September 1, 2002 - Food Bank Sunday
Welcome Back
When we open ourselves to respond to Jesus’ call to follow, we must be fully aware of the challenges involved. The good news is that we do not take this risk alone. Today’s passages invite us into engagement with the community of Christ.
If you would like to stay seated for any or all of the “standing” parts of the service, please feel free to do so.
Prelude
Sharing Announcements
A time of silent preparation—Lighting the Christ Candle
Call to Worship (Unison)
We journey together on a highway towards God’s Realm. It is the way of Jesus that takes all our past, and loves it into the future; that calls our world, and moves it towards the light. Come, let us journey together.
One: And let us continue to pray together
Eternal Creator, we have created a demanding, noisy world, a place where we scarcely have a moment of silence. Guide us in our worship this morning. Help us to create moments of silence in our worship, moments where we can focus our thoughts on you. You teach us that your voice is heard in the silent moments of life. Help us to slow down and listen for your voice. Amen.
Hymn #567 “Will You Come and Follow Me”
We Remain in God’s Presence Through Confession
Forgiving God, as we move out onto the road, hear us as we leave behind our burdens by the roadside: burdens of hurt, of wrongdoing, of words said and unsaid, and enable us to gather ourselves, healed and renewed for the journey…(Silent Confession)
Assurance of Pardon (One)
God says: “I will take your burdens from you, and set you free, healed and forgiven, ready for the journey.” Let us go into God’s future together. Thanks be to God!
Biblical Notes
God calls Moses
Matthew 16:21-28 From the Christian Scriptures Pg. 24
Jesus speaks about his suffering and death (Read from the New Revised Standard Version)
One: This is the Good News of Jesus Christ
Hymn #562 “Jesus Calls Us”
We Respond In Giving And Gratitude
Offertory
We do not ask that through our gifts all will be made perfect. We ask that through our gifts, comfort will be experienced, friendship will blossom, neighbours will be discovered, and those whose names we will never know, will find courage and hope. We pray in the name of God’s Sharing One, Jesus. Amen.
Hymn #264 “Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise”
Commissioning
Go from this place to listen to the heart of God in others, to walk the path of the Spirit’s healing and to follow Christ’s challenge.
Choral Amen
#298 “When You Walk From Here”
When you walk from here, when you walk from here.
Walk with justice, walk with mercy, and with God’s humble care.
Postlude
September Celebrations
Birthdays:Katie Patterson, May Schlenker, Boo Thompson, Alice Felesky, Marg McCulley, Eleanor Townsend
Anniversaries: Clare & Bob Crews (56 yrs.),
Ernest & Eileen Marchand (55 yrs.)
Flowers are placed in the Sanctuary this morning
in loving memory of
husband, Delbert Simpson
by
Treasa Simpson
Thought For Today
There are only two ways to live your life.
One is as though nothing is a miracle.
The other is as though everything is a miracle.
by Albert Einstein (1879-1955) Physicist
(Some source material shared today is with modifications from dialogues of clergy & worship leaders in community on the net…special thanks to Joinhands.com & this Midrash community)
One of the things summer is supposed to provide…at least it is the accepted myth, summer is an opportunity to connect with our sacred spaces.
We can do that in a hundred ways…time at a camp site smelling pine trees and hearing lake water lap against the shore…time spent fishing or hiking or using some time to gather with friends or family that we haven’t seen for a while…time to read a fistful of books that have been on your to-do list…whatever becomes for you an opportunity for re-creation is, in some way, a connection with your own very important and much needed sacred space.
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But sacred spaces are not always those that are predictable.
Back in April just after my father died I told you that I would say more about that at some future time…well I think this is the time.
For years my dad has been accumulating and collecting stuff. The house, and in particular, the basement was becoming more and more full of everything. We kids would tell him how important it was to toss out some of those things and to let go of some of the stuff. It never happened … and so the task of wading through a life time of accumulated stuff fell largely to Jane and to me this summer.
I would be lying to you if I said that we weren’t angry with having to sort through and chuck out tonnes of stuff that was of little interest to anyone. If fact, for three weeks we worked pretty much 16 hour days dealing with “the stuff” and it certainly began to wear on us.
It is sometimes that laborious image that comes to mind when folks ask “so, how were your holidays?”
Jane didn’t have the same history with all the stuff in the house that I had and so I can’t really imagine what the experience was for her. But for me, aside from the seemingly endless physical work, there was a cathartic experience of moving through layers of history much like an archaeologist might move through the many strata of life at a particular excavation. For me the peeling away of the layers refreshed the memory of my own history and served to fill in some gaps I didn’t even know I had.
Sure it was largely my dad’s history but it was also mine. Pictures and papers that spanned my whole life and most of my father’s life helped me reconnect with who Keith Farrell was throughout the past 71 yrs and they also served to put me solidly in touch with my roots.
