Want to put some fun in your Friday night? Join the Cedar Park United Family Ministry Team for BINGO this Friday, May 9, at 7:00 p.m. in the Fellowship Hall. The cost is only $5 for an entire family! Little ones can sit with their parents to play or watch a Disney movie in KidZone Corner. Single? Don’t stay home! Come on out and play for just $2.

Non-cash prizes will be awarded, and light refreshments will be available.

Acts 1: 6-14

In an article in Sojourners magazine* this month that Elisabeth Jones gave me at the retreat yesterday, Justo Gonzalez, a Cuban-born theological educator, claims that humour is one way the author of Luke-Acts was engaging in “moderate subversion of an early church that was becoming increasingly exclusive in its models of leadership.” The reading we have today is almost slapstick.

In a final, over-the-top demonstration of “not getting it,” a group of Jesus’ followers demand to know the exact time when Jesus will restore the kingdom of Israel. A crude paraphrase used in the Sojourner article was “Great, you’re not dead. Now are we going to kick some Roman butt and take our rightful place as kings?” We’d all like easy answers, concrete promises, the ability to control our lives by knowing when things will happen. Jesus tells them that’s not where they should be putting their energy. They will receive power from the Holy Spirit to be witnesses all over the then known world. Not exactly what they were asking!

Then Jesus disappears in a clouds, as though in exasperation. So you are left with the stooges standing still gawking at the sky…where Jesus had disappeared. Still looking heavenward for the answer. Two men appear—not necessarily superatural. They could be just guys who came along. They tell them that they are looking for Jesus in the wrong place. Just as the angels at the tomb had told the women that they are looking for Jesus in the wrong place. They are wasting time looking outside for the answer. As our reflection read by Bob and Elisabeth said, much time is wasted staring at the sky waiting for God to step out of heaven and make everything right. Much time is wasted staring at political leaders expecting they will solve the problems of the world. Much time is wasted looking at dogma and doctrines expecting right believing kind of religion to make everything right. Again from the Sojourner article” Many of us are looking for Jesus in the wrong places; our faith lives consist too much of standing and looking up. We could us a poke in the eye, a ride on a banana peel, or a pie in the face to get us to look at the world around us and those who are standing next to us”*

Hmm. Is this story really about the ascension, Jesus going up to heaven? I think it’s more about the followers; more about the disciples who are living in a time of huge transition. One way of being was coming to an end. Jesus was going. How were they to live in the world now?

What happens is a return to community; they go back to be a community of prayer; to renew their call to love and their call to witness to the life and ministry of Jesus by their words and their actions.

I chair the vision and transformation committee of Montreal Presbytery and some of the churches I work with easily can be accused of looking outside for something to come and save them…Looking to the Presbytery, or the National Church or some radical change in the culture that will turn the clock back to a time when church was at the centre of community life, and people went as a duty and a responsibility. It’s a bit like having your heads in the clouds…looking a bit unreal. I don’t believe Cedar Park is one of those congregations; and that became very clear as over 35 people of all ages from 7 to seniors got together to explore our identity and our goals as a congregation.

We worked with a fun exercise on identity, which invited us to imagine the congregation as a person. We were asked about gender/age/personality/passions/ foibles/core values of this person. We were asked how you knew this person was a person of faith? How they lived out their core spiritual values and what hopes and dreams this person might have for the future.

Each of our five groups had a remarkable similarity in describing the person that is Cedar Park/ or Chiara/Pat/Lindsey/ or Madison as some groups named him/her. We decided that either s/he was a very liberated/strong/ empowered woman or a modern sensitive guy. We had gender confusion. Or as one person said, “This is a person, it doesn’t matter what the gender is.” We knew though that s/he had a maturity and experience but also youthful energy, and ideas/ was coming into her own; passionate about learning and growing in the faith ; passionate about being a community where people can ask questions and seek and learn and grow. S/he showed her faith in her caring for others in the body, in her openness to new ideas and new people, in her concern for social justice and generous outreach beyond herself, in her commitment to healing, and being inclusive in community. S/he was a reformed gossip, one group told us, and had weathered some storms in her life but was healing and moving on. S/he loves kids and enjoys their exuberance, and s/he wishes there were more people who knew what a great person s/he was. What makes her angry is injustice and discrimination. What delights her is spending time with her friends, especially over food. S/he loves to eat and laugh, and sing and have fun with others in the community. S/he is intellectually curious and not afraid to ask hard questions and allow for different opinions and beliefs. S/he finds music a real source of joy and meaning and likes all kinds of music. S/he is committed, and very generous with her money, but s/he is living in an aging house and has some concerns about how much it will cost to repair the roof and bring it up to scratch. She’s very concerned about the environment and the future of the planet and feels a responsibility to do what she can about it. And I am no doubt missing some parts but you can see the sheets from yesterday in the coffee hour and find the parts I’ve missed.

