Loving and life-giving God, open our hearts to experience your bottomless grace for us. Open our minds to the interconnections that you have woven across time, across the world and spanning the universe. Open our arms to embrace the possibilities for wholeness and love that abound around us. In Jesus’s name we pray. Amen.

Since the dawn of time, being a mom has never been easy. From Eve having to change the fur lined diaper of Cain and Abel, to Mary grounding the youngster Jesus after an Amber Alert was put out after he ran off to the temple, to Elizabeth having to wash her son John’s loin cloth after all that time in the desert eating honey and locusts. To the present day when some women may feel that in order to be the best mom, you have to bedoing it all and do it well.

And so at this time of year, when Mother’s Day cards and flowers are around each corner of Wal-Mart, we are reminded again of the challenges that mothers are up against. This past week you probably noticed that almost every magazine, every Yahoo news page, countless bogs and radio shows were talking about moms. There was discussion on the CBC radio show Q with Jian Ghomeshi about the relationship between mothers and sons and how society usually equates it with the relationship that Norman Bates from the movie Psycho had with his mother. There were discussions of how societal wisdom cautions women never to marry a momma’s boy. Or take this week’s Time magazine cover that featured a mom breastfeeding her three year old child. Or discussion on another CBC program called The Current about a book published in France about how motherhood is oppressive to women. It seems everyone has a strong opinion on what mothers are and how they should live out that role.

Everywhere you look around Mother’s Day every year or any day throughout the year, a mother may question if she is doing it right. Is she a good mom? Where can one turn to find mothers who know the ups and downs of being a mother?

Well, if you were to turn to the Bible for examples of the biblical picture of motherhood, and if you started with Psalm 31, you might be in trouble. The psalm begins with the line “the sayings of King Lemuel — an oracle that his mother taught him.” The Webster dictionary defines this sort of oracle as “a person giving wise or authoritative decisions or opinions.” I would amend that to say that this was likely a mother hoping none of the girls her son was currently dating would ever measure up to her “oracle.” Regardless, we are left with the impression that this sort of mother is the Approved Standard Version — family centered, good business woman, great cook, generous, prepared, discreet, praiseworthy, wise, and beautiful.

But aside from this Martha Stewart type model there are also real mothers in the Bible that know the pain and the joy of motherhood.

Open to the first book of the Bible and you find Eve, the mother of them all. The first mom so she had no one to call it make sure that that diaper rash was nothing to be worried about or no one to to ask how high is too high for a fever. Being the woman who was the first, she was also the first mother to lose a child. She was a mother who buried one son but also lost the other after he was branded a murderer and exiled. The first mother was never to see her first born again.

Then there is Sarah, a woman who wanted a child so much that she found a surrogate, her maid Hagar to bear a child on her behalf. Here was a woman who took her reproductive choices into her own hands.

The first helicopter mom (they hover over their children) just may have been Rebekah, the mother of the gentle Joseph and the outdoorsy Esau. She was a mother who played favourites among her children and went as far as to trick her eldest son out of his inheritance all in the name of loving her youngest son more.

How about Naomi who upon the death of her husband and both her sons, takes her future and the future of her devoted daughter-in- law Ruth into her own hands by coaching Ruth on how to seduce Boaz.

Jochebed, the mother of Aaron, Miriam and Moses brings to mind the defiant mothers of some modern day countries like China. According to the story in Exodus, Jochebed and her midwives allowed Moses to live and hid him from certain death by placing him in a basket in the river. When the baby Moses was found, Miriam brought Jochebed to the Pharaoh’s daughter to nurse Moses. It could be a story of a modern day illegal immigrant raising the children of the well to do urbanites.

And lastly, perhaps the most well-known of the biblical mothers, we have Mary, the unwed teenage mother. The mother who knows her son was capable of great things. Mary was a mother who set things up at the wedding in Cana so that when her son was ready to turn the water into wine things were ready. She was a mother who fled to Egypt to save her son. A mother who loved so deeply but stayed till the very end when everyone else had turned away at her son’s last moments. She is the mother of the death row inmate.

What all these stories have in common is that they are about mothers who have strength, and courage to go on no matter what happens. Within the pages of the Bible we find stories that are fresh to our ears because they could just as easily been written yesterday. The Biblical story is our story. These are stories of mothers who love, who are modern day helicopter moms, they tell of ambitious moms and the biblical equivalent of the Jerusalem soccer mom. They tell us of mothers who walk with their God, who know they are not doing it alone.

All of these stories and many more about mothers have been handed down to us for a reason. Many of these stories were told around the family cook fire and passed along orally hundreds of years before they were ever written down. We can only imagine the stories that were not recorded. But what we do have paints a picture of motherhood that is just as true now as it was at the dawn of time. Being a mom aint’ easy. You bring a child in the world and you don’t know how long they will be with you. You bring them up to be the best they can be, and sometimes they even turn out regardless of how much we blunder things up. And sometimes no matter what you do, sometimes they break your heart and that is a universal truth that has been and will always be no matter where or when you live.

The Bible stories teach us that there are as many different models of motherhood as there are women. What makes these stories so special is that each one wrestles with the question of where God is active in those struggles. Each story is about how these mothers loved, how they hurt and how they loved some more. So if that is what is in the heart of a loving mother, how much more is the love of a God who also loves, feels hurt and yet continues to love?

May God keep us and may God bless our mothers. May it be so.

