Cocoons and Butterflies ... Worship for March 12th.

MINNEDOSA UNITED CHURCH
CLERGY: REV. SHAWN ANKENMANN
MINISTER EMERITUS: ELGIN HALL
ORGANIST: ELEANOR TAYLOR
CHOIR DIRECTOR: KENDRA FALLIS
MINISTRY: THE PEOPLE OF GOD GATHERED HERE
March 12th, 2006

GREETINGS ANNOUNCEMENTS MINUTE FOR MISSION

HYMN #410 This Day God Gives Me
CALL TO WORSHIP
One: Come, faithful people, and find that quiet centre
where God may enter in.
ALL: WE GATHER AS GOD’S PEOPLE:
HUNGRY FOR HOLY PRESENCE,
READY FOR GOD’S WORD TO US.
One: May the God of grace be welcome in our midst.
ALL: MAY WE RECEIVE THE POWER AND PEACE OF DIVINE LOVE.
One: Come let us worship with our hearts and minds and bodies.
ALL: LET US BECOME ONE SEEKING JUSTICE AND COMPASSION.
One: Blessed be God who challenges, heals, and unites us.
ALL: BLESSED BE OUR LEARNING AND BLESSED BE OUR VISION.
One: Blessed be God who inspires all things to be new.

PRAYER OF APPROACH:
One: Renewing God, we seek the presence of your Spirit
ALL: CREATING GOD, YOU ARE STILL THE CENTRE OF THE WORLD YOU MADE.
BE OUR GUIDE AND OUR COMPANION.
One: Holy One; we come to you in this season of turning and returning.
ALL: IN THE MIDST OF LIFE, WE RETURN TO YOU.
WE TURN TO YOU.
YOU, WHO ARE OUR SOURCE AND OUR DESTINY.
One: Blessed One, shake off our weariness.
ALL: SHOW US HOW TO OFFER LIFE IN YOUR NAME. AMEN.

HYMN (INSERT) You Are Salt for the Earth

PRAYER FOR WHOLENESS:
One: God, you have called us to be pilgrims.
God of exodus and wilderness,
God of refuge and help,
hear us now as we make our confession to you.
ALL: IN TIMES OF TEMPTATION,
WE FORGET WHAT YOU HAVE DONE FOR US.
YOU GIVE US EVERYTHING WE NEED,
YOU SHOW US THE WAY WE ARE TO FOLLOW,
YET WE OFTEN CONTINUE ON THE PATH OF SELF-INDULGENCE AND SELF-CENTREDNESS.
FORGIVE US, WE PRAY.
(pause)
One: We ask for your direction, your patience, your love;
ALL: IN THE NAME OF JESUS CHRIST,
WHO, IN SPITE OF HIS TEMPTATIONS,
WAS FAITHFUL TO YOUR SAVING WORD. AMEN.
(pause)
ALL: FORGIVE US WHEN WE WEARY OF THE JOURNEY
FORGIVE US WHEN THE RISK IS TOO STRONG
FORGIVE US WHEN WE LOSE OUR WAY…
One: Touch us O God,
ALL: THAT YOU WILL GRANT US PILGRIM SPIRITS
TO LEAD US TO THE NEW LIFE OF EASTER.

Scripture Readings: Mark 8:31-38
Psalm 22 (parts 3 & 4), page 746 V.U.

CHOIR ANTHEM:

STORY STOOL:

HYMN #703: In the Bulb There Is a Flower
SCRIPTURE READINGS: Genesis 17:1-7,15-16

