Psalm 104 – “Unity with of All Things” – July 14, 2019

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When you ask a congregation, especially Govans congregation for sermon topics, you never know what you’re going to get. I asked this congregation to complete the following question ”What does the Bible say about ________?” Shortly after that I received the following e-mail from choir member Doug Storey:

“Hi Tom, In response to your request for sermon topics, here is one I have been thinking about for a long time.

A book that influenced me many years ago was the slightly hippy-dippy effort to popularize Eastern philosophy, especially the Vedanta, by Alan Watts called “The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are.” In it, he provides a simplified version of the Hindu creation myth that goes something like this…

Matthew 17:1-8 – “Transfiguration and Thin Places” – March 3, 2019

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There is an expression attributed to ancient Celtic culture that has become fairly popular in the spiritual/faith circles of our day. The expression is “thin places.” The saying goes that heaven and earth are always only three feet apart, but in thin places, they are even closer. Thin places are physical places or even moments in time when the veil between the material and spiritual is pulled away or becomes transparent. Thin places can be ancient holy sites or particularly moving experiences of nature, or profound events in life such as the birth of a child or the death of a loved one. In all such times and places, we might think that God is coming closer to us, or the barrier that seems to exists between the Heaven and Earth crumbles. But, I wonder if that is really what is happening in those thin places.

Sermon – November 23, 2014 – Matthew 25:31-44

It’s like eating an orange!

I finally figured it out. We’ve been reading the Gospel of Matthew for weeks now and dealing with all these parables about judgement and Jesus refusing to open a locked door and people being cast into the outer darkness and weeping and gnashing of teeth and now today we have a group of people being called goats and being sent to the eternal fire that is prepared for the devil and his angels and I’ve finally figured it out. It’s like eating an orange. Reading a parable from Matthew is like eating orange. The eternal judgement stuff is the peel. You don’t eat that part! If you want to get to the good, sweet, juicy stuff in the parable you have to take off the peel. In the same way you have to remove the condemnation and punishment from Matthew’s parables.