McPhail Baptist Church
Sunday June 14, 2020
"What A Friend We Have In Jesus"
Sue Sparks
Favourite Hymns
Ernie and Lynda Cox
Jesus Saves
We have heard the joyful sound: Jesus saves! Jesus saves!
Spread the tidings all around: Jesus saves! Jesus saves!
Bear the news to every land, climb the steeps and cross the waves;
Onward! ‘tis our Lord’s command; Jesus saves! Jesus saves!
Give the winds a might voice: Jesus saves! Jesus saves!
Let the nations now rejoice—Jesus saves! Jesus saves!
Shout salvation full and free, highest hills and deepest caves;
This our song of victory: Jesus saves! Jesus saves!
The King of Love My Shepherd Is
The King of love my Shepherd is, whose goodness faileth never;
I nothing lack if I am His and He is mine forever.
Where streams of living water flow, my ransomed soul He leadeth,
And where the verdant pastures grow, with food celestial feedeth.
And where the verdant pastures grow, with food celestial feedeth.
And so through all the length of days Thy goodness faileth never,
Good Shepherd, may I sing Thy praise within Thy house forever.
Saviour, Like A Shepherd Lead us
Saviour, like a Shepherd lead us, much we need thy tender care;
In thy pleasant pastures feed us, for our use thy folds prepare:
Blessed Jesus, blessed Jesus, thou hast bought us, thine we are;
Blessed Jesus, blessed Jesus, thou hast bought us, thine we are.
We are thine, do thou befriend us, be the guardian of our way;
Keep thy flock, from sin defend us, seek us when we go astray;
Blessed Jesus, blessed Jesus, hear, O hear us when we pray;
Blessed Jesus, blessed Jesus, hear, O hear us when we pray.
"That Which Survives"
Rev. Steve Zink
“Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another;
all will be thrown down”
(Matt 24:2)
Announcements
-We are excited to now offer an e-transfer option for McPhail offerings. If you would like to make use of this option, offerings can be sent via online banking to offerings@mcphailbaptist.ca If possible, please include your envelope number in the memo line. A special thanks to Steve Sparks and Samantha Helman for setting this up for us! For those who would prefer mailing in their offering, funds can be sent via post to: McPhail Baptist Church, 249 Bronson Ave, Ottawa, ON. K1R 6H6 We are deeply thankful for your ongoing support of this ministry!
"Immortal, Invisible"
Sue Sparks
Immortal, invisible, God only wise,
In light inaccessible hid from our eyes,
Most blessed, most glorious, the Ancient of Days,
Almighty, victorious, thy great name we praise.
To all life thou givest, to both great and small;
In all life thou livest, the true life of all;
We blossom and flourish as leaves on the tree,
And wither and perish—but naught changeth thee.
Great Father of glory, pure Father of light,
Thine angels adore thee, all veiling their sight;
All praise we would render; O help us to see
‘Tis only the splendour of light hideth thee.
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Luke 5:33-39 (NRSV)
33 Then they said to him, “John’s disciples, like the disciples of the Pharisees, frequently fast and pray, but your disciples eat and drink.” 34 Jesus said to them, “You cannot make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them, can you? 35 The days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days.” 36 He also told them a parable: “No one tears a piece from a new garment and sews it on an old garment; otherwise the new will be torn, and the piece from the new will not match the old. 37 And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the new wine will burst the skins and will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. 38 But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins. 39 And no one after drinking old wine desires new wine, but says, ‘The old is good.’”
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"Live Well, Laugh Often, Love Much"
Rev. Ernie Cox
"Live well, laugh often, love much."
Some people have mistakenly thought that the words come from Ralph Waldo Emerson
but actually, they come from Bessie Anderson Stanley, who wrote a poem in 1904 entitled "Success", and the first line reads:
"He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much."
Here at home we have a plaque hanging above the door to our condo, so that we see the words every time we go out. The plaque was given to us by some dear friends who are two of the most successful people I know. Not because they’re famous or rich, but because they know how to live well, they laugh often, and they love much.
I
Let’s take the second phrase first, “Laugh Often.”
I find myself laughing and smiling more now that I’m a grandfather. It’s said that children laugh more than 100 times a day, but when we get to be adults we laugh maybe 12-15 times a day. The wonderful thing about the laughter and joy of a child, is that it’s infectious. And sometimes just the memory of something a child does or says, will bring a spontaneous laugh or smile.
Some people make the mistake of thinking that joy comes when everything in life falls into place. Then there will be joy and laughter. But when does life ever perfectly fall into place?
