okay but I’m aware it might not be up to what you may expect from me.
Thank you Barry. As always, clear and good. I get stressed about what’s happening in the world and I can’t do anything about it. It’s good to be reminded that ‘s okay. I’m responsible for what I can do in my world, even though that’s much smaller than it used to be.