HYMN #634 To Abraham and Sarah

SERMON: “What kind of butterfly shall we be?”
(Being a Covenantal People….)
Ann Weems writes of Holy Week, the time between Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday:
We move from hosannas to horrors
with the predictable ease
of those who know not what they do …
Today in the life of our community, like no other time before, we are a Pilgrim people. With our groups and activities spread across town in a variety of activities we embody the very essence of pilgrimage.
What we need to bear in mind as we journey forward on our pilgrimage is the simple fact that we’re spread all along the road … some of us are up over the next hill scouting out new potentials and possibilities … some of us are back still standing in the memories of what once was on Main St … others are clustered in a variety of places along the way – some father along in the healing then others, some still hurting, still angry … As a community we are all in different stages of grief – some of us are still in a place of denial and isolation, some are angry, some of us are bargaining, some are depressed and some of us are accepting what’s happened and preparing to move on to rebuilding …
The important thing for all of us, is to remember that we all grieve at different paces and in very different ways. And as a pilgrim people we need to have patience with one another as we journey – otherwise the front will lose sight of the back, and we will no longer be journeying together … and as a pilgrim people, we MUST journey together.
The journey we are on is not an easy journey, nor is it a short journey, and it is not a journey that we make alone. We are like Abraham and Sarah being called by God to head off into the unknown, trusting in two things – that God will be with them, and they will be the parents of a vast nation more numerous then the stars … Our journey assures us of a couple of things – God will be with us through it all, and we will find the faith transformation promised to us by hope.
This week, I realized that we, as a community are very much like a butterfly – we’ve been happily munching like a caterpillar, then suddenly we find ourselves in a cocoon – in the cramped darkness, waiting for something new … Slowly, the cocoon is beginning to break open and push us into the light. We’re in a place where many of us are wanting to launch off into the air and float and fly with the beautiful new wings that God has provided us … but we simply can’t do that … Watch a butterfly emerge from a cocoon – it takes time. Slowly they unfurl their wings, slowly they let the air and the warmth dry the fragile wings, then with tentative caution they begin to flap their wings and get ready to fly … we are like that … we WILL flap our wings, we WILL take flight, we WILL complete the transformation … in time.
Joan Chittister in her book Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope outlines the process of Hope. Hope is one of those words we can easily toss around and use, but it is a word – a concept that is harder to live, but if we are to move forward on our journey, we must claim and embody hope …
The first step is change. All life is change – we can not resist it, we can only prepare for it in a superficial way. Change is sometimes thrust upon us in harsh and unexpected ways … death, loss, accidents, fires … the list of sudden and traumatic change is long … Yet, when change comes we face a choice – we can wallow in our grief over what has been lost, or we can move and grow to accepting what has happened and moving forward … the first step in the face of change is undergoing a conversion. We no longer hold to a childlike faith that says – “God loves me and everything happens because God loves me …” I for one couldn’t say the flames of February 12th were a gesture of God’s love … but what followed in the coming days and weeks was a revelation of God’s love shared through God’s people … our childlike understanding of an omnipotent, all powerful God gets left behind …
With change comes isolation. We feel alone … our dreams are gone …the future looks less rosy … we don’t want to move forward. But we must live – we must move – we must leave the hurt and sorrow behind and become independent of our pain … hope stirs in our soul.
The long dark night of the soul breaks up on us … we know in our heads we’re not alone, but in our hearts there is a different message, a different feeling … we feel abandoned by God … we feel overwhelmed by the blackness … IN the darkness we claim our faith – God is with us, even in the darkness.
With the realization of God’s presence, we push back the fear and move beyond the powerlessness of grief … In proclaiming our faith that God is with us, we begin to find others who share in our journey … the pilgrimage is revealed in the breaking dawn. The long dark night of the soul is dispersed in the presence of God, and we find ourselves walking along a road where others journey and have journeyed, and we are not alone, we are not powerless … Knowing that life happens and much is beyond our control is not a surrender to cynicism, but is a moment of surrendering to living the hope of our faith. We can not change what has been – we can only focus our energy on what remains – relationships, memories, and the future. We’re naming our limitations, but within that we’re setting our goals and moving forward.
