Pentecost Party!

Happy Birthday!

Pentecost is one of my favorite holidays of the year, and even more so now that this building celebrates its birthday on the same holiday.  Happy 102^nd birthday, Athabasca United!

It’s the day we reflect on the third, most mysterious and most elusive member of the Trinity, the Spirit.  It’s not a comfortable topic for some, surprisingly enough.  We squirm and wonder if we have to start rolling on the floor or speak in tongues.  As a person who has been in the United Church since I was a child, there’s no way I want to talk in words that even I can’t understand.  And it’s easy for me to get puffed up with pride that I’m not like those people, you know, the ones who let their religious experience get all emotional, loud and demonstrative.  I’ve got enough British and Scottish strict Presbyterian and stiff upper lip to shy away from such a display.

Spirit is dangerous, it is spontaneous, and it is impulsive.  We’re not always comfortable with it, and for good reason.  There are times when too much spontaneity can get us into trouble.  There are times when an impulse can lead us into dangerous situations.  Sometimes our ideas or urges can be problematic to say the least.  If I indulged in chocolate every time I had a craving, I would be heading for serious trouble with my health.  A little self-discipline can be important in such a situation!

Someone once suggested that you can tell which of the three aspects of the Trinity a congregation feels most comfortable with.  A congregation that is most comfortable with God, will have an intellectual understanding of their religion and their faith community will be filled with discussion groups and book studies.  A congregation that focusses on Jesus will talk about having a personal relationship with Jesus that is intimate and emotional, and they will want to know if you are saved. 

A congregation that puts the Spirit central to their faith will be comfortable with speaking in tongues and healings, and their worship will be very active and participatory.  I saw a preacher in one of those congregations act out Jonathan’s sneaking up on the Philistines and he actually got down on his hands and knees and snuck across the stage.  All three groups tend to think that they are better than the others, and that they really ‘get’ the message of what it means to be a Christian.

Maybe it’s time to remember that we are all works in progress, groaning inwardly some of us, and outwardly too.  Maybe it’s time to remember that we are waiting with patience for things that we can’t quite explain, but that is what living in hope is all about.  Maybe it’s time to wonder if there are times that we can celebrate the spontaneity of the Spirit, but with the wisdom of God and the compassion of Jesus.  Maybe it’s time to learn from each other and people from many different Christian traditions to try to heal our understanding of what it means to be Christian in a world where many people fear that idea of being a faith-filled people, being religious.  Maybe it’s time to explore being spiritual, and claiming that part of our faith. 

I do believe that we can be pilgrims on a journey, doing our best to practise hope and patience and love with each other, remembering that we are none of us perfect, and that we can all encourage each other and learn from each other.  When we come together in that way, we find God’s healing presence is with us in ways we least expect.  God is still speaking to us, is still healing us, and is still creating us.

Some might think that the United Church is not a denomination that honors the Spirit much, but if you happen to go to Conference next week in Slave Lake, you might be surprised. 

When Jean and I go as your delegates to Conference, the understanding of is that we will be touched by the Spirit and discern what is needed for the many choices that we face. 

Our Song of Faith says this about the Spirit:

We sing of God the Spirit, who from the beginning has swept over the face of creation, animating all energy and matter and moving in the human heart.

We sing of God the Spirit, faithful and untameable, who is active in the world.

The Spirit challenges us to celebrate the holy not only in what is familiar, but also in that which seems foreign.

We sing of the Spirit, who speaks our prayers of deepest longing and enfolds our concerns and confessions, transforming us and the world.

We offer worship as an outpouring of gratitude and awe and a practice of opening ourselves to God’s still, small voice of comfort, to God’s rushing whirlwind of challenge.

Through word, music, art, and sacrament, in community and in solitude,   God changes our lives, our relationships, and our world.

The church has not always lived up to its vision.

It requires the Spirit to reorient it, helping it to live an emerging faith while honouring tradition,    challenging it to live by grace rather than entitlement, for we are called to be a blessing to the earth.

Grateful for God’s loving action, we cannot keep from singing.

