Reflections of a Canadian Churchman

My good friend and colleague, the Rev. Heather McCance, incumbent of St. Andrew's Church in Scarborough, was interviewed the the CBC radio program Spark , this week. Her interview touches on how the internet has revolutionized the distribution of sermons (a topic dear to my heart) in both positive and negative ways, and how the internet has facilitated "sermon-theft." The podcast of the interview can be found here . Heather did a fantastic job. I hope you all take the time to listen to it.

“When the great crowd of the Judeans learned that he was there, they came not only because of Jesus but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. So the chief priests planned to put Lazarus to death as well, since it was on account of him that many of the Judeans were deserting and believing in him.” -- John 12:9-11 Darkness cannot withstand the light that is cast upon it. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it,” writes St. John in the opening verses of his gospel narrative. It may seem as though darkness rules the present age, for we live in an age of pessimism. We live in a time when words of good news are dismissed as sentimental and idealistic, and a world in which those who pronounce good news are thought of as peddlers of starry-eyed dreams. If there is a good news story to be heard, it is relegated to the end of the broadcast, to the final page, below the fold, and if some better bad news comes along, we will kill the good news alt...

Last night I was listening to a portion of the 2009 Dalton Camp Lecture being aired on the CBC Radio programme, Ideas . The lecturer was Sue Gardner, the executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation. During the portion that I heard, Gardner spoke about how the internet has let us into worlds that would be impenetrable to us in another time.  In particular, the rise of blogs, chatrooms, and group websites allows us to peer into the world of individuals and groups radically unlike ourselves.  For example, Gardner spoke about surveying the blogs of conspiracy theorists. With "in person" social interaction, we tend to naturally gravitate to those with whom we agree and build relationships and networks with them.  Without relationships, it is difficult to understand the minds of hearts of those radically "other" from us and to feel empathy for them.  Typically, the chief way we overcome prejudice and build bridges of reconciliation is ...

This past Tuesday was the feast day of St. Gregory of Nyssa, that great Cappadocian father (died c. A.D. 395). There is much that could be said of this luminary of the early Church. We might speak of his excellent early education and training in rhetoric; we might speak of his difficult episcopacy, which he reluctantly took, later to be exiled under trumped up charges of embezzlement by his Arian foes; we could speak of his vindication and return; we could speak of his biblical exegesis and preaching, his mystical and ascetical writing, his ardent defense of the Nicene faith against his Arian foes; we could speak of contributions to our understanding of the triune God, and especially, the person and working of the Holy Spirit; we could speak of all these things, but in doing so, I fear we may fail to see something very important about the man behind the doctor of the faith, something very ordinary, prosaic and indeed common to our human condition. In perusing Father Stephen Reynold’s w...

In Luke 13:1-9, the passage appointed for Lent 3, Jesus counters the insecurity of a group of people that approach him about God's wrath upon sinners with a parable about God giving the tree that fails to bear fruit another season to grow. The individuals come to Jesus' hoping that he will confirm that they are not as bad as others who have died under horrible circumstances, apparently the wrath of God poured out upon their faithlessness. Jesus, of course, rebukes them for their own sinfulness and warns them of a similar fate if they do not repent. At this point, we might shudder at that time honoured tactic of "evangelism by fear." But, Jesus does not leave things with this admonition, rather, he engages in his favourite passtime of storytelling. He tells them a parable about a man who is quick to cut down a tree in his vineyard that bears no fruit. But this man has a gardener who knows the virtue of patience and of careful tending of the plants in his charge. ...