Sermons

You may sometimes receive a question you wish to answer but are not sure about. Your answer would then start with “I believe” or “I guess” or “I suppose” or “I think”. When I would give such answers as a teenager, those around me would often say “believing is something we do in church”, meaning that if you are [...]

How do you feel when you end up in a crowd? Are you comfortable with all the opportunities to meet new people and excited about all the unexpected things that happen when you put a large group of people together? Or do you feel rather intimidated by all the colours, smells, noises, opinions, demands and [...]

Today is the Sunday right before Lent, Lent being a time of turning inwards, giving up things and considering the painful part of Christ’s and of our own ministry, but also already being aware of the victory that would follow and the reward that Christ has won for us. Now although Lent is still a [...]

The Lamb of God is a title of Christ we use several times in each Sunday liturgy. But to the general public, it is definitely more obscure than the titles of “Saviour” or “Messiah”. Even in the days of John the Baptist it was by no means a common name for the Messiah.  […]

The time before Advent is traditionally a time when we look forward, not yet to the coming of Christ, but to the end of days, the latter days, the time before the return of Christ. Christ’s own teaching about this is only given at the very end of his ministry, and prompted by four disciples who [...]

During our recent Synod in Gent, one session dealt with the work of the so called Mission Working Party. A paper by Rev. Sam van Leer was among those presented for discussion and dealt with “church models and how to relate Christianity to a hostile culture”. […]

The beliefs of the Pharisees were closer to the teachings of Jesus than those of the Sadducees. Some have even speculated that Jesus might have been a Pharisee. In any case, Jesus got a seemingly friendly invitation for dinner at the house of this Pharisee. […]

Orphans’ Sunday. That is what the Sunday before Pentecost is called in the Dutch Reformed tradition. This is because it is stuck in between Ascension day and Pentecost. For a short time it seemed that the disciples had been left like orphans. […]

The story of Tabitha is the story of a loving church community. Love caused Tabitha to do her charitable works. Love caused the other widows to appreciate her work and to call for Peter when she had died. And love caused Peter to make a two hour’s walk from Lydda to Joppa (in our days [...]

I would like to speak about change. On the one hand, Christians are very familiar with change. After all, we talk about repentance, conversion, being born again and even resurrection from the dead. We know that the Holy Spirit is capable of profound transformations in all kinds of people. They can be brought to realize their true condition and [...]