Worship services are streamed live every Sunday at 11 AM Pacific on Zoom.

Contact the office for a link if you would like to attend virtually.

Music used for this service is licensed under OneLicense A-727478 and CCLI 20776078.

Sermon

Text: Mark 10: 35 – 45

So Prince William this week said that “We need some of the world’s greatest brains and minds fixed on trying to repair this planet, not trying to find the next place to go and live.” In response to the latest billionaire space race stunt of Amazon sending William Shatner into space briefly. 

And I agree. And I think those great minds would probably love to work on saving the planet, but the billionaires who are paying them don’t want them to. 

I’m saying that Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Richard Branson are not the “great minds.” They’re billionaires who pay physicists, engineers, and technicians, who are great minds. But they certainly like portraying themselves as great minds to the public, as eccentric scientist types. And they go up into space and have everybody “ooh” and “aah” at their pointlessness. 

They want everybody to look up to them. They want to be thought of as heroes and saviours of humanity and seen as geniuses. They want to be the ones to lead us into a Star Trek future, while ignoring the part of Star Trek where it’s a post-scarcity future where everyone’s basic needs are met. 

(I love Star Trek, btw. I’m very passionate about it. I want a Star Trek future. Gates McFadden as Dr. Beverly Crusher is the first woman I looked at as a kid and thought, “She’s so pretty; I want to look just like her”) 

“You know that among the Gentiles, those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you.” 

Jesus offers us a vision of the Kingdom of God without hierarchy. James and John, they want to be assured that they will be rewarded with their rightful place. “We were the first you called, with Peter, so we should be first when you get your throne.” 

The disciples are thinking that there must be someone at the top of the pyramid. They cannot conceive the Kingdom of God except as a hierarchy where they will get to be first; that’s why they signed up to follow Jesus, right? To be part of the elite. 

But Jesus rebuffs them. “If you want to be first, you have to serve.” No, you will not get servants. You will not be like the Emperor; you will not have statues made of you; you will not get buildings named after you. You won’t be important, people won’t pray to you . . . unless you become like the lowest servants. Unless you’re willing to become hated, not loved; persecuted, not worshipped; killed, not celebrated. “Can you drink the cup that I am drinking?” 

Look at these people, whom those rich rulers despise. The Emperor would never be seen down among the lepers, washing their feet. He would say that as Emperor it was his divine right to be at the top and have people wash his feet. But God gives you no such rights. God gives you no special privileges for being a Christian. God gives you responsibility and a call to love. 

The irony being, eventually, the disciples did get the message, most of them anyway. The only one who doesn’t have statues and buildings named after him and to whom people don’t pray is the one who couldn’t accept that and betrayed the movement. 

I had a bit of a theological realization. So, the Gospel according to Mark is the shortest of the gospels. And nearly the entirety of it is repeated between Matthew and Luke, so likely it’s the earliest and Matthew and Luke copied Mark and added their own stuff. It’s a bit basic, but Mark was always an enigma to me, because there’s this running theme where Jesus doesn’t want anybody to know who he is, and if they know, not to tell anyone else. Peter says, “You are the Messiah,” and he “sternly orders” the disciples not to tell anyone. He heals lepers and they say, “You are the Son of David,” and he tells them not to tell anyone. They don’t listen. Demons recognize him, and he orders them to be quiet. 

But if Jesus had gone around saying, “Hey, I’m the Son of God,” then the movement would have lost its purpose. If everybody knew and believed he was the Son of God, he would be surrounded by important people; he would only hang out among the elite. But his purpose was the expansion of God’s love and blessing to those who had been denied it, not those who were already swimming in it. 

The only time Jesus openly and publicly declares who he is, when he says “I am the Son of God and the Son of Man,” is not when it will get him followers and accolades; it’s when it gets him executed for blasphemy. 

So the purpose of keeping it a secret who Jesus is, is to keep the Jesus movement on track. 

We think that there must be someone at the top, and that things are good when the “right” person is at the top, and things are bad when the “wrong” person or people are. Usually, we think the people who should be at the top are those who look or act like us. Our religion, our race, our gender, our social class.  

But, if we are Christians, we know that we are not meant to inherit the world. That is for the meek, not the mighty. The king, the ruler, the Prime Minister or President, the billionaire tech “genius,” the rock star pastor with a private jet; they want us to worship them. They want us to try and experience vicariously their greatness, look up to them. 

