Pacific Pastor

Our Easter sermon at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Taylor, BC 2022. We see how Jesus arriving in Jerusalem did what Isaiah said the true King would do. He prepared a feast for all people. He destroyed the power of sin and death. He gave comfort to the weeping.

Preached Good Friday 2022 at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Taylor

Jesus tells a parable about how the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house who brings out from his storeroom new treasures along with the old (Matthew 13:51-54). That’s how it felt to me when I read this passage from Joshua, like my king was giving me a new treasure from his word, that I had glossed over and read past dozens of times. It’s a simple thing, a simple fact. This scripture lesson does not tell us much that we may not already know, but it ties together so many other things.  So today my friends, right before lunch, we are going to talk about food.

In Ottawa this weekend, at least at the time I printed my sermon, 76 bank accounts have been frozen, 147 people have been arrested, 22 drivers licenses have been revoked. Divisions in our nation have been made plain and deepened.

In this context we hear the voice of our God: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you”

We pay a lot of lipservice to love, it motivates, inspires, challenges and changes us. In today’s sermon we hear a vision from St. Paul of a particular kind of love, charity, that is supposed to define those who have received Jesus’s mercy. Preached in the Parish of the North Peace January 30, 2022.

This week we hear a story of restoration after scattering, we remember how the hearing of God’s Word reshaped a community. The wood carving of Ezra the priest used as an image is by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld from 1860.

Angels are one of the more strange parts of many bible stories. Why is it important for God to tells us about these terrifying messengers? Preached at the Church of the Good Shepherd, October 3, 2021.

This is a paraphrase of the third part of the Anglican Exhortation Against the Fear of Death in the Reformation Book of Homilies. It was preached in the Parish of the North Peace June 27, 2021.

This sermon is a paraphrase of part 2 of the Exhortation Against the Fear of Death in the Anglican Book of Homilies, a formulary text for Anglicanism rooted in the Reformation. It was preached in the Parish of the North Peace June 20, 2021.