We were not staring at the sky, looking for the answers. We were looking amongst us as a community of prayer and commitment, gathered together. We are being the body of Christ right here. And as we thought of where God might be leading her, we clearly felt called to renew our call to love. We acknowledged that she was doing lots of things right and we wanted to continue and strengthen and support that and build from that strength.

One of our goals was to Strengthen the People of God Under that we identified
• Redefine our mission statement: saying clearly and outloud who we are and what we stand for.
• Continue and support the educational focus for people of all ages ongoing and needing support…(Kidzone in need of teachers for next year)
• Strengthen ministry with young families
• Explore/build/redesign/develop a timeline for exploring costs of roof/insulation/sanctuary redesign. We need a project management of this large piece of work.
• Empower people to tell the good news of Cedar park to friends
Reaching Out in Faith: Moving beyond our comfort zone
• Keep breaking out into the community, building partnerships, using our existing partnerships to invite people into our congregation
• Continue our multifaceted outreach programs
• Pursue an affirming ministry; recognize the importance of diversity and welcome to all people. We need to keep learning and growing and deepening our welcome
• Explore possibilities of reaching out to francophones and disenfranchised Roman Catholics in our area, Perhaps French faith discussion group? Other ideas?
• Meet people of other faith traditions
• Lots of other ideas came forward that need to be explored
• Raise the profile through advertising, outreach, partnership and clear statement of identity.

Living with Respect in Creation:

• Explore the greening of our church, but also learn to give community leadership in environmental issues and concerns. Look at our property to see how we might use it in ways that are environmentally healthy. Eg. Community gardens etc.

By struggling in community in prayer and listening and sharing, we heard God’s call to us to renew our call to love and to live our faith in today’s world. We are not looking up at the sky, expecting Jesus to pop out and fix it all. We are working to be a community of faith in our own time. May the power of the Spirit come upon us that we might live this dream.

*References are to Sojourners, May 2008, Living the Word.

Tickets for this 50/50 fund-raising concert for the church are $15. Please see Elizabeth Chown on Sunday or during the week for tickets. This is RESERVED seating in the sanctuary, so please decide where you’d like to sit (count the rows from the front) and buy your tickets early.

Tickets are on sale now for the fund-raising dinner being held by Cedar Park’s Youth in Action Group of Free the Children. The dinner will be held at the church on Saturday, May 31, at 6 p.m.

Our young people have been busy! The menu has been taste-tested, the evening is planned, and the entertainment and displays are being organized. The evening will include traditional African food, African dancing, and informative presentations. All funds raised from the evening will support the construction of a school and mobile medical clinic in the Salabwek community in Kenya.

This event is always sold out, so buy your tickets early.
$20 per person, with a maximum of $50 per family.

If you’re not able to attend, “I Can’t Come” tickets are available for $10 at Fellowship Hour, from a FTC member or through the Church Office.

Join us on Wednesday, April 30 at 7:30, when our guest,
Rev. Phil Joudrey, will lead a discussion on
“The Bible and Homosexuality – Current Theology”.

We will also be holding a “Talking Circle” to share questions, comments, concerns and ideas, on Wednesday May 14 at 7:30.

Where: Offsite at Beaurepaire United Church
When: May 3, 2008 from 9:00-3:00-ish
Freewill Offering to cover lunch and expenses.

Acts 17:22-31

Paul in speaking in Athens describes the God who created the world and everything in it, who is the universal giver of life and breath to all that lives, who created the diversity of people on the earth, who were created to seek God. Yet Paul says, we do not have to seek far, Indeed it is in God that we live and move and have our being. Today I invite you into a meditation to rest in the presence of this one in who we live and move and have our being…..This Spirit, whom as Jesus says in the gospel is IN us.

