APRIL 27, 2025
SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER SEASON
A Service of Prayer, of Song, of Celebration, of Experiencing the Risen Christ and, of Touching the Wounds.
THEME: “Easter Happened…Peace Be With You...”
Lead Minister: The Rev. Jope Langejans
Music Director: Cody Obst
Minister Emeritus: Rev. Gerry Scharff
Honorary Associate Ministers: Rev. Clint Mooney & Rev. Kelley Warner
Chair of Council: Vacant
Reader: Peggy Jackson
Guest Pianist: Susan Varcoe
PRELUDE
*Indicates please rise as you are able
“For Thomas, seeing is believing, as the saying goes. However, most of us must be content to see Christ through the eyes of faith. For us, believing is seeing. Faith opens a realm we never, ever dreamed of. Jesus pronounces his blessing on those who have not seen and yet believe and folks, that’s us!”
Gathering
CHOIR ENTRANCE
INTROIT HYMN: “Seek Ye First the Kingdom” VU # 356
WELCOMING & ANNOUNCEMENTS
LIGHTING of THE CHRIST CANDLE
ACKNOWLEDGING THE TERRITORY (Unison)
People have lived on this land for thousands upon thousands of years. This land on which we gather is the traditional land of the Blackfoot Confederacy; The Siksika, Peigan, Kainai, TsuuT’Ina and the Stoney Nakoda Nations along with the home of our Metis brother and sisters. We acknowledge with respect the thousands of years of ceremony and relationship that are etched in footprint, fire, and faithfulness on the soil and rock that surround us.
(Peter Chynoweth, Cochrane, Alta., Gathering Magazine, Pentecost 1, 2023, Year A, pg. 36)
*OPENING HYMN: VU # 382 “Breathe on Me, Breath of God”
OPENING CALL TO WORSHIP:
Leader: We gather for worship this morning aware of many blessings. If we look around the sanctuary, we see many people gathered here. Each person present represents what this blessing is….that’s you.
ALL: Each of us are so blessed to be one of God’s people, one of God’s ‘children’. As our voices join in celebration and praise, may God’s Spirit fill and transform each of us.
Leader: Come, Holy Spirit…come…come and make us your people and remake us in your image. Young and old and in-between, from near and far, we ‘come home to worship’, for God is our true home.
ALL: We gather now, to renew our covenant with God and with each other, God’s faithful people. Let grace and peace and forgiveness fill this house!
Leader: May our time together lift us up as we celebrate God’s care for us and for all of creation.
ALL: Welcome, O Holy Spirit. Welcome into our midst as we turn to you this morning. Prepare each of us to witness the Risen Christ.
Leader: Come, for now is the time for worship. Come, for now is the time for brand new life.
ALL: So now we offer ourselves in prayer and in thanksgiving as we centre ourselves with these words to you:
OPENING PRAYER:
O God of all that is; day by day you give us our lives as a gift and then you surround us with people and share in the things that happen to us – bringing us friends and loved ones to support us, skills of healing so some may walk once again, opportunities to buy and sell and make decisions together to earn our living, counselors to help us heal wounded memories and rebuild relationships, warming winds so that we can walk outdoors, sometimes making the weight we carry inside us easier, refugee families to show us that yes, we do make a difference. In so many ways you have enriched our lives, responded to our needs, reacted to our pain, and shared our satisfaction in doing the simplest of things. This hour cannot hold all of our thanks so we will live it with our lives, reaching out to help others as if we were reaching out to you, for this is the way you have reached us and so we offer these words in your name, O Christ…Amen
Engaging the Sacred Text
Reader: Peggy Jackson
PSALM 118: VU # 837 (Responsive Reading with Refrain)
(God is my strength and my song…)
Refrain: “Hallelujah! Hallelujah!”
Peggy: “God is my strength and my song; God has become my
salvation.
ALL: There are shouts of joy and deliverance in the tents of the
righteous.
Peggy: The right hand of God does mighty things; the right hand of
God raises up.
ALL: The right hand of God does mighty things.
