This past Saturday, five of us – Tom and Ron, Megan, Joe and myself – attended the Annual Gathering of the SoCal/NV UCC conference as observers. This is a conference that includes 138 churches. It was held at the Samoan Congregational Christian Church in the City of Carson. I estimate about 400 people in attendance. I would encourage you to talk to any or all of the MCCV folks that attended for their insights and experiences.

I will speak for myself as we come to celebrate Pentecost Sunday, the birthing of the Christian church by the Holy Spirit. I have to share the experience of two UCC elected members and executive officers of the Collegium, a ruling Council of the UCC. One was James Moos of Wider Church Ministries. Wider Church Ministries is one of four Covenanted Ministries in the United Church of Chris that supports congregations and the other settings of the church in developing relationships with a wider church that is global, multiracial and multicultural, open and affirming, and accessible to all. Check them out online (http://www.ucc.org/wcm/). They are involved in global ministries in partnership with the Disciples of Christ, immigration and refugee issues, AIDS, a child sponsorship program, the Genesis program. The other was Rev. M. Linda Jaramillo, the executive minister of the United Church of Christ’s Justice and Witness Ministries. Check them out (http://www.ucc.org/jwm/) as well.

I heard two talks on justice, the caliber of which I have not heard since I was a Jesuit years ago. Both speakers spoke on topics of passionate concern to me: immigration, solidarity with the poor and hungry, and global climate change. Both stressed Earthcare and respect for life emerging from the gospel values of solidarity with all life and the poor. When Rev. Jaramillo mentioned the UCC commitment to Mission Earth, in which the denomination has planted more than 41,000 trees (to reduce carbon emissions), put in over 230,000 hours of UCC care for the earth, and written nearly 21,000 letters to politicians and government officials on climate change, I was moved to tears. And this was merely one justice issue connected to numerous others, including an immigration summit at Centro Romero in San Ysidro in June. I hope some of us might attend. Justice and compassionate care for the least, years ago, drew me into ministry to seek ordination. It was my desire to serve Christ among the poor and the oppressed that led me into ministry, and in the last five years I have broadened my list of the oppressed to include human mistreatment of the Earth and all life on the planet. To the say the least, I was favorably impressed and my faith was stirred. Do ask other attendees about their experiences.

This Sunday is Pentecost. My sermon is entitled “The Spirit Births the Church.” The Spirit has been active in the birth of Jesus, his baptism, his ministry, and death and resurrection. And the Spirit is naturally involved in our lives. As I have been working on my sermon, I asked a question: “What is Christianity?” And I found an answer that resonates with my faith: Slavoj Zizik, listed as one of the top one hundred global thinkers writes, “What is Christianity? It’s the Holy Spirit. What is the Holy Spirit? It’s an egalitarian community of believers who are linked by love for each other, and who only have their own freedom and responsibility to do it.” His vision conforms to Jesus’ vision of God’s reign as a democracy of love which is led by the Holy Spirit to a ministry of radical inclusive love and compassionate care for all life.

Join me on this birthday of the Church. Bring a friend with you to join us in fellowship and worship of God.

May God bless you with the unrest of the Holy Spirit.

Peace,

Rev. Bob

We celebrate Mothers’ Day this Sunday. The holiday of Mothers’ Day was commemorated in 1908 when Anna Jarvis celebrated a memorial for her deceased mother, and she attempted to make it a national holiday. By 1920, Mothers’ Day had become commercialized as we know it today. Taking the commercialization away, it becomes a celebration of all mothers. Each of us has had a mother who carried us for nine months in her womb and gave birth to us. For those of us who have lost our mothers, it becomes even more significant to remind those whose mother are living to honor them.

As human beings, we have a need to speak about God, and we speak about God with metaphors. The dominant metaphors for God through much of human history have been male: God as Father. Let me first say that God is beyond all language and description, for God is infinite mystery. But practically, we need human images to speak about God. As I said, patriarchal culture has elected to use male images. But there is a strong tradition within our biblical heritage to speak about as God as Mother and with female metaphors.

