Sermons
God's Reign and Climate Change
In the world Jesus belongs to, the ultimate commitment is to truth. “For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.”... there is no more important question of truth in the world now, and no more fiercely contested question of truth (at least in North America), than the question... Read More
The Narrow, Winding Road to Life
Jesus is reported to have said, “strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.” From that passage, we get the phrase, “the strait and narrow,” not straight (like the path of an arrow), but strait (meaning a narrow entryway, like the Strait of Gibraltar). The way... Read More
Re-Membering Our Future
The poem “In Flanders’ Fields,” which we heard earlier, contains the line, “take up our quarrel with the foe.” I wonder sometimes who that foe is, with whom we are supposed to take up the quarrel. Apparently Dr. John McRae, the author of that poem, told his chaplain that he did not think of the foe as the German... Read More
A Broken, Holy Hallelujah
My title for this sermon is drawn from Leonard Cohen’s wonderful song Hallelujah, in which he sings of a holy and a broken Hallelujah, a cold and a broken Hallelujah. He sings of how hallelujahs emerge from the ordinary aspects of human existence, from flawed and strained relationships. And yet they are still... Read More