Thanks to everyone who participated in our Good Friday ecumenical service. There were about 1200 people there from across the valley with participation from multiple churches. We also had a wonderful service on Easter Sunday morning at Berwick.
The 9:30 a.m. Berwick Sunday Schedule for the Easter Season is:
April 22nd, 2007
May 6th, 2007
May 20th, 2007
Plan on every second week thereafter until further notice.
Monday, April 16, 2007
Monday, April 09, 2007
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Easter Weekend
Good Friday: We shall be participating in the Valle-wide ecumenical Good Friday Service at Mark Isfeld High School on Lerwick Rd in East Courtenay. 10:30 a.m. Friday April 6th. Please arrive early.
Easter Sunday Morning: 9:30 a.m. Communion Service at Berwick, 1700 Comox Ave, Comox, BC.
Easter Sunday Evening: Pot-luck supper followed by prayer and praise plus youth cell group at 1523 Eton Rd, Comox, BC. Everyone is welcome.
Readings for Sunday from the Revised Common Lectionary:
First Reading Acts 10:34-43
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24,
Second Reading 1 Corinthians 15:19-26
Gospel John 20:1-18
Easter Sunday Morning: 9:30 a.m. Communion Service at Berwick, 1700 Comox Ave, Comox, BC.
Easter Sunday Evening: Pot-luck supper followed by prayer and praise plus youth cell group at 1523 Eton Rd, Comox, BC. Everyone is welcome.
Readings for Sunday from the Revised Common Lectionary:
First Reading Acts 10:34-43
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24,
Second Reading 1 Corinthians 15:19-26
Gospel John 20:1-18
Monday, March 26, 2007
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Friday, March 16, 2007
Confirmation Service
The Rt Rev T. Johnston, Missionary Bishop of the Episcopal Church of Rwanda, will be presiding over a confirmation service for Anglican Mission (ACiC) churches at Richmond Emanuel Church , Elmbridge Way, Richmond, BC, 7 pm Sunday 18th March 2007. All welcome.
There will be no COOL Comox service or pot-luck that day.
There will be no COOL Comox service or pot-luck that day.
Saturday, January 27, 2007
COOL Schedule for February 2007
February's schedule is as follows:
COOL Comox at 1523 Eton Rd, Comox: 6pm Sundays each week. Potluck supper followed by prayer, praise and adult and youth cell groups.
COOL Berwick at 1700 Comox Ave, Comox: Holy Communion 9:30 am Sundays. Usually fortnightly but we are shifting the phase by having two services in a row:
Feb 4th as planned
Feb 11th (i.e. two weeks in a row)
Feb 25th
March 11th
March 25th
April 8th (EASTER)
April 22nd
Youth Unlimited and Adult Bible Study
Comox Valley Youth For Christ/Youth Unlimited Discipleship Team meet at 1523 Eton Rd on Tuesdays 3:30-5pm. YU meets at St George's United Church on Fitzgerald in Courtenay Wednesdays at 7pm. Bible Study for parents and volunteers follows during small groups at around 8pm.
Marriage Preparation using the Alpha Marriage Prep Course 7pm Tuesdays at Eton Road.
COOL Comox at 1523 Eton Rd, Comox: 6pm Sundays each week. Potluck supper followed by prayer, praise and adult and youth cell groups.
COOL Berwick at 1700 Comox Ave, Comox: Holy Communion 9:30 am Sundays. Usually fortnightly but we are shifting the phase by having two services in a row:
Feb 4th as planned
Feb 11th (i.e. two weeks in a row)
Feb 25th
March 11th
March 25th
April 8th (EASTER)
April 22nd
Youth Unlimited and Adult Bible Study
Comox Valley Youth For Christ/Youth Unlimited Discipleship Team meet at 1523 Eton Rd on Tuesdays 3:30-5pm. YU meets at St George's United Church on Fitzgerald in Courtenay Wednesdays at 7pm. Bible Study for parents and volunteers follows during small groups at around 8pm.
Marriage Preparation using the Alpha Marriage Prep Course 7pm Tuesdays at Eton Road.
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
Anglican Mission Chairman, Chuck Murphy, describes church planting.
The ACiC is the Canadian network of the Anglican Mission in the Americas. Bishop Murphy chairs the mission on behalf of the Archbishop of Rwanda.
Sunday, December 31, 2006
Calculating Christmas
For those of you who are interested in this sort of thing, here is an article tracing the origins of the date of Christmas. We do not know when Jesus was actually born; what matters is that in Jesus Christ the Word of God became human. Some scholars think that Jesus was probably born at the time of the Feast of Tabernacles , which is usually in September. This article explains why December 25th was chosen.
Calculating Christmas
William J. Tighe on the Story Behind December 25
Many Christians think that Christians celebrate Christ’s birth on December 25th because the church fathers appropriated the date of a pagan festival. Almost no one minds, except for a few groups on the fringes of American Evangelicalism, who seem to think that this makes Christmas itself a pagan festival. But it is perhaps interesting to know that the choice of December 25th is the result of attempts among the earliest Christians to figure out the date of Jesus’ birth based on calendrical calculations that had nothing to do with pagan festivals.
Rather, the pagan festival of the “Birth of the Unconquered Son” instituted by the Roman Emperor Aurelian on 25 December 274, was almost certainly an attempt to create a pagan alternative to a date that was already of some significance to Roman Christians. Thus the “pagan origins of Christmas” is a myth without historical substance.
A Mistake
The idea that the date was taken from the pagans goes back to two scholars from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Paul Ernst Jablonski, a German Protestant, wished to show that the celebration of Christ’s birth on December 25th was one of the many “paganizations” of Christianity that the Church of the fourth century embraced, as one of many “degenerations” that transformed pure apostolic Christianity into Catholicism. Dom Jean Hardouin, a Benedictine monk, tried to show that the Catholic Church adopted pagan festivals for Christian purposes without paganizing the gospel.
In the Julian calendar, created in 45 B.C. under Julius Caesar, the winter solstice fell on December 25th, and it therefore seemed obvious to Jablonski and Hardouin that the day must have had a pagan significance before it had a Christian one. But in fact, the date had no religious significance in the Roman pagan festal calendar before Aurelian’s time, nor did the cult of the sun play a prominent role in Rome before him.
There were two temples of the sun in Rome, one of which (maintained by the clan into which Aurelian was born or adopted) celebrated its dedication festival on August 9th, the other of which celebrated its dedication festival on August 28th. But both of these cults fell into neglect in the second century, when eastern cults of the sun, such as Mithraism, began to win a following in Rome. And in any case, none of these cults, old or new, had festivals associated with solstices or equinoxes.
As things actually happened, Aurelian, who ruled from 270 until his assassination in 275, was hostile to Christianity and appears to have promoted the establishment of the festival of the “Birth of the Unconquered Sun” as a device to unify the various pagan cults of the Roman Empire around a commemoration of the annual “rebirth” of the sun. He led an empire that appeared to be collapsing in the face of internal unrest, rebellions in the provinces, economic decay, and repeated attacks from German tribes to the north and the Pers ian Empire to the east.
In creating the new feast, he intended the beginning of the lengthening of the daylight, and the arresting of the lengthening of darkness, on December 25th to be a symbol of the hoped-for “rebirth,” or perpetual rejuvenation, of the Roman Empire, resulting from the maintenance of the worship of the gods whose tutelage (the Romans thought) had brought Rome to greatness and world-rule. If it co-opted the Christian celebration, so much the better.
