You know that you are getting older when your younger friends start posting the anniversaries of the movies that you grew up with.   I have always been a Star Trek  fan. A science fiction TV show that premiered in 1966. I’m just a little older than it.  I fell in love with it during its continued re-run but part of my Fandom heart does belong to a series of moves called Star Wars The first movie came out in 1977 so it is now 47 years old.  They have continued the franchise of movies and the latest one is called “The rise of Sky Walker”    The last of the great Skywalker saga.    The movies over the years (there are eleven of them)

As a whole body of work, they move the story forward but also gives some of the back story.  In essence that is kind of what the gospel is doing today it is giving us some back story of just why the Pharisees just don’t like Jesus.

The   Pharisees we see today Are looking any small flaw or misstep Jesus might make  to find a way to guard their own power.  Anything. “I saw Jesus sneeze coming into the temple. Unclean.  I saw Jesus writing with his left hand. Demon. Really we all know that Left handed people are in their right mind.    Jesus sees right through them and we see one of those wonderful human moments of Jesus.  He looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at their hardness of heart     It ends with “ Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus”

Great Plot for a movie.  You could call it “The Nazarine affair.”  The story on how to  Get rid of   this nuisance back water profit and all will be well in our world. 

  It was all about the “I” the Pharisees  own personal power. Not about God. 

Jesus’ sees right through them; he knows this is all about their own preservation of personal power and really nothing to do with a call back to God and the Faith. 

Jesus again and again throughout the gospel shows that it is all about relationship

It is about making connections. 

 I have always enjoyed building models.   When I built my tall ship the “Cutty Sark” a three masted ship  I learned how all of it worked together to create a strong and stable single Unit when I started the rigging .  Before the rigging the masts wiggled all over the place. Then you start the riggings, the fore stays, aft stays back stays.  Rigging between the masts and down to the sides of the ship.  In total on the actual Cutty Sark there is 11 miles of rigging.  All the rigging works together, to stabilize the masts. 

   When the wind takes the sails the mast will take the strain but not bend. They work as connected part of the whole  When we as a community of faith, have made the connections we need we find that we are able to unfurl the sails of faith and have the wind of the spirit take it. 

 Religion is and should be about relationships.  Not mechanics and doctrines of Church. 

It is about personal encounters with faith 

The church is not based on a “mine” or “I”  It is not based upon the individual but the whole community 

 I am re-reading a book on Iconography as prep for my study leave in July. The author tells a story of being away and their hotel room overlooked a court yard shared with a school of dance. The students were in the court yard warming up. Some good some not so good. All working to perfect their skill.  The teacher calls them to order and the music starts and there is this amazing transformation as all focused on the dance and began to move not as individuals but as a whole each focused on the dance. 

When John Cornell was moved by the Spirit to create a community of faith, the world in which he lived was in turmoil. News would be trickling in from England that the Prime Minister Spencer Percivale had been assassinated replayed by Robert Jackson.  The Napoleonic war was continuing with rumours that Napoleon was going to march into Russia.  But more importantly here the talk was about the building tensions between Canada and United States of America tensions which would see the United States declare war against the crown on June 18^th.  If ever there was a time to come together and now the strength of being part of a community of faith this was the time.  Rev Cornell saw beyond his own personal devotion to God and embraced the work of Holy Spirit to bring together something that would be bigger then himself.  A place where one could come and know God. 

Once more we find ourselves living in a time of turmoil.  It is easy to get lost in running of a building, to get caught up in debates about doctrine and theology.  It is easy get lost  looking out for our own interests.