On Palm Sunday, Jess considers what happens in the space between the Palms of the Triumphal Entry and the Passion of Christ, emphasizing the way Jesus walked toward human suffering and encourages his followers to do the same. Jess invites us to pay attention to the suffering in our own lives, so that we can pay attention to the suffering of others as well.
A few months after inviting us to “Bring Our Shadows to Church,” Walter asks us to face the shadow side of God in order to prevent us from “calling evil good” (like genocide or threats of eternal torment) while also avoiding a naively optimistic minimizing of evil. We could choose to lament and wrestle with the mystery of evil that’s present in God’s Creation while trusting in the Presence of God’s co-suffering love.
At Second Breakfast this Sunday, we invited Rick, Wilma, and Rosie to reflect on Lent practices they’ve done and are doing. Then we enjoyed sharing our own experiences with each other, as we considered together the value of rituals such as this, and the kind of space it can make in our lives.
On the 3rd Sunday of Lent, Jess is drawn to return to the baptism of Jesus and the revelation of our own belovedness. Reflecting on excerpts from Henri Nouwen’s book, Life of the Beloved, she invites us to consider the people who have revealed our belovedness to us, and encourages us to deepen our experience of living into (or ‘enfleshing’) our belovedness in our everyday lives. Jess demonstrates how letting ourselves be known can be a threshold we step through that allows The Beloved to find us, too.
On the second Sunday of Lent, Renate Gritter shares some reflections on death and mortality grounded in her recent experience of finding a lump on her neck. She tells the story of what it was like to contemplate going through cancer and even death and invites all of us to consider “giving up” going through struggles with mortality with only our own powers to aid us and tell our friends about the “lumps” in our lives, whatever they may be.
On the first Sunday of Lent, Mark Groleau walks us through the temptations of Jesus and asks us to consider the things Jesus “gave up” and why. He points out that each response Jesus gives “the satan” links to Old Testament Jewish teachings and to what was happening in the cultural landscape of that time. Mark recognizes that we continue to face the same challenges the early church faced. He encourages that following The Way of Jesus still means giving up on power and doing “small things with great love” to care for our neighbours and the world
In today’s homily, Jess expands on our theme “Being Rooted in Love Together” as she reflects on some lessons in love she’s picked up from her former self, (90’s evangelical teenage Jess) her current self, the apostle Paul, and everyone else. She suggests that greeting our differences with a loving embrace (instead of trying to convert each other) might be the only way to melt our barriers away.
Rachael dives into our new theme, “Being Rooted in Love Together,” with some thoughts on our barriers to love and how to approach them, a guided reflection with Psalm 139, and an invitation to adopt the phrase, “What’s not to love?” as a love-barrier-melting tool!
At our 2nd Breakfast service, Walter followed up on his fall workshops by inviting discussion of how we can stay in good relationships with those whose views differ greatly from our own on many issues of the day. We concluded that we’re tired of referring to these folks (often family members, co-workers and neighbours) as ‘enemies.’