A By-Product
It is true that the first evidence of Christians celebrating December 25th as the date of the Lord’s nativity comes from Rome some years after Aurelian, in A.D. 336, but there is evidence from both the Greek East and the Latin West that Christians attempted to figure out the date of Christ’s birth long before they began to celebrate it liturgically, even in the second and third centuries. The evidence indicates, in fact, that the attribution of the date of December 25th was a by-product of attempts to determine when to celebrate his death and resurrection.
How did this happen? There is a seeming contradiction between the date of the Lord’s death as given in the synoptic Gospels and in John’s Gospel. The synoptics would appear to place it on Passover Day (after the Lord had celebrated the Passover Meal on the preceding evening), and John on the Eve of Passover, just when the Passover lambs were being slaughtered in the Jerusalem Temple for the feast that was to ensue after sunset on that day.
Solving this problem involves answering the question of whether the Lord’s Last Supper was a Passover Meal, or a meal celebrated a day earlier, which we cannot enter into here. Suffice it to say that the early Church followed John rather than the synoptics, and thus believed that Christ’s death would have taken place on 14 Nisan, according to the Jewish lunar calendar. (Modern scholars agree, by the way, that the death of Christ could have taken place only in A.D. 30 or 33, as those two are the only years of that time when the eve of Passover could have fallen on a Friday, the possibilities being either 7 April 30 or 3 April 33.)
However, as the early Church was forcibly separated from Judaism, it entered into a world with different calendars, and had to devise its own time to celebrate the Lord’s Passion, not least so as to be independent of the rabbinic calculations of the date of Passover. Also, since the Jewish calendar was a lunar calendar consisting of twelve months of thirty days each, every few years a thirteenth month had to be added by a decree of the Sanhedrin to keep the calendar in synchronization with the equinoxes and solstices, as well as to prevent the seasons from “straying” into inappropriate months.
Apart from the difficulty Christians would have had in following—or perhaps even being accurately informed about—the dating of Passover in any given year, to follow a lunar calendar of their own devising would have set them at odds with both Jews and pagans, and very likely embroiled them in endless disputes among themselves. (The second century saw severe disputes about whether Pascha had always to fall on a Sunday or on whatever weekday followed two days after 14 Artemision/Nisan, but to have followed a lunar calendar would have made such problems much worse.)
These difficulties played out in different ways among the Greek Christians in the eastern part of the empire and the Latin Christians in the western part of it. Greek Christians seem to have wanted to find a date equivalent to 14 Nisan in their own solar calendar, and since Nisan was the month in which the spring equinox occurred, they chose the 14th day of Artemision, the month in which the spring equinox invariably fell in their own calendar. Around A.D. 300, the Greek calendar was superseded by the Roman calendar, and since the dates of the beginnings and endings of the months in these two systems did not coincide, 14 Artemision became April 6th.
In contrast, second-century Latin Christians in Rome and North Africa appear to have desired to establish the historical date on which the Lord Jesus died. By the time of Tertullian they had concluded that he died on Friday, 25 March 29. (As an aside, I will note that this is impossible: 25 March 29 was not a Friday, and Passover Eve in A.D. 29 did not fall on a Friday and was not on March 25th, or in March at all.)
Integral Age
So in the East we have April 6th, in the West, March 25th. At this point, we have to introduce a belief that seems to have been widespread in Judaism at the time of Christ, but which, as it is nowhere taught in the Bible, has completely fallen from the awareness of Christians. The idea is that of the “integral age” of the great Jewish prophets: the idea that the prophets of Israel died on the same dates as their birth or conception.
This notion is a key factor in understanding how some early Christians came to believe that December 25th is the date of Christ’s birth. The early Christians applied this idea to Jesus, so that March 25th and April 6th were not only the supposed dates of Christ’s death, but of his conception or birth as well. There is some fleeting evidence that at least some first- and second-century Christians thought of March 25th or April 6th as the date of Christ’s birth, but rather quickly the assignment of March 25th as the date of Christ’s conception prevailed.
It is to this day, commemorated almost universally among Christians as the Feast of the Annunciation, when the Archangel Gabriel brought the good tidings of a savior to the Virgin Mary, upon whose acquiescence the Eternal Word of God (“Light of Light, True God of True God, begotten of the Father before all ages”) forthwith became incarnate in her womb. What is the length of pregnancy? Nine months. Add nine months to March 25th and you get December 25th; add it to April 6th and you get January 6th. December 25th is Christmas, and January 6th is Epiphany.
Christmas (December 25th) is a feast of Western Christian origin. In Constantinople it appears to have been introduced in 379 or 380. From a sermon of St. John Chrysostom, at the time a renowned ascetic and preacher in his native Antioch, it appears that the feast was first celebrated there on 25 December 386. From these centers it spread throughout the Christian East, being adopted in Alexandria around 432 and in Jerusalem a century or more later. The Armenians, alone among ancient Christian churches, have never adopted it, and to this day celebrate Christ’s birth, manifestation to the magi, and baptism on January 6th.
Western churches, in turn, gradually adopted the January 6th Epiphany feast from the East, Rome doing so sometime between 366 and 394. But in the West, the feast was generally presented as the commemoration of the visit of the magi to the infant Christ, and as such, it was an important feast, but not one of the most important ones—a striking contrast to its position in the East, where it remains the second most important festival of the church year, second only to Pascha (Easter).
In the East, Epiphany far outstrips Christmas. The reason is that the feast celebrates Christ’s baptism in the Jordan and the occasion on which the Voice of the Father and the Descent of the Spirit both manifested for the first time to mortal men the divinity of the Incarnate Christ and the Trinity of the Persons in the One Godhead.
A Christian Feast
Thus, December 25th as the date of the Christ’s birth appears to owe nothing whatsoever to pagan influences upon the practice of the Church during or after Constantine’s time. It is wholly unlikely to have been the actual date of Christ’s birth, but it arose entirely from the efforts of early Latin Christians to determine the historical date of Christ’s death.
And the pagan feast which the Emperor Aurelian instituted on that date in the year 274 was not only an effort to use the winter solstice to make a political statement, but also almost certainly an attempt to give a pagan significance to a date already of importance to Roman Christians. The Christians, in turn, could at a later date re-appropriate the pagan “Birth of the Unconquered Sun” to refer, on the occasion of the birth of Christ, to the rising of the “Sun of Salvation” or the “Sun of Justice.”
The author refers interested readers to Thomas J. Talley’s The Origins of the Liturgical Year (The Liturgical Press). A draft of this article appeared on the listserve Virtuosity.
William J. Tighe is Associate Professor of History at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and a faculty advisor to the Catholic Campus Ministry. He is a Member of St. Josaphat Ukrainian Catholic Church in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He is a contributing editor for Touchstone.
Calculating Christmas
William J. Tighe on the Story Behind December 25
Many Christians think that Christians celebrate Christ’s birth on December 25th because the church fathers appropriated the date of a pagan festival. Almost no one minds, except for a few groups on the fringes of American Evangelicalism, who seem to think that this makes Christmas itself a pagan festival. But it is perhaps interesting to know that the choice of December 25th is the result of attempts among the earliest Christians to figure out the date of Jesus’ birth based on calendrical calculations that had nothing to do with pagan festivals.
Rather, the pagan festival of the “Birth of the Unconquered Son” instituted by the Roman Emperor Aurelian on 25 December 274, was almost certainly an attempt to create a pagan alternative to a date that was already of some significance to Roman Christians. Thus the “pagan origins of Christmas” is a myth without historical substance.
