Tag Archives: Sermon

Pastor Thoughts, Theology & Culture

The Collision of Holy Week

Leave a comment

The first Palm Sunday I can remember I was six or seven. A Sunday school teacher shoved a palm branch into my hands and told me to be happy; we were going to welcome Jesus. The Sunday school and adult choir paraded into the sanctuary singing a happy song as the congregation watched. I remember not being sure what was going on. But I knew that happy people were laying down their coats and palm branches to make a welcome mat for Jesus, who was parading into town. 

Palm Sunday is an odd event seen through this lens. Why is there a party for Jesus at the end of Lent and before Maundy Thursday and Good Friday? And it is not just my home congregation that bought into the party idea. The celebratory emphasis of Palm Sunday is a theme that can be seen in artwork, music and many passion plays throughout history. 

But Palm Sunday wasn’t a party or celebration, not really. Jesus’ ride into Jerusalem was something else. 

This year, many congregations in the United States are including protest signs in their Palm Sunday processions, as a way to protest their current government. Seeing Palm Sunday as a protest is probably closer to what the moment represented, but not quite. 

Processions are important social symbols in our world as they were 2000 years ago. We might not think about it much, but processions occur in a lot of places. A celebratory parade is an obvious one. But processions occur also at weddings, funerals, graduations, political and state ceremonies, military ceremonies, and in religious practice. Though it is understated, our worship begins with a procession and ends with a recession every week. From a practical standpoint, it is a matter of getting the people who have a role to play in worship into and out of the space. But, symbolically, processions draw attention and focus. They help to communicate that something important is about to happen.

This is what the procession of the triumphal entry was about. In the gospels, prior to the triumphal entry, much of Jesus’ ministry resulted in conflict with the religious authorities, the political authorities and the demonic authorities⎯the Kingdoms of Religion, Politics and Satan. The purpose of Jesus’ ride into Jerusalem was to draw attention and focus to the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God.

Palm Sunday is the event where the Holy Messiah, God-In-Flesh, arrives to meet human centres of power.  The Temple at the heart of Jerusalem was the symbol of power for the Kingdoms of Religion, Power, and Satan⎯the Kingdoms opposed to the Kingdom of God. The crowds shouting “Hosanna!” believed that Jesus was coming as a conquering king⎯more like that scene from the movie Gladiator where Caesar rides into Rome as a war hero or like the Allied troops marching into a liberated Holland in World War II. The conflicts in both cases were not resolved, but only beginning. 

At the end of the triumphal entry, Jesus presents himself at the temple, preaching and teaching that God’s Kingdom had arrived, calling humanity to repent and to return to God. In that moment, the response to Jesus’ arrival was silence. 

On Palm Sunday, the kingdoms at odds had yet to collide. That collision comes later in the week, during the Great Three Days from Maundy Thursday to Easter morning. 

Doctor of Ministry, Pastor Thoughts, Theology & Culture

The Doctrine of Vocation: What does it mean to be called?

Leave a comment

The world has been a pretty heavy place the past few weeks. The news feels like a Tsunami of rage-inducing items being shot at us from a fire hose. Usually, as Canadians, we feel at least one step removed from the chaos of our southern neighbours, but the tariffs’ rollercoaster this week carried with it very real implications for our lives in the northern part of the continent. 

So naturally, this week we get a story about being called. Jesus teaches some fishermen how to fish (Notice: a rabbi tells career fishermen how to fish!), and it goes so well that it almost sinks their boats. Then Jesus calls Simon (who will become Peter) to follow him. 

Sometimes, these gospel stories just pass us by because we have heard them before. We don’t always slow down enough to consider just how scandalous these stories are. Jesus’ call to these fisher disciples came right after a moment when their livelihoods were in peril because of no fish, and then when the abundance of fish threatened to sink them. 

This is the same call that Jesus is making to us while we navigate our moment of chaos, too. 

Yet, when we hear this notion of “being called”, it can be difficult to know what such a call would look like. So often, when we talk about being called in the church, we imagine it to be reserved for a special few, such as clergy or pastors.  This description of being called comes to us honestly; it was more or less the operating definition for the first 1500 years of Christianity. 

