Time is an issue that divides many of us in the land of church. On one side comfortably the folks for whom there is always enough time for a thought-provoking, content-driven, lecture or sermon. On the other end of this issue sit, slightly uncomfortably, those who are restless and find the concept of sitting in one place, to hear one speaker, a necessary evil. The latter group would really prefer to receive this information with the aid of visuals, for there to be a more inter-active format...

For thus the LORD has told me, "I will look from My dwelling place quietly Like dazzling heat in the sunshine, Like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest." Isaiah 18:4

I was riding on my bus this morning into the city and noticed the sun peeking out from the overcast clouds in the morning sky. I was feeling the effects of three days of living with a bad cold and the day-time Tylenol that made my head a little foggy. In that foggy state of mind and on this cold overcast day the warmth of the sun was effective. While I could not “feel” the warm of the sun, it is very cold today, I could “feel” the effect of this bright light shining through the grey clouds that surrounded it...

When we are sick how do we help ourselves get better? For some it is rest. For some it is various vitamins. For some it is an ancient remedy, perhaps herbal, likely natural in some way. For some being ill results in an immediate reach for the bottle of Tylenol or another over-the-counter drug. I know some Evangelical Christians who rely solely on prayer to get them better. For some it is a hot bowl of chicken noodle soup. For me it is walking and neocitran, an odd combination for sure. I rely on the walking to tire my body and the neocitran to put me to sleep, thus helping the body to heal. I really have no idea if this method can be proven effective, it just works for me...

My spouse tells me I put too high a value on consistency. Perhaps I do but I try as hard as possible to connect what I believe to what I do, to connect the various things I believe so there they fit together. I apply this as well to my theology, what I believe God does and we as human do need to fit together, that there is a narrative story that hangs together, that makes sense...

It’ an odd thing that as most people my age and older get more nostalgic and interested in the traditions of their families I have grown increasingly indifferent to both. It sounds so harsh to say that but it comes from years and years of sitting with people who are dying or people living through a crisis or people offering wisdom to those who are younger. In none of these examples have I witnessed nostalgia or tradition playing any constructive role. Only at retirement parties do I see these classic touchstones in full display. And as quick as you can say “gold watch” it’s back to the prospect of living a life of meaning. Nostalgia and tradition can only assist with such a meaningful life if infused with a memory of something or someone who participated in an event or experience that led to larger connections...

John 4:5-18: Jesus came to a Samaritan city...Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” Jesus said to her...

The middle class is in this country are battle ground for every political campaign. They are older now than they were a generation or two ago and they have absorbed certain life-lessons that are repeated as a mantra and therefore parroted back at us every time there is an election. Church is not all that different. Most mainline churches are populated by middle-class people, if I had a dollar for every nurse and teacher who served on a search committee that interviewed me for a pastoral vacancy I would be a mighty wealth man. Middle class people take it as gospel that they rose up from poverty to where they are today...

Be prepared. That’s the Scout motto. I may have been the world’s most incompetent Scout. I was not interested in, talented in, the Scouting way. I still can’t tie a knot, I can’t build a “lean-to” and I would be lost in the woods forever if I ever went too far off the trail. By every measure I was a terrible Scout. And yet I learned one lesson from my Scouting experience, “be prepared.” As an adult I spend a lot of time looking ahead and planning for different possible outcomes for the day’s plans...

A fellow staff member and I had a good conversation yesterday about the tension of how the church makes itself relevant without it compromising its “Gospel integrity”. Certainly the conversation around the water coolers that concern the church come at both sides of this debate, those who suggest that the church “get with it” and speak to the concerns of people today and on the other hand people who believe the church is being led by “the world”. I tend to be a little suspicious about the consistency of the latter group because nine times out of ten they are talking about the church’s wrestling with same-gender marriage...

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly I tell you, it will be hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astounded and said, “Then who can be saved?” But Jesus looked at them and said, “For mortals it is impossible, but for God all things are possible.”...

“Who do you say that I am?” Matthew 16:15 asks the question that every follower of Jesus has had to answer for two thousand years. In Catherine MacLean’s and John Young’s new book Preaching the Big Questions: Doctrine Isn’t Dusty the question of Jesus’ relationship to God is dealt with in their second chapter titled “Christology”. It was taken as doctrine for generations that Jesus was God and God was Jesus. Jesus came to be an incarnation of God’s presence in our world. In Christian art, theology and personal devotion the message was clear, Jesus was the Divine who dwelt among us. In stained glass depictions Jesus appears with a light around his head, he walks on water, there is a clear sense that Jesus is more than human...

