Sermons

This Christmas Eve, Rev. Cari preached on the beautiful prologue to John’s gospel, John 1:1-14. Christmas is the celebration of God becoming human, in the startling specificity of the one we call Jesus of Nazareth… it’s also a cosmic mystery – not to be solved, but to be pondered – that the creator of the…

For the fourth Sunday of Advent, Rev. Cari completed the sermon series based on the four posture prayer of Julian of Norwich. The sermon focussed on the final posture, “Attend” was based on the Magnificat, the song of Mary found in Luke 1:46b-55. Introducing Attending as a “stretch” – a potentially uncomfortable position to be…

For the third Sunday in Advent, we added another word and posture to our theme for the season… and Rev. Cari preached on the story of the Annunciation (the Angel’s visit to Mary) found in Luke 1:26-38. As “call stories” go in the Bible, this one is unique. Mary doesn’t put up a fight –…

On the second Sunday of Advent, Rev. Cari picked up the second posture of Julian of Norwich’s four-posture prayer: Allow. The texts for the day were Isaiah 40:1-11 and Mark 1:1-8, which she wove together along with “allow” to create an Advent invitation to “establish our hearts.” The Advent practice of “preparing the way” of…

For the first Sunday in Advent, Rev. Cari focussed in on the words of the prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 64:1-9. She also responded to a request that she talk a bit about “silence” – her recent sabbatical experience of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola. This advent our theme is a four posture…

This was Rev. Cari’s first Sunday back from her sabbatical, and as she stated in the opening of the sermon, the gospel text for the day, Matthew 25:31-46, is a “marvellously complex” one. She had invited the congregation, when she read the text aloud, to pretend they’d never heard this parable of the sorting of…