Here are a few quotations:

Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! (Isaiah 49:15)

As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you; and you will be comforted over Jerusalem. (Isaiah 66:13)

Or from Jesus: Jesus speaks about God as Feminine Wisdom who sends messengers, and like a mother hen who wants to gather her children under her wings (Luke 13:34) or the woman who places the yeast secretly in fifty pounds of flour. (Luke 13:20-21)

Our God is neither male nor female, both male and female and more because we are made in the image of God. Those who claim that God is only male have excluded and denigrated female experience. I remember in a workshop years ago, a woman clergy speak how difficult it was for her to say “Our Father” since her father had physically abused her. She resorted to “Our Mother” and that was an image meaningful in her prayer experience of God. Here at MCC in the Valley, we practice an inclusive use of language to speak about God since we are male, female, and transgendered. And we experience God in our own gendered language but realize that God is always beyond language. God is like a “father” and God is like a “mother.” And God is infinitely more than the metaphor of God as a father or mother.

This Sunday let us remember our mothers and that God, like a mother, will never forget us.  “As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you; and you will be comforted.”  God, like our mothers, has given us life and will never forget us.

After service, we hold a Mothers Day Potluck Barbecue. Please bring a side dish or beverages to share. We provide hot dogs, buns, and condiments.

Rev. Megan More will preach a sermon entitled “A Mother’s Love.” Bring a friend to join our worship and fellowship.

Peace,

Rev. Bob

Here we are again at Mother’s Day, when, naturally, we celebrate all mothers, especially our own. But there is much more to that than just the women who bore us. There are also those who raised us, adopted us, loved us, sacrificed for us. Mothers come then in all forms, sizes, looks, colors and creeds. But the one thing they all have in common is that love for their children, and the willingness to sacrifice themselves if necessary for their child.

That is how I see God, and from God, Christ, willing to sacrifice God’s self in Christ for our salvation and liberation from sin. That kind of love is also eternal, non-judgmental and complete. Just as a mother will love her child no matter what, defending her child no matter what, God does that for us also.

But a mother is also not necessarily defined by sex. A mother is defined by heart and spirit. Single fathers become mothers in their own way, needing to fill all roles for their children. Same sex male parents also show they are more than just two “dads”, but two “moms” as well.

So that “mother” is within all of us to some degree, especially in how we love, and why we love, and what that love means in our lives.

Celebrate that Mother in us all this Sunday, but especially for that certain, special Mother in our own lives. Honor them, living or not, for without them, we wouldn’t be here.

May God bless you all,

Rev. Megan More, M.Div
Clergy on Staff

There have been some remarkable things that happened in the last couple of weeks. New Zealand and France have legalized same-sex marriage, bringing up the number of nations that allow same-sex marriage to 14. In the United States, Rhode Island is the most recent state to legalize same-sex marriage, bringing the number of states to 10 and the District of Columbia. We may also see Illinois and Delaware join the ranks. And if the Supreme Court returns the Prop 8 case to California, that will put the number of states to 13 which will cover nearly half of the US population.

Also, this week the National Basketball player Jason Collins came out as gay, and the news has been generally positive except for a few instances of name calling by the religious right. Coming out normalizes our lives in society. I want to share the comments message to me on Facebook by one my former heterosexual Methodist students, now clergy in Oklahoma. A number of years ago, Coy took my Queer Theology class that I teach every other year Claremont School of Theology. He writes,

I experienced something really amazing yesterday in a hospital waiting room while listening to two really large “red neck” mechanics talking about Jason Collins coming out. It was amazing hearing their tones of voice change from a hateful judgmental tone, to a tone of “Things have changed, I don’t quite understand it, but my heart is changing too.” By the end of the conversation they weren’t waving rainbow flags by any means, but they weren’t angry or hateful either. Thank God for people like you who have helped move me in a more Christ like direction. Thank you for the tools and the knowledge you share.

Coy’s words are a living parable on the mission and evolution of MCC in the Valley. It is the end of the ghettoized LGBT church. Now don’t get me wrong, we are not stopping being a welcoming church to LGBT folks. We will actively continue this outreach, but we proclaim each week that we are a radically inclusive church open to all. That means we are evolving an outreach to the wider heterosexual community. It is by engaging the wider community as LGBT folks that change comes about. I would say that none of us dreamt we’d be where we are today on marriage equality. It is because we did not hide our lives, but proclaimed that our lives were graced and loving as many others.

