Psalm 116: 1-19 (links validated 3/4/24)

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Resources from 2023

  • Easter 3A (2023)

    by Nancy deClaissé-Walford
  • Easter 3A (2023)

    by Phil Heinze
  • Sermon Starters (Easter 3A)(2023)

    by Scott Hoezee
    Some gifts defy the ability to even things up. It reminds me of the episode of “The Big Bang Theory” TV comedy in which Sheldon Cooper is going to do a Christmas gift exchange with his friend Penny. But Sheldon does not like ever being in anyone’s debt so he buys at least a half-dozen gifts in increasing increments of cost so that once he sees and estimates how much Penny’s gift to him cost, he can give her a gift of slightly higher value (and then return all the others to the stores for a refund). That way they’d be even or perhaps Sheldon might even be a slight one up on Penny. But then Penny pulls a fast one (though she did not intend to): at The Cheesecake Factory where Penny works, she ended up being the waitress one evening to Sheldon’s hero, the actor Leonard Nimoy or “Mr. Spock” of Star Trek fame and has him autograph a cloth napkin and address it to Sheldon. This is her gift to Sheldon. He is shocked. He cannot put a price tag on this precious gift. To Sheldon this gift is of inestimable value. So he proceeds to give Penny all six of the gifts he bought and realizes it’s still not enough so he does something that this socially awkward, vaguely obsessive-compulsive man never does: he gives her a heartfelt hug. And he still knew it was not enough...
  • Easter 3A (2023)

    by Tabitha Ssonko
  • Easter 3A

    by Howard Wallace et al
  • Thanksgiving for Answered Prayer

    by Garth Wehrfritz-Hanson
    Months of prayers by numerous “grandmas and grandpas” paid off when residents of the Whitehorn Village retirement community were reunited with a young man nearly stolen from them by an alleged drunk driver. Jordan Legatto, 17 (at the time), was in hospital for almost three months with a skull fracture and broken bones after he was struck by a car while skateboarding to his job at the retirement home. [Some time later] he returned to the retirement community for the first time and was met with applause and a cheque for more than $1,100—raised through fundraising. “I didn’t see this coming,” the teen said, holding the cheque. Manager Cindy Rota said residents raised $550 and the company’s head office in Toronto matched the funds. “We are a community here and we really pull together in difficult times,” she said. “We just wanted to help in any way we could.” “We’ve got a lot of grandmas and grandpas in here who did a lot of praying and I think that helped,” she said. Legatto admits his quick recovery was somewhat miraculous and he credits positive thinking for getting him through the scariest moments. He plans to return to his job as a cook at Whitehorn Village.

Resources from 2020 to 2022

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  • Maundy Thursday (A)(2020)

    by Amanda Benckhuysen
  • Maundy Thursday (C)(2022)

    by Aaron Bolerjack
  • Giving Thanks

    by Frederick Buechner
  • Easter 3A (2020)

    by Jason Byassee
  • God Hears Our Prayers

    by Bob Cornwall
  • An Interesting Time

    by Jonathan Gaylord
  • Grief's Sharp Edge

    by Lexiann Grant
  • Proper 19B (2021)

    by Phil Heinze
  • Sermon Starters (Proper 19B)(2021)

    by Scott Hoezee
    When I have preached on the topic of suffering and looking to God for deliverance as Psalm 116 does, I have opened the sermon with two contrasting vignettes from the world of literature. The first comes from Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World where we see a future world in which life is engineered to avoid all suffering. But somehow or another this doesn’t quite lead to a complete human existence. The residents of this brave new world require monthly injections of adrenalin to make up for their bodies’ not producing adrenalin the usual way when we are fearful, startled, or in pain. Huxley seems to be saying that to deny all suffering is not quite human. On the other hand is the character of Miss Havisham from Charles Dickens’s classic Great Expectations. Many years before, Miss Havisham had been jilted on the day of her wedding. The groom just never showed up. Ever since, Miss Havisham has locked herself in the room where the wedding reception was to have taken place. The clock on the wall is stopped at the hour and minute when the wedding was to have begun. The long-since desiccated and rat-eaten wedding cake still sits on a buffet. And Miss Havisham still wears her wedding dress, now tattered and yellowed with age. Miss Havisham is trapped by her suffering. Denial of suffering. Being frozen in one’s suffering. Are these the only two alternatives for dealing with the fact that sooner or later we all suffer in some way? The Bible suggests a fruitful third way: relying on God, crying to God, looking to God in all things. We don’t need to be trapped in our suffering and so let it have the last word on our lives nor do we need to deny its reality but we do look to the God who is with us in all things.
  • Sermon Starters (Easter 3A)(2020)

    by Scott Hoezee
    On the idea of God’s accepting whatever thanksgiving we can give him, Billy Collins’s poem “The Lanyard” says it all: The other day I was ricocheting slowly off the blue walls of this room, moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano, from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor, when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard. No cookie nibbled by a French novelist could send one into the past more suddenly— a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp by a deep Adirondack lake learning how to braid long thin plastic strips into a lanyard, a gift for my mother...
  • Let Me Drink That for You

    by Cathy Lessmann
  • Proper 19B (2021)

    by James Mead
  • Lift Up the Cup

    Art and Faith by Lynn Miller
    In Christian practice, a chalice or cup of some kind is used as part of the celebration of the Lord's Supper. Remembering Jesus' last supper with his disciples, the chalice is often lifted up as words are said and the people are invited to the table. In some congregations worshipers come forward and share a common cup; in others, congregations use individual cups. If you remember the ending of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, you remember that Indy's challenge was to choose the "real" Grail - understood as the cup that Jesus used at that last supper - from the myriad of cups and plates arrayed around him. The choices included cups of silver and gold that shone in the firelight. Some were encrusted with jewels that added richness and sparkle. Kiddush cups are often heirlooms, passed down through families. Many kiddush cups are silver, engraved, special, in order to suitably honor the occasion for which the cups are used. However, any cup can be used...
  • An Hallel Psalm

    by Tabitha Ssonko

Resources from 2017 to 2019

(In order to avoid losing your place on this page when viewing a different link, I would suggest that you right click on that link with your mouse and select “open in a new tabâ€. Then, when you have finished reading that link, close the tab and you will return to where you left off on this page. FWIW!)
  • Maundy Thursday (B)(2018)

    by Amanda Benckhuysen
  • Easter 3A (2017)

    by Nancy deClaisse-Walford
  • Thanksgiving and Service

    Video with Nikki Hardeman
  • Easter 3A (2017)

    by Phil Heinze
  • Proper 19B (2018)

    by Phil Heinze
  • Maundy Thursday (B)(2018)

    by Libby Tedder Hugus
  • Easter 3A (2017)

    by Stan Mast
    Here’s a way to think about prayer as the main way we give thanks for the resurrections in our lives. Think about your holiday celebrations, especially at Christmas. That is such a magical and miserable time of year. We’ll get together with family and friends, hoping for a wonderful time. But it is often a time of considerable tension and pain. We exchange gifts around the Christmas tree, trying to be merry and grateful. In fact, we are unhappy about the state of our relationships. What we want to say is, “It’s not your gifts that I want. Just tell me and show me that you love me.” That’s why prayer is the most important part of thanksgiving to God. By bending the knee and bowing our heads and talking to God, we say, “I love you and I need you.” That’s a greater way of showing gratitude than anything else.
  • Proper 19B (2018)

    by James Mead
  • My Soul, My Life, My All

    by Bruce Schoonmaker
  • Maundy Thursday (A)(2017)

    by Mark Throntveit

Resources from 2012 to 2016

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