There’s a piece of advice, written in the form of an essay—it's called "The Station." Some people are traveling by train. Through the windows they take in the passing scenery. But uppermost in their minds is their arrival at the station.
The scenery is almost ignored, because all the people can think about is when they get to the station—then flags will be waving and bands playing. All their dreams will come true—all the pieces of life will fit together—their ducks will all be lined up, the mortgage paid.
Each person is thinking, "When I put the last child through college, when I finally have that job I’ve wanted, when I finally reach retirement. When we finally get to the station, oh, everything will be just right. If we can just make it to the station.”
But then the writer of the essay goes on to write: “Sooner or later we must come to the realization, that there is no station here on earth to arrive at once and for all—because "The joy of life is in the trip." I live with a woman who I’m sure laughs more than a 100 times a day. For she learned long ago that, “The joy of life is in the trip.
One time some Pharisees came to Jesus, and asked Him why He and His disciples didn’t fast. "We fast a lot," said the Pharisees, “but you and your disciples don’t fast.”
“Well,” said Jesus, "It’s like this. Let’s say you’re at a wedding party. You don’t stand around in sackcloth and ashes, looking all gloomy when you’re at the reception. How can the people at the party be gloomy when the bridegroom is with them,” said Jesus.
In other words, “How can my disciples be gloomy if they’re with me?” said Jesus.
Mondays and Thursdays were market days and there would be more people about than on other days. Some of the Pharisees chose the market days of Monday and Thursday to parade through town with white ash smeared on their faces, so that the people would know they were fasting.
But Jesus wasn't the fasting type. He despised that kind of display. Besides, He enjoyed Himself too much. I mean, you don't get a reputation like He did for eating and drinking too much, by depriving yourself of food and drink. The only record we have in the Bible of Jesus fasting is when He was out in the desert struggling with the Temptations.
It doesn't tell us in the Bible that Jesus laughed often—the writers of the gospels didn't think those kinds of details about Jesus needed to be told--but I suspect that Jesus did laugh often. After all, He loved children, and children love adults who know how to laugh.
Remember that saying from the Rabbis: "At the judgment day we will be called to account for all the good things we might have enjoyed but didn't."
That's the first thing: "Laugh often."
II
Here’s the second point: Live well. Laugh often, and live well. Charlie Brown is standing at Lucy’s psychiatric stand where the sign says, The Psychiatrist Is In. The charge is five cents. Charlie says, “I need help—tell me a great truth. Tell me something about living that will help me.”
Lucy says, “Do you ever wake up at night and want a drink of water?” “Sure,” says Charlie, “quite often.” Lucy says, “Well, when you’re getting a drink of water in the dark, always rinse out the glass because you never know, there might be a bug in it.” Then she says to Charlie: “Five cents, please.”
Charlie walks away saying, “Great truths are even more simple than I thought. Well, actually, Charlie is right, because great truths are simpler than we think. There’s no great secret to living well. And it doesn’t take a psychiatrist to figure it out either.
Some of the best answers for living well are found right in the Bible itself. And particularly in the Sermon on the Mount, where in one place Jesus says, “The sun shines and the rain falls on the righteous person and on the unrighteous person .”
That tells us that we learn to live well when we come to accept that life isn't always fair. And if we’re honest about it, we know that from life experience, don't we, that some of the worst things happen to some of the nicest people, and some really good things happen to people who aren’t so nice, which is the way life sometimes goes, whether we like it or not.
But some people have trouble accepting that reality. I remember seeing a woman on television. She was from Florida and she was commenting on the fact that Florida had more than its fair share of hurricanes. She said to the interviewer: "We're nice people, we don't deserve this."
Well, truth is, nobody deserves a hurricane. But as someone has said, “Thinking that life is always going to treat you fairly, is like thinking that the bull won’t charge you because you’re a vegetarian.” Living life well is coming to understand that the sun shines and the rain falls on the just and on the unjust. That bad things happen to good people.
But I come back to the Peanuts comic strip. In her 1989 book, Good Grief: The Story of Charles Schultz, Rheta Johnson, Shultz’s biographer, wrote this: “He spent a lifetime perfecting failure."
And commenting on the subject of failure, Schultz himself wrote: "All the loves in the strip are unrequited; all the baseball games lost; all the test scores are D-minuses; the Great Pumpkin never comes; and the football is always pulled away."
And that’s true. But as one newspaper columnist wrote after Charles Schultz died, “Peanuts' wasn't really about failure. It was about perseverance.” Which is what good old Charlie Brown always did, didn’t he. He persevered. He knew that life isn’t always fair---and certainly wasn’t to him, but he kept on trying anyway.