But we, following Jesus, we have no king except God; no ruler except Christ. And our God wears a crown of thorns and whose throne is a cross. There are no privileges for the elite. There are no special privileges for those who have done the most. The last will be first. The world will be turned upside down, and those who “don’t deserve” God’s blessing in many people’s eyes will be the ones showered with it. 

Jesus gives us a command, that if we are to be counted among his followers, we are to serve. We are to serve the lowest and the least, not the high and mighty. And not to make ourselves out to be the high and mighty, but to humble ourselves, so that we can love more fully. Amen.

Sockobter 2021 runs till Nov 7, 2021

Due to the schedule change on the 31st and my confusion, we will extend Sockobter until Nov 7, 2021.

You can donate gently used or new Clean warm winter clothing like mitts, gloves, toques, coats and also toiletries.

Mt Paul – you can bring them to church on any Sunday up to November 7.
Plura Hills – you can make your own arrangements to collect at Plura Hills before but …

DROPOFF will also be scheduled for after church on the 7th from Noon (ish) to 1:30 pm

People who wish to donate money can make cheques out directly to the Mustard Seed. Cash – I’ll work something out but include your contact info.

Thanks,
Kathleen

Life & Ministry of Mt Paul United Church
Week of October 17, 2021 – October 24, 2021

Here at Mt Paul
Mt Paul – SUNDAY WORSHIP

We have returned to in person worship at Mount Paul & PLURA Hills. Rev. Emily will be leading the service at 9 AM at PLURA, then again at 11 AM at Mount Paul. We ask that face masks be worn at all times. Singing is permitted as long as masks are on. Wilf F. will be playing the piano for us.

Mt Paul – DID YOU KNOW
DID YOU KNOW that our 5 year $180,000 GIC, from the sale of the church building, matured on October 5, and we earned a total of $34,200 in interest, which was deposited to our “Emerging Congregational Needs” account. The original $180,000 has been reinvested in GIC’s, although interest rates are lower now than 5 years ago.

Mt Paul – NAZLI UPDATE

Nazli, our former musician, has 2 new part time jobs starting this month, while she is still attending McMaster University. She has been hired as a Teachers Assistant to help her professor with a class she took last year, and she has also been hired as a business development representative for a company called Sales factory. Her job will be to increase sales and marketing of this company.
She will finish her Masters of Entrepreneurship and Innovation by the end of December, and will be looking for full time work. Her sister Ailee is in Ryerson University in Toronto this fall, but her courses are still online.

Mt Paul – PASTORAL CARE

A couple of things from Pastoral Care as follows:

1.Your Pastoral Care team are supporting a PRAYER SHAWL MINISTRY. If anyone has any knitting or crocheting materials or supplies (needles, yarn, etc.) they would like to donate, it would be much appreciated. Such supplies could be taken to the church office if you call ahead, or a team member will pick up. For more information call Betty

2.Your Pastoral Care Team often send greeting cards to congregants and families. If anyone has any cards (particularly sympathy cards), they wish to donate we would be very grateful. They could be dropped at the church office you call ahead, or for a team member pick up, call Gaetan

Our Wider World…
Posting Prayers Weekly

This week we are praying for the ministry congregation of: First Memorial UC (Vanderhoof), Fort St. James UC, Gilmore Park UC, and Gitsegukla UC.

As participants in the World Council of Churches, we are invited to remember and pray for the peoples of The Churches in Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico.

CONTACT INFORMATION
Rev. Emily Cooke
email: revemilyccooke@gmail.com or
mtpaulminister@gmail.com

PLURA Hills: Mon to Thurs 9 AM-12 PM
Mt Paul: Mon to Thurs 12:30 PM- 5 PM
Contact numbers:
PLURA Hills: 250 828-1123
Mt Paul: 250 376-2261

Secretary: Margaret Pel
email: mtpauloffice@gmail.com
Telephone: 250 376-2261
website: www.mtpauluc.ca

Pastoral Care Needs: Merle B
Prayers Requests: Karen M

Worship services are streamed live every Sunday at 11 AM Pacific on Zoom.

Contact the office for a link if you would like to attend virtually.

Music used for this service is licensed under OneLicense A-727478 and CCLI 20776078.