A Mistake
The idea that the date was taken from the pagans goes back to two scholars from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Paul Ernst Jablonski, a German Protestant, wished to show that the celebration of Christ’s birth on December 25th was one of the many “paganizations” of Christianity that the Church of the fourth century embraced, as one of many “degenerations” that transformed pure apostolic Christianity into Catholicism. Dom Jean Hardouin, a Benedictine monk, tried to show that the Catholic Church adopted pagan festivals for Christian purposes without paganizing the gospel.
In the Julian calendar, created in 45 B.C. under Julius Caesar, the winter solstice fell on December 25th, and it therefore seemed obvious to Jablonski and Hardouin that the day must have had a pagan significance before it had a Christian one. But in fact, the date had no religious significance in the Roman pagan festal calendar before Aurelian’s time, nor did the cult of the sun play a prominent role in Rome before him.
There were two temples of the sun in Rome, one of which (maintained by the clan into which Aurelian was born or adopted) celebrated its dedication festival on August 9th, the other of which celebrated its dedication festival on August 28th. But both of these cults fell into neglect in the second century, when eastern cults of the sun, such as Mithraism, began to win a following in Rome. And in any case, none of these cults, old or new, had festivals associated with solstices or equinoxes.
As things actually happened, Aurelian, who ruled from 270 until his assassination in 275, was hostile to Christianity and appears to have promoted the establishment of the festival of the “Birth of the Unconquered Sun” as a device to unify the various pagan cults of the Roman Empire around a commemoration of the annual “rebirth” of the sun. He led an empire that appeared to be collapsing in the face of internal unrest, rebellions in the provinces, economic decay, and repeated attacks from German tribes to the north and the Pers ian Empire to the east.
In creating the new feast, he intended the beginning of the lengthening of the daylight, and the arresting of the lengthening of darkness, on December 25th to be a symbol of the hoped-for “rebirth,” or perpetual rejuvenation, of the Roman Empire, resulting from the maintenance of the worship of the gods whose tutelage (the Romans thought) had brought Rome to greatness and world-rule. If it co-opted the Christian celebration, so much the better.
A By-Product
It is true that the first evidence of Christians celebrating December 25th as the date of the Lord’s nativity comes from Rome some years after Aurelian, in A.D. 336, but there is evidence from both the Greek East and the Latin West that Christians attempted to figure out the date of Christ’s birth long before they began to celebrate it liturgically, even in the second and third centuries. The evidence indicates, in fact, that the attribution of the date of December 25th was a by-product of attempts to determine when to celebrate his death and resurrection.
How did this happen? There is a seeming contradiction between the date of the Lord’s death as given in the synoptic Gospels and in John’s Gospel. The synoptics would appear to place it on Passover Day (after the Lord had celebrated the Passover Meal on the preceding evening), and John on the Eve of Passover, just when the Passover lambs were being slaughtered in the Jerusalem Temple for the feast that was to ensue after sunset on that day.
Solving this problem involves answering the question of whether the Lord’s Last Supper was a Passover Meal, or a meal celebrated a day earlier, which we cannot enter into here. Suffice it to say that the early Church followed John rather than the synoptics, and thus believed that Christ’s death would have taken place on 14 Nisan, according to the Jewish lunar calendar. (Modern scholars agree, by the way, that the death of Christ could have taken place only in A.D. 30 or 33, as those two are the only years of that time when the eve of Passover could have fallen on a Friday, the possibilities being either 7 April 30 or 3 April 33.)
However, as the early Church was forcibly separated from Judaism, it entered into a world with different calendars, and had to devise its own time to celebrate the Lord’s Passion, not least so as to be independent of the rabbinic calculations of the date of Passover. Also, since the Jewish calendar was a lunar calendar consisting of twelve months of thirty days each, every few years a thirteenth month had to be added by a decree of the Sanhedrin to keep the calendar in synchronization with the equinoxes and solstices, as well as to prevent the seasons from “straying” into inappropriate months.
Apart from the difficulty Christians would have had in following—or perhaps even being accurately informed about—the dating of Passover in any given year, to follow a lunar calendar of their own devising would have set them at odds with both Jews and pagans, and very likely embroiled them in endless disputes among themselves. (The second century saw severe disputes about whether Pascha had always to fall on a Sunday or on whatever weekday followed two days after 14 Artemision/Nisan, but to have followed a lunar calendar would have made such problems much worse.)
These difficulties played out in different ways among the Greek Christians in the eastern part of the empire and the Latin Christians in the western part of it. Greek Christians seem to have wanted to find a date equivalent to 14 Nisan in their own solar calendar, and since Nisan was the month in which the spring equinox occurred, they chose the 14th day of Artemision, the month in which the spring equinox invariably fell in their own calendar. Around A.D. 300, the Greek calendar was superseded by the Roman calendar, and since the dates of the beginnings and endings of the months in these two systems did not coincide, 14 Artemision became April 6th.
In contrast, second-century Latin Christians in Rome and North Africa appear to have desired to establish the historical date on which the Lord Jesus died. By the time of Tertullian they had concluded that he died on Friday, 25 March 29. (As an aside, I will note that this is impossible: 25 March 29 was not a Friday, and Passover Eve in A.D. 29 did not fall on a Friday and was not on March 25th, or in March at all.)
Integral Age
So in the East we have April 6th, in the West, March 25th. At this point, we have to introduce a belief that seems to have been widespread in Judaism at the time of Christ, but which, as it is nowhere taught in the Bible, has completely fallen from the awareness of Christians. The idea is that of the “integral age” of the great Jewish prophets: the idea that the prophets of Israel died on the same dates as their birth or conception.
This notion is a key factor in understanding how some early Christians came to believe that December 25th is the date of Christ’s birth. The early Christians applied this idea to Jesus, so that March 25th and April 6th were not only the supposed dates of Christ’s death, but of his conception or birth as well. There is some fleeting evidence that at least some first- and second-century Christians thought of March 25th or April 6th as the date of Christ’s birth, but rather quickly the assignment of March 25th as the date of Christ’s conception prevailed.
It is to this day, commemorated almost universally among Christians as the Feast of the Annunciation, when the Archangel Gabriel brought the good tidings of a savior to the Virgin Mary, upon whose acquiescence the Eternal Word of God (“Light of Light, True God of True God, begotten of the Father before all ages”) forthwith became incarnate in her womb. What is the length of pregnancy? Nine months. Add nine months to March 25th and you get December 25th; add it to April 6th and you get January 6th. December 25th is Christmas, and January 6th is Epiphany.
Christmas (December 25th) is a feast of Western Christian origin. In Constantinople it appears to have been introduced in 379 or 380. From a sermon of St. John Chrysostom, at the time a renowned ascetic and preacher in his native Antioch, it appears that the feast was first celebrated there on 25 December 386. From these centers it spread throughout the Christian East, being adopted in Alexandria around 432 and in Jerusalem a century or more later. The Armenians, alone among ancient Christian churches, have never adopted it, and to this day celebrate Christ’s birth, manifestation to the magi, and baptism on January 6th.
Western churches, in turn, gradually adopted the January 6th Epiphany feast from the East, Rome doing so sometime between 366 and 394. But in the West, the feast was generally presented as the commemoration of the visit of the magi to the infant Christ, and as such, it was an important feast, but not one of the most important ones—a striking contrast to its position in the East, where it remains the second most important festival of the church year, second only to Pascha (Easter).
In the East, Epiphany far outstrips Christmas. The reason is that the feast celebrates Christ’s baptism in the Jordan and the occasion on which the Voice of the Father and the Descent of the Spirit both manifested for the first time to mortal men the divinity of the Incarnate Christ and the Trinity of the Persons in the One Godhead.
