Wine Before Breakfast

February 21, 2010crc No Comments

Walking the Streets of Jerusalem for Lent

Whose story?
That’s kind of been the question for Paul.

Whose story will set the direction of our lives?
Whose story is redemptive?
Which story will be the basis of home?
Which story will be the foundation of justice?

The story of Caesar or Jesus?

Six months of Romans to sort that out.
Six months of walking with Paul.
Six months of Paul working through the meaning of the story of Jesus
in the face of the story of Rome,
and in the context of the story of Israel.

And now it is Lent.
Now we enter unto a path to the cross.
Now we walk with Jesus through the streets of Jerusalem,
the city of peace that was so filled with violence.

One week in Jerusalem.
A week of intensified conflict.
A week of impassioned expectation and dashed hopes.
A passion week.

Here the story comes to its climax.
This is what it’s all about.
Without this week, Paul would have had nothing to talk about.

So for Lent, WBB follows Jesus through the streets of Jerusalem.

We move from Paul’s Romans to Mark’s gospel.
And we walk with Jesus to the cross.

This week our beloved Sacristan, Chris Dow puts down the towel
and takes up the mantle of preacher.
David Neelands will serve up the bread and wine,
the Bandhood of all Believers will lead our worship
and Alex Karney leads the prayers.

Lent is important, friends.
It is an important time for prayer and meditation,
for quiet reflection on Scripture,
for self-examination and confession.
Let’s keep a Holy Lent together.

Brian

Wine Before Breakfast
Tuesday Morning, February 23, 2010
7.22 @ Wycliffe Chapel

January 17, 2010crc No Comments

Whole Bodies, Transformed Minds: Martin Luther King Jr., Romans 12 @ WBB

If there was to be one text that could be said to be at the heart of Wine Before Breakfast, Graduate Christian Fellowship and pretty much everything that we do in campus ministry at the University of Toronto, it would likely be Romans 12.1-2:

“I appeal to you, therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

Monday, January 18 is Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the United States. Dr. King once said that Christians are too often like thermometers, registering and reflecting the temperature all around them, when in fact we are called to thermostats, influencing and changing the spiritual, moral, and cultural atmosphere of the society in which we live.

Kind of sounds like the distinction between being “conformed to this world” or being “transformed by the renewal of our minds.”

And in our ministry we are unabashedly all about transformation. Heck one of our folks once wrote a book about such transformation. But we also stand with Paul (and King) by insisting that transformed “minds” without bodies presented as living sacrifices is a pious intellectualism that doesn’t really amount to very much. No, the whole point of a transformed mind is that we might be discerning people, perceiving in the midst of our day to day personal and professional lives what embodied discipleship looks like.

There is no mind/body dualism for Paul. And there is no possibility of separating worship from this whole matter of transformed minds and sacrificial bodies either. Whole-bodied, mind-transformed, non-conformist living is precisely what worship is all about. Indeed, this way of living is worship!

So this week we come to Romans 12 at Wine Before Breakfast. This week we come to the heart of our ministry, and to the radical implications of the story that Paul has been telling and retelling in the previous 11 chapters of this letter.

Scott Flemming has the joyful task of preaching out of Romans 12. No pressure, Scott!

Andrew Asbil will be serving the bread, the band has some U2 and some more Marley on tap, and the food will be good as usual. Just the kind of thing that embodied discipleship needs.

One last thing, friends. In Romans 12 Paul identifies hospitality to be one of the defining characteristics of the body of Christ. Let’s extend that hospitality to other folks who need to be fed deeply on a Tuesday morning. Bring your friends. In fact, if you are going to heed Paul well, then you should bring your enemies too.

Shalom,

Brian

Wine Before Breakfast
Tuesdays
Wycliffe Chapel @ 7.22am

January 4, 2010crc No Comments

WBB Still Hanging out with Paul

Title: WBB Still Hanging out with Paul
Location: Wycliffe College Chapel
Description:

“The word is near you,
on your lips and in your heart.”

That’s just one of the passages that Paul cites in Romans 10.

In what is something of a hermeneutical tour de force, the apostle waltz’s through Deuteronomy, Isaiah and the psalms.

December 7, 2009crc No Comments

WBB: Advent, Assurance and Anguish

Title: WBB: Advent, Assurance and Anguish
Location: Wycliffe College Chapel@7.22am
Description:

WBB: Assurance, Anguish and Advent

“Nothing can separate us from the love of Christ,” the apostle powerfully proclaimed last week. But if you keep reading you see that he then immediately gives voice to a deep sorrow and anguish. So deep that he says that he wishes that he himself could be cut off, that he himself could be separated from the love of Christ.

