"Love God. Love Your Neighbour. Love Yourself." (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge

Sunday October 25, 2026
Scripture Readings:  Leviticus 19:1-2, 15-18, Deuteronomy 6:1-5, Matthew 22:34-40


I’ve got two things to say about the reading from the gospel of Matthew that we just heard.  First of all, this is probably my favourite passage of scripture.  I know that most of you know that I have many favourite passages, but this is the passage that I chose to have printed on my business cards, and this is the passage that you’ll find at the bottom of every email that I send.  Love God.  Love your neighbour.  The whole message of God can be summed up in these two things.

The other thing that I have to say about this passage though, is that it’s really hard to preach a sermon on such a perfect piece of scripture.  What more could I possibly say about it?  Love God.  Love your neighbour.  Anything else I might say runs the risk of diluting Jesus’s message.  So I’m going to have to tread very carefully this morning.

One strategy for preaching – giving you a peak behind the curtain this week – is to try and find the point of tension, the point of discomfort in the scripture, and lean into that.  Explore the tension and what makes it uncomfortable, and often a thought-provoking message will emerge.  But that is where I am struggling with this piece of scripture – it resonates so deeply with me that I struggle to find a point of tension to lean into, and I’m worried that I’m about to preach a very bland and boring sermon about a piece of scripture that I hold so dearly to my heart!

So where can I find the tension-point in this passage?

If you’ve been following along with our scripture readings this fall, then you already know where we are in the story of Jesus’s life.  We’re in the final days now.  Jesus has already entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, he’s been doing and saying a whole bunch of provocative things, and now he is in dialogue with the officials and leaders in the temple.  They keep trying to trip him up, looking for any excuse to arrest him.  And if we step out of the storyline for a moment, we also know that in three days Jesus is going to be arrested, in four days he is going to die on a cross, and in 6 days, the tomb is going to be empty for he will be risen from the dead.

Needless to say, in this moment in the story, tensions are high.  And the Pharisees – who were all experts in the Law, so it’s curious why Jesus’s questioner is explicitly named as a lawyer – they ask Jesus, what is the most important commandment of them all.

And Jesus – well, he gives a very orthodox answer.  We saw in our readings from Deuteronomy and from Leviticus that he is quoting directly from the scripture when he says that the most important commandment is to love God with our whole being (Deuteronomy); and to love our neighbours as ourselves (Leviticus).  Jesus wasn’t even the first person to suggest this pairing – a generation before Jesus, Rabbi Hillel had said essentially the same thing when he was asked to recite the entire law while standing on one foot. Love God, love your neighbour, and the rest is commentary.

Which leaves me with the same problem that I started with.  Where’s the tension point in the reading that can help me preach a sermon this week that isn’t boring?  The setting is full of tension, but what Jesus is saying isn’t.

Or is it?

How are Jesus’s listeners going to hear what he is saying?  Are they going to nod along with him and say, “Very wise.  Very profound of you, Jesus.”  Or are they, are we, going to gradually come to the realization that they, we, haven’t always been able to keep these commands perfectly?

I don’t know about you, but I know that I don’t always perfectly love God with all of my being.  There are times, as I go about my every-day life, when God is not at the forefront of my mind.  There are times when I even do things that make God sad.  I, like most if not all of us, am trapped in systems that cause harm to God’s creation and cause harm to God’s children – a dependence on fossil fuels is one that comes to mind, or economic systems that always favour some and oppress others.  I think that maybe these sorts of things make God weep.

And I don’t always love all of my neighbours perfectly.  Sometimes a thoughtless word slips out of my mouth or from my fingertips that causes pain in another person.

Heck, I don’t even always love myself, which we can probably consider the third part of the love commandment.

And so even though I keep this scripture in front of me, at the bottom of my emails and on the back of the cards that I give out, even though I try to use this scripture as the lens that I interpret the rest of the bible through – even with all of this, I’m still not able to keep this commandment perfectly.  My human-ness trips me up.

