Passion and Compassion ~ A Maundy Thursday Message

Good Friday Spiritual Practices For Children. Photo T.Brotsky

Greetings and blessings to you, as you prepare for the high holy days that lie ahead.

Tonight begins the Paschal Triduum, the Christian retelling of Jesus’ last supper with his friends, his trials and suffering, his crucifixion, and his resurrection from the dead.

I have always loved observing Maundy (or Holy) Thursday, with the sharing of communion together. I am always moved at the realization that Jesus welcomes to his table the friends who are about to betray him, abandon him, and deny him. Not only does Jesus welcome them: he also serves them.

And he gives them a new commandment ( the name “Maundy” comes from a corruption of the Latin “mandatum”, meaning commandment). That commandment is simple: to love one another.

It’s something to cling to, as we enter these final days. That Jesus’ willingness to undergo the passion (meaning suffering), is rooted in his compassion (meaning, to suffer with).

Passion and Compassion

The arc of the three days before us is grounded in, and carried by, and finds its fulfillment in, love. A love that is radically self-giving. A love that suffers with all the ways Jesus’ body continues to be broken in our own time and place. A love that will not back down from confronting the death-dealing forces of empire. A love so strong, that it can bring life again, unexpected and paradoxical, in places of loss and death.

May you know that love, deep within you, and flowing through you, as you follow Jesus to the cross, and then discover again the empty tomb.

And, may you remember that Easter comes not because of the amount of work you put in – but purely by the grace and power of God. I pray that you will be pulled by the Holy Spirit into the story once again, letting it carry you and your community of faith through all the services and events and prayers and vigils and and and… to a time of rest and restoration after Easter!

Deep blessings,
Rev. Michelle Slater
LeaderSHIFT Regional Minister

Pre-PMRC AGM Gathering for Ministers, with Rev. Scott Reynolds and Rev. Michelle Slater

Clergy friends,

We are thrilled to be offering a gathering for you, in the days immediately prior to the Pacific Mountain Regional Council’s 2024 Annual General Meeting!

Deep Dive - A time for Ministry Personnel pre-PMRC AGM
with Growth Animator Rev. Scott Reynolds and LeaderSHIFT’s Rev. Michelle Slater

May 29-30, 2024

Come to Vancouver BC a day early to explore how we are called to minister and lead in this time and place, post-pandemic. How did you embrace ministry during the pandemic, and what did you learn? What do we want to lament, and what do we want to ask God’s blessings on? How can we support one another in the challenging work of ministry leadership today?

Begins Wed. May 29 at 1 pm, and ends Thursday, May 30 with lunch

Location: St. Andrew’s-Wesley United Church, Downtown Vancouver BC.

Cost: $50

Registration coming soon!

Contact Rev. Michelle Slater if any questions, in the meantime: MSlater@united-church.ca

Crosses and Hearts

Dear Friends,

You may have noticed that this year, Ash Wednesday (the beginning of the season of Lent), and Valentine’s Day (the secular holiday celebrating LURVE), fall on the same day, this year.

It made me wonder: what does preparing for the mystery of Easter have to do with the celebration of love?   

 
Maybe the life of Valentinus of Rome holds a clue. While there is not a lot of reliable information about “St” Valentine, legends note that he was a priest (and possibly a bishop), and an evangelist, in the third-century church in Rome. This put him at risk, in a time when Christianity was illegal and Christians were persecuted by the Roman empire. In fact, the day we celebrate as his saint day, February 14, is the date of his execution by the Emperor Claudius II, for the crimes of evangelism and refusing to renounce his Christian faith.
 
He was also a healer, and there are several stories of him healing a blind girl – in one version, the daughter of a judge before whom he was tried, and in another, the daughter of his jailor. It is in one of these stories, that the saint wrote a note to the girl, saying, “from your Valentine”.
 
But my favourite legend about Valentine, is that he would defy the Emperor’s temporary ban on marriages, by secretly performing Christian weddings. Apparently military-age men were in short supply those days, and there was a custom that newly married men would not be required to join the military for a period of time. So Valentine’s secret weddings would then exempt the grooms from being conscripted into the Roman army, and being sent away to war. The legend adds that in order to remind the men of their vows to their spouse and of God’s love, Valentine would give them hearts cut out of parchment paper.
 
In the Godly Play telling of the story of St. Valentine, we say that “we remember Valentine because he loved so well, for God.” I suspect it’s no accident that loving so well, for Valentine, involved giving his very life for that love – just like the One he followed and proclaimed. The heart and the cross are interwoven, it turns out.

It is always powerful for me to receive the sign of the cross in ashes on my forehead on Ash Wednesday. Because, as Wendy Claire Barrie writes, “For me, the cross of ashes I receive on my forehead on Ash Wednesday is intimately connected with the cross of oil we receive in the same spot at our baptism.  Here’s the heart of it: From Love we come, and to Love we return.” We are beloved, and we are frail, imperfect humans who will one day die and return to the earth and to the one who made us. The heart and the cross are inextricably linked, in the life of Jesus, in the life of St. Valentine, and in our own lives.

I can only hope, and pray, and live, so that when I have returned to dust, returned to God, returned to Love, that I may be remembered for loving well, for God.

Knowing you are gearing up for book studies, discussion groups, special liturgy, and more for this season, you are in my prayers – for strength, sustenance, and deep peace, on the road to Jerusalem.

And, if you’re looking for your own Lenten practice, feel free to join in the following:

 
Deep blessings in this hard, holy, life-giving season ahead, 

Michelle