This is another of those Sundays I wish we had recorded! I departed from the text substantially in the second half of the sermon and have no record of what I actually said. What I did do was lay out the three ways of looking at this text more clearly:

• as a parable that tells of God’s super-abundance—unmerited and beyond imagining,
• as a reflection on Jesus’ own ministry and returning to the beginning of that ministry in temptation—which path will Jesus take? Wealth and power, or losing everything?
• as a story telling of Jesus’ solidarity with those whose lives are the third servant’s life—no matter what they do, even that is taken away again and again by The Man.

Here is the sermon:

• Sermon for the Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost (2011-11-13, Year A) – OpenDocument version
• Sermon for the Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost (2011-11-13, Year A) – pdf version

Advent is always a tricky time of the year for the preacher and worship leader in my opinion. Its not Christmas, yet, according to the church but it is Christmas time for the culture arround us. Just as we have taken rituals and practices of other cultures and baptised them as Christian, so our Western culture has taken one of our rituals/practices, Christmas, and ‘baptised’ it for the cultural purposes of promoting family life and selling stuff!

Here is my sermon for the first of our four Advent Sundays:

• Sermon for the First Sunday of Advent (2011-11-27, Year B) – OpenDocument version
• Sermon for the First Sunday of Advent (2011-11-27, Year B) – pdf version

The sermon lost a page today but apart from that it went well. The accompanying music and presentation are not included in the downloads but this is the full version of “Oh Mary, don’t you weep” that I used during the sermon.

• Sermon for 9/11 (Ordinary Sunday 24, Year A) – OpenDocument version
• Sermon for 9/11 (Ordinary Sunday 24, Year A) – pdf version

This Sunday I ended up turning the first half of this sermon into a ‘children‘s sermon’ and then continuing with the second half of the sermon as the sermon. So, for those who want the entire sermon—here it is.

It begins like this and the whole sermon can be downloaded in either an OpenDocument or a pdf version.

Who am I?

Here we are, back at names again. We have had Abram change to Abraham and Jacob to Israel. The Pharaoh remains nameless but the midwives are named Shiphrah and Puah. Two women, slaves in the court of Pharaoh have names and their master has none.

Just a few verses ago Jesus was named truly by his disciples. As they worshipped him after the storm was over they named him, “Son of God”.

All these names.

My name means “man of the dark waters”. I thought that was so lame when I was young. Why couldn’t I be a Christopher or a David? Now those are strong names!

But dark waters run deep. And I have grown into my name as I have grown older. I am Douglas. That is my name.

All these names.

• Sermon for Ordinary Sunday 21, Year A, 2011 – OpenDocument version
• Sermon for Ordinary Sunday 21, Year A, 2011 – pdf version

Readings

• Deuteronomy 8:10-18
• 2 Corinthians 9:7-15
• Matthew 6: 25-33

Sermon

Lillian Daniel, in our challenging piece in the Christian Century, tells the following story:

[A man] explained how his own son had bowled him over with a great insight. He said: “Listen to what my son wrote: ‘Children are starving with empty bellies in faraway lands. They have nothing to eat. All around them they hear the sounds of gunfire and bombs going off. And it made me realize that we are so lucky. We are so lucky to be living here and not there.’”

“I had tears in my eyes when he said that,” the parent went on to say. “I was blown away and I realized that he gets it, he really gets it. It was gratitude. That’s our religion—gratitude. And at that moment, when he recognized all that suffering and how fortunate he was, I could not have been prouder.”

There is a profound problem with being thankful and its a very human problem. Being thankful is really rather easy much of the time and it shifts too easily to a kind of “aren’t we lucky” thinking.

We can look out the window on a beautiful morning like today and it takes no effort to be thankful for the blue sky, the sunshine and the crispness of the air. Aren’t we so lucky to live in our nice houses with windows we can look out of to see the beauty of God’s creation?

But its a little more difficult for the homeless man who has lain shivering awake all night under the cold clear sky to see that same beauty! And if God has given us, in our comfortable homes, such beauty, why has God also inflicted upon the homeless man such despair?

The full sermon is attached to this post in both OpenDocument and pdf versions.

• Sermon for the Parish Thanksgiving service, 2011-09-04 – pdf version
• Sermon for the Parish Thanksgiving service, 2011-09-04 – OpenDocument version

Christ is risen. Alleluia!

At this time of the year I always wonder about our lack of attention to Eastertide compared with our Lenten business. And then along comes this post on the blog of Ian Gomersall from Manchester, England. I don’t have any answers, just lots of questions. Maybe I’ll reflect some more in the next week or so.

On this Holy Saturday, I recommend the reflections by Scott Gunn found here.

I do hope to post to this blog regularly but I’m making no guarantees. See you soon.