May 17 – Last Words

Many, many thanks to all those who helped with the Spring Chicken BBQ on May 13, and especially to the 402 people who purchased dinners! When I tell folks that we served 400 dinners on Wednesday, if they are people who are not familiar with the process, they gasp. But for those who are familiar with the process, the ones who fill the sour cream containers or run the dinners out to the cars or sell tickets to everyone they know, it’s just what we do. Everyone does their job, and after checking and re-checking every detail, it all comes together.  We are blessed to have the Chicken BBQ passed on to us from our forebears in the faith as a means of community building and also providing a crucial component in Tobermory United’s fundraising efforts. The Chicken BBQ is part of many initiatives through the year that allow us to do what we do here at the tip of the peninsula.

A good portion of what we do happens on Sunday mornings, as we gather all those who cross the threshold of Tobermory United -- as well as those who join in online -- in a time of singing, praying, illumination and coming together as community. This week in our worship, we encounter part of Jesus’ farewell discourses, his last words to his friends before he will be betrayed and taken away to his death. Last words are important. In the text from John that we will read, Jesus offers a prayer.  He asks God to glorify him so that he may glorify God. It is a long reconciling, and in the end of the passage, Jesus asks, “Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.” It is a prayer for unity. So we wonder what the glorification of our own lives might look like. We wonder what our own last prayer might be…

To prepare, read John 17:1-11, and ponder the following:

1.      Does Jesus seem at peace in this passage with what is going to happen to him?

2.      What would your final prayer be? If you have some time, write it out.

Image: I’m kind of in love with the art of Mike Moyers, so here’s another piece: “Awake My Soul.” Moyers describes this as, “an abstract depicting the light of The Word shattering the darkness," from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN.