Category: Sermon

(Modified 2021-03-21: Added audio)

I had a bad-attitude day on Friday.  I say a “bad-attitude day” and not a “bad day” because objectively, by every measure, Friday was a very good day.  I got to work from home.  It was a beautiful, sunny spring day.  I played board games online with dear friends I haven’t seen in person in over a year.  And I came to church in the quiet and the evening light to pray.  But despite everything objectively seeming quite lovely, I was in a snit pretty much from the word go.  I felt resentful and put-upon.  I felt smothered by obligations when all I wanted was for the world to leave me alone.  And round about the time I was dragging myself resentfully downstairs to the car to come to church for Evening Prayer, I started to lecture myself.  You have no earthly reason to feel this way, I sensibly pointed out.  You chose this work and these relationships.  And there can be no argument that by any objective measure, your life is not only “not that bad,” it’s pretty damn privileged.  So what are you whining about?

Continue reading “Lent 5, 2021 – Sermon”

St. Mary the Virgin Anglican Church, Lent 4, 2021 Revd. Canon Claude Schroeder
Lectionary: Numbers 21. 4-9, Psalm 107, Ephesians 2. 1-10, John 3. 14-21

A warm welcome to you all on this the Fourth Sunday in the season of Lent, in the year of our Lord, 2021!

Isn’t this just what we all have been waiting for?

Well, not really.

This may be the Fourth Sunday in Lent, but it is also the 52nd Sunday in the season of Corona-tide. It is one year ago now that we went into lockdown, and closed the doors of the church.

Hasn’t this been fun?

No. It has not been fun. Corona-tide has forced upon us all manner of self-denial, such that we might say, it’s been a year-long Lent.

Warren Buffet, the famous investment guru once said, “It’s only when the tide goes out that you discover who has been swimming without trunks.” Well, in these last 12 months the tide has certainly gone out of our lives. Things hidden have been revealed. The true state of things has been uncovered, and not just the quality of care given to the elderly in long-term care, but the quality and character of our relationships, attitudes, and commitments, and not to mention the state of our souls…

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Time to clear out the Temple: Sermon on John 2:13-22.
Third Sunday in Lent. St. Mary the Virgin Anglican Church, Regina.
Rev. Nathaniel Athian Deng Mayen. 

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer (Psalms 19: 14).

Brothers and sisters, the gospel reading calls us to attune our desires and needs to the Lord, where our salvation comes. It is time to clear out the Temple to set a room in our hearts for the teachings of our crucified and risen Lord, Jesus Christ. 

When the rector emailed me the readings for this Third Sunday in Lent, he commented, “Time to clear out the Temple!” This is a great gospel declaration that I would like to keep as the title for the sermon. It is appropriate for the Gospel of John that proclaims the death and resurrection of Jesus in the beginning of the ministry relative to the Synoptic Gospels that narrate the story closer to the end of Jesus’ ministry (Mk. 11:11-19; Matt. 21:12-13; and Luke 19:45-48). 

Continue reading “Lent 3, 2021 – Sermon”

St. Mary the Virgin Anglican Church, Lent 2, February 28, 2021 Canon Claude Schroeder.

Sermon on Mark 8. 31-38

The season of Lent, as we have been learning, was established in the early church as a period of preparation for the “Paschal Feast”, which we call Easter, that is the joyful victory celebration over sin, death, and the devil which Jesus accomplished through His suffering, death, and Resurrection. Lent was also a time when convents to the Christian faith were prepared for that moment when in Baptism they were marked out as followers of Jesus Christ, were united to Jesus in His death and Resurrection, sealed with the Holy Spirit, adopted into the family of God, and were made members of the Body of Christ. God willing, we will be celebrating Easter baptisms at St. Mary’s this year!

But who is this Jesus Christ, and what does it mean for us to follow Him?  Our Gospel lesson today puts before us the centrality of the suffering, rejection, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ for our understanding of who He is, and our life as Christians. 

Continue reading “Lent 2, 2021 – Sermon”

A period of forty days is significant in scripture, and is repeated over and over:

We heard in the Penitential Rite on Ash Wednesday that the forty days of Lent are the Church’s preparation for the great feast at Easter, and that that preparation takes the form of “self-examination and repentance, prayer, fasting and self-denial, and reading and meditation on God’s holy Word” (BCP pp. 611-612). 