So, shovelling through more than 26 thousand pounds of stuff… sorting what could be used by care organizations… what should be sold in a garage sale, what could be given to friends or charities… all of that was, for all it’s hard work, a very cleansing process for me…for Jane, I think it might have been simply “hard work” more than anything else …but through it all, I can’t tell you how wonderful it was to have someone share in the experience, the sad and happy times the anger and the humour that comes from dealing with all that stuff.
For those of you who have shared similar experiences, you know what I mean. For those of you who have had to soldier through similar experiences on your own, I can only begin to imagine what that would be like.
We are all pretty much stuff collectors. And at some point the stuff begins to posses us.
I know how much stuff there was at Dad’s because 13 tons was what we were charged for depositing in the local land fill. Now before you castigate me for not recycling understand that there are folks who sort through the land fill and make a living from the recyclable items they encounter there…besides, another 6 months would be needed to break everything down at the home level and the curb side would look like Toronto during a garbage strike.
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In some ways I suspect that dad had more than the odd smile about the whole experience.
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After the stump pulling, the sod laying, the scraping and painting, the electrical repairs, the plumbing changes the preparation of the house and the real estate listing, it sold last week and its sale seems a fitting ending to my cathartic summer.
Was the whole experience one of engaging one of my sacred spaces? Yes, I believe it was.
A reluctant sacred space for me but a sacred space just the same.
Holy Places can take many forms. As a minister I am invited to share in other people’s sacred spaces. Some times I’m called to take off my shoes and approach the bedside of a dying person, an ill person, a person unsure of their physical future…and in the moments of genuine care shared between us I know that I have been on holy ground.
Sometimes I have shared with someone the pain of their child’s experiences in their lives and I have come away knowing I have been standing on their holy ground.
Moses encounter with God was intense…his sense of call, unmistakable; his angst at feeling that he was smack in the centre of God’s will and in God’s presence has helped formed the way a whole culture thinks about the encounter with the holy.
But we don’t need to stand in the presence of a bush that burns without being consumed to know that we have been in the presence of the holy. I believe that the genuine encounters we have with self and others when we are free enough with our own beings that we trust that God’s presence is alongside us in our decision making, our struggles, our joys…every one of those times is a sacred time and every place where that vulnerability happens, is a holy place.
Holy ground is all around us!
Jesus, through his disciples was able to see the holy ground that surrounded their lives. He was in tune enough with them to invite them to share in the experience of holy ground that he envisioned.
Was it always easy or clear?
No Way!
Peter couldn’t understand that in the conversation that Jesus shared with him about pain and death he was really speaking about holy ground.
The Struggle and death that awaited Jesus and the anguish that would be the experience of the disciples was “holy ground”! That they were not wanting to identify—anymore than I was willing to identify the task of labouring through tons of garbage as a “holy space” for me… or anymore than we want to view the death of a friend or loved one as holy ground requiring our surrender.
Sure, like peter we want to rage against the thought, the possibility, but in the end the presence we share with that person is also a presence that is shared “in the presence of God” and that makes it holy ground.
Holy ground is everywhere. A child’s first day of school, a parent’s experience of seeing a child go off to college, or beginning a relationship with a partner, I think our ultimate connection with God flourishes if we are willing to pause and bask in the awareness that these sacred times, these rights of passage, these moments of transition in our lives are indeed sacred.
Too often we move beyond them too quickly, not coming close and standing silent in the presence of the burning bushes in our lives.
Ask yourself why Moses had to take off his shoes? It wasn’t to keep the carpet from getting dirty…it was that he might fully get in touch with the experience.
We need to be ready to take our shoes off much more often than we likely do. We need to get in touch with the God experiences that are all around us. There really is no shortage of sacred ground—only a shortage of the times we are willing to take off our shoes and get in touch with “the holy ground” around us.
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I don’t know if you have had the chance to see the movie that is currently showing down town, “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”? I don’t do a lot of movie plugs but this one is special…it’s Canadian humour at its best. And most of all it is funny because it’s real. It’s about family…not just Greek family but family of any kind. In reality, we are going to encounter our sacred places most often through those closest to us…our colleagues, our church community, our classmates and of course, our families.
Go see that movie…laugh and enjoy and think about the craziness that is in the families closest to your heart. It might just prove to be a vehicle to invite you to see more of the sacred spaces, the holy places, the holy ground in your life.
But don’t let your encounter with the holy end there…if Moses had never shared his experience of being alone with God, if Peter had never shared his experience of taking Jesus aside, those encounters with the holy would never have become part of our experience…God has given us community that we might share our experiences of the holy with one another.
God is so much greater than my experience or your experience but all of our experiences of God are given wings and strength when we are able and willing to share them with each other.
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Today we begin a new church year together…the calendar may say January 1st is the beginning the year, don’t believe it…in our culture it is the start of all things fall…the new school year, the beginning of a church year together, the knuckling down after the period of re-creation that is summer… that is the start of the year and I hope and pray as we begin a new year of sharing and encountering the holy ground all around us that we will do that as a community that strives to encounter God in all of life.
We have wonderful opportunities daily to encounter and share the holy!
The only choice we have is “the choice” to recognize and to share those encounters…God is known only as we do both. Amen.