And I wonder if this might be that tension point in the reading that I was looking for.  Jesus’s listeners, then and now, already know what the right answer is; but they and we are also aware that we don’t always follow what we know to be right.

If you were to read on ahead a little bit, Jesus’s questioners are chastened by his answer, and we’re told that they didn’t dare to ask him any more questions.

But I don’t necessarily think that the answer is to simply throw up our hands and walk away, because the other message that Jesus gives to us is a message of grace.  Even when we mess up and miss the mark, God doesn’t stop loving us.  God’s love is without conditions and limitless in its scope.  When we are able to love God, I think that maybe we are just reflecting the love that comes from God back to God; and when we are able to love each other and love our neighbours, then it is God’s love that is flowing through us.

We are human.  We all mess up sometimes… and if you are someone who never messes up, please let me know what your secret is!  But God’s love never ends, and God is working in you and working in me by the Holy Spirit, allowing us to love more perfectly.  Thanks be to God.

 

 

Image:  “Love”
Babak Fakhamzadeh on flickr
Used with Permission

"The Currency of the Kingdom of God" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday October 18, 2026
Scripture Readings:  Isaiah 45:1-7 and Matthew 22:15-22

After taking a break for Thanksgiving last weekend, our Bible reading today bring us right back to the last week of Jesus’s life. Jesus has entered the city of Jerusalem riding on a donkey accompanied by people waving branches, spreading out their cloaks on the road ahead of him, and crying out to him, “Hosanna! Save us!”

And right away, Jesus starts poking the bear – doing and saying things that are going to provoke the people with the power, the temple officials.  He flips over the tables in the temple, the dwelling place of God, accusing the money-changers of turning a house of prayer into a den of robbers.  He restored the sight of people who were blind, and strengthened the legs of people who were lame, right there in the temple, in the place where he had no official authority.  He told some very pointed parables that accused the actual authorities of not truly knowing God.  And it’s still only Monday!

The authorities then have their chance to have a go at Jesus, and the reading that we heard today is the first of a series of trick questions that they are going to be asking him, trying to get him to say something blasphemous – trying to get him to say something that will allow them to officially arrest him.

I can almost picture this scene playing out in a movie.  A group approaches Jesus and they start to flatter him, buttering him up, and then at the very end comes the catch.  “Tell us then, what you think.  Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?”

So here is where the catch lies.  The people who are questioning him are two groups who would normally not have anything to do with each other.  The Pharisees were intent on holding up the Law, the Torah.  To them, the idea of owing anything to a foreign dictator was blasphemous. You paid your tithes to the temple, and that was it.  But to the other half of his questioners, the Herodians, the answer was, of course you have to pay your taxes.  The Herodians were those who supported King Herod, the puppet king representing the Roman Emperor, and law and order and taxes were at the core of their beliefs.

So no matter which way Jesus answers their question, he is going to piss off one group or the other.  Say that it’s lawful to pay taxes and the Pharisees are going to be upset and accuse him of heresy.  Say that it’s not lawful to pay taxes, and the Herodians are going to be upset and accuse him of treason.  Heresy or treason.  Jesus is in a no-win situation.

Until he gives an answer that doesn’t satisfy either group, but also doesn’t give them anything to accuse him on either.  We have this well-known scene where Jesus asks for a coin, points out the image of the Emperor on the coin, and says, “Give to the emperor the things that belong to the emperor, and give to God the things that belong to God.”

In other years when we’ve read this story, I’ve pointed out that ultimately everything belongs to God.  God is the creator of all, and reigns over all of creation.  Even the emperor is created in God’s image and belongs to God – on that coin, the people are looking at an image of the image of God.  Our God is the King who reigns over other kings, the Lord who rules over other Lords.

So in one sense, Jesus is giving a very orthodox answer.  Since everything ultimately belongs to God, we must give everything back to God.  But I want to take this story one step deeper and ask, what is the coinage of the kingdom of God?  Because I really don’t think that a coin with an image of the Emperor is what is going to buy our way into heaven.