What is our essential gift? On my bus ride to work today I was thinking about people I’ve known who had long careers, did many things and now are gone. What did I remember about them? I think of my four grandparents and how I talk about them with my daughter who never knew any of them. They all had complex characters and personalities, lived full lives and did many things. Yet what I take away from my relationship with each is a combination of my own outlook/gift and theirs. There is some organic chemistry that occurs when what we meet others, some part of our offering sometimes connects to what they offer...

Some time ago I attended a large United Church gathering that showcased the various Christian communities throughout the Maritimes. I went to the L’Arche presentation. The assistant who spoke to our group described the community as a place where women and men of different abilities live together as sisters and brothers. The assistants tend to be able-bodied and the residents live with some form of physical or mental challenge. But their way of relating to one another is the same as any family...

Fred Rogers was ordained a Presbyterian Minister. If you listened carefully to the message he shared in every episode of his children’s program there was a clear and fulsome recognition of the value and worth of every person God created. While Rogers did not refer to God by name on his show he did speak about God in interviews and speeches. It was his faith in a God of imagination, love and neighborliness that gave him the voice to sing his songs, tell his stories and create such strange and lovable characters. I loved the innocence that Fred Rogers shared. While I am not emotional in what we might understand as emotional I am very caught by innocence, the expression of love with no reciprocity or manipulation involved...

Saviour. If you had asked me what my view of this Christian term meant to me when I was ordained in 1990 I would have responded from a defensive posture. I would have acknowledged the terrible baggage this term brings with it, the way Christian missionaries used it to convert indigenous cultures, the way preachers would suggest that being “born again”, rescued by a Saviour, was the only way to become a believer, the way Saviour sounded to those persons of Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist faith, namely that only Jesus could lead one to God. Such baggage made the word unworkable in a modern era, it was borderline offensive, most clergy ordained in mainline denomination in the 80’s and 90’s would just ignore this term in hopes it would eventually fade away...

When I served the church in Tantallon I was very involved in the community. The people who were overrepresented at every community gathering were the Buddhists. They came out to every public meeting and participated in all of the communal conversations about our future and what the community was becoming. Most of these Buddhists had come to Nova Scotia from the United States and almost all of them were former Christians. It was interesting to hear their reactions to the United Church theology that I expressed. Many of these Buddhists had come of age during the Vietnam War and the complicity and silence of the Christian churches in their community was a major factor in their becoming disillusioned with Christianity. It opened them up to a new experience of faith, to difference expressions of their spiritual yearning...

This Sunday I am preaching on John 3:1-7. Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ The encounter between the “well respected man” Nicodemus and Jesus happens at night...

Tonight our study group at Bethany will begin a 13 week exploration of the big questions we Christians wrestle with on a daily basis. Our first topic is the sovereignty of God, what God does, who God is, what we can expect from our God. I read the chapter, written by United Church historian and academic John Young and renowned preacher and scholar Catherine MacLean, and what came to mind was the different ways various religious people use the word “deep”.  To my academic friends the word “deep” is reserved for ideas and arguments that are put forward by learned thinkers, concepts that take the simple and add layers of complexity so that we can make sense of our lives...

Bruce Cockburn sings, “The trouble with normal is that it always gets worse.” What did he mean by that? Cockburn is an activist and like many who want the world to become more just there is a lingering feeling that the world sets its clock to “normal” and lives without reflection. One could say that much of the world cannot afford the time and expense that is necessary to do anything other than survive. But there is a sizable population in western democracies who do have the time, energy and drive to make the world a better place. Their enemies are large corporations who have a vested interest in the status quo. We can see that. That dynamic, change vs. more of the same, is obvious and the interests of both sides make for powerful conflict...

Clarence Jordan was a very clever man. He earned two Doctorate degrees, one in Agriculture and the other in Greek. As a white man living in the deep-south during the more tense days of segregation Jordan did something almost no Christian was doing, he lived in community with Christians of African-American background. As a result Jordan was threatened, the Christian community that he founded based on the Book of Acts (that included persons of difference races) was fire bombed and boycotted and had a Cross burned on their property. Jordan could certainly identify with the early disciples of Jesus...