Testimony to life

1 John 5:9-13, John 17:6-19

This is the last Sunday of Easter, and we are facing again Jesus’ last speech, and a convoluted passage about testimony.  I’ve been reading them to myself all week, wondering, what the heck? Sometimes a sermon begs itself to be written, sometimes the scriptures speak for themselves and Jesus’ words shine with a beautiful eloquence that barely need a preacher to help them out.  But John and his followers, who are writing their letters and their testimonies, are writing some 50 to 60 years after Jesus’ death.  And John, well, he’s a bit of a poet.  No, correct that, he’s a huge poet, all starry-eyed, and trying to come up with a way to try and describe the indescribable.

As I was writing this last night, I heard someone playing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”, not the Judy Garland version, but the one with ukulele by a fellow that sings it like a lullaby.  It’s heart-breakingly beautiful.  It doesn’t have the power of Judy Garland, or the sweet stylings of Susan Boyle, yet it is powerful.

And sometimes it’s in the simplicity of moments like listening to that music, that I am reminded that our Easter story is a simple one too.  Jesus came to free us from the chains of fear and hate and self-loathing that we fall into if when left to our own devices.  It’s too easy as we slog through the challenges in our lives to turn away from hope.  Hope that our lives can be meaningful, hope that we might have love, friendship, and acceptance.  We all search for that part of whatever it is we think of when we imagine what the other side of the rainbow might be.  The tragedy is when we give up too soon, when we sell ourselves too short, when we think it’s all about me and my life and I have to do it all. All I need is the right self-help book, a little more self-discipline, the right Mr. Right or Miss Right in my life, the perfect friend, the perfect lover, the perfect child, or toy or house or car or retirement package, and so on.  Then we get that perfect possession, object or person, and we find that we are still the same miserable person that we’ve always been.

We are often scarred by the relationships we have had, so much so that we would rather complain, criticize or compete in the relationships we now have.  We are afraid of an intimate relationship with something that we cannot see or touch and sometimes do not believe exist.  I think at the heart of the matter, we are deeply afraid.

We are so scared that we will be rejected by God, if there is one, that we will push away or control or diminish anyone including ourselves.  At some deep level, we may have a hidden belief that we are just not good enough, or that the universe is not kind enough, or that there is not enough to go around to have abundance, or life is a competition that I have to win at all costs, or that the only way to prove to God that I am good enough for God’s love is to show God how much better I am than everyone else.  So we deal with people different than ourselves with suspicion, prejudice, fear, and even violence.

That begs the question, what does it take to have a really rewarding life?  A life where we are joyful and fulfilled, where we don’t feel the need to protect ourselves or control others or be perfect?  John says that it is listening to the testimony of God, not the testimony of people.  We get it wrong, we mortal humans.  Even the most seasoned preacher struggles to find the words that will fit what is weighing on our hearts.  Jesus wants us to have fulfilling lives of energy and enthusiasm, passion and creativity.  Lives of vitality and purpose!  What a dream, what a vision he has.  The prayer he says is one he makes on the last day of his life, and it is full of hope, purpose and a mission for his followers.  He sends them out into the world to continue his story, his teachings and ultimately his love.  And if you listened carefully enough to the scriptures, he’s not just sending out the Twelve on the adventure of their lives, he is sending us all out and asking God to love and protect us in a relationship so deep that he describes it as an intimate parent-child relationship.  Wow!

Jesus doesn’t see us the way we fear that he will.  Jesus sees us with love.  Jesus loves the 12, a group of argumentative men who couldn’t even collaborate enough to put together one definitive Gospel that would have all the answers.  They blew it on Good Friday, less than 12 hours after he prays so lovingly to God that ‘all may be one,” they ran away, betrayed him, lied to protect themselves, and committed acts of violence to protect him, all which are contrary to what he had been trying so hard to teach them. 

