“Writing the Sacred”

Sermons

• THE EPIPHANY OF THE LORD
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  The world was going to end. But it didn’t. How often have we been here, listening to various media outlets trying to grab our attention with apocalyptic predictions which don’t come true? So often – and this most recent one perhaps so weak – that several TV shows taped and aired episodes whose jokes were [...]

• 1st Sunday after Christmas – Markus’ last sermon
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  Have you ever had a chance to look at one of our big communion wafers? They are large enough to be seen from the very back, but you probably haven’t noticed that they are perforated. These indentions are supposed to help you break the wafers into 24 nice little pieces. “Supposed to” being the operative [...]

• Advent 4
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  Sermon on Luke 1:39-55   Advent 4   December 23, 2012                  Ross Bliss Pregnant.  A word with a curious ‘charge’. A familiar enough concept, but depending on the context, still sometimes startling, even to our jaded post-modern sensibilities.  Pregnant.  A beautiful thing, really, obviously, beautiful, but being so obvious, also potentially scandalous. I mean we all know [...]

• Stewardship Moments
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  by Sandra Vander Schaaf Did you know that last year, worldwide, corporations spent 131 billion dollars on advertising?  Make no mistake, that’s a 131 billion dollar stewardship campaign.  Its goal is to persuade you that you are inadequate, you don’t have the right stuff, you don’t have enough stuff, and the answer to all of [...]

• Stewardship Moments
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  by Rose Mary Drefke My introduction to St. Paul’s happened five years ago when I came to Vancouver on vacation. At that time I attended first the Wednesday evening service and then the morning service the following Sunday .I knew immediately that everyone was accepted in this beautiful old the church. It seemed that the [...]

• What happens when Christmas just isn’t a time filled with joy?
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  We’re Christians; we’re about to celebrate the Incarnation, the time when our God takes on flesh and chooses to dwell among us. How can we feel sad or lonely or filled with some aching something that we can’t pin down? We just get over it…or keep it inside and don’t rain on everybody else’s parade. [...]

• St. Nicholas
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  At a recent ordination of the BC Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada, one of my Lutheran colleagues shared this story: On the way to a meeting, he had stopped at a church he had known for a long time. These days, its congregation is on the move and the building is up [...]

• Remembrance Day
  Posted by ParishAdmin
  

  Sometimes we see something and it sticks to our mind. For no particular reason. It just does. Yes, there are images we all have seen and we all remember. But sometimes there is an image that for very personal reasons stays in your minds, and stays in your mind only. One of these kinds of [...]

• St. Luke, Evangelist & Physician
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  In their book “Mighty Story, Dangerous Rituals” theologians Herbert Anderson (with whom I studied in Chicago) and Edward Foley challenge the church to reclaim the importance of story and the importance of ritual for her ministry and mission: On the one hand the church’s mission should be about proclaiming with gusto God’s story in creation [...]

• Thanksgiving
  Posted by ParishAdmin
  

  Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to attend a service in an Anglican parish outside of our diocese. And, boy, was it different! First of all, the parish was situated in a more rural part of Canada. It was a small church, in all aspects: the building was small, about the size of our [...]

• 13th Sunday After Pentecost
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  A couple of weeks ago, St Paul’s hosted a fundraiser for the BC Children’s Foundation. The organisers had collected a huge amount of board games and were selling them in support of this great charity. At one point I asked one of the volunteers how things were going. He replied by sharing his astonishment at [...]

• 11th Sunday After Pentecost
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  The seven ecumenical councils, which occurred in the first eight centuries of the life of the church, seem far, far away in history. But they remain important for the identity of the church. Not only did they open the church to move from a religious sect of a rather narrowly defined ethnic group to what [...]

• Tenth Sunday After Pentecost
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  Don’t you have better things to do? This is how I sometimes joke with volunteers when I see them here at the church on a regular basis. Don’t you have better things to do? It is a question I could also ask of you as we come together every Sunday morning for worship. And indeed [...]

• 9th After Pentecost
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  Ever so often, I get asked what I miss most about Germany. It is an understandable question, which is rather timely so shortly after my vacation. Usually, I fire off a standard answer: “Beer and bread.” It is a good alliteration that is guaranteed to make the questioner smile. Beer and bread… rather stereotypical, eh? [...]

• St Mary Magdalene
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  As I mentioned last week, I attended Sunday morning services at St. James’ Piccadilly in London a fortnight ago. On the surface the church is quite different from St Paul’s. It is a magnificent neo-classicistic stone building designed by Sir Christopher Wren in the late 17th century. But as soon as you look past the [...]

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