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Feast of St. Peter and St. Paul

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Ezekiel 34.11–16 Psalm 87 2 Timothy 4.1–8 John 21.15–19 The church has been tempted by fragmentation since the very beginning. We are constantly and continuously tempted to walk away from each other. In university I took a class on Christian history. My professor, Dr. Robinson, held up a book that listed all the known Christian denominations, which at that time numbered at somewhere over 20,000. Many of these denominations consisted of only one church. He then told us his two favorite churches/denominations. One was “the Church of God on Turtle Hill”, the other (in the same town) was “The True Church of God on Turtle Hill”. It’s amazing how a whole history can be assumed in the one word “true”. You can imagine there was some sort of a disagreement that happened. It could have been over something theological- like how faith and works determine your salvation. But, it might also have been the result of an argument about the colour of the carpet. Whatever it was, it caused a division in ...
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Trinity and Tradition

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PROVERBS 8:1-4, 22-31;  PSALM 8;  ROMANS 5:1-5;  JOHN 16:12-15 Having a Tradition means that we don’t have to use a lot of energy trying to answer questions that have already been dealt with. … That doesn’t mean we don’t think for ourselves, or that our ancestors can’t get things wrong sometimes. We rely on tradition all the time, and not just in a religious context. Much of education is about learning a tradition. If you go to university and take physics, you will learn a tradition- you will learn the work of those who have come before you. You can look at how they have wrestled with problems and what answers they came up with. You learn a method for approaching a problem. You learn a way of framing a problem. When you learn a tradition, you look at what those who came before us have found out. We can look at the map they left us, and (through their explorations) we can see where the various paths lead us. We can see which paths are dead ends, and which ones lead us o...
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Pentecost- Bringing the Nations Home

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  GENESIS 11:1-9; ACTS 2:1-21 Our reading from the Old Testament today is the familiar story of the Tower of Babel. There are a couple of Old Testament scholars who have shed new light on this story for me in the last few years. One is Michael Heiser and the other if Fr. Stephen De Young. [1] De Young sees this story as referring to the Broze Age Collapse that happened in the 12th century BC (just over 3000 years ago). He sees this story not so much as informing people about the Bronze Age Collapse (as it would have been something they were very aware of), rather, the story would be giving the spiritual meaning that lays behind the collapse. According to De Young, The Tower of Babel story is referring to the first Babylonian Empire, which is not to be confused with the Neo-Babylonian Empire, which was 1000 years later, and who destroyed the Jerusalem Temple and took the people into exile. This empire tied together an incredibly wide geography. Bronze was made from tin and copp...
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God is Rescuing the Nations- Acts 11

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ACTS 11:1-18 The mission of God is to rescue us from the mess we have gotten ourselves into, and it is a mission to rescue all of humanity, not just one ethnic group. God does, however, select one family- Abraham’s family. And that might seem like God is prioritizing one ethnic group over others, but when we look at the blessing God puts on Abraham, we see that his family is blessed to be a blessing to all the families of the world (Gen 12:2-3). God’s focus on Abraham’s family was a way of ultimately blessing all of humanity. … The mission of God is to save and bless all humanity, and choosing Abraham’s family was part of that plan. … Abraham’s family wasn’t really one of the nations of the world. The Bible will often talk about the 70 nations. That is a symbolic number representing all the nations of the world. … One of the ways that scholars look at the Tower of Babel story is that humanity rebelled by trying to push their way into heavenly realities, to tr...
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Jesus the Good Shepherd

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  PSALM 23; REVELATION 7:9-17; JOHN 10:22-30 Our Gospel reading is taking place on the Feast of Dedication, which is better known as Hanukkah. Hannukkah celebrates the successful Jewish revolt led by Judah Maccabee against the Greek Seleucid Empire and the rededication of the Second Temple (164 BC), which had been desecrated by placing a statue of Zeus in it and sacrificing pigs in it. After their successful revolt, though they didn’t actually have any royal blood, the Maccabees then established themselves as a new royal lineage. Fast forward a few years and the Jewish people were dealing with the Roman Empire. King Herod didn’t have any direct Jewish royal lineage when he was put in power by the Romans, so he married a Maccabean (Hasmonean) princess to strengthen his legitimacy in the eyes of the Jewish people. Hannukkah was about remembering the rededication of the Temple, and the liberation of their people from oppression, but it was also a time to think about oppressive empires...
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The 'Conversion' of Paul- Acts 9

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Acts 9: 1-20 Today we are looking at the conversion of Saul. Saul will come to be known as St. Paul. ‘Saul’ is his Hebrew name. ‘Paul’ is the name he used among Greeks. It means something like “small”. The name change doesn’t actually have to do with his conversion, as some people believe. … We have a few name changes in the Bible like ‘Simon’ being renamed ‘Peter’ by Jesus. Likewise, ‘Abram’ was renamed ‘Abraham’ by God, and ‘Jacob’ is renamed ‘Israel’ after wrestling the angel of God. … But ‘Saul’ becoming known as ‘Paul’ has less meaning attached to it, in that sense. … It’s actually more like how some people from Asia, when they move to North America, will choose an English name because they find English speakers have a hard time pronouncing their name. So, you might bump into a man with a thick Chinese accent who tells you his name is “Bob”. It’s easier for English speakers to remember and pronounce that name, so they do that rather than spend the next 5 minutes trying to coach...
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The Resurrection body of Jesus, the sending of the Disciples, St.Thomas, and you- John 20

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Acts 5: 27-32; Psalm 118: 14-29; Revelations 1: 4-8; John 20: 19-31 Jesus has been resurrected. He is alive again, but in a new way. He isn’t alive the way Lazarus was alive again. Lazarus was brought back to life- But he was brought back to the same kind of life that he had before. He would die again someday. But Jesus was resurrected into a new kind of life. The New Testament scholar Bishop NT Wright says that Jesus went through death and out the other side into a new kind of life. In our gospel reading, the disciples are afraid, and they are hiding behind locked doors. And somehow Jesus just appears in the room. He wasn’t knocking on the door asking to be let in. He is just suddenly there among them. He shows them the scars from the crucifixion in his hands, feet, and his side, … which happened just the previous Friday. He wasn’t in need of medical attention. He was okay- More than okay. … He isn’t a ghost, and this isn’t a vision. He has a body. His body has continuity ...
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