Jesus sees the flaws, the foibles and loves us anyway.  God testifies to us in broad, beautiful surprising ways.  The Spirit comes to us, regardless of the prison that we think we are living in.  The Holy, however you want to label it or describe it or testify to it, comes to you, yes even you, in your doubts, your fears, your challenges, your moments of weakness, dare I say it, your moments of sin.  And The Holy will not stop.  Even the threat of crucifixion did not keep Jesus from declaring his message of love to us and to the world.  And we are also sent out to declare that message of love, no matter how preposterous, through our actions or words, and when we do so, we are one with God who is the greatest testifier and lover the world has ever known.  May we find God’s testimony speaking to us with love and gentleness in our lives this day and ever more.

Conquering the world

Focus scripture: 1 John 5:1-6

Whatever is born of God conquers the world. Seriously? I mean, have you looked at the news lately?  Earthquakes, terrorist attacks, refugees drowning in the Mediterranean, Global Warming, endangered polar bears and our own ecosystem in Alberta threatened by the die off of bees, frogs and the invasion of pine beetles in a seemingly never ending litany of bad news.  God conquering the world? Give me a break!

I can just imagine how this would play out if I quoted it at a member of my family who will remain nameless as he’s not here to defend himself.  This young adult was only 10 years old when a world-changing event changed how we look at our sense of safety and security.  One day, he found teachers whispering to each other, looking sad and shocked, and parents coming to pick up their children who were giving their kids longer hugs than usual before bundling them off home.  Once there, moms and dads sat down and tried to explain what was happening on the television, and many chose not to let them see the cycling images of airplanes crashing into two tall skyscrapers in New York. 

Whether or not the children saw these images, they had a sense that their lives were not as secure as they had imagined, and the fear they saw in their adults’ faces had a lasting impact.  Many of this generation have a sense of hopelessness and apathy, that it doesn’t matter what we do as the world can come crashing down on us in a split second.  Why bother plan for the future when some crazed terrorist might end everything with dynamite stuffed in a backpack?  Scripture that claims God conquers the world would seem laughable, idealistic and naïve.

I imagine that this little message was as hard to swallow for John’s people as it is for us.  His people had survived Emperor Nero and the mad Caligula, but it didn’t mean that they were safe from persecution or violence.  They were being chased out of synagogues for preaching heresy, they were being ridiculed by the Greeks and Romans whom they rubbed shoulders with, and if they truly proclaimed that God, not the Emperor, was the ruler of the world, they would be executed for treason against the state.  In fact many did indeed die for saying the unthinkable – Roman emperors come and go, but Jesus is the one who makes a lasting impact on our lives and on our community.  Proclaiming Jesus as ‘the one who for us is the Christ,” who is our judge and our hope, the word made flesh who came to reconcile and make new, was a dangerous thing for them to believe, to commit to, to have faith in.  It wasn’t easy then, and it isn’t easy now.

It’s also not only about my personal relationship with Jesus, and through him, God.  If we limit our understanding of faith to that level, we fail to realize the transforming power of our faith claim.  The world is conquered by God, not just me, but the whole world.  John understood that, and encouraged his community to act as if their faith could make a startling difference in their society.

Did it make a difference?  It was a faith crisis that led to Quakers turning away from the practise of owning slaves in the United States.  It was a faith crisis that led to the inspiring words of Amazing Grace being set to a chant sung by African captives heading to be sold in the United States.  It was faith that led an angry young man in a prison in South Africa to choose a path of reconciliation, and that let him to work with his enemy for the dismantlement of Apartheid.  Nelson Mandela and F. W. de Klerk changed the course of history.  A Venezuala owner of a rum company, Alberto Vollmer, would drive around his community in a bullet-proof car because it was the deadliest country in the world due to corrupt police and widespread drug gang warfare.  He offered two thugs work for three months for free or go back to the police where they would probably be executed.  They agreed.  A few days later, the thugs asked if their friends could join them.  22 kids showed up!  Then they recruited the rival gang to the work force, and before they knew it, they had 5 different gangs working together in what they have called “Project Alcatraz”, and the violence in the area has gone down dramatically.  This is not an isolated event, however.