From assurance to anguish. Why? Read more WBB: Advent, Assurance and Anguish

November 30, 2009crc No Comments

WBB and Advent Waiting: Romans 8 (Reprise)

WBB: Romans 8 (reprise)

I knew from the beginning that we would have to spend more than one week in Romans 8 during this year’s WBB meditation on Paul’s most famous letter. This passage was just too rich to rush through. Of course the same could be said of a lot the first seven chapters of the book as well, but there is something about Romans 8 that requires time for meditation, for reflection.

So we scheduled two weeks for Romans 8. And, well, that isn’t enough. So we are going to remain with Paul in this chapter for one more week. Read more WBB and Advent Waiting: Romans 8 (Reprise)

November 23, 2009crc No Comments

WBB and the groaning of creation

Title: WBB and the groaning of creation
Location: Wycliffe College Chapel
Description:

Dear friends:

In what is perhaps the most remarkable turn of a phrase in the letters of Paul, the apostle tells us in Romans 8.22 that “the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now ….” This is a creation longing for redemption, longing to be set free from all that binds it.

Perhaps only the women in our community can begin to understand what Paul is talking about here, and even there maybe only the women who have given birth. I can tell you as a very concerned observer that there is an intensity in the groaning of labor like nothing else that I have ever born witness to. Groaning in travail was the way the older versions of the Bible put it.

November 16, 2009crc 1 Comment

Title: WBB: No one ever said this was going to be easy
Location: Wycliffe College Chapel, 7.22am
Description:

No one ever said that this was going to be easy.
            Not Paul’s letter to the Romans.
            Not the faith that he there proposes.
            Not the Jesus he calls us to follow.

Romans 6 … things are settled.
We are saved in Jesus Christ,
no longer slaves to sin, but slaves of righteousness.

Romans 7 … things are unsettled.
We are caught between conflicting laws,
Christ and sin.
And we are all adulterers.

And it all comes down to “dwelling.”
            Romans 7 painfully reminds us that sin “dwells” in us,
            while Romans 8 insists that we are set free from sin
            because the Spirit of God “dwells” in us.

But this still doesn’t make it easy.
            There is still “war in my blood.”
            There is still a royal battle between a mind set on the “flesh”
            and a mind set on the Spirit.
            Death or life.
            War or peace.

Heavy stuff at any time, not least at 7.22 in the morning!

This week I’ll be preaching, David Julien will be presiding, and the band will be playing some Steve Bell for us.

Know anybody struggling with these kinds of tensions in their lives? Bring them along. They’ll be in good company.

In hope,

Brian Walsh

Start Time: 7.22am
Date: 2009-11-17

November 9, 2009crc No Comments

WBB, Home Wrecking and Christ

Title: WBB, Home Wrecking and Christ
Location: Wycliffe College Chapel
Description:

Dear friends:

These days, when I think about marriage or any other relationship of covenantal intimacy, words from a Martyn Joseph song invariably come to mind.

“I would never do anything in this world to hurt you…
But I do.”

The deep sentiment of faithful love meets the reality of pain, hurt and betrayal.

We profess with confidence that we would never do anything in the world to hurt the one we love the deepest, and yet we in fact do hurt that very person.

I think that Paul is on to something like this in Romans 7.

WBB, Adam and Home

Title: WBB, Adam and Home
Location: Wycliffe College Chapel
Description:

Adam or Christ? Homewrecker or Homemaker?

Dear friends:

Last week I got to reflecting on reading Romans from the perspective of home, homelessness and homecoming. And I suggested in my WBB sermon (now posted at www.empireremixed.com) that Paul offers the story of Abraham as a family story for the church. Abraham is the father of all of us. In this memory, in this family story, there is the space for making home together.
Read more WBB, Adam and Home

October 19, 2009crc No Comments

WBB, Marriage and Faithfulness

Title: WBB, Marriage and Faithfulness
Location: Wycliffe College Chapel
Description:

Dear WBB friends:

Forgive me for offering a “sermon before the sermon” this week. I know that this is a little long.

It seems that this is the season for weddings in and around the WBB community. Last week we prayed for Bethany Osborne and Ed Miedema and this week we will bless Melissa Graham and Dave Burke.

Now let me candidly admit that I don’t know the “secret” to keeping a marriage healthy. I have no “four easy steps” to marital bliss. In fact, it seems to me that there are no recipes for this stuff and there certainly are no guarantees. So my word to folks entering into marriage is to try to get the starry eyed romantic look off of your face as soon as possible because this business of being married is hard work.