This is just a brief follow-up on the recent series of events we hosted with the writer and new monastic Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove. A longer reflection will follow at some point in the coming days… You can take a look at a feature article on these events in the latest issue of the ChristianWeek, as well as a piece from the October 14 edition of the Winnipeg Free Press.
a sermon preached on Mark 7:24-30
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hat in heaven’s name is going on in this section of the Gospel according to Mark? A woman with a deep and pressing need – her daughter is afflicted with a spiritual evil – comes to Jesus with that need and asks for help. Yet he appears to just blow her off.
She’s a gentile, a foreigner, and he says to her, “Let the children be fed first; it is not right to take the children’s food and feed it to the dogs.” I beg your pardon? Has Jesus just called this woman a dog, based entirely on her ethnic identity? He’s willing to take care of the needs of the people of Israel – figuratively “the children” – but rejects this gentile woman as a dog?
a sermon preached on the Song of Songs 2:8-13
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or our reading from the Hebrew scriptures this evening, we’ve just heard a passage from the Song of Solomon, the Song of Songs. If you weren’t expecting it, it is an odd thing to heard read aloud in worship, this little bit of an exchange of love songs between a man and a woman. It is the one time in the three year cycle of Sunday readings that we read from the Song of Songs, and we heard read a fairly tame bit from what can otherwise be a fairly steamy book.
If you’ve not ever read it through, you should. What you will discover is basically eight chapters of poetic material; largely the back and forth between the lover and the beloved during the opening phase of their romance. And it does heat up…
This is the fourth in a series of sermons preached by Jamie Howison dealing with the figure of David; with the way in which his life speaks into, and sometimes unsettles, the life of the people of God.
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n the first three sermons in this series, we encountered a figure who sparks the imagination of the church – the boy marked to be king; the one who trusts God rather than the armor of kings as he dares to contend with Goliath; the musician-poet who dares to sing the blues.
But tonight? Tonight we hit a piece of the narrative that probably caused you to choke a bit. Did you hear it as we read the passage from 2 Samuel 5? ‘Whoever wishes to strike down the Jebusites, let him get up the water shaft to attack the lame and the blind, those whom David hates.’ Really? This is the David said to be a man after God’s own heart, yet he hates the lame and the blind?
This is the third in an ongoing sermon series on the figure of David, preached at saint benedict’s table over these summer months. Our wrestling with these texts is to try to see just how this particular biblical character shapes and challenges the imagination of the people of God.
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etween last Sunday’s reading of the story of David and Goliath and this week’s Old Testament reading, the lectionary has skipped past a massive amount of material. David, the shepherd boy and unlikely hero, has been taken into King Saul’s own household, in part because the young man’s skill as a harp player means he is able to offer one of the only things that can sooth the soul of the increasingly mentally unstable king. Yet in time, because he is an increasingly popular and attractive figure, David becomes a threat to the king. Saul eventually issues what amounts to a death warrant, and David narrowly escapes into the wilderness; an escape made possible through the assistance of Saul’s own son Jonathan, with whom David has come to share a deep friendship.
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just finished reading a very fine new book by David Bentley Hart, and wanted to post this recommendation to hopefully connect some other readers to this guy’s work. Hart is an American theologian, located within the Orthodox tradition, currently teaching in the Theology Department at Providence College, Rhode Island. My first encounter with his writing was in a book called The Beauty of the Infinite: the aesthetics of Christian truth, which was probably one of the most theologically dense yet poetically beautiful books I’ve read in several years. This time around the book, entitled Atheist Delusions: the Christian revolution and its fashionable enemies, is considerably less dense and daunting, though still a good solid workout.
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note from Jamie Howison: What follows here is the text of the sermon preached by Calvin Seerveld on June 6 at the memorial service held to mark the death of Gerald Folkerts. As I listened to Cal preach, I thought to myself how much I hope that words like this might be preached at my own funeral, whenever that might come. The context here, of course, is for someone who has died too young; at 51 Gerald should have had more life to live. Yet he did die well – reconciled, prepared, and finally in a place of acceptance. At the end of the sermon is a list of the other articles and material that were posted on this site over the course of Gerald’s nine month battle with cancer.
This is the text of a sermon preached by James Snyder on Pentecost back in 2000, at St George’s Anglican Church in Halifax. As many of you might be aware, Jim is the author of the saint benedict’s table Lenten book, Toward What We Can Scarcely Imagine and Scarcely Refuse.
At last: After brooding upon us all these millennia,
and intermittently turning things upside down, and episodically delivering us,
it comes sweeping through the world like a firestorm,
redeeming and transforming everything in its path.
And if you’re in its way there’s nothing you can do. There’s no escape.
It’s wild…it’s uncontrollable…it’s undeniable…it’s irresistable.
Ready or not, it is here…and it is here to stay.
The Holy Spirit will have its way with you, no matter what.
There’s nothing you can do to stop it, or deflect it…
neither can you hasten or importune it.
This one comes from Andrea Bell, a grade 10 student at St Mary’s Academy and a relative newcomer to saint benedict’s table. Prepared for in May 2008 for her school bible class, it seemed well worth sharing a bit more widely.
A reading from the book of James.
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his letter is from James, a slave of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. I am writing to the “twelve tribes”-Jewish believers scattered abroad. Greetings!
Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy.
a sermon preached on John 15:9-17, May 17, 2009
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ccording to Facebook, I have 137 friends. And I’m a very bad Facebook member. I only check in about once a month; I think I have only once invited someone to be my friend, and that was my wife; and I really only use the site when I want to connect with someone who isn’t answering their e-mail. Yet I still have 137 friends.