Nehemiah 8:5-6, 8-12
Acts 3:12
Psalm 4 (VU pg. 727)
1 John 3:1-7
Luke 24:36b-48

Let us pray…Loving God, thank you for calling us and giving us the gift of faith so that we may respond to your love. Hear our questions and open our hearts to believe your world of peace. Amen.

In the summer of 2008 my husband and I went on a big adventure. Along with my brother-in-law, and my father-in-law we all went to Europe. It was a three week trip that included Germany, Poland and three hours in Holland. Just long enough to be able to tell my Dad that I had visited his home country. It was also the first time I had been on a plane. I took my camera with and I was the official photographer and videographer of your journey. I think I took about 800 pictures, thank goodness for digital, but of course there is always a critic for my husband complained that 650 of the 800 pictures were of churches. What can I say? Near the end of our journey when we were churched out, from seeing so many churches there was one we came across that left all of us speechless.

In a small town in the Western part of Germany, near Munster there is a church Christukirche, Christ’s church. My father- in-law translated the bronze plaque at the front of the church that said that the corner stone had been laid in 1523 and had been consecrated in 1533. In 1846 it had burned to the ground but had been rebuilt. Religiously it had originally been Catholic, then in the 16th century it was Lutheran, Calvinist in the 17th century and for a time had even housed Protestants and Catholic worship from 1795 to 1831. The architecture is part Gothic married to Romanesque style of the 1200’s. It is solid and majestic.

As we stood around the plaque listening to the history our eyes moved over the façade of the building and something struck us as odd. All over the south facing side of the church there was all of these pock marks over the exterior.

We wondered aloud what could have caused the pitting on such stone hewed building. It was my father-in-law that made the realization first. The south side of the building looked into the town square and down the main avenue of the town. The pit marks on the building were concentrated around little openings in the structure. A German sniper or snipers had barricaded themselves in the church to fight off the advancing Allied forces. The pitting was due to rifle fire.

As we stood there and took the scene in, I slowly walked to the front of the building and that is when I saw it, a simple solemn bronze statue of the risen Christ and Thomas were at the front of the church.

The heads of Jesus and Thomas were bent inward; it was almost an intimate moment, a moment between the two of them that had lasted decades. It was beautiful.

All over Germany I visited towns and cities that had been utterly destroyed during World War II and one could argue that a place like that could so easily lose faith in God. After the war philosophers and theologians had debated the death of God and yet today everywhere you go in Germany the monuments to God have slowly been rebuilt one brick at a time. After the war, surly the average German must have doubted and cursed God and yet they have found a way through the rubble to rebuild. You see this faith all over the world wherever there has been or is war and terrible suffering, they are the ones who find a way to believe.

I have often thought about that statue of Thomas and Jesus and I think that Thomas gets a bad rap. Thomas the one who needed to touch the wounds of Christ to believe in fact had a great faith. Thomas was the one who said that he would go with Jesus to see the ill Lazarus in Bethany and die there with Jesus if need be. He never lacked courage. For Thomas the cross was only what he had expected but when it came to pass, he was heartbroken and so grief stricken that he could not believe when the disciples had told him that Jesus was alive. The crucification had broken his heart, he felt that his belief was betrayed and so to dare to believe again only opened his up to the possibility to new hurt, new agony.

How many of us have found it difficult to believe again? To turn toward God and to put our trust in the one who seemed to have let us down? And when we do trust again, what will this new trust require of us? Will we have the strength to answer the call that Jesus gives us?

I am reminded of what a catholic woman at theology school once said and at the time I found it very hard to understand. She explained to a group of fellow students that sometimes she wished that she could crawl into the wounds of Jesus. To fill them, to make them whole, to feel what he felt.

I wonder if in the story of Thomas he needed to concretely encounter the woundedness that he had felt as a way of confronting what had happened.

Perhaps Thomas needed to really experience the resurrection. Thomas knew that Jesus had been dead…but if he was alive…maybe that was even more frightening because Thomas knew that he would be changed and would never be the same.

Sometimes our very lives are like war zones. Littered with bombed out relationships, ransacked possibilities, and bulldozed dreams. We sit in the rubble with ashes in our hair and feel stuck, not knowing what to do, where to turn or wondering if it even matters. Maybe we can learn from Thomas by not being afraid to confront the disaster that is around us. Like that statue we can lean into God, softly testing the edges of the pain in our lives and realizing that they don’t hurt as much as we thought. The wounds of Christ are our own, but it is wrapped in the package of resurrection.

We don’t need to be afraid of leaning into God for Jesus provided what Thomas needed to go on. He didn’t condemn Thomas for his failure to believe but gives him that which enabled him to believe.

As we made my way from the church with its history etched into its skin, another site surprised my eyes.

In the square, just below the church, the town had created in bricks a large labyrinth. The townspeople had turned this site of doubt and destruction into a site of meditation and contemplation. The people who built the labyrinth seemed to recognize that a place such as that needed Thomas on the hill by the front door and a space below to encounter their deeper selves, their collective and individual history. They needed a place to learn from those experiences so that all could move toward the future with faith and hope in what could be.

Thomas wasn’t a coward, he knew that faith requires the sacrifice of letting go but also that God provides the strength to go on after even the darkest times in our personal and collective history.

May it be so and thanks be to God.

