Church #12. Knox-Metropolitan Church

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! 

 

There was also a message sent out to make us think about spring cleaning and to purge unneeded items, to avoid materialism and to donate unwanted goods to charity.

Over all I was blown over on how “young” the message of the sermon was today. Hearing about “not having people define you” and “purging material positions” would be something I would expect to hear preached to a room full of young and empowered 20 year olds. I went back and shook the priests hand and told him he did a wonderful job. I mention that I was shocked on how “youthful” of a speech he gave considering he was in a room where I am sure the average age was 70. He replied and said that with his kind of message “responds well” with this particular group and he is happy to hear that I enjoyed it. I walked outside in my one layer jacket to a balmy +7 degrees and waked home as the birds sang. It was a good day to go to church .