A Christian Feast
Thus, December 25th as the date of the Christ’s birth appears to owe nothing whatsoever to pagan influences upon the practice of the Church during or after Constantine’s time. It is wholly unlikely to have been the actual date of Christ’s birth, but it arose entirely from the efforts of early Latin Christians to determine the historical date of Christ’s death.
And the pagan feast which the Emperor Aurelian instituted on that date in the year 274 was not only an effort to use the winter solstice to make a political statement, but also almost certainly an attempt to give a pagan significance to a date already of importance to Roman Christians. The Christians, in turn, could at a later date re-appropriate the pagan “Birth of the Unconquered Sun” to refer, on the occasion of the birth of Christ, to the rising of the “Sun of Salvation” or the “Sun of Justice.”
The author refers interested readers to Thomas J. Talley’s The Origins of the Liturgical Year (The Liturgical Press). A draft of this article appeared on the listserve Virtuosity.
William J. Tighe is Associate Professor of History at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and a faculty advisor to the Catholic Campus Ministry. He is a Member of St. Josaphat Ukrainian Catholic Church in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He is a contributing editor for Touchstone.
Sunday, December 24, 2006
Christmas Message from one of our Archbishops (en francais)
Joyeux Noel from Archbishop Diropka of the Congo
Sunday December 24th 2006, 10:09 am Filed under: Uncategorized Link to: this post
Chers collègues Eveques, Partenaires et amis,
Fraternelles salutations dans le Précieux nom de Notre Seigneur et Sauveur Jésus Christ dont nous célébrons bientôt la nativité.
A cette occasion, nous présentons nos sincères vœux de Joyeux Noël et de Bonne Année 2007 à vous, votre famille, vos collaborateurs et a tous ceux qui vous sont cher.
Que la fête de la Nativité nous rappelle toujours ce grand amour de Dieu envers nous « Car la grâce de Dieu, source de salut pour tous les hommes, a été manifestée… Notre Sauveur Jésus christ qui s’est donne lui-même pour nous, afin de nous racheter de toute iniquité, et de se faire un peuple qui lui appartienne, purifié par lui et zélé pour les bonnes œuvres » (Tite 2 :11,14).
Ces fêtes de fin d’année doivent être pour nous, le moment de bilan de notre cheminement avec Jésus et de prendre de nouvel élan sous la conduite du Saint Esprit, pour un engagement encore plus sérieux de Le servir en servant les autres.
Que ce Roi d’Amour et de Paix naisse dans le cœur de chacun de nous, dans nos foyers, dans nos Pays respectifs et dans les lieux de nos travaux pour la plus grande gloire de Dieu. Alléluia !
The Most Revd Dr DIROKPA BALUFUGA FidèleArchbishop of Congo and Bishop of Kinshasa
Sunday December 24th 2006, 10:09 am Filed under: Uncategorized Link to: this post
Chers collègues Eveques, Partenaires et amis,
Fraternelles salutations dans le Précieux nom de Notre Seigneur et Sauveur Jésus Christ dont nous célébrons bientôt la nativité.
A cette occasion, nous présentons nos sincères vœux de Joyeux Noël et de Bonne Année 2007 à vous, votre famille, vos collaborateurs et a tous ceux qui vous sont cher.
Que la fête de la Nativité nous rappelle toujours ce grand amour de Dieu envers nous « Car la grâce de Dieu, source de salut pour tous les hommes, a été manifestée… Notre Sauveur Jésus christ qui s’est donne lui-même pour nous, afin de nous racheter de toute iniquité, et de se faire un peuple qui lui appartienne, purifié par lui et zélé pour les bonnes œuvres » (Tite 2 :11,14).
Ces fêtes de fin d’année doivent être pour nous, le moment de bilan de notre cheminement avec Jésus et de prendre de nouvel élan sous la conduite du Saint Esprit, pour un engagement encore plus sérieux de Le servir en servant les autres.
Que ce Roi d’Amour et de Paix naisse dans le cœur de chacun de nous, dans nos foyers, dans nos Pays respectifs et dans les lieux de nos travaux pour la plus grande gloire de Dieu. Alléluia !
The Most Revd Dr DIROKPA BALUFUGA FidèleArchbishop of Congo and Bishop of Kinshasa
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Christmas Season.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all.
Many thanks to all the many folks who attended our Carol Evening on the 15th and our Nine Lessons and Carols on the 17th.
Our Christmas Eve Service will be shared with our friends at Living Word Episcopal Church meeting at St Andrew's Pioneer Church building, Mission Hill, Courtenay at 11pm Sunday 24th December 2006.
As many folks are away for the holidays we shall cancel our 31st December service and meet again January 7th at 9:30 am at Berwick, 1700 Comox Ave.
Many thanks to all the many folks who attended our Carol Evening on the 15th and our Nine Lessons and Carols on the 17th.
Our Christmas Eve Service will be shared with our friends at Living Word Episcopal Church meeting at St Andrew's Pioneer Church building, Mission Hill, Courtenay at 11pm Sunday 24th December 2006.
As many folks are away for the holidays we shall cancel our 31st December service and meet again January 7th at 9:30 am at Berwick, 1700 Comox Ave.
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Advent 2006
Hello all. So much for global warming. This balmy Pacific Island (Vancouver Island) is blanketed in snow and ice.
Advent begins this coming Sunday Dec 3rd.
COOL Berwick:
Advent begins this coming Sunday Dec 3rd.
COOL Berwick:
- Dec 3rd. We meet at Berwick at 9:30 for the Eucharist.
- Friday 15th we shall be holding a carol sing at 7pm in the Berwick foyer for the residents there.
- Sunday Dec 17th Service of 9 lessons and carols at 9:30 a.m
COOL Comox:
- Sunday evenings each week for potluck supper at 6pm at 1523 Eton Rd followed by Prayer and Praise plus Youth Quest series.
COOL Christmas:
- We join our Common Cause partners at Living Word Episcopal Church on Mission Hill in Courtenay for Christmas Eve.
- Their services that Sunday are 10 a.m. & 6p.m. and we shall join them for the 11pm "midnight mass" service with David celebrating.
Unpacking our Mission Statement - Fifth Instalment - Worship
Mission: To serve the people of the Comox Valley, introducing them to Jesus Christ, welcoming them into His family, equipping them to follow Christ's example, and loving Him with all that we are.
So far we have discussed how Jesus’ teaching can be summarized by two statements: the Great Commandment and the Great Commission, which give us the five purposes in our mission statement.
Great Commandment:
Mark 12:29-32 (New International Version)
29"The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself. 'There is no commandment greater than these."
Great Commission:
Matthew 28:19-20 (New International Version)
19Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."
Today we look at the final part of our mission statement: loving God with all that we are. This is what worship, in its most comprehensive sense, means. Worship is at the heart of all that we do, as the most important of these purposes.
What is worship?
To worship something or someone is value them above everything else. It is to ascribe worth to them. We uses the concept in a non-religious sense when we ask what something is worth, or when we refer to the mayor as “his Worship” or we read about some “worthy fellow” in a story about merry England. Or when we say a soldier is worth his salt.
Reverence, awe, fear, wonder, and amazement are some of the feelings we may have when we participate in worship. Words we use to describe what we are doing include: exalt, glorify, magnify, praise, venerate, or revere. The highest of all of these terms is the worship which belongs to God alone. We may respect or revere humans we hold in high esteem but Christian worship is reserved for God.