Nehemiah 8:5-6, 8-12
Psalm 96 (VU pg. 816)
Romans 15:7-13
John 16:16-24

Knock knock…
Who’s there?
Gladys.
Gladys who?
Glad it’s Sunday, aren’t you?

Let us pray…Mysterious and wonderful God, there is beauty and mystery all around us and there is also pain and suffering. In in down times, help us to hold onto your promises for us. Help us to be your Easter people. Amen.

In his Holy Humor Sunday sermon, Rev. Dr. Jim Moiso of Westminster Presbyterian Church in Portland, Oregon, noted that the Sunday after Easter once was called “Bowling Sunday” because “one could roll a bowling ball through the sanctuary, and not hit anyone.”

Now at first glance one might think that Holy Humour Sunday is just a gimmick thought up to increase church attendance on the first Sunday after Easter. Well, even though it does help, it is a way for people to experience the joy that Easter, the joy that belief can bring to our lives. Holy Humour is not about laughing in the face of trouble or being silly, or not being serious. Holy Humour is deeper and more important than that. Holy Humour is recognizing the limits of our abilities and where the grace of God begins. Humour can provide us a way through from dark to the light.

As we all know life has a lot of suffering in it. Life is not easy and religion too can often seem too serious, sober and depressing. Take for instance the season of Lent that we just came through and Holy Week and Good Friday. And talking about Good Friday who came up with that name anyway because state sanctioned torture does not sound like good news to me.

There are those who sometimes explain that we have to suffer, have to know pain in order to be redeemed or in order to be a better person. I say, God doesn’t require suffering but God does provide things like humour to help us through those times of pain and suffering. After all, our faith is not just about the earthly Jesus but about the risen Christ. The message of the risen Christ is that death and suffering doesn’t have the last word. That life is more powerful than death, that good triumphs evil and that joy will replace our tears…in time.

In the Gospel according to John, the writer has Jesus telling his disciples that, “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.” Those are strong words for someone who probably knew where his actions would lead to. Humour can be like an ointment or a pill that takes the sting away from a wound. Sometimes it is dark, but sometimes in the darkness, with laughter, there can be healing.

I would like to share with you a story and I tell you knowing that it might be offensive to some of you. But I will explain why I share it. During my training for being a minister I had an internship in Toronto. Across the street from the church and right beside where I was living was a funeral home and as part of my training I conducted a number of funerals. As some of you know, most funeral directors have a wicked sense of humour. At that funeral home there had been a funeral director who had passed away a few years previous but he had a story that kept making the rounds.

A few years before he died he needed to have one of his legs amputated due to diabetes and he told people that he when the operation was done he took his leg and had it buried. That way when people asked him how he is was doing he would reply with a straight face, “Well I already have one foot in the grave!”

It is ok to laugh, he certainly did and he would tell that story to everyone and anyone who would listen. I also tell this story as a person whose mother was a double amputee as a result of diabetes.

The humour is dark, yes, but by claiming it, by taking the illness by the horns and wrestling it to the ground, in a way he was saying that his failing body was not going to get the best of him. He was made of something more than ashes and dust.

“Humor,” as one writer put it, “becomes holy when we recognize God in between our aspirations and our limitations, ready to laugh with us, and heal us.”

And talking about funeral homes, do you wonder why at funerals laughter bubbles up at the strangest times. Sometimes the only thing we can do is laugh or cry and frankly laughing is a lot more fun.

This leads me to a story that I would like to share with you about Freda and John…

“Several days ago as I left a meeting at our church, I desperately gave myself a personal pat down.  I was looking for my keys.  They were not in my pockets. A quick search in the meeting room revealed nothing. Suddenly I realized I must have left them in the car.  Frantically, I headed for the parking lot.  My wife, Freda, has scolded me many times for leaving the keys in the ignition. My theory is the ignition is the best place not to lose them.  Her theory is that the car will be stolen.

As I burst through the doors of the church, I came to a terrifying conclusion.  Her theory was right. The parking lot was empty. I immediately called the police.  I gave them my location, confessed that I had left my keys in the car, and that it had been stolen. Then I made the most difficult call of all, “Honey,” I stammered. I always call her “honey” in times like these.  “I left my keys in the car, and it has been stolen.”

There was a period of silence.  I thought the call had been dropped, but then I heard Freda’s voice. “John” she barked, “I dropped you off!”

Now it was my time to be silent. Embarrassed, I said, “Well, come and get me.”
Freda retorted, “I will, as soon as I convince this policeman I have NOT stolen your car!””

Our minds, our bodies in time will fail, but the love that God has for us will not. God created us as creatures full of mirth and joy…God wants us took at the resurrection and know that God has given us a joy like that so that any trouble we face, we know that it will never get the best of us. We are not Good Friday people, we are Easter people.

From Psalm 4 verse 6-7 we can read, “There are many who say, ‘O that we might see some good! Let the light of your face shine on us, O Lord!’ You have put gladness in my heart more than when their grain and wine abound.” The psalmist is saying that the love of God is better than beer or wine. He is saying that faith in God provides the best party and everyone is invited.

So why have Holy Humour Sunday? Because we’re Easter people, celebrating the resurrection. Because everyone who is struggling in mind or spirit, whoever is trapped in the tomb of defeat, needs to hear the joy of the Good News!”