Relax, shut eyes if comfortable, Be in touch with your breath as you notice it moving in and out of your body . This breath of life often used as a symbol of the Spirit.… Breathe in the breath of life … Let it move deeply into your body … mind … and spirit … Breathe out fear and anxiety and release them as you are able to do so … Breathe in the breath of life
Release the toxins built up in your system…

Breathe in life … Breathe out fear and anxiety …
Breathe in life … Breathe out fear and anxiety …

Breathe in the grace of God in whom you live and move and have your being … Let this grace it gently take root in your body …
Breathe out the tension and stress that are held in the cells of your body …
Breathe in God’s grace … Breathe out tension and stress …
Breathe in God’s grace … Breathe out tension and stress …
Breathe in the healing strength of God … Breathe out whatever blocks you from being fully present …
Breathe in healing strength … Breathe out what blocks you …
Breathe in healing strength … Breathe out what blocks you …

Let the breath gradually still your soul … Let the breath gradually still your spirit … Let the breath gradually still your mind … Let the breath gradually still your body …
Know that you are in sacred space, where you have been invited by the Spirit … that the God in whom you live … and move … and have your being … flows through this place with deep unconditional love … Take some time to be in touch with this Source of Love … Be in this safe space where you are known by your Creator …

Notice how the Spirit comes to you? … Does it have form? … Is it a feeling? … Is it a knowing? … Simply allow the Holy to be with you in whatever way Spirit comes to you today … Experience the words from Spirit … “I remember you … I know you from before you were born … I have always known you … I could never forget you … I love you more than a new mother her child … You are mine … You are carved right into the palm of my hand … Rest there … Let me hold you in the palm of my hand”
As you rest in God notice your soul coming home …
As you rest in God … feel what it is like to be known to the core by Ultimate Love …
As you rest in God … feel the stresses, the distractions of your life fall away … for you know what is important … what is real … what matters …
As you rest in God … feel the fears and anxiety you carry fall away …
As you rest in God … feel the anger and pain you carry fall away …
As you rest in God feel the healing power of the Creator flowing through you … and around you … filling you with sacred light … healing light …

As you rest in God … know that you can live your life rooted in that love … in the knowing that you are loved … that you are known by name by your Creator … that you are precious to God …
As you rest in God connect with God’s peace, with God’s healing, with God’s wisdom, with God’s hope for the world and for you

Notice if there is anything the Spirit would like to say to you as you rest in God’s presence …

From that place of resting in the God in whom we live and move and have our being…Let us open our hearts and souls to those for whom we pray…asking that Spirit surround them…Imagine the love and the light of God’s Spirt surrounding those for whom we pray…. for our childen baptized today…Olivia, and Frances.,for all who have joined this congregation today. For Margie Ann and Ranny as they leave for a new beginning in Ottawa, For Robert, and others in our community who are ill, and who are going through crisis For all who are living on the edge, for victims of violence, victims of greed, For all who are on their healing journey.,.For this planet home in crisis, for all affected by food shortage Take some time to hold in the healing light of God those for whom we pray.

Together let us pray the prayer our brother Jesus taught us… Our father/mother

Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16
1 Peter 2:4-10
John 14:1-4

Each of our Scriptures are written for people living in the midst of trying times and they all, in their own way, speak about a sacred place…a place where the holy and the human encounter. The Psalmist in a time of crisis and danger, is consumed by fear despair and grief. He pours out to God the pain, the fear, the sense of being trapped. He laments what life is like for him at the moment. Yet, even in the midst of that pain, the psalmist is able to imagine, or maybe it is to remember. Whichever, he is able to connect with, catch a glimpse of a place of refuge, a place of safety and security in God, in realizing that his life and times are in God’s hands, A powerful portrait of that gut-wrenching experience of finding sacred place in the midst of suffering and anguish.

The gospel of John and our reading from 1st Peter are both written to the early church, Christians living in difficult times, wondering what their place was in a dominant Roman Empire. We get the author of John’s take on Jesus as he writes the farewell Jesus gives to his disciples, No doubt he is imagining how these frightened, displaced, early Christians living in small minority communities would hear it as well.

(A Parenthesis)
(There are at least two cautions in this reading, I’d like to address right away. One is John’s exclusive use of Father as an image of God. For me to hear this passage, I have to believe it signifies intimacy rather than exclusive gender for God.

Another very challenging statement, “No one comes to the Father except by me” has been used by fundamentalists to justify Christian exclusivity. Again, I can’t accept that. It may be that the early church believed that, but it is more likely that they were saying that Jesus points the way to intimate relationship with God. It is important that we challenge scripture, even as it challenges us, and peel off layers of traditional hearing and interpretation that make it hard for us to hear.)

