Worship

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April 5, 2020 – Palm Sunday Click Here to watch Video Rev. Todd Weir Matthew 21:1-17   I love a good parade – always have.  As a child my mother loaded me in a red wagon and took me to the humongous parades at Iowa State University.  Students put all their Springtime yearnings and creativity into the floats.  It was Spring 1968, and I remember marching bands and one group of hippies, all wearing overalls and playing “This Land is Your Land” by blowing on Coke bottles.  The PRIDE March in Northampton is my favorite parade, with its rainbow of joy, and celebration that love is love.  Parades celebrate who we are.  They can also be a protest against what is unjust, and a hope for a better future.  It is heart-breaking when it rains on our parade, or worse, [...]

Click here to watch video Rev. Todd Weir Ezekiel 37:1-14                                                                       March 29, 2020   Can you still remember what you gave up for Lent?  We have given up a lot in the past few weeks – handshakes, warm embraces, shopping, haircuts and a cup of coffee with a friend.  Worse, things have been taken away from us – Sunday gatherings, security, health, 3 million jobs.  In the midst of adapting and worrying and flattening the curve, I have forgotten what I pledged to do for Lent.  Yet I feel like I am living Lent more deeply, facing the vulnerability and uncertainty of our human condition.  Lent feels unavoidable.   A pastor on a Facebook forum raised the issue if Easter could be moved back a few weeks till we gather again.  I’m sympathetic. Virtual Easter will be weird.   But something [...]

Rev. Todd Weir Exodus 17:1-7                                                                         March 15, 2019   I was taken aback when I walked into the conference room at my first church.  The faded institutional yellow paint was peeling.  A beat up wooden table was surrounded by metal folding chairs.  A decades old stretcher in the corner on battered wooden poles, and the army green canvas was brittle and frayed.  At a council meeting I asked why the stretcher was there.  “Oh, that is an important church artifact.  During the flu epidemic of 1918, the church chapel was used as a hospital.  We have kept this stretcher ever since to remember.”  That’s great.  But why is it behind the door?  If it is important, why not mount it on the wall of the chapel and put up a plaque to remember?”   This suggestion was met with awkward [...]