Peggy: I shall not die, but live; and I shall proclaim what God has
done.
ALL: God indeed punished me but did not give me over to death.
Refrain: “Hallelujah! Hallelujah!”
Peggy: Open to me the gates of the temple, that I may enter and give
thanks to God.
ALL: This is the gate of God; through it the righteous shall enter.
Peggy: I thank you for you have answered me; you have become my
salvation.
ALL: The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief
cornerstone.
Peggy: This is God’s doing, marvellous in our eyes.
ALL: This is the day that God has made, let us rejoice and be
glad in it!
Refrain: “Hallelujah! Hallelujah!”
Peggy: Save us, O God, we pray.
ALL: God, we pray, give us success.
Peggy: Blessed is the one who comes in the name of God.
ALL: We bless you from the house of God.
Peggy: God, our God, has given us light;
ALL: with palm branches in hand let us march to the altar.
Peggy: You are my God, and I will thank you;
ALL: you are my God, and I will extol you.
Refrain: “Hallelujah! Hallelujah!”
EPISTLE LESSON
REVELATION 1: 4-8 (994) (Peggy Jackson) John greets the seven churches of Asia...
HYMN of ILLUMINATION: “Deep in Our Hearts” MV # 154
GOSPEL PASSAGE
JOHN 20: 19-31 (Rev. Jope) Thomas doubts until he sees Jesus for himself…
MESSAGE/SERMON: “What Do We Say to People Who are Grieving?”
Responding
PRESENTATION OF OUR OFFERINGS (Invitation – Leader)
Here, O God, is one way that we live out our baptismal promises: in our act of offering our gifts for the ministry and mission of this community of faith – your church, so that your Word may be shared, and your justice supported here and around the entire world…our offering will now be received…
CHOIR OFFERTORY SELECTION
“We Will Be a Shelter for Each Other” by: Tom Long & Allen Pote
PRAYER of DEDICATION: (Rev. Jope)
Blessing
Sunday’s Reflections of the Heart: (unison)
(‘Be With Me in My Unfolding,’ Ted Loder, (Guerillas of Grace)
O God, it is spring, and the land is coming up green again, unfolding outside our well-drawn boundaries and urgent schedules. And there is the mystery and the smile of it.
The willows are beginning to drip honey colour into the bodies of water and the mother birds are beginning to prepare their manger nests, and we are learning again that “for everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven.”
O God, you have sketched the lines of spring.
Be with us in our unfolding.
It is spring, O God, and our blood runs warm with the song of the sap, longing for a beauty we would become. And there is the mystery and the smile of it.
The buds are starting to swell on the bush, the sun is beginning to coax the colour from where it’s been curled against the cold, the air is sweet to the nostrils; even the villages seem to be rubbing their eyes from a long sleep; and there is promise in the season we know no name for, except life. O God, you have sketched the lines of spring.
Be with us in our unfolding.
It is spring and something stirs within us, reaching, stretching, groping for words, peeking through our defenses, beckoning in our laughter, riding on past our fears, pulsing in our music. And there is the mystery and the smile of it.
Be with us in our reaching, so we will touch or be touched, this time, by a grace, a warmth, a light, to unfold our lives to a new beginning, a fresh budding, and a spring within as well as around us. O God, you have sketched the lines of spring.
Be with us in our reaching…
The Lord’s Prayer (Niesje Bates – spoken in Dutch)
*Hymn: MV # 209 “Go, Make a Diff’rence”
*Commissioning (unison): Go out into your world and embrace it with different shades of love…different hues of hope… different colours of compassion and different paints of peace… may the kaleidoscope of colours sing to the beckoning of spring and the newness of life, the opening of closed doors, the tearing down of walls and the building of bridges. We go in peace, and we go in love…Amen.
Benediction
Postlude
><><><>HAVE A BLESSED EASTER SEASON<><><><
SCRIPTURE READINGS - Sunday, May 4th, 2025
THIRD SUNDAY OF EASTER - NEW MEMBERSHIP SUNDAY
ACTS 9:1-20
REVELATION 5:11-14
JOHN 21:1-19