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” Our worship should reflect the fact that we love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. What our preferred way is to worship God has a lot more to do with our personalities than with what is necessarily the right way to worship. Different denominations and traditions tend to emphasize or specialize in these different elements of worship. Some emphasize the mind, others the spirit. Heart speaks of emotion and enthusiasm. Soul refers to the core of our mortal beings. Mind speaks of the intellect and will. Strength reflects the physical part of us. Unlike some other religions and philosophies, Christians and Hebrew believers in God reject any dichotomy between the spiritual and material. God is Lord of both. In our Gospel passage today Jesus said God seeks those who will worship him in spirit and in truth. Truth is something we grasp with our minds as God illuminates our thinking. It also affects our emotions as we respond to it's truth, and it helps bring our spirits to life as his Spirit touches ours with the truth of his word.
At Church of Our Lord we try to bring a balance of these different aspects to our worship. We honour God’s Word, the Bible as we try to understand it with our minds and obey it with our strength. We are open to God’s Holy Spirit so that we can worship with our spirits or souls. We use our bodies to worship him as we sing, stand, sit or kneel, raise our hands or clap. We receive him spiritually by the physical act of eating bread and wine, when accompanied by faith.
What it is not:
Worship is not for our selves. It’s for our Saviour.
The Puritan Shorter Westminster Confession describes the purpose for which we are created as this: “the chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.” St Augustine wrote, “Thou hast made us for thyself and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee.” We are wired for worship. Worship of some sort of deity or some sort of spirituality is common to all cultures even though some have tried to stamp it out and it is no longer fashionable in Western Society to believe in God. Human beings are incorrigibly religious. We are made that way because God made us for himself. Worship does bring us benefits, but that is no why we do it.
Unlike some other spiritualities, we do not worship in order to appease him, or earn something, or to manipulate him through magic. We worship because he is worthy of it. We worship him because of who he is. We worship in response to what he has already done.
Worship is not for sissies. It’s a sacrifice.
Salvation is free. Christ has made the sacrifice on our behalf. There is no sacrifice we can make to earn our salvation. But that does not mean the Christian life will always be easy or that there is no cost to being a disciple of Jesus Christ. We love him because he first loved us. He calls us to love the same way, to follow in his steps.
Deitrich Bonhoeffer wrote from the Nazi prison: “when God calls a man, he bids him come and die.” For many Christians around the world, admitting one’s allegiance to Christ or worshiping him openly or meeting with other believers is a life-risking affair. Whether or not we shall ever be called to pay that price is something we don’t know. We do know however, that we are called to present ourselves, our bodies as a living sacrifice to God. Not just our words, or our time, talents and treasure but also ourselves – all of us.
The psalmist tells us to give God a sacrifice of thanks and praise. There are times when worship comes effortlessly, when we are lost in wonder, love and praise. There are other times when we do not feel like worshiping. It is not hypocritical to do s at those times. It is in fact a sacrifice: it takes effort to worship when we are tired or cranky or feeling off-sorts. When we honour God on such occasions by approaching him anyway, we are often surprised by how our feelings follow along afterwards. At other times, God tests us through what St John of the Cross called “a dark night of the soul”, when God seems distant and we wonder why we bother. He wants us to trust him even when we don’t have the feelings. He is trust-worthy and worthy of our worship regardless of our feelings.
Worship is not for Sundays (only). It’s a seven-day a week activity.
Christian worship is not limited to a special day, a special time, a special building, nor even only when a special class of people is present. The Samaritan woman tried to draw Jesus into a religious controversy over whether the Jews were right about worshiping in Jerusalem or the Samaritans at Mount Gerazim. Jesus ignored that. He said “neither”. God is Spirit, implying that he is not confined geographically. We can worship him any time and anywhere. But we are to worship him in spirit and in truth. The early Christians worshiped in synagogues and the temple until they were expelled. They also met in homes, or rented rooms or in the open air or in the catacombs in Rome. The Celtic Christians worshiped in the open air, under trees, in simple church buildings. They had prayers for every occasion: milking cows, getting dressed, going to work etc.
We too can do what the medieval monk, Brother Lawrence, called “practicing the presence of God”. We can worship our Father Monday to Friday too, and in every situation.
So far we have discussed how Jesus’ teaching can be summarized by two statements: the Great Commandment and the Great Commission, which give us the five purposes in our mission statement.
Great Commandment:
Mark 12:29-32 (New International Version)
29"The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself. 'There is no commandment greater than these."
Great Commission:
Matthew 28:19-20 (New International Version)
19Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."
Today we look at the final part of our mission statement: loving God with all that we are. This is what worship, in its most comprehensive sense, means. Worship is at the heart of all that we do, as the most important of these purposes.
What is worship?
To worship something or someone is value them above everything else. It is to ascribe worth to them. We uses the concept in a non-religious sense when we ask what something is worth, or when we refer to the mayor as “his Worship” or we read about some “worthy fellow” in a story about merry England. Or when we say a soldier is worth his salt.
Reverence, awe, fear, wonder, and amazement are some of the feelings we may have when we participate in worship. Words we use to describe what we are doing include: exalt, glorify, magnify, praise, venerate, or revere. The highest of all of these terms is the worship which belongs to God alone. We may respect or revere humans we hold in high esteem but Christian worship is reserved for God.
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” Our worship should reflect the fact that we love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. What our preferred way is to worship God has a lot more to do with our personalities than with what is necessarily the right way to worship. Different denominations and traditions tend to emphasize or specialize in these different elements of worship. Some emphasize the mind, others the spirit. Heart speaks of emotion and enthusiasm. Soul refers to the core of our mortal beings. Mind speaks of the intellect and will. Strength reflects the physical part of us. Unlike some other religions and philosophies, Christians and Hebrew believers in God reject any dichotomy between the spiritual and material. God is Lord of both. In our Gospel passage today Jesus said God seeks those who will worship him in spirit and in truth. Truth is something we grasp with our minds as God illuminates our thinking. It also affects our emotions as we respond to it's truth, and it helps bring our spirits to life as his Spirit touches ours with the truth of his word.
At Church of Our Lord we try to bring a balance of these different aspects to our worship. We honour God’s Word, the Bible as we try to understand it with our minds and obey it with our strength. We are open to God’s Holy Spirit so that we can worship with our spirits or souls. We use our bodies to worship him as we sing, stand, sit or kneel, raise our hands or clap. We receive him spiritually by the physical act of eating bread and wine, when accompanied by faith.
What it is not:
Worship is not for our selves. It’s for our Saviour.
The Puritan Shorter Westminster Confession describes the purpose for which we are created as this: “the chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.” St Augustine wrote, “Thou hast made us for thyself and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee.” We are wired for worship. Worship of some sort of deity or some sort of spirituality is common to all cultures even though some have tried to stamp it out and it is no longer fashionable in Western Society to believe in God. Human beings are incorrigibly religious. We are made that way because God made us for himself. Worship does bring us benefits, but that is no why we do it.
Unlike some other spiritualities, we do not worship in order to appease him, or earn something, or to manipulate him through magic. We worship because he is worthy of it. We worship him because of who he is. We worship in response to what he has already done.
Worship is not for sissies. It’s a sacrifice.
Salvation is free. Christ has made the sacrifice on our behalf. There is no sacrifice we can make to earn our salvation. But that does not mean the Christian life will always be easy or that there is no cost to being a disciple of Jesus Christ. We love him because he first loved us. He calls us to love the same way, to follow in his steps.
