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Berwick Trinity United Church, 240 Commerical Street, Berwick, NS (2026)

06/14/2026

Reflection- “Welcome to Church 101 for the 21st Century and Beyond” Based on Exodus 18:13-27 &Matthew 9:35-10:4
This past Wednesday, June 10th, the United Church of Canada turned 101 years old. This milestone gave me an excuse to take a look at the creed that we all read together just now. It’s a creed that I have read over and over again in various settings-both private and public, but for this examination, the thing that stood out is the first line and the second to last line, which is the same one-WE ARE NOT ALONE.
I’m not sure why this one line has resonated with me so much this time around, but it certainly has gotten me thinking about something that I was reminded of this past weekend when I attended our Annual Regional meeting. During the meeting, there was a presentation offered up by our theme speaker-Rev. Dr. John Pentland from Hillhurst United Church in Calgary, Alberta- during which mention was made of how loneliness has become so much more prevalent in the lives of many in the years following the COVID pandemic. Loneliness has always been present in our culture and in our world, but Pentland observed how in the last five years or so, it has become so much more prevalent in the lives of so many, and mentioned that this observation had become a driving force behind his church’s ministry and mission to the wider world-to respond to that loneliness by offering some kind of connection and community that people could find a place for themselves in. One of the visuals that was part of Pentland’s presentation was a sign that he had noticed in a neighbouring United Church that summed its mission statement and its’ identity up in one very catchy sentiment “We put the “unity” in “community”.
Now, I’m not trying to suggest that just because we have the word “United” in our denomination’s title, or because our most familiar creed makes a point of repeating that one line -WE ARE NOT ALONE-that we are in any way superior in offering this ideal of connection and community to those who are part of what we are about, or those who are waiting for some kind of connection in the wider world outside of our doors. This is what church has always been all about. But in our current culture, it stands to reason that such an idea is something that the world is hungering for in its current lonely state., and as such it’s something that we in this particular church in this part of the world might seek to offer to those who might find meaning within it. As a denomination, and as a local community of faith, the notion that we are called to be together and to work together for a common good is something that we’ve been doing our best to be about for over a century now.
That being said, it’s not always easy to extend that hand of friendship and connection to others, whether we are here in the church, or we are looking outwards at the world we are trying to serve. Part of this is because, as lonely and isolated as our world currently is, there is a countercultural resistance to the sense of unity that we might offer. We live in a world right now where the idea of being fiercely independent to a point where one should strive to not need anyone else in order to feel whole is one that is upheld as being something to strive for. We live in a world where competition is seen as being vastly superior to cooperation with your neighbours, because to work together has been painted in some circles as being a sign of weakness that might make us lose something that we want to keep for ourselves at all costs. Sadly, these values have found their way into church land, leading us to regard our neighbors from other faith communities with wariness and suspicion-even if these communities are part of the same denomination in nearby communities. And even within our own church circles, there are far too many examples of churches that are reliant on a handful of folks doing much of the work to keep going. It just seems so strange, that ,as we commemorate the coming together of our founding denominations one hundred and one years ago, and we hearken back to those inspirational words from a creed created to remind us of who we are and who we want to be in God’s world, that even as we say the words “We are not alone”, in so many ways, we are living as if we are exactly that.
This all feels even stranger when we turn to our readings from scripture today, and we see two of the leaders of our faith-Moses and Jesus Christ-embracing a way of life that relies on a spirit of interdependence to make it all work. It should give us pause to consider that even these two headliners of the faith came to the humbling realization that if they were going to have a life giving ministry in God’s name in their own time and place, neither of them could do it alone-they would need support and help from those in their midst if it was going to go anywhere.
For Moses, this realization comes about as the result of some well intentioned and timely advice from his father in law, Jethro, about how this ministry of justice that Moses was working so hard to be about could be more effective if he sought to share the responsibility of helping all of the Israelites under his care with their day to day issues, instead of trying to deal with everything himself. Before this intervention, Moses was content to carry on as a lone ranger type of leader, trying to assist everyone on his own, no matter how overwhelming or ineffective such an approach might be for the community. But this situation appears unsustainable to Jethro, an outsider when it came to the day to day operations of this new desert community, and so he offers his two cents worth of wisdom to his son in law, in the hopes of reminding him that he did not have to be alone in all of this-that there were others who could bear the load, thereby enabling God’s help and justice to impact the lives of those who were searching for it. Moses takes this advice seriously, and before long, the life and work of the community is much more manageable, as it is held in trust by the people working together in a spirit of unity and cooperation that served to make things better for all of them.
When the time comes for Jesus to begin ministering to the people of God in His time and place, He sees immediately that the work ahead is too much for one person to handle all on their own. He also acknowledges that He is not alone, either-that there are others waiting to be called upon to journey alongside of Him, to work with Him to bring God’s love to the people. And so He calls the first twelve disciples to minister with Him, recruiting them from the communities that they would soon serve in a variety of ministries intended to heal and strengthen those who were in need of some kind of life giving intervention. And even though the authors of Matthew’s Gospel provide a bit of foreshadowing to remind future communities that these first leaders of the Christian community were anything but perfect, their induction into the Jesus movement stood as a testament to the fact that the Way of Christ was never anything less than a team effort, one that left no one standing alone in the name of it.
As we commemorate another year in our church’s history, we are being increasingly called to look to the future, and to decide what that future might be like for those of us who consider the United Church to be our faith home. As we look to whatever might still be ahead for us, it might be helpful for us to hold those four little words from our sacred creed foremost in our minds and our hearts, so that they may continue to remind us that the Christian church has always been built upon values of interdependence and cooperation, and that we have held it as a sacred responsibility to live these values out to their fullest, so that they may serve as an example of how we as human beings might better live together as neighbours in community. We are not alone, we have never been alone, and if we can see the world as it is, and place our trust in how it could be, we will never be alone, as we work together, here and beyond here, in the name of the One who calls us to be one, this day and forevermore. May it be so. Amen.