I apologize to our treasurers and our church stewards, because I’m about to talk about money in a way that isn’t helpful to church budgets.  But I really don’t think that we are able to buy favour with God through our Loonies and Toonies.  Jesus tells all sorts of parables that point out that material wealth isn’t what counts in God’s eyes; in fact, he warns us not to store up treasure on earth but rather treasure in heaven.  But that brings us back to the question – what is the currency of heaven?  How can we store up treasure in the kingdom of heaven if we don’t even know what coins are used there?

But I think that maybe Jesus has told us.  What has his ministry been about?  It’s been about healing people.  It’s been about lifting up the people who were downtrodden by society.  It’s been about feeding hungry crowds.  It’s been about pushing back against oppressive authorities.  It’s been about building community where people share with one another and care for one another.  These are the things that matter in the kingdom of God.

So we can give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s – we can give all the gold and silver coins to the emperor because these things don’t matter in God’s sight.  What matters to God is that we are doing justice, and loving kindness, and walking humbly on this earth.  I will concede to our treasurers and church stewards that sometimes these things require money, so I’m not going to advocate for cutting out the offering.  But ultimately, it is what we do with the resources entrusted to us that matter.  It is about using our resources – our time, our talents, and yes, our treasure, to be agents of healing and justice and love and mercy and goodness.

And may it be so.  Amen.

 

A Roman coin bearing the image of Tiberius Augustus,
Roman Emperor from 14-37 CE.
Image used with permission.

 

"From Gratitude to Generosity" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday October 11, 2026 – Thanksgiving Weekend
Scripture Readings:  Deuteronomy 8:7-18 and Luke 17:11-19

Happy Thanksgiving!  This is a weekend that comes around every year and it gives us an opportunity to pause, and notice, and say thank you.  This is a weekend when many of us will be gathering with friends or family or chosen family to share a meal.  As the different generations run around, we have a chance to make memories; and if we aren’t part of a big gathering this year, it is a weekend when many of us look back on the memories that we carry of meals shared.

And as we break bread together – and turkey – and squash – and potatoes – and pie – in many Thanksgiving gatherings there will be an intentional space to pause and name the things we are grateful for. Grateful for the food.  Grateful for the company.  Grateful for the beautiful October day.

And I, like many of us, have been thinking this week about gratitude, and what gratitude actually is.  Because I think that gratitude is more than just a feeling.  Yes, it is something that we can feel – gratitude is a combination of love and joy and maybe just a bit of yearning as well.  But rather that just a feeling that comes and goes, I think that true gratitude changes us.  We are transformed by gratitude, in the very best possible way.  Once we’ve experienced gratitude, we experience the world differently; we approach the world differently.

And while the story from the gospel of Luke is obviously a story about gratitude – ten lepers are healed, but only one of them comes back to Jesus to say thank you – I think that the reading we heard from Deuteronomy is also about gratitude.

Some of you have heard me say this before, but I love the book of Deuteronomy! (Well, maybe not the parts that talk about stoning people or keeping slaves, but the overall message of Deuteronomy is a powerful one, all about thresholds and hope for the future.) If you remember the story of the Old Testament, you will remember that the Ancient Israelite people had been slaves in Egypt; but then God appeared to Moses in a burning bush.  Moses went to Pharaoh and demanded, “Let my people go,” then Moses parted the waters of the sea so that the people could cross over to safety.  After that, the people spent 40 years wandering through the desert wilderness, dependent on God to guide them with a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, dependent on God to feed them (manna and quail, anyone?), and dependent on God to provide water in the desert, water that miraculously flowed from a stone.

Deuteronomy is set at the end of those 40 years, as the people are about to cross the Jordan River and enter the Promised Land.  It is a threshold moment as the people are about to leave behind the hardship of the desert to enter a land flowing with milk and honey. The reading that we heard this morning begins by speaking of the abundance that the people are about to encounter:  wheat, barley, fig trees, and pomegranates; springs and underground waters; bread in abundance.  And God is worried that the people are going to forget the lessons that they have learned in their 40 years of wandering.

