Sermons on Faith (Page 13)
The Intersection of Cosmic and Mundane
John 1:1-18 My sister is an excellent preacher. Although we are different in many ways, we also both tend towards procrastination and dislike housework. We joke that if one of us is cleaning, it is a sure sign that we have a sermon to write. So it will not surprise you that at my allotted sermon preparation time yesterday I found myself cleaning a car mat which had suffered from a particularly sticky holiday food event. As I worked, I…
Making Room for Baby
Photo by Filip Mroz on unsplash.com Many of you know Sarah. She’s expecting to become a grandmother any time now. Last week, the baby was in the wrong position so the doctors decided to do a C section on Monday but when the family arrived at the hospital they discovered that baby had moved into the normal position. But a day or two later baby moved back and so they went back to the hospital for a C section but…
Good News Hunting
When I was a kid I loved the puzzles where you have to see how many umbrellas or chipmunks or words you can find hidden in the picture. I was reminded of this by this morning’s gospel which ends with the words, “So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.” It left me wondering where exactly the good news is hiding in this account of John’s preaching. It seems that he was mainly talking about…
Make Space for God
Photo by Jeremy Bishop on unsplash.com If you’re about the same age as me, this gospel reading with its quotation from Isaiah immediately brings to mind the beginning of Godspell with its haunting “Prepare the Way of the Lord.” Yet I wonder why the Lord needs the way prepared. Yesterday, members of the altar guild cleaned all our sacred pots and pans in preparation for Christmas. We do this two or three times a year – before the two big…
Raise your Head
Luke 21:25-36 There are two quite different ways of looking at this week’s Gospel. One is that terrible things are going to happen and we should be prepared less we be trapped; and the second is that actually terrible things happening means that redemption and God’s reign are very near and we should be hopefully expectant. Looking at this textually, the ambiguity seems to come from the fact that we are reading Luke’s gospel. Both Luke and Matthew took Mark’s…
The Reign of Christ
Revelation 1:4b-8 John 18:33-37 I am glad to be home after a rapid visit to my family in the UK. Of course, one person I did not see was my brother Richard who died quite a while back. Every Christmas, Richard faithfully sent out a Christmas letter with the normal kind of information about his family’s activities. But Richard was not an optimist. Every year he told us that things were so bad that the end of the world was…
The Cup
Photo by Jametlene Reskp on Unsplash Mark 10:35-45 Not so long ago in a time not unlike this, people thought that there was only one point of view, only one way to see things. Then they found that it was possible to read the same thing but understand it in a number of different ways. So now, when we read the Bible we need to take into account the perspective from which we come. This is called the hermeneutic. For…
St. Benedict
The Fall of the Roman Empire is usually dated to 476 when the Roman Emperor was deposed by Odoacer who was probably from one of East German peoples. Benedict was born just four years later in 480. Although we talk about the Fall of the Roman Empire it was not something that happened overnight – there was a prolonged period of unrest and uncertainty both before and after 476. It was a time of massive migrations in Europe; groups of…
Sky
Luke: 24:45-53 One of the things that I love about living here is the amount of sky that we can see. And I know that many of us find the beauty of a sunset to be a place and a time when we are moved beyond ourselves and experience God. The Apostles Creed tells us that “Jesus ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.” Scholars suggest that this creed originated in the second century or…
Humanity
Photo by Sandy Kumar @ Unsplash.com At first glance, it may seem a little strange that during the Season of Creation we celebrate humanity. But it is only strange when we persist in the idea that somehow we are separate from the rest of creation. When we shift our perception and realize that we are as dependent upon our environment as any other animal, we can see that we are just as much part of creation as a coyote, a…