There will be rain clouds and storms will appear on the horizon but God always, always shows us a rainbow to admire and enjoy after the rain. Gloom and defeat are the not the weapons of God. Love and laughter, compassion and joy are the healing ointments of our God. And unlike Mary Poppins, God’s medicine for the soul doesn’t require a teaspoon of sugar, it only requires a smile.

God has a sense of humor. God has the last laugh and the last word. That word is Resurrection in Jesus Christ!

Rejoice and take heart in the Good News. Thanks be to God.

Isaiah 65:17-25
Psalm 118 (VU pg. 837 verses 1-3)
1 Corinthians 15:19-26
John 20:1-18

Let us pray. O God for whom there are no barriers, no stones too big to remove, roll away our resistance to you. Let your words fill us with new life and bring us out from the tomb of indifference, alive again in you. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

It’s a bird, it’s a plane it’s……Superman! Well I can tell who didn’t spend their allowance buying comic books. I loved comic books growing up. I was in love with the idea of the super hero: someone with super powers; someone who could fly, had superhuman strength, and who fought for good and upheld justice. Over the years I have amassed a pretty good superhero comic book collection over the years too. Superman, Batman, Supergirl, Spiderman. Maybe one of the reason I liked the boy that one day became my husband is that he too had a comic book collection.

But growing up my favorite hero was Wonder Woman. Every week end in the mid-to late 1970’s I would watch Wonder Woman on TV. I had a Wonder Woman book bag, Wonder Woman posters, Wonder Woman doll, and Wonder Woman dress up set. A set that came with her tiara, magic bracelets and her golden lasso. Her lasso was used to compel people to tell the truth. It was a sort of modern day lie detector. She had super human abilities like strength, speed and…..an invisible plane.

When I wasn’t collecting Wonder Woman items my sister and I were playing super hero in the back yard. No cops and robbers for us, no sirree, we played superheroes. Looking back I think what drew me to heroes was the sense of power, freedom, purpose and fun that heroes stood for. Super heroes stand outside the realm of society. They had these powers that could make a real difference in the world. They stood up to the powers that wanted to keep people down. Even now I along with the majority of society still worship heroes. But why?

Joseph Campbell, a renowned scholar in his book Myth and Symbol explained that the hero is special because of the journey they have taken. Usually a hero starts out reluctantly, not fully embracing the path before them. Then they embark on a journey that usually involves dangers like slaying a dragon, saving the Princess, confronting their own inner demons in the process and they come back changed. They then take their new found insights and help others do the same.

Well today on Easter morning we have the ultimate hero tale. Jesus had been living his life as a carpenter for a sometime. He had started his ministry only after being tested in the desert by his arch enemy. He returns from the battle more convinced than ever about the course of his life and of his mission. He is betrayed, handed over, tortured and crucified. And then the ulimate thing happened. On the third day he rose and walked out of his tomb not as a ghost but with his own body that had been transformed. Talk about super abilities! And we thought walking on water was a big deal.

What is interesting from this morning’s reading is that Jesus had been saying that he would rise again on the third day and yet when Mary Magadalene came face to face with Jesus at the tomb she didn’t understand that it was him. Now as we may remember super heroes always have a secret identity.

Superman’s secret disguise was……Clark Kent
Batman’s secret disguise was……Bruce Wayne
Wonder Woman……Diana Prince

When you think about it, Jesus always asked “Who do you say that I am?” Even those closest to him never really understood who he was. Just like Clark Kent with his glasses, we might wonder why no one close to Jesus ever really knew him: they didn’t recognize him for who he truly was. He didn’t wear a disguise but what he did was so amazing, it was hard to believe that a hero, a savior was standing right in front of them until the journey was finally over.

Jesus had been through death and come out the other side; of course such a journey would change him and now because of that journey he was back to help others to understand what had happened. By Joseph Campbell’s definition that makes Jesus a hero, he is a savior of humanity.

Today we are still hungry for heroes; for saviors and like those disguised superheroes, we usually don’t recognize them even when they are right in front of us. Even when we walk out of a tomb, after being dead for three days, perform miracles and brave the evil powers of the day; we still don’t understand the power that our savior has.

Can anyone guess where this quote comes from. “Even though you’ve been raised as a human being, you’re not one of them. They can be a great people, Kal-El. They wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way. For this reason above all—their capacity for good-I have sent them you…my only son.”

Supermans’s father Jor-El advises his son, in the movie trailer for the 2006 film Superman Returns. From comic books, to novels, to movies Lent, humanity has always searched for the saviour, the hero figure, in our midst. Humanity has always been drawn to real life heroes whether it is firefighters, war heroes, hockey stars. From time to time a hero rises above the others, Like Terry Fox, Rick Hansen, Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King, and Gandhi. But sometimes it is the people that have the most impact in our life: our parents, our fifth grade teacher who inspired us to do great things, an Uncle who taught us how to tune an engine. Hero’s can also be every day people, people who risk something great to make a difference in the world.

So what if we can’t leap buildings in a single bound, lift a hatch-back, dodge bullets, have x-ray vision or look good in tights and a cape?

On this Easter morning we are reminded once again that Jesus is the ultimate hero. Resurrection is special, unique, super human. Through Jesus, with the Christ we too can experience the transformation, the power, the ability to do, and be, amazing and extraordinary people. We can be like a super-hero to each person we meet because we have the ultimate super-hero as our guide: Jesus the Christ.

