We live in a fast-paced culture, with hectic schedules, stressful careers and incredible, competing demands on our time. Busy-ness is often seen as a mark of success, or importance. Unless you're God.

Sermon, "A Good Excuse," February 25, 2018

St. George's welcomes guest preacher Rev. Dr. Richard Topping, Principal of the Vancouver School of Theology

Church can be a sanctuary where we withdraw from the chaos of the world. Nonetheless, even the best protected sanctuary can have its predators.

Bad religion creates people who are self-serving, privilege gathering. Good religion creates people who live sacrificially for love of God and neighbor.

In these three little verses, Jesus is all about how to be in relationship with God, flipping societies’ expectations on their head. He says, this ain’t no insiders club – truth, is, its easier if in all the rest of your life you just don’t fit.

When we think of God as powerful, we assume that God's power is like human power: destructive, fearful. Jesus suggest God's power is more like mustard.

Our job is to scatter the seed of God's grace indiscriminately, with the trust that the outcome, the fruit, is God’s doing.

With Jesus, it’s both/and. Hearing and doing. Receiving and giving. And this is the pattern he sets for the Christian life, the whole human life.

Christianity is often thought of as a "family-friendly" faith. A youthful Jesus in the temple seems to suggest otherwise.

This is the full Christmas Day service. The sermon begins at 9:00 on Isaiah 52:7-10.