The United Nations is discovering that worldwide violent conflict has been in steady decline for a surprisingly long time.  In 2005, there was a report released by a University of BC research institute that discovered the number of wars, deaths from warfare and civil wars have been steadily decreasing since the end of the cold war.  Even accounting for events like 9/11’s, the number of deaths due to war have dropped.  With the Arab Spring, the number of countries operating under a dictatorship have dropped.  Since the 1990’s the UN has been working with many organizations and charities to prevent or reduce conflict, and to keep civil wars from re-emerging.  Even our Mission and Service fund is helping reduce wars and violence.  Better education for women, better health care for babies means that hope is coming to people who haven’t had hope before.  And for those of you who still feel cynical, ponder this: in the 1950’s Athabasca United Church was designated the town’s local bomb shelter.  If there had been a nuclear attack, the people were supposed to take shelter in our basement.  When was the last time one of your children or grandchildren told you that they had a practise drill hiding from Atomic bombs?

It starts with us.  It starts with individuals like you and me taking Jesus seriously.  Jesus commands us to love one another, not as one person who has power over another, but as friends, as equals.  Love one another as Jesus loved us, not to dominate or intimidate or boss or threaten.  But as partners, as co-creators, as people who are committed to the dream of a world that God does indeed conquer with love and has the power to bring a lasting peace and joy to all who live in it.  May we work together to bring this vision to fruition.  Amen.

Who are you?

https://cbsphilly.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/wartman_mason-rosas-postits-_hadas.jpg

Scripture: 1 John 3:1-3: See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2 Beloved, we are God's children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. 3 And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.

When you meet someone you don’t know, how do you tell them who you are?  Dogs have it easy, they sniff each other and figure it out through smell.  Cats study each other, goldfish don’t care as long as they can get to their food pellets, and lobsters are too territorial to want to get friendly.  We humans use words.

Hi, I’m Monica and I’m…  And we fill in the blanks and look for something we have in common.  I’m a big Abba fan, a small Star Trek fan or whatever.  What can we talk about together, what are our shared joys and passions?

We may often say, I am an electrician, a teacher, a doctor, a dancer, a retiree.  That describes what we do, but not who we are.  We might say, I’m a daughter, a grandfather, a kokum, a niece, but that describes how we are connected to others but not who we are.  We could say, I’m a drunk, a cancer victim, a video game addict, a workaholic, a busybody, and so on, but that describes what we are struggling with, but still not necessarily who we are.

First John says something quite strange and ground-breaking.  We are children of God.  That is an odd point of view.  If you look at Greek or Roman mythology, humans are toys and playthings of the Gods.  Zeus is always looking for a cute young human to flirt with, and the Trojan War was seen as the equivalent of a chess game between Zeus, Aphrodite, Apollo and Athena, who each had their favorite hero to side with.  Egypt’s gods were to be served by humans and they would judge and sort them out for the afterlife. 

The Babylonian Gods saw humans as created from the blood of a murdered God, and as a source of nourishment.  The burnt offerings the humans made in their worship was food for Marduk and the others.  The flood, according to the Babylonians, occurred because one of the goddesses wanted her beauty sleep and thought the humans were too noisy.

What a radical idea, being children of God.  It’s still today a radical idea.  People sometimes believe that they are a product of their dna, or as I heard at a funeral this week, we are all star dust that has been a part of the universe for millions of years.  I remember people involved in the New Age movement claiming that they were God in their own right, and that when they remembered who they were, prosperity and health were sure to follow, because they were creators of their own lives.  That was before the economic downturn of 2008.

What does it mean to be children of God?  Elsewhere in the scriptures, it talks about how we are adopted to be God’s children, to become like Jesus.  Adoption in the ancient world was a very different thing than it is now.  Often adoption is done for the sake of providing children with a healthy family life that we hope is stable and nurturing, with the assumption that their birth family may not be so healthy.  It is a private thing that is not necessarily a part of changing a child’s identity, but adding to it.  The ancient world saw it more as a transaction, between unequal people.  A rich roman citizen would adopt a suitable young person to be the heir to their property.  It was a legal tool for providing childless couples with healthcare and protection for their aging years.  Often the young person’s family would be given a large sum of money and encouraged to sever all ties with the child.  It was a purchase, and a step up in the world.

