Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Sermon for Easter Sunday - April 24th 2011

The Church is Easter. Out of death: life.

Out of darkness: a lush green world, flowers in the ice,

sunrays in the storm, mustard seeds galore.

Our souls enter a spiritual spring time,

our bodies given over to leaping and dancing,

our very beings saturated in hosannas.

Our shouting crashes in upon ths world: the Lord Lives, We live.

Resurrection resounds throughout our community. (Ann Weems)

We are a people of the Resurrection. An Easter People.

The challenge we face, whether we’re aware of it or not, is to go out into the world and without fear, embarrassment, or hesitation, share the story of what happened, and continues to happen since that first Easter Morning … Saying “Christ is Risen” and “He lives” and all of the slogans that are part of this Season in the Church, is about affirming life and celebrating our certainty that God is with us each step of the way.

Easter is not about the chocolate and bunnies and coloured eggs, it is instead about affirming and celebrating life, even in the face of death.

Over the last couple of days, I’ve been reading a book about preaching the Gospel – the Good News in a world that is seething with violence and fear … the author ponders how we are to engage our theology – our story – as a Church in a world that seems diametrically opposed to our values and our core beliefs … too often, in the Church when we realize that juxtaposition, we tend to pull away and form an isolate little enclave that prides itself in NOT being of the world, but removed from it … or we simply shrug our shoulders and say “what can we do?” and become part of the world …

The calling of the Church today, as it was when Mary stood in the garden and found the empty tomb, is to find a way of proclaiming the core of our faith, and offering our society and our world a better and a different way … and it ALL begins in that moment when Mary stood in the shadowy darkness of dawn and heard her name whispered by a familiar voice …

Why do we look for LIFE amongst the dead?

Why do we look for LIFE amongst the graves?

Why do we look for LIFE, when through the Resurrection it has found us and it calls us to celebrate?

The resurrection is ALL around us, we need only open our eyes to see it, then we can head out into the world and share that Good News – afterall, that’s what we’re called to do as The Church –to share the Good News that ‘because Christ live, we live …”

(In search of New Resurrections – Ann Weems)

May it be so – thanks be to God … Let us pray …

Breaking Bread on Maundy Thursday - Apr 21st 2011

Gathering Music:

Proclamation: I Corinthians 11:23-26

Invitation and Prayer:

One: We will remember the soothing,

ALL: and not forget the jarring.

One: we will remember the sweetness,

ALL: and not forget the sour.

One: we will remember the jagged desperation of Judas,

ALL: and own it, for it is our story too.

One: we will remember

WOMEN: the passion of love,

MEN: the smell of perfume,

WOMEN: the pain of rejection,

MEN: the stench of blood money …

One: and to help us on the journey, to help us with the tensions,

to help us face both the delight and the difficulty.

ALL: We will say yes to God’s generosity in creation.

We will say yes to God’s Grace poured out on humanity.

We will say yes to God’s justic revealed in Jesus.

MUSIC: “Come Unto Me” David Haas

Reading: “It Happened on a Thursday …”

Ritual of Handwashing: (John 13:1-17)

One: Great and Holy God, we have heard again the story of

Jesus’ meal with the twelve. At supper, he took the ordinary staples of life – bread and wine – and made them into an extraordinary feast. You have invited us to gather, to remember and to celebrate that sacramental meal. With power and blessing, may your Spirit touch these elements and anoint us with grace. In the name of the One who calls us here and makes us friends, AMEN

Music: “Song of the Body” David Haas

Breaking of the Bread:

Sharing of the Cup:

Reading: Holy Communion by Ann Weems

Sharing at the Table:

Prayer of Thanks:

ALL: Holy One, it is at your table that we remember you

most. As we partake of these elements may we be filled not only with their substance, but also with your Spirit. As we gather here to reenact the meal you shared with the Twelve, remind us of your presence along us, recommit us to your mission, and be with us in the coming hours. In your name we pray. AMEN

Reading: Psalm 116 Page 836 Voices United

Reading: I Will Give What I Have”

Blessing:

One: O God, in Jesus Christ you triumphantly entered Jerusalem,

thus beginning a week of pain and sorrow. In these days of defeat and victory, you have brought together humiliation and exaltation, death and resurrection.

ALL: Be with us now, as we follow in joy and in sorrow

the way of the cross, in the footsteps of Jesus our Saviour. Amen.

Reading: John 13:31-35 & John 17

Prayer: (Paraphrase of the Lord’s Prayer - page 916 Voices United)

Reading: They Went Out and Followed Him.”

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You are invited to join us as we commemorate

Good Friday

Eugenia United Church at 11 am

Sermon for April 17th - Palm Sunday


Between Parades - Ann Weems

We're good at planning !! Give us a task force and a project and we're off and running!

No trouble at all.

Going to the village and finding the cold,

even negotiating with the owners is right down our alley.

AND how we love a parade!

In a frenzy of celebration we gladly focus on Jesus,

and generously throw our coats and palms in his path.

And we can should praise loudly enough to make the Pharisees complain.