Standing there trying to fly that kite that somehow won’t fly. Yet he keeps trying day after day, until the rain forces him inside. Standing there every year holding the football, and every year it’s pulled away. Charlie Brown certainly knew that life isn't always fair.
And Jesus knew that life isn’t always fair. It certainly wasn’t to Him. Yet, He’s the one who said, “In this world you will have tribulation (unfairness) but be of good cheer! I have overcome the world.” In other words, with faith in Him, we find strength to meet the tribulations of the world when the world is unfair.
But let me say something else on this point of living well. Something else we must do to live well, is to let things go.
I have some file folders in my office filing cabinet. One contains some not-so-nice letters and emails and notes people have sent me over the years—just remember, you can't please everyone—and another one contains all the nice and wonderful cards, notes, letters and emails, people have sent me over the years.
But you know, the file with the not-so-nice notes and letters is so very small, that sometimes I can barely find it. But the one with the nice notes is nice and full. Which one do you think I should dwell on if I want to live well?
Anne Lamott writes that forgiveness means it finally becomes unimportant that we hit back. We let it go. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you want to have lunch with the person. "But if you keep hitting back, you stay trapped," she writes.
Jesus spoke much about forgiveness. He never said it was easy to let things go. But He did seem to know that it’s necessary to let things go if we want to live well.
Some people are unable to forgive and let things go, because they insist on being right. And people who insist on always being right, end up like those wineskins Jesus talked about in our text.
You can't put new wine into old wineskins, says Jesus. You need new wineskins for new wine. New wineskins are flexible, but old wineskins are rigid, brittle, inflexible. And for those persons who are always right then it’s a certainty they will be somewhat rigid and inflexible.
Bruce Larsen, the Presbyterian preacher and writer, used to say that we should be asking
ourselves this question as we go through life: "Is it becoming any easier to say I was wrong?"
That’s the second thing.
Laugh often, and Live Well.
III
Now here's the third part of Bessie Anderson Stanley's formula for success: "Love Much."
Laugh often, live well, and love much.
I read about a man who said that one of his goals in life was to have at least eight people
attend his funeral without once checking their watches. But the truth is that if at the end of our lives we have loved much, no one will check their watches at our funeral, because their minds will be too much occupied in thinking about the good things we’ve done for others along the way.
There’s a little story about Gandhi, who stepped aboard a train one day, and as he did so, one of his shoes slipped off and landed on the train track. He was unable to retrieve it from the track as the train was starting to move.
To the amazement of his companions, Gandhi calmly took off his other shoe and threw it on the track near to where his first shoe had fallen. When asked why he did so, Gandhi smiled and said: “The poor man who finds the shoe lying on the track, will now have a pair of shoes he can use.”
Gandhi wasn’t a Christian, he was a Hindu. But he learned much from the life of Jesus,
and the teaching of Jesus in the Sermon On The Mount. That the life of a Christian, at least to some degree, has to be a life of service. We have to do things for others, because that’s what Jesus asked us to do.
When Jesus came into this world, the people of his time were burdened with many rules and regulations imposed upon them by their religion: Jesus said, “Woe unto you, you experts of the Law, You load people down with burdens they can hardly bear.”
Jesus didn’t have a list of burdens for people to bear—in fact, He gives us one burden only, and that burden is the burden of love. And what Jesus asks us to do is to take His burden and in some way, carry it for Him, which is simply to love much in His name.
And when we do that, we find it not be a burden at all, because as Jesus said, His burden is different from other burdens—His burden is light.
As a wise person once said, “When we help someone up the mountain, we can’t help but get a little closer to the top ourselves.”
“Live well, laugh often, love much.”
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Special Music: "His Yoke Is Easy"
Ernie and Lynda Cox
Note from Ernie: Sue and I had scheduled a Bach duet for this Sunday, but in that I didn't get in enough rehearsal time to do it properly, it required a postponement, and Lynda and I had to pinch-hit. The Bach duet will show up in due time. :-)
Coping with the Corona Crisis
(A series of responses from our McPhail congregants)
Ernie and Lynda Cox
1.) All of us are confined to our homes. How are you spending your time?
Ernie: I’m in charge of keeping the kitchen clean and tidy. I make coffee for Lynda every morning, and dutifully walk downstairs to the front lobby to fetch the newspaper for her. Fortunately, my domestic duties are light, which allows me time to read, read, and read, as well as spend some time on music. The rest of my time is spent in preparing for Sundays, which, to my surprise, has turned out to be as much if not more work than preparing for Sundays in the usual way when we were all attending church.