If God has adopted us, then, First John wants us to consider the implications of such a situation.  We are no longer part of a human family but a community of saints, elders, disciples and messengers.  We are also works in progress.  Remember the t-shirt that said, “be patient with me, God isn’t finished with me yet”  1 John says, “what we will be is not yet revealed, what we do know is this, when he is revealed, we will be like him.”  This is a reminder that while we can and should do our best to work on who we are and how we are to others, this is a partnership.  Just as the rich citizen teaches his new child, so too God is in the process of shaping us into heirs as well.  We can work ourselves into frenzies trying to become perfect, but this is really saying that we are Gods, and not the children of God.  There’s also the added challenge of how the world sees us.  When we truly take this seriously, people don’t get it.  “Why are you so nice,” they ask.  “How come you care about people like that?”

There’s a fellow who is selling pizza in Philadelphia.  One day a customer came in and asked if he could pay it forward, buy a pizza for someone who couldn’t afford it.  The store owner grabbed a sticky note, wrote a voucher and stuck it on the wall.  Then, he asked his customers if they would like to pay it forward.  Everyone who goes to the restaurant and donates $1.25 when they buy a pizza, gets a sticky note.  They can write whatever they want on the note, encouragement, hope or whatever they feel like.  The wall of the restaurant is covered with notes.  People come in, pick a sticky note to take with them to encourage them as well as a slice of food that doesn’t taste mass produced.  Customers have given away ten thousand pizzas!  Some are coming back, saying that they got free pizza and now have a job and want to buy pizza for others. 

There were people who angrily attacked the idea as silly, as enabling, as supporting people in their laziness, as allowing welfare bums to not take responsibility for their lives.  They don’t get it.  They don’t understand that as children of God, we are called to a bigger picture.  As children of God, we trust in an Easter resurrection, even when it seems crazy and irrational.  We remember who we are and who we belong to, which gives us the power and the courage to see Jesus alive and living in ways that the cynics can’t understand.  Life is crazy, but we’re not alone and thank goodness God isn’t finished with us yet.  That is worth saying halleluiah for.

Walking in the light - John 20:19-31, 1 John 1:1-2:2

 Today is the second Sunday of Easter, sometimes known as "little Easter" and every year we read this story of Thomas who is late to understand what has happened with Jesus. It would be easy to point a finger at him as being a good example of how not to be a follower of Jesus Christ, but that is not where I want to go. Instead, I thought I would talk about nudist colonies.

Well, now that I have your attention, I had better explain that I happened to see an interview on the internet or else CBC TV one day where the topic was a congregation in the states somewhere that was part of a nudist colony, and everyone went to worship in their birthday suits, which they thought was perfectly natural. They went on and on about it in an attempt to justify their activities. I couldn't help but notice that the camera blurred out some parts of the participants. Yup, you guessed it, these brave souls would bare everything but their faces. They didn't want their families or colleagues know how they celebrated their Sunday worship.  They weren't going to let the world know what they were doing.  Even though they believed in what they were doing, they didn't believe enough to be open and honest about it.  

One might say that they were hiding behind closed doors, feeling unsure what kind of reaction they would get if they revealed their true selves.  Or that they were walking in darkness while they said that they walked in the light.

The same can be said about the disciples. According to John, they were hiding behind closed doors. Despite the experience of Easter Sunday, they are wanting to play it safe, to keep the message to themselves. They are not even sure what the message is.  

They certainly are not going out to tell every one of the event of the past few days. So the question this raises is "who really counts in this story?  Maybe Thomas is just saying out loud what everyone else was thinking, he is just a few days later than the rest of them.  And the most honest person, too.