Deitrich Bonhoeffer wrote from the Nazi prison: “when God calls a man, he bids him come and die.” For many Christians around the world, admitting one’s allegiance to Christ or worshiping him openly or meeting with other believers is a life-risking affair. Whether or not we shall ever be called to pay that price is something we don’t know. We do know however, that we are called to present ourselves, our bodies as a living sacrifice to God. Not just our words, or our time, talents and treasure but also ourselves – all of us.
The psalmist tells us to give God a sacrifice of thanks and praise. There are times when worship comes effortlessly, when we are lost in wonder, love and praise. There are other times when we do not feel like worshiping. It is not hypocritical to do s at those times. It is in fact a sacrifice: it takes effort to worship when we are tired or cranky or feeling off-sorts. When we honour God on such occasions by approaching him anyway, we are often surprised by how our feelings follow along afterwards. At other times, God tests us through what St John of the Cross called “a dark night of the soul”, when God seems distant and we wonder why we bother. He wants us to trust him even when we don’t have the feelings. He is trust-worthy and worthy of our worship regardless of our feelings.
Worship is not for Sundays (only). It’s a seven-day a week activity.
Christian worship is not limited to a special day, a special time, a special building, nor even only when a special class of people is present. The Samaritan woman tried to draw Jesus into a religious controversy over whether the Jews were right about worshiping in Jerusalem or the Samaritans at Mount Gerazim. Jesus ignored that. He said “neither”. God is Spirit, implying that he is not confined geographically. We can worship him any time and anywhere. But we are to worship him in spirit and in truth. The early Christians worshiped in synagogues and the temple until they were expelled. They also met in homes, or rented rooms or in the open air or in the catacombs in Rome. The Celtic Christians worshiped in the open air, under trees, in simple church buildings. They had prayers for every occasion: milking cows, getting dressed, going to work etc.
We too can do what the medieval monk, Brother Lawrence, called “practicing the presence of God”. We can worship our Father Monday to Friday too, and in every situation.
Unpacking our Mission Statement – fourth instalment. Discipleship.
Mission To serve the people of the Comox Valley, introducing them to Jesus Christ, welcoming them into His family, equipping them to follow Christ's example, and loving Him with all that we are.
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours now and for ever.
Amen.
So far we have looked at Service, Evangelism and Fellowship. Today we look at what is means to be a disciple or follower of Jesus Christ. At COOL we want to be an authentic community which encourages each other to grow in maturity as followers of Jesus Christ, to discover the gifts he has given us and to use those gifts for him.
Jewish rabbis of the day used to teach their students or disciples in small groups. A person who wanted to learn from a rabbi would ask to become his disciple. If accepted, he would become part of a small group of followers who would spend all of their time with the rabbi, eating, travelling, studying, discussing the Jewish law etc. They would even share accommodation and spend all their waking moments together. They attempted even to walk and talk like their teacher. Jesus’ small band of closest followers was similar, except that he chose them.
A disciple is a follower or student, one who patterns his life on his teacher. The term comes from the same root as “discipline”. Just as an athlete or musician develops skills by practice and exercises, so to develop as a disciple of Christ involves practicing spiritual disciplines, such as regular prayer, scripture reading, participating in worship and times of solitude, silence, meditation on scripture etc. Peter tells us that Christ left us an example to follow in his steps. God’s intention is for us to become like Christ. And that we are to be partakers of the divine nature.
Jesus’ disciples noted that he was a person of prayer and so they asked him to teach them to pray as John the Baptizer had taught his disciples. He gave them what we know as “the Lord’s prayer “ as a template for our prayers.
The topic of Christian discipleship is an enormous one. While preparing for today I thought that we could use the Lord’s Prayer as a framework, especially as we were looking at this prayer during our adult and youth Bible studies this week.
Our Father in Heaven: Jesus introduced them to a relationship with God as Father. This expression is only used of God a few times in the Old Testament. Jesus’ relationship with God as “Abba” or “Daddy”, as we would say, was entirely novel. What Jesus enjoyed by his very nature as the eternal Son of God, we can enjoy by adoption and grace. He said to say ”Our Father”, indicating that, in Christ, we collectively are God’s children.
John 1: 12 tells us But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God. 13 They are reborn—not with a physical birth resulting from human passion or plan, but a birth that comes from God.
Romans 8: 15 puts it this way: So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God’s Spirit when he adopted you as his own children.[h] Now we call him, “Abba, Father.”[i] 16 For his Spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are God’s children. 17 And since we are his children, we are his heirs. In fact, together with Christ we are heirs of God’s glory.
A disciple of Jesus is one who knows God as heavenly Father.
May your name be honoured: In Hebrew thought a person’s name represented who they were. To honour God’s name is to show him reverence and respect. It means not taking his name in vain or speaking disrespectfully of him. It means not bringing his name into disrepute, not being ashamed of him. Similarly we honour the name of Jesus and of the Holy Spirit.
A disciple of Jesus honours him.
Your Kingdom come:
Jesus constantly taught about the Kingdom of God. He indicated that in his own person the kingdom of God had arrived. He also said that the Kingdom was within or among them and that they could enter that kingdom by believing in him and being baptized. He further indicated that they were not to worry about material things. Matt 6:33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
How many of you are familiar with the legend of Robin Hood and his merry men? Of maid Marion, Little John, Will Scarlet etc? Richard, the rightful king of England, was away on the Crusades and had been abducted on his way back through Europe. His brother, Prince John had usurped control of the Kingdom. Robin and his band of men in green were loyal to Richard the Lionheart. They were outlawed and hunted down but on Richard’s return they helped him regain the throne. The Christian community is like that merry band, longing for the return of King Jesus, facing danger for him and remaining loyal regardless of the apparent futility of it.
A disciple of Jesus is a citizen of God’s kingdom, an ambassador for the King, a member of the church which is an outpost or colony of the kingdom.
Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven:
A disciple of Jesus surrenders his will to God, says “not my will but yours be done.”
Give us this day our daily bread
This is the only part of the Lord’s prayer which asks for something material. Bread is the staple food. Daily bread means essential nourishment enough for the day. While the Hebrews were in the wilderness during the Exodus God gave them manna from heaven enough for the day. Except on the day before the Sabbath they were only to collect enough for the day. Jesus taught his disciples total reliance on God. He also called himself the bread of heaven. He invites us to receive this bread at his table.
A disciple of Jesus relies on God for his needs and receives Jesus in the bread and wine of communion regularly.
Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us:
As creatures, we owe our creator a debt of obedience. Our rebellion incurs a debt, as it were, of what we owe him. Christ paid that debt by his perfect obedience as perfect man on our behalf. Through Jesus we have been offered forgiveness for our sin and a restored relationship with the Father.
A disciple of Jesus is one who knows he has been forgiven and who has learned the difficult lesson of forgiving others.
Lead us not into temptation (or save us from the time of trial)
God neither can be tempted himself nor tempts us. However, temptation is part of life. The same word is used for trial or testing and for temptation as temptation to do what is wrong is a test of our submission to God. He has promised us that we shall not be tempted beyond what we can bear.
We also have an advocate in heaven, Jesus, who was tempted in every way that we are so he is able to sympathise with our weaknesses and intercede for us before the throne of God. Christ gave us his example of resisting temptation.
A disciple of Jesus is one who faces trials in His strength, who avoids unnecessary temptation and who turns to God for forgiveness when he falls.
Deliver us from evil (or the evil one)
Christ has conquered death and evil by his crucifixion and resurrection. We have his promise that the gates of hell will not prevail against us.
A disciple of Jesus resists evil and has God’s promise that we shall overcome evil eventually.
