Slideshow image

Dear Glen Morris United Church, 

 

This week’s words come to you as an honouring of the life and work of Walter Bruegemann, a theologian I respected greatly who recently passed away at the age of 92. He spent many decades writing, teaching, and praying and was someone I could rely on for deeply prophetic and sincere theological reflections. 

"The profane is the opposite of the sacramental. “Profane” means flat, empty, one dimensional, exhausted. The market ideology wants us to believe that the world is profane—life consists of buying and selling; weighing, measuring, and trading; and then finally sinking into death and nothingness. But Jesus presents an entirely different kind of economy, one infused with the mystery of abundance and a cruciform kind of generosity. Five thousand are fed and twelve baskets of food are left over—one for every tribe If bread is broken and shared, there is enough for all of Israel. Jesus transforms the economy by blessing it and breaking it beyond self-interest. From broken Friday bread comes Sunday abundance."

Walter Bruegemann, The Liturgy of Abundance, the Myth of Scarcity: Consumerism and Religious Life

May his memory be a blessing and may we continue to learn and reflect on the ways we can create and nurture all that is sacramental and holy. 

As we welcome this warmth of summer, I hope that you will find God in the gentle breeze, the wondrous glow of fireflies, the lush abundance of Creation in full bloom.

May there be ease in feeling God’s presence,

may prayers as simple as gazing upon the beauty of a flower flow through you,

may the Peace of Christ be with you. 

 

Yours in Christ, 

Michiko