Next week as part our ongoing discernment about becoming an MCC/UCC church, six of us will be attending the Southern California Conference Gathering of the UCC. We will have stories to share about our experiences.

We are still collecting items for our Yard Sale on May 18th. Please bring them to help offset the cost of the stucco work on the building and the replacement of the lattice Atrium with a Pergola-style Atrium.

This week the title of my sermon is “Grace Set Me Free: For What?” Come and explore how God’s grace is alive and surrounding your lives. Grace provides the miracle of the unexpected if you remain open to God’s grace.

Come and bring a friend to join us for worship and fellowship.

Peace,

Rev. Bob

Last week James Stuart delivered a wonderful sermon for Earth Day. I want to explore further some of themes about the Christian environmental movement. So I share a meditation reflection from Father Richard Rohr, a Franciscan, who sent this out on Wednesday morning (April 24). It gives you a glimpse of my sermon entitled, “In the Image of God.”

When I first joined the Franciscan order in 1961, my novice master told me we could not cut down a tree without permission of the Provincial (the major religious superior). It seemed a bit extreme, but then I realized that a little bit of Francis of Assisi had lasted 800 years! We still had his awareness that wilderness is not just “wilderness.” Nature is not just here for our consumption and profit. The natural is of itself also the supernatural. Both natural elements and animals are not just objects for our plunder. Francis granted true dignity and subjectivity to nature by calling it Brother Sun, Sister Fire, Brother Wind, and Sister Water. No wonder he is the patron saint of ecology and care for creation.

Once you grant subjectivity to the natural world, everything changes. It’s no longer an object with you as the separated and superior subject, but you share subjectivity with it. You address it with a title of respect, and allow it to speak back to you! For so long creation has been a mere commodity at best, a useless or profitable wilderness depending on who owned it. With the contemplative mind, questions of creation are different than those of consumption and capitalism, and they move us to appreciate creation for its own sake, not because of what it does for me or how much money it can make me. For those with spiritual eyes, the world itself has to be somehow the very “Body of God.” What else could it be for one who believes in “creationism”? As Paul puts it, “From the beginning until now, the entire creation has been groaning in one great act of giving birth” (Romans 8:22), so it is not only an evolutionary body but an eternally pregnant body besides. God’s creation is so perfect that it continues to create itself from within. The Franciscans were not wrong in not cutting down ordinary trees without a very good reason.

I just discovered two weeks ago, one of the worst polluters of the world — the Peoples Republic of China — has mandated that every person in China between the ages of five and seventy is required to plant 4 to 6 trees a year to combat the pollution generated by the country’s emission of toxic gases into the atmosphere. Trees are the lungs of the world, removing carbon emissions so that we can breathe oxygen.

This Sunday after worship we will show the award winning documentary “Call Me Malcolm.” It is a story of young girl’s transition to become a trans-man, his attempt to understand gender in our society, his falling love with a woman, and his ordination as clergy in the United Church of Christ. My students at Claremont School of Theology and CSUN loved this beautiful documentary and Malcolm’s journey to accept himself as an original blessing of God. We will show this movie at noon time.

Come and bring a friend to join us for worship and fellowship.

Peace,

Rev. Bob

On my Facebook page, I have the following quotation:

“I wish more people would care for the Earth as much as they care for whom they believed created it.” It is meant to communicate how important I believe that Earth care is for myself and for all humanity. It is hoped that Christians and MCC Christians for whom God is important in their lives, would also be equally passionate about God’s creation. Finally, after four years of “being a green Jeremiah”, MCC has mentioned Earth Day and provided a few recommended sources. It is a start, but MCC leadership and churches have a long way to go to be green caretakers of the Earth. It will take an ecological conversion from MCC and many other denominations to make a meaningful impact to our current and future environmental crisis.

Earth Day celebrates its 43rd anniversary April 22. It was started in 1970 and credited to Gaylord Nelson, a Senator from the State of Wisconsin. It was a impassioned trend of thought that an environmental crisis was imminent and that human disconnection from the Earth remained at the root of the crisis. It was hoped that Earth Day would become a national grassroots teach-in day on ecological issues. This year Earth Day will be observed by more than one billion people globally. Our Earth supports life and our lives on Earth.