06/10/2026

Happy 101st Birthday,
United Church of Canada!!!!!

05/24/2026

Reflection-Acts 2:1-12 & 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13
Over the last little while, there’s been a phrase that has been coming up more and more often in our cultural lexicon when the topic turns to how we relate to one another as human beings in any configuration, and the phrase is this:

“Love Language”

Has anyone here ever heard that phrase before? (Wait for responses) Can you say more about it? (Wait for responses)

I first became acquainted with this phrase and the ideas behind it by way of a book that Ian and I received as a wedding gift twenty (soon to be twenty one) years ago. The book is titled (not surprisingly) “The Five Love Languages”, and was first published in 1992 by Baptist Pastor Gary Chapman. In the book, Chapman identifies five different ways people in a loving relationship can express their connection to each other- speaking words of affirmation, spending quality time together, giving meaningful gifts, performing acts of service, and sharing of physical touch. After identifying these ways of expressing love, Chapman explains how important it is for one person to understand the other person’s primary and secondary love languages, so that in living together, so that together you will be able to interpret what you are trying to express to each other through your words and actions. He also spends much time describing how misinterpretation of these diverse ways of expressing love can lead to much misunderstanding and confusion between those in relationship, concluding that “lasting love requires diverse relational behaviors rather than speaking a single preferred language.”. In other words, respecting and making room for someone’s preferred and primary way of understanding love is more important than ensuring that you are both speaking the same language at all times.
While this book was originally published as a way of helping those who were in committed partnerships to uphold those relationships, the author in later years went on to apply this idea to other kinds of human connection- including parent and child relationships, workplace relationships, family relationships, and friendships. Even though these books and their author are not as referenced as much as they may have been in their earlier days, and even though much scientific research has demoted the author’s ideas about love and relationships to something that is more anecdotal than anything else, the notion of each of us and all of us having a different language to help us to make sense of whatever it is that might seek to connect us, and that so much could be gained by seeking to understand those differences to the point of absolute fluency in them, could still have something to teach us about how to live better with each other in our present culture and world.
This was certainly the case in our reading from Acts, where we hear about what many refer to as the “birthday” of the Christian church-the day when the followers of Christ were empowered to follow in Jesus’ way through the intervention of an unexpected yet long awaited force known as “The Holy Spirit”. Up until this point in the lives of these disciples, the Jesus movement had pretty much remained an “in house” project, staying almost exclusively between those who had been part of Jesus’ original inner circle-almost all of them were from the same part of the world-some even originated from Jesus’ home base of Galilee. As a result of this, there hadn’t been much call or need for these disciples to become fluent in any ways or languages other than the ones that they were familiar with, because they were all already well versed in the culture from which they had first encountered Jesus. The members of this community all knew each other, and were all comfortable sharing the teachings of Jesus amongst themselves even as they began the process of moving on without the leadership who had been at the movement’s centre . They would often get together to share in prayer, an activity that would bring them together in one location as they connected with the Divine and with each other.
But then on that fateful day, everything changed, when an uninvited yet much waited for rush of wind breathed a new kind of life into this cohort of Christian believers-the kind of life that called them to make room for others in what they were intending to be about in Christ’s name. This inspirational incident was both chaotic and transformative, as it empowered the disciples of Jesus to speak the words of Christ in languages that, while foreign to them, could be easily understood and embraced by those who couldn’t help but overhear the commotion that had overtaken this small community. In that mysterious moment, the words spoken by the disciples became a new kind of “love language”, as it inexplicably translated Jesus’ message into something that could be fully understood by those who were listening, regardless of their primary dialect in everyday life, and thereby allowing this message to do its’ intentional work of drawing different people together into one community, revolving around one goal-which was understanding and sharing God’s love through the word and example of Christ with each other, both here and in the communities they would return to once the Pentecost festivities had come to an end for another year.