Lynda: Before baby Spencer arrived I was happily baking for Charlie and even for Sam and Jim. I loved doing it….cookies, scones, Maritime Brown bread baguettes, brownies, cinnamon rolls, pasta (yes, homemade pasta), I tried so many things and had lots of fun tasting everything I made. I tried sourdough but finally gave up. I just couldn’t seem to get it right. I’ve read lots of books, Zoomed with my Book Club and walked my way around our beautiful city. Presently I am the only member of the Cox Home Team able to work and quite frankly I’m run off my feet. The real estate market is so crazy at the moment. There are not enough houses on the market but the buyers are plentiful so bidding wars are common. Most homes sell for their asking price and many sell over asking. Did I mention that it’s crazy? I am hoping to switch jobs with Jimmy and start looking after Charlie. Jimmy and his young bones can run circles around me and will not have any trouble managing our real estate clients. I on the other hand can have fun with Charlie all morning then take a nap with him in the afternoon. Bring it on, I say.
- How are you staying connected?
Ernie: Our household is almost an Apple store. The entire family, Ernie, Lynda, Jordan, Pam, Jimmy, Kate, have iPhones, iPads, and Mac computers, so we’re never more than a button press or mouse click away. We get regular Facetime calls from Ollie in Rome, and Charlie in Ottawa. My dear Aunt Ethel used to say “We’re living in a wonderful age.” Insofar as having the ability to connect instantaneously with our loved ones around the world, yes, we are living in a wonderful age.
Lynda: All of the above. Our boys are experts at taking pictures and videos, setting up FaceTime calls and staying up close. The only thing missing is the physical contact. I’m starving for their hugs.
- Some people have stopped following the Coronavirus news, suffering from an overload of information, much of it not encouraging. How are you handling all the news?
Ernie: What with CBC, CTV, MSNBC, the New York Times, the Ottawa Citizen and the
Internet, I now limit myself to a quick glance at MSNBC, just to see what noxious
nonsense Trump has been up to, and I also receive the NYT on my Kindle every
morning at 4 a.m. So, I’m well informed, but not overloaded.
Lynda: For the first time in a long time I started a subscription to the Citizen. Every day at 6 a.m. or earlier, I get the news and lots of puzzles to work on. Sometimes at night I catch the National on CBC but it all seems the same and I can’t stand the commercials. Usually I’m too sleepy anyway. Also, I find that I am not as keen to know everything about the virus as I was at the beginning of the Pandemic. It’s enough just to watch the numbers come down here and in Italy.
- Have you been able to find a silver lining in the current situation?
Ernie: Well, having scored on the introverted side of the Myers-Briggs test, I have always worked to a certain degree in solitude, so, being forced to hang around the house a little more is not a great hardship. I think the Covid crisis has caused many of us to slow down somewhat and think about what really matters in life—family, health, cultivating good values, and because we’re all in this together—thinking more of others.
Lynda: I find that it has given us all something in common. Something to share. Contact with family and friends has increased and I love that. Baking has been fun, especially the Maritime Brown Bread that I make every few days. Downside is that I’ve been tasting so much that my
corona curves now need flattening….Yikes
- What things do you especially miss?
Ernie: Sitting in one of my many coffee haunts in the Byward Market and around
the city.I miss getting together for coffee with my friend Bob Eady, and the same
for my friend Graeme Barber. I profoundly miss not being able to pick up
Charlie, hug him, or have him over to our place overnight. And I miss not being
able to hop on a plane to see Ollie in Italy. And to date I haven’t even been close
to baby Spencer. But I look forward to when we can get together with all our
family members again. And I very much miss Sundays in church. When I go to the
church from time to time during the week, the emptiness of the building leaves a
feeling of emptiness in the heart. But in the words of Nathaniel Hawthorne:
“The greatest of all mortal consolations, is that this, too, shall pass.”
Lynda: Yes, I miss you, my church family. Yes, I miss Italy and our family there.
Yes I miss hugging Charlie and Baby Spencer, Kate, Jimmy, Sam and Jim. I
miss my Yoga classes but am now quite used to the on-line version. I miss
my Book Club but Zoom has been perfect. I miss going out for dinner with
friends. I miss brunch with Steve and Lindsay. I think I am ready to continue
at a slightly different pace I love ordering groceries online and may never
go shopping again……….. but I will be very happy to see the end of the
anxiety caused by this invisible enemy.
Benediction
Ernie and Lynda Cox
Postlude: "Trumpet Air"
Sue Sparks
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