Good morning spring! Seriously nicest day to get up and go to
church ever! Sun was out, snow was melting, birds were singing ( you could even
hear them during the service.) I was concerned going in that this church would
be loaded with children when I came in, because of the large children’s pay
area fenced off right in the front yard of the church, but I only saw a total
of 2 in the whole service.
From the inside you can tell this is clearly a new-er church.
A lot of it was painted white, very clean look. It had the tall stain glass
panels featuring Jesus in different moments of this life. There was on large
round glass panel at the back of the church featuring Jesus represented as the
Sheppard. He had the whole goat wrapped-around-the-neck thing. For those of you
that need a visual, here is your fun Pope Francis Photo for the day!
The demographics for this place were pretty standard, 80 people
ish, even number of men and women, almost all with white hair and likely
qualifying for a seniors bus passes. There was a choir of approximately 15
people, and they did a pretty good job. Not the loudest church I have even been
in considering they had a choir, but I guess they don’t wanna scare off the
seniors. This choir provide much entertainment during the service. Including a
random man in an apron that stood up at the start to join the group, thou he
look like e had just walked right out of the kitchen. However my favorite will still have to be the
junior-senior lady sitting up in the choir that took out her knitting needles
during the summon, and clicked away feverishly.
Interestingly enough Holy Communion was one of the FIRST
things done in the service, (normally it is left till almost the end). They had
a selection of large cubes of white or brown bread and at this one you didn’t drink
out of the cup, you just dipped the bread and tossed it back. No wine at this
one, just plain old grape juice. But it was good grape juice.
The church leader had some interesting robes on. All white,
and it almost liked like the laid over like a double breasted robe? With what
looked like a white apron? His robes looked closer in resemblance to my pastry
chef uniform then typical priestly garb . There was a story time for the kids
today. Today’s story book talked about things we are afraid of and finding the
power to overcome them. This time of year also starts the time of “lament” aka.
That month when you give up eating chocolate and fail half way thru. So during
the hems we were asked not to sing “hallelujah” at the end of the song to
remind us that this is a more somber time to remember the death and resurrection
of Christ and also a time of self reflection.
I totally enjoyed the scripture reading for today. Mathew
4:1-11. Which is that chunk of the bible where Jesus goes out and fasts in the
desert for 40 days. During this time Satan
is tempting him, and eventually shows up in full fashion and talks with Christ.
He tries convincing him to do things that would win over the people by taking
in-appropriate advantage of gods power that is granted to him. He tries talking
him into to taking the cheap way out, showing off and doing many other non-Jesus
like things. He also tries putting ideas in Jesus es’ head on how he should behave.
Like telling him that he should rule over the people in such way and be this
great powerful arrogant leader ( which was we all know is totally not his
style). And then he offers JC a business deal. He asks him to bow to him just
once and they will be great partners etc. At that point Jesus just breaks out
and yells to the heavens and basically tells the devil to f*#$@ off, causing the devil to promptly disappear. Jesus
walks back into town with an over powering feeling of joy and starts working medical’s
like they are going out of style.
The point the priest was trying to make with all this is that
we can’t let other people slap bad or false labels on us as Christians. That we
need to stand up and be true loving, forgiving and devoted followers of the example
that Christ set. And not let stupid people get us mixed up with the followers
of the West Boro Baptist church.*god forbid!