By the time we get to Paul’s ongoing correspondence with the church in Corinth, much of the confusion and chaos that had surrounded the events of that first Christian Pentecost celebration had died down, and the people of God had immersed themselves in doing what they could to build up and strengthen this new community of faith. And yet, in this corner of the fledgling kin-dom of Christ, a new kind of misunderstanding had cropped up amongst the residents of that community, over which of the many spiritual gifts that existed within the abilities of the people was to be regarded as the most valuable. At the time of Paul’s letter, the spiritual blessing that was held in the highest regard was the ability of a select few to speak in a language that even fewer of their neighbours could understand, leading to the church community becoming secondary to a splinter group that was becoming overly enamoured with the insider status that this particular gift had surrounded them with.
In an effort to shut down this division before it could take on a life of its own, Paul makes a point in his letter of reminding the people of Corinth that there were many diverse ways of being together in this community, and as such there were a great variety of “languages” that this community had proven to be fluent in over the course of their life together, represented by the diverse spiritual gifts that were possessed by the citizens of this church community. Paul provides a laundry list of these other gifts that had been forgotten and ignored by the Corinthians in recent days-the ability to speak words of great wisdom and knowledge, the ability to heal, the ability to have faith and to speak in the name of that faith in a prophetic fashion, and the ability to discern what was right-as a way of telling the congregation that these gifts existed in abundance alongside and in addition to all of the awe that currently revolved around the speaking and interpretation of tongues, so that the people of Corinth would not allow these other “love languages” to be silenced or to fall dormant from lack of recognition of them as having a place within the life of this community. To do so would be a complete reversal -and even a betrayal-of the infusion of the Holy Spirit experienced by that first Christian community on that fateful Pentecost day, which had transformed the language of Christ’s message into something that everyone had full and complete access to, whoever they might be or wherever they might come from in the world. No, in order to fulfill God’s vision through Christ, room would have to be made for the sharing and living out of ALL of these holy gifts, so that the love of God could be expressed fully and completely through them in all of the relationships and connections that would be built between this cohort of the whole people of God. That was the ultimate purpose of all of these gifts of the Spirit, and in order for the community to be as healthy and whole as God intended for it to be, all of these gifts would need to be recognized and lived out as outlets for God’s all encompassing love in the lives of everyone, without exception. Such a vision of wholeness could never be fully achieved by placing one or more of these love languages on a pedestal, especially if said gifts were by their very nature far too limited in scope or accessibility to be of any real use to the common good. Rather, it could only be realized if a community cared enough to become fluent in more than one of these expressions of God’s love through Jesus Christ, and then to use those languages to invite people more fully into community, in a way that they could make sense of.
On this Pentecost Sunday, we are reminded of the tremendous legacy that has been passed down to us as present and future bearers of the Holy Spirit in today’s world. We all have a spiritual gift to share with the world as part of this family of faith, something that enables us to keep the conversation going-the one that first began with so much fanfare during that first Pentecost celebration. We can all speak fluently in one or more of the love languages that have been taught to us by the teachings of our faith and the example of Christ, and there has never been a time in history where those languages have not needed to be spoken, and spoken loud enough to be heard over the racket that teaches us to be suspicious or dismissive of anything or anyone different from us. We all have the ability to say something, do something, be something that moves the Holy Spirit fully into a world that is crying out for the kind of love that has the power to make the world a different, better place. Let us join in with our different ways and different voices, knowing in our hearts that all of these diverse notes, all of these diverse parts, will add something important to the message that the Spirit has to share with everyone and all of creation. May it be so. Amen.

