Priscilla Williams, Lancaster PA www.glorygazing.com

This Sunday we begin our journey towards Easter, under the banner ‘Mending the Heart’. It is not easy for us to admit, but many of us are living with broken hearts … as we see others suffer, as we struggle in our own relationships, as we acknowledge our failures and yearn for a sense of purpose, as we witness creation itself being compromised. How good it is to be reminded that healing and renewal are possible, by the grace of God.

This morning we locate ‘mending the heart’ first and foremost in God. Our lives are renewed as we place our broken hearts within God’s great love known in Jesus. Healing and renewal is not found in being ‘holy’ (as in doing or believing certain things) but rather in being willing to be embraced within the great beating heart of the ‘Holy One’ (Mark 7:1-23).

I thought this painting by Priscilla Williams accompanies this gospel text perfectly. This artist of Lancaster PA has explained of her painting ‘Safe Place’ that the broken heart at the centre is shown to be held within God’s greater heart, and even while broken it bears some of the orange ‘glow’ of God’s life. God’s heart itself is located within three circles representing the triune community of love that God is, Father Son and Holy Spirit. And the strong diagonal lines behind speak of the strong, sovereign character of God, and God’s love. https://glorygazing.com/inspired-paintings/inspired-paintings-group-2/safe-place/ 

If you are in the area, we warmly invite you to join us this Sunday morning. Certified child care is offered during the service and a programme for young children also. There is free parking on the streets around (please note that the time-of-day restrictions on Clergy Street north of Queen are not in effect on Sundays) and in the surface civic lot just behind the church off Queen Street. There is a wheelchair lift inside the doors to St. Andrew’s Hall from the church parking lot mid way along Clergy Street, and hearing assist devices are available upon request from an usher. 

Have a look at the Order of Service and bulletin below, and consider each hymn and prayer and announcement a personal invitation to join us in Christian worship, community and service.

Download (PDF, 521KB)

Next Sunday we will continue with ‘Mending the Heart: Accepting the Challenge to Change (Mark 7:24-30)

Vincent Van Gogh, 1890 – ‘The Fields’, said to be his last painting. ‘It’s not important who does the planting, or who does the watering. What’s important is that God makes the seed grow’ (1 Cor 3:7)

This morning we pause our journey through the Gospel according to Mark to welcome the Rev. Prudence Neba of the Presbyterian Church of Cameroon. Prudence has served nine years as Minister of Word and Sacrament, most recently as Associate Pastor to a congregation in Douala, responsible for up to 4000 people on a given Sunday. Prudence is completing her doctorate at Presbyterian College Montreal and McGill, and has travelled to share with us something of her perspectives on Christian faith and ministry.  And after the service, a lunch together in the church hall!

If you are in the area, we warmly invite you to join us. Certified child care is offered during the service and a programme for young children also. After the service a time of fellowship over tea or coffee, so please linger if you can and allow us to introduce ourselves more fully. 

There is free parking on the streets around (please note that the time-of-day restrictions on Clergy Street north of Queen are not in effect on Sundays) and in the surface civic lot just behind the church off Queen Street. There is a wheelchair lift inside the doors to St. Andrew’s Hall from the church parking lot mid way along Clergy Street, and hearing assist devices are available upon request from an usher. 

Have a look at the Order of Service and bulletin below, and consider each hymn and prayer and announcement a personal invitation to join us in Christian worship, community and service.

Download (PDF, 636KB)

Next Sunday, we will look at Mark 6:45-52 (and hold our AGM!)

Jesus Mafa Art – Northern Cameroons, West Africa

We arrive at two revealing scenes this Sunday in our journey through the Gospel according to Mark.

In the first, Jesus is rejected by the people of his hometown (Mark 6:4). Might familiarity be an enemy of faith? For many of us raised in the Church, this possibility comes as a challenge.

In the second, Jesus sends his disciples as partners in his mission of extending the healing and embrace of the Holy One. And he declares that they need to travel light (Mark 6:8). For many of us in the Church, accustomed to frameworks of support from creeds to physical sanctuaries, this exhortation comes also as a challenge.

As I consider these scenes, I find this painting by the Jesus Mafa community in northern Cameroon helpful. It is just one of dozens that date back over 50 years and an initiative to make the gospel real in a particular region of this West African nation. A team of a church leader, a theologian and an artist would read a particular gospel passage and invite people of various villages to enact what they heard. Photographs were taken of the skits and tableaux, and the artist would eventually paint a canvas. It was a tremendous project, one that prompts the question … what might the gospel look like in my community? What does it mean for me/us to go in the power of the Risen Lord ‘lightly’?

If you are in the area, we warmly invite you to join us. Certified child care is offered during the service and a programme for young children also. After the service a time of fellowship over tea or coffee, so please linger if you can and allow us to introduce ourselves more fully. 

There is free parking on the streets around (please note that the time-of-day restrictions on Clergy Street north of Queen are not in effect on Sundays) and in the surface civic lot just behind the church off Queen Street. There is a wheelchair lift inside the doors to St. Andrew’s Hall from the church parking lot mid way along Clergy Street, and hearing assist devices are available upon request from an usher. 

