Last week we heard Jesus harshly rebuke Peter: “get behind me Satan, you’re still seeing things in accordance with the ways of this world, rather than in accordance with God’s ways.” Clearly Jesus knows of what he speaks. We know he will in fact go on to suffer and die at the hands of the elders and chief priests; that his faithfulness to God that results in his death, overcomes human sin and so reconciles us to life with God. We know this part of the story. We often talk ab

In last week’s gospel reading Peter was the hero of the story declaring “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” It’s critical to remember this from last week because within a very short space of time, Peter goes from hero to zero, as it were, almost in the blink of an eye. Jesus, you’re the Messiah, so there’s no way you’re going to end up in Jerusalem to suffer and die at the hands of the chief priests and elders. This simply cannot and will not happen. I can just

One of the greatest mistakes Christians make today - and sadly, have always made - is in believing, and then taking actions that presume that God’s kingdom will come through major social, political, legal, or military movements. How many actions deserving of God’s eternal fire, have been done in the name of God? From inquisitions, to political and ecclesiastical divisions that led to millions of people tortured and executed, to the using Christianity and the lure or fear of t

Jesus tells of a field in which an enemy sows weeds among the wheat. The servants want to uproot the weeds immediately, but the master forbids it, lest the wheat be damaged. At harvest, the wheat and weeds are separated. Jesus later explains: The sower is God himself. The field is the world. The good seeds are the children of God. The weeds are the children of the evil one. The enemy is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age. The angels perform the final separation. The

One of my favorite passages of Scripture because of what a call out to all of us it is, is when the Prophet Nathan, is telling King David a parable. We read about this in the 2nd book of Samuel. When the object of King David’s lust, Bathsheba, became pregnant from an affair with David, he attempted to cover it up by bringing her husband, Uriah home from war. Because Uriah honorably refused to sleep at home while his men were in battle, David ordered him placed on the front li

The other day I was sitting outside a coffee shop speaking to a six year old, having just finished grade 1, and now ready to be 25 so he could have his freedom, he told me. I replied to him: you might need to learn a few things between now and age 25 if you really want to be free. Like what, he said to me. And on and on the conversation went; while it was certainly funny (and tbh, a little exhaustingly tedious); one thing 6 year olds demonstrate brilliantly: they do not know

One of the things I remember so clearly throughout my years of playing team sports as a kid, was that I was representing not just my own team, but my coaches, my parents, my city, my Province, even my country. One of the things I remember struggling most with though, was the sense that I wasn’t good enough; that I was only as good as my latest performance; that if I didn’t perform, I was letting everyone down and perhaps that meant I had no worth or value. So Jesus’s words

This morning we heard one of my favorite passages of Scripture where Paul is writing to a church in Philippi. It’s a favorite of mine because Philippi was the first city in Europe where the Apostle Paul planted a Christian church. This involved risk, and demanded strong faith, conviction, courage, and humility. Why? Because Paul went to plant this church not with the freedom we have here in Canada or the US, or anywhere in the West; but actually in the midst of a Roman Empire

In the last few weeks, I have had many conversations with two relatively new Christian converts. Both display a love for other people and an awareness and expression of their own falling short of God’s grace in doing so, and their willingness to ask for God’s forgiveness. Given their backgrounds, I am in fact not that surprised. It is often those who have gone through hardship, those who have had to put everything on the line, who see and experience God’s offer to us most cle

I remember one of the first times I cried post-infanthood. The tears were not exactly of sadness, or loss, or frustration. They were tears that I can only attribute to being awestruck by the totality of God’s holiness. I was somewhere in the middle of my PhD. I was yet to be diagnosed with ADHD. I was struggling with being able to focus on the long and extremely difficult task of in depth research, reading, writing, translating, and producing original thought. I felt as if my