The Church of the Holy Trinity is a community of people who seek to express Christian faith through lives of integrity, justice and compassion. We foster lay leadership, include the doubter and the marginalized, and challenge oppression wherever it may be found.
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 Sermon preached by James Harbeck at Church of the Holy Trinity, Toronto, January 29, 2012
Readings:
Deuteronomy 18:15–20; 1 Corinthians 8:1–13; Mark 1:21–28
In the Gospel, it says the people in the synagogue were astonished at the teaching of Jesus, because he taught them as one having authority, not as the scribes did. After he cast out the demon, they said to each other, “A new teaching – with authority!”
What does that mean here? Does it mean that the scribes would go up and say [namby-pamby voice] “Oh, well, you know, I think maybe you should sort of do this or something,” and Jesus said “OK, you, do this! You, do that!”
Well, not exactly. What it [...]
Here we are – nearly at the end of Advent – one week from today all the preparations of Advent will be over and we will be celebrating the birth of the Christ Child.
Today I want to talk to you about Black Cake and Advent – because the two are closely related. Those of you who are not from the Islands will be saying “What on earth is Black Cake?” and those of you who are from the Islands will be saying “How come she knows about Black Cake?”
My grandfather was a sea captain and he owned a citrus plantation in the Islands. He moved his family there so that when he and my uncles were at sea, my grandmother and aunt could run the plantation – my mother was the youngest by far in the family so she didn’t get to do that. [...]
Today, we continue our Advent journey walking in the Light amidst darkness, with a call to “prepare the way of the Lord” and “make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God” as Isaiah says or to “Make ready the way of the Lord, clear a straight path” as Mark says.
Advent is a time of preparing our hearts, minds and our world for the coming of God. We wait in this time of darkness, hoping for the Light. As Sherman spoke of last week, many cultures and many faiths celebrate the hope for Light in the face of darkness during this time—Hannukkah, the Festival of Lights, with its 8 days of candle lighting celebrating how [...]
All of us here today have suffered sickness, have had troubles and tragedies, and perhaps have even faced despair and the death of a loved one. There isn’t one person here in this church who hasn’t experienced loneliness, felt overwhelmed, or at times felt hopeless and full of doubt.
We all wish we could face everything that life throws at us with courage and faith, but sometimes as Peter’s letter put it in today’s reading “You may have to suffer the distress of many trials.” We find ourselves experiencing a terrible “dark night of the soul,” and even when friends and family surround us with love we can feel lost and all alone.”
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Fear
Just last week we celebrated Christ’s rising from [...]
Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24 Psalm 100 Ephesians 1:15-23 Matthew 25:31-46
by Sherman Hesselgrave
Holy One, you have called us to be the living stones with which you seek to build your realm of living justice on earth. Make us worthy of this great calling, and open our hearts and minds to recognize your Spirit working in our midst. Amen.
Last Wednesday, at the midweek Eucharist, we commemorated St Margaret of Scotland, whose feast day it was. Margaret, the 11th-century Anglo-Saxon princess who married King Malcolm III of Scotland, used her position of privilege and her wealth to provide relief to the homeless, the hungry, and the orphaned, as well as to redeem many Anglo-Saxons who had been sold into slavery by their Norman conquerors. Not [...]
 A very special welcome on this ‘Back to Church Sunday’ to our visitors this morning. Last year, at this time, I was welcomed back to Holy Trinity after I spotted Archbishop Colin Johnson in his full vestments standing in front of Union Station.
I took up the invitation last year… and here I am today.
Let’s begin with a plunge into the deep end of the doctrinal pool, starting with the words of the great American Anglican theologian, Robin Williams. Our sisters and brothers in the Anglican communion in the US prefer to call themselves Episcopalians. Here the esteemed Mr. Williams sets out the top ten reasons for being an Episcopalian:
10. No snake handling.
9. You can believe in dinosaurs.
8. Male and female, [...]
Genesis 2:4b-8, 18-23 Song of Solomon 2:8-13 Galatians 3:23-29 Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30
Rhythms of Grace
“I do not understand the mystery of grace – only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.” — Anne Lamott
If our forebears could join us today, I can only imagine the range of their reactions to Pride Sunday. “What?! a Sunday to celebrate one of the Seven Deadly Sins? What has the world come to? I suppose you have a Greed and Gluttony Sunday as well?” And we would get to explain that ‘Pride’ in this context is not about one of the cardinal sins, but about undoing the millennia of shaming that human societies and the church [...]
 On Sunday, June 26th, 2011 the Rev. Jim Ferry’s license as priest was reinstated by Archbishop Colin Johnson of the Diocese of Toronto, and he was appointed Honorary Assistant of Holy Trinity, Trinity Square. It is 20 years since he was made an outcast by the previous Bishop of Toronto, Terence Finlay, for being in a same sex relationship. His outing and subsequent public trial in a Bishop’s Court garnered worldwide media attention.
Jim’s sermon “Pride and Prejudice” marked the opening of Toronto’s Pride Week celebrations at Holy Trinity, and highlighted the Pride 2011 theme: You Belong. It is available [...]
Readings: Acts 2:42-47; Psalm 23; 1 Peter 2:19-25; John 10:1-10
When I received this week’s readings after having agreed to share this morning, I will be honest and say I had a sinking feeling. A guilty, sinking feeling. A feeling that I would, in the process of preparing this homily, have to face something I mostly avoid because I’m just not sure what to do with it. So today I will share, but I will share in many ways the anxieties of the rich. And I want to recognize up front that for many in our midst, these are not your anxieties. And that reality is in some ways at the heart of the question. [...]
 Briallen Hopper is a divinity student at Yale, a faith blogger, and a future leader of the Church of NALT. She shared her Passion Week sermon with Dan Savage and gave him permission to post it on his blog. This is an incredible piece of writing that get’s to the heart of the the Christian message for us today. [...]
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