Jesus has been on a journey through death and now he has brought back for us eternal life, a new way of living that is free of the guilt, despair and sadness of the past. Just like Lois Lane, daring to step off the balcony into the arms of Superman, we have to trust that God will be there during the trouble filled times of our life when we are about to fall. God’s arms are strong and we can rely on that strength to get us through the dark nights of the soul.

Talking about the Dark Knight another name for Batman; what does Commissioner Gordon do when Gotham City needed help? He would shine the bat signal in the sky. The light of hope was shone in the dark sky for all to see, and for Batman to answer.

For us, we can be that light for others to see and draw strength from. We can call on the strength of God to get us through the trial and tribulations that face us daily. We can claim the miracle of resurrection, the awe of miracles all around us that have no explanation and know that God is at work in every moment to offer us newness and resurrection, transformation.

We can draw on that strength of our Savior and guide. We can contemplate the courage, and the sacrifice that some make for others so that we too can become more like the Savior that fought the ultimate battle for us.

Like Mary not recognizing Jesus on the road, sometimes the Christ may be in disguise; we may not recognize him, but he is in our midst. Our Savior is never far.

Jesus didn’t wear a cap, or have x-ray vision, but he was a Superman.

So with Christ as our guide we too can be like Robin was to Batman, not just as a sidekick but as a partner in the unfolding of God’s kingdom.

We too can be superheroes.

And that is amazing. Thanks be to God.

Camp Awesome is hosted by various congregations across the Ottawa area and serves kids aged 4 to 12.

Activities include games, crafts, drama, singing, water fun and learning about important topics. The day starts at 10am and goes to 3pm. Children bring their own lunch.

CAMP AWESOME IS A “NUT FREE” CAMP.PLEASE PROVIDE A NUT FREE LUNCH FOR YOUR CHILD.

Early registration deadline: Tuesday, May 25, 2012. Please print and fill out the registration and waiver forms. Forms can be dropped of at the church or mailed to St. Paul’s United church, 3452 McBean Street Richmond, Ontario, K0A2Z0.

Early Registration Rates: $65 per child, $120 for a family of two, or $170 for a family of three or more. Please make cheques payable to St. Paul’s United Church.

Post May 25, 2012 Rates: $70 per child, $130 for a family of two, or $185 for a family of three or more. Please make cheques payable to St. Paul’s United Church.

For more information or to volunteer, contact Rev. Carla Van Delan at 613-838-5397 (email stpaulsunited@gmail.com) or Catherine Court at court.catherine@gmail.com

Maundy Thursday

Tonight we sit in a darkened church. We come to pray, to listen, to worship. Some of us might even be moved to tears as we hear the story that has been told and retold for thousands of years. And some of us may wonder what this story has to do with us here in the 21st century.

The story of Jesus’ passion is our story. We have lived the darkest night. Each one of us has a story of darkness, betrayal and hardship. We have stories of sitting in hospital rooms beside loved ones. Stories of crying in darkened hospital chapels, praying, and bargaining with God to make things turn out for the best.

Some of us have stories of losing a child, or about losing our parents and feeling like a 50 year old orphan.

Some of us have sat behind bars, waiting for the judge to hear our case. Stories of bailing out a child knowing that our lives will never be the same.

We have felt betrayal by those closest to us. Girlfriends, and boyfriends, wives, husbands, business partners and best friends who have cheated us and stabbed us in the back.

We have felt the shock of being let go from a job that is deemed redundant and told that our services are no longer needed.

Our life stories are lived over and over again by people around the world. Our stories mirror the lives of Jesus, Mary his mother, James his brother and yes even Judas.

We know what the darkest night feels like and we always pray that we will never have to feel it again. But sadly, this life does bring sadness. It is a fact of how this world has evolved over millennia, it is the product of patterns set down long ago and it is a product of modern day choices.

But as we sit here we have the advantage of knowing that although we sit in the dark, and the cross comes tomorrow, the joy of the dawn on Easter morn awaits us.

But for now we sit in the dark.

As we sit and wait in the dark we are not alone for something amazing and wonderful also happened on that night so long ago.

Jesus the messenger of grace and love was put down. It wasn’t fair and it wasn’t just but it was what the world chose. He was betrayed, shunned, mocked and ridiculed, flogged and crucified and somehow all those experiences became part of God. All of that pain and hurt, injustice and feelings of abandonment became part of God and God felt perhaps more clearly than ever before what it means to be human.

The shortest verse in the Bible is from John 11:35, “Jesus wept.” He wept that his friend Lazarus was dead and he hadn’t been there with him when it happened. It could also be said that God wept on the day that Jesus died. From the gospel of Mark we read that for three hours there was darkness. Could it mean that God was in mourning? Hurting for the pain of his son, hurting because of what his people were capable of? Hurting because now the human experience of Jesus was now part of the Divine reality? God felt the real pain of lose and God wept.

And how did God respond to all that heartache? In Mark we read that the curtain in the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.

In God’s darkest moment, God didn’t return pain with more pain, lose with more lose. Instead Mark writes that God ripped down the symbol of what kept people separated from the most sacred inner chamber in the Temple, the Holy of Holies. From this point on, nothing would separate God and humanity.

God experienced the loss of a son and God took that moment and turned it on its head. A moment that said, “You are my people and you are not alone. I am with you.” That is powerful, that is grace.

We know that Easter will come, but for now we sit in the dark, we sit with our fear and our longing and our hurt and God promises us that we are not alone. It is dark now, but I promise you that the light will come…in time.

