“This teaching is difficult, who can accept it?” This past Wednesday, we left our Bible study with more questions than answers after we spent some time talking about our readings for today, and especially after we spent some time talking about our Gospel. This is our fifth week in John’s chapter 6, and it does…
Proper 15(B) – Psalm 111
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Psalm 111, v10a) I remember as a child having overheard an interesting conversation between my grand mother and my Dad. I can’t recall the context, if it was on my Grand mother’s birthday or on another occasion. I heard my grand mother say: Well, aging…
Proper 14(B) – 1 Kings 19:4-8, John 6:35, 41-51
Well, it would have been nice to have had Elijah with us this week, because as you may be aware the prophet is known for having prayed to God for a drought, and then it stopped raining for three years and a half! This prayer is actually so famous that it is mentioned two times…
The Feast of Mary Magdalene – John 20: 11-18
Well, we’ve heard so much this week about women in leadership, it looks like it’s perfect timing to celebrate the feast of Mary Magdalene (which was honored this past Monday)! If you’re like me though, it may take a minute to make a connection between female leadership and Mary Magdalene, because I don’t think we…
Proper 11 (B): Psalm 23; Mark 6:30-34, 53-56
I think I made everybody laugh at Bible study when I candidly asked around if, by the time you retire, you end up being less busy. When they stopped laughing, someone said to me: “Oh, we find other things to do!“ Busyness is really a disease of our time…or maybe it’s not? Because my sense…
Proper 9B – 2 Corinthians 12: 2-10; Mark 6: 1-13
Have you ever had someone telling you that if only you had enough faith, your prayers would be answered? When we’re struggling with something, and especially if we struggle for a long time, there is likely to be a good Christian to show up and give us this type of advice: You need to pray…
The feast of St Peter and St Paul – John 21: 15-19
Xavier and I went to Rome the first year of our marriage. I had never been to Italy, I guess it was the romantic thing to do but also I had an agenda: I wanted to see all the churches and the Vatican, the museums and the Sistine Chapel. So we got up early on…
Proper 4(B) – 1 Samuel 3: 1-20; Mark 2: 23 – 3: 6
I like it that, in our Gospel today, Jesus refers to King David to justify his own actions and his disciples’ behavior because once again, it shows us that it’s really hard to understand Jesus if we don’t understand the Old Testament. To understand Jesus, we actually need to understand the OT twice: As Jewish…
2nd Sunday after Pentecost (B) – Trinity Sunday – Isaiah 6:1-8
These past months we have come to get to know much more about the Hebrew Bible as we have been encountering many different characters of the Old testament through our weekly study. We enjoy discussing their stories, often uplifting, sometimes unsettling, always quite colorful, and we realize that in the process we also learn much…
Pentecost Day B: Notes for a sermon on John 15:26-27, 16: 4b-15
On the Day of Pentecost, we celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit / the coming of the Holy Spirit, the well-known story we have just heard in the Book of Acts…Many details are probably familiar to you: the tongues of fire, the languages, the new wine, the young people seeing visions, the old people…