Chittister likens this process of hope to the story in Genesis which sees Jacob preparing to meet his brother Esau, whom he hasn’t seen in years – the last time the two met was just before Jacob scammed Esau out of his birth right. Jacob had fleed for his life, then continued his conniving ways with his father in law Laban. And now, he camps in the failing light of dusk on the shores of the River Jordan, waiting to cross the river and face his brother.
Through the night, Jacob has a visitor and spends the night wrestling with a manifestation of the holy. Some texts say it was an angel, others say it was God’s own self that wrestled with Jacob through the night … either way, neither Jacob nor the visitor prevailed over the other. So as dawn was approaching, the visitor made to leave the wrestling match, but Jacob sensing something significant had happened, appealed to his visitor not to leave without a bestowing a blessing upon him …
And so Jacob was blessed … his name was transformed from Jacob to Israel and in the coming hours he crossed the river and met face to face with his brother – a brother who had every reason in the world to exact a bloody revenge upon him. But instead Esau embraced his brother and welcomed him with LOVE.
Jacob’s journey shows us a bold way of living through the long dark night of the soul … we wrestle through the night (we’ve all been there) and as dawn break we call out to God and seek a blessing that will allow us to face the breaking day … Hope is that blessing.
Hope – is not a denial of the reality around us, nor is hope an elixir that makes everything better – hope is not a placebo. Hope is the small actions that slowly inexorably transform the darkness into light. Hope is what confronts life in its fullness and embraces even the pain and despair and proclaims the certainty that God is journeying with us as we make our way …
There is a First nations story of an elder talking about the response we have to tragedy. He notes that within his heart there are two wolves wrestling. One wolf is vengeful, angry and violent. The other wolf is strong, loving, and compassionate. A young person hearing the elder was concerned and said – “which wolf will win the fight?”
The elder said nothing for a long moment but then answered quietly – “that depends on which one I will feed …”
To go back again to Joan Chittister – she ends her book by writing: “when tragedy strikes, when trouble comes, when life disappoints us, we stand at the cross roads between hope and despair, torn and hurting … Despair cements us in the present. Hope (HOPE) sends us dancing around dark corners trusting in a tomorrow we cannot see because of the multiple pasts of life which we cannot forget. Despair says there is no place to go but here … Hope says – remember where you have been before and know that God is waiting for you someplace else to lead you to someplace (or something) new … Hope carries us to the dawn of new wisdom and new strength …”
She notes life is not a single road, but many roads … roads that offer us the raw material from which we build, embody and share hope … our challenge today is to never lose sight of the simple reality that we are together, on a journey … we need to care for, and care about each other along the way … Those who are way out in front need to come back and tell us what they see over the hill … and those who are struggling need to let other help them along the way …
We want to hurry from the parades of Palm Sunday to the processions of Easter Sunday – but the only way from Hosannas to Hallelujahs is through the unrelenting shadows of Holy Week … Thankfully though, even in the darkness where Jesus himself called out “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me …” God is there to guide us to the moment where we will again dance before God in joy …
If you try to help a butterfly as it emerges from the cocoon, by pulling back the edges and freeing her the butterfly will never fly … so intricate and so delicate is the process of transformation for the butterfly that if you force it … it will NEVER be completed. But if we trust in the process (trust in God) we will not only complete the transformation – in time we will find our wings and perhaps be like the Monarch who flies thousands upon thousands of kilometers on delicate wings …
We will be a butterfly … we will take wing … we need only trust in God to help it happen … That is our hope. That is our faith. That is our resurrection … We are an Easter People … we are a people of the resurrection … we are journeying from darkness to light …
May it be so … thanks be to God …

OFFERING:

OFFERTORY:

PRAYER OF DEDICATION:

HYMN #639 One More Step Along the World I Go

PRAYERS OF THE PEOPLE THE LORD’S PRAYER

HYMN #686 God of Grace and God of Glory

COMMISSIONING/BENEDICTION
One: Christ is our journey
Christ is our task
Christ is our life
May we travel into the newness of tomorrow,
One with Christ.

The worship has ended…
…the work of God’s people has just begun
Go in peace

ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Bible Study: Fridays 10 am in the meeting room of the Minnedosa Library – all are welcome.

Choir Practice – Thursdays at 7:30 p.m. at the Covenant Church.

Church Board Meeting - this Wednesday, March 15th, 7 p.m., at Minnedosa Adult Learning Centre.

UCW Meeting – this Wednesday, March 15th, 2 p.m., at Audrah Caughell’s home.

UCW St Patrick’s Day Tea and Bazaar – Saturday, March 18th at the Ukranian Hall.

Spring Supper/Smorg – Sunday, March 26 @ MCCC. Please remember to fill out the sign-up sheet sent in the mail last week.