However, in the Reformation, re-prioritizing of baptismal identity came with what would be called the Priesthood of All Believers. Martin Luther saw in our baptisms a call to gospel ministry for every Christian, not just for monks, nuns, deacons, priests and bishops. God called everyone who was baptized to serve the Gospel, to be proclaimers of the Word, witnesses to God’s love and mercy given to sinners⎯the promise of the Gospel. 

Five hundred years from that time, we have more or less gone back to the idea that only the clergy are called, but with a more problematic variation. When we talk about the Priesthood of All Believers, the present-day church means that lay people are doing the stuff that clergy typically have done: lay-led worship, lay preaching, lay pastoral care, lay teaching and faith formation, etc. To be clear, oftentimes all these things, which most often were the tasks of clergy, can be done by lay people. But that is not what the Priesthood of All Believers means. Within the concept of the Priesthood of All Believers, we find the Doctrine of Vocation. Or, in simpler terms: the teaching of what it means to be called. 

The Doctrine of Vocation means that each baptized Christian is called to the ministry of the Gospel where they are. The school teacher, the lawyer, the tractor salesperson, the accountant, the stay-at-home parent, and on and on⎯ each baptized person is called to the ministry of the Gospel within their work in the world, in their community, in their family. Luther put it this way in his important treatise, The Freedom of a Christian (which I referenced last week): 

“As our Heavenly Father in Christ freely came to our aid, we also ought freely to help our neighbour through our body and its works, and each one may be Christs to one another and Christ may be the same in all, that is, that we may be truly Christians….”

Our baptismal calling is that each one of us bears to the world around us, Christ and Christ’s Gospel of forgiveness, life and salvation. Now, does that mean door-knocking and handing out tracts on salvation? Not at all. Luther also believed that one of the fundamental questions we ought to ask is, “What does my neighbour need to hear the Gospel?” Is my neighbour hungry? Need shelter? Need education? Need protection from harm? Need meaningful labour? Need love, compassion, and friendship? Need trustworthy people of faith genuinely interested in their wellbeing rather than just winning souls for Jesus?

Part of being Christ to our neighbour is also giving our neighbours what they need to hear the gospel. That might mean genuine love and care that witnesses to Christ through deeds rather than just words. It also might mean a simple invitation to church or the willingness to talk openly about faith, especially the things we don’t know and have questions about, too. 

I am not sure that Simon Peter had all this in mind when he left his boat and followed Jesus. I am also not sure that most parents who bring their children to the font to be baptized truly realize that calling that they are allowing God to place on their cute babies. I am not sure we, as people of faith, committed to a life of worship and fellowship together in the congregations to which we belong, often remember this calling with which God has called us. 

But this is the call of Christ, just the same. The call is not to be a perfect follower (certainly, Simon Peter was far from that), but to understand that we bear Christ to the world, to the people around us, as members of the Priesthood of the Baptized. 

And just maybe, in our moment of chaos (as in Peter’s), this call, this vocation, is exactly what is needed.

Photo: The Altar in front of which Martin Luther was likely ordained at the Cathedral in Erfurt.

Pastor Thoughts, Theology & Culture

I don’t know what to think about Israel and Palestine – Pastor Thoughts

2 Comments

I am sure many of us have been paying attention to the news this week with heavy hearts and uncertainty about what to think. 

As news of the attacks by Hamas on Israeli citizens⎯rockets, soldiers, kidnappings and murders⎯it felt like yet another setback in an already shaky and unstable world.

Reports of the violence and tragedies have been dominating the news headlines. They were hard to hear and see. Yet, people started taking sides as soon as images, reports and videos of the violence were released. 

The safety and security of Israel, and the horrific acts of Hamas are claimed to be justification for Israel’s response in kind. The occupation and blockade of the Gaza Strip are claimed to be the cause of Hamas’s actions. While there is truth in each claim, neither are those claims the whole story of this complicated situation. 

I cannot help but think of that childhood refrain, “Two wrongs don’t make a right.”

