Sunday, November 18, 2012

Anniversary Sunday at St John's Flesherton




The Choir along with special musical guests David, Bobbi and Rob
getting ready for the worship service. 
Today's extras included guitar, drums, fiddle and trumpet 
accompanying our choir in the worship music leadership!!!

  

The Congregation of St John's United Church 
was joined by members of sister Congregation 
Eugenia United Church 
as St John's marked thier 
155th Anniversary as a Congregation 
and
135th Anniversary of the Opening of thier current Worship Building. 



Our Minister Emeritus Rev. Doyle Prier shared in worship leadership 
and noted that it was 135 years ago today, (Nov. 18th 1877)
that The Rev. Dr Egerton Ryerson lead the worship services 
to officially open St John's Methodist Church, Flesherton.




Susan and David 
playing together, adding their talent 
to our powerful music ministry!! 

Rev. Doyle invites the "kids" 
to help build a Church ...

The end results:

 



Today our Music,
under the guidance of our Music Director Nancy,
pulled our worship service together
and made it truly memorable!



A special thank you to ALL the wonderful members of our community who helped make for a memorable weekend celebration of our life and ministry together!

The dinner on Saturday night, the Concert, and today's worship service was a celebration of the many talents of our Church and surrounding community - thanks to everyone who came and took part and 
shared their talent and ability. 

  

Sermon for November 18th 2012 - Anniversary Sunday at St John's








For the service today - marking 155 years as a congregation, and the anniversary of the Official Opening of our current Church Building at St. John's in Flesherton, we held a weekend of special events mirroring some of the events of November 17th and 18th 1877 when the Rev. Dr. Egerton Ryerson came and presided at the Official Opening of the Building, and led no less then FOUR services over the weekend. 
Today, 135 years later The Rev. Doyle Prier, and The Rev. Shawn Ankenmann lead our worship service and presided at a powerful event full of music, laughter and celebration of our faith. 

The sermon that follows was in part a visit from an 'old' friend:

Rev. D. Prier:
"135 years ago, the doors were officially opened on our soaring sanctuary space here at St John’s … built on the hill over looking the village, it was to be a hub of religious and social activity for the community.
Our forebearers had something grand in mind as they build the red brick building that we continue to call home.
So sure of their role in the life of the community and the area, they invited The Reverend Dr. Egerton Ryerson to come and preside at the first worship services held in this new building …
Egerton Ryerson, a Methodist preacher, the founder of the education system as we know it in Ontario, Superintendent of that same system, General Secretary of the Methodist Church in Canada, a writer, a theologian, an avid hunter and fisher … there was no brighter light in Canadian Methodism than he …"

(interrupted by "E. Ryerson" - Rev. Shawn in period costume:)

Here, here …you’re making me sound like some sort of walking saint. I’m just a preacher. The brother of three fine preachers, and myself fortunate to have been able to serve God and this fine country in helping create villages where our young people will be taught the values and morals of our shared faith.
I am nothing more than a simple servant of God and the Church, helping do the work I have been blessed to be invited to partake in.
The work that you, my sisters and brothers carry out day after day as you live and share the very teachings handed down to us through our common faith.
What is important in our world – in our scattered villages being carved out of the wild back country of places like this, is sharing the teachings of the Apostles. Taking the very words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and applying them to the lives we live here, in this beautiful frontier town.
I came here 135 years ago to celebrate the opening of this fine building because it stands as a shining beacon to the village of Flesherton and to the surrounding countryside. You can see the spire reaching up to heaven, reminding us all of where your lives come from, and where they will in time return.
This church stands as a symbol of the hope that we alone can offer.
I have long said that when we found a Church through the work of the saddle bag preachers, and come to a point where we are ready to set the corner stone of a house of worship, that we should “erect places of worship that are commensurate with the work we are called in the providence of God to perform!”
This building is a living symbol of the work we are called to perform.
We are here to share the blessings of Baptism that celebrate the value of every child. Baptism that proclaims boldly that every child is loved and cherished by our God.
We are here to guide those young people, and to inspire and educate them with and through and by our faith. We are to be the example of caring for one another, loving our neighbours, welcoming in the strangers, reaching out to those in need here, down the Sydenham road, and even in the farthest reaches of Canada and the world … we are to guide our young people by living our faith and inviting them to share in the journey.
We are hear to share our songs and prayers, and to worship God by breaking bread and conducting services that invite others to come and join us. We are afterall, Methodists – it was John Wesley himself who said:

“The kingdom of God is not in word, but in power. However the Gospel may be admired, its great design is never realized but in the actual conversion and salvation of men. With whatever ability the word of life may be dispensed no sinner will be truly awakened, no heart will become broken and contrite, no polluted conscience will be purged from dead works, no impure mind will be sanctified, no human soul will be effectually renewed and comforted unless the Holy Spirit descend in the plentitude of his love and power.”