There is no denying it, the darkness changes us, just as that darkness of the cross changed God. The unchangeable one felt and was moved to offer the joy of Easter. The dark will come, we will never be the same but God doesn’t abandon us to the dark. God walks with us.

Each one of us has a cross that we bear but whenever we look back, over our shoulder, if you really look, you will see that you are not carrying it alone.

Thanks be to God.

Palm Sunday, 2012

Mark 11:1-11
Psalm 118 (VU pg. 837 parts 1, 3 and 4)

Let us pray. God of the Cross, as we enter Holy Week, may we take the time to reflect on how you have touched our lives. May we find you in the deepest corners of our lives, always offering us newness and wholeness. Help us to grow in your ways each and every day. Amen.

“Mirror, mirror on the wall who is the fairest of them all?”

Does anyone here know where that famous line comes from? It comes from the fairy tale of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. As you way remember, from the story, each day the evil step mother (if you are a step-mother sorry about the evil part) peers into her beautiful magic mirror and always asks the same question, “Who is the fairest of them all?”

Everything goes well until one day, when the evil witch asks the same question, excepting the same answer but the mirror has something very different to say.

The face in the mirror tells her that someone else is fairer in the kingdom and her name is Snow White. Well you can imagine that trouble begins to brew for Snow White. First there is an attack on her life, then her stepmother comes disguised as an old woman with a poison apple and then Snow White eats the apple and falls into a deep death-like sleep. She is only awakened with the kiss of true love from her Prince Charming.

This may be a fairy tale but what does happen when we look in the mirror and we don’t like what we see? (We are talking about inner and not outer beauty.)

What would happen if the mirror was held up for companies or for countries to take a good look at themselves? Some are so used to everyone saying that they are honourable and just. But what happens when the mirror says the opposite of what they expect? In a very real way Jesus was holding up a mirror to the powers of his day to take a good look at themselves.

The religious leaders of his day thought that they had things all figured out. They followed the law. Like any institution that has been around for any length of time there was corruption. They thought themselves righteous and blameless. They thought that they were on the right track but then Jesus comes along. Jesus, the one we know as a window to God, holds up a mirror for the religious leaders to really look at themselves.
But instead of being told once again that they were acting in a way pleasing to God, Jesus shows them that their reflection is anything but rosy or perfect. And like the evil step mother in Snow White the leaders in Jesus’ day reacted in much the same way.

But Jesus wasn’t only holding up a mirror for the Pharisees or the Sadducees to see themselves clearly, to see themselves through the eyes of God, Jesus was also holding up a mirror for all the people that were around him. There were his own people, the Israelites who were waiting for a Messiah. They wanted a conquering King who would reinstate the Israelites as a people and not as the subjects of Rome. Their welcome was one which befitted, not the King of love, but of a conquer who would shatter the enemies of Israel. Little did the people know what type of conqueror Jesus would be. Jesus showed them a reality, a truth that they did not expect to see.

Jesus held up a mirror for his people to look at themselves, to look at their assumptions and they did not like what they saw. As we know the crowds will soon turn from cries of adulation to shouting for his death. The people did not like what Jesus had to show them.

We too can look in Jesus’ mirror and ask ourselves what do we see? Jesus continues to hold up a mirror for our world and for ourselves to really see ourselves clearly and truthfully. In my own life I sometimes catch myself looking at the reflection that Jesus shows me. When family, friends and those that I care about make me anxious, angry or upset I stop and ask myself why I feel the way I do. Most of the time I realize that when I am angry or upset with someone it is because of the assumptions and expectations
that I put on that person. My emotions have nothing to do with them, it is more about me. Sometimes I don’t like what I see in the mirror that Jesus holds up for me to look in but I know that when I do look in the mirror that Jesus offers, it is for loves sake.

I have a cute little story that I would like to share with you that has to do with taking a good hard look at one’s self.

There once was an old, stingy painter named Wayne who was very interested in making a penny where he could, so he often thinned down his paint to make it go a wee bit further. As it happened, he got away with this for some time, but eventually the a local church decided to do a big restoration job on the outside of one of their biggest buildings. Wayne put in a bid, and, because his price was so low, he got the job.

So he set about erecting the scaffolding and setting up the planks, and buying the paint and, yes, I am sorry to say, thinning it down with turpentine.

Well, Wayne was up on the scaffolding, painting away, the job nearly completed, when suddenly there was a horrendous clap of thunder, the sky opened, and the rain poured down washing the thinned paint from all over the church and knocking Wayne clear off the scaffold to land on the lawn among the gravestones, surrounded by telltale puddles of the thinned and useless paint. Wayne was no fool. He knew this was a judgment from the Almighty, so he got down on his knees and cried: “Oh, God, forgive me; what should I do?”

And from the thunder, a mighty voice spoke…

Repaint! Repaint! And thin no more!”

Sometimes we need to really look at ourselves to really see ourselves. We need to be shaken up and we need to look at Jesus who is our mirror. We might even wonder what do our lives look like to God? But no matter what we see, God’s love for us is always reflected back.

With all our warts, wrinkles, character flaws and imperfections, God accepts us and wants to work miracles in our lives. This life, like the journey of Lent is a process. God is waiting for us to make the conscious decision to follow and love him, no matter what the cost. As Palm Sunday winds down, we turn from the crowds and begin the walk to the cross. May we learn to accept the love and acceptance that Jesus reflects back to us even from the cross. Thanks be to God.