Earth Day, for me, combines the mystery of the Incarnation that we celebrate on Christimas when “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” and Easter when Christ’s resurrection celebrates the future of the Earth: all humanity and life with God. Earth Day represents a time for reflection on how we can reconnect with the Earth, how we can reconnect with our earth roots and how we can nourish our identities as “green Christians” who make earth care a central practice of our spirituality. One of my theological heroes, the Brazilian theologian Leonardo Boff, holds that “we are the Earth that feels, loves, and venerates.” We have a responsibility to love the Earth and all life on the earth as God loves the Earth and all life. Make this notion a central part of your prayer this week and every day.

This Sunday, our Druid clergy friend, James Stuart will preach. We will hold a special worship focused on how God loves the Earth. We will start in the garden with a blessing of the Earth and process into the sanctuary. Caring for the Earth is sharing fully in the Creator’s gift to us.

A couple of other things I need to mention. We have rescheduled our yard sale to Saturday, May 18th. Please bring items that you can contribute for the yard sale. On Friday April 20, our potluck dinner and movie will be the Oscar winning musical Les Miserables. And after worship on April 21st, we will have a potluck lunch and commemoration party for our deceased member Steve Leasure, now a friend of God in paradise. Let’s have a party for Steve.

Peace,

Rev. Bob

I apologize ahead of time that I am using a meditation from Rev. Michael Piazza’s Liberating Word meditation (4/10/13). This week I am bombarded with proof reading galley proofs of the new book, Queering Christianity, and one of the editors, Rev. Tom Bohache, fell and broke his hip; he is in a hospital in Barcelona (Spain) awaiting transportation to a hospital in the United States. Keep Tom in your prayers. So I have stepped into take over Tom’s proofing the galley texts, as well as do in the indexing guide for the book. And there is the work on the atrium.

So here is Michael Piazza’s thoughtful meditation:

There is a blog that asks, “What if God’s love really does endure forever?” Two of my favorite books are If Grace is True and another If God is Love. All three challenge us to believe things that are contrary to the evidence of our secular experience, yet, they are tenants of core Christian beliefs. To engage these truths fully, and to live as if they are real, is revolutionary and absolutely contrary to the lifestyle and patterns of modern American life.

Do we dare? Do we dare live as if God’s love endures forever, or are we stuck in patterns of belief that trap us in believing that love is tentative, fragile, and comes with an expiration date? Few of us live our lives on the edge as though we believe God’s love endures forever. We live with anxiety and fear that contradict this statement of truth offered repeatedly to us by scripture.

We are prone to trust in that which fails, disappoints, and falters, but “God’s steadfast love endures forever.” Steadfast love is such an anomaly in the culture in which we live. Divorce, disappointment, and desertion are so common that few of us are capable of fully believing in “steadfast love.”

So rare is this reality that I looked up “steadfast” and “endures” on Dictionary.com:

stead·fast [sted-fast, -fahst, -fuhst] -adjective
1. fixed in direction; steadily directed: a steadfast gaze.
2. firm in purpose, resolution, faith, attachment, etc., as a person: a steadfast friend.
3. unwavering, as resolution, faith, adherence, etc.
4. firmly established, as an institution or a state of affairs.
5. firmly fixed in place or position.

en·dure [en-door, -dyoor] verb
1. to hold out against; sustain without impairment or yielding; undergo
2. to bear without resistance or with patience; tolerate
3. to admit of; allow; bear
4. to continue to exist; last
5. to support adverse force or influence of any kind; suffer without yielding; suffer patiently
6. to have or gain continued or lasting acknowledgment or recognition, as of worth, merit or greatness

God’s love is firmly established and unwavering, and it will continue to last without yielding! So if you fully believed that, how would you live?

Why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for? Do we have faith that Jesus is the resurrection and life? Do we hold to the notion that death is not the final word and that God’s love is stronger than death? Do we believe that after we die, like Jesus, we too will rise from the dead and live on in God’s paradise? Do you love me? Then feed my sheep.

