George Hermanson

All We Need Is Love

Year C
Season of Easter
Pentecost Sunday

Acts 2:1-21
Read the Bible passage: Acts 2:1-21, The Message;   or   Acts 2:1-21, The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV).

Faith-provoking, historical insights into the lesson by David Ewart, Acts 2:1-21.  

Click here: George Hermanson's sermon, for an easy to print or email Adobe PDF version of this sermon.

The Rev. Dr. George Hermanson

In our Acts passage we get the marching orders for the church. We may puzzle over the meaning of the coming of the Spirit. They did then. The watchers ask if the disciples were drunk.

It is called ecstatic speech. We have all some experience of this when we are so excited we cannot get out our words or they tumble over one another. Then there are times the moment of awe is so great we say nothing. There is nothing magical about this experience, and the writer of Acts uses colourful and metaphorical language to tell of a moment when the world changed.

We all have a moment or event in which our world changed. We heard or saw things in new ways, heard or saw things that we had never had before. Our world was changed, we were changed.

Worry?

May 25, 2008
Edwards (Knox) United Church
Second Sunday After Pentecost

Matthew 6:24-34
Read the passage: The Message   or   The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

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The Rev. Dr. George Hermanson

Everyday we hear on the news, or read in the paper new things to be worried about. It is the economy.  It is crime.  It is terror.  It is the environment.  It is about the health of the church. It is about families. There is so much confronting us that some have given up watching the news or reading the papers.  Yet, the worries slide in.  The anxieties are there.

Anxiety can freeze us- make us fearful about the world around us.  This fear creates a climate of threat, of seeking vengeance.  Our anxiety is made more real when we realize we cannot control the future. Yet there are all sorts of gurus who offer us quick solutions to our fear, bromides that feel good in the moment but never solve the existential anxiety we carry around in our bodies.

Creativity

May 18, 2008
Edwards (Knox) United Church
Trinity Sunday

Genesis 1:1 - 2:4a
Read the passage: The Message   or   The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

Matthew 28:16-20
Read the passage: The Message   or   The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

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The Rev. Dr. George Hermanson

In both Genesis and the Psalm we have beautiful poetry that affirm that God is the Creator.  God’s power is ultimately defined as creative.  And it is good power.  It is persuasive power.  It gives life. It transforms chaos into order, and it brings new life of death.  It is the power of novelty.  God’s power is the source of entirely new possibilities.