Might As Well Face It, We're Addicted To Sin: A Homily for the Sixth Sunday After Pentecost

Preached at All Saints, Collingwood, and Good Shepherd, Stayner, the Sixth Sunday After Pentecost, 5 July, 2026.  Readings for this Sunday: Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67; Psalm 45:11-1; Romans 7:15-25A; Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it but sin that dwells within me.   Romans 7:19-20

Today I want to talk about how we can understand Paul's talk about sin in Romans by thinking of the addictive behaviours that our society tries to lure us into.

One of my favourite summer pasttimes is watching baseball.   Preferably a Jays game, but any team will do, really.   I love the geometry of the field, the colours, and above all the drama and rhythm of the game itself.    But one thing I don’t enjoy is the rise of the sports gambling commercials and the way that revenues from betting seem to be taking over the sport, despite the fact that gambling is an addictive and ruinous pasttime.

I have no desire to bet on sports, or on anything else, really, and I watch those commercials with a bit of a sneer.  I’m like the Pharisee looking at the tax collector and saying “I think God that I’m not like that sinner”.    But, if I’m being honest, I know that I have my own addiction issues.

My son taught me an acronym, TSLAMP.  Time Spent Looking At My Phone.   Our phones and the apps they provide can consume vast amounts of our time because they are designed to be addictive.  Likes and clicks fuel social media, providing their little dopamine rewards so our brains are actually rewired to want more affirmation, more likes to our posts, higher friend counts.    Our phones make online shopping easier, but they encourage so called “retail therapy”.   Excessive screen time shortens attention spans, makes us less social, and deprives us of sleep.

We could blame all this on the tech companies, but really we live in an addictive culture, of which online gambling and social media may just be symptoms.  We know how powerfully addictive drugs, nicotine, and alcohol can be.  Calorie and sugar rich foods and drinks are targetted to the poor, leading to obesity.   Pornography, especially in its online forms, is likewise powerfully addictive, distorting sexual behaviour from adults to teens.   Whatever the cause, I think it’s fair to say that addictions have a destructive impact on our mental and physical health, on our relationships and families, and on our society.

So while I am saying that we live in an addictive society, I don’t say this to be a scold, nor do I mean to be a sociologist, though I will say that if we put more resources into addiction treatment and made it harder for people to make money victimizing others, that wouldn’t be a bad thing.   Rather, speaking as a priest and as a preacher, I am saying that we live in a condition that, theologically, we call sin, and sin is profoundly addictive.

Sin is a primary theme of Paul’s writing, and particularly in Romans, which we have been sampling of late in our second readings.   You many have noticed that Paul talks about sin in the singular.   Not sins, as in various misdemeanours that we might avoid through greater willpower, but sin as a condition that ensnares and entangles us, like weeds choking a garden.

When Paul says that “the evil I do not want is what I do”, he isn’t talking about a momentary temptation to do a bad thing.   We wouldn’t say that the drug addict stealing money for another fix, or the sports fan spending the grocery money on a betting site, is something that can be fixed by just being stronger.   Sin for Paul is an inbuilt inclination to destructive behaviour. 

Another way to put it is that Paul sees sin as slavery, and sees Christ as the only one who can liberate us from sin.   In 12 step programs and AA, liberation is described as a higher power.  Several times in my military service, I counselled young soldiers who needed AA but couldn’t find make themselves believe in or trust this higher power.  I would always ask them why they needed to go to AA in the first place, and they’d say it was because of the booze.  So I’d say, then you accept that alcohol has power over you?  Yes, they’d say.  So it seems to me that only an even higher power will save you.   And that is Paul’s message in a nutshell.