This Sunday, April 14th, we’re joined by two UCC congregants from the area conference to get to know us at MCCV. And after worship on April 21st, we will have a potluck lunch and commemoration party for our deceased member Steve Leasure, a now a friend of God in paradise. Let’s have a party for Steve.

Peace,

Rev. Bob

Holy week celebrations and Easter were wondrous spiritual events at MCCV. Our Holy Thursday Seder included the congregants from the Disciples’ Little White Chapel in Burbank, who joined us for a prayerful and festive celebration of Jesus’ last meal before his death. On the following evening, we joined the Little White Chapel for an Earth-centered commemoration of the stations of the passion and death of Christ expressed in the oppression and ecocide of the Earth. It gave us an opportunity to build bridges with another congregation. This is only the beginning of our cooperation together. On Easter Sunday, the celebration included a wonderful repertoire of music and songs, a potluck brunch, and the Easter bonnet contest which our music director Louis won.

We are now in the Easter season for the next seven weeks until Pentecost Sunday. It gives us an opportunity to explore the foundational event of our faith life. Our discipleship journey begins with that first Easter season in which the risen Jesus asked his disciples a number of questions:

Why are you weeping? For whom are you looking? Do we have faith that Jesus is the resurrection and life? Do we hold to the notion that death is not the final word and that God’s love is stronger than death? Do we believe that after we die, like Jesus, we too will rise from the dead and live on in God’s paradise? Do you love me? Then feed my sheep.

Easter disturbs us out of a spiritual complacency to spiritual awakening if we allow the risen Christ to direct these questions to us. Easter invites us to take up the ministry of Jesus where he left off. We are asked to enter the discipleship stories of the gospels and Acts of Apostles these next couple of weeks, and reflect on our commitment to the risen Christ. Are we willing to take risks for suffering humanity and injured earth? Are we willing to accompany Christ and his disciples in prayer as they renounce violence for love and take on suffering for justice and peace? Are we willing to risk forgiving those who hurt us and to have faith in the risen Christ who forgave his disciples in the Upper Room for betraying, denying, and abandoning him as he suffered and died on the cross? Easter changes everything, and if we ask and answer these questions in prayer, we will discover that we too are changed by the risen Christ. The God of Resurrection will resurrect our lives with the mission to extend God’s grace and love to all.

Last week, we took up a collection for tearing down the Atrium and refiguring it as a pergola to preserve the outer wall of the church from water damage. The planter boxes are disintegrating, and the watering is beginning to reach the foundation of the church. Last week, we received $1600 in cash and pledges. We need approximately a $1000 more. I am aware that many are on fixed incomes, and it is hard to give. I ask you to give what you can, and nothing beyond that. We enjoy the beauty of the plants and birds during our worship service. It keeps our worship of God connected to Earth and life.

After service this Sunday, Rev’s. Joe and Megan and I will lead a presentation and discussion on the Ministries of the UCC as part of our discernment Sunday series.

A couple of other things I need to mention: We will have a yard sale on Saturday, April 13th. Please bring items that you can contribute for the yard sale. On April 14th, we will be joined by two UCC congregants from the area conference to get to know us at MCCV. And finally, after worship on April 21st, we will have a potluck lunch and commemoration party for our deceased member Steve Leasure, a now a friend of God in paradise. Let’s have a party for Steve.

Peace,

Rev. Bob

We celebrate the holiest days of the Christian year–the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In a meditation “Love is stronger than death,” Henri Nouwen writes,

As I walked through the dark woods at the end of this Easter Day, full of intimate joy, I heard you call Mary Magdalene by her name and heard how you called from the shore of the lake to your friends to throw out the their nets. I also saw you entering the closed room where your disciples were gathered in fear. I saw you appearing on the mountain and at the outskirt of the village. How intimate these events really are. They are like special favors to dear friends. They were not done to impress or overwhelm anyone, but simply to show that your love is stronger than death.

O Lord, I know now that it is in silence, in a quiet moment, in a forgotten corner that you will meet me. Call me by name and speak to me a word of peace. It is in my stillest hour that you become the risen Lord to me.