We end the prayer as we begin, by worshipping God: For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.
This brings us to the topic of worship which we shall be discussing next time when we look at “loving Him with all that we are.”
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours now and for ever.
Amen.
So far we have looked at Service, Evangelism and Fellowship. Today we look at what is means to be a disciple or follower of Jesus Christ. At COOL we want to be an authentic community which encourages each other to grow in maturity as followers of Jesus Christ, to discover the gifts he has given us and to use those gifts for him.
Jewish rabbis of the day used to teach their students or disciples in small groups. A person who wanted to learn from a rabbi would ask to become his disciple. If accepted, he would become part of a small group of followers who would spend all of their time with the rabbi, eating, travelling, studying, discussing the Jewish law etc. They would even share accommodation and spend all their waking moments together. They attempted even to walk and talk like their teacher. Jesus’ small band of closest followers was similar, except that he chose them.
A disciple is a follower or student, one who patterns his life on his teacher. The term comes from the same root as “discipline”. Just as an athlete or musician develops skills by practice and exercises, so to develop as a disciple of Christ involves practicing spiritual disciplines, such as regular prayer, scripture reading, participating in worship and times of solitude, silence, meditation on scripture etc. Peter tells us that Christ left us an example to follow in his steps. God’s intention is for us to become like Christ. And that we are to be partakers of the divine nature.
Jesus’ disciples noted that he was a person of prayer and so they asked him to teach them to pray as John the Baptizer had taught his disciples. He gave them what we know as “the Lord’s prayer “ as a template for our prayers.
The topic of Christian discipleship is an enormous one. While preparing for today I thought that we could use the Lord’s Prayer as a framework, especially as we were looking at this prayer during our adult and youth Bible studies this week.
Our Father in Heaven: Jesus introduced them to a relationship with God as Father. This expression is only used of God a few times in the Old Testament. Jesus’ relationship with God as “Abba” or “Daddy”, as we would say, was entirely novel. What Jesus enjoyed by his very nature as the eternal Son of God, we can enjoy by adoption and grace. He said to say ”Our Father”, indicating that, in Christ, we collectively are God’s children.
John 1: 12 tells us But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God. 13 They are reborn—not with a physical birth resulting from human passion or plan, but a birth that comes from God.
Romans 8: 15 puts it this way: So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God’s Spirit when he adopted you as his own children.[h] Now we call him, “Abba, Father.”[i] 16 For his Spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are God’s children. 17 And since we are his children, we are his heirs. In fact, together with Christ we are heirs of God’s glory.
A disciple of Jesus is one who knows God as heavenly Father.
May your name be honoured: In Hebrew thought a person’s name represented who they were. To honour God’s name is to show him reverence and respect. It means not taking his name in vain or speaking disrespectfully of him. It means not bringing his name into disrepute, not being ashamed of him. Similarly we honour the name of Jesus and of the Holy Spirit.
A disciple of Jesus honours him.
Your Kingdom come:
Jesus constantly taught about the Kingdom of God. He indicated that in his own person the kingdom of God had arrived. He also said that the Kingdom was within or among them and that they could enter that kingdom by believing in him and being baptized. He further indicated that they were not to worry about material things. Matt 6:33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
How many of you are familiar with the legend of Robin Hood and his merry men? Of maid Marion, Little John, Will Scarlet etc? Richard, the rightful king of England, was away on the Crusades and had been abducted on his way back through Europe. His brother, Prince John had usurped control of the Kingdom. Robin and his band of men in green were loyal to Richard the Lionheart. They were outlawed and hunted down but on Richard’s return they helped him regain the throne. The Christian community is like that merry band, longing for the return of King Jesus, facing danger for him and remaining loyal regardless of the apparent futility of it.
A disciple of Jesus is a citizen of God’s kingdom, an ambassador for the King, a member of the church which is an outpost or colony of the kingdom.
Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven:
A disciple of Jesus surrenders his will to God, says “not my will but yours be done.”
Give us this day our daily bread
This is the only part of the Lord’s prayer which asks for something material. Bread is the staple food. Daily bread means essential nourishment enough for the day. While the Hebrews were in the wilderness during the Exodus God gave them manna from heaven enough for the day. Except on the day before the Sabbath they were only to collect enough for the day. Jesus taught his disciples total reliance on God. He also called himself the bread of heaven. He invites us to receive this bread at his table.
A disciple of Jesus relies on God for his needs and receives Jesus in the bread and wine of communion regularly.
Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us:
As creatures, we owe our creator a debt of obedience. Our rebellion incurs a debt, as it were, of what we owe him. Christ paid that debt by his perfect obedience as perfect man on our behalf. Through Jesus we have been offered forgiveness for our sin and a restored relationship with the Father.
A disciple of Jesus is one who knows he has been forgiven and who has learned the difficult lesson of forgiving others.
Lead us not into temptation (or save us from the time of trial)
God neither can be tempted himself nor tempts us. However, temptation is part of life. The same word is used for trial or testing and for temptation as temptation to do what is wrong is a test of our submission to God. He has promised us that we shall not be tempted beyond what we can bear.
We also have an advocate in heaven, Jesus, who was tempted in every way that we are so he is able to sympathise with our weaknesses and intercede for us before the throne of God. Christ gave us his example of resisting temptation.
A disciple of Jesus is one who faces trials in His strength, who avoids unnecessary temptation and who turns to God for forgiveness when he falls.
Deliver us from evil (or the evil one)
Christ has conquered death and evil by his crucifixion and resurrection. We have his promise that the gates of hell will not prevail against us.
A disciple of Jesus resists evil and has God’s promise that we shall overcome evil eventually.
We end the prayer as we begin, by worshipping God: For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.
This brings us to the topic of worship which we shall be discussing next time when we look at “loving Him with all that we are.”
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Unpacking our Mission Statement Third Installment: Fellowship
Mission To serve the people of the Comox Valley, introducing them to Jesus Christ, welcoming them into His family, equipping them to follow Christ's example, and loving Him with all that we are.
Readings: Ephesians 1: 3-14, Acts 2: 41-47, Mark 3:31-35,
Church of Our Lord is a Christian community serving the Comox Valley. We have been looking at our Mission Statement the past few weeks. So far we have discussed service to others and how to share the good news about Jesus in a natural way. Today we’re talking about what it means to become and enjoy being part of God’s family, the church, and the riches, rights and responsibilities that go along with that. There are many other metaphors for the church in Scripture: Body of Christ, Bride of Christ, a Temple made of living stones, a new person, the people of God, a royal priesthood, etc. One metaphor is that of a family. It was Jesus himself who taught us to call God our Father; he used the Aramaic word “Abba, meaning Daddy, when he spoke of God. We were not meant to be alone. God himself is a community: three-in-one, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. When he made the first human being he said “it is not good for man to be alone.” We were meant for friendship with God and with others within the community of those who know him as Father through faith in his Son, Jesus.
We all have our own stories: depending on our different personalities and on our own experiences, we may approach or be drawn into this family through one of three different ways, though not necessarily in this order: belonging, believing, behaving.
Belonging: Some people need to experience what it means to be part of a loving, accepting community before they can be convinced of the truth of the Gospel: they need to belong before they believe or before their life-style changes.
