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Posts from the ‘Faith’ Category

Nov 15

9 Comments

How Dare You Speak of Grace?

I spent a good chunk of this week at a denominational pastors retreat in the Alberta foothills just north of Calgary. One of the things we did during our worship times each day was spend some time “dwelling in the Word.” The specific text we focused on each session was Luke 7:36-50, the story where Jesus is anointed by a “sinful woman” at the home of Simon the Pharisee. It’s a scandalous story—a woman of ill repute showing up a bunch of religious elites, crashing their party with her sensuous, inappropriate display of penitence, love, and devotion. Even more scandalously, Jesus praises her as an example to emulate, claims to forgive her sin, and sends her away in peace. One can only imagine what must have been going on in the minds of the esteemed, religious host and his respectable dinner guests! Read more

Nov 6

31 Comments

Placebos, Politics, and Prayer

Today is election day south of the border. I have been trying—mostly unsuccessfully—to follow this over the last few months and am glad that after tonight I will be relieved of this (imagined) burden. I confess that I find the whole business so spectacularly boring and predictable. Two rich men squabbling over power, spending obscene amounts of other people’s money to sell themselves back to these same people. It’s the same story every four years or so: we have laughably impossible rhetoric about “hope” and “change” and “rebuilding America” combined with the inevitable sloganeering and nasty attacks on the other guy’s character and intentions…. Yawn. Wake me up when it’s over. Read more

Nov 1

22 Comments

Secularly Spiritual? Spiritually Secular? (Gil Dueck)

Over the last few days, my commutes have been spent listening to the 7 part CBC Ideas series called “The Myth of the Secular.” I’m not finished the series yet, but it’s been very interesting thus far. Is “the secular” simply the absence of religion? Or does it require religion and lean heavily on versions of religious eschatology in its vision of the future? Is religion a private exercise in a kind of generic, value-free public square or is it public truth with private implications? Basically, what I’ve picked up from the series thus far as that “the secular” owes considerably more to religion than it often cares to acknowledge and religion is often fundamentally secular in its presuppositions and expectations. The lines are often very blurry indeed. Read more

Oct 30

8 Comments

U-Turn

I got a traffic ticket on Sunday.

It was an ugly exclamation point at the end of an exhausting weekend. My wife had been in Calgary for a seminar and I had been going nonstop from about Friday noon until Sunday evening. Volleyball tournaments, swim meets, soccer games, piano recitals, a communion service, church meetings, kids’ social gatherings… It just seemed to go on and on. There was just one thing left to do on a late Sunday afternoon before an enjoyable evening with friends beckoned, and that was to drop my son off so that he could get a ride to soccer practice. We stopped at the place where he was to be picked up.  I then proceeded to make a U-turn to head off for supper. And then, the ominous red and blue lights in my mirror.  Read more

Oct 25

30 Comments

What Kind of God is This?!

Those who know me well will attest to the fact that the question of how we think about the nature of God is important to me. Like, really important. Like, it’s the fundamental reality behind almost every significant theological, anthropological, exegetical, hermeneutical issue we get excited about. Like, it’s implicitly or explicitly operative behind nearly every pressing existential question we spend time agonizing over. Like, it affects how we relate to and understand others (especially those who are different from us!), how we understand and exercise power, how we parent, worship, pray… How we think about who God is, what God is like, and how God relates to human beings matters. A lot.  Read more

Oct 20

10 Comments

Hellbound?

Does hell exist? Who goes there? Is it a literal “lake of fire?” How does what we believe about hell relate to our views about violence? About the nature and interpretation of Scripture? About people of other faiths? What does our view of hell say about our view of God? These are among the questions addressed in Hellbound?, an intriguing and, for some, controversial film that has been making its way around North America this fall. Read more

Oct 18

2 Comments

Being a Christian is Exhausting

Sometimes I think that being a Christian is exhausting. Wait, am I allowed to say that? Can pastors say that out loud? It doesn’t sound very pious or inspirational, I know… But hey—I’ve been talking about Job for a while now, and Job is all about complaint and lament and being transparent before God, right? Right? Read more

Oct 11

“God Has Bound Himself To Us”

One of the interesting things about participation in the wild world of social media and online interaction is the many and varied mediums through which feedback and conversation can take place. Blogs are synced with Facebook and Twitter and who knows what else, and feedback can (and does) arrive from any number of sources.

I believe the correct term  for this—the usage of which would undoubtedly make me sound far smarter and more technologically savvy than I really am—is “multi-platform engagement.” I am only scratching the surface on these matters, having recently linked my blog to Facebook (and having thus far resisted the madness of Twitter), but it’s been very interesting to interact with the same content in multiple contexts. “Likes” and comments and “re-posts” and “pins” and “tweets” and “re-tweets” “+1’s” and before you know it my head is spinning. I remember the good old days back in 2007 when all I had to remember to check was if there were any comments on my blog. Read more

Oct 10

1 Comment

Why (Not) Me?

