Freelton Strabane United Church
To live our discipleship with integrity and grace.
Horseshoe Falls Regional Council
Lent 5
Sunday, March 26 2023
Minister: Rev. Will Wheeler, B.A. M. Div. 905-659-3380 E-mail: wwwheeler@sympatico.ca
Music Director Joan Simpson
Announcements
We will be worshiping in the Hall for the months of January, February and March. Worship is at 10:30.
March 27 It’s Sew Fun 10:30am
March 28 Tech Tuesday 2p Please note that Tech Tuesday is cancelled due to Filming Rental
March 28 Council 7p we will be having our Council meeting but please take note that for a brief time we will be sharing our space with a Filming Rental.
April 6 Maundy Thursday Supper at the church still working on details As we come to the end of Lent and Holy week we invite you to join us for a Passover meal. We will gather at 6pm in Hall for a traditional Passover celebrate and we are asking that people bring finger foods to share as the meal. (please no pork dishes)
April 7 Our long standing tradition of sharing Good Friday with our sisters and brother in Christ at Mountsberg Westover continues as we join them this year at the Westover Baptist Church at 11am with a light refreshments to follow. We hope you will come and join us on this most holiest of days
April 7 Join us for our Good Friday walk and pot luck dinner. We will be gathering at the Church for 3pm and driving up to the Halton Forest for our walk. Then it is a pot luck dinner at the Church for 5. If you feel you are unable to walk please still join us for dinner.
April 9 Rejoice in the Risen Lord. Come and celebrate with us as we gather first for our Sun Rise Service 7:30am at the Church and then a Breakfast to follow Today we return to the Sanctuary to Celebrate the Risen Christ at our 10:30 Worship
If you wish to order flowers for the Sanctuary on Easter please see Barb Woodburn for an order sheet.
April 16 Studio and Studies at Freelton Strabane are pleased to offer you “ It’s a Small world the art of the Miniature” with Will Wheeler A look how miniatures are built, inspiration and photographing join us at the Church a 2p with light refreshments included. This is a free will offering event with proceeds being divided between Mission and Service and the former Freelton Church Window installation fund.
Prepare ye the way to Sing
We are planning a Spring Concert for Sunday, April 30, at 7 PM.
There will be a variety of musical spots including the choir presenting selections from Godspell.
Anyone interested can join us for practices at Freelton Strabane Wednesday afternoons, starting at 1:30 PM.
Inspiration for our Lenten liturgy was taken from an article by Jayson Flores, May 15th 2014 “Seven Modern Sins”
April 16 Studio and Studies at Freelton Strabane are pleased to offer you “ It’s a Small world the art of the Miniature” with Will Wheeler A look how miniatures are built, inspiration and photographing join us at the Church a 2p with light refreshments included. This is a free will offering event with proceeds being divided between Mission and Service and the former Freelton Church Window installation fund.
Let us Gather together for worship.
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.
Call To Worship
One Gather us in Holy God to this time, to this place.
All: For God at times the burdens of this world deaden our souls to the possibilities that you set on the path before us.
One Come people of God let the Holy Spirit loosen that which binds you and step into the promise of God’s light ever brightening our path.
All May our being here release us from the burdens, the bondage in which we find ourselves for this is the place we need to be.
When the wind of Winter Blows
Bringing lent we’ve come to know
Fill the silent icy night be our hearts compassion
Holy light warm our night
Warm this Lenten journey
Holy light warm our night
Warm this Lenten journey
One: The dark of lent shadows our hearts
All Our hearts are but snow and icicles
One Melt the snow and this ice in your love of God
All Nothing but your love can free us from this iced time.
One: The iced indifference of this world shroud the cross We journey from darkness to light owning our faults, lamenting the sins of the world We light this light to lament unaccountable cruelness of words and actions.
All: Cold darkness of night is dispelled by your promise of a coming light O God .
All: We pray for a world which has become frozen to how unaccountable cruelness of words and actions destroys the spirit and tears down relationships. O God, too often the world’s cruel words are written in the virtual world, media is used to promote hate and distrust. People will rage and spout hate with no thought of the consequences of their words. Bullies go on checked. Send of God your light to engender in us a voice that will call people to account, will speak out against hate, intolerance, and bulling. Amen
One Rejoice in the Lord Always and sing praises in Psalm
Our Psalm is 130
All: (sung) In God we live and move and have our story.
In love God lives in us and makes us whole
O Jesus may we hear the Word that calls us near;
Your story makes a home within our soul.
Your story makes a home within our soul
One: Who we strive to be is founded in our story.
All Please, share once more with us our story.
One Our Epistle is taken from Romans 8:6-11
One This is our Story
All Thanks be to God
One Our way through the wilderness is found in the gift of the Gospels our Lesson is taken from John 11:1-45
One: The Word of God for the People of God
All Thanks be to God
Sermon
Prayer
Lord as we ponder your words open our hearts that we may understand and know you. Amen
Seasons change and spring came on a rather sunny but cold day. I have been trying to be more deliberate about taking the time to just be. As a doctor recommended in an interview stop looking at your watches, stop looking at the calendar. Just be in the moment. One of the Covid changes in my life is that I have taken to not wearing my watch. Time is of course a perception. I see it as an infinite amount of lines between all the aspects of our lives’ joys and sorrow, its love and heart ache. Time is slow it is fast it is fleeting. The infinite threads of the future flow into the loom of the present to create each our own tapestry set on display in our lives. There can at times seem that there a lot of dark threads and we are challenged to look for the bright threads in our lives to weave into our tapestry.