• Genesis 7 – in the great flood, rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights.
• Exodus 24 – Moses was on the mountain with God forty days and forty nights.
• Numbers 13 – the Hebrew spies were in in the land of Canaan forty days.
• 1 Samuel 17 – the giant Goliath tormented the Israelite army for forty days before David killed him.
• 1 Kings 19 – when Elijah was on the run from Jezebel, an angel fed him a meal of bread and water, and on the strength of it he walked forty days from Beer-Sheba to Mount Horeb.
• Jonah 3 – Jonah’s prophecy to Nineveh was that they had forty days to repent.

And Mark tells us in his Gospel that after Jesus was baptized by John in the Jordan River, he went into the wilderness for forty days and was tempted by Satan.

Continue reading “Lent 1, 2021 – Sermon”

St. Mary’s Anglican Church, Ash Wednesday, Feb 17. 2021 Canon Claude Schroeder

“The word “Lent “ comes from on old  English word ‘lencten” meaning ‘spring-time ’ which isn’t particularly helpful in  mid February on the Canadian Prairies  where we are just starting to come out of a particularly brutal polar vortex.

Besides what does Lent have to do with spring-time?

Nothing. 

Lent, as we heard in the exhortation was, in the early Church, a penitential season of preparation for baptism, and the annual journey of remembrance towards the celebration of Easter.

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St. Mary’s Anglican Church, Epiphany 6, Feb. 14, 2021. Canon Claude Schroeder

Rector’s Report to the Annual General Meeting

At a recent video conference, the clergy of the Diocese were asked to share in small groups their response to some questions, including “How have you been affected by the pandemic?” “How has your parish coped during this time?”

I shared that it has been a bit like the magician who attempted the trick of pulling the table cloth out from under the dishes and glasses on the table, without disturbing them. According to the laws of physics, it’s not much of a trick at all, because when you pull the cloth, the dishes stay put on account of what physicists call  “inertia”, which is the property of matter that describes its resistance to any change in its motion.  Only in this case, when the magician yanked the table-cloth, while some of the dishes and glassware, thanks to inertia, remained in place, others landed in broken pieces on the floor, which has required a certain amount of clean up and re-setting of the table.

Continue reading “Last Sunday after Epiphany, 2021 – Sermon”

Sermon for St. Mary’s Anglican – by Henry Friesen           February 7, 2021

Scriptures for the 5^th Sunday of Epiphany:  Isaiah 40:21-31, Psalm 147: 1-11, I Corinthians 9:16-23 and  Mark1:29-39

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts together, be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.

Questions That Push Us Toward God

            Asking the right question is one of the most incisive ways to get to the heart of any issue or problem. Your family Doctor listens to your explanation but then begins to ask pointed questions – the better the questions, the more certain her or she is about what the treatment options are. Parents can only understand their child if they ask the questions that will reveal what is really going on with their child, what is behind their discomfort, anxiousness or sadness. I suggest to you this morning that good questions will also reveal your spiritual malaise or areas where you and I have forgotten the reality of God’s presence.

Continue reading “Epiphany 5, 2021 – Sermon”

St. Mary the Virgin Anglican Church, January 31, 2021 The Fourth Sunday after Epiphany
Revd. Canon Claude Schroeder. Sermon on Mark 1. 21-28

In this season of Epiphany, we have been celebrating and considering the means by which Jesus Christ becomes visible and known in the world. In our Gospel lesson today from St. Mark, we have another wonderful and powerful “epiphany.” Who is Jesus Christ? He is the Holy One of God comes to release His people from the grip of the unclean spirits of the Evil One which has holds them captive! 

This manifestation of both the power and identity of Jesus Christ comes to us perhaps as a bit of challenge. In our modern world, we generally believe that evil is simply a personal and/ or systemic problem, that can we address by means of education and legislation, government programs and improved technologies, all of which require a lot of effort and a lot of money!  But the conception of reality that emerges from the pages of the New Testament suggests that this is inadequate. There are radically evil, demonic spiritual forces at work in the world which actively assault, enslave, corrupt and destroy the creatures of God, and from which we need to be protected and delivered. Jesus Christ has come to do precisely that.

Continue reading “Epiphany 4, 2021 – Sermon”

If you follow the schedule for the Psalter as it is laid out in the Book of Common Prayer, you would have read Psalm 106 last Thursday evening.  It’s a long psalm – 48 verses.  The purpose of the song was to remind Israel of their history, of who they were as a people.  Beginning at the Red Sea, it moves through the history of the nation, reminding the listener of events they had been learning about all their lives, as they were set down in the Pentateuch.

Here are some of the highlights of Jewish history as recounted by Psalm 106:

Continue reading “Epiphany 3 2021 Sermon”