Scripture Readings Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen! The commemoration of St. Luke the Evangelist. Today we remember a man who is only mentioned three times in the entire New Testament - all in the letters of St. Paul. But as a writer, St. Luke gave us more of the New Testament by volume than any other single author. If you do the math, Luke’s Gospel and the Book of Acts are around 37,900 words. If you tally up S

Scripture Readings Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen! The pastor went out to do a parish visit. When he got to the door he was greeted warmly by the Lady of the house. Wanting to make a very spiritual impression on the pastor, she told her little daughter to “Quickly run and get that good book that we all love so much and bring it here.” The little girl toddled off and then returned, proudly, with a look of triump

Scripture Readings Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen! My very first congregation was in the south end of the Okanagan Valley, right in the heart of wine country. There are over 40 wineries in the surrounding area. The hills all thrive with beautiful estates and vineyards as far the eye can see, earning the region the well deserved title of the “Wine Capital of Canada!” It was truly a gorgeous spot. It was hot and

Scripture Readings Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen! You might have noticed that we live now in a day and age that is ripe with ripoffs, scams and corruption. To be sure, there have always been con artists out there trying to scam you out of your hard earned shekels. Remember when people had fax machines?! There was always that same old fax from that Nigerian Prince who had millions and millions of dollars for yo

Scripture Readings Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen! Perhaps you might have noticed that life is all about the numbers. Just think about that for a second. I have to remortgage my house, what is the interest rate? Did I get enough questions right to pass my exam? How did the canola test at the elevator? Gas just shot up to $1.68 per litre! Ring, ring, is Ted there? Oh, sorry, I must have the wrong number! Did the

Scripture Readings Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen! The craziest thing about life is that it’s almost impossible to see your own sins. It’s like your neighbour’s kids. They’re awful. They do all kinds of bad stuff. They’re disrespectful. Obnoxious. Undisciplined. They walk the dog and let it pee on your lawn. They hang around with the wrong crowd. All they do is play video games all day and so on. Meanwhile, you

Scripture Readings Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen! If you recall last Sunday, St. Peter was doing really well. Jesus had given the disciples a pop quiz: ““But who do you say that I am?” 16 Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God!” (MT 16:15-16). Peter passed that test with flying colours! His rock-solid confession of who Jesus is echoes throughout the centuries. Jesus builds His chur

Scripture Readings Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen! Do you ever lay awake at night, pondering the intricacies of life?? You know those all important questions like “If a tree falls in the forest, and there is no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?” The obvious answer is “no, it doesn’t.” But the squirrel it lands on sure does! Or what about Jolene, do you ever wonder about her? I mean, if Dolly Parton wo

Scripture Readings Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen! Behold! A Canaanite. A Canaanite woman! That’s about all the information we are given in the Gospel reading, other than Jesus and the Disciples were way up north in the coastal area of Tyre and Sidon. I’ve always wondered, did she have one of those stickers on that said “Hello! My name is Canaanite Woman”?? It’s actually kind of a weird scenario. “Canaanite” ha

Scripture Readings Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen! Our Gospel reading from St. Matthew this morning picks up where we left off last Sunday. Jesus had just did the miracle of feeding the 5,000+ size crowd with only 5 loaves and 2 fishes. They were in the desert, a desolate place, the Tim Horton’s had already closed, the Disciples were imploring Jesus to send the crowd away to scavenge food for themselves. But in

Scripture Readings Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen! One of my kids’ favourite books when they were little was called “Pancakes, Pancakes!” It was written by Eric Carle. He’s the same guy who also wrote “The Very Hungry Caterpillar.” His books always have this very distinctive illustration style too. It’s a hand painted tissue paper collage thing that gives the illustration a kind of weird styling. In the pancake

Scripture Readings Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen! Everybody knows the ‘genie in the magic lamp’ schtick. Aladdin. Disney. You know the gist. They find the lamp, give it a rub a dub and viola, a genie pops out and grants you 3 wishes. Imagine if it was true though. What would you wish for? My first instinct was to wish for unlimited wishes! But I’m sure that violates the genie’s fine print agreement somewhere.

Scripture Readings Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen! Back in the old country, a grandpa and his grandson were walking home from the market with their donkey. As they walked along, the folks along the way began to laugh and make fun of them. “Why are they both walking beside the donkey?! You’d think one of those fools would ride!” Upon this scorn and peer pressure, the old man put his grandson on the donkey’s back

Scripture Readings Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen! Do you ever notice how pretty much everyone loves Christmas? There in the manger lies the little Lord Jesus, cute and cuddly, asleep on the hay. Shepherds, angels, Mary, Joseph, and barnyard animals all gathered around the newborn King. The prophet Isaiah painted this beautiful picture centuries earlier: “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the

Scripture Readings Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father and Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen! Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there! Father’s Day is another great reminder that none of us would be here without you! It really is fascinating when you think about it. God Himself instituted fatherhood and motherhood for the purpose fulfilling the original “great commission” at the dawn of creation: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of Go

Scripture Readings Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father and Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen! One evening, a man was out for a walk along a beautiful beach on the pacific ocean. As he journeyed along his way, he was admiring the gorgeous sunset and the sound of the waves crashing onto the shore. He noticed another man down the beach in the distance. As he approached this other man, he noticed that from time to time this man would stoop down, pick something

Scripture Readings Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father and Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen! Pretty much the last place on planet earth I’d ever choose willingly to go is to the hospital. Especially the ER. I’m impatient and hate waiting. In Moose Jaw, it’s an automatic 3 hours and probably more like 6-8 of just sitting around waiting to get looked at. Don’t you long for the days when the doctor came to your house and fixed you up with merely the contents

Scripture Readings Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father and Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen! I’ve got a real interest in early church history. As Lutherans, we tend to kind of default to the Reformation with Luther and the other Protestants. But that was only around 500 years ago. What happened before that? How did Christians understand God and theology way back, like 1,900 years ago!? It’s fascinating really. Often we have ideas about God and faith that r

Scripture Readings Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father and Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen! Last Sunday at confirmation we were talking about God’s presence with His people. When you read the Scriptures, you can see a definitive pattern emerging about this. Eden, the garden-temple that we talked about last Sunday, was the starting point. God was present in a very intense way with Adam and Eve. In a world without sin and death, you had a literal paradise.

Scripture Readings Christ is Risen! He is Risen Indeed! Alleluia! Our ‘once-Christian’ culture still bears some of the fingerprints of the Church. Christmas. Easter. Thanksgiving. The bigger holidays are still there in concept, even if the actual Christian meaning has become eclipsed by Santa and a bunny and a turkey. Even our weekend days of Saturday and Sunday reflect the Sabbath and the day of our Lord’s Resurrection that used to be days off from work. Now they’ve just bec