Sometimes religion is seen, unhelpfully, as a way of keeping track of our misdemeanours, and hopefully keeping them to a minimum, by submitting ourselves to discipline.   And yes, there is a discipline that is part of our Christian faith, which is why we think of self control as one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit.  The gifts of the Spirit are part of Jesus’ willingness to come to our aid, because Jesus recognizes our burdens and he understands our entanglement in sin.  When Jesus says in our gospel reading that his yoke is easy and his burden is light, he is speaking to the truly burdened - those crushed by all forms of oppression - to those crushed by violence, imperialism, poverty, hunger, and all the addictive things th

Thinking of sin this way helps us to resist the temptation to see the sinner as the problem.  The problem is sin, in all its forms, and the answer is the kingdom of God, the justice of God, and the solidarity of God in Christ who stands with the burdened. 

Today Jesus’ invitation comes to the those ashamed of the images on their computers, to those desperate for attention on social media, to those whose brains and bodies are taught to crave harmful things.  Jesus comes to break the chains, open the doors, and free us from our burdens. Jesus wants to free us from all those things that ensnare and entangle us.  Because addiction is part of sin, and sin is hard to say no to, unless we first let Jesus say yes to us.  And Jesus will always say yes to each of us, because Jesus loves us and wants us to be free, to love him, to love one another, and yes, even to love our true selves.

Creator of All: A Homily for the National Indigenous Day of Prayer

Preached at All Saints, Collingwood, Anglican Diocese of Toronto, on  21 June, 2026, the Fourth Sunday After Pentecost and the National Indigenous Day of Prayer.   Readings for the NDIP:  Isaiah 40:25-31, Psalm 19, Philippians 4:4-9

John 1:1-18

 Every year the plough is obliterating the last traces of our  predecessors on this soil. Every year the axe lays low some invaluable witness to the ages which have elapsed since populous villages of another race were scattered far and wide through our now lifeless forests. We are fast forgetting that the bygone ages even of the new world were filled with living men.  

Those words were spoken in 1852 by one Captain Lefroy, who was a member of a professional and learned society, The Canadian Institute,that had been newly founded by Sir Sandford Fleming.   Lefroy’s thoughts, given almost 175 years ago, remind us that the indigenous heritage of this part of Ontario has long been known, at least through the efforts of a few, mostly amateur researchers.

Dedicated amateur researchers continue to remind us of our links with our indigenous past.  Last Sunday Joy and I were at St Luke’s for their late morning service, following which we heard a fascinating presentation by their parish historian, Dorothy Shropshire.  Dorothy and her late husband Jim have spent years studying the Petun people, who lived in the area known today as Bluewater and Clearwater Township.   Dorothy spoke knowledgeably about the various Petun sites on the hills and and riverbanks around Creemore.

You won’t find any Petun peoples nearby today.   In the 1600s the Petun nation was ravaged by disease and by proxy wars among the local tribes competing for the lucrative fur trade with the Europeans.    The surviving Petun peoples fled this area.  Today they are called the Wyandot, and they live as far away as Montreal and Kansas.

Today, which we observe in the Anglican Church of Canada as the National Indigenous Day of Prayer, is about remembering the past, but more importantly its about reconciliation in the present and new relationships in the future.   The Petun may be gone from this area, but indigenous people in their many cultures, languages, and places, are a vital part of our country and of church.

We may not have an indigenous community close by, but today gives us many opportunities to think about the First Nations people we do occasionally see on our streets and in our church.   The readings we’ve heard today from the First Nations Version of the Bible remind us of the story of Pentecost and how the Holy Spirit desires to communicate the good news of our faith to all peoples in their own languages.   Our first two readings, from isaiah and Psalm 19, help us to see with fresh eyes how the natural world is a gift from God the Creator, an insight which is a great gift of indigenous spirituality to our church.   

There are many rich themes to explore here today, but the one I think I can do best in the space of a summer sermon is found in the First Nations translation I read from just now, where we hear how John the Baptist came “Into the wilderness of the Land of Promise (Judea)”.  Promised by whom?   Now we can see what the translators and editors of the First Nations Bible were trying to do.   Renaming Judea as “Land of Promise” takes us back to the story of Genesis and the coveanant promise that God makes with Abraham.

