Sermons
Therefore...
Our faith is a grateful response to God’s faithfulness. God is faithful first. We live in God’s world, and God's loving grace is before and after, above and below, to our left and to our right, inside and out. Once we realize that, there is only one appropriate response, and that is to live with a similar grace in... Read More
Good News: Extravagant Grace
Life isn’t fair. Some people get all the breaks. Other people get more than their share of hard knocks. To a huge extent, success depends on luck: where you are born, when you are born, and the accidental things that happen to you along the way. And over generations inequalities become entrenched. Some become... Read More
United by Grace
Continuing the series of narrative sermons on the book of Ephesians, I tell the story of an important scribe named Demetrius, whose first contact with the Christian community in Ephesus comes when he is nursed back to health after a life-threatening illness: Demetrius was a skeptical man, and not given to new... Read More
The Riches of Faith
I have always found Paul’s letters difficult to preach on. Most of them were written to address very specific situations, which often have little to do with our current settings. He uses long sentences with lots of subordinate clauses. To put it mildly, he takes a little unpacking. And long explanations strike me... Read More
The Pilgrim Way
For us today, it is easy to travel. It is expensive, but for those with the money, it is possible to cross continents and oceans in only a few hours. But as former UN Secretary General Dag Hammerskjold once wrote, “the longest journey is the journey inward.” The most difficult journey is that in which we set aside... Read More
Citizens and Disciples
The stories of the biblical prophets have a number of insights about citizenship that are worth reflecting on as we observe our national holiday. Throughout the Older Testament, there is a tension between the rulers of the nation, and the prophets, who call the nation to account to a higher authority. The rulers... Read More
First Things First
When Jesus said “Seek first the kingdom of God” I think he was inviting us to get our priorities straight by setting our lives in the largest possible context. God’s kingdom is when God is the ruler: not the hunger for power or wealth or self-centred desires. God rules in our lives, when we do what God wants us... Read More
From Tiny to Tremendous
As parents, volunteers, neighbours, workers in God’s garden, we do the best we can. We scatter our hours, our words, our deeds of kindness and support and encouragement, trusting that they will fall into the good soil of God’s providence and lead to good growth. But we cannot control that. These parables do not... Read More
Holy, Holy, Holy
“Terry Fox taught us that life is a victory, but you don't always win,” writes former moderator Peter Short. When the ugly threat of cancer loomed over Terry’s life, the holy God loomed yet larger and put his fears in perspective. And it was then that Terry heard a call from the holy God saying, “whom shall I... Read More
Spirit of Truth
Sometimes people understand faith in a narrow way, as if to have faith in God means to reject science or other religions or what other people believe to be true. But faith in God cannot mean the rejection of any truth from any source. Because any God worthy of the name, any God who is the creative source of all... Read More