Looking Ahead to September 1, 2019

This being the first Sunday of the month we will be celebrating the Sacrament of Communion.

The Scripture Readings this week are:

• Hebrews 13:1-3
• Luke 14:1, 7-14

The Sermon title is Radical Hospitality

Early Thoughts: What does it mean to be a good host? To be a good guest? For hospitality to work we need to be both.

Hospitality is one of those things that makes it possible for us to live together.  In some parts of human history the need to be a good and willing host was truly a matter of survival. That may be less true for many of us now but it is still true for us as a community.

And yet there seems to be a lot of rhetoric that goes directly against hospitality. There are those who claim immigration is somehow a bad thing. There are those who think some people are more welcome than others. There are voices who advocate tossing out those who, in their opinion do not add to/take away from the quality of life in our community. (I have got to stop reading posts about the homelessness issues/ tent city and the drug issue in GP because I keep getting enraged at the comments).

I fear that we, as a culture, have become less welcoming, less hospitable as we have also become more suspicious about those we define as "them". Then I read Hebrews 13. Or I remember the story of Abraham and Sarah entertaining three strangers (Genesis 18)  or even the story of Lot in Sodom (Genesis 19 -- Scripture itself tells us the the sin that led to the destruction of Sodom was a lack of hospitality [Ezekiel 16:49, Matthew 10:13-15]). And when I read these stories I am reminded that we are to welcome the stranger.

What about the other side of hospitality? What about the guest? In this passage from Luke Jesus gives some hints.  And my summation of those hints is "don't think too highly of yourself". This morning as I re-read the Luke reading for this week I am once again given the impression that a great deal of what makes hospitality work is to not think too much of ourselves. Both as guest or host we need to keep ourselves humble.

To live as citizens of the Kingdom means, in part, to practice hospitality. Indeed it is one of the 12 practises cover in the book  Practicing our Faith (need to re-read that chapter this week). It means to recognize that God is present in the act of hosting. It means that we might have to rethink and relearn some of our assumptions about what it means to be a good host and a good guest.

One model would be the communion table. We in the United Church hold an open table, where all are welcome. We do this because we recognize that God is the real host and that God welcomes all to come and eat and drink. Let us eat and drink together, and let us be transformed in the process.  The hope for the future of our culture lies, i part, in how we practice radical hospitality.
--Gord

Looking Ahead to June 9, 2019 -- Pentecost Sunday

This week we mark Pentecost, the celebration of the Holy Spirit and the "birthday" of the Church.

We will also be celebrating the sacrament of Communion.

The Scripture Readings this week are:

• Galatians 5:22-26
• Matthew 7:16-20
• Acts 2:1-4

The Sermon title is You Got Spirit in You?

Early Thoughts: On that first Pentecost of the Christian Era God arrived. The Holy Spirit blew in and through the community of Jesus' disciples and transformed them completely.

That is what the Holy Spirit does, it changes how we see the world, how we live, how we interact with the world. And the people around us should be able to see that, they should notice and wonder we we act the way we do.  Hopefully they won't sneer and decide that we are drunk, as some did on that first Pentecost.

This past Easter season we took some time to look at some of what Paul says grows in us when the Spirit is a part of our lives. This week we are reminded of wisdom from Matthew "Thus you will know them by their fruits". Now Matthew has a bit of a judgement twist, has no sense that transformation is possible, but the great witness of our faith stories is that transformation is possible. When God works in us and others by the Spirit transformation happens. We proclaim that the Church is populated by people who have been born by water and the Spirit. I sometimes wonder if people see the Spirit at work in our lives?

So do you have the Spirit in you?  What sort of fruit do you bear?
--Gord

Looking Ahead to May 20, 2018 -- Pentecost Sunday

The Scripture Readings this week are:

• Acts 2:1-21
• Philippians 4:4-9

The Sermon title is Keep Calm and Keep On

Early thoughts: How can we continue to be the church? In a world of change how can we keep being something that has been around for 2000 years?

A couple of thoughts come to mind from our passages for this week.

