In our Gospel Lesson Jesus said: “I am the good shepherd.” This is one of the most common images for Jesus in the world. You can see one example of a stained glass window on this theme pictured in the insert to your bulletin. There is another such window (though a different one) at First Baptist Church of Eau Claire, where I was a small boy. There’s another at the Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Baptist Church where we worshiped for many years. It struck me that I have been followed by the Good Shepherd for much of my life, but it… Continue reading →

I remember a distinguished preacher and the former minister of Canada’s largest Baptist congregation who was one of my colleagues who used say to students, “Don’t make yourself the centre and constant example in sermons.” That’s undoubtedly a good idea, and I hope I haven’t done that too much. But sometimes, one’s own experience makes it inevitable. It may seem a small thing to some of you who have done it and survived, but this last week, on Monday, I filed the paperwork concerning my pension. I received an email response from the Retirement Board representative, saying, “You’re on your… Continue reading →

Holidays are very important times. In the church year the Easter Season lasts for the 50 days from Easter Day until Pentecost (which derives its name from the Greek word for fifty). In this time following Easter Day, the Great Church celebrates the implications of the fact that Jesus is alive and “Going ahead of us into Galilee” (Easter words at the Empty Tomb). So, it is not surprising that the scripture lessons today talk about some of the characteristics of communities that centre in God through the risen Christ.

To start with the Old Testament, Psalm 133 is a… Continue reading →

This morning we used an age old greeting and response for Easter Day: “Christ Is Risen! He Is Risen, Indeed!” Each year, on this Sunday, and on many others, we proclaim this good news directly. But, indirectly, the very fact that the overwhelming majority of Christians (including us) changed the day on which they worshiped from Saturday (the Jewish Sabbath) to Sunday (the day of Christ’s resurrection) proclaims the resurrection of Jesus week by week, silently, by their very meeting together.

Now, although, today and often, we proclaim the resurrection of Jesus, it is not his own act, as if… Continue reading →

Presented -November 2, 2014

(Gen. 12:1-3; Rev. 79-17; Mt. 5:1-12)

Yesterday was All Saints Day and today is All Saints Sunday. In the Bible (either Testament) being a saint is being “holy.” To be holy means “set apart to God’s values and service in the real world.” The last four words are crucial. God’s “saints” are never out of touch with the realities of life in the real world. God made the world. According to John 3:16, God loves the world. God puts saints in the world as a blessing to the world. The word “saint” as a noun is… Continue reading →

Presented -October 26, 2014

(Dt. 6:5-9; Lev. 19:1-2, 15-18; 1 Thess. 2:1-8; Mt. 22:34-46)

As I look back over these past years, I am proud of the fact that First Baptist has been guided by a sense of mission “out there” in our community that is determined only partially by our numbers (either in terms of people or dollars), and much more by a sense of the kind of community we believe God is calling us to be, and going in the way we believe God is calling us to go. It is important that this continue into 2015 and… Continue reading →

Presented -October 19, 2014

(Isa. 45:1-7; Mt. 22:15-22)

Very soon we will go to the polls and vote, which means we have endured endless rhetoric of late (as we seem to do more continuously than we used to). One of the perennial subjects of the rhetoric, political spin, and all the rest of it is taxes, who raised them (or lowered them) last time, and who will this time. A long time ago Jesus had his own debate about taxes with an unlikely coalition of religious/political leaders within his culture called the Herodians and the Pharisees. We don’t know a… Continue reading →

Presented -October 12, 2014

(Isa. 25:1-10a; Phil. 4:4-9; Mt. 22:1-14)

The Old Testament Lesson pictures God’s final presence with people as a sumptuous banquet where everyone will have enough and more than enough to eat. Such an image may have limited appeal in our world where most of us have never been very hungry, but in Jesus’ world where very few of his hearers had ever been anything else, it was very attractive. Later in history than this text that is now in the Book of Isaiah, though it was probably composed as late as the 4th century, this picture… Continue reading →

Presented -October 5, 2014

(Ex. 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20; Phil. 3:4b-14; Mt. 21:33-46)

There’s a book written over 60 years ago by the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber called Two Types of Faith that I first read long ago. I have almost pirated his title for this sermon. I want to acknowledge how much I have learned from him (and not only in this book), but I’ve changed the title so as not to suggest that he would have begun to agree with my conclusions, which are a bit different from his.

Through the years, I would say the vast majority of… Continue reading →