God’s love is stronger than death. As we look at death in the world, we witness the death of friends and loved ones, death of holy innocents as victims of oppression and war, and the death of other life. But we look for hope at the tomb in the garden with Mary and the other disciples. We stand with Mary Magdalene, the apostle of the resurrection, grieving at the culture of death in our world. Christ the gardener calls us to a ministry of compassionate care, nurturing, and healing people and all life. By his death and resurrection, Christ became intertwined with the web of life on Earth. The Irish poet Mary Plunkett writes in “I see His Blood upon the Rose,”

I see His blood upon the rose
And in the stars the glory of His eyes;
His body gleams amid eternal snows,
His tears fell from the skies.

I saw His face in every flower,
The thunder and the singing of the birds
Are but His voice – and carven by His power
Rocks are His written words.

All pathways by His feet are worn,
His strong heart stirs the ever-beating sea,
His crown of thorns is twined with every thorn,
His cross every tree.

Christ (now resurrected and with a transformed body and life) in the garden of the resurrection, points us to look to nature to find his presence. Magdalene walked in the footsteps of Christ the gardener. She focused her ministry of compassionate care and healing of life in the life-giving of God on Easter. This is the day to celebrate that Christ is risen and present to us in all of life. Ignatius of Loyola has taught me through prayer and contemplation to find Christ transparent in all people, in all life, and in the Earth herself.

On Easter Sunday, we celebrate the central foundation of our Christian faith–Christ’s resurrection. Join us for a wonderful worship service. We ask you to bring a dish for a potluck brunch in our garden. There will also be an Easter bonnet contest after brunch, and the winner will receive an Ukranian Easter egg created by Rev. Joe. I have watched him during the last couple weeks, designing and working on them: they are beautiful.

On Easter, we take a second collection to offset costs to replace our Atrium with a new Pergola filled with plants and trees. This is to stop the damage to the foundation of the church building from the corroding planters caused by constant watering.

Come and celebrate Easter – the God event of life and compassion.

Peace,

Rev. Bob

This coming Sunday is the final Sunday of Lent — Palm Sunday. As we snuff the last candle of our Lenten wreath for chronic illnesses and all terminal conditions, we remember that Christ suffered and died for us. Even God’s child did not escape the human condition of suffering, challenges, and death on a cross. We recognize how impermanent life is and how life can deal us challenges that strain our faith.

California author and lecturer Leo Buscaglia, a professor at USC nicknamed Dr. Love, taught a course on love to undergraduate students and wrote a best-selling book on love. Buscaglia once talked about a contest he was asked to judge. The contest was to find the most caring child. The winner was a four-year old child whose next door neighbor, an elderly gentleman, just lost his wife. Witnessing the man crying in grief, the little boy went into the elderly gentleman’s yard and climbed onto his lap, and just sat there. When boy’s mother asked him what he had said to the neighbor, the four-year old said, “Nothing, I just helped him cry.”

Sometimes, our care for human beings who experience suffering and loss can be only like the child’s simple care: “I just helped him cry,” or “I just cried with him.” The ministry of being present to another is the greatest gift of love and compassion we can share with those who are suffering from a chronic and/or terminal illness. I remember when I was a young Jesuit seminarian, being present to a man dying in Calcutta, in Mother Theresa’s House of the Dying Destitute. I could not speak Bengali, nor could he speak English. He was dying, and I placed a hand on his arm and just prayed for his passage into God. He was a Hindu man who only days before was picked up off the streets in Calcutta by the Missionaries of Charity and brought to the House of Dying Destitute to die with folks around him. And this was the gift that I shared with him – being present with him as he died. I prayed for his transition into God and held him as he died. He was not alone. It was the gift of human presence that Leo Buscaglia observed in the four-year old. Sometimes if we will take the time to observe, we can learn a lot from young children.

This week is the center of our Christian experience. On Monday evening (3/25), we will hold a candle-lit Taize prayer and meditational song service at 7:30 PM in our sanctuary. On Maundy Thursday (3/28), we co-celebrate a Christian Seder at MCCV. We will be joined by congregants from Little White Chapel. We ask each household to bring a side dish, or bottle of grape juice or red wine to our dinner. We will provide lamb and chicken for the seder meal. On Good Friday (3/29), we co-celebrate an Earth-centered Tenebrae (Good Friday Service of the Passion of Christ) at Little White Chapel (1711 North Avon St, Burbank. It is the first left on Burbank Blvd., just after Hollywood Way.) In keeping with Catholic Holy Week tradition, there is NO Catholic Mass on Holy Saturday (3/30). Saturday evening 5:00 PM Mass resumes its weekly schedule on April 6.

