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Attendance today -> 7 – last year -> 12
We’ve now got air conditioning in the sanctuary !!
Sermon 🔈 (audio only)
Second Sunday after Pentecost-June 7, 2026
Prayer of the Day
O God, you are the source of life and the ground of our being. By the power of your Spirit bring healing to this wounded world, and raise us to the new life of your Son, Jesus Christ, our Saviour and Lord. Amen.
Gospel: Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26
9 As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax-collection station, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him.
10 And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with Jesus and his disciples. 11 When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” 12 But when he heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. 13 Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous but sinners.”
Sermon:
Bishop Larry’s sermon last week helpfully reminds us that this second half of our church year pivots to explorations of the life of the church as it’s informed by the life of Christ. This shift invites us to read this week’s Gospel through the lens of faith community. The faithful question that follows is, what might Matthew’s Gospel be saying to today’s church?
In just a few words, Matthew describes a seismic shift in one person’s life that goes far beyond a career change. Historians believe that Matthew’s specialty in a port town like Capernaum was to tax transported goods. If there were ever an opportunity to gouge somebody for money, this was it!. Tax collectors were equated with robbers, brothel owners, and corrupt officials. Matthew’s leaving his post leaves jaws dropping for two reasons. First he disrupts his own life built around exploitation and greed. Second, he ghosts more than an employer. Not much of a chance that there was cake in the break room as a farewell for Matthew when he left the tax collecting racket to follow Jesus. Even less chance that Roman management issued the blasé memo wishing Matthew the very best in his future endeavours “thank you for your attention in this matter.” Taxes fed the imperial beast’s insatiable appetite. Everyone was expected to feed the beast one way or another. Matthew stops playing along. Imagine the stand Matthew takes and the personal risk he assumes when he follows Jesus.
More questions: What about Jesus is so compelling that at a word, Matthew leaves his post? Just where is it that Jesus is going and wants Matthew to follow?
The disapproving muttering among the religiously respectable signals that where Matthew is going TO is even more revolutionary than what he has left behind. We’ve been clued in that tax collectors are outcasts. Jesus’ other dining companions are “sinners”…sort of a blanket term for outsiders and those judged to be too far gone for redemption.
And Jesus eats with these people? On purpose? Absolutely on purpose. In Jesus’ culture and in his day your dining companions were those you identified with and befriended—reputations were thought to rub off on each other. So where is Jesus going? To the margins of society! What’s he up to? He enacts and embodies the insistence that there is no such place as outside the scope of God’s love. This is the “new place” Jesus leads Matthew. And us.
This week I read work by the Rev. Dr. Danny Zacharias. Reading his biographical notes was a treat—He is Associate Dean and professor of New Testament Studies at Acadia Divinity school in Wolfville Nova Scotia. He’s originally from Winnipeg and is Cree-Anishanabe and Métis…so I was intrigued to hear what an indigenous person from Turtle Island might have to say about Matthew and his community.
Professor Zacharias speaks of indigenous ceremonies as being more about relationship that rubric. And indigenous ceremonies are carefully curated so the emphasis on relationships is truly inspiring. Through his cultural background Professor Zacharias sees what he calls God’s restorative mercy as communities are formed and nurtured. He goes on to say that such mercy isn’t pretty words; it’s tangible actings showing what the kin-dom of God ought to be like.
The professor also invites the church to put itself in Matthew’s place—as those profiting from present and past injustice to others and to the planet. When Jesus calls the church to follow we work to leave those ways behind and to join Jesus as he embodies the scandalous message that there is no such place or thing beyond the reach of the love of God. Amen.
Thank you Lily for regularly updating our board!
The Heartland Forest Service is on June 28 @11:00 am, so register today by calling the office (Rona) and leaving a message!
Attendance today-> 12 – last year->15
Sunday is the fortieth anniversary of the ELCIC’s founding. The national bishop has prepared a special sermon.
Attendance today -> 12 last year -> 19
Sermon 🔊 (audio only)
Transcript of Gospel and Sermon
More items added today to this table and a table in the Kottmeirer Room
PENTECOST SUNDAY May 24, 2026
Prayer of the Day
O God, on this day you open the hearts of your faithful people by sending into us your Holy Spirit. Direct us by the light of that Spirit, that we may have a right judgment in all things and rejoice at all times in your peace, through Jesus Christ, your Son and our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
Gospel: John 20:19-23 19
When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 20After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 21Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” 22When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”
SERMON
Maybe you like a little razzle dazzle with your Pentecost…gale force winds, flames, buzzing cacophony of voices that miraculously make sense no matter what language one speaks.
