The Day of Pentecost

Pentecost may not seem as important a festival as Christmas or Easter. There is no familiarity of glad tidings, no alleluias, nor does it have secular holiday traditions. No one puts up a Pentecost tree or hangs a Pentecost stocking. There are no large family gatherings with turkey and all the trimmings and we don't hear people saying "We're having Pentecost at our house this year." Most often Pentecost is viewed with either suspicion or confusion.

But Pentecost should be - Pentecost is - an important festival. It is none other than the birth day of the Church; the day in which the Holy Spirit descended on the gathered community of believers and empowered them to proclaim the Gospel and witness to Christ to the ends of the earth. God is filling the world in a new way! This is something to be celebrated!

Every year, on the Day of Pentecost, we are reminded of who we are as a church, what we proclaim, and the source of that proclamation. The Day of Pentecost is a message to the church from the church, passed down through the ages to each generation. This is something to be celebrated!

Join us this Sunday at St. Peter's as we join with the Church throughout the world in singing a joyful noise to our Lord and Saviour.

Sixth Sunday of Easter

For most of us, the word 'love' is highly ambiguous. What does 'love' really mean? Love is possibly the most overused, overrated, misunderstood four-letter word in our entire English vocabulary. I love my ipod. I love to eat. I love Led Zeppelin. I love babies and bacon rolls. I love my husband, my children. I love to run. I love to garden. I love figs and honey and home-made bread. I love love. But what exactly do I mean when I say all of this?

Love: what a conundrum. But Jesus is not ambiguous about love. He is not reticent to say what he really means about love and its requirements. He says: This is my commandment: that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends...love on another.

Join us, this Sunday, and see what this love means. All are welcome.

Fifth Sunday of Easter

Throughout Eastertide we've been on an incredible Spirit-filled journey with the apostles through the Book of Acts. Two Sundays ago, Peter preached on repentance. Last Sunday, Peter and John faced the consequences of healing someone by the power of the Holy Spirit. And this week, we find Philip listening to the voice of the Spirit and welcoming  the Ethiopian eunuch into the fellowship of God's grace. As the old church hymn goes, 'There is a wideness in God's mercy'. But how wide does it really extend? Come and join us this Sunday and find out!

Fourth Sunday of Easter

I am the Good Shepherd. I am the light of the world. I am the bread of life. I am the true vine. In all of his I AM statements, Jesus is publicly applying the divine name of God to himself. Harkening back to the time when Moses asked directly what God's name was - with God's answer being that frustratingly vague, 'I am who I am' - Jesus takes it one step further and publicly declares who he is, who God is. He is bread, water, light, truth, life! Everything that we need to sustain us in our lives.

Join us this Sunday at St. Peter's as we live in to the Easter message of hope and resurrection. Baaaaaah!

Third Sunday of Easter

The resurrection is not an isolated event.  Easter is not just one day, just as Christmas is not just one day. Unfortunately, some churches are not attuned to Easter as a liturgical season - liturgy meaning 'the work of the people'; the worship we do every time we gather. After Easter Sunday, some churches return to something akin to 'business as usual'. But nothing could be further from the truth. The paschal mystery - the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ - is the centrepiece of our faith and so that is why the liturgical calender devotes seven weeks to the Easter season. It is the fifty days of the year when we never stop proclaiming that 'Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia, alleluia!'

YOU are invited to join us this Sunday as we are called into the reality of the resurrection. We hope you will join us.