Sermon

Text: Mark 10: 17 – 31

The vicar was Canon Woodiwiss—he later became an Archdeacon and finally Bishop—and he was a gifted apostle to the well-to-do . . . He soaked the rich for money, which was fair enough. At least once a year he preached his famous sermon about “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” He would explain that the Needle’s Eye was the name of a gate to Jerusalem which was so narrow that a heavily laden camel had to be relieved of some of its burden to get through, and that custom demanded that whatever was taken from the camel became the property of the Temple. So the obvious course for a rich man was to divest himself of some of his wealth for the church and thereby take a step toward salvation. 

—Robertson Davies, The Manticore 

Somebody, in a couple of thousand years, is going to be reading a document from this time, maybe an email, that says something along the lines of, “I’ll marry him when pigs fly,” and concoct this elaborate explanation for this ridiculous turn of phrase we have. “Oh, ‘Pigs’ was an airline that everybody thought would go bankrupt” or some silly thing like that. 

There was no such gate in Jerusalem. There is no archaeological or historical evidence for it. The myth appears to come from at least the 15th century and maybe earlier. Neither does “camel” actually mean “rope.” The Greek words are similar, but Jesus was not speaking Greek. In Jewish literature of the time, there are similar sayings about camels or elephants going through the eye of a needle. It’s a phrase that says exactly what it says, for the same reason we say “when pigs fly.” It’s called hyperbole. 

It was a myth that arose for the same reason that the rich people of Canon Woodiwiss’s congregation there liked it; if you honestly preach this gospel, rich people will leave your congregation and your congregation will fold because it has no money. People don’t like being told they’re going to hell. They love being told other people are going to hell, but not that they are. So, instead, there’s this twisty explanation with various ideas about what it even means, as long as it doesn’t mean what it seems to mean at first. 

What strikes me about this story of the rich man who wants to follow Jesus is that it isn’t a story of exclusion. This man, who in Matthew’s version of the story is a “young man,” and in Luke’s version is a “rich ruler,” wants to go above and beyond. He has the law, the commandments, but it isn’t enough. It doesn’t make him stand out in faithfulness. So, he asks Jesus how to go the extra mile with God. 

Jesus invites him to join the movement. Jesus opens up a place for him by his side. He says the same thing he says to Peter, to James and John, to all of the disciples: “Follow me.” Jesus does not say, “No, you’re rich and so you can’t be a part of this movement.” There’s a place for him to do the work of the Kingdom. 

But the man can’t do it. To do it, he has to leave behind something that he loves. 

Look . . . I grew up on welfare. There is very little that is as annoying to me as the sound of rich people whining about how hard it is to be rich. Because all I’m thinking is, “You can just stop being rich any time you want.” But no one does. A few brave souls, like St. Francis, but very few people. Certainly not any of the people doing the whining. 

I honestly suspect it might be about more than even money. Jesus walked around hanging out with the worst sort of people, on the margins of society. True, he would also be occasionally invited to a rich patron’s home, but most of the time, he’d be among the beggars. Does this rich man with rich friends really want to follow Jesus there? What would his friends think? 

But it is not that this man is excluded from the Kingdom of God simply for being rich. It’s that he cannot bear to give up that wealth. He asks about eternal life, and realizes that it isn’t as important to him as money. 

When Jesus says, “Give away everything you own,” it is about more than money. Consider that people who were not rich wanted to follow Jesus, and Jesus said, “Leave behind your family.” 

The point is that truly following Jesus, loving as God loves, costs us something we might be very attached to. Following Jesus will confront us with the fact that there might be something we value more than God’s love. It might be wealth; it might be our prejudices against other people; it might be our comfort and security. 

We cannot be truly grateful for the things we hold on to so tightly that we can’t let them go. We’re not truly thankful for our wealth or our family if we think of them as entitlements and inalienable rights. “If you love someone, let them go” doesn’t apply only to romantic relationships, but anything we’re liable to be possessive over. When we’re too attached to these things we say we love; we don’t truly love them. We hoard, we become jealous, we become paranoid. Like in a relationship where one person has a sense of ownership and possessiveness, whether a parent over a child or one romantic partner over another; that isn’t a relationship of love; it’s a relationship of abuse. 

To truly love something; to be truly thankful and grateful for it, we have to hole it lightly and let it go, because we know we don’t actually deserve it. 