One is that the Spirit is still blowing around this crazy world of ours, calling forth faith and courage. The Spirit still breaks into closed (even locked) spaces and sets itself free -- freeing people in the process.

The other is that if we honestly still believe that God is with us we are still called to "Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice". Paul wrote to the Philippians from prison, but even then he did not give up on the church. It is not always easy to be the church (some might argue that it should never be "easy" to be the church). But still we are called to be the church.

We keep the faith. We try to keep calm, to avoid panic, to avoid giving in to "the church is dying" rhetoric (even if we half fear those statements might be true). And we keep on.

Not always in the same way. But with the same vision in mind. We focus on the vision, we focus on the Gospel, we focus on the God revealed in the faith story and we keep on being the church. We might use different language or different tools or different styles than our parents and grandparents (or even different ones than we ourselves used a few decades ago). We might put the emphasis on different parts of the story. We might even change our understanding of how God is calling us to react to some things. But we keep on. We keep looking for those things that are true and honourable and commendable. And we keep on being the church.

Centuries ago the Spirit of God, the Spirit of the Risen Christ blew into the hearts and souls and lives of a small group of people and transformed them. They then went out to share a story that would transform the lives of dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of others. The same Spirit  blows in our world today. Are we ready to keep on being the church?
--Gord

Looking Forward to June 4, 2017 -- Pentecost Sunday, the Fruits of the Spirit

This being the first Sunday of the month we will be celebrating the sacrament of Communion.  This will be the last regular Communion service until September.


The readings for Pentecost Sunday this year are:

• Acts 2:1-4
• Galatians 5:16-26

The Sermon title is Live in the Spirit

Early Thoughts: Many years ago, when I was in Junior Choir, we did a musical called the Music Machine. The premise was that there was a magical machine that would create a song about anything you put into it. Then they put in it a passage of scripture and we get a series of songs about the Fruits of the Spirit. That was my first introduction to this concept from Scripture (and I can remember snippets of some of the songs too--particularly the one about patience!)
Somewhere in my parent's house is this album that we bought around the time we did the show:


But since I probably should do something beyond playing the songs of the album...

In the Gospel of Matthew Jesus is recorded as saying (Matthew 7:15-20):

“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? In the same way, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will know them by their fruits."

Paul teaches that in Christ we are people of the Spirit, we are people who have received the Spirit. Paul also suggests that maybe if we are living by the Spirit people should be able to tell. Which do your lives show more, the works of the flesh or the fruits of the Spirit? Maybe we don't always want to know the answer to that question.

The story of Pentecost reminds us that while the central story of the Christian community is the life, death and resurrection of Jesus the power that pushes us onward is the breath of the Spirit, the same breath that blows over the primordial soup at the beginning of Genesis, the same breath that inspires the prophets, that descends on Jesus at his baptism. The Spirit of God is what changes and feeds our lives as people of faith -- if we let it.

We are known by our actions, by our words, by our fruitfulness. Do people look at us and see things like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control?
--Gord

Looking Forward to May 15, 2016 -- Pentecost Sunday

This Sunday for Children's Time we will hear the beginning of the story of Pentecost, often called the "birth of the church".  You can read it here.

The other Scripture Reading for this week is 1 Corinthians 12:1-13 

The Sermon title is Spirit-Gifted

Early Thoughts: What gift has the Spirit of God stirred in you?  When the breath of God stirs the embers of the fire in your belly what do you feel driven to do?

Maybe your gift is found in the list that Paul lays out.  Maybe it is different (I doubt that Paul was claiming this is an exhaustive list of gifts, more like these are some of the gifts that the folks in Corinth are claiming and/or fighting about).

On Pentecost Sunday we remember that the Church is made alive when God's Spirit blows through our communities. The same wind that, in the beginning of our faith story, blew life into the lungs of Adam and Eve blows life into our faith, into our churches.

It is my belief that with that wind comes gifts.  We all have gifts that we offer for the growth and benefit of the whole community (both inside and outside the church walls).

And so the question remains: With what gifts/talents/strengths has God gifted you? As the fire of the Spirit burns in your soul what do you feel called to do?
--Gord