The Preachers’ Table
Preaching is a communal, multi-layered act; listening, reading, writing, proclaiming, absorbing. This is a place for us to share our preparations for our sermons. Share your first impressions, new discoveries, old favourites, burning questions. This is a place for preachers and listeners alike, to prepare our hearts and minds for the Word.
February 1, 2015: Don’t make me unfriend you
In these days of friending and unfriending and selective news gathering it is easy to shut out the voices of those with whom we disagree. But what if we are shutting out the Word of God, only because we do not like what we hear? Continue reading
But probably not today
Can we, who do not live in most ways as if the appointed time is growing short, hear in chapter 7 an invitation to the same kind of freedom that Paul was writing about last week in chapter 6? Continue reading
Water & Spirit baptism (Proper 1)
Perhaps rather than asking “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became a believer?” a more useful question today would be: “Is the Spirit presently active in your life… and how?” Continue reading
Advent 4: it all comes tumbling down
The lectionary path through Advent B feels like a four-sided die skittering across a board game. It tumbles through the four-facets in the order of Mark-Mark-John-Luke-Matthew. Each possible landing leads to a very different past and thus a very different future. Continue reading
Preaching Advent 3: Christmas needs Pentecost
We tell children that Christmas is Jesus’ birthday. But the specialness of that birthday, above all others, remains hidden until we tell the rest of his story, particularly Pentecost. Continue reading
Are you in or out? Really?
When I baptize infants I often tell the parents that having a child baptized but never bringing them to church is like having a child adopted but then never letting them go to live with their adopted family. Continue reading
November 2, 2014-All Saints’ Day: “Blessed” sinners and saints
With the daily rise and fall of personalities, I wonder if sainthood is something any of us truly want to claim for ourselves. Does any one of us want to be the holder of such a lofty title, from which it is so easy…and so far…to fall away? Continue reading
The easy life
But once more, we meet in Jesus a God who firmly insists on offering more than we could ask or imagine. Continue reading
Pentecost 19: Jesus Rifles
Rendering the tax is now, ironically, a gesture of rejection rather than acquiescence. “Here is your dirty blood money,” Jesus says, “and you are welcome to it.” The currency of the realm (cash, lives taken by violence, whatever) is counterfeit in The Kingdom’s economy. We should hand them over with as much disregard as we would monopoly money given to children. Continue reading
Love excludes ?
In some parishes the option to use the lections for “Harvest Thanksgiving” may be the cause of thanksgiving by preachers who thereby circumvent two rather difficult passages in the regular lections. But can stories of wrath and judgment teach us to love a God who practices exclusion? Should we also be thankful for what is not around the table of the kingdom banquet. Continue reading