05/22/2026

From our UCC neighbours in Aylesford.

05/17/2026

Reflection-Based on Matthew 28:16-20Acts 1:9-14 and “Look Ahead” by Dave Panting and Rawlins Cross

When I was growing up on our family farm, I had a number of dogs that were part of my life during that time. One of them was a yellow labrador retriever that joined our family when I was in my early teens. His name was Cody, and he was one of the sweetest, most lovable dogs I have ever had the privilege of knowing during my life. Cody has been gone for a long time, and even though it pains me to speak ill of the dead, I must confess that there is one aspect of Cody’s personality that I will never forget. With all of his sweetness, lovability, and loyalty, the one thing that I could never deny about my dear Cody was that in so many ways, that dog was dumber than a bag of sand! I remember this clearly, because in addition to being our family dog, Cody was also one of my projects when I was involved in our local 4H program-which was Dog Obedience. During our weekly sessions, Cody and I were often singled out as an example of what NOT to do, as the other participants and their Mensa worthy canines all sat or stood looking at the two of us with pity and impatience, as we struggled to learn even the simplest of commands as quickly as they had all done a while ago.
When I think back on my time with Cody, though, one incident stands head and shoulders above all others when it comes to my recall of his lack of intelligence. One afternoon, I had to leave school early due to a doctor’s appointment, and since the school day was practically over, I returned home instead of returning to class. Since it was a nice day, I decided to spend it with Cody out in the yard.
As we were sitting together on the lawn, and I was patting Cody and talking to him, we heard the sound of my school bus driving by on the highway, and we watched it pass our house. All of a sudden, Cody jumped up, shook my hand off of his head, and began running out of the yard. Confused, I stood up to follow him, whereby I was able to watch him run up the driveway to wait at the top of the hill. The same place he would wait every day for me to come down from the school bus. The same place that he now expected to greet me coming off the school bus, even though I was not on the school bus that day-I was in fact sitting right next to him, patting him and talking to him.
When I realized that this is what Cody was expecting, I wasted no time in calling out to him from the bottom of the driveway. If I close my eyes, I can still see the look of surprise on that dog’s face, as he tried to puzzle out how he had missed seeing me get off the bus and move past him so quickly. Eventually, he got it, and came down to join me in the yard again, and as far as he was concerned all was right with his world, even as I was laughing under my breath and shaking my head.
I share this story today because it reminds me of today’s story of the Ascension, which comes to us from two of the writers of the Gospel of Jesus. It’s a hard story for us in the 21st century to get our heads around, due to its supernatural elements and the larger than life events that see Jesus being drawn up into the heavens, away from the view of His disciples, after having spent some borrowed time with them after His resurrection. Funnily enough, though, it is these elements that have the power to make this story so appealing to us, as we too have a tendency to hold onto the idea that some magical person might come back into our lives and make everything all right for us and for the world. We’ve clung to this fantastical vision of Jesus and how He left this world, all the while pinning our hopes on the suggested notion that someday, He would come back in just that same incredible fashion to make things right in this world that we are a part of.
But what if by focussing too much on the supernatural aspects of the Ascension story, we’ve turned too far away from what the story is really about, which is much more ordinary and yet much more meaningful because of its ordinariness.Beginning with our reading from Matthew’s Gospel, we find Jesus having a final gathering with His band of followers, handing out final instructions for how they are to carry on a ministry in His name once He has departed from this realm. It is Jesus’ intention that everything He stood for would be part of the future of this world, represented by those who had learned all about it from Him during His time in their presence, and so He is once again imparting this wisdom and its nurture to these ordinary individuals, trusting that they would carry it on in all that they were about.
