This morning we have already witnessed an enacted sermon in the Christian ordinance of Believer’s Baptism. Most everyone here today is aware that Baptists perform baptisms in ways that differ significantly from many churches: Episcopal, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian and Roman Catholic just to name a few. I remember sitting at a joint worship service of theological schools and listening to the president of a nearby seminary speak. He began, in the fashion that many have been taught, by making a few jokes. As it happens, since he was among Baptists, he decided to joke about baptism, and the obvious differences.… Continue reading →

Family Snapshots: a Healing Community (Ps. 23; 1 Jn. 3:16-18; Jn. 10:11-18)

Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd,” as almost everyone that’s been near a Christian church knows. I both grew up in a church and worshiped in another for many years that featured beautiful stained glass windows featuring artists’ conceptions of this saying. It’s always been a favourite of mine. In the background that Jesus (and John, who tells this story) would have shared with their hearers and readers were the many “shepherd passages” in the Old Testament, found from Genesis (“Jacob blessed “The God before whom my… Continue reading →

Although we are in the season of Easter, I have chosen a Gospel text that is set in the pre-Easter ministry of Jesus. In my doing so, I want to remind us, once again, that, although most of the Gospel stories are set in the time before Jesus’ death and resurrection, all of them were written and published after these events. The entirety of the written Gospels were read or heard by communities of faith that lived, as you and I do, after Easter. So the Gospels tell the story of Jesus to those who know how the story came… Continue reading →

The Sunday after Easter (technically called the Second Sunday of Easter) is usually a bit of a let-down. We showed off all the lilies and heard the wonderful anthems that our choir sang, and heard words about the Resurrection of Jesus. But that was last Sunday. How do we go back to more ordinary things today? Well, the fact is, we really don’t, or aren’t intended to, at least The Easter Season runs fifty days, from Easter Sunday through Pentecost (pentekosta is the Greek word for “fifty”). During this period the Revised Common Lectionary gives us a reading each week… Continue reading →

Today we have used an age-old Easter greeting and response: “Christ Is Risen! He Is Risen, Indeed!” And, though it is true, we also proclaim that this resurrection was not Jesus’ own act, as if he rose up all by himself. Jesus’ resurrection is primarily God’s act; an act that vindicated Jesus’ life and death. In the Gospel Lesson this morning the young man who spoke to the women at the tomb did not say that “Jesus rose from the dead.” He said, “He has been raised.” He means “raised by God, as Peter made abundantly clear in his sermon… Continue reading →