Passage: John 20:1-18    

  Description: An empty tomb! That’s what the disciples, the men and women who had faithfully followed Jesus for the three years of his ministry, found on that Sunday morning almost 2,000 years ago. An empty tomb! According to the account in the gospel of John, Mary Magdalene arrived first and discovered the stone, used to block the entrance to the tomb, had been rolled away. That was strange enough, since it would have been a stone too large for any one person to move. Then she peeked in, with a bit of trepidation I imagine, and saw that Jesus’ body was gone. Immediately, Mary ran back to tell Simon Peter and the others. An empty tomb! That’s what Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved – that’s what they discovered after their foot race to the tomb – Peter lost that race, but was the first to actually enter the tomb. An empty tomb! But, we are told, the linen wrappings that would have been wound around Jesus’ body were still there, as well as the burial cloth that had covered his head. And, just so we get the fact that this a very intentional and purpose-filled moment, we are told that the linens have been neatly folded up, that the cloth covering the head was placed separately from the other linens. An empty tomb! This is no joke. This is no set-up by the disciples to make it look as if Jesus had risen from the dead. This is no arrangement by the Romans to play games with Jesus’ disciples. Something amazing, miraculous, intentional, and astounding has happened here. That’s the point of the story. An empty tomb! It is quite easy to be caught and held in place by this empty tomb.

Passage: Colossians 3:12-17    

  Description: Why bother with worship? Psalm 100: 2-3 says, Worship the Lord with gladness; come into his presence with singing. Know that the LORD is God. It is God who has made us, and we are his; we are his people and the sheep of his pasture. (Ps. 100: 2-3) This is why we worship. We are designed to worship God. It’s in our DNA. It’s rooted in our tradition. Our theology of worship is grounded in ancient wisdom that affirms a special, intimate relationship with the One who has made us; the One who claims us as his beloved—his people, and the sheep of his pasture. I mention Psalm 100 because it lies at the very foundation of everything that follows into the time of Jesus and Paul as we consider prayer and public worship. The collective wisdom of our Judeo-Christian roots proclaims that we pray and worship not because of want but, need. Our greatest purpose as human beings, according to the wisdom of our faith is to offer God our gratitude, praise, and worship. Consider prayer for a moment. In the Muslim Tradition, prayer is offered 5 times a day. In the Jewish Tradition, it’s 3 times a day. In the Christian Tradition, according to the rule of St. Benedict and earlier (4th – 6th centuries), prayer is still offered 8 times a day in monastic settings. These prayers are called the liturgy of the hours. In the Middle East where all the Abrahamic traditions intermingle, the call to prayer is proclaimed from the minaret, by the time on the clock and/or the place of the sun in the sky. In every case the call to prayer is meant to be an interruption in the day. Work stops. Tasks cease. Room is created to pray. What I appreciate is the notion that prayer interrupts. Prayer is designed to get in the way of the many things that serve to keep bread on the table, keep others happy, keep things operating. Worship and Prayer go together. They exist to get in the way of the many things we deem important or that otherwise serve as distractions from tending to our soul’s need to commune with God. The intent of prayer and worship is to get at the very center of our life in order that we may be reminded again and again about who and Who’s we are.

Passage: Luke 11:1-9    

  Description: I love to pray. I can’t imagine life without praying. Prayer weaves in and out of my day, part of the fabric of my life. Yet, even though prayer is so much a part of who I am, it is not easy to explain what prayer is. Let me start by saying what prayer is not! Prayer is not like giving a wish list to Santa or a to-do list to a spouse. It is not saying, Okay, here God, these are the things I need done; now get busy. God is not our personal robot, or our servant. Too often, I hear people say that prayer doesn’t work and that God doesn’t answer prayer. That is rooted in this kind of thinking – that if I pray it, God should just do it. However, there are some things I’ve prayed for that I am now very glad that God didn’t just do. So prayer is not a to-do list or wish list for God. Prayer is not magic. It is not saying, “Abracadabra” and having something appear. It is not about saying the right words so that your prayer is answered, and trying different formulations of words until you get the result you hope for. God is not a genie in a bottle ready to grant us three wishes Prayer is not negotiation. There are times when we will find ourselves praying, okay God, I’ll do this, if you’ll do that. Or I promise never again to do that, if just once you do this. It’s natural to pray this way. It comes from the deep emotions we may be feeling, but that is not how prayer works. We don’t negotiate with God or bargain with God. God loves us. God is working with us. Prayer is not manipulation. Prayer isn’t about doing & saying the right things so that we can back God into our corner, into our way of seeing things. We don’t have to be the best defense lawyer in the world, pleading our case before God. It isn’t about trying to trick God into believing what we are saying. God loves us.

Passage: 1 Corinthians 12:12-27 & Acts 2:43-47    

  Description: Why bother going to church? Rabbi Schmuel Kaplan tells the story of an employee who approaches the boss in order to ask for a raise. Well, you can imagine the boss pummelling the employee’s request with any number of questions that have to do with justifying why a raise is so deserving. While going to the boss individually is a worthy endeavour, imagine the difference if all the employees showed up at the same time or, the union reps are part of the meeting? The weight of the request would shift in a very different way. No doubt, the rational for the increase in wage would be more convincing. No matter, the boss would have to hear the request very differently. Well says, Rabbi Schmuel, imagine one person praying to God compared to a whole community praying to God. Not that individual prayer is any less significant, but there’s more capacity when a whole community prays. We must not underestimate the power of corporate prayer. And of course, the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament writings are filled with expressions of corporate prayer. In fact, the synagogue was developed to create a context for local corporate prayer so everyone in their town could come together and pray. The roots of the Judeo-Christian faith are community-based and grounded in congregational life. And the soul reason for that is founded on praying together. Why bother going to church? We go because it matters that we pray together in community one with the other. We bring our whole self to church. We bring all that matters to us. We bring our worries, our anxieties, our intentions, our concerns, our gratitude, our joy, our compassion, our vision, our hope, our skills, abilities, talents, possessions, our desires for everyone’s well-being into a corporate community expression of prayer. Amazing really.

Passage: Romans 12:1-8 & Matthew 4:18-25    

  Description: We are in the year 2018. We are surrounded with technological advances and scientific understandings more than any other time. We have landed on the moon, have a space station orbiting the earth, and are talking about living on Mars. Information speeds around our planet instantaneously. We can talk and facetime with a friend on the other side of our planet with only micro-seconds of delay. The list could go on – we are a people who have so much, know so much, have discovered so much - so why do we bother with faith? The truth is that 100 years ago or 1,000 years ago or 10,000 years ago people probably were saying the same thing wherever they lived – we know so much more than our ancestors, we have discovered so much more. People living 100 or 1,000 years from now may look back at us and wonder at what primitive lives we lived. It all reminds us that we are part of something so much more, that there is something much greater and much more mysterious going on than all our scientific advances or medical knowledge or technological break throughs can totally capture. That is when we turn to faith – faith in God, in a More that is Mystery, and Love, and Wonder, and Possibility. We choose faith in our generation. In past centuries, faith was assumed. People included faith practice in their lives in the way they would include food and labour and sleep. They could not have imagined life without religious practice and a sense of faith as a foundation to all they did. But we are in a time when, because of all the science and technology, because of rapid change and human migration, and because of some horrendous actions by religious people which overshadow the good that faith can do, having a faith or religious practice at the core of your life is no longer assumed. We now live in a culture formed much more around materialism and science, though even science, too, has a hard time being taken seriously and is sometimes dismissed. For the first time in history, to follow a faith and a religious practice is a choice, not a given.