Wycliffe College will be hosting their annual Preaching Day on Monday, February 26, 2018. Wycliffe always manages to put together an excellent program featuring keynote speakers that are among some of the most theologically insightful preachers and teachers of our day. This year’s conference looks to be no exception to the rule as Wycliffe welcomes Jason Byassee to speak on the theme of “Christ Meets Us in the Psalms.” (more…)
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Bonhoeffer on What it Means “To Believe in the Church”
I taught an intensive intercession course on the “Life and Thought of Dietrich Bonhoeffer” during the first week of January this year. While the students were responsible for completing some reading prior to our week together in class—including Christianne Tietz’s excellent, new short biography, Theologian of Resistance: The Life and Thought of Dietrich Bonhoeffer—most of the major engagement with the primary sources in the Bonhoeffer corpus has been taking place over the past few weeks following the conclusion of our time together in class. In recent days, the students would have encountered this remarkable passage from Bonhoeffer’s doctoral dissertation in which he addresses the question of what is means “to believe in the church.” The passage is noteworthy not only because it was penned by a theology student who was a mere twenty-one years old at the time, but also because it anticipates in many ways the central themes of Bonhoeffer’s ecclesiology that will come to the fore throughout his life. (more…)
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Back by Popular Demand
Those who missed my presentation at last year’s Wycliffe College Preaching Day will have an additional opportunity to join me in reflecting upon the realities of preaching with Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I will be leading a workshop at the upcoming Tyndale Preaching Conference on March 6 on the theme “Confessing Christ in Troubled Times: Bonhoeffer as a Resource for Preachers.” You can find more information about the conference and how to register here. (more…)
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Bonhoeffer: Following Jesus in a Fragmented World
I’m going to be delivering a series of presentations on the life and thought of Dietrich Bonhoeffer at Whitby Christian Assembly. The series will run for four Wednesday evenings starting at 7:00 pm, beginning on January 17. If you’re in the neighbourhood, come on out and join us. (more…)
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The Feast of the Holy Innocents and the Tyrannical Despiser of Humanity
There is something distinctly un-sentimental about the historical form that the Christian liturgical calendar has come to exhibit during the season of Christmas. The Feast of the Nativity is immediately followed the next day by the Feast of St. Stephen, the first Christian martyr. Today (December 28) is the Feast of the Holy Innocents, the date on the calendar set aside for commemorating the children massacred following the birth of Jesus as depicted in the Gospel of Matthew (2:16-18). In this way, the Christian liturgical calendar is simply following the brutal realism of Scripture. The coming of the Prince of Peace sets on edge the petty tyrants of our world like Herod. (more…)
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When a Hallmark Christmas Isn’t Good Enough
A Guest Post by Paul Johansen
This is the seventeenth in a series of posts engaging with the sermons in Leaps of Faith: Sermons from the Edge. This post is a reflection upon a Christmas Eve sermon entitled “When a Hallmark Christmas Isn’t Good Enough” (pp. 78-84). The Scriptural text for the sermon was Luke 2:1-20. (more…)
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The Song of the Son
With the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55) appearing as a potential reading in the lectionary last Sunday and again this coming Sunday and with the Annunciation to Mary (Luke 1:26-38) standing as the Gospel reading for the fourth Sunday of Advent, it seems timely to share an excerpt from a sermon entitled, “Let Heav’n and Nature Sing!” from my book Leaps of Faith: (more…)
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“Judgement”: A Sermon for the First Sunday of Advent
The following is the text of a sermon I preached at Fallingbrook Presbyterian Church in Scarborough on the first Sunday of Advent. The Scripture readings were Psalm 98 and Revelation 19:1-9.
Advent is my favourite season of the Christian year, but it seems like the observation of the season of Advent is becoming an increasingly counter-cultural activity. While Starbucks has been serving its Christmas blend in its signature Christmas cups for over a month and Swiss Chalet has been offering its festive meal for almost as long, Advent tells us we are still waiting. While the music blaring in malls and on radios announces that it is the most wonderful time of the year, Advent says to us “Not yet.” (more…)
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Review of “For the Life of the World”
Daniel W. Rempel has published a review of my book For the Life of the World: Jesus Christ and the Church in the Theologies of Dietrich Bonhoeffer in the Conrad Grebel Review. Towards the end of the review, he writes:
“For the Life of the World will benefit multiple readerships. For theologians, critical engagement with the work of Bonhoeffer and Hauerwas will provide a greater understanding of both theologians’ greater projects, with a reminder that theology should be rooted in the person and work of Jesus Christ for the benefit of his body, the church. (more…)
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A Quote from Ellen Davis for the Feast of Christ the King
The following is quotation from Ellen Davis’s rich collection of sermons, Preaching the Luminous Word, that seems especially appropriate for the Feast of Christ the King: (more…)