That God cares more about the poor than about the rich is not in dispute. It is laid bare in the Bible. And the reason given is plain, “Truly I tell you, they have received their reward.” God does not care about who deserves help or not; God cares about who needs it. 

And if we are to call ourselves Christians, we have to be the same way. Being a Christian, following Jesus, comes at a cost. And that cost will be our comfort; we will have to spend time around people we don’t want to spend time around. We will have to leave our prejudices at the door. We will have to love the people who try very hard to make themselves unlovable because sometimes we are those people too. 

If we are grateful for God’s love—if we say, “God, you love me, and I am thankful for it”—we are acknowledging that we needed it, not that we deserve it. And we cannot hoard it for ourselves once we have it; we cannot be possessive of it; we have to give it to the people who need it most. 

This is what it means to cultivate a spirit of gratitude. Not to simply repeat to yourself, “Oh, I’m so thankful for all the good things I have,” but to understand that there is very little that separates you from those who do not have those things. You don’t deserve however much money you have; you don’t deserve the family you will gather with; you don’t deserve the food on the table or the roof over your head. 

But maybe you need them. Absolutely. Of course you need them. So you have them. Gratitude means nothing if it does not move you to compassion for those who need those things but do not have them. 

Truly following Jesus means more than coming to church once a week. Especially if the only reason you come to church is to be with people who are like you.  Truly following Jesus means potentially giving up things we say we are thankful for, but Jesus’ call will put that gratitude to the test. 

When you say that you are thankful, this thanksgiving, consider what you would be unwilling to give up to follow Jesus, and are you really thankful for it? Not that Jesus is asking you to give up your family or all your money specifically; I don’t think that’s the context we live in. It also wouldn’t do a lot of good. Jesus might even be calling you to have a deeper relationship with your family when you don’t want to. Maybe. That’s up to you to figure out. 

But as a society it’s clear we have to give up a lot of things for the sake of the planet, and we are just unwilling to do it. We have to give up a lot of things for the sake of reconciliation with our Indigenous family, and we seem so unable to let go of these things. Things like statues of colonizers; things like extremely cheap consumer goods; things like our comfortable complacency and self-image as basically good people.  

Gratitude means acknowledging that what we have, we don’t necessarily deserve. Gratitude, likewise, is truly thankful not for the things we merely enjoy, but the things we know we absolutely need. We need God’s love; we don’t necessarily deserve it, at least not any more or less than anyone else, but we need it. And so does everyone else. So go and show how grateful you are for that love by giving it to those who most need it, and see just what is possible with God. Amen.

Worship services are streamed live every Sunday at 11 AM Pacific on Zoom.

Contact the office for a link if you would like to attend virtually.

Music used for this service is licensed under OneLicense A-727478 and CCLI 20776078.

Sermon

Text: Mark 10: 2 – 16

I’m going to preach on the gospel, but just to briefly say about Job, I hope if any of you disagree with something I’ve said in my sermons that you tell me, “You speak as any foolish woman would speak.” I would love it so much.

As a hospital chaplain, I did some work on an oncology ward, so meeting people with cancer, especially terminal cancer, or meeting their family, I would often hear a lot of anger at God. An illness that can have such a devastating effect on one’s life, often with no cause other than “Well, guess you just had a poor hand of cards dealt to you,” and yeah, who better to direct that anger at than God? Why would a loving God give someone cancer?

Now, my own personal belief is that God does not “give” people cancer, but as a chaplain you’re taught to specifically never say the usual platitudes: “God never gives you more than you can handle,” “It’s all part of God’s plan,” or what Job says, “We have to take the bad with the good.” Maybe they can say they believe that, but what you do as a chaplain is validate their feelings.

And when someone would say, “I’m angry at God; I know I’m not supposed to be; I feel guilty for that,” I would usually say something like, “God’s a big guy; he can handle it.”

My point here, is to try and encourage a more expansive view of God than the petty, limited view we’re so used to. And that’s what Jesus is fighting against with his response to the Pharisees who would trap him with tricky legal questions, or to the disciples who would exclude children. God is bigger than our petty legalism or our limited worldview. God is also big enough to meet our anger, our fear, and our uncertainty. We don’t have to worry about feeling “wrong.”