This sermon serves as a introduction to the historic vote that each Session will be making in the next two months. Each congregation has a committee called the Session that looks after the spiritual well-being of the congregation. For more info about the belief documents of the United Church please see the website at www.united-church.ca and look under the heading “beliefs.” Under the belief heading you will also find the study document entitled Our Words of Faith: Cherished, Honoured, and Living. The Words of Faith document outlines the vote that will be taken in the coming months.

Let us pray…Ever present and eternal God, as we listen to your Word, as we listen for the calling of the Spirit in our lives, help us to draw ever closer to you. Help our understanding to know you, our hearts to love you and our hands and feet to live out the grace that you pour so freely upon us. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

When you were a child, what did you use to call your parents? Mom and Dad? Mother and Father? Pop? Ma and Pa? Or maybe Meme and Pappe?

What about names for your grandparents? Grandma and grandpa? Oma and Opa? Nanny? Granny? Gramps?

Did the words you used to address them change as you grew up or maybe they stayed the same because you felt comfortable using those names?

To change gears a bit, when you pray, how do you address the Divine? Lord, Father, Spirit, God, Loving Parent, Jesus, Christ, Creator, Sustainer and Redeemer, Mother? The list is almost endless!

Or on another track, how would you explain the Trinity, the cross or the resurrection to a ten year old?

I am asking these questions to encourage you to think about how we as individuals and as a community of faith define our faith and how the words we use might change over time. The reason for this is that the Session of each congregation across this country will be voting very soon on an historic matter. The questions surround how we describe our faith in the United Church of Canada.

The thing to keep in mind is not that God’s love changes, but how we describe that love sometimes requires new words to describe that love. God’s message isn’t the thing that changes but how we experience and describe our encounter with God…does change.

Language changes over time…for example in English we no longer speak the same way that Shakespeare did or even the way our grandparents did. But other things change as well. There are always new archeological studies and discoveries like the texts found at Qumran that shed light on how we interpret and understand scripture.

Linguistic scholars also continue to shed new light on how to interpret Aramaic, Greek and Hebrew. The United Church is very special in that it is not a top down model but a bottom up one. Each person has a say in what the church does, what it believes and how it should be governed. We are governed by a conciliar model meaning that our decision making is not based on a 50 plus one but trying to have as many people agree on a matter before it is adopted. That takes time but it also means that every viewpoint is listened too and taken into account before a motion is voted on.

Before May 15th, each Session must vote on a matter concerning our doctrine and for the motions to pass there must be a two-thirds majority in favor of the motion. If any Session does not vote, it is counted as a “no-vote.”

The United Church is not a creedal church, meaning that in order to join the United Church, you don’t have to swear that you absolutely agree with the doctrine set forth by the church. For example, I think that if we took a poll of this congregation there would be a wide variety of beliefs on some key points of belief. For instance, do you believe that during communion the bread and wine becomes the literal body and blood of Jesus or do you see communion as more of a meal of remembrance? Or do you believe something in between?

The amazing thing is that each view point is valid and respected in this church. The ability to have these differing viewpoints goes back to the very formation of the United Church in 1925. You may know that the United Church was originally a coming together of Congregationalist, Methodist and many of the Presbyterian churches.

Imagine that three churches sat down and had to put together a document outlining their beliefs that all three could agree on. But even when the Articles of Faith document was first signed, those around the table noted that this document was not the end of their faith exploration. They knew that the words they used, the concepts that they explained would change as their understanding and experience of God changed.

Between 1925 and 1940 a lot of things happened in the world. There was World War I, the Great Depression, and the beginning of World War II. As a result of that lived experience the understanding of how the church explained its faith to itself and the world changed and so the 1940 Statement of Faith was created.

Fast forward a few decades to the 1960’s when there was a desire to have a shorter statement of faith that could be used within the liturgy for Baptism. From that work we now have A New Creed which we said together during the baptism this morning.

A lot can change in 40 years so in 2006 the church created and adopted A Song of Faith, a statement of belief that is like a song, another way of explaining the core beliefs within the United Church. However for some of us we may not even have heard of this new statement.

This now brings us to the last General Council meeting that was held in Kelowna British Columbia in 2009. At that meeting a proposal came from the grassroots of the church wanting the church as a whole to look at what it professed to believe in light of the beliefs and faith of those sitting in the pews of the 21st century church. After much discussion it was agreed that a series of questions would go out to the Sessions across the church.

Three questions were formulated and paraphrased, they are: That after the primacy of Scripture, the church is proposing to add, to the Doctrine Section of the Basis of Union, in addition to the Twenty Articles, three other United church expressions of faith; the 1940 Statement of Faith, A New Creed, and Song of Faith.

This means that if the motions pass, there will be four documents that will outline the belief stance of the United Church.

If the motions pass, these multiply expressions of faith will mean that more people will find comfort in the way in which they approach their relationship with God, the Holy Spirit and Jesus. It recognizes that the human capabilities to define the Divine is limited and yet it is rich in its diversity. One real consequence of this remit vote is that when students come forward to take their final ordination interview they will find multiple ways of expressing their faith. The current practice is that each student is asked if they are in essential agreement Twenty Articles of Faith as stated in the 1925 document. It is then up to the Ordination Committee to decide if the student is in “essential agreement.”