We are the ones to create that Kingdom of God – here in this village, in this corner of Grey Country, … The Kingdom of God. The place where the love and power of God is poured out for all to come and share.
And it starts with prayer.
Praying in our homes, and in our workplaces. Praying for our friends, our family, our neighbours and our communities.
Then gathering together and sharing our prayers as a community. As a Church.
That’s what this place is for my friends.
That’s why we toiled to build these beautiful buildings in the villages and towns all across this land.
It is to have a place where we can gather to celebrate the sacraments of Baptism and The Lord’s Supper, but more importantly, to have a place to PRAY.
In our rousing hymns, and our inspiring worship we are to join our hearts together to PRAY for our communities, to pray for our families, to pray for our world and the work we are called to share, and then go out into our community and live this faith that reconciles us with the Love of God!
The reason I came here that fall morning, was not because Mr Flesher, the son of a fine Methodist preacher, and himself a child of the Methodist Church, had invited me, I came because I see the importance of places like this – Church communities in the very heart of towns and villages across this land.
This building is a beacon of faith that shines a bright and unwavering light on the dark paths we sometimes find ourselves trodding.
This building, like the school houses I’ve been part of creating, is the means of forging an enlightened, educated, inspired and caring community that has neighbour helping neighbour, and has you and I looking out for and looking after one another.
This building, is a reminder of that simple commandment our Lord Jesus Christ gave to his apostles, who in turn gave to us … the commandment to love one another as God has loved us.
135 years ago, we opened the doors of the building and proclaimed that Good News to the village around us … today, let’s go back out there and remind them again that not only is the message still here – we, the decendents of the Methodist Tradition are still here – and we are still living that commandment to love one another as God has loved us !!!

(Rev. Shawn steps out of costume:)
The Reverend Dr. Egerton Ryerson – presided at four worship services on that first weekend of services held here in this place back in 1877 … in a little of a year, his earthly journey would end at the age of 79.
There can be little doubt that the grand old man of Canadian Methodism offered a powerful series of reflections looking back on a long and storied career as a saddle bag preacher, a writer, a newspaper publisher, a Church leader, the superintendent of Education for Ontario, and so many other hats he wore in his lifetime … today we are numbered among those who Ryerson no doubt commissioned to carry on the work he had envisioned and begun – the work of sharing our faith with the world around us …
135 years after his challenge was issued – may we continue to live and share our faith … thanks be to God … Let us pray …

Monday, November 12, 2012

Sermon for November 11th 2012 - Remembrance Day




Today is about Remembering.
Remembering the fallen.
Remembering the wounded and the broken.
Remembering those who were willing to serve in uniform and stand on the battle lines to defend something that many of us may not fully comprehend much less understand.
Today we recount the battles of the past, and the bittersweet glories of places with names like Kandahar, Kapyong, Juno, Hong Kong, Cassio, Vimy, Passcendale and Yrpes … as we pause to remember the fallen – those who lie in foreign battlefields far from the villages and hamlets they once called home, we are also challenge to balance our pride and our ego as we approach these moments of remembrance …
It is easy to get caught up in the patriotism of the moment and wrap ourselves in the flag for God, and Queen and Country, and lose sight of the simple fact that Remembrance Day is not about the glory of the battle, it is about the horror of the battle and the quiet almost desperate prayer that echoes across time, that we may finally learn from our past, and not repeat ad nauseum into the future …
Remembrance Day is about our living memory … and our enduring hope.
Remembrance Day is about having the courage to live with that hope that the sacrifices of the past – the fallen – the broken – the wounded, those forever changed, will help us find a better way …
The flood of memories is not about standing proudly like those Jesus was citing in our reading from Mark – those who stand with their glorious and flashy robes saying “Look at me … look at how faithful I am … look at how religious I am …” Instead Jesus cites the woman who quietly and with any ceremony or recognition steps up and offers herself …
That is the lesson of remembrance day. To hear the story of the ordinary men and women who put on uniforms and who in their own opinions ultimately really didn’t do anything extra-ordinary, but simply dis what was asked.
I remember sitting with a veteran of Vimy ridge who dismissed the suggestion that his role in the raging battle of an April morning decades earlier constituted anything heroic … he was simply a soldier doing what he was ordered, and he was lucky enough to survive while hundreds of others did not.
Or, another veteran of a place called Cassio who took pride in saying “I was no hero. While others were fighting at Juno I was as far away from there as I could be …” his humour was a counter balance to the dark memories he carried of a long drawn out and bloody Italian battle six decades earlier …
Neither man, nor any of the heroes I’ve been blessed to meet in the last twenty years of my ministry ever stood up and said “Look at me …” Instead on Remembrance Day they quietly and very proudly wore the tiny red poppy and struggled to stand at attention, their quivering hand firmly held in a salute at the remembrance of brothers – literal and figuratively who gave everything they had in service to God, the King and country on bloody battle fields decades earlier.
The true heroes don’t look for adulation … they have simply earned it. And our task on days like this in our action of Remembrance is to honour that willingness to sacrifice … to honour those who risked so much … to honour those who have never forgotten.
The balancing act we are called to live is using our memories of the past without being overwhelmed by them and allowing them to be the place we reside …
A friend and colleague put it well today when he shared the following prayerful appeal:

Perhaps today will be the day that Remembrance translates into doing.

Perhaps today is the day we who never went and never fought will finally see the demands we made on generations past and present.

Perhaps today will be the day that we decide that sending future generations to die is our taking their lives for granted and proving ourselves to be unworthy of such sacrifice.

Perhaps today will be the day that we acknowledge that there is no greater love than to lay our lives down for others and no greater offense than to demand others to take lives on our behalf.

Perhaps today will be the day that we rise up and declare that the insatiable appetite of the grave will find no easy meal amongst our nations.

Perhaps today two minutes of silence will finally be enough for us to actually remember and not repeat the failures that rob our brave sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, friends and neighbours of their humanity or their lives.

The only thing preventing today from becoming such a day is our craven selfishness. (source: rev. john maich)

          In our remembrance today, and in the coming days – may we have the courage to learn from the past and to recreate the future as God yearns it to be.

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

Sermon for November 4th 2012 - Living Hope ...




There is a story about an Irish man named Paddy, who couldn’t – he just wouldn’t see the positive in anything. He constantly bemoaned the circumstance and happenings in his life; nothing satisfied him. Everyone in the village knew this and they tolerated him.
But then one summer afternoon, the sun broke through after a grey and dreary morning, and the hillsides were bathed in a glorious light – it was a wonderful afternoon on the green hills of Ireland.
The parish priest was strolling by Paddy’s yard as Paddy was tending his garden, and called over the stone fence: “Eye, Paddy tis a beautiful day isn’t it?”
Paddy looked up and shrugged and answered with a moan – “Ah, sure Father, … but will it last?”
Joan Chittister, notes in recounting this story that despair such as Paddy’s colours the way we look at things. Despair makes us suspicious of the future and makes us see the present in very negative terms. But most alarmingly, despair leads us to ignore the very possibilities that could save us, or cause us to actively hurt ourselves or those around us …
Jean Vanier writes of that place where despair has completely usurped and overwhelmed hope when he observes the following:
I once visited a psychiatric hospital that was a kind of warehouse of human misery. Hundreds of children with severe disabilities were lying, neglected on their cots. There was a deadly silence. Not one of them was crying. When they realize no one cares, that nobody will answer them, children no longer cry. It takes too much energy. We cry out only when there is hope that someone may hear us. (JV pg9)

We cry out only when there is hope that someone may hear us … despair robs us of hope and begins to shut us down … BUT, by faith we are a hopeful and HOPEFILLED people. We are about far more than despair. Jean Vanier offers this reflection in the opening pages of his book “Becoming Human” which calls us to revision our view of the world and how we interact with it. For Vanier, it’s about embracing and embodying hope in our lives, our faith and our relationships.
Today, we stand on All Saints’ Sunday when we acknowledge and give thanks for the Saints of every time and every place who have been part of this great cloud of witnesses that is the family of God. All Saints is about embracing the totality of our relationships past and present.  
As protestants, we also stand in the shadow of the young clergy man named Martin Luther, who on Halloween 1517, nailed to the door of the Church in Wittenburg 95 questions he wanted to discuss with Church authorities … instead of a dialogue and a process of dynamic growth and change, Luther was excommunicated, a bounty was placed on his head and the Protestant reformation was begun …
Our legacy today as people of Hope, is to not only acknowledge and celebrate the many people like Luther, who asked the tough questions, but to honour and celebrate the everyday saints who have touched our lives by their example of LIVING the tough questions and embodying Hope and Faith in everyday life. The people who have effected and shaped our lives.
All Saints is about ALL the Saints – the average ordinary people who have left extra-ordinary legacies by living, sharing and celebrating their faith in communities just like ours. It is about our circle of family, friends, and mentors around us.
Being a Hope-filled and hopeful people of faith is not about big showy Saints that have special saint days and statues put up in churches and gardens and on dashboards. Being a people of hope and faith means being like those folks who helped by setting an example for us through their everyday lives.
We live in a time, when Hope is seemingly in short supply.
If we listen carefully to the election campaign south of the Border, or even some of the political rhetoric in our own country, we hear a thick heavy stream of fear running through the appeals of our politicians and leaders.
They want us to trust them … they want to offer easy solutions to complex questions … they want us to be comfortable and to deny the reality of our fear rather than addressing it. Perhaps the shining example of this came when President Bush, with the smoke of 9/11 still swirling around him, called on American to just resume their normal lives – he even dropped the encouragement to “go shopping” in the face of the horrific events we ALL watched …
Our modern consumerist culture wants us to deny our fear and substitute that ache of loneliness and despair with SHOPPING … the biggest, the newest, the best, the most up to date gadget, gizmo or electronic … instead of seeking hope … we try to fill the space – the ache – with other things …
Jean Vanier observes this when he notes:
A sense of loneliness can be covered up by the things we do as week recognition and success. This is surely what I did as a young adult. It is what we all do. We all have this drive to do things that will be seen by others as valuable, things that make us feel good about ourselves and give us a sense of being alive. We only become aware of loneliness at times when we cannot perform or when imagination seems to fail us. (JV pg 7)