It's all so good !

It's between parades that we don't do so well ...

from Sunday to Sunday we forget our hosannas.

Between parades the stones will have to should because we don't.

We have stumbled into an interesting time in the Church season – Lent is ending, and we begin the final steps in to and through Holy Week.

We know what lies ahead. The story, the characters, the happenings – all of it is very familiar and very un-nerving to journey through.

It is, as Ann Weems noted, easier to jump over this week and move from the parade of Hosannas offered here in Palm Sunday, to the Hallelujahs of Easter Sunday when the empty tomb is discovered, and the resurrection is proclaimed … afterall, who really wants to revisit the betrayal of Judas while at supper with Jesus?

Who wants to remember the lonely struggle Jesus had in the dark garden before the guards came and lead him away like a common prisoner?

Who wants to recall the beatings and the torture that marked the trials Jesus faced in those final hours?

Who really stand at the foot of the cross and watch the dying? Listen to the crowds turn? See the Disciples flee?

It IS far easier to just skip over these deep dark and distressful moments, and move from the warm jubilant celebration of arriving in Jerusalem welcomed as hero, to the early morning proclamation of “He is Risen”, and skip over the ugly nasty bits …

It is easier … but we are called to be an Easter People, and if we’re going to be there when the stone is rolled away, we need to be there in the events and happenings that lead up to that moment … Even our Christmas Story, accepts the fact that Jesus must face his trial, torture and crucifixion to offer the gift of Resurrection.

The wise men after all, offered him Gold, Frankincense and myrrh – two of which are spices used to anoint a body after death. Theologians might want to gloss over that – afterall, who wants to talk about Jesus’ death at the time of year when we’re celebrating his birth – yet, the whole point of Jesus life reached its culmination in this coming week … with each step into the darkness of Holy Week, we move closer to that moment when we stand before the empty tomb and our question – “he is risen?” turns into a joyous proclamation “He is RISEN!”

Yet to simply skip through Holy Week, something we do quite often, is to miss the foundation on which that proclamation rests …

The strength of our faith – the heart of what we believe – and what makes this a powerful approach to life, is the what is about to happen in the coming hours that lie between today and Easter Sunday … Jesus is betrayed by his friends … Jesus knows what is ahead and has a long dark night of the soul when he truly struggles with the issues and happenings he is confronting … Jesus experiences the abandonment of his friends repeatedly – first they can’t stay awake, then they stand on the sidelines as he is arrested and tried, then finally they flee in terror as he approaches death … Jesus endures the ridicule and torturous abuse that comes from the trials and confrontations he endures … then finally, he experiences the indignity of death on a cross …

Early in his ministry, Jesus challenges his disciples and us, to “take up our cross and follow me …” In the months between his birth and Holy Week, we can take up our cross … it might involve coming to Church once in a while, it could be about a few extra moments of volunteering, it might be someone saying contemptuously “YOU go to Church?”, it might even involve feeling slightly embarrassed at the thought of being connected to a Church … but this week, the real meaning of ‘take up your cross and follow me’ is revealed, and it is not an easy road to travel.

The power of Holy Week comes though, in realizing that these things happen to ALL of us … we ALL have moments when we feel alone and frightened, we’ve ALL had those sleepless deep dark nights of the soul when we struggle with something, we’ve all had lonely moments when we feel abandoned and forgotten, we’ve all struggled with pain and suffering, and we know what it means to face death … we’ve been there … So, Holy Week is uncomfortable, not because of what is happening to Jesus, but because it reminds us that we each face those deep dark moments too.

We face them – but we don’t want to be reminded of them … we like the power of the resurrection. We like standing in the early morning sunshine of the garden and rejoicing that He is Risen Indeed. We like Easter, and would rather skip over the Maundy Thursday and Good Friday bits …

The challenge then, is to journey into the coming week … to actively and willingly travel into the events we know lie ahead and experience them, not as some liturigal happening recalling moments from long ago, but experience them as our moments … to recall as retell the story, the moments in our own lives when we’ve faced the darkness, when we’ve struggled and when we’ve felt ALL of the emotion that is part of Holy Week, and to take each step knowing that we are not alone, and that we will experience the fullness of the resurrection ourselves.

After all, we are a Resurrection People. We have journeyed through the darkness and have lived through our own Holy Week when we’ve taken each step wondering if we’ll find the strength to take another … we’ve ALL been there … and it is that common experience that not only undergirds the happenings of Holy Week, but that also brings us together as community of faith … we ALL know and have experienced journeys in the darkness, and we ALL know and have experienced the triumphant power of the Resurrection … it has been the journey through the darkness though, that has made us stronger and given us the ability to take each step, to draw each breath, and to experience more fully the moment that comes on Easter Morning when our questions turn to proclamations …

Each of us have walked the dark streets of Jerusalem in our own lives … we’ve journeyed into the shadowy and dark places … and in the coming week, we’re being challenged to make the trip once again …

(Holy Week by Ann Weems)

May it be so – thanks be to God … Let us pray …

Friday, April 1, 2011