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By Michael Wilson Pastoral Letters November 1, 2024

 

 

 

                                 

Watch this week’s service on YouTube by clicking:

November 3 Worship Service Video

 

 

Join us for Worship Sunday at 10:00 AM followed by fellowship and refreshments in the He/SheBrews Café

 

  • The Church Council and our Care and Community Committee invite you to a community lunch after church on Sunday, November 17. We hope you can join us.

 

  • Third Quarter Statements are available for pick-up at the church Sundays and during office hours. If you are unable to pick it up and would like it sent please get in touch with us by email finance@charleswoodunited.org or call 204-832-3667.

 

  • We were saddened this week to learn of the death of our friend and member Jean Lothian. A funeral for Jean will be held at the church on Wednesday, November 27 at 2:00 PM. Please remember the family and friends of Jean in your prayers this week.

 

 

Dear Friends

Welcome to worship for Sunday, November 3, 2024.

I have noticed several commercials promoting the 50th anniversary of Saturday Night Live. Given that I was a fairly boring teenager in the 1970s and stayed home most Saturday nights, and a fairly dull young adult often home on Saturday nights, and 35 years a minister at home writing sermons Saturday nights, SNL has been part of my consciousness for most of its half century. That will partially explain the obscure reference I am about to make.

The centerpiece of an episode of SNL is the news spoof in the second half hour called “Weekend Update”. Always has been. In the early years there was a recurring character named Father Guido Sarducci. He would come onto Weekend Update and give news from the Roman Catholic Church. I remember well a show where Father Guido came on to lament the fact that were no American saints. He felt it was time for one but there weren’t any obvious possibilities. The punchline was that it took three miracles to become a saint but for the leading American candidate, “two of them were card tricks.”

It is lost in the attention garnered by Halloween but November 1 is All Saints Day on the Christian calendar. The two observances are related. The church of the middle ages created All Saints Day for the veneration of saints of the church who didn’t have their own feast days. (It should be called the-rest-of-the-saints-day) The night before All Saints came to be known as All Hallows Eve. Over time All Hallows Eve was contracted to be Halloween, the connection between the saints who have gone before us and the eerie fates of the less-than-saintly being fairly obvious. Of course, none of this has anything to do with my giving an 8-year-old neighbour dressed as Harry Potter a chocolate bar. But I digress.

The caricature of a saint, something for which the church is fully responsible, is that of a perfectly faithful person through whom signs and wonders of God’s grace have been witnessed. But here’s the thing: there are not any perfect people in the world today so why should we think that there ever have been. The past and the present has all kinds of very, very, very good people. But miracle-producing, halo-wearing, perfect saints? I think not.

All Saints Day and the Gospel lesson for this week would seem to go together very well, but not for the obvious reason. Mark 12:28-40 is the answer of Jesus to the question ‘what is the greatest commandment?’. His renowned answer was to love God with all your heart, all your mind, all your body, and all your soul and to love your neighbour as yourself. Sounds great. Sounds like the definition of a saint. Sounds like…nobody I know. And that’s how it should be.

The greatest commandment is not prescriptive, it is aspirational. If we aspire to love God and neighbour in equal measure we will have attained sainthood even if (when) we fall short or miss the mark. Because that space between our limits and perfection is where mercy resides.

Saints are not those who have been faultless. Saints are the people who have gone before us who have striven as we do. Those who have lived lives of faithfulness in ways that grants mercy a place beside love. Saints are those through whom we have experienced goodness, grace, forgiveness, and humility.

 

Taken this way, the miracles of the saints are endless.

 

Grace and peace,

Michael

 

 

  • For news and events please have a look at Life & Work on our website: Life and Work

 

  • Did you know you can support this ministry by e-transfer, automatic withdrawal (PAR), and gifted securities, in addition to weekly or monthly cheques? For Offering Information please visit: https://charleswoodunited.org/support/  We have begun to receive donations for this summer’s Roofing Project which will be held separate from Operations and Mission & Service. Thank you for your generous support.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Michael Wilson / About Author
Michael’s involvement in the wider church has included ministry with children and youth, membership on the National Division of World Outreach, supervision of campus ministry, and the Ten Days for Global Justice National Committee. He has been blessed by the opportunity to represent the United Church of Canada in the Bahamas, Cuba, and Africa on different occasions. Michael has taught at the University of Winnipeg – Faculty of Theology and is past President of the Conference of Manitoba and North Western Ontario.
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