You see, in the desert, they had to depend on God for everything and there was an immediacy to their dependence; but when they encounter abundance, there is a risk that they will forget that God is still the giver of all good things.  And God reminds the people to continue to give thanks to God as the giver of all good things even when the fiery pillar fades, even when water can be drawn from wells rather than trickling down the face of a rock, even when dry flakey manna is replaced by fresh vegetables and recognizable grains.  God is still the giver of all good things, even when God is less visible in the giving.

And so for us, whether we are in a desert period of life or a “promised land” period of life, God is the giver of all good things; and when we recognize this and give thanks to God, then we are freed to live our lives without fear of running out.  Even in the wilderness, the manna was refreshed every day; and in the Promised Land, there was food and water for everyone.

A couple of years ago, I spent a week in Ottawa with the Canadian Foodgrains Bank, advocating to Members of Parliament of all political colours to maintain and increase Canada’s foreign aid spending on sustainable agriculture around the world.  There was one MP meeting that I was in, along with two other volunteers, and in this one I was taking the lead.  I began by explaining the work of the Canadian Foodgrains Bank, and ended by saying, “Our vision is a world where nobody is hungry.”  The Member of Parliament we were meeting with jumped in and said, “I believe that this world is possible,” and we replied with, “So do we – that’s why we’re here!”  Out of gratitude for our abundance, our country should be able to share with others who have less.

God is a God of abundance, and I truly believe that God dreams of a world where nobody is hungry.  God fed the people in the desert, and God provided for the people in the Promised Land; and God instructed them to remember to give thanks at all times and in all places.

Recognizing God’s abundance, and then pausing to give thanks, frees us from fear of running out, frees us from fear of scarcity.  Gratitude then frees us to be generous towards others, living our lives with open hearts and open hands, sharing with others out of our abundance, because we know that God is the source of our abundance.

Gratitude is more than a feeling – gratitude transforms us towards generosity.  And this is where I’ll put in a plug for our Thanksgiving / Giving Thanks gratitude activity. The details are on the insert in the bulletin, and will be appearing on Facebook in 10 minutes or so.  Each day for the next week, there is a gratitude prompt, a suggested donation, and a prayer, as we let our gratitude transform us towards generosity.

For God is a God of abundance, not just today, but God’s abundance will persist even when the leaves have all fallen and the pumpkin pies are just a memory.  God’s abundance will persist even when the river freezes and the gardens are hidden under a blanket of snow.  God’s abundance will persist when the leaves unfurl and seeds are sown.  Because God’s abundance is never confined to a weekend or a season but is for every season; and our gratitude is never confined to a weekend but is something that we can live 12 months of the year.  Thanks be to God!  Amen.

 

 

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
(Don’t forget to save room for dessert!)
Photo:  K. Jones, Thanksgiving Dinner 2021

"Wait, What Did You Just Say?!?!" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday October 4 – Worldwide Communion Sunday
Scripture Reading:  Matthew 21:33-46

Some of you know that I have many favourite stories from scripture, so you may be surprised to hear that the passage we heard today is NOT one of them.  I really don’t like this story that Jesus is telling; and I especially don’t like reading it on Worldwide Communion Sunday.  How can we reconcile a story that is essentially kicking some of the workers out of the vineyard, alongside a table of abundance where there is a seat for everyone?  How do we reconcile a story where Jesus explicitly says, “the kingdom of God will be taken away from you” with a feast where everyone is welcome at the table?

So it’s fair to say that I struggled with the scripture reading this week!  And I’m not sure that I came to any fully satisfactory conclusions either.

Last week, I mentioned that most of our readings from late September through to the end of November this year are going to be coming from the last week of Jesus’s life.  At this point in the story, it’s the day after Palm Sunday, and only 3 days before Jesus is going to be arrested, 4 days before he is going to be crucified.

