Last Sunday I spoke about the difficulty – in fact the impossibility – of speaking about God in exacting terms – talking about God in any definitive, unambiguous way … as if we can comprehend fully and nail down completely our concept of God.

And, of course, while we do know something very important about God through the...

So, the religious leaders gather around Jesus, and say to him: “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.”

Tell us plainly.

Indeed.
How much we all prefer “plain-talkers” – people who just tell it straight, to tell it like it is, not to beat around the bush, but just say it...

Well, I for one am glad it’s Easter Sunday – for many different reasons.

What with this recent ice storm, it seems we’ve been through a long, grey, wearying winter.

And Holy Week prior to Easter – with its tough and gritty emotions surrounding the suffering, torture and death of Jesus – all of that just beats us...

“The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.” (Jn.12:3)

Over these weeks of Lent, with our Wednesday soup suppers, I’ve been routinely preparing a soup to bring and share at our soup supper.

And as the soup simmers on the stove top in my home, how that aroma, that wonderful savoury smell of simmering soup fills the...

An under-reported fact, in the immediate aftermath of the tragic events of September 11, 2001 – before the reactions, political analysis and military retaliation – something happened that was … remarkable.

People called home.

It was an automatic human response, erupting almost everywhere regardless of politics or religion.
...

(Exodus 34, Luke 9)

I still remember some years ago, during a summer vacation, Patty and I were attending a worship service on a warm Sunday morning at a church nearby to where we were staying.

We were sitting in a pew near the back, so we had a good view of the back of everyone’s head.

There was a boy maybe six or seven years old, siting...

A new student looks out on a sea of strange faces in the high school cafeteria,
… wondering where he should sit,
… which group he should join,
… how he will be received…

A woman walks down the hall in her empty house to look at her daughter’s bedroom,
… the bedroom contains pictures and souvenirs of...

We have this morning, on this Second Sunday of Christmas, the Gospel reading actually appointed for Christmas Day – the Gospel of John, chapter one.

In a very straightforward way, we hear about how Jesus – this newborn babe in swaddling clothes lying in a manger – is actually God in the flesh.

If we’re to take anything...

For my New Year’s Eve reflections today, I want to pick up on and carry forward the words of assurances and encouragement that we heard in the scripture passages in Isaiah and the Gospel of Matthew.

And these assurances and encouragements come not as a result of our actions, of what we do or plan to do, but out of what God does and...

In the appointed gospel reading from Luke chapter 2 on this First Sunday after Christmas, we fast forward from celebrating the coming of God to us in the baby Jesus born in Bethlehem, and jump ahead to a time when Jesus is already a teenager.

And we follow all the stressful drama of this teen and his parents, as Jesus gets “lost” in...