I do not think it is a coincidence that readings lately have focused on children, and not leading children astray or excluding or hurting them. Maybe just believe that God is trying to tell us something. And then let to Holy Spirit try to tell you what that might be. A limited view of God is something imposed on us; we are told “don’t question; don’t be angry with God” and then just accept that God must be this thin-skinned being who’s just waiting to find a reason to punish us. Like if we break any of these single rules, but only caring about the letter of the law, not the spirit.

We have again two stories that do not seem to have much to do with each other. And yeah, maybe it is a stretch whenever I try to find what they have in common. But I still think it can be illuminating to try.

The Pharisees, again, want to trap Jesus. He has to give one of two answers: “Yes, it’s lawful for a man to divorce his wife,” and then they will just say, “Aha! You’re against the family! You’re against men abandoning women!” Or, he can say, “No, it isn’t lawful, no matter what the law says,” and they will say he doesn’t respect God’s law.

What sticks out for me is Jesus says this, “It is because of the hardness of your heart that Moses gave you the commandment.”

Wait; Moses and not God? Isn’t this God’s word? But even Jesus says some of these rules are human rules, and not God’s rules. They can make sense depending on the context, but they are not “once and for all time.”

It’s hard for us to get our heads around today, because for us the ability to divorce can be a justice issue. Someone should not be forced to stay with an abusive or unfaithful partner. Two people who are no longer in love shouldn’t have to pretend to still be. Someone who realizes they’re gay shouldn’t have to pretend to be straight.

In Jesus’ day, it was the opposite. A woman left by her husband usually found it difficult to remarry. She would face economic hardship. And only the man would write that certificate of divorce; the woman could not no matter how abusive her husband was. We live in a world where, while there are still a lot of social barriers to women being on the same footing as men, it isn’t the same impossibility for a woman to be independent. So, for Jesus, it is a justice issue, reminding men of their responsibility if they get married.

It is not the particular rules which matter, what they allow or disallow, because those are only human rules. The spirit of love and justice is what matters, which is God’ law.

What Jesus is telling us in both of the two halves of this story is to get back to basics. And the basics aren’t the rules, not even the Ten Commandments. Jesus never cites them. He specifically says that the basics are just “love God,” and “love one another.” You don’t love one another just by not killing them; you love them by loving them.

“Unless you enter the kingdom of God as a little child, you shall not see it.” To the disciples, this would have been almost incomprehensible. Understanding God was about study, about learning the rules, about maturity. Children were like women to them; not even fully human. Barely worth considering. That’s the other thing which links the two halves of the story; Jesus cares about the marginalized, about the people whom the adult male disciples and Pharisees thought were beneath them. A lot of philosophy at the time said that women did not have the same intellectual capacity as men.

Come on, please tell me I speak as any foolish woman would speak.

But Jesus says that the key to understanding it all is to look at it as a child.

Enter the kingdom of God as a little girl before anyone has told her, “Girls are gentle; stop roughhousing.” Enter the kingdom of God as a little boy before anyone has told him, “Boys don’t cry; boys don’t play with dolls.” Enter the kingdom of God as a child before anyone has told them that they’re not allowed to make friends with certain people. Who, when they learn of differences between people of different cultures, says “Oh, that’s so cool,” and not “That’s weird.” Enter the kingdom of God as a child who doesn’t even know what all the rules are, much less care about them, but who only cares about the basic principles: seek justice, love kindness, walk humbly.

Enter the kingdom of God as a child who only knows one word: God’s word. That word is nothing but “love.” Amen.

Here at Mt Paul

Mt Paul – SUNDAY WORSHIP

We have returned to in person worship at Mount Paul. Rev. Emily will be leading the service at 11 AM at Mount Paul. At Mount Paul, we ask that face masks be worn at all times. Singing is permitted as long as masks are on. Wilf F. will be playing the piano for us. Services will still be available on ZOOM for those who do not feel comfortable attending in person. Also, the services can be viewed on Facebook Live, and You Tube with the following links:
https://www.facebook.com/mountpaul
https://www.facebook.com/PluraHills or
https://mtpauluc.ca (for YouTube)

Mt Paul – VOLUNTEERS

The volunteer schedule has been published, and sent out to those that volunteered. Volunteer forms will be available at each Sunday service, and if you feel comfortable volunteering, we will schedule you in of the remainder of the volunteer schedule, which runs to April 24, 2022.