My ruminations lead me around the manse as I ponder debating if I have got to the point where I might consider dusting the antiques and the collection After all some of the dust is historic. A lot of what is in the manse has been a part of another person’s life time another’s tapestry. Like the photograph of A Y Jackson’s mother on her wedding day. Acquired in an auction. Someone else’s Mementos and memories.
All things in time pass away. Nothing is truly permanent. Our belongings treasured possession will eventually be one big job lot. A life time reduced to a table of stuff that goes for five dollars. Makes a person say. Wow just pass the chocolate. Thanks for that cheery thought.
All things in their time pass away. Mountains rise and fall, seas swell and dry. Death is part of a natural order of the universe.
Consider this painting. What do you see, darkness, light, death, life. What joy, sorrow. What line in time is followed here what thread is woven in this moment, in this painting?
It is called “the resurrection of Lazarus.” Lazarus in the tomb is bound. We are also bound.
we at times are bound by fear, uncertainty, questions, lives suspended, what has been the normal gone everything fades, withers, decays dies. We strive to preserve and maintain. We build our fragile bridges over this great abyss. But we cannot deny the abyss.
Into the gloom there creeps light dispelling the darkness, Into this somber reality, creeps a fact that defies reality and the natural order, A breeze blows, there is a breath, a life giving breath. Old, dead, dry bones take on flesh, move are alive. Jesus comes out to the cemetery and in a loud, conquering voice, shouts Lazarus, come out!
A voice shouts to us beyond time and space, People of God awake for your light has come. Come out Jesus says and then commands un-bind him, and let him go.
Jesus speaks to all that enshrouds us, our grief our fear, our greed, our self-pity our pride fullness our vanity, our very mortality and says Unbind them and let them go
Jesus does not whisper he does not call gently he with a loud voice shouts. “Come out.”
He is shouting in order to overcome the strong, seemingly invincible voice of fear. He shouts so that we might hear and look up, and live.
Why do you think Jesus goes toward Jerusalem with such certainty with such serenity? And confidence. He walks confident in the power of God, the giver of life, to give life even in the face of death. He walks not alone. Neither do we. Hear the voice; heed the words.
Come out rise up be unbound live life.
In all that we do as a people of a living God, in all that we do as a community of faith let us do it with that same confidence and unbounded joy of living. Life is not a burden. (it can feel that way) but ultimately I think life is something that should be grasped and enjoyed and shared. As we travel this road to Jerusalem, here deep in Lent, perhaps these words of life strike us even more forcefully than if they had been spoken during the great fifty days of Easter. This is a sample of the Easter event. Just as Jesus raised Lazarus from the Tomb so Jesus comes to bring life to those of us who live in the valley of the shadow of Death.
In the many deaths we die each day, in the darkness of life’s winter, Jesus calls to us to come out, and he unbinds all that enshrouds us and bids us to greet the new day calls us to shed that which binds us and embrace the possibilities that God gives us in the creative motion of the Holy Spirit. In every moment there is the possibility for a different future, in every moment faith moves us towards that future which is calling.
In Every moment God reaches out to us and lifts us up. Jesus is the spring that brings new life after winter’s chill. His is the voice of the well sung Robin calling us from our binding. In Christ we find the promise that is made to us we see that we can never be alone that in live in death in live after death God is with us. Thanks be to God.
Prayers of the people
Blessed and present God we come to you as your people in this time.
A Jesus called out to Lazarus so to we pray that you will set your hand upon us and call us out of our fears unbinding us to be confident that you are with us. Give us such grace at this time to calm our minds and be open to the presence of your Holy Spirit in our lives.
There is much in this world that binds us, wraps us and hold us still. Lose of physical and mental health. Lose of dreams and confidence. Lose of security and living in fear. We pray that your spirit move upon all those that call to you that they may be unbound by that which had holds them. We thank you for your wisdom and presence in the challenges that we face both as individuals and as a community of Faith. We are thankful for those moments that your spirit has intervened and given us guidance. We here your call and we ask for strength to be able walk with those who are a part of our lives. We hold them in our hearts and name them before you.
As comes the breath of spring so your spirit moves among us making differences in our lives. We entrust to you our own personal prayers of petition and thanksgiving spoken in the silence of our hearts knowing that in your time and in your way they shall be answered. We offer them through Christ who binds us as one as we say 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.
All Bring life, O God, to the program and mission of this church, which we support through our offerings. May our giving bring life and hope in many “ Valleys of dry bones As Christ sacrificed life for us, so may each of us commit ourselves to carrying forward the work to which we are called in our own day. Bless us and all the gifts we bring, in Jesus' name amen.
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.
We Shall go out with hope of resurrection
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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