I also cannot help but think of the story of Noah’s flood. A story baked into the DNA of people of the book – Judaism, Christianity and Islam. A story rooted in the decision of God to blot out the wickedness in all the earth. Because of the wickedness of humankind (after God had done the work of creation only four chapters prior in Genesis), God decides to wipe out all of creation. 

God determines to wipe out the wickedness of humankind with an even greater act of violence by drowning all creation in a flood, save a few righteous families and animals. God erases one wickedness with an even greater wickedness. God responds to the corruption and violence of humankind with even greater⎯though righteous⎯violence. 

Significantly, as God gives Noah and his family meat to eat after the flood (Genesis 9), God adds the caveat that the blood must be properly drained from the animals – a reference to Kosher or Halal food preparation. The implication being that a part of humanity’s pre-flood wickedness was the improper worship of God and failure to keep the purity laws. These issues persisted throughout the Old and New Testament, and remained issues at play between Jews, Muslims and Christians throughout history to today.

This cycle of responding to violence with greater and righteous violence has been a part of the human story for 3,500 years. Versions of the flood story are not only told in the Torah, Old Testament and Qu’ran but in many of the mythologies of the Ancient Near East like the Gilgamesh Epic and Atrahasis Epic. It is part of the DNA of humanity and it is part of the cycle of history of that part of the world. 

Violent acts committed by the righteous in the name of blotting out the wicked and unfaithful are condoned by God… at least that is the rationale. 

Of course, the point of the flood story is that God realizes God’s mistake. God realizes that responding to wickedness with greater wickedness, to violence with greater violence, doesn’t solve anything. 

Instead, it takes the remainder of the Old Testament and the beginning of the Gospels to see what that rainbow covenant truly means. God’s promise never to flood the earth again is realized in the Christ who finally answers humanity’s death-dealing ways with Resurrection and New Life. 

In response to news headlines that we are seeing and hearing, let us pray for Peace and Reconciliation. We pray for Resurrection and New Life to take hold among us now.

A Prayer for Peace Among the Nations:
Gracious God, grant peace among nations. Cleanse from our own hearts the seeds of strife: greed and envy, harsh misunderstandings and ill will, fear and desire for revenge. Make us quick to welcome ventures in cooperation among the peoples of the world, so that there may be woven the fabric of a common good too strong to be torn by the evil hands of war. In the time of opportunity, make us be diligent; and in the time of peril, let not our courage fail; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
(ELW Occasional Services for the Assembly)

Sermon, Theology & Culture

Choosing paths with Jesus – A Sermon for the 6th Sunday in Easter

Leave a comment

GOSPEL: John 14:1-14
Jesus said to the disciples:] 1“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. 2In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? 3And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. 4And you know the way to the place where I am going.” 5Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” 6Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me…

*Note: Sermons are posted in the manuscript draft that they were preached in, and may contain typos or other errors that were resolved in my delivery. See the Sherwood Park Lutheran Facebook Page for video

“How can we know the way?”

This is the question that is asked of Jesus this week in the gospel lesson. 

We have arrived at the 5th Sunday of Easter. After 3 weeks of resurrection stories, and then a week to uplift Jesus as our Good Shepherd, we now start to head away from Easter Sunday and orient ourselves towards Pentecost. Towards that moment when the rag tag group of Jesus’ followers are driven by the Holy Spirit out into the public square. There they become the visible community and body of Christ in the world. But before we get there, this aimless group of disciples needs to figure out what it means for them to become the Body of Christ – without Jesus leading the way as he had done for the 3 years prior. 

So we go back a bit in the Gospel of John. We hear a conversation between Jesus and the disciples that is taking place around a table. The table of the last supper on Maundy Thursday where Jesus is giving final instructions for the community he intends his followers to become – even though they still have not fully realized that within hours Jesus will be arrested, on trial and nailed to a cross. 

In a passage that is the most common gospel reading heard at funerals, Jesus promises that there is a place for his followers in his Father’s house. Thomas, ever rationalizing may be sensing something ominous behind what should be a promise of welcome and belonging.  Thomas interjects, 

“Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?”

How can we know the way?

Then Philip, speak out loud the anxiety of all of Jesus followers. He wants Jesus to just show them the father. Thomas and Philip want to know the way, the destination. They want the roadmap, they want to be able to get there themselves. If Jesus can provide the directions and a destination, maybe the journey won’t feel so scary to imagine. 