Have a look at the Order of Service and bulletin below, and consider each hymn and prayer and announcement a personal invitation to join us in Christian worship, community and service.

Download (PDF, 547KB)

Next Sunday, we welcome the Rev. Prudence Neba of the Presbyterian Church in the Cameroon to St. Andrew’s.

This morning we conclude our summer series of services focusing upon the wonderful stained glass windows of the St. Andrew’s sanctuary. And how appropriate that, with the beginning of a new school year, we will gaze upon perhaps the loveliest of all gospel scenes, when Jesus declares ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs’ (Matthew 19: 14). Lovely indeed, but also radical. It is a scene that speaks about children, but to all of us, and does so with challenge and with promise.

We warmly welcome you to join us. Certified child care is offered during the service and there is free parking on the streets around (please note that the time-of-day restrictions on Clergy Street north of Queen are not in effect on Sundays) and in the surface civic lot just behind the church off Queen Street.

Have a look at the Order of Service and bulletin below, and consider each hymn and prayer and announcement a personal invitation to join us in Christian worship, community and service. If you have any questions about forthcoming events and opportunities, please call the church office Tuesday – Thursday, 9 a.m. – noon, 613-546-6316, or email [email protected]

Download (PDF, 347KB)

 

p.s. be sure to look at The Days of September for information about forthcoming services and events at St. Andrew’s

Jesus the Good Shepherd Window

These Sundays of summer we are exploring the gospel through the stained glass windows of the sanctuary of St. Andrew’s and this morning, The Good Shepherd Window. Created by Castle and Son, with the inscription ‘He shall gather the lambs with his arm and carry them in his bosom’ (Isaiah 40:11), and the dedicatory plaque ‘To the Glory of God and in Loving Memory of Effie, the beloved daughter of William and Ellen Nickle, died July 23, 1877.’

We warmly welcome you to join us. Certified child care is offered during the service and there is free parking on the streets around (please note that the time-of-day restrictions on Clergy Street north of Queen are not in effect on Sundays) and in the surface civic lot just behind the church off Queen Street.

Have a look at the Order of Service and bulletin below, and consider each hymn and prayer and announcement a personal invitation to join us in Christian worship, community and service. If you have any questions about forthcoming events and opportunities, please call the church office Tuesday -Thursday, 9 a.m. – noon, 613-546-6316, or email [email protected]

 

Download (PDF, 193KB)

These Sundays of summer we explore the gospel through the stained glass windows of the sanctuary of St. Andrew’s. As we do so, I am reminded of the beautiful poem The Windows by George Herbert (1593-1633) and the glorious opportunity for us to become windows through which God is ‘seen’ in this world!

Lord, how can man preach thy eternal word?
    He is a brittle crazy glass;
Yet in thy temple thou dost him afford
    This glorious and transcendent place,
    To be a window, through thy grace.
But when thou dost anneal in glass thy story,
    Making thy life to shine within
The holy preachers, then the light and glory
    More reverend grows, and more doth win;
    Which else shows waterish, bleak, and thin.
Doctrine and life, colors and light, in one
    When they combine and mingle, bring
A strong regard and awe; but speech alone
    Doth vanish like a flaring thing,
    And in the ear, not conscience, ring.

What better window with which to begin than the one over one of the sanctuary doors … of the Ten Commandments. It is good to recall and reclaim these ‘ten words’ of God. The commandments have been reduced to a list of divine prohibitions, forgetting the great freedom that leaves us all else. They have been relegated to some objective legal code, neglecting the more meaningful context of covenant, the Sovereign One coming to the human ones in commitment and love, laying out for us the way of life that would honour God and ourselves. A small stained glass window, a great opportunity to consider the gospel!

A warm welcome in the name of Jesus Christ and a special welcome to all visitors and friends with us this morning.

During these services of summer,  we have our certified child care and there is free parking on the streets around (please note that the time-of-day restrictions on Clergy Street north of Queen are not in effect on Sundays) and in the surface civic lot just behind the church off Queen Street.

Have a look at the Order of Service and bulletin below, and consider each hymn and prayer and announcement a personal invitation to join us in Christian worship, community and service. If you have any questions about forthcoming events and opportunities, please call the church office Tuesday -Thursday, 9 a.m. – noon, 613-546-6316, or email [email protected]

Download (PDF, 228KB)

~~Saint Cecilia – the patron saint of organists ~~

A warm welcome in the name of Jesus Christ and a special welcome to all visitors and friends with us this morning.  We acknowledge that we meet on traditional Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee territory.

During these services of summer,  we have our certified child care and there is free parking on the streets around (please note that the time-of-day restrictions on Clergy Street north of Queen are not in effect on Sundays) and in the surface civic lot just behind the church off Queen Street.

Our Director of Music John Hall will lead worship on both sides of the keyboard this morning, playing the organ and also sharing reflections on ‘The Art of Listening’. Our Elders will lead in prayer.

Have a look at the Order of Service and bulletin below, and consider each hymn and prayer and announcement a personal invitation to join us in Christian worship, community and service. If you have any questions about forthcoming events and opportunities, please call the church office Tuesday -Thursday, 9 a.m. – noon, or email [email protected]

Download (PDF, 175KB)