Blackbird – Jamie Hoffman Sunday School Activities We don’t like judgement and sin in the United Church. They are tainted words for us. We associate them with a toxic kind of religion that puts up barriers to love and inclusion, the tools of a Christianity rooted in moralism, literalism, and self-satisfied power used to bludgeon people on the margins of society—women, lgbtq2s…
You are not alone. Come share the journey.
You are not alone. Come share the journey.
Sermons by Rev. Joe Gaspar
Psalm 57: 4, 6-10 Music Sunday They Can’t Take That Away From Me – Neil Murray (Sax) Bob Hudgins (Piano) Earth Song – Voices United Choir You Do Not Walk Alone – Voices United Choir Come You Thankful People Come – Cast in Bronze Be a Light – The Band Sunday School Activities We don’t know the situation the Psalmist is facing…
2 Corinthians 13: 11-13 – Trinity Sunday Sunday School Activities Prelude – Waltz #15 by Brahms – Bob and Neil Voices United Choir – The Plans I Have for You Such a short little scripture this morning, two little verses, a short farewell at the end of a long letter. Why? Why this short, seemingly inconsequential excerpt on a Sunday the church sets…
Acts 2: 1-12 Pentecost Sunday Sunday School Activities Sinfonia by Purcell(Neil) Domine Deus by Vivaldi(Joc This long weekend is the traditional kick off to gardening season. I know we have many gardener’s at Parkminster. Some of you have shared with me how gardening brings you closer to God. The poet May Sarton says of gardening, “Everything that slows us down and forces…
Luke 24: 36b-48 3rd Sunday after Easter (Earth Sunday) Sunday School Activities Today, in the gospel reading, we enter a room filled with Jesus’ disciples trying to understand strange rumours: the one they saw dead is alive! How can that be? And suddenly there he is, sitting with them eating fish. This Sunday is also Earth Sunday. And we can imagine or…
Laughter and Resistance—1 John 1: 1-8a 2nd Sunday after Easter Sunday School Activities Amid so much seriousness these days, you may wonder if there’s a place for joking around and laughing—a pandemic lockdown and all the stress that goes with it, racism in our lives, the news and social media feeds, economic anxiety and inequality and a great deal of unpredictability and…
Sunday School Activities Mark 11: 1-11 If you follow me on Facebook, you’ll know that I’m heartbroken and angry about the state of the world right now. But, let me begin with one year ago. Last year for Palm Sunday, at the beginning of the pandemic I compared the inner struggle and courage of essential workers to the inner struggle and courage…
Sunday School Activities Fourth Sunday in Lent Mark Twain once said “When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.” In matters of faith, I have been arrogant,…
Sunday School Activities Genesis 17: 1-8, 15-16 2nd Lent Here’s the thing about this scripture and others like it that speak of the covenant between God, the patriarchs of Israel and the promise of a land for the Hebrew people that was already inhabited. I can’t read these scriptures without thinking about what’s going on in that part of the world today. …
Sunday School Activities “My hope is always when people take their faith and put into action”. This Black History Month challenges us to ask, how we get to that place of hope where our faith is put into action in service to racial justice? Last week we began to talk about the anti-racism journey as one that is never finished, a lifelong…