One of the worst lines to hear is, “What do you want to hear first, the good news or the bad news?” Well, you already know that there is going to be bad news, so it doesn’t matter how good the good news is.

As I have said when I was planning this series on prayer and creation I used the book “Before Amen” that of Spirit Circle is studing and the resource of Trees in the Bible. This week at the book study on prayer we talked about why do we consider God good? And how can we trust in the goodness of God when God allows the world to be such a mess?

As you have already heard, today we embark on a sermon series that connects our prayer life, or at least our hope for one through the Spirit Circle study on the book "Before Amen" by Max Lucado And to connect it to our celebration of the Season of Creation which we have just entered. To help me keep focused on creation, we will hear about a specific tree in a specific scripture story.  

This morning, we have a small part of a great letter or Epistle from James. There is a creative group of scholars called the Bible Project who with videos and wipe board drawings crack open the scriptures for us.

I find it helpful, as much as possible, when you are going to talk about the scriptures, to begin with the scriptures.

And today it would seem like the writer of the gospel of Luke had two very different, unrelated stories on scraps of paper that he just stuck together on the same page.

Irish philosopher Pete Rollins took our passage from last week, and put it through a first-world translator (see if you can hear the difference)

… the crowds continued to follow [Jesus]. Evening was now approaching and the people, many of whom had traveled a great distance, were growing hungry.

I’m going to start today with a riddle… (for those who have heard it before and know the answer, just hold back for a split second and see if people can figure it out)

What is greater than God, and worse than the devil?

Poor people have it. Rich people need it.

If you eat it you die.

What is it?

Answer? Nothing.

I have never questioned why this passage of Paul to the Corinthians was written. It always felt like this is a really good image for the body of Christ. A body with a great variety of different parts. A body where each part is valued, not above another, but equal to one another. Indeed, if any part is missing, then the whole body suffers. This metaphor means that all men and women, slaves and freeborn, Jew and gentile, younger and older, are all to be honoured equally. None of us here this morning are superior or inferior to another. Within the body of Christ all are equal.

We began our service this morning with an amazing story from the Gospels. The disciples are somewhere between dumbfounded and awestruck over Jesus’ ability to calm the winds and smooth the waves.

That is an easy thing to do when there is no wind and ripples, not waves. However, in the midst of a storm, now there is a challenge. I was born into a church filled to the brim with people of all ages.

Like Forest Hill, my home congregation felt the need to…

I live on a cul de sac in Guelph. My house is one of six houses that face each other across a central garden. Some on the street have professional landscapers come each week to cut and trim their lawn and garden beds. Others of us do our own yard maintenance. In the spring and fall sometimes the number of crews doing larger seasonal clean ups can create havoc on the street as we try to navigate our own cars in and out of our driveways around multiple pickup trucks and trailers. My dog Gracie dreads Tuesdays & Fridays, when the crews are …

I have to say, God has quite a sense of humor. The leadership chose this Sunday for Reverent Gaylyn’s covenanting without knowing what scripture the lectionary, a three-year cycle of weekly readings, would have us talk about. And by us, I mean me, but hopefully you will find time to talk about it after my few words. So, of the over 150 possible scripture readings, today’s reading has Jesus’s family coming to get him because it is obvious that he has left the respectable and useful work of carpentry to go into Ministry. And one translation they ask, “has he gone out of his mind?”

The first scripture this morning is called, ‘The call of Samuel.’ It highlights several things. First is that God is willing to go around, those who should have inherited leadership within the Faith community. Eli the high priest wanted his sons to inherit his authority. They enjoyed having that authority but lacked the honour and capacity to act according to the will and way of God. So, God chooses…

In Amos 5, we encounter a powerful message condemning hollow religious rituals that lack true justice and righteousness. The prophet Amos criticizes the people for their hypocrisy, for going through the motions of worship while neglecting the essential values of justice and righteousness. God's desire is not for empty ceremonies but for a life marked by justice, that

flows like a mighty river and righteousness, that is as constant as an ever-flowing stream.

I’ve had the opportunity to travel to some wonderful places in my life so far. From an early age I had wanted to see more of the world than was contained in the boundaries of my childhood neighborhood. I can remember at one point when my daughter was in high school, she came home to tell me that she didn’t think she’d go to university. I sensed that for whatever reason…

Most theologians would agree that the person who wrote the Gospel of Luke also penned the Book of Acts. The Gospel being volume one in the history of the Christian church and Acts being volume 2. You can even hear this continuity in the readings we heard today. The Ascension story…

This Sunday we were reminded about our fondness for boundaries. We create boundaries everywhere from that floating rope in the pool, to painted lines on the road, to lines on basketball and Pickleball courts, to border crossings where countries meet. Now there is no doubt that some of these boundaries are there…

This is camping Sunday which challenges us as mainline Christians to ask the question where do we find people who are willing to engage in conversations about faith? It is such a blessing to have on this Sunday the scripture reading from the Book of Acts commonly referred to as the conversation or conversion of the Ethiopian eunuch. It holds several good pieces of scriptural wisdom to answer the question about…