Honesty is a hallmark of followers of the Way, according to the first letter of John. The resurrection is not some crazy p.r. scheme or mass conspiracy, on the contrary, it leads to a bold declaration of faith, that despite our faults and failings, our errors and flaws, we are washed clean. In baptism, as one United Church theologian said, "we are bathed in God's love, we enter into a community that hopes to live in the light, we walk together in a pilgrim journey, we are anointed and recruited by God to heal a broken world, we respond to God by choosing to enter into a relationship where we might have to risk getting wet, drowning to our small secret selves for a partnership in building a new and just world.

Our Song of Faith says that “Before conscious thought or action on our part, we are born into the brokenness of this world. Before conscious thought or action on our part, we are surrounded by God’s redeeming love. Baptism by water in the name of the Holy Trinity   is the means by which we are received, at any age, into the covenanted community of the church. It is the ritual that signifies our rebirth in faith and cleansing by the power of God. Baptism signifies the nurturing, sustaining, and transforming power of God’s love and our grateful response to that grace.

 

You see, baptism is when we all recognize that we are living naked in a locked room, trying to stay safe and rational.  Despite our best efforts, our deepest questions and fears, Jesus comes into our lives, turning our understanding of life upside down and asking us to trust that there is a better way, that we can live in the bold light of day.  And Jesus comes to community; Jesus didn’t come to Thomas in a private moment like Mary Magdalene experienced in the garden that first Easter; Jesus came when he was with his friends.  And the community he was with wasn’t perfect, or else they wouldn’t have been hiding behind closed doors. 

Thomas, despite his questions, was the first of the disciples to boldly proclaim that Jesus was the anointed one, the messenger, the example, the bringer of hope and love. Despite our flaws, our doubts and our questions, Easter keeps happening in our midst. Let us remember and be grateful for the amazing love and grace that didn’t come only once centuries ago, but continues to come to us in simple things like the breaking of bread, the sharing of wine, and the boldness of our public witness.  May we all experience Jesus breaking into our naked places and helping us walk boldly in the light.

No Such Thing as Closure

Easter Sunday, April 5, 2015

&Scripture Readings:  Mark 16:1–8, 1 Corinthians 15:1-11, Psalm 118  (VU p 837, parts 1, 2,and 3 Responsively), John 20:11-18
 

Any of you remember an old radio show called “The Rest of the Story”?  Paul Harvey would have some nugget of information with a surprise twist in it, and it would always be left hanging until after the commercial, when Paul would bring in a punch line that would make us go, “wow, I didn’t know that!”

In some ways, our gospel readings could be seen a little like that.  We have Mark’s gospel, where the three ladies go running out without telling anyone.  End of story, end of Mark’s gospel.  What a cliff-hanger. And then we have the gospel of John, where there is a much more detailed encounter, and Mary goes to get more witnesses to figure out what happened.  John gives us the ‘rest of the story’, all tidied up, and leading on to greater things.

We also had a third reading, Paul’s retelling of his Easter experience, in which he, who wasn’t even one of the original band of followers.  this is the oldest written account of Easter, written before Mark and John ever got out their pens and tried to get it down on paper.  Paul says, “You know this, you have heard it, you know the people who have told you what they saw”.

Three different reactions, three different views, three different tellings.  We dislike that, we modern scientific people.  We want our stories to come in nice packages, starting with “once upon a time” and ending with “and they lived happily ever after”.  We want closure, completeness, sensible and rational, logical progression.  Modern people would ask, “which version is right?” and if they couldn’t pick one, they might conclude, “these are all nonsense.”

We are hung up on closure.  We think that things should have tidy endings, that our emotions can be boxed up like Easter decorations once the chocolates are all eaten, that we have an expiry date on traumatic experiences, and that we only need to deal once with bad situations before we move on. We want the easy answers and living with an open-ended story only causes us stress.    Tell us which of the stories is right, Mark, Paul or John, and let us get on with things.

I think that it is possible to have a variety of stories that all are true witnesses to the first Easter.  I remember one Easter when I thought I would surprise everyone at my kid’s school.  I had a gig as the Easter Bunny to give out chocolates at a mall.  So I talked to the teachers and they thought it would be fine if I showed up at recess.  Everything went as planned, kids were coming over and getting hugs, and I was having a grand time.  A teacher came rushing up to me and told me I had to leave right away.  One of the children was having a panic attack!  It was full blown, hyperventilation, tears, beet red face, and crying!