But even in the midst of that final lesson, we are told by the writers of Matthew that there was some doubt swirling in the minds and hearts of those who had been assembled. Over the centuries it has been assumed that the uncertainty is somehow rooted in the disciples’ inability to fully believe that it is Jesus who is standing in their midst at this moment, and who has been walking alongside of them in the days since the discovery of the empty tomb, but what if the doubt in the disciples’ hearts could be coming from a different source?
After all, the folks who had gathered around Jesus that final time were representing a fractured, still wounded community that was still trying to make sense of their place in the world after all that had happened in the last while. They were no longer a team of twelve, now that Judas had died after betraying Christ to the authorities, and even amongst the eleven who were still seeking to represent Christ and Christ’s way, there was much reason for a sinking sense of morale, due to the heavy memories that all of them carried of how they had abandoned Jesus when things got too risky, for Him and for them. In light of this, perhaps the doubts that the disciples were harbouring in their hearts in those final moments had less to do with their faith in Jesus, and more to do with their faith in themselves and their ability to carry any of this important work forward into the future that Jesus was inviting them to take part in.
Is it any wonder then, that as we turn to our reading from Acts, where the writers of Luke take over the telling of the story, that we see the disciples with their faces turned upward, frozen in place, unable to move in any direction, while longing to follow Jesus wherever He seemed to be headed? As long as Jesus was still visible, things had the power to make sense, and they could function, but now that Jesus was no longer in their line of sight, the disciples felt they had no choice but to follow His last known trajectory with their eyes, trying to keep connected with what He had trusted them to carry on in HIs name-it was all they could think to do in those early moments of departure.
It isn’t until a pair of mysterious strangers appear that reality is reintroduced into the lives of these followers, as these mystical figures inform the followers of Jesus that even though this was the place where they had last seen Christ, this would not, could not be the place where His mission would move forward from. If these disciples were going to live fully in Jesus’ name, according to His way, they would have to look in a different direction than the one they were currently looking. Instead of looking up to Jesus, they would have to look outward into the world that they were a part of, trusting all the while that they would see Jesus there as well, in each other and in those who would join them in this important work. Instead of remaining static in the hopes of catching a glimpse of Christ in what they already knew, they would have to trust that as He had promised them, He would be with them here in this world, in this life, to be found in the vision that Jesus had left in their care upon His departure. This vision would need to be strengthened through community building activities such as prayer, and it would need to make room for others, such as Jesus’ family and members of His former entourage, but this is how it would be carried forward into the future that was waiting for them.
It is this forward motion that is part of our ministry in Christ’s name as well. The mystical, larger than life elements of the Christian story may give us a lot of fuel to work with as we seek to live and work and make a difference as modern day followers of Christ, but these parts of the story are only a small part of what we are called to be about. Where we will find our meaning and our purpose is in the ordinary ways of the ordinary folks who looked away from the skies and the past glories that it held for them, so that they and we could look ahead into whatever would or could come next for all of us. Let us continue to turn our views and our visions in the direction that Christ calls us to move toward, trusting that even in all of our ordinary humanity, Christ is with us and will be with us wherever we see to go next. May it be so. Amen.