In saying farewell to his followers, Jesus wants to prepare them for what is to come; some bad times. He wants to offer them hope to live by. If you knew you were going to die, and were writing a farewell to those beloved who would remain…what might you say? There’s a fascinating video on YouTube of a young American professor named Randy Pausch who has just months to live. He gave a last lecture to his students in which he offers words of comfort and wisdom about what is important just as Jesus did. It has been downloaded more than a million times on the internet.

http://video.stumbleupon.com/?s=ithct48cqw&i=ufcchmyxqsuj9vwsemax

An interesting question: What would you say if you were writing a farewell for those who would live on? How would you comfort them? What wisdom would you like them to hear from you?

No doubt you’d want to speak to their anxiety and fear as did Jesus. Jesus acknowledges that they had troubled hearts. “Do not let your hearts be troubled:” he says. The gospel writer also shows a troubled Jesus, It’s mentioned at least 3 times just before this reading that Jesus is troubled, And so he speaks with empathy and compassion.

He tells them not to dwell on the trouble, or in it, but to trust in God in life and in death. Then he wants them to know what is most important to him. He speaks of sacred place for him….his unity, his deep connection with the Source…and invites them into that unity, into that deep connection with the Source as the way that leads to life.

The metaphor of many dwelling places has sometimes been taken literally, golden mansions in the sky, but I think it has more to do with promise of sacred place; place where we can feel like the psalmist that our life and times are in God’s hand even as we face into death,

The “I am” statements are part of a series in John which offer lenses into how the early church saw Jesus. The author is making strong connection with the name of God given at the burning bush. When Moses asks, who shall I say has sent me, the name given was JHWH “I am who I am, I will be who I will be, I am beingness becoming” Try to lock that in a box!!!!!……These “I am” statements suggest the writer sees strong ties between Jesus and God. They also point to ways the community experienced Jesus revealing God’s way. I am the bread of life, the light of the world, the good shepherd, and today The Way the Truth and the Life. Each can stand as separate assertions about who Jesus is, but they can also be translated in other ways–e.g. Jesus is the way and truth that lead to life, Jesus is the way that leads to truth and life, Jesus is the true way of life. There is sacred place says Jesus in this intimacy with God, in this profound trust in God even in times of grief, and loss, and fear and uncertainty. It is clear that the way of Jesus is to be a path of transformation and truth that is life-giving.

The author of 1st Peter, is writing earlier than the gospel writer of John, but also to small, isolated, scattered minority communities in Asia Minor in times of persecution. They felt very much overpowered by the Roman Empire, which had a whole different set of values about life and how to live it. The author reminds of the sacred place of being community of spirit. He calls these small scattered communities, who thought they had no power, to become a house of living stones, centred on Christ as cornerstone. They were to remember that they are spiritual community; the ecclesia-those called out. Their allegiance was not to the values of their culture. They were called out to build a new kind of house, much more than a building, — a spiritual community where God is present in the very livingness of the people in community. A sacred place where the way of Jesus is lived.

In that culture, the corner stone is the first laid stone which sets the pattern for all the rest. It determines if the walls will be straight or crooked. It orients the other stones and provides the guidelines for where they are to be. It sets the shape and design of the house. Without a cornerstone, there could be no house. It is the basis of all future building. Yet when the house is finished it is underneath a lot of other stones-sometimes not even recognizable.

The author of Peter’s letter suggests that Jesus, the cornerstone of this new building is sometimes not only unrecognizable. He is a stone for people to trip over; a stone rejected by the builders of the society of his day- the political and religious leaders. Jesus was crucified as a revolutionary by the Roman political and military machinery and the priestly council of the day.

Those who could see through the eyes of the Spirit saw beyond his execution. They saw his life as foundational- life lived in a balance of communion with God and the life of love poured out for others; a radical life given over to announcing and embodying the kingdom of God right in the midst of life. A life not afraid to speak out, to go beyond the rules when God values demanded. A life in whom the livingness of God was transparent. If the church really took Christ’s life as foundational, as the kids say, we’d be awesome!

Peter tells them that they were to remember that they are not isolated individual rocks, but part of a living temple of God. An image of a house of living stones….stones that are not rigid or fixed or imovable….This is sacred place…a community of people alive in the Spirit.

And so some questions: Where do you find sacred place? Where is there spiritual aliveness in me, and how do I connect that aliveness with others in community? Do I feel like a living stone in whom God dwells; a part of a spiritual temple? How am I part of building God’s kingdom in the place where I am. And a really hard one..Are we prepared to be fitted into a house built by Christ or would we rather build the house on our own terms?

As we will be visioning our future in a few weeks on May 3, we might want to ask ourselves, What kind of house of living stones would God want to create in Cedar Park at this point in our lives?