View archived sermons Listen to this sermon Matthew 20:1-16 And Jesus told them this parable. The kingdom of Heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire labourers for his vineyard…. In this way, Jesus begins a story like so many of the stories that he told in order to create a worldview that we are invited to take residence inside. I have heard that with his parables or stories, “Jesus creates…
View Archived Semons Listen to this Sermon Ezekiel 33:7-11; Romans 13:8-14; Matt. 18:15-20 If you heard me preach two weeks ago and you experience a bit of déjà vu this morning with today’s gospel reading it will be understandable. It’s either a déjà vu or a second chance. I have a sense that the winds of the Spirit that we want to pay explicit attention to this summer are giving me a second chance this morning to preach on a…
View Archived Sermons Listen to this Sermon It had been a long, hot summer. The windless air was stagnant, refusing to blow in the much needed rain clouds. The blazing sun was burning up whatever sparse grass remained along the hillsides, so the shepherds were forced to wander farther and farther away from home, in search of food for their animals. But it was a summer like any other. The shepherd was tired. He had left his wife and…
View Archived Sermons Listen to this Sermon The Rock and the Wind Matt. 16: 13-20 Just over a week ago, in North Carolina – as the sun was rising, I woke, got dressed quickly and headed up the mountain behind our hotel room at the Ridgecrest Conference centre. The early morning sun was shining on the mountains above me, but had not yet risen far enough to illuminate the hotel and so being the morning person I am –…
View Archives Sermons Listen to this Sermon Listen and Understand Texts: Isaiah 56:1, 6-8; Matthew 15:10-28 I have seen the wind, our framing metaphor for sermons this summer, gives opportunity to reflect on some of the surprising ways in which God speaks to us. As I’ve meditated on today’s sermon over the past month or so, there have been a number of instances where it wasn’t difficult to sense the Spirit’s presence. One was at Mennonite Church Canada’s Annual…
View Archived Sermons Listen to this Service Have You Seen the Wind?: Comfort in the unpredictable Matthew 14: 22-33 As Emily and the children have reminded us, we last heard the sound of wind chimes here on Pentecost Sunday when we used them to symbolize the wind that entered the room where Jesus’ followers were praying and waiting for the Spirit of Jesus to comfort them. But it didn’t just comfort them, it gave them power: strange power. …
View Archived Sermons Listen to this Service Marilyn and John’s wedding Text: Ephesians 4,5 Mawage. Mawage is what bwings us togevah, too-day. Mawage, that bwessed event, That dweam wiffin a dweam I threatened them that I would start this way; so there you have it, nothing else to fear, right? For those of you who don’t recognize them, these are the classic lines delivered by the bishop in the 1987 movie The Princess Bride. The movie is…
View Archived Sermons Listen to this Sermon Genesis 32:22-31; Matthew 14:13-21; Romans 9:1-5 I have seen the wind. I have seen the wind on the Sumas prairie, where I grew up, near Abbotsford, BC. One fall, in the 1970s, we woke up after a night of the howling wind that picks up speed as it swoops down into the Fraser Valley near Chilliwack and into the Sumas flats. Our neighbour, half a kilometre away across the…
View Archived Sermons Listen to this Sermon Genesis 28:10-19a This week as I prepared my sermon I had the opportunity to “hang out” with or spend time with the biblical characters Isaac, and Rebecca, Jacob and Esau, Leah, Rachel, Bilhah, Zilpah, and Laban. If there is ever any comfort to be had in contemplating one’s own family dysfunctions, just spend some time with these characters in Genesis. Our text for today does not give you the big picture of…