Believing: Others have to be convinced of its truth before they will commit themselves. Some people approach the church firstly through intellectual questions. Often they need to come to the place where they accept that Christianity is not unreasonable. That believing in a creator, for instance, makes sense. Being a Christian is so much more than just giving mental assent to a list of doctrines, however, there are certain beliefs that we need to accept before we become Christians: “Anyone who wants to come to him must believe that there is a God and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him.” (Hebrews 11:6), We need to understand that there is a God, that Jesus is God’s son and died for us, rose again from the dead and is coming back and so on. Certainly, as we mature in faith it becomes more important to absorb and become more committed to the truths contained in His Word, the Bible. But it is surprising how little we need to believe and how faltering our faith can be to begin with, yet God is still able to meet us and draw us into a relationship with him. If we are aware of our sinfulness, are willing to turn from it and desire to know him even a prayer such as “God, if there is a God, please reveal yourself to me”, if sincerely prayed, will be answered.
Behaving: Still others want to know what practical difference believing in God and being part of his family makes to themselves and to society before they will be persuaded to consider the truth claims Jesus made. We cannot expect people to pattern their lives on Christ until they have met him.
For a few pragmatic individuals, though, trying for a while to live as though it were true (eg praying daily, planning their day as though God were real, living out the golden rule because it makes sense etc) might persuade them that the Christian life-style does work. Of course, there is no way we can really live as Christ would have us do without his help, nor can we earn our way into a relationship with him, that is a free gift.
We cannot expect people to change before coming to Christ but we can expect transformation after meeting him. One cannot have an encounter with the living God and be left unscathed. Growing into the family likeness is a process. As the saying goes: he loves us as we are but loves us too much to leave us the way we are.
Our hope for this fellowship is that it will be a welcoming place, where people can feel safe asking questions, experiencing a little of what it means to be part of a worshipping community, gradually coming to believe in the truth as the scriptures teach it, growing in faith, and learning how to follow Christ’s example together.
We can introduce our friends to Jesus in this kind of comfortable environment. One of the best ways to do this is through an informal course on basic Christianity, such as the Alpha course, where after a meal together and a video explaining various aspects of the Christian faith, folks can discuss questions and perhaps even learn to pray together. God has used courses like that to bring many people from all walks of life into a relationship with him.
As John’s gospel puts it: 12Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—
Once we have understood the good news about Jesus, and responded to it, we become members of this community by faith, by trust in Christ, by baptism and receiving his Holy Spirit. We become new creatures, reborn or adopted into his family with all the privileges of being heirs to all the riches God has for us to inherit in Christ. And other Christians are our brothers and sisters.
There is a depth of fellowship that exists between believers in Jesus that cannot exist in any other sphere, although there are some secular settings where friendships can run very deeply: eg on a team that practices regularly together, in a small crew on a ship or in a small military unit. What these have in common is a common mission, purpose and allegiance, a hared experience in facing danger and overcoming obstacles together. Fellowship is deepest when we work together on common goals. In 1 John 15-7 we read
5This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; In him there is no darkness at all. 6If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. 7But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.
Fellowship can only be deep when there is honesty, transparency and accountability to each other. These are best cultivated in small group settings such as a home fellowship, prayer partnership or cell group. At COOL we encourage people to be involved in small groups like that.
Next time we shall talk about becoming equipped to follow Christ’s example.
Readings: Ephesians 1: 3-14, Acts 2: 41-47, Mark 3:31-35,
Church of Our Lord is a Christian community serving the Comox Valley. We have been looking at our Mission Statement the past few weeks. So far we have discussed service to others and how to share the good news about Jesus in a natural way. Today we’re talking about what it means to become and enjoy being part of God’s family, the church, and the riches, rights and responsibilities that go along with that. There are many other metaphors for the church in Scripture: Body of Christ, Bride of Christ, a Temple made of living stones, a new person, the people of God, a royal priesthood, etc. One metaphor is that of a family. It was Jesus himself who taught us to call God our Father; he used the Aramaic word “Abba, meaning Daddy, when he spoke of God. We were not meant to be alone. God himself is a community: three-in-one, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. When he made the first human being he said “it is not good for man to be alone.” We were meant for friendship with God and with others within the community of those who know him as Father through faith in his Son, Jesus.
We all have our own stories: depending on our different personalities and on our own experiences, we may approach or be drawn into this family through one of three different ways, though not necessarily in this order: belonging, believing, behaving.
Belonging: Some people need to experience what it means to be part of a loving, accepting community before they can be convinced of the truth of the Gospel: they need to belong before they believe or before their life-style changes.
Believing: Others have to be convinced of its truth before they will commit themselves. Some people approach the church firstly through intellectual questions. Often they need to come to the place where they accept that Christianity is not unreasonable. That believing in a creator, for instance, makes sense. Being a Christian is so much more than just giving mental assent to a list of doctrines, however, there are certain beliefs that we need to accept before we become Christians: “Anyone who wants to come to him must believe that there is a God and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him.” (Hebrews 11:6), We need to understand that there is a God, that Jesus is God’s son and died for us, rose again from the dead and is coming back and so on. Certainly, as we mature in faith it becomes more important to absorb and become more committed to the truths contained in His Word, the Bible. But it is surprising how little we need to believe and how faltering our faith can be to begin with, yet God is still able to meet us and draw us into a relationship with him. If we are aware of our sinfulness, are willing to turn from it and desire to know him even a prayer such as “God, if there is a God, please reveal yourself to me”, if sincerely prayed, will be answered.
Behaving: Still others want to know what practical difference believing in God and being part of his family makes to themselves and to society before they will be persuaded to consider the truth claims Jesus made. We cannot expect people to pattern their lives on Christ until they have met him.
For a few pragmatic individuals, though, trying for a while to live as though it were true (eg praying daily, planning their day as though God were real, living out the golden rule because it makes sense etc) might persuade them that the Christian life-style does work. Of course, there is no way we can really live as Christ would have us do without his help, nor can we earn our way into a relationship with him, that is a free gift.
We cannot expect people to change before coming to Christ but we can expect transformation after meeting him. One cannot have an encounter with the living God and be left unscathed. Growing into the family likeness is a process. As the saying goes: he loves us as we are but loves us too much to leave us the way we are.
Our hope for this fellowship is that it will be a welcoming place, where people can feel safe asking questions, experiencing a little of what it means to be part of a worshipping community, gradually coming to believe in the truth as the scriptures teach it, growing in faith, and learning how to follow Christ’s example together.
We can introduce our friends to Jesus in this kind of comfortable environment. One of the best ways to do this is through an informal course on basic Christianity, such as the Alpha course, where after a meal together and a video explaining various aspects of the Christian faith, folks can discuss questions and perhaps even learn to pray together. God has used courses like that to bring many people from all walks of life into a relationship with him.
As John’s gospel puts it: 12Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—
Once we have understood the good news about Jesus, and responded to it, we become members of this community by faith, by trust in Christ, by baptism and receiving his Holy Spirit. We become new creatures, reborn or adopted into his family with all the privileges of being heirs to all the riches God has for us to inherit in Christ. And other Christians are our brothers and sisters.
There is a depth of fellowship that exists between believers in Jesus that cannot exist in any other sphere, although there are some secular settings where friendships can run very deeply: eg on a team that practices regularly together, in a small crew on a ship or in a small military unit. What these have in common is a common mission, purpose and allegiance, a hared experience in facing danger and overcoming obstacles together. Fellowship is deepest when we work together on common goals. In 1 John 15-7 we read
5This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; In him there is no darkness at all. 6If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. 7But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.
Fellowship can only be deep when there is honesty, transparency and accountability to each other. These are best cultivated in small group settings such as a home fellowship, prayer partnership or cell group. At COOL we encourage people to be involved in small groups like that.
Next time we shall talk about becoming equipped to follow Christ’s example.
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