We are perhaps first and foremost, a people of imagination who DARE to proclaim hope in our world – we dare to live it. In the face of despair and hope we speak a different language. We know:
Hope is not some kind of delusional optimism to be resorted to because we simply cannot face the hard facts that threaten to swamp our hearts. People do die and leave us. Friends do leave and desert us. Businesses do crumble and destroy us financially. Loves do dry up and disappear. Desires do come to dust. Careers do come to ruin. Disease does debilitate us. Evil does exist. But through it all, hope remains, nevertheless a choice.
Hope rides on the decision either to believe that God stands on this dark road waiting to walk with us towards new light again, or to despair of the fact that God who is faithful is eternally faithful and will sustain us in our darkness one more time. HOPE MEANS: We can begin to build a new life when death comes. We can reach out to make friends with others rather than curl up, hurt and angry waiting for someone to come to us. We can allow ourselves to love again, knowing now that love is a prize that comes in many shapes and forms. We can allow ourselves to cultivate new joys, new interests. We can take the experiences of the past and use them to mine a new life lode. … we can let go of a finished present so that what is about to happen in the future can begin. (JC pg 105-6)

We know that Hope is about action. Following the lead, and the example set by the Saints we’ve known and that we live among, and sharing our faith by word and deed … Hope is rolling up our sleeves and getting busy showing the world that this fear and despair and loneliness isn’t what God wants for us, and it isn’t what we deserve … there is something more!
To borrow another joke – despair and fear is akin to the man who watched the rising flood waters surrounding his home and called out to God to rescue him. Shortly there after some kids in a canoe happened by and called to the man, who was busily piling sandbags if he wanted to be rescued.
“No” answered the man, “I’m waiting for God to rescue me.”
Later after the sandbags breached and his house was flood, the man retreated to the second floor and a police boat came by and called on the man asking if he wanted to be rescued, and again he offered, “No, I’m waiting for God to rescue me.”
Finally as he clung to the chimney with the water swirling around his ankles a helicopter thundered overhead and a rope was lowered for him to grab and be carried to safety by he refused , being adamant in his faith that God would rescue him … the story ends with him standing before God at the pearly gates and asking “Why didn’t you rescue me?”
God chuckles and said – “What more did you want? I sent a canoe, a police boat and a helicopter …”
There is a fine line between despair and fear and stubborn blindness … admittedly, with the events along the coast line of New York and New Jersey in recent days, the prospect of someone losing everything including their life is no laughing matter – but the lesson of this facetious tale remains. In the face of despair, we are called to be a Hopeful and Hope-FILLED people, but our hope must be tempered by a realism. We can, as the flood waters rise, call out to God to rescue us – but, we must be willing to see the canoes, boats and helicopters as part of that response.
We must live with a sense of hope that allows us to overcome despair.
Joan Chittister says bluntly that :
Hope lies in the memory of God’s previous goodness to us in a world that is both bountiful and harsh. … God has given us in this unfinished world a glimpse of eternity and walks with us through here to there, giving us possibility, GIVING US HOPE. (JC pg 104-5)

Our readings today are about living faithfully. Ruth and Naomi live faithfully to each other, and to the circle around them – Jesus challenges the disciples to live faithfully, a challenge that resonates across time to us … love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, and all your soul and you should love your neighbour as yourself … it’s ALL about living faithfully in relationship with yourself, with God, with our community, and with those around us.
It’s about embodying Hope. Sharing Hope. Living Hope.  
It’s about embracing the unfinished world around us, and not just giving and sharing hope – but BEING HOPE.
May it be so – thanks be to God … let us pray …



JC – Joan Chittister - “Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope”
JV – Jean Vanier - “Becoming Human”