Freelton Strabane United Church
To live our discipleship with integrity and grace.
Horseshoe Falls Regional Council
Lent 4
March 10 2024
Minister: Rev. Will Wheeler, B.A. M. Div. 905-659-3380 E-mail: wwwheeler@sympatico.ca
Music Director Joan Simpson
Gathering
Come touch our souls that we may know and love you
Your quiet presence all our fears dispel
Create a space for sprit to grow in us
Let life and beauty fill us,
Come touch and bless our souls.
Come touch us now, this people who are gathered,
To break the bread and share the cup of peace;
That we may love you with our heart our soul,
Our mind, our strength, our all,
Come touch us with your grace.
(More voices 12)
Call To worship
One: Come from your exile to meet the God who sets us free.
All We come to learn of that freedom to learn to make the choices that freedom offers.
One Come from the shadows where you have hidden to rejoice in the God who brings light and hope.
All We come to learn to walk in the light of God and learn how God’s truth will change our lives.
One: A hammer. It holds within it the potential to build and tear down. To create and destroy.
All: As we journey through this time of reflection may
we seek the tools we need to create the world that God would have us build.
One: Out of the ruins and ruble and struggles of this age.
All: May we seek out the ways of God and commit to the stewardship of the planet.
One We can build a beautiful city a city of God. We lay this hammer, a symbol of how we have built barriers that continually press forward destroying the planet
All: The Light of God in Christ is our promise (Candle lit)
All God Builder of all we know. The world has built on the thought the earth’s resources as inexhaustible. we confess to the sin of selfishness and setting humanity above creation.
We sit quietly and watch more and more of your creatures become extinct as we encroach more and more on their environment. We have plundered creation with the sublime conviction that it was put here for our exploitation. Help us to tear down barriers of environmental destruction and Open our hearts to be to the rhythm of our planet and inspire us to once more be good stewards of creation Lord Give us a hammer of justice. Hear our own private prayers of confession
Assurance of Pardon
Song Come now, O God of second chances
May we forgive ourselves
May we become your living sign
Children of God’s love
One: we Know our God as a God who renews broken covenants, who offers blessings, and who has the power to make each of us a blessing to others. Despite our frailty and weakness, when we turn toward God, God accepts us and offers us forgiveness
Epistle Ephesians 2:1-10
One This is the word of the Lord
All Thanks be to God
Gospel Lesson John 3:14-21
One: The Word of God for the People of God
All Thanks be to God
Prayer
Lord as we ponder your words open our hearts that we may understand and know you. Amen
Sermon
Time is moving so fast I find it hard to think that we are already half way through Lent. In my journeys, I have been privileged to visit ancient sites of standing stones and sites with alignment to the moon the sun and stars. Places that use the light to govern their world. Places that Mark the light coming into the world. Today is the much debated somewhat hated spring time change the clocks spring ahead an hour. Oh it was hard yet it does mean m ore light in our days. Nine days from now March 19 will see the Spring Equinox that point in time when the day will see equal amounts of light and dark. Our lives are a combination of light and dark. Moments of joy moments of sadness. We need the hope that the light brings for it brings us through the darkness, back to the light. We search for those moments of light, the missing fragments of light in our lives.
Last weekend we had Rev Jamie speak (very good) and our vintage dessert buffet. Time to turn to my book of ancient family recipes.
It is interesting to look at them because they take a lot for granted.
Recipes that give everything but say enough flour to make a stiff dough. That would be how much flour. And bake. Bake at what. A temperature would be helpful. How long would be helpful. What is it to brown flour or mix the sugar till it creates hair. Almost as mysterious as the faith.
It does leave a lot of question.
Early church faced a lot of questions. They had heard the teachings of Jesus, the disciples were still talking about it and everyone knew what it was that that Jesus had done.
After a while some of the teachings started to fade, what Jesus actually said was filled in with memories of what people thought he said. The gospel so to speak of the broken telephone. There was that assumed knowledge. They took the fragments of the light of Christ and began to pull them together. The light was always a reflection of the core of our story.
That Core, that Center is Jesus is God’s gift to us to help us to be in that right relationship and is part of that triune center of our faith. Jesus was crucified rose from the dead at Passover.
What needs to happen to keep the core faith strong when you are moving further and further away from the core event, and the first hand accounts of what Jesus did and what Jesus said?
You take the core belief, you chip off some fragments and like embers in a fire you breath into them to kindle the light
That is what John is does. Remember John did not know Jesus. In fact John is writing his Gospel about 147 years after the fact around 180 Ce That is a long time after the Easter event. John is pulling together the fragments of light. Modern Biblical Scholars would say that “John” is name de plume. The gospel of John being created by a “school of disciples” in Syria. That being said it does not diminish the divine wisdom that can be found in the book. The times they were a changing for the early church.
It was a time of persecution and so the light was truly needed. Biblical Scholars hold that this passage is the creation of the School of Disciples and cannot be attributed to Jesus. What the John writers have done is taken the tried and true known recipe and filling in the what is missing.
