March 17, 2024
And Yet…The Shadow Side of God
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.
March 10, 2024
Conversations on Lent
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.
March 3, 2024
You Are The Beloved
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.
February 25, 2024
Lumpy Together
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.
February 18, 2024
Give Up Like Jesus (And Do It Together)
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
February 4, 2024
Being Rooted in Love is Economic: Some Experiences with God and Money
Walter shares some of his story around finances and his lifelong passion to try to take biblical ideas of economic justice seriously. At the end, he shared this recording of Becka singing the lullaby he wrote for his kids based on Matthew 6.
January 28, 2024
Lessons in Love
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.
January 21, 2024
What’s Not To Love?
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!
January 14, 2024
More on Loving Enemies
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.’
January 7, 2024
Being Rooted in Love Together
Jess introduces our new teaching theme for the season ahead, ‘Being Rooted in Love Together’ and reflects on some of the ways she’s experienced this happening at SCC over the last year. She also shares some verses from Ephesians 3&4 that the Leadership Collective have spent time contemplating as we work on putting new language to our values, and nods to Epiphany and what it could mean for us today.
December 24, 2023
Our Chronic Existential Waiting Crisis
On the final week of Advent – the week of Love – Mark Groleau helped us to face our CHRONIC EXISTENTIAL WAITING CRISES by addressing the ways humanity, and Christians in particular, are always waiting for the next best thing that promises salvation. But what if what we’re waiting for never comes? And what if that’s because it’s already here? God -aka Love- is with us. If
December 17, 2023
Joy with Eyes Open
Walter explores the theme for the 3rd Sunday of Advent (Joy), emphasizing that joy must remain aware of the suffering and hardship around us and that trust enables us to respond to the moments when joy arises in us. When his notes ran out of steam, the congregation’s wisdom rose to the challenge!