The Keys of St. Peters

Text: Hebrews 4:1-13
Proper 24, Series B
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Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 

Rest: It can be such a welcome word. To be able to kick back and relax. The pressure is off. The burden is lifted. Take a load off and chill! A little R & R is very welcome after a long week. We can see the need for a day of rest once a week. It matches the pattern God gave us by taking a day of rest at the end of creation. We understand rest, but when it comes to our Epistle reading for today, from Hebrews 4, we find a different kind of rest. It’s about an even greater sort of rest, God’s rest. So this morning, we have an invitation to enter God’s rest and a warning about falling to reach it.

Text: 2 Corinthians 9:6–15 & Luke 12:13–21
Day of Thanksgiving, 2021
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Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

On January 31, 1957, the Governor-General of Canada, Vincent Massey, issued a proclamation. It stated: “A Day of General Thanksgiving to Almighty God for the bountiful harvest with which Canada has been blessed – to be observed on the second Monday in October.” We don’t really need an act of parliament, or a royal proclamation or even a special day to be thankful, do we? Harvest festivals of thanksgiving are an ancient practice, as you can see in our Old Testament reading. It’s also all over the psalms. Look at our gradual: “O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his steadfast love endures for ever!” (Psa. 118:1) Or you might remember of the preface in the Lord’s Supper. “It is truly meet, right, and salutary that we should at all times and in all places give thanks to You, holy Lord, almighty Father, everlasting God, through Jesus Christ, our Lord.”

On this occasion, it is most fitting to offer gratitude for all the blessings we have received from our gracious God this past year. That’s how thanksgiving works: God gives. We receive his gifts and respond with thankfulness. Today we reflect on those things received from the Lord for which we ought to consider worthy of special thanksgiving. Our readings should remind us about the responsibility our abundance puts on us.

Text: Mark 10:2-16
Proper 22, Series B
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Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 

In 2020, there were about 2.71 million people who had obtained a legal divorce in Canada. This figure has been steadily increasing since 2000 when there were about 1.88 million divorces in Canada. Divorce in the first century was a generally accepted part of life, both among Jews and perhaps more so within broader Roman world.

Many Christian brothers and sisters are experiencing or have experienced the misery of divorce. Some are caught between warring parents and others may have been the offending party. Situations in some lives can be so convoluted it is challenging to know how to apply Biblical principles. At the same time, the Church must be prophetic. We must speak God’s Word to a hostile culture—regardless of what the culture thinks. Let’s be honest. Few, if any, preachers out there will want to write a sermon on this text. But, it’s one of those texts in the Bible that if read out loud, you must preach on it. Divorce has touched too many lives to ignore a passage like this, especially when Jesus is talking. The bottom line is, what does Jesus say about marriage and divorce? 

Text: Mark 9:14-29
Proper 19, Series B
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Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Many of us have grown up watching movies and TV shows made by Walt Disney. Disney productions try to be somewhat inspirational. One of their big themes is “faith”. This often comes in the form of “believe in yourself.” If you believe in yourself, you can do anything you put your mind to. If you believe in yourself, you can accomplish your dreams. Sometimes the message is slightly better: believe in something greater than yourself. Disney portrays faith as a sort of power that you must activate to make anything possible. Faith is also a big theme in the gospel text before us, and it looks like the disciples have the Disney kind of faith.

Text: Isaiah 35:4-7a
Proper 18, Series B
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Grace to you and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

What do you fear? We know something about feat. When you experience anxiety, your body reacts: you feel the adrenaline release as your heart races, your breathing accelerates, your stomach churns, and your muscles tense. It is a stress response that we call fight or flight. Our Old Testament Reading begins with a command to speak, proclaiming a remedy for fear. So, who needed to hear these words? The prophet says that the message is for “those of an anxious heart.” This message is for those whose hearts are literally racing in fear. We know about fear, so what’s the remedy?

Text: Mark 7:14-23
Proper 17, Series B
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Grace to you and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

“We have met the enemy, and he is us.” Perhaps you have heard a version of that quote. The original came from an American naval officer in 1813 after the Battle of Lake Erie. It was made famous by Pogo the Possum in several cartoon strips in the early ’70s. Ever since, it continues to resurface here and there in moments of honesty, transparency. 

This quote makes a point similar to Jesus in our appointed Gospel. Of course, Jesus’ version comes out of a different context. Yet, both the quote and the Gospel reading tell us the truth about the source of evil and our condition.

Text: Ephesians 5:21-23
Proper 16, Series B
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Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 

Our epistle reading from Ephesians draws our attention to husbands and wives: “Wives, be subordinate to your husbands as the church is to Christ.” “Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself up for her.” Now, that is undoubtedly an unpopular passage today. Many Christians are trying to make their way through a world where God’s creation of marriage  between one man and one woman faces an all-out assault. There is an entire movement founded around the phrase, “Smash the Patriarchy.” But, don’t we live in the age of progress and liberation? Talk about wives being subject sounds oppressive, toxic, and misogynistic. That’s why many would say that passages like this are wicked and shouldn’t even be read out aloud. These words might sound oppressive and toxic in our ears, but no pastor should skip over these words just to please popular opinion. Who could better define the roles of husband and wife than he who created them in the first place? So, this morning we are going to take some time and try to unpack this text and see if we have correctly understood the passage or not.

Text: Galatians 4:4-7 and Luke 1:39-56
The Virgin Mary, Mother of Our Lord
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Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 

Everyone has a mother, and our Lord is no exception. The Bible says that Jesus was “like us in every way.” So, that means he had a mother, just like us. His Father, of course, is a different story. In that way, He’s not like us, but He is like Adam. Jesus is the second Adam, the beginning of a new humanity. He was born without the inherited Sin of Adam. Yet, He had a human mother, and so is like us in every way except for sin. Today is when the Church has decided to remember Mary, the mother of our Lord Jesus Christ. The artists get it right. When you see the Blessed Virgin holding her child, you will notice that she tends to be looking either at Him or right at you, and with her hand, she gestures toward Him. Mary is not about Mary. Mary is all about your Jesus.

Text: Ephesians 4:24-5:2
Proper 14, Series B
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Grace to you and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

How important would you suppose kindness is? When we talk about what holds a community together, I think we’d agree that kindness ranks pretty high. The reason for this is stated clearly at the end of our epistle reading: kindness is one of the purest forms of imitating God. Think about that for a moment. What would it be like if God were the kind of God who was always making snide or bitter remarks at us? What would worship and prayer be like if we thought God had been talking about us behind our backs, putting us down to others? How would you feel if you thought you couldn’t trust God to tell you the truth, or if he was constantly losing his temper with you? Of course, there are plenty of religions, ancient and modern, where the gods do behave in that sort of way. Well: how do people feel about us if that’s what we’re like? Sadly, there are all too many Christians, and sometimes whole churches, that have allowed themselves to forget that kindness is the very essence of the Christian community. So, this morning we’re going to look at five vices that threaten personal relationships within the Church the reason why we should imitate God’s kindness within the Church.