My sermon this morning is a very short intro to the questions that our Session will be voting on in the next months. Each Session has the right to vote on this matter and each Session member is to vote according to their heart but as a group here at St. Paul’s they have decided that they would seek your input on this matter.

You can contact them individually or you can write a letter and address your opinion directly to the Session. Next week the service will be based around the 2006 statement of faith called “A Song of Faith’ so many of you will become a bit more familiar with this new document.

As I said earlier…this is historic. We have the ability to shape the expression of our beliefs. No one is telling us what to believe, rather we are being invited to participate in the unfolding of God’s revelation here among us. We are writing the history of our church for the next generation.

May it be so. Thanks be to God.

From the Service of Ashes, February 26th, 2012
Joel 2:1-2, 12-17
Psalm 51:1-17 (VU p. 876)
2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

In the words and in the spaces between them; in the stories that are told and the stories we imagine, speak to us, God! For you are God, the creator of all things. The one who loves with an overwhelming love. As the days get longer and the cross gets closer, help us to read, remember, and live your love. Amen.

On Valentine’s Day on CBC radio there was a documentary put together by a young woman who when she was a teenager, was diagnosed with a heart disease that required a new heart. In the documentary she recalled the day when she got the call that a new heart was ready for her. As she prepared to make her way to the hospital for the operation that would change her life, she told her boyfriend that he didn’t need to come with her. After all they hadn’t been going out for very long and she didn’t want him to lose time from work. But he did go with her and sat beside her bed the whole time. In time she healed but she explained that it took a long time for her to get used to her new heart. It took so long because her new heart was so loud so strong she couldn’t believe it was coming from inside her. It took time to get used to the new rhythm of life that was inside her.

The young woman said that after the operation she and her boyfriend would joke by saying things like, “Don’t break my heart” or, “I had a change of heart.”

I don’t remember her name, or what her documentary was called but her change of heart journey has been with me for the past two weeks.

We don’t have to literally have a heart transplant to be given a new heart. The psalmist requests God, “To put a new heart in me. Restore me to joy and strengthen me with a willing spirit.”

This new heart doesn’t require fancy showings of penitence. Things like burnt offerings, wearing of a sad face, the wearing of rags or punishment of the flesh. None of those things are needed to show that you are sorry, that you have had a change of heart. Instead it requires one thing…to acknowledge that you are broken, incomplete, in need of God.

This might not seem like a big thing…confession can be easy. It is easy to say, “Yes I ate the cookies.” “Yes I backed into the light pole at the mall parking lot” or “Yes I made change out of the offering plate.”

But God really isn’t concerned with that sort of confession. True confession will change our heart.

After all we are finite creatures. We have a certain time on this earth, time that is often over so quickly. When you think about it, we are creatures made of earth, dust really. We are made of star dust, the dust that made up Cleopatra, Ghana’s Khan, Hitler, the disciples, our ancestors. But what makes us different than other life on this planet is that we are aware of our capacity for greatness and our tendency for depravity. When we acknowledge that capacity for compassion and when we strive against the tendency for not recognizing that what happens to our neighbour effects us, then we are one step closer to God. As religious leader so eloquently put it, “Jesus, in his person, his example, bridged the gap between our hard-heartedness and the wonderful lure of God’s grace and possibility for us.”

As many of you know in January, my husband and I bought a farm property. Now one of the wonderful but also labour intensive parts about the house is that we exclusively heat with wood. Whoever gets up first in the morning, (and I try to make sure he gets out of bed first!) there is a ritual that must be performed every time you start a new fire. You need to have a bucket and a little shovel to clean out the cold ashes. You would be surprised at the pile of ashes that are left over from all the wood that had been burned over the previous day. The wood that had taken years and years to grow but then is harvested and burned to warm our home. All that is left is dust. Then when the ashes are cooled we dump them on the manure pile, ashes to ashes and dust to dust. Sometimes we use those ashes on our walkway and in the driveway to create traction on the ice. The only drawback is that it gets on your feet, and on the dogs feet and then it can be tracked into the house.

But those ashes can be used for something else. In decades past, ashes were mixed with tallow, the fat of animals to make an important substance: soap. From what I remember homemade soap smelled terrible and had a dull grey sheen to it. But if you wanted to get stains out of your laundry, nothing could beat homemade soap.

So, something that was burned up, something that created a mess, something that wasn’t really good for anything, can actually make you clean. The psalmist talks about, “Washing away all my guilt and being cleaned from sin, wash me and I will be as white as snow.”

Purging, clean out our mind from those things that burden us and turn us away from God can leave us with a new heart, a clean heart. Like any relationship, it takes work and that is also true of the relationship we have with Jesus and with God.

We are made of dust and to dust we shall return. But at the center of our body is our heart. A heart that beats so strong that sometimes when we are filled with love for each other or for our God, we can scarcely believe that our chest will contain it.

Amazingly, this week a mathematician put 400 years of music into a computer to analyze it, along with our heartbeat and found that there is a rhythm to it, a mathematical equation. We can’t discern the rhythm it but it is there. There is a rhythm, a heartbeat in us, a heartbeat to the universe, a heartbeat that beats so loudly because it is loved. We may be made of dust and ash but the heartbeat of the universe will always keep the tune, the beat, and the rhythm of the cosmos going. By dumping out the old ashes of our lives, a new, bold, clean life can beat ever stronger in our heart.

May it be so. Thanks be to God.