Claim OwnershipMeditations from Southpoint Church
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© Southpoint Church
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www.southpoint.ca — A fully affirming and welcoming church.
At Southpoint, it all begins with God’s Love. The more we know God’s love, the more we love.
We encourage relationships rather than run programs.
We are intentional yet organic, spacious yet authentic.
We share communion every week — everyone is welcome!
Our pastor is Rev. Anne Baxter Smith.
Gather with us Sundays at 10:00 am, 15639 24 Ave, Surrey, BC, Canada.
Get in touch at office@southpoint.ca
At Southpoint, it all begins with God’s Love. The more we know God’s love, the more we love.
We encourage relationships rather than run programs.
We are intentional yet organic, spacious yet authentic.
We share communion every week — everyone is welcome!
Our pastor is Rev. Anne Baxter Smith.
Gather with us Sundays at 10:00 am, 15639 24 Ave, Surrey, BC, Canada.
Get in touch at office@southpoint.ca
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May we notice and enjoy God’s gifts, and let that enjoyment spill over into praise and thanksgiving.
The gospel’s life force will not be stripped of its wild power to heal and renew. Jesus continues to call people into a way of life that is alive, unruly, and renewing. Each small act—whether a moment of truth-telling, a word of repentance, a gesture of forgiveness, or humble acts of service—becomes a container for the re-wilding power of Love.
In Luke 16:19-31, Jesus speaks of a rich man who wore expensive purple linen clothes and ate sumptuous feasts every day, while a poor man named Lazarus begged at his gate. Covered in sores which dogs came and licked, he longed to eat the crumbs that fell from the rich man’s table. Yet the rich man did not draw near nor show compassion to the poor man. As is so often in Jesus’ parables, he turned the table on his listeners: what do we do in the face of suffering? Do we draw near? Do we distance?
This week, Scott Hill shared about his dad, one of his role models in “eco-discipleship”. I wonder who modelled for you how to love and care for creation? In our scripture passage this week, Luke 16: 1-14, we find an unlikely role model—a dishonest manager who, after losing trust with his employer by cooking the books, was about to lose his home. Like the dishonest manager, the collective human preoccupation with getting and keeping more money has led to the squandering of God’s creation. We, too, are at risk of losing our home.
It's the beginning of Season of Creation! This year's theme is "Making Peace with Creation" and we are continuing our year-long journey with the lectionary, through the Gospel of Luke. As ever, we are also asking the question "What Does Love Look Like, Now?" Today, we are attending Jesus' parable in Luke 14: 25-33.
This summer, we’ve been practicing table talk. We’ve made space to share and space to listen. As we draw this summer series to a close, pause to remember the many times you’ve sat at Love’s Table. What tables have been memorable in your life? Who sat at them with you? What happened at these table that you treasure?
In this sermon, we explore the energy of peace-keeping and peace-making. When have you felt the quiet inner discomfort of peace-making? When have you known the fiery energy of peace-making?
In the passage, Jesus invites the listeners to let go of their belongings and assures them that this letting go will not lead to scarcity as feared, but into a different kind of abundance.
Today, we are exploring the vulnerability and weight of having abundance.
Today, we are exploring the vulnerability and weight of having unmet needs.
A presence that does not let go. A Holy Someone who has come near to us — who waits in the space between vulnerable people, hoping that peace might be shared across a table, but not forcing anything.
We worship a God who is, at their very core, a community of love who shares power in deference and delight, who listens and exalts rather than dominates. As followers of Jesus, we, too, are welcomed into this deep, collaborative communion.
Today is Pentecost. Today a new community is being birthed into being. Today, we experience a God who does NOT fit into our boxes, categories or the constraints of our binary male/ female language.Today, God is wind.Today, God is fire.Today, God blows where they will. Today, our young people prophesy. Today, our elders dream dreams.Today, we are caught off guard by the possibility of impossibility. Today, Big Love comes, places their hands on either side of our faces, and says, “So, what’s your new name? And what are you doing with your big, beautiful life?” **The bold words are two lines from a poem Maya Kostamo wrote and read on Sunday. Thank you, Maya, for this beautiful, generous offering.
What if the oneness that Jesus prays for us and for the world is a whole lot messier than we’ve often taken it to be? What if this oneness is not the tidy togetherness of a potted plant, but rather an ongoing, shapeshifting process of listening and revealing, giving and receiving, as we seek to inhabit the position of guest and neighbour in places that aren’t our own, those that we come into?
“What does love look like now?”We’ve been asking this question while moving through the liturgical calendar this year. The lectionary passage for this past Sunday is found in John 13, the account of Jesus’ last supper with the disciples. The chapter shows that Divine Love in this text looks like One who serves, speaks truth, shows compassion, and builds community.After asking “What does love look like now?” is the equally important question, “Will I choose love?” ie. Will I exercise my own moral agency, at this moment, by choosing love?As we come to God and to each other, celebrating the love we have managed to share, naming and taking responsibility for our mistakes, asking for forgiveness, and realigning our lives back to Love, we are amplifying love. Even our mistakes can be a place where we choose love.
In this passage, people come to Jesus. They don’t know if he is the messiah, and they want proof so they can get their head around Jesus. “Tell us who you are!” Jesus' response points to a different kind of knowing, not one based on a cerebral understanding but one based on the attachment of the heart: “My sheep listen to my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them… life… no one will snatch them out of my hand.” Some of us have lost our mothers recently, and we are missing the secure attachment that our mothers gave us. Some of us did not have a secure attachment with our mothers and grieve a kind of love we did not have. Some people long to be mothered. Some people long to mother. Mother’s Day stirs up grief as well as gratitude. Into these longings, Jesus comes near to us. “I know you. I hear you. Come, know me. Come, attach yourself to me. Come let me mother you.” This is the embodied, heart-patterned knowing Jesus is offering us.
In John 21:1-19, Jesus gave Peter the invitation that would shape his life from that moment onwards: “Do you love me, Peter? Then feed my sheep.” Verbs, not nouns, drive the storyline forwards, yet is the presence of Jesus that provides the wild abundance. As we align our actions with the wisdom of Jesus, what wild abundant love might Jesus draw us into?
This Easter we are reading from Luke's gospel: we are witnessing—with the women—Christ's resurrection from the dead! Christ is alive, the Holy Spirit is at work, and the love of God is on the loose. And although we see death around us today, we proclaim that death will not have the last word!
This gospel reading contains a lot of emotion—Joy, fear, anger, grief. None of it silenced. All that emotion is allowed to take up space. Religious spaces can often be unsafe places for emotions. Some churches teach that emotions are suspect; that they lead us astray and undermine our commitment to truth. Yet, Holy Week is not a journey we make with our head, but with our heart.
Jesus called both blessed: the hunger for righteousness and the practice of being merciful. What is the impact of the word “righteousness" upon you? What about the word “mercy”? To which do you gravitate?In Sunday’s scripture, Luke 10:1-10, Jesus showed mercy to a man who had betrayed his community, spending time with him over a meal. It's the story of Zacchaeus, the tax collector. his story places us in the flow of Divine Love, and if we let it, opens us up to the creative, prophetic imagination and generous hospitality that Jesus showed in this story.
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