Each Sunday morning we will be sending an email to everyone in the congregation for whom we have email addresses, offering an abridged Sunday morning service — “virtual church.” For the latest news and updates from Walton, please check our Facebook page, Instagram and website.
Please contact office@waltonmemorial.com if you would like to be added to our email list.
Today’s service will be offered in 2 formats – a video and text. If you wish, you can download and print the service from this document – link – or you can read the complete service below.
The hymn-sing is at the end.
• SPAGHETTI DINNER A DIFFERENT WAY?????
WALTON FRIENDS OF WESLEY URBAN MINISTRIES: Every September the Outreach Committee holds a Spaghetti Dinner. With COVID this is not possible. We would still like to do something for Wesley Ministries as they are struggling to feed so many more people during our COVID times. With the job loss situation in both in Hamilton and Halton Regions which Welsey serves, there has been a doubling of their meals served from the 3,000. per week pre-pandemic to well over 5,000. We ask for your financial donations through Walton Church. You can give online through the website, mail a cheque to the Church made out to Walton United Church or drop one off through the mailslot at the Allen Entrance in any amount you can afford. Truly, all donations really add up.
As it is not possible for the Walton Outreach Committee to host the annual spaghetti dinner this year, we would like to deliver to your front porch if you would like the ingredients for a modest spaghetti dinner for 4; a sample of what families going through difficult times can afford. Let us know you wish this optional drop-off.
Questions to the Church Office: 905-827-1643 or email office@waltonmemorial.com
• GRIEF SUPPORT GROUP
Walton United Church & other area churches are sponsoring this Grief Support Group starting up on Wednesday, October 28th, running for 6 weeks 7:00pm -8:30pm on line by Zoom.
This education and support group is designed for those who are struggling with the death of a loved one. We will explore various aspects of grief, how grief affects our emotions, behaviours, body, mind and spirit, in a faith-based perspective. We will look at ways to work through our grief, making suggested adjustments and help find ways to find hope and a future in meaningful ways.
The course is based on materials by Dr. Bill Webster, Centre for the Grief Journey.
The cost per participant for the course materials is $20.00. Please contact Maeva Donalson 905-845-7454 or maeva.k.d@hotmail.com for more information or to register.
Lead by: The Rev. Dr. Deborah Hart
Minister of Deer Park United Church in Toronto, who has been facilitating grief support groups for over 25 years.
• CAN WALTON BORROW A POP-UP TENT / FOUR POST CANOPY COVER?? Do you have an easy to assemble pop up tent / four post canopy cover 8 X 10 or larger than we could borrow as needed? Please contact the church office.
• If you need Rev. Jim for a pastoral emergency, please email him directly at jamescgillwuc@gmail.com
• If you need Rev. Jim for a pastoral emergency, please email him directly at jamescgillwuc@gmail.com
• THANKSGIVING SPECIAL….MIKE’S SEVILLE MARMALADE is available for curbside delivery through the church office – $3.00 per jar. Please contact the office at 905-827-1643 or email the office at office@waltonmemorial.com to make arrangements. All proceeds go to Walton Treasury to fund programs and ministries.
JESUS PRAYED that we might be one.
One in spirit
One in mission
In union and communion with each other and with you.
Today, God, we confess fumblings and failures in accomplishing unity, as we set aside yet another day to remind ourselves of the task. On this World Communion Sunday, give us eyes to recognize your reflection in the eyes of people everywhere. Give us a mind to accept and celebrate our differences. Give us a heart big enough to love your children everywhere. We thank you for setting a table with space enough for us all! Amen.
(Adapted from The Africana Worship Book, Year B)
God of all nations, we give You thanks that we are all made in Your image, with such rich diversity. On this day we are in solidarity with the faithful around the world. As we break bread together, we remember that we are still one body in You, even though we have different languages, cultures and traditions, different ways of worship, praying and praising. In solidarity we drink the cup together of hope, of new life, knowing that Your will is for Your people to be one body. We are one body, but we are not the same—it is through the gift of diversity that we are able to be Your body. We thank You and praise You for making us all who we are, individually and collectively. We each celebrate our own ancestry, culture and ethnicity, and we pray to You now as You taught us:
Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen.