And the faith grew, It changed it evolved and even though it was not the intention of the early followers of Christ the Church with its ritual, it theology grew political structure grew.
We are in heritors of the ancient Christian Recipe, we can ask ourselves are there some gaps. Has the light of the gospel lost its brightness because our eyes have become used to the light? When we hear this gospel, do we really hear it anymore?
This is one of those scriptures that have become so well used that they are almost cliché. People hold up the sign John 3:16 and people just smile That is just a name and two number.
We are called to hold onto the Spirit center, the core of the faith.
The gift of Easter is manifested in the gift of spirit at Pentecost. The gift of the Spirit moved on Paul to write his letters of encouragement to a fledgling church crying to understand itself. That spirit moved on Mark, then Matthew and Luke as they began to record the stories of the good news and it Moved on John. Good news for the teenaged church. Our story told, retold words added and words of Jesus taken away. All at the creative hand of the Spirit. To help us not to lose the recipe of the faith. The fragments of light.
We are in this Lenten time are called to once more let that light of the gospel to break into the world again. A world that longs for that remembered taste of hope and faith, but has lost the recipe, We are touched by the spirit to begin again to tell the story. Not to just tell the story but to act on its message.
What love is this o my soul o my soul, that God should care so greatly for me that he would give his only begotten son so that those that believed may not die but have eternal life.
Is this Scriptural? No, but more than a name and two number.
The Gospel seems more contextual as John uses a Christ centered understanding over a Jesus centered understanding to convey to the early church the depth of the love of God for us and God’s great desire to be in that right relationship with us. To love us. To love us with an unconditional love that does not know restrictions and conditions
May we hold the words given to us by the Gospellers the evangelist, the saints and see how we are heirs to that love and be proclaimers in the light of God’s presence in the great gift of Christ with us, within us and in each other. To take the fragments of light in their lives and help them to see that it is the love of God that pulls the fragments together.
An alignment. As the Sun and Moon and plants align to the ancient monuments. We see our lives as that combination of light and dark. Moments of joy moments of sadness. We need the hope that the light brings for it brings us through the darkness, back to the light.
I sat at my desk the beginning of the week looking out my window and well It was grey. Neither light nor dark. Foggy morning. I pondered that in all that we have to do in our everyday, in all the obligations and pressures of our day We can begin to live in the grey. The grey fades to dark and then repeat. As we move through this Lenten time may we remember that Christ is the light of the world. That the light has come into the world. May we slow ourselves each day to seek out the light in the center of our being to see the light of God within ourselves and others and strive to allow this little light of ours shine. To Know that we are not alone. Thanks Be to God
Prayers of the people
Slow me Down Slow me Down
Still my restless mind Still my restless mind
Quell my fears Quell my Fears
Quench my Thirsty soul Quench my thirsty Soul
Fill me with your love Fill me with your love
God of Truth God of Truth
God of love God of love
God of Hope, as we move through this life we are tempted to live into the grey fog of just going through the everyday from task to task. The Fragment of light are scattered across the landscape of our lives small beacons through the fog. As the morning sun dispels the fog so may we through your love and Spirit draw the fragments of joys that are there each day and allow them to brighten our lives. Strengthen in us through Jesus as reflected in the Scripture in our core knowledge of you in our lives.
A deep fog swirls around your people. People lost in wars, people lost in fog of poverty. Those that see dim light of hope but have no means to move towards it. We pray for your people that your Spirit may move on those that have the power to change how things are. Soften hardened hard, break self serving egos so that justice may prevail.
Jesus bids us shine and we hear your call to let our own light of faith to brighten. May our faith strengthen those whom we are called to walk with. We pray for those that are ill, those that are lost in fog, for those who just need human contact. May we always open ourselves to listen to those who only want to be listened to.
Lord we name before you those who are close to our hearts and lives.
We rejoice that we have been drawn together to this place. May each of our own lights strengthen the light of faith and welcome here. May all who come though our doors feel as they have come home. We offer our own prayers to you in our hearts. We offer to you the great prayer that binds our lights together saying Our Father….
Offering
We give thee but thy own. The work of the Church continues and there are three ways you can continue to support that work. Consider using PAR, use the donate button on our Web Site or drop your gift at the Manse. Let us make our offering and give thanks.
Prayer : Bless our offerings, O God. May they make known your love to those who need to hear your good news. In Jesus’ name we pray amen.
Commissioning and Blessing
Commissioning and Blessing
One: Where Christ walks
All we will follow
One Where Christ stumbles
All We will stop
One Where Christ cries
All We will listen
One Where Christ suffers
All we will hurt
One When Christ dies
All We will bow our heads in sorrow
One When Christ rises again in glory
All We will share his endless joy
One There is no other way
All Christ is the only way.
One: Now may the blessing of God travel with you, May the teachings of Christ Illuminate you path and may the guiding hand of the Holy Spirit lead you forward. All Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost. As it was in the beginning, it is now, and ever shall be world without end, Amen.
Yesterdaywe honour our heritage.
Todaywe know that we are not alone,that we live in God's world.
Tomorrowwith God,we will discoverthe undiscovered country.
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