As I mentioned in the previous post, our church is spending the month of October in the book of Job, looking at themes of suffering, lament, protest, repentance, and the motivations for faith. As it happens, Job was the subject of conversation on the most recent edition of “Tapestry,” the weekly spirituality program on CBC Radio. More particularly, the theme of the program was “coping” and explored the question: “How do we cope with the suffering that inevitably comes our way?” A number of appropriately diverse perspectives were explored (this is Canada, after all!), each of which contributed to what was a fascinating program. Read more

Oct 8

1 Comment

“The World is More Precious Than We Can Possibly Imagine”

Among the lectionary readings for the month of October are selections from the book of Job. Having long been fascinated by this magnificent story, I decided back in summer that October’s sermons would be oriented around Job and themes of lament, suffering, repentance, the sovereignty of God, etc. Strangely, I never really clued in to the fact that the first Sunday in October would be Thanksgiving Sunday here in Canada, and that I would thus find myself in the somewhat awkward position of starting a series on the trials of Job on a Sunday normally devoted to giving thanks to God for the blessings we enjoy! It was an interesting experience, to say the least, trying to weave together themes of gratitude and grace, pain and promise, suffering and salvation, through the stories of Job, Jesus, and all of us who ponder the mysteries of joy and pain in their shadow. Read more

Oct 4

8 Comments

The Formula of Faith

I’ve been thinking a lot about carrots, sticks, and formulaic faith over the last little while. I spent a good chunk of last week wrestling with the well-known (and often abused) “pray and you will be healed” passage from James. Among the questions I explored were, Is there a one to one correspondence between (the correct kind of) prayer and the experience of healing/blessing? Is faith a kind of formula where the input of x leads to the output of y? And, of course, lurking behind these questions are even bigger ones: What is the motivation for our faith? Do we follow Jesus because of what we can get out of the deal? Is our faith contingent upon the experience of blessing/goodness? Read more

Oct 2

46 Comments

“We Need a Heavy Dose of Hope”

There has been plenty of talk of “Muslim Rage” in recent weeks. The video, the now famous response, the violence, the killing, the angry words back and forth, the inflammatory rhetoric and provocative magazine covers. It’s a tragically predictable script that we are becoming all too familiar with. Read more

Sep 29

The Long View

Amidst the many astonishingly trivial deliverances of the Facebook news feed, the odd gem comes through now and then as well. Like this prayer I came across this morning. It has been attributed by many to Oscar Romero, the famously martyred archbishop of El Salvador, although evidently it is far from clear that Romero ever wrote or spoke these words. Bishop Ken Untener is believed to be the prayer’s actual author, composing it in 1979, and apparently it was Cardinal John Dearden who delivered it as part of a homily for departed priests (like Romero). Confused yet? Me too. Read more

Sep 26

15 Comments

Indicting the Cross

Last night was spent at a local theology reading group hosted by a philosophy professor from the university in town. It’s an eclectic mix—a few professors, a chaplain (who was gracious enough to invite me!), history and philosophy students, Mormons, atheists, agnostics, and a handful of other positions on the way to or from faith, no doubt. The discussion was freewheeling, lively, and very stimulating. I spend a lot of time in “churchy” circles where I am supposed to be some kind of “authority” or, ahem, “expert.” It was nice to take that hat off for an evening and just explore some interesting questions with others. Read more

Sep 12

19 Comments

Wednesday Miscellany: The Freedom, Scope, and Abuses of Religion

A bit of a mixed bag this morning, but here are a few things that have caught my eye over the last few days and have me thinking (and avoiding sermon-writing!) on this crisp September morning. These are mostly unrelated themes, but if pressed for a connection, I suppose I would say that they deal in turn with the nature of religion, the purpose of religion, and the practice of religion. Read more

Sep 5

5 Comments

Right Side Up

This week, I have been waking up each day to the Beatitudes. Take Our Moments and Our Days is a specifically Anabaptist prayer-book which means that daily prayer is intentionally structured around the teachings of Jesus, his call to recognize and participate in the in-breaking kingdom of God. During “Ordinary Time,” the book follows a four-week cycle of prayers and readings focused in turn on The Lord’s Prayer, the Beatitudes, Parables, and Signs and Wonders. It’s a very different approach than other prayer books I am familiar with, but it has been a breath of fresh air to be daily called to praise, discipleship, and intercession in this uniquely Anabaptist way.

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Sep 3

1 Comment

To Be Continued…

This year, our family spent Labour Day weekend about an hour and a half northwest of Calgary at Camp Evergreen  where I was speaking at the camp’s fall family retreat. This was the camp I grew up attending as a boy, and it was great to see our kids get to enjoy the same activities—archery, horseback riding, and canoeing—that I enjoyed once upon a time, as well as try out a few that weren’t around way back when I was there (the zip-line and the climbing wall were highlights). Many things had changed (apparently that happens over 20+ years!), but it was still great to be back. Read more

Aug 27

14 Comments

Difference as Essence

It is not at all uncommon for me, as a pastor, to encounter some variation of the question, “So, what’s the deal with all the different denominations in Christianity? Why can’t you all agree on anything?!” Read more

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