Several Sundays ago we heard in the first reading how God says to Abraham “To your offspring I will give this land”, and Genesis mentions in passing that “At that time the Canaanites were in the land” (Gen 1.6).   One of the more unpalatable aspects of Genesis is that the Canaanites are basically an indigenous people, pagans and heathens, who have no right to their and deserve to be dispossessed by God’s people.

Fast forward to the 1500s and 1600s, the so-called Age of Exploration, and the same story of dispossession played out and became part of early Canadian history.   Those 19th century amateur scholars like Captain Godfrey were uneasily aware of “our predecessors” who were being erased.   Today we are, with the help of indigenous Canadians, rethinking this history and trying on new names, so we now think of “Indians” as “The First Nations” or “indigenous”, and we sometimes, think of ourselves as “settlers”.  And, today, we’ve heard new names for the divine, such as “Creator Sets Free” for Jesus, “Great Spirit” for the Holy Spirit, and “Creator” for God the Father.

THis week in our bible study, we asked whether it might change our spirituality as Christians if we were to think of God more often as “Creator”.  We agreed that if the term “Creator” becamse habitual, then we might think about one another differently because we are all created by the same God and created in the image of that God, and we enjoy earth, creation, as a gift given to all of us.   And if we are all created, and all given the same gifts of this earth to share, then surely that commonality as children of the Creator is greater than any of our differences?

This wonderful and mysterious relationship between difference and unity is at the heart of our Trinitarian faith, as the American monk Curtis Almquist beautifully explains:

We are distinct persons, all of us, and yet our essence is the same. We are all children of God. We all need water and food, shelter and rest, love and safety, education and encouragement, health and hope to be alive and thrive. … We must be in relationship with one another. We have been created by a God in relationship – a Trinity of Persons – who invites us all to be in personal relationship – relationship with one another and in relationship with all that God has created – because this is the essence of God, to be in a circle of  relationship with all whom God has created

Being in relationship - genuine, authentic, loving relationship - takes time, patience, and effort.  Our church has slowly learned to work on its relationship with our First Nations and Inuit fellow Anglicans as we’ve listened to their stories and made steps towards reconciliation.  Our country likewise continues to  work slowly towards better relationships with indigenous Canadians over things like land claims and resource rights.  And, when as with the 51st state talk from certain Americans, we suddenly feel a new appreciation for the First Nations and what it means to be threatened with conquest and dispossession.  Our natural reacgtion to such talk is to think "This land may be your land, this land may be my land, but it's not your land, Uncle Sam!"  But, when we we sing how this land is your land and this land is my mind, as we think about what Canada means to us today, that "us" includes French and British, First Nations and Inuit, all the various communities of newer Canadians in the sports bars and in sthe streets cheering their World Cup teams, and yes, during this Pride Month, gay and straight and trans, because my dear friends and fellow saints, this land belongs to all of us, because it was given to all of us by our Creator God.  May we learn to live together on this land.

Students of Jesus: A Homily for the Third Sunday After Pentecost (A)

Preached at All Saints, Collingwood, and St Luke’s, Creemore, on June 14, 2026, the Third Sunday After Pentecost (A).  Texts:  Genesis 18:1-15 (21:1-7); Psalm 116:1, 10-17; Romans 5:1-8; Matthew 9:35-10:8 (9-23)

“Then Jesus summoned his twelve disciples” Matthew 10.1

You know those dreams where you’re in uncomfortable or stressful situations?  They’re often called anxiety dreams, and one of my least favourite kinds is where I find myself forced to go back to school.   Sometimes I’m back in university, with a test I haven’t studied for or a due date for an essay I haven’t written, but sometimes I’m back in elementary school, and I’m an adult sitting in one of those little kid’s desks, and I’m uncomfortable and I have no idea what I’m doing.

I wonder what it is about this deam of being a student again that makes me uncomfortable?  What is it about school that triggers adult anxieties?  I suppose it has something to do with the imposed obligations of schoolwork - the essays and projects - and no surprise that these dreams bubble up when I’ve been procrastinating about a deadline.  