On Easter Sunday (3/31), we celebrate the central foundation of our Christian faith – Christ’s resurrection. Join us for a wonderful worship service. We ask you to bring a dish for potluck brunch that day in our garden. There will also be an Easter bonnet contest after brunch, and the winner will receive an Ukranian Easter egg created by Rev. Joe. I have watched him during the last couple weeks on designing and working on them. They are beautiful.

Come and join us this Palm Sunday as we are present with Christ’s journey to the cross and try to be as present as the four-year old was to his grieving neighbor. We journey with Christ through the streets of Jerusalem to the demonstration in the Temple, to his final meal, arrest, and crucifixion. Be present to Christ in love and with gratitude for His great love.

Peace,

Rev. Bob

This Sunday is the fifth Sunday of Lent, and we snuff the candle out on the oppression and exploitation of the Earth. Over the last couple of centuries, humanity has moved away from seeing itself connected to the Earth and have been driven to dominate, exploit, and rape the Earth of its resources. Humans have distanced themselves from the Earth and other life through privileging itself with a dominating mission.

Celtic Christianity is a minority tradition that needs to be recovered. It is traced to Pelagius, who opposed Augustine on notions of grace and original sin, and Pelagius was forced to flee from Rome to the British Isles. Celtic Christian spirituality is indebted to Pelagius and other Celtic Christian writers. As I write a bit about his spirituality, you find themes that are recurrent in our church. Pelagius understood a Christian as one “whose door is closed no one” and “whose food is offered to all.” He believed in the goodness of the Earth, for him, the Earth did not fall into an original sin as humans fell. It was a place of God’s beauty and grace. He held to the goodness of grace and the goodness of nature.

That is why we have placed a Celtic Christian cross in our resurrection garden to remind us of the original blessing of all creation and the Earth herself. It is a cross with the very rising of the sun, for the sun rising is a reminder of Christ’s resurrection in the garden of nature and as a gift of God. The Celtic cross merges the rising sun with the cross of Christ symbolizing the wholeness of salvation in the death and resurrection of Christ. Like Pelagius, MCC in the Valley does not place any boundaries on God’s grace. We recognize that we distribute food to the homeless and feed the birds in our garden. Our food and hospitality is offered to all.

But this Sunday we are very conscious of the ravages of increasing climate change caused by human ignorance, arrogance, and greed. Pelagius and the Celtic spiritual tradition practiced a principle for us to meditate upon this week: “Let no person have more than he/she needs, and everyone will have as much as they need.” These are words of wisdom based on Jesus’ practice of God’s reign.

Every Saturday at 5 PM, we hold our Catholic mass. Tell your Catholic friends about our service.

On Monday, March 25 at 7:30 PM, we hold our Taize spiritual practice. This month we’ve moved it from Thursday to the Monday of Holy Week. Make it a Lenten practice to join us for meditational singing and prayer.

Mark your calendars: On March 28, Maundy Thursday, we co-celebrate a Christian Seder at MCCV. We will be joined by congregants from Little White Chapel. We ask each household to bring a side dish or bottle of grape juice or red wine to our dinner. We will provide lamb and chicken for the seder meal. On Good Friday (3/29), we co-celebrate an Earth-Centered Tenebrae (Good Friday Service of the Passion of Christ) at Little White Chapel (1711 North Avon St, Burbank. It is the first left on Burbank Blvd., just after Hollywood Way.

On Easter Sunday (3/31), we celebrate the central foundation of our Christian faith — Christ’s resurrection. Join us for a wonderful worship service. We ask you to bring a dish for potluck brunch that day in our garden. There will also be an Easter bonnet contest after brunch, and the winner will receive an Ukranian Easter egg created by Rev. Joe. I have watched him during the last couple weeks on designing and working on them. They are beautiful.

Come and join us this Sunday in gratitude for all you been given by God.

Peace,

Rev. Bob