It is a feeling we share. We all much prefer knowing the directions, having a map, knowing the destination… whether it is a literal trip or journey, or whether it is the journey of life choices and experiences. We want to know where we are headed and how we will get there. Whether its finding a job or vocation, settling down and starting a family, choosing a place to live. Whether it is making sure that the church community we love continues on, or that the Jets don’t leave town again, or if we can let ourselves start worrying less about a 3 year old pandemic and on and on. We are full of wonderings and questions about our futures, our destinations and the paths we will take to arrive at them.  

When I was little, maybe four or five, my mother took me to the University of Alberta (UofA) for “an appointment.” We met a kind woman there who took my mother, sister and I on what felt like a long walk through the UofA campus. At one point, she just stopped and looked at me and asked, “Erik, do you think you can find your way back to the office?”

So I started leading our little posse back to the office where we had first met this nice woman. I know that I made a few wrong turns along the way, but I eventually figured out our way back to the office. All along the way, I remember the woman asking me questions about why I had chosen the path I was taking, landmarks I was using, my sense of direction etc…

Years later when I recalled the experience to my mother, she told me that I was part of a study about direction sense in children. There were three groups. The first group was told they were going for a walk and would need to find their way back. They’re also given help and hints as they led their way back. The second group was told about the walk and the need to navigate their way back, but were given no help once they started to lead the way. The third group – the group I was  in – were not given any notice about the task and given no help finding our way back. 

If on the various journeys we take in life we had the option of getting clear instructions and then help navigating where we were going, or at the very least, the knowledge that we were going to have to find our way to our destination, we always choose to be in group one or group two. We wish that the path to find our way through ministry as a church, and in life in general, had a kind researcher reminding us to make note of landmarks as we travel, and gently correcting us when we make a wrong turn. 

Yet, we know that life after a certain point the parental figures, teachers, guides and coaches have to let us figure it out ourselves. And all of sudden we are in that 3rd group where we do not even know that we are getting lost and then someone turns to us and says, “Do you think you can find your way back from here?”

When you are navigating blind, you don’t really know if you have taken the right path or made the right choices until you get to where you are going. Providing a map or turn by turn directions or a guide we can hold onto, is not what Jesus is about. Instead, Jesus has a very different idea of what it means to navigate our way down life’s paths and what it means for us to know the way. 

“How can we know the way?”

As Thomas and Philip press Jesus for more than a promise that there is a place where they belong, they are casting about for something that they can do, something they feel like they have some agency. But they have also missed tthat Jesus has shown them everything they need. 

Jesus promises them a place in his Father’s house. Jesus reminds them that he is the way. Because they know Jesus, they have seen the Father. 

Because they know Jesus, they can make the journey. 

Because they know Jesus, they belong already to the Kingdom of God. 

The dimples want roadmaps and directions, they want the certainty that the destination is a good place to end up. But that is about their own fears and anxieties, those are just means for their own control.

Jesus provides community. 


It isn’t just that there is one room, or one place at the table. It is that there is a whole community of faithful disciples who are now part of God’s house. There is a whole table of siblings in Christ who are on the pathways with us. Knowing the way isn’t so important as is knowing that we are not going alone, we have the people who are walking with us, to rely one, to support one another, to care for each other. 

Jesus gives us himself. 

It isn’t just that Jesus is a teacher and friend. Jesus is the one whom brings God close and near. Jesus reveals the Father to us. Jesus show us God: God’s face and voice, God’s flesh and image. Because the disciples know Jesus, they know God. And God knows them, in the flesh, face to face. 

Jesus is the way. 

As we struggle like the disciples to know where we are going, to know what is going to happen to us, what we should do as people living our lives of faith, Jesus reminds us that he is the place, the One, to whom we are going. Faith isn’t a task or job or set of instructions to follow. Faith is relationship with God who promises us new life. In a world that always ends with sin and death, Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. 

And in Jesus the way, we are transformed. God declares that we belong no matter where we are. God goes with us no matter what path we walk.