It could also be that, mixed in with these anxious dreams, is the fear of the loss of adult agency, which we I think is a normal part of aging.   Life in a senior’s home can seem a lot like elementary school, where the residents are treated like children.  The British TV comedy Waiting For God treated this brilliantly.

I don’t think it’s learning that makes people feel uncomfortable.  Many of you eagerly attend the Georgian Triangle Learning Institute lectures (though I wonder how many would attend if they were given homework assignments with them).   Seniors happily participate in bookclubs (though, again, the wine might have something to do with that activity).     

So it seems that we’re good with being lifelong learners, but how many of us would want to be students, with all the obligations and expectations that go with being a student?  And yet, if we think of ourselves as disciples, that word basically means student, which means that, like the original disciples, we are students of Jesus.

In today’s gospel reading, and in the New Testament generally,  the word disciple is a translation of the Greek word mathētēs, which in Greek meant a student of pupil.   Our word disciple comes from the Latin meaning student or pupil, and is from the Latin verb discere, meaning to lean.   So in the ancient world, a disciple is a student or pupil, someone under instruction.   Today we think of disciples as having a specific religious sense, of messengers or evangelists, which is what the twelve chosen by Jesus eventually became, but in the gospels, as in today’s gospel, they are students.

Thinking of the discples as students makes sense when we remember how many times Jesus is referred to in the gospels either as a rabbi or as a teacher (didaskalos, often translated as master).   In the ancient world, a didaskalos was a spiritual leader or philosopher, someone who had mastered a body of knowledge and who would over time share that knowlege with students, in the same way that apprentices learn today.  

 Sometimes in the gospels we hear Jesus sound notes of exasperation, because he has spent so much time with the disciples and they still don’t get it.  For example, later in Matthew, after Peter asks Jesus to explain a parable, Jesus essentially says, “are you still so dense?”  On this and several other occasions, Jesus sounds very much like a frustrated teacher (Mk 8:17-21, Mt 16:9-11).  Fortunately for them and for us, Jesus is a patient and loving teacher.

So what does Jesus have to teach?  Put simply, it is to try and see the world through his eyes of compassion and to act mercifully.  Matthew tells us that Jesus had compassion on the crowds  “because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd”.  In other words, these people did not have leaders who cared for their welfare, they were exploited, overburdened, and ground down.   In a week where the world’s richest man became the world’s first trillionaire, with enough money to cancel world hunger and all the ethics of a mosquito, I think we can relate.   

Jesus empowers his disciples/students to do the things he does.   Share the good news that God loves them and values them.  Be with them.  Heal them and help them.   Give selflessly.  It’s the most ancient and most effective teaching model, to let the student go into the field and learn by doing.

Last week in my homily I quoted Martin Luther, who said that the church is “a school for saints and a hospital for sinners”.   If we can admit in our weekly prayer of confession that we are all sinners, can we agree also that we are also students, and specifically, Jesus’ students?   

We use all sorts of terms to describe ourselves as people.  We can call ourselves Christians, and then as Anglicans, and then as parishioners at All Saints, as opposed to, say, Christians who call themselves Presbyterians who go to First Pres.    I wonder if we would be any different, if our faith would be more intense, if we just called ourselves Jesus’ students?  

To call ourselves students would be to accept the authority of our master as teacher.   We haven’t been given the ability to raise the dead, heal the sick, or cast out demons, but Jesus does have expectations of us his students.   Our homework is to try and see the world through Jesus’ eyes of compassion.   Our assignment is to show Jesus’ mercy and love wherever we can.  Our school is always in session, and the syllabus is there in our baptismal covenant.  There’s no pass or fail, just the expectation that, as a church and as people, we can help people sense the nearness of the kingdom of God.   This school will never give us anxiety dreams, because Jesus our teacher is patient and loving.

So, fellow students of Jesus, what will you try to learn this week, and what will you try, with God’s help, to put that learning into action?