Passage: Mark 12:41-44    

  Description: Love. Love one another. Love your neighbour as your self. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your soul, with all that you are. Love. Not long after Susan and I were dating, I remember a very distinct moment when my heart skipped a beat. I had this feeling that everything had changed in my life. I tried my best to think my way through it, to some how make sense of it, and to try and figure it all out. I couldn’t. I was in love. This wasn’t infatuation, it was much deeper than that. It was changing my life, calling me out of myself, inviting me to live into a relationship grounded in what I believe unto this day, to be the work of God’s loving spirit. And I couldn’t do anything about it. I could not reason it out or subject it to my calculating mind. Love was much bigger than that and after a few weeks of utter inner turmoil, I realized that I needed to surrender myself to love. I had to follow my heart. All that was required of me was to release myself to this love and let go. Shane Claiborne speaks of love (Animate, Practices—Money, the Joy of Sharing, Sparkhouse, 2014). It is the heart that leads us into relationships, into community, into service, into the practice of sharing and into the territories of generosity and compassion. God’s love embraces us and draws us into relationship with the Divine, with the Christ, with holy wisdom, with the community of faith, with mission, with ministry, with one another. At the root of the Christian life is a love for Christ and a love for one another and our selves expressed through our life in community—the embodiment of Christ. So my question is, are we in love? Are we in love with Christ? Are we in love with this community of faith we know as High River United Church? Are we in love with our church? Is our heart leading us into a deeper relationship with God? Are we releasing ourselves to God’s love? Are we surrendering to God’s love? Does our heart skip a beat when we think of our congregation, our church, it’s people and the world it serves? Are we overcome with love? Do we permit ourselves to have an emotional response rooted in love when we ponder our relationship with God and our church?

Passage: Exodus 3:1-14    

  Description: We all need a higher power. That’s the wisdom of AA. That’s the wisdom of scripture. We all need something bigger than us, something to inspire us, someone to whom we are accountable, someone who cares for us no matter what and who is there for us no matter what. If we don’t have a higher power, then we lose our centre, our focus, our sense of worth. If we don’t consciously choose to worship God, we will unconsciously start worshipping other things. Worship is to give a place of “worth” to something in our lives. If we are not giving God, the highest place of worth in our lives, not worshipping God, then we will find ourselves worshipping other things – money, perhaps, or the ability to make a good impression on others, or material goods, or status, or perfect looks. But the problem with worshipping those things is that they give nothing back to us. They only demand more of us – harder work, more energy, more money. They only cause us to worry about whether we have enough or are doing enough. God is different. When we worship God, we discover the One who gives back to us abundantly more than we can imagine. God loves us. God accepts us as we are. God sees the value and worth in each one of us. God is the higher power – bigger than our biggest worry, ready to inspire us, comfort us, surround us with compassion, and to challenge us when we need a nudge or boot in a new direction. When we worship God, our own sense of worth is restored. When we pause to seek God’s presence & purpose, we discover beauty and possibility. When we worship, it keeps us in our proper & good place in creation.

Passage: Acts 2:43-47    

  Description: The first thing that Jesus did in his ministry was to form a community. Twelve disciples, and many, many more who learned from him, lived with him, supported him and followed him. The first thing the disciples did after Jesus’ crucifixion was gather as a community. The first thing those same disciples did after Jesus’ resurrection and then again after the coming of the Spirit on Pentecost was gather as a community. And the first thing that happened as the disciples began to preach the Good News was that people started gathering as communities. That’s what we read about in Acts: “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they`d sell their possessions and distribute the proceeds to all who had need. They spent much time together worshipping and breaking bread, eating with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all people.” This is what faith looks like: Community. Community is at the centre of being Christian. To be a follower of the Way of Jesus is to be part of a community.

Passage: Romans 8:31-39 & Luke 15:11-32    

  Description: In 8 billion years our sun will become a red dwarf star, expand, and, in the process, incinerate Mercury, Venus and our planet Earth. That is if a comet or asteroid doesn’t hit us first, or if we don’t do the job ourselves with biological or nuclear warfare, or a climate catastrophe and environmental collapse. At some point in the future, the planet Earth and all that is on it will be gone. Done. Ended. Okay, so that is the bad news. Isn’t it interesting that even when I say that something will happen 8 billion (that is eight billion) years in the future, our anxiety level goes up. That is so far into the future that our minds really can’t grasp it, but what we can grasp is destruction, death, end of the earth. We, as human beings, are survivors. Right down to our DNA we are made to survive, to think our way out of difficult situations, to be creative in the face of challenge, to find both physical and emotional strength in the midst of disaster, to rise above the worst of situations using the brains we have been given and by supporting one another in the communities we naturally form. We are survivors, so that even when a disaster is slated to happen 8 billion years in the future, we are on alert, anxious, wondering how to respond. Indeed, with our ingenuity and creativity, we might escape to another habitable planet in another galaxy. But there is good news closer at hand -- good news that helps now in any situation in which we may find ourselves. That is the good news that Jesus came to proclaim in word and action – the good news of God’s love for us. The apostle Paul writes to the Romans: “I am sure that nothing can separate us from the love of God.

Passage: Romans 8:18-28 & John 16:16-24    

  Description: Through the ages, fear has been used to control both adults and children. Fear of torture, fear of execution, fear of shunning or banishment, fear of eternal punishment and, yes, fear of God – all have been used to force people into submission to the will of whoever is in power whether in the government, the church or the family. Fear has been used through much of church history to drive people to believe in God, or maybe rather to drive people to obey God`s will – which really was the will of whoever held religious power at the time. Don`t obey what I say and you will go to hell and suffer for eternity in the fires of punishment awaiting you there. Only by following what I say (and sometimes by paying me money) will you have a chance to enjoy the eternal happiness of heaven in the afterlife. It is a perversion of the gospel, a misuse of the good news shared by Jesus. Bits and pieces of the Bible have been used to serve human greed and desire for power. Hellfire and brimstone preaching does not serve God.