Colourful Dreamer

Available here on Buzzsprout Gate Pa – Palm Sunday 2015 Readings: Psalm                                    Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29                                                 First Reading:                  Isaiah 50:4- Second Reading:            P hilippians 2:5-11   Gospel:                                 Mark 11:1-11                                                                                          What I want to say: I want to help people enter into this story to hear the invitation to let go of our preconceptions, and hear the invitation to engage with the story and God in a new way What I want to happen: Who is Jesus? Let go of our stereotypes and engage with the one presented in the gospels The Sermon      1.      Introduction: And so it begins   the beginning of the end Jesus rides a donkey into Jerusalem as a small crowd gathers wave palms shout hosannas big enough be remembered but small small enough to escape the notice

And so it begins. We have waited six weeks for this Sunday. Made our penitential way through Lent. And here it is. Palm Sunday. A mix of celebration and bravado, thumbing our noses at the Roman overlords, their temple priestly puppets, and their successors today. A small parade of entry and hopes fulfilled. Now is the time! But now is not the time. A shadow is cast across this party. We now know where all this leads, unlike those first paraders. Just ahead are days filled with angst, fear, trembling despair and numbing grief. Both stories belong to today, and are often repeated today. Like the gospel writers, we sit on the other side of all this. We have space to try and make sense of it all in light of our own experience and our reading of scripture. And yet these events are still asking us questions. On the cross those first palm wavers and cloak layers lost all they hoped for and had faith in. All they understood of God and the future died as Jesus the Christ hung dying

This sermon can be listened to here:   Gate Pa – Lent 5 2015 Readings: Hebrew Scripture:     Jeremiah 31: 31-34 Psalm:                          51:1-12 Epistle:                         Hebrews 5: 5-10 Gospel:                        John 12:2-=35 What I want to say: ·          I want to use John to explore how big it all is. I want to suggest that the cross exposes our smallness of thought – thought about God, and the world, and who we are in all that. The cross explores our preoccupation with ourselves and our own desires, dreams, hopes and aspirations. In the cross they are shown to be so petty. We are invited instead to have our imagination and our focus reoriented back to God. What I want to happen: Do we want to be successful or significant? The Sermon 1.       Introduction: Whāia te iti kahurangi ki te tūohu koe me he maunga teitei in our table groups we asked to explore what it means our group draw picture about that thought meant th