Sunday, April 21, 2013
7:00 p.m.

A Rock Eucharist with

The Wine Before Breakfast Band
Dr. Brian Walsh preaching

Church of the Redeemer Anglican
(Avenue Rd and Bloor St.)

Bring your dancing shoes…

Christ is risen. Alleluia!
The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!

And it pretty much all hangs on this confession.

If the story has been about life from the beginning,
if this story of “let there be” this and “let there be” that,

is fundamentally about life,
and death is a usurper,

death is an alien,
then this story has no resolution without the defeat of death,
this story has no redemption short of resurrection.

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The story was going a certain way.
Sure, there were some detours along the way
and things didn’t always go totally as expected,
but the overall plot remained clear.

It was all about home.
It was all about being in exile from home
and longing for a return home.

Truth is, everything is about home.
Really, when it comes right down to it, what else is there?

And if it is about home, then it is, of necessity about story.
Stories that tell us the memories of home.
Stories that shape the contours of home.
Stories that will lead us home.

But sometimes these stories meet a dead end.
Literally.

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The Church of the Redeemer
with Urban Remixed
present

A loaf of bread,
a jug of wine,
& Martyn Joseph

Sunday, February 24, 2013
7:00 to 9:00 pm

The Church of the Redeemer
162 Bloor St. W, Toronto

A creative evening of song and the sacred
Bread, wine, readings and MJ songs.
The evening will conclude with a full set of Martyn

All are welcome
(No tickets, but donations will be gladly received)

In what is undoubtedly his most oft-quoted statement, Alasdair MacIntyre once said,
“I can only answer the question ‘What am I to do’ if I can answer the prior question, ‘Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?’”

Paul has just spent eleven chapters addressing the prior question of what story or stories his Roman hearers find themselves in.

And it really is a matter of plural stories.

They find themselves a part of a Roman story rooted in imperial myths.
This is a story of conquest and the gods;
of imperial justice and the Pax Romana;
of Caesar and the pater familias.

And they find themselves grafted in to a Jewish story of a crucified Messiah.
This is a story of covenant and the God of Israel;
of righteousness and shalom,
of Jesus and a Father who keeps his promises.

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Urban Remixed presents

Reconciliation in the City

with Mark Vander Vennen
Executive Director, Shalem Mental Health Network

Tuesday, February 12 @ 7.00 p.m.

Leonard Hall
Wycliffe College
5 Hoskin Ave., Toronto

For more information contact: brian.walsh@utoronto.ca

What does ‘restorativejustice’ look like in practice?

Mark is a social worker who has worked extensively with both survivors and perpetrators of violence. He is a certified restorative justice trainer with the International Institute of Restorative Practices and co-author of Hope in Troubled Times: A New Vision for Confronting Global Crises (2007).

“Many of us are still suffering PTSD from the language of salvation.”

So I was told last week after our WBB service.
Post-traumatic stress disorder from the language of salvation.

I get that, even though it is not my experience.
I get it that the language of salvation has been a tool of manipulation,

rooted in an abusive spirituality of guilt,
and constructed for social control.
I get that.

But rather than abandoning the language of salvation
(and I appreciate that some folks just have to do that,
at least for a time),
I’d like to reclaim it.

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My daughters think that I hate shopping. They are mostly right.

Not all shopping, but certainly the kind of shopping that might take me into a mall. Indeed, my overwhelming bodily experience in a mall is an overheated irritation that gives birth to a grumpy exhaustion. My body literally starts to ache if I’m in the shopping mode too long. And too long is something like five minutes.

Actually, I can start to feel that overheated irritation and soreness just looking at a store these days.

That is one kind of bodily soreness.

But there are other kinds.

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The Graduate Christian Fellowship invites you to an:
====================================
Advent and End-of-Term Celebration
- including Potluck Dinner together

Thursday, December 6, 2012
Chaplain’s office, Wycliffe College (basement)   [Directions]
6:00 – Potluck Dinner
7:00 (or so) – Prayer, Intros, Conversation, Games, etc., etc.

Click here / see below for:
- Future GCF Topics
- Upcoming Special Events
====================================
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In what is perhaps the most remarkable turn of a phrase in the letters of Paul, the apostle tells us in Romans 8.22 that “the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now ….” This is a creation longing for redemption, longing to be set free from all that binds it.

Perhaps only the women in our community can begin to understand what Paul is talking about here, and even there maybe only the women who have given birth. I can tell you as a very concerned observer that there is an intensity in the groaning of labor like nothing else that I have ever witnessed. Groaning in travail was the way the older versions of the Bible put it.

But this is a travail, a work, a pain, born of hope. The smile on a woman’s face upon delivering her baby and holding that child to her breast is also one of the sweetest things that I have ever had the privilege to see.

All of creation is longing for that smile.
All of creation looks for the day of resurrection.
All of creation is waiting.
All of creation is in Advent.

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