If you had asked the kids on the playground what they had experienced when they saw a 6 foot tall bunny on the playground, most of them would have said, “the Easter Bunny, of course”.  If you had asked the teachers, they would have said, “a parent volunteer”.  But for one little child, they would have said, “a big tall thing with huge scary eyes that was staring at me.”

Our scriptures are like that.  John’s gospel says that the first Easter was a private, beautiful thing that turned sadness into joy, lonely heartbreak into comfort and reconciliation.  It was the gospel that inspired the hymn, “I Come to the Garden Alone”, a retelling of Mary Magdalene’s experience with Jesus by the empty tomb.  Paul’s story says that it came to an ever widening community, that many people still remember that experience, meeting and seeing Jesus in a way that profoundly transformed them into saints and leaders.  Mark’s gospel tells that it was so surprising that it shocked the three women who experienced it, shocked them so much that they didn’t speak of it.  Terror and amazement.  Terror perhaps in the fact that if this reversal of what is natural, what does it mean?  What would it mean to us today if we really believed that there was a God? What if there was the potential of you and me having an actual experience where we came in contact with the Living God? With Christ?

I may never put my hands in the nail wounds of Jesus, but I have heard stories of encounters with the sacred that have profoundly changed people.  I have witnessed folks get their courage back, find the ability to walk in dark times, face their addictions and heal their hurts.  I have seen sinners strive to be saints, and have heard stories that would make you weep, of people who were locked in dark tombs of their own, who have heard the message of the angels, “do not be afraid, you will find what you are looking for!”

We gather together on Sunday mornings to share that good news, to hear each other’s stories, and to help each other along the way as best we can.  We gather to heal, to talk, to pray and to watch for signs of the Easter story in our lives.  We gather because for us the story of Jesus has no closure, but is a story that continues to inspire, challenge and transform us.  We gather because Jesus keeps appearing, keeps breaking open our tombs and letting light in, pulls off the darkness and gloom, and accompanies us on our journey.  We gather, as I did four years after that recess fiasco, with my bunny head in my hand, to show the now 12-year old that it was just a big fancy kind of hat that I wore, and that it was still the same person under the hat.  I wasn’t just a parent volunteer, I also happened to be this child’s Sunday School teacher, and while it didn’t quite take away the terrors, it was a comfort to know that the big staring eyes had a caring person behind them.  They faced their fears and so they too became transformed by something hidden, something surprising, and something that at the heart of things was about love.  Maybe that is the key, behind the big staring eyes of our understanding of God is a caring love that risks all, even fleshy life to witness to the Covenant of Love. And now you know that the rest of the story is your story, your witness, your journey.  May you be saints for others and share your joyful halleluiahs as others have been saints for you.  Amen.

MWUC members Faith Discussion

You have all seen these signs; they are everywhere:

This is a good one. I discovered it on facebook of course. What isn't immediately obvious is that it is an advertisement. It is speaks to its intended audience with an issue we can all agree with. The person who posted the picture, likely from their cell phone camera, had no intention of advertising the church or the sign.

And yet... It comes to me. All the way from Ohio! You can see the name on the top of the sign: "Stone Bridge Church of God"

I wanted to know where Stone Bridge was, so I did a Google search. It took me seconds to find it. I suppose I am advertising it now as well... But that is not my point. If you look at the link, it takes you to a very slick web page. The page was put together by a media company

It sounds like StoneBridge takes evangelism very seriously. They put their resources into finding as many people as they can. My question to you is, how comfortable do you feel about their mission statement, "StoneBridge Church of God is a Bible-based community devoted to making and developing disciples of Jesus Christ."? I know Mill Woods United is a church. We worship. We listen to Bible passages. We are involved in lots of Justice issue. But...

Are YOU bible based? Are you devoted to developing disciples of Jesus?

Or are you like the person who posted the above image? Advertising by accident, not intentionally working toward the Kingdom of Christ?