Sermon: Naaman’s Leprosy

August 14, 2011 By Coleman Glenn Leave a Comment

I preached this sermon on August 14, 2011, at the Dawson Creek Church of the New Jerusalem in Dawson Creek, BC.

NAAMAN’S LEPROSY

“My father, if the prophet had spoken unto you of a great thing, would you not have done it? How much more then, when he says to you, ‘Bathe and be​ ​clean’?” (2 Kings 5:13)

What should we do to be cleaned?  How can we be cured of our spiritual diseases?  The answer is simple: wash, and be cleaned.  Cease to do evil, learn to do good.  But that simple answer is often unsatisfying.  Sometimes we want something much bigger, something immediate and powerful that heals us in an instant.  In those times, we are like Naaman, who we read about this morning.

Naaman was the commander of the army of the king of Syria – “a great man.”  He was a hero of his people – but he suffered from leprosy.  In those times, there was no known cure for leprosy.  It would have disfigured Naaman, and made his skin hard and white.  Besides this, when a person has leprosy they lose sensitivity, and they can easily hurt their bodies because they don’t feel pain.

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Sermon: Honouring Father and Mother

May 8, 2011 By Coleman Glenn Leave a Comment

I preached this sermon on May 8, 2011, at the Olivet New Church in Toronto.  Sermon audio will be posted sometime within the next couple of days.

HONOURING FATHER AND MOTHER

“Honour your father and your mother, that your days may be prolonged upon the land which Jehovah your God is giving you.” (Exodus 20:12)

The Writings for the New Church tell us that there are deeper senses within the literal sense of the Word, although this does not do away with the importance of the literal sense.  Within the literal sense there is a spiritual sense, which is primarily about love toward the neighbour; and even deeper than this is a celestial sense, primarily about love to the Lord.  All of the Ten Commandments contain both of these deeper senses.  But the first three commandments in particular focus on love to the Lord, and the final six – the list of thou-shalt-not’s – particularly focus on love toward the neighbour.  Today, though, we’re focusing on the bridge commandment, the one that most clearly conjoins the two tables of love to the Lord and love to the neighbour.

In the literal sense, this precept commands us to honour our parents.  In this sense, the commandment is especially important for children, since in childhood parents stand in for the Lord, and much of a person’s relationship with God as an adult will be coloured by his childhood relationship with his parents.  Even as adults, though, we ought to follow this commandment in the literal sense.    Although we no longer owe them obedience, we still owe our parents gratitude and love.

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Sermon: Bringing the Ark to Jerusalem

July 20, 2010 By Coleman Glenn Leave a Comment

I preached this sermon at the Carmel New Church in Kitchener, Ontario, on July 18, 2010.

BRINGING THE ARK TO JERUSALEM

A Sermon by Rev. Coleman S. Glenn

This morning we read the story of David taking the ark to Jerusalem, and the sad story of Uzzah touching the ark.  But the story actually begins long before our reading takes place, before David was king, before his predecessor Saul was king, when Samuel had just become the leader over Israel – decades before the story in our reading took place.  In those days, the ark was captured by the Philistines, but it brought curses on them, and so they returned it to the people of Israel.  The people of Israel took it and brought it to the house of Abinidab on the hill.  There the ark stayed for decades.  Samuel grew old while the ark was there.  Saul was anointed king, and then after him, David was anointed king, and all the while, the ark was in the care of Abinadab and his household.

It stayed there for seven even after David had become king, while he was ruling Israel from the city of Hebron.  It was not until David finally conquered Jerusalem in the seventh year of his reign that he called for them to bring the ark to Mount Zion, the site of Jerusalem, which was then called the city of David.

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