So like those disciples who were trying to figure out what it meant for them to become the visible Body of Christ in the world, Jesus reminds us that the destinations or pathways that we imagine might not be the point. Instead knowing the way is about God who promises a place to belong, room in God’s house. 

Hear again the reminder from 1st Peter”

 9But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

 10Once you were not a people,

  but now you are God’s people;

 once you had not received mercy,

  but now you have received mercy.

Sermon, Theology & Culture

The Long Road to Good Friday – A Good Friday Sermon

Leave a comment

PASSION GOSPEL: John 18:1–19:42 

*Note: Sermons are posted in the manuscript draft that they were preached in, and may contain typos or other errors that were resolved in my delivery. See the Sherwood Park Lutheran Facebook Page for video

It has been a long road to this moment.

From the mountain of Transfiguration down into the Lenten wilderness. 
From the tempter to Nicodemus’s questions. 
From the dark night to the woman at the well in the noon day sun. 
From Jacob’s well to the blindman not knowing who had healed him. 
From a community in chaos to a community grieving at Bethany. 
From Mary, Martha and a raised Lazarus to the road to Jerusalem covered in palm branches. 
From shouts of Hosanna to the table of the Lord. 
From Betrayal at night to Golgatha by noon. 

And now from Lent to Holy Week to the bottom of it all on the cross. 

The journey to Good Friday is one that takes a lifetime to prepare for. It is one that begins long before Transfiguration, with Angels and Pregnant Virgins and picturesque mangers. 

It begins with a garden paradise and exile from Eden.

It beings with the words “Let there be Light.”

Good Friday was where this story was going since the beginning. 

And now that we are here, now that cross has been planted on Calvary, now that Jesus has been nailed to the tree, now that we have born witness to the execution of the one sent to save…

We ask why? What does it all mean? Who is at fault?

It feels like it could be our fault. Maybe it could be our mistake. 

We did choose sin in the garden. 
We did refuse to repent.
We did choose to sin again after repenting. 

We do put ourselves first.
We choose ourselves before others.  

We harm our neighbour
With our greed, and indifference, and unwillingness, and selfishness.
With our hoarding and racism and wall building and excuses.
With our celebration of power and wealth and control. 

And we harm creation
With our callousness and entitlement and refusal to care
With our destructive actions and war making and striving for more
With our consuming everything and anything that can be consumed. 

We do all of that and more.

So nailing the Messiah to the cross doesn’t feel out of the question. 

It feels like the cross is our fault, our mistake, our consequence. 

And if that was all that Good Friday was about, if Good Friday was only asking why? 

Asking how we got here from Creation and Eden, from Angels and Mangers, from Transfiguration and Lent…

Then maybe we would have our answer. 

But this is not all that Good Friday means. 

Humanity’s best nailing Jesus to the cross is not all there is. 
Humanity using our great power to put God to death is not the last stop of this long journey. 

We ask why? What does this mean?

And God has a different answer. 

God knew that Good Friday was coming from the beginning. 
God saw the cross in Eden. 
God knew that we would try to put Messiah to death. 
From the Angels singing of his birth
From voice speaking from the heavens at the mount of Transfiguration
God knew that Golgotha was where this long road would lead.

But God also knows that Good Friday is not the end. 

Good Friday is not the last stop of the journey. 
The cross is not the last page of the story.
On this day God is doing something new. 

The cross – the pinnacle of humanity’s sinful and death dealing ways, Will be God’s new beginning. 
Where we fail to repent, God will turn us around. 
Where put ourselves first, God will give up all Godself for our sake. 
Where we harm our neighbour and ourselves God will heal and restore that which is broken. 

Where we use our great power of death. 

God will use God’s great power. 
God’s power to keep on going even when things seem to have ended
God’s power of new beginnings when there seemed to be nothing. 
God’s power of life that will stand higher than death on a cross. 

So yes it has been a long road to this moment. 

And yes it might feel like the culmination of everything we have done that brought us here. 

But for God, Good Friday is not the end. 

For God, the cross is not the final destination. 
For the God that spoke life into being, the cross is transformed. 
Transformed into a new creation. 
A New creation for God’s people created a new. 

For God, Good Friday is the beginning.