There is another Pentecost…commentators nickname the Gospel reading we heard as John’s Pentecost. True to form, John’s version is intensely intimate and human; just as is his witness that the inner life of God becomes enfleshed and lives among us. We can identify with people feeling dispirited and directionless.
We know about sitting with others in collective grief, when words fail or maybe they just fill the space we don’t know what else to do with.
We’ve been close enough to other humans to feel their warm and damp breath on our own skin.
Jesus appears among his followers when they are at their lowest and he stands with them. He shows them his wounds—death is still real yet here is Jesus, raised from the dead.
Jesus speaks peace to them…and he breathes his own warm moist breath upon his followers—-receive the Spirit; this advocate who will be with you forever to teach, guide and comfort—this Spirit who will gather and gift a faith. community to carry on Jesus’ work.
Dr. Karoline Lewis has devoted her academic career to the study of John’s Gospel and she observes something here…there is no sending us to do the work without first imparting the Spirit within and among us.
Dr. Lewis’s colleague Cody Sanders connects more dots for us by point out that the word used to describe Jesus’ breathing Spirit is the same one used when scripture speaks of God breathing life into the first humans.
Aren’t we a lot like those sequestered behind locked doors?
Dismayed by absurd cruelty in the world?
Appalled by co-religionists calling for violence and maligning the hungry instead of feeding them?
Dispirited because the enormity of the work exhausts us?
Discouraged and harbouring dread that this just might be as good as it gets?
Aren’t we also a lot like those first followers because Jesus is present with us, showing us glimpses of resurrection even though wounds aren’t healed?
Because in baptism and it’s daily recollection we’re promised God’s Spirit among us all and within each of us
Because we also are called to proclaim Christ in Word and deed, to work for justice and peace and to care for the world God made and so loves?
Amen
Seventh Sunday of Easter May 17, 2026
Prayer of the Day
O God of glory, your Son Jesus Christ suffered for us and ascended to your right hand. Unite us with Christ and each other in suffering and in joy, that all the world may be drawn into your bountiful presence, through Jesus Christ, our Saviour and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
Gospel: John 17:1-11
1 After Jesus had spoken these words [to his disciples,] he looked up to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, 2 since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. 3 And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. 4 I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. 5 So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.
6 “I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. 7 Now they know that everything you have given me is from you, 8 for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you, and they have believed that you sent me. 9 I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. 10 All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I have been glorified in them. 11 And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.”
SERMON
Years ago, the journal Spirituality and Health reported that just knowing someone is praying for you has physical and psychological benefits. Many of us have folk who pray for us every day. Just knowing that might make us feel more connected and cared for.
There is a downside—my brother tells me that when he visits corporate headquarters for the airline he works for-in the Southern U.S.- he hears folk say “I will pray for you”. In that region of the country, “I will pray for you” can convey condescension and ‘judginess’.
When I read about a public official offering thoughts and prayers in the aftermath of a school shooting or other incident of gun violence, I wonder if the gesture is performative. Folk from Minnesota often say, “sometimes those prayers need feet too”. So what about this lengthy prayer Jesus prays on our behalf? Considering it was written down nearly 100 years after Jesus lived on the planet, and that transcription services and voice-to-text apps weren’t available we might want a bit more perspective.
The prayer reads like a sermon. We don’t know where the disciples were in the garden when Jesus prayed. The words even seem to bend in on themselves (a trait of John’s Gospel writing style) and what we mistake for repetition is actually taking us to other layers of meaning. For now, let’s attend to one theme—-God with us in hard times.
Immediately before Jesus prays, he warns his followers that hard times are coming. So Jesus prays on behalf of his first followers and those who are part of the community that John’s Gospel is written for. Jesus also prays for us; especially the community of faith. We overhear that God has given Jesus as the Word made flesh…that Jesus has taught and given a life giving word and that the followers hang on to those words—they are entrusted to us.
The Gospel readings for the last two Sundays set the stage for the season of Pentecost; in which we anticipate the Spirit of God—The Spirit of the risen Christ. We attune our hearts to listen what the Spirit has to say to the community of faith. We keep going back to the words of Jesus and to Jesus himself as God’s Word enfleshed and among us…and how that Spirit of God comes along side us to continue teaching, comforting and calling us into God’s work of blessing and saving the world.
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St. Matthew's Evangelical Lutheran Church, Welland, Ontario, Canada 
City of Welland Flowerbed (Broadway Ave and Reg.54) commemorating our 150th Anniversary (photo taken June 2-26)