05/10/2026

Reflection- Based on Proverbs 31:10-31,2 Timothy 1;1-7 ,John 14:15-21
A few years ago, my husband Ian and I took a summer road trip into the United States, intending to visit Washington D.C. . During our travels, we took an unexpected detour into Lancaster, Pennsylvania,and decided to spend a day seeing some of the areas associated with the Amish who made their homes in some of the communities in that county. One of the places that we visited was a museum that was dedicated entirely to quilts made by women from the nearby Amish communities, and as we made our way through the exhibits, marvelling at the beautiful artistry on display in those quilts, we came across this quote that was posted on the wall. The quote said
“The most lasting legacy an Amish woman leaves behind can be found in the quilts that cover her family while they sleep”.
This quote has stuck with me to this day, but over the years, I have come to see it a bit differently. I still see it as having a deep truth to it, but at the same time it brings to mind something that is also so true about this particular community. More often than not, an Amish quilt is not the work of an individual woman Rather, the quilts are a community project, worked on by women of all ages until the project is complete. The quilt might go to one woman’s home at the end of the day, but before that, it is worked on by any number of women, all of whom add their stitches and expertise to the finished project and its design. It’s easy to imagine that as a group of women gather around a quilt to put it together,that those who had more experience with this form of artistry might use that opportunity to pass their wisdom down to the younger individuals who had come together to be a part of the circle.And, an interesting bit of trivia about Amish quilting practices that was also part of the museum’s display, when a quilt is just about ready to be completed, one of the women will deliberately add an imperfect stitch to the quilt, as a reminder that nothing crafted by human hands can be considered to be absolutely perfect.
As we turn to our first reading today, we find ourselves face to face with the image described by the writer of the book of Proverbs of the “ideal woman”. Right away, it’s a pretty tall order, one that it’s hard to imagine that any ordinary, flesh and blood female could live up to on an ordinary day. If we look at it like that, it’s pretty intimidating-this expectation to be all things to all people in one single life. But what if the writers of Proverbs was not simply describing a single woman, a single wife, a single mother? What if, instead, the writers were describing many different facets of womanhood, in an effort to express how all of these gifts and skills and talents and personalities might work together to build families and the communities that they call home? Imagine if the woman who is upheld for the beautiful clothing that she has made for her family, lived alongside of the woman who got up before dawn to prepare her family’s meals for the day, and that this woman lived alongside of the woman who worked so hard in the vineyards during her waking hours, and that they all lived and worked alongside the woman whose expertise is in non profit, charitable endeavours that make a difference in the lives of the less fortunate. Imagine what a legacy these women, working together for a common purpose, might leave for their descendants to learn and benefit from in some way? Perhaps the woman from Proverbs is too much for one woman to live up to, but perhaps we can find parts of ourselves in that one woman and live up to that small but important standard.
In Paul’s Second Letter to Timothy, we see the Apostle doing his best to leave his young apprentice with some important food for thought as he prepares for his inevitable demise at the hands of the state. He does this by reminding Timothy about the legacy of faithful example left for him by not one, but two women who played a part in raising him to be the person he was today-his mother Eunice, and his grandmother Lois. Working together in a family unit that had become part of a larger, and still growing family brought together in Christ’s name, these two women had embroidered and stitched within Timothy a strong belief in something greater than himself-a belief that had, if Timothy could be reminded to draw upon it in times of uncertainty-could enable him to withstand whatever challenges life might bring his way as a follower of Christ. We are not told much about the faith lives of either of these women, but whatever faith they had lived out during their lives and passed on to their descendants over the generations had made an impression on extended family such as Paul, so much so that he feels called to remind Timothy of its lasting influence over current events.
It is this same spiritual influence that Jesus is encouraging His followers to embrace in our reading from John’s Gospel today, as they sought to make sense of the life they would one day live as members of community in Christ’s name when the time came for Jesus to depart from them. This spiritual connection ,this love, was already part of who they were as a community, and they would be the bearers of that love in the lives of all they would encounter in this world. Jesus was already a part of them, and this would reveal itself in how these disciples would live with each other and with those who would join them in future times. Even though Jesus would only be a memory by that time, the example and influence He had left for His followers would find a way to take on a life of its own, drawing more and more people into its’ warm embrace as time went on.
On this Christian Family Sunday, let us hold up the ways in which we might all be family to one another, in this place and beyond. By supporting each other in the ways in which we try to be there for each other and love each other in all ways, we make it possible for God’s love to reach its’ fullest potential.Such a love is not something that any of us can carry out alone, but we can each carry a part of it, seeking to share it with those around us in all that we do. There is so much room for love in this world, let’s all do what we can, where we can, however we can, to make sure that it lives through each of us and all of us, together. May it be so. Amen.

Berwick Trinity United Church

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