Real Life, Personally Revealed

Real Life, Personally Revealed —that is what our current series is about. The Bible says so much about so many things. Various Bible teachers ‘prove’ just about everything quoting different texts. Sincere people disagree on what the Bible teaches. And then there are the difficult texts: the command for holy war [genocide really] in the Old Testament; sanctioned polygamy; and harsh words on homosexual behaviour. Then there are the language idioms that are thousands of years old and God words spoken into those cultures which simply could not be applied today as cultural norms are so different. This raises the question of what are the universal truths and what are the time bound truths in the Bible?

Is the bible worth reading? Renowned aetheist Lemuel K. Washburn says no, “There is absolutely no information in the Bible that man can make any use of as he goes through life. The Bible is not a book of knowledge. It does not give instruction in … sciences… no help to labor.. useless as a political guide…” At Cap we have a different view. We recognize that the Bible is an ancient and complex book to understand. But we believe the word Jesus spoke that life is not found in food alone but in digesting words from God [Matt. 4:4]. In this series, Making sense of the Bible for Today we are going to take a look at the book of Romans and try and demonstrate how to make sense of a complex bible text for today. Stick with us through this series and see if you don’t emerge better able to find life in the universal truths of this ancient text.

(Mike Nichols)

Today we are pleased to bring to the community the Reverend TERRY LEBLANC. Terry is Mi’kmaq-Acadian. Terry is the director and founding chair of North American Institute for Indigenous Theological Studies and is completing a PhD (ABD) in Intercultural Studies. Terry speaks to our community about faith, justice, and first nations.

My People International’s mission statement is: To train and equip North Americans and other Indigenous people via the teachings of Jesus and to encourage spiritual life and the appropriate participation within the wider community of indigenous and other people who follow Jesus. See more at see more at www.mypeopleinternational.com/About.html

Asking God for a Fresh Start

Today we finish our devotional journey through the OT book of Lamentations in our series: Learning to Live in Lament and Hope. I particularly like the title of this series: Learning to Live in Lament and Hope.

Learning suggests that there are both things to unlearn and things to learn that will enable you to enjoy God and live a more redemptive life on this side of heaven. Lament and hope are in my estimation two “faith-life-skills” that when learned and practiced allow you to navigate the dark and hard experiences of life in a way that leads to life, rather than sucks life out of you. As we finish this series I want to add a third “faith-life-skill” to lament and hope and that is Asking God for a Fresh Start.

While I believe that learning to lament and learning to hope, via cold and broken hallelujah’s, are two basic skills for the God-formed life, they are incomplete without a third—and that is asking God for a fresh start. This trinity of lament; hope, and fresh start is in many ways the essence of redemptive living and all gifts of God by his Spirit to help us get on in this world.

Hope: A Cold and Broken Hallelujah

Scripture Text: Lamentations 3:19-33

Last week, our own Brian Dean introduced the Book of Lamentations to us and taught about the importance of lament, and the way it deepens our relationship with God and others. This week, as we continue in Lamentations, my assigned topic is hope. Next week, Mike teaches on making a fresh start. The problem is, lamenting, hoping and starting again are not stages as distinct from each other as our preaching calendar might suggest. Both the Book of Lamentations and our own lives tell us that our experience of grief is often a messy thing, sometimes even swinging from one extreme to the other. So, this morning as we consider what “hope” looks like in the Book of Lamentations, we see fundamentally, that it is a trust in the goodness of God even when our lives remain in ruins and our hearts remain broken. To paraphrase words from a favourite Leonard Cohen song, hope is less like a “victory march”, and more like a “cold and broken hallelujah”.

(Kim Pierrot)

Consolations & Desolations of 2011

It is our custom at CapChurch on the first Sunday of the year to thank God for our consolations from the past year; to lament our desolations and to commit our lives to God afresh for the year ahead. This year Brian Dean brings us our Consolations & Desolations sermon.

Do Not Fear

SCRIPTURE TEXT: ISAIAH 35:1-10

“Don’t be afraid.” When someone says this to you, does it serve to increase or decrease your anxiety? These are words that God speaks to his people throughout the Bible, and we find them today in Isaiah 35. And yet the call to “be strong” and “not fear” requires a bit of unpacking for us to hear it in the way it was intended, since it is linked here with images of God’s judgment.

In this, the second installment in our Advent series “What Are We Waiting For?” we get a glimpse of what it will be like when Jesus returns to this earth and how an understanding of this can change how we wait right now.

Sermon was not recorded this week but transcript is available at the link below. Go to bottom of this introduction for link to the pdf file.

WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR?

Text: Isaiah 11:1-10–A Saviour who Returns to Restore

Each year at advent we share something with those who have preceded us in faith in the God of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebbeca—we wait. We wait for God our Saviour to appear. Those who have preceded us in faith waited for Christ to appear. He did. For over two millennia we have celebrated Christ’s advent [arrival in this world] as well as what he accomplished in his death and resurrection. But we still wait. We wait for his next advent [coming to his place as sovereign in a new heaven and new earth]. What are we waiting for? We are waiting for the peaceable kingdom described in Isaiah 11: 1-10 and pictured in the painting you see here by Edward Hicks.

Edward Hicks was a Quaker minister who made signs and ornamental paintings in Pennsylvania. He painted more than one hundred Peaceable Kingdoms, using the theme from Isaiah 11:6-9:”The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them…”The scene in the background shows William Penn’s treaty with the Indians, thereby interpreting the Quaker experiment with the beginning of the new era of peace on earth.

Today we look at what the Saviour who returns will restore.

Find the written transcript of the sermon HERE

I Am The Way, the Truth and The Life

In this, the final sermon in the series we have called “The Seven Faces of Jesus”, we consider Jesus’ declaration: “I am the Way, the Truth, the Life”. While some take great comfort in Jesus’ words, others might wonder whether He isn’t being a tad exclusivistic when He declares himself to be the only way to the Father.

Hearing these important words in their proper gospel context helps us to understand more about what Jesus was actually claiming about Himself, and also what it actually means for us to follow in the “Jesus Way”.

I wonder if you have noticed a progression as we have moved through our series “The Seven Faces of Jesus”. Today, we consider Jesus’ claim: “I am the Vine”. This sentence finishes with Jesus making a statement about us as well: “you are the branches”. Jesus’ claims are becoming more confrontational as the weeks have gone by. It is no coincidence that as Jesus moves closer and closer to his death on the cross in John’s gospel, He makes claims that invite, perhaps even demand, a response from his listeners. If I accept that Jesus is the vine, then that makes each of us lowly branches. How do we feel about that? How does that change the way we live our lives, interact with Jesus, and with others? Today, we hear from Cory and Linda Smith as they share their reflections on this face of Jesus from John 15.

(Kim Pierrot)

By the way, did you know that the first gentile church after Christ’s resurrection was in the region where Uganda is located? Yes that is right. In Acts chapter 8 the Ethiopian Eunuch is converted and takes a scroll of Isaiah home to his native land just north of what is now Lake Victoria in Uganda. History tells us that his witness started a community of Christians. Some of the oldest churches are in this area. In meeting Moses you are meeting nearly 2000 years of Christian witness and heritage from this corner of God’s world. Cool!