(adapted by Rev. Mindi and posted on her Rev-o-lution blog.)
Though I myself have reasons for such confidence. If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless. But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
Worldwide Communion Sunday is today. Around the world on the first Sunday of October, believers join in the communal meal we celebrate today. Today, of course, many like ourselves will be sharing bread and wine virtually. Worldwide Communion Sunday is a celebration observed by many forms of Christianity in denominations around the globe. I think this is even a more powerful Sunday, for today the world is united in its fight against Covid-19. The virus has no respect for borders, language or culture.
Today’s Worldwide Communion Sunday promotes Christian unity and ecumenical cooperation with other Christian denominations. This all began, in fact, quite near to us in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The tradition was begun in the lifetime of some of those in our Walton congregation. In 1933, Rev. Hugh Thomson Kerr, who ministered in the Shadeyside Presbyterian Church, started it all and the idea quickly spread around the world.
The key theme of Worldwide Communion Sunday is the unity of communion. It’s a day when we mark the near-universal Christian practice of breaking bread with one another in worship. We remember both the night of Jesus’ betrayal when Jesus instituted what we now call the Lord’s Supper as a lasting remembrance of his sacrifice. So accounts of the last supper feature prominently today in Christian churches everywhere, by virtue of Worldwide Communion Sunday being a celebration of the Lord’s Supper.
But there is also a flavour of the Christian celebration of Pentecost in Worldwide Communion Sunday. At Pentecost, people from around the Mediterranean world came together in mutual understanding and inspiration beyond language and culture, with the descent of the promised power of the Holy Spirit to create the early church. Worldwide Communion Sunday is a time for remembering that around the globe in different languages, different traditions and different customs, and in various forms of liturgy, this holy meal is celebrated. The Lord’s Supper, Communion, the Bread and Wine, or Eucharist is celebrated throughout Christendom. At its very least, Worldwide Communion Sunday serves two purposes: it is both a joyous and meaningful partaking in Jesus’ sacred meal with Christ’s friends and a mind-opening exposure to different Christian traditions from around the world.
My message is entitled “One Light – Many Lamps.” It is to capture that sense of our sisters and brothers in the faith on every continent, sharing this meal today with us. Communion is celebrated differently in every congregation, even within the United Church of Canada. But the message is the same regardless. Some use real wine; others use grape juice. Different lamps but the same Light of Christ shines in that wine or that grape juice.
In today’s reading Paul talks about how God uses this Pharisee to share the message of Jesus around the world. Paul had all the credentials as a Pharisee. But God used him in spite of those credentials, for his grace was in God, not in Paul’s accomplishments. Paul had been a persecutor of Christians. Remember Stephen being the first martyr stoned to death. But God uses anyone God chooses for God’s purposes. We do not boast in what we do, but what God is doing in us, often in spite of our failings.
Maybe you heard about what happened to the head of the Virgin Mary statue outside of a Lebanese Church in Toronto? It was chopped off. It is a rare act of religious vandalism in Canada. But in various parts of the world, Christians are being persecuted even to death. China, Nigeria, Egypt, Afghanistan, Sudan, and Iran to name a few of the most dangerous countries for Christians. In their online magazine, Christianity Today writes that every day, eight Christians worldwide are killed because of their faith. Every week, 182 churches or Christian buildings are attacked. And every month, 309 Christians are imprisoned unjustly due to their faith.
But you know Christianity is growing far more in many of those persecuted countries than right here in Canada. Christ’s light cannot be extinguished, whether back in Paul’s day or in our day. On this Worldwide Communion Sunday 2020, I celebrate that this service can be viewed by anyone who wants to watch it. It is not censored by the government.