Mt Paul – DID YOU KNOW

DID YOU KNOW that we have suspended coffee time after the service due to concerns with physical distancing and removing masks. Most people found it hard to drink coffee while wearing the mask. While coffee time after a worship service is permitted under health guideline, we have elected to no serve coffee or a snack. Talking and socializing following the service, while wearing a mask and physically distancing is encouraged.

OUR WIDER WORLD

This week we are praying for the ministry congregation of: First UC (Fort Fraser/Fraser Lake, Houston, Kelowna, Kitimat, Prince Rupert),
First Community (Salmon Arm). As participants in the World Council of Churches, we are invited to remember and pray for the peoples of The Churches in Columbia, Ecuador and Venezuela.

CONTACT INFORMATION
Rev. Emily Cooke
email: revemilyccooke@gmail.com or
mtpaulminister@gmail.com

Mt Paul: Mon to Thurs 12:30 PM- 5 PM
Mt Paul: 250 376-2261

Secretary: Margaret
email: mtpauloffice@gmail.com
Telephone: 250 376-2261
website: www.mtpauluc.ca

Pastoral Care Needs: Merle B
Prayers Requests: Karen M

Worship services are streamed live every Sunday at 11 AM Pacific on Zoom.

Contact the office for a link if you would like to attend virtually.

Music used for this service is licensed under OneLicense A-727478 and CCLI 20776078.

Sermon

Text: Mark 9: 38 – 50

One of the things I try to do each and every sermon is something new. I want to try and encourage you to look at the text with fresh eyes. Because what I believe, is that the movement of the Holy Spirit in the text is that there isn’t just one meaning, set in stone. There are multiple, even infinite readings and meanings we can pull from this. Because what we need to hear changes based on what’s going on in our lives, in the world, in our hearts, and if we believe that God speaks to us through the text, then God always says what we need to hear. Not what we want to hear, mind you; what we need to hear.

There’s a real danger to our ability to have a living faith in a living God if everything is set in stone, if we are inflexible in our thinking, including in our approach to scripture.

So every time I come to a text that I have heard before, that I’ve read before, that I’ve preached on before, I’m struck by how I always can find something I never noticed before. It might be small, but enough to dive into and ask what it means, and what we can learn from it.

In this story, from the Gospel According to Mark, we have a brief story about Jesus chastising his disciples again for not getting it, and then completely unrelated, encouraging self-mutilation and mentioning hell a lot. It’s difficult to get into.

But as I was reading this, asking what this could mean for us, what I would say in this sermon, I was also thinking a lot about the residential schools, and Thursday, the first national day for reconciliation with the Indigenous peoples of this land. And I realized that inflexible thinking was what this story is about.

I think what we have is a story of religious intolerance; a denial that the Holy Spirit can be with someone unless they are part of “the group.” The Disciples don’t think that anyone who isn’t part of their denomination, their movement, their religion can have the spiritual power to heal. Whoever isn’t with us is against us, they think.

Jesus’ response echoes his response to the Pharisees when they accuse him of only casting out demons with the power of Beelzebub. The Holy Spirit is with anyone who is on the side of love, no matter what they believe, whether they’re with the movement or not. To suggest otherwise, to say that the Holy Spirit is only giving power to heal and cast out demons and preach to certain select groups, is to deny the breadth of God’s love and inclusion.

Neither the Pharisees nor the Disciples seem to care all that much about the people who need demons cast out of them; they’re perfectly happy to let those people continue suffering just as long as they’re not healed by the wrong people. And thus, inflexible dogmatic thinking, religious intolerance, and mistrust just perpetuate human suffering. No one and nothing is served by it, except our own egos.

The Indian Residential School System, and the very idea of colonialism, was driven by the idea that the English and French European cultures were naturally superior to every other way of living. That the Christian religion—Catholic or Protestant depending on who you asked—was the only way to understand the world. That there was no value in any other spirituality: nothing we could learn from them. Therefore, it was our responsibility to “civilize” them. That we got all their land and resources was, I’m sure, just a fortunate coincidence.

Because they were not explicitly for us, they must have been against us. The logic is used for all sorts of discrimination. People of other or no faiths—Muslims and Atheists, especially—don’t believe the same things we do; therefore they must be trying to do the same thing to us.

