FREELTON STRABANE UNITED CHURCH
To Live Our Discipleship With Integrity And Grace
Horseshoe Falls Regional Council
Lent 5
April 6 2025
Rev. Will Wheeler BA M. Div. E-mail: [email protected]
Organist : 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.
Call To worship
One: Come to sit at the feet of Jesus, to worship and hear God’s message for you.
All: We count everything else as loss because knowing Jesus is worth so much more.
One: We come, not because we are righteous, but because our faith compels us to stand with Christ.
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
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
One: Once more here the story of our faith as told to us in
One This is our Story Philippians 3:4b-14
All This is our story of faith amen.
One: God’s light comes into the world in the word. The word was God. Here the good news. Our Gospel is taken from John 12:1-8
This is the good news
The April Showers are coming and with them comes the smell of spring. It truly has its own distinctive smell. Smell of rain, mud, damp, some what fresh, and just a hint of smoke from what didn’t get burned in the fall and those Spring evening fires to take the chill off.
The gospel for this coming week is part of the prelude to what is to come. It is a story found in several of the gospels, John no surprise has added his own different version. It is the story of Mary anointing Jesus. We are told that it is pure nard. Now Nard is a common name used for Jatamansi or Spikenard. It is a very heavy damp wet cave smell. I can only imagine what a pound of it would have been like. An open the window moment. Some of you may remember a couple of Good Friday’s back I used incense in the Westover Church. It went way better then I thought and there was a pillar of smoke a blue haze and a lot of smell which resulted in us having to open all the doors and try to smother charcoal burner. Rev Jamie still feels it is one of his funnier moments in worship. No there will be no scents this Good Friday. Still that is what it would have been like in that room.
Perfume can be made up of hundreds of smells. Layers of scents playing a part of the over all scent.
Jesus’s journey is made up of many people each adding to the story, each bringing another layer to our understanding of God with us.
We also have many who have impacted our faith journey
The biblical stories of Jesus, the action of the Holy Spirit in our lives, those whom we travel with in our lives help to shape our understanding of God with us.
As we draw to the end of the Lenten season I think it is important to reflect and evaluate where we are in our journey of faith . As we reflect on the journey are we being lead closer to our understanding of the God with in us at our core? Are there old layers that need to be stripped away and left behind.
It is very easy for us to become involved in the operating of the church, the up keep, the administration, the funding and yes even the politics. All of this can be the layers that can obscure our deeper understandings. Has the sacred been sacrificed and how do we reclaim that?
Is the sacred lost because of the demands of this world. We must continuously work at keeping the sacred, nurturing our spiritual center.
Christianity is when we are honest with ourselves is built on the foundation of older traditions from other faiths and spirituality. It is very layered Modern Christianity fragments itself with the idea of denomination. This fragmentation has led to a sense of “our way is better than there way” mentality
We don’t practice anointing the way that it is done with in the Roman Catholic faith But the gospel reminds us that it was an act of extravagant love. The anointing of oneself with holy water as you enter a Catholic church an out worldly remembrance of our baptism, a small bows of respect before the alter, a humble act before God. Crossing of oneself the remembrance of the gift of the resurrection and God in all of Gods manifestation in our lives in the trinity. In the Jewish faith as well in some Catholic Countries, the modesty of coving ones head before God is very important. , In the Jewish faith they have a small container on their door frames called a mezuzah. Which reminds them of the blessing of God at their going out and coming in. It contains a prayer. In the Eastern Christian Church they venerate Icons. They have an Icon corner in their homes, a small little place to go and pray. They believe that the saints are always with them and interceding in their lives. The icon screens in the churches are spectacular
What would be the response if each Sunday we set out a blessed bowl with some water in it. For us to bless ourselves when we came in, to remember our relationship to God, and that we are baptized into a larger family of God.
Oh that would be to Catholic But we are Catholic we are a part of the one holy catholic church. Well to much Roman Church
Our Spiritual practices are not limited to a denomination but can be reflective of the wide and rich traditions that have been given to us. They take the common and make them holy
We have had a bowl of stones here at the front for people to take and use as a means of focusing prayer. What are the Spiritual practices that you nurture yourselves that help you to find the your spirit center. To take the that ordinary thing and make it sacred
The same way that Mary took common perfume and made it sacred the way that Jesus took common bread and wine and made it holy.
To take common acts and make them an extravagant gifts.
To work in this world honouring what is sacred to us. To Act with integrity in our ministry. To experience the presence of God in Rocks and Trees, to honour God in our actions. To wear our sacred symbols not as bling but an outward sign of who we are.
We have a rich heritage of faith to discover. To find new ways to allow the Spirit of God to open our lives to its presence. To hold what is sacred in our faith knowing that it constantly reminds us that we are not
Take time to honour the sacred days that are coming up. Take the time to be to own our story. To see the layers that make up our story, our faith. To know in all aspects of life that we are not alone. Thanks Be to God
Present God, The work of the world can be a fog shrouding your presence in our lives. We become accustomed to the routine that we fail to see the many ways in which you reveal your presence to us. We can become insular and see our way as the only way and miss your message of gathering as your people.
Help us to pull back the lawyers the insulate us from you to discover your divine spark in the core of our being.
We pray for your world in all of it’s brokenness.
We pray for those who we are called to journey with.
God of extravagant gifts we offer you our own personal prayers.
We offer you the great prayer which binds us as one. 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.
One: Praise God who from all Blessing flow
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
Sending Forth 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.
amen amen 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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