Back in September, I did a mid-week check-in from Walton’s mini-gym about the Toronto Raptors. I quoted a bible verse in that check video – Paul’s words from our text today. It is one of the first verses of scripture I ever memorized: “But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”
I think of those words about “pressing on.” Wherever we are in this world of God on this Communion Sunday in the midst of COVID, let us all keep “pressing on.” Come to this meal with those around the world.
God is with us!
We are not alone!
Lift up your hearts.
We lift them up to God.
Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
It is right to give our thanks and praise.
Holy Mystery that is Wholly Love, you are beyond complete knowledge, above perfect description. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; Source of Life, Living Word, and Bond of Love, you are creative and self-giving, generously moving. In all the near and distant corners of the universe, nothing exists that does not find its source in you. (based on A Song of Faith)
Even when we turn away from you, you are with us; your presence never fails us, your gifts of hope and new life transform us.
We praise you for Jesus Christ, eternal as your love, our bond to one another. We rejoice with all your people of every time and place, and with angels and archangels, to proclaim the glory of your name:
Holy, holy, holy are you.
Holy, holy, blessed are you.
It is Jesus, God incarnate, the Risen Christ, who joins us together as a community of broken but hopeful believers: loving what he loved, living what he taught, and striving to be his faithful servants in our time and place. In this meal, we remember Jesus, his promises, and the price he paid for who he was, what he said, and what he did.
On the night before Jesus died, he took a loaf of bread, gave thanks, broke it, and said, “Take and eat; whenever you do this, remember me.” After supper, Jesus took the cup, and poured, saying, “This is the new covenant, remember me.”
We do remember. We remember his life of love, his friendship, his teaching, his dying, and his rising to life again.
In sharing this meal, we live out the mystery of our faith:
Christ has died
Christ will arise
Christ will come to us again
Holy Mystery, God the Spirit, we call on you to transform these familiar things, as you continually transform the world around us. Bless this bread and this cup, the wheat and the grape, the farmer and the harvest, the seed and the sower. So that in the sharing of these simple elements in community, we may taste and see your goodness, so that we might catch a glimpse of what it is to be in communion with you and with one another. Through Christ, in Christ, and with Christ, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory is yours, God most holy, now and forever. Amen.
The body of Christ, the bread of life.
The lifeblood of Christ, the cup of blessing.
The gifts of God for the people of God.
Thanks be to God!
Thank you, O Christ, for this feast of life. We are fed by your love; we are strengthened by your life. We are sent forth into this world to live into the visions God has laid on our hearts. We are now commissioned to feed as we have been fed, forgive as we have been forgiven, love as we have been loved. Thanks be to God. Amen.
(A Communion Liturgy for the Whole People of God by Alydia Smith)
Invitation to Offering
As God has been extravagant with us, let us be extravagant with God, offering not only our treasure but also ourselves, our being. We present the gift of our offering.
♥ by secure online payment from your bank or credit card – waltonmemorial.com/donate
*Important Note*Please enter the donation in one person’s name (preferably the name shown on the credit/debit card) even if you give jointly with another person. As with cheques and cash, donations made online are automatically credited to both adults in the same household regardless of which one made the donation.
♥ by cheque through the mail slot at the Church office entrance or by Canada Post.
♥ by monthly PAR payments. To sign up contact stuart@waltonmemorial.com.
Glorious, extravagant God, accept all in need, those here and those outside of our community of faith. Amen.
You formed the universe in your wisdom and created all things by your power. You set us in families on the earth to live with you in faith. We praise you for good gifts of bread and wine, and for the table, you spread in the world as a sign of your love for all people in Christ.
(Book of Common Worship)
This morning on Facebook and on YouTube, we’re sharing a video where Linda shares with us several of our favourite hymns! Sing along!
♬ One bread, One body
♬ Deep in our hearts
♬ In Christ there is no East or West
♬ Be Thou My Vision
♬ May the Light of God Go With You
Here is Rev. Jim’s mid-week update from Wednesday, September 30th