This black and white way of thinking, that there is only wrong and right, that a way being and culture and tradition can be wrong, is a demon that needs exorcising. There are still people who argue, “Well, maybe the physical and sexual abuse that happened at the schools was bad if it did happen,” and they will argue that it didn’t despite there being tons of proof, “but in the end it did help them adapt to modern Canadian society.”

Except it didn’t, and generations of trauma is the result. Like the Disciples not caring for the people who need healing, there is no care for the actual children, so long as they weren’t taught spirituality by the wrong people.

Jesus’ message to the disciples is one of tolerance, and it’s one we need to hear. “Whoever is not against me is for me.” Our enemy is not other religions, nor nonbelievers, nor even people at all. Our enemy is hatred, injustice, and oppressions. We only fight people when they are defending those things, and only as much as we have to, and we must still make it clear it is the ideas we are opposing, not the people.

Jesus’ message is to affirm the work of the Holy Spirit in other peoples. I’ve learned so much from Indigenous peoples who walk a path where they have one foot with the church and one foot with their cultural heritage about how those traditions go about teaching the same thing, with many of the same things; how the teachings inform one another and a deeper spirituality results from it; a deeper relationship with God through a deeper relationship with each other. I’ve learned so much from other religions, like Buddhism, and from Atheist philosophers, that I’ve been able to use for myself and reflect on my own faith, and I feel I have a better relationship with God because of that.

And I’ve had well-meaning Christians quote John 14:6 at me, “No one comes to the Father except through me.”

If a doctrine causes you to stumble, and put a stumbling block in front of others by rejecting them, throw it out. If a Bible verse causes you to stumble, such as “No one comes to the Father except through me,” throw it away until you can come to a different understanding of it. Better to enter the Kingdom of God saying, “I loved everyone even if I didn’t always go to church,” than “I went to church and hated my neighbour.”

Our reconciliation with the Indigenous peoples of this land means we have to exorcise the demons of colonialism and Christian supremacy from ourselves. We do that by listening to the value of the spirituality and culture of Indigenous peoples, walking humbly with them, and in doing so, walking more humbly with our God. Amen.

Life & Ministry of Mt Paul United Church
Week of September 19, 2021 – September 26, 2021

Here at Mt Paul
Mt Paul – SUNDAY WORSHIP
We have returned to in person worship at 11 AM at Mount Paul. The services will not be on ZOOM anymore, however the services can be viewed on Facebook Live, and You Tube with the following links: https://www.facebook.com/mountpaul At Mount Paul we ask that face masks be worn at all times. Singing is permitted as long as masks are on. Wilf Frose will be playing the piano for us.

Mt Paul – VOLUNTEERS
A new schedule has been created covering 8 months (Sept 3, 2021 to April 24, 2022). It has been published, and sent out to those that volunteered. However, We are in need of some new people to fill positions for Tellers, Usher/Greeter, Reader, Offering Prayers, Coffee, Communion, and Chair Set up. Please ask Rev. Emily how you can help. Volunteer forms will be available at each Sunday service, and if you feel comfortable volunteering, we will schedule you in of the remainder of the schedule.

Mt Paul – DID YOU KNOW
DID YOU KNOW that our August Income was $5536, and our expenses were $7036, leaving us $1500 short of meeting expenses. Expenses included $222 for our annual license to post our hymns online, $624 for our annual review of 2020 financial statements, and $306 for our Denominational Assessment to the United Church of Canada.

Our Wider World…
Posting Prayers Weekly
This week we are praying for the ministry congregation of:
Eagle Ridge UC,
Edgar Memorial UC (Klemtu),
Edgewood Treatment Centre (Nanaimo),
Emmanuel UC (Bella Coola),
Emmaus Community &
Abbey Church Plant (Victoria).

As participants in the World Council of Churches, we are invited to remember and pray for the peoples of The Churches in Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay.

CONTACT INFORMATION
Rev. Emily Cooke
email: mtpaulminister@gmail.com

PLURA Hills: Mon to Thurs 9 AM-12 PM Mt Paul: Mon to Thurs 12:30 PM- 5 PM

Contact numbers:
PLURA Hills: 250 828-1123 Mt Paul: 250 376-2261

Secretary: Margaret Pel
email: mtpauloffice@gmail.com
Telephone: 250 376-2261
website: www.mtpauluc.ca

Pastoral Care Needs: Merle B Prayers Requests: Karen M