Sermons

What follows is a brief sermon I did on Sunday at theStory after Canada Day.  It was meant to provoke dialogue and ask ourselves how we can be better neighbours to Indigenous neighbours. For thousands of years, First Nations people have walked on this land; their relationship with the land is at the centre of […]

My own experience with humility has been quite forced. I grew up believing in the idea of being humble. My mom used to ensure that I would actually stay humble by constantly telling me that I didn’t think I was as great as I thought I was. Churches teach humility to mean that you don’t

One of the aims of November was to ask ourselves the question of “now what” in regards to some of the current issues around us. The one’s I suggested to the lead team were the new Ontario Health Curriculum, Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and ISIS. You know, just small, easy to tackle things that

Let me start with a story. This is taken from Caesura Letters. Philosophies for Sale is a clever dialogue written by Lucian of Samosata, a second century satirist. It is a story about an auction organized by Zeus and Hermes. The gods present prospective buyers with the great philosophers of the past, whose theories are

This week has been an interesting and eventful week for me. The story about our ducks being taken is going into the newspaper. I wrote few blog posts that got some attention and conversation going. One of the blog posts I wrote was a little rant about the national anthem and how standing for the

This was passed to me after my sermon, but I had to post it. This is a brilliant reading of this passage and I think makes sense of a lot of the struggle we were having together. The Breaking of the Bridesmaids: Rethinking a Problematic Parable (Lectionary Reflection) This was easily the most talkative Sunday

Since we’ve all been children and many of you are parents, I think we all know what it’s like to know the difference between saying what somebody wants to hear and saying the truth. Rachel and I have this fight all the time. She is much more inclined to save face, be nice and say

All of us have an identity. Some of us can be attributed to multiple identities. We identify as mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, grandparents, pipefitters, teachers, friends, entrepreneurs, academics, farmers, certain sports fans, retirees and the list goes on. Almost everything that is done by a human can eventually be turned into an identification marker for

This morning I want to lay out a basic argument and then have us discuss its implications for us as individuals, families and a church. Humans have undergone quite a transition throughout it’s history especially in the way that we think about ourselves. Modernism is a word that we use to describe that kind of

Since introducing different prayers and liturgical readings I find myself pondering specific phrases during the week. I start to become more aware of things that I wouldn’t have noticed if they weren’t there. So this morning I wanted to unpack one of the lines in our confession that we do before the prayers of the

This is a sermon that I spoke at church this past week. I was somewhat excited to give this sermon and yet at the same time was dreading every minute of it. This is such a sensitive topic and folks read so deeply into how someone lands on topics like this. Over the last few

This morning we tackle chapter 23-24. David has been fleeing from Saul in every direction and Saul has been making quite a mess in his tracks. So Saul just finished having his right hand man slaughter a city of priests in Nob and one of the priests has fled the scene and has joined the

It was a long time ago, so let’s read this little bit of 1 Samuel 2. So this comes up and God speaks to Eli basically cursing him because of the evil of his sons. This is what God says through a man to Eli. Therefore the Lord, the God of Israel, declares: ‘I promised

People that speak before me always tend to not take the full two chapters, so I end up having to do three chapters in one week. Good thing I’m an expert preacher and I can cover lots of ground in half the time. This week we are going to have some discussion around loyalty and

But the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel. And they said, “No! But there shall be a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations, and that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles.” And when Samuel had heard all the words

I’m bursting with God-news! I’m walking on air. I’m laughing at my rivals. I’m dancing my salvation. Nothing and no one is holy like God, no rock mountain like our God. Don’t dare talk pretentiously- not a word of boasting, ever! For God knows what’s going on. He takes the measure of everything that happens.

We started the service by reading Hannah’s Prayer  Then Hannah prayed and said: “My heart rejoices in the Lord; in the Lord my horn is lifted high. My mouth boasts over my enemies, for I delight in your deliverance. “There is no one holy like the Lord; there is no one besides you; there is