Reflections of a Canadian Churchman

“Just after daybreak, Jesus stood on the beach; but the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to them, ‘Children, you have no fish, have you?’ They answered him, ‘No.’ He said to them, ‘cast the net to the right side of the boat, and you will find some.’ So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in because there were so many fish. That disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, ‘It is the Lord!’ When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on some clothes, for he was naked, and jumped into the lake. But the other disciples came in the boat, dragging the net full of fish, for they were not far from the land, only about a hundred yards off.” (John 21:4-8) When we preach on this, the last of the Resurrection appearances in St. John’s Gospel, we rarely stop to ask the question, why was Peter fishing in the nude? After all, the story from which this short excerpt is taken contains so many wonderful images on which we might otherwise preach: the multitudinou

Before Jesus ascends into heaven in the final verses of St. Luke’s Gospel, he sat with his disciples and had a little Bible Study. We are told that “he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and he said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses to these things.” Just in case that had not fully understood, after following him through his ministry, after watching him be taken away to trial and execution, and then after seeing him appear to them not as a ghost, but in his physical body, he made it absolutely clear what his life, death, and resurrection meant (and continue to mean). The story of Jesus is about repentance and reconciliation, it is about facing our darkness that we might dwell in the light, it is about touching our brokenness that we might live in wholeness. It is difficult for u

The Good Friday liturgy is, without a doubt, the most solemn liturgy of the year. At the appointed hour the congregation assembles and the clergy enter the church in silence, dressed only in their black cassocks. The altar and chancel, having been stripped of all adornments the previous evening, appear stark and barren. The service begins with a solemn confession, without absolution. The absence of the absolution is striking and we might wonder where that particular liturgical event has gone, but as the liturgy unfolds, we come to understand that the entire liturgical enactment of our Lord’s passion is the absolution so desperately sought after by our wounded souls. Readings from Scripture then follow. First we hear of the suffering servant in Isaiah 53; next is chanted the words of the twenty-second psalm, the very cry of Jesus’ dereliction on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Next, come words from Hebrews, and finally, the long reading of St. John’s Passion. Foll