FOURTH SUNDAY IN LENT OUR SACRED WORLD: SACRED RELATIONSHIPS
Let’s “Worship at Home” together again this week. This week’s service includes a children’s worship option, a beautiful new recording of Matt’s original hymn “Seek Us and Find Us,” and an old favourite “Great is Thy Faithfulness.” You may want to create a worship space at home before returning to this post at 10:30am Sunday morning (or whenever is best for you), scrolling down to the Worship from Home heading and starting our worship.
– Emily, Matt, and Natalie (Worship Planning Team)
Watercolour by June Malabar
WORSHIP AT HOME:
This service includes links to listen to all the music and see the readings – click on the parts of the service that are underlined as you reach them.
THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT OUR SACRED WORLD: SACRED DIVERSITY
Leaside United Church made the decision yesterday to close, including suspending Sunday worship, until further notice. Many other churches in Toronto are making the same decision as we work together to slow the spread of the coronavirus and in doing so care for our congregation as well as the wider community. As we respond together with compassion, prevention, and prayer, we invite you to take part in worship on Sunday morning from home.
Our worship planning team (Matthew Boutda, Director of Music, Natalie Jahn, Young Families and Youth Leader, and myself Rev. Emily Gordon), have adapted the service to be meaningful at home. We invite you this about the “Worship at Home” service at 10:30, so that we are worshiping at the same time (or another time if that isn’t possible). This service also includes children’s worship.
Our church is not about a place but about our care for one another. Right now we do this by staying apart, but also by connecting by phone and email. We invite you to reach out to someone today – not just close family and friends but someone you do not know as well, as part of our wider network of care.
The pastoral care team has a virtual meeting scheduled to discuss ways to care for our congregation during this time. Our worship planning team is already discussing worship and spiritual nurture, and there will be three opportunities this week:
Email reflections – watch your inbox Tuesday and Friday for short email reflections this week. (if you are not on an email list, you can sign up with your email address in the side bar).
Prayer workshop – Wednesday’s prayer workshop at 4pm is moving online. Email Natalie or Emily to sign up.
Worship and Nurturing Spirituality Committee meeting – everyone is warmly invited to join Wednesday at 7pm as we discuss what worship and spiritual nurture looks like online, over email, and by phone.
To sign up or to share thoughts about what we can do in the coming weeks, send me, Natalie, or Janet an email or sign up and share thoughts here.
Blessings this Lent, Rev. Emily Gordon
Work cell: 647-303-6709 Email: emily@leasideunited.org _________________________________________________________________________
WORSHIP AT HOME You are invited to find a quiet space and, if you have one, to set up a candle to light at the service start.
Lighting the Christ Candle Our sacred world shines with holy light. Peace in this moment, for every moment. You are invited to light your candle or to close your eyes and imagine the glow of a lit candle.
Learning Together
Yesterday was PIE Day, Canada’s National Affirming Day! On PIE Day, different communities celebrate and honor the Public, Intentional and Explicit affirmation of the LGBTQ2SIA+ community. This might be a nice opportunity for you to not only celebrate PIE Day and to think about what it means to be an affirming congregation, but also to enjoy some pie! If you like to know more, please watch the video.
John 4:5-42 In today’s reading, Jesus is asked to confront his own assumptions. Rather than insisting on his views, he changes them. What is a time when you have assumed something and then been forced to change your view? Where do you continue to be challenged by diversity? How can we celebrate our differences as sacred?
A New Creed We are not alone, we live in God’s world We believe in God: who has created and is creating, who has come in Jesus, the Word made flesh, to reconcile and make new, who works in us and others by the Spirit. We trust in God. We are called to be the Church: to celebrate God’s presence, to live with respect in Creation, to love and serve others, to seek justice and resist evil, to proclaim Jesus, crucified and risen, our judge and our hope. In life, in death, in life beyond death, God is with us. We are not alone. Thanks be to God.
Offering
If you give by PAR, take a moment to reflect on what it means for you to offer your gifts. If you usually give via the offering plate, consider making a donation online (the link is in the sidebar), write a note to yourself to adjust your givings the next time we worship in the building, or think of another way you will extend caring, such as donating to a charity, mailing unexpected thinking of you cards to friends or family, or something else.
Prayer You are invited to pray for our congregation, our city, and our world.
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