Not only are tensions high because Jesus has been doing and saying some things that have challenged the authorities, but tensions are also high because the city of Jerusalem has probably 3 times as many people as usual due to the Passover celebration so streets are crowded, and Roman soldiers would have been especially alert to any sign of disturbance.

And Jesus doesn’t lay low either.  In the last week of his life, he confronts the religious authorities – they ask him questions to try and trip him up, and Jesus tells some very pointed parables – like the one we heard this morning – that aren’t designed to comfort his listeners but to make them uncomfortable.

But what do we make of that statement, “the kingdom of God will be taken from you”?  I will say that this verse has been interpreted in very harmful ways in the past, with people interpreting it as Jesus saying that Jewish people have been kicked out of God’s favour.  But since Jesus himself was Jewish, as was the author of the gospel, as were the first readers of the gospel, that is definitely not what Jesus was saying.

So what might he have meant?  I really struggle with this verse.

When I look back to the parable that precedes this statement, I asked myself, what did the workers in the vineyard do wrong?  They decided that they were in charge.  They weren’t going to honour the owner of the vineyard, and eventually they killed the child of the vineyard owner.

This parable follows immediately after the parable we read last week, and last week I mentioned that one of the keys to understanding Jesus’s parables is that you can usually equate whoever has power in the story with God.  So in this parable, God would be the owner of the vineyard.

So then the next question becomes, how, in the world outside of the parable, do we disrespect the owner of the vineyard, try to take over, and maybe even kill the messengers and children of the owner?

Those of you who don’t like it when I get lower-case-p political, this is your cue to tune out for the next couple of minutes.  But I think that we can see this across time and across space.  The actions of the workers in the vineyard is a pattern that we can see repeated again and again.  People with power try to interpret God’s message to suit their own ends; and people who speak truth to power, who try to point the way back to God, the owner of the vineyard, don’t usually meet a good end.

A historic example might come from Central America in the 80s – various countries were using the church and church teachings to oppress people who were poor, and Archbishop Romero was one of many liberation theologians who tried to turn the church and their country back to an understanding of God always being on the side of anyone who is poor and oppressed; and Archbishop Romero was one among many who were killed for bringing this message.

But I also see this happening in the world today.  The rise of Christian Nationalism in so many places around the world screams to me corrupt workers in the vineyard – people wanting power, taking God’s beautiful message and twisting it to favour themselves and people who think and believe like them.  And in some places, the parallels between Christian Nationalism and Jesus’s parable are even more striking, as God’s beloved children are detained, arrested, sent to detention centres, tortured, and even killed.

I really don’t like this parable that Jesus tells, but I have to admit that I see this parable playing out in the world around me.

But that brings us to Jesus’s concluding statement – the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to people that produce the fruits of the kingdom.

Do I believe that God chooses to remove Their grace from someone?  No – that doesn’t fit with my understanding of a God who is endlessly and unconditionally loving and forgiving.  But do I think that there are some people who choose to remove themselves from God’s presence?  Maybe.  When we gather at the table in a couple of minutes, the invitation is an invitation to everyone – no matter who you are, no matter where you come from, no matter how you pray, no matter who or how you love, no matter the language you speak or the colour of your skin, there is a place at the table for you and this invitation is for you.  And I wonder if there might be some people out there who wouldn’t be comfortable sitting at such a diverse and expansive table as this.  I wonder if there might be some people who would choose to remove themselves from the table rather than be asked to sit next to “that person,” whoever "that person" might be.

It’s still not an easy parable that Jesus tells, but I think that it is one that calls us to honour God and God’s vision for the world.  Don’t be like the workers in the vineyard, thinking that we have sole ownership over God’s message, bringing harm to God’s beloved children.  And there is always a place at the table for you.  Thanks be to God!

 

"Jesus in the Wine Press"
Used with Permission