Service Sunday June 14, 2026
HIGHLAND HILLS UNITED CHURCH
Minden, Ontario
All are Welcome!
Worship Leader: Rev. Max Ward
Music Director: Melissa Stephens
Watch a video recording of the whole service using YouTube below (we had technical difficulties so this is only a portion)
(For a Printer Friendly PDF version click this link)
MESSAGE – Guest Speaker Rev. Éric Hébert-Daly
Message: “From Laughter to Possibility”
Read the message below.
Due to illness, the remainder of the webpage will be left undone at this time.
It’s a pleasure to be with you on this special occasion and to honour the work you have done to become an Affirming congregation of the United Church of Canada. Thank you for inviting me to join you and celebrate with you.
The process to becoming Affirming is not an easy one and many churches simply say that they are welcoming of all people without doing the work of identifying what that means. You’ve worked through the process, you’ve had the conversations and the explorations. You’re prepared now to be public, intentional and explicit in your welcome… which is no small feat.
Today’s scripture reading is precisely the lesson that was scheduled for this Sunday… and how appropriate. Notice how Abraham jumps up and greets the three guests, offers them water and bread, but then extends curds and milk… and uses the finest flour to make little cakes. The hospitality goes above and beyond. Isn’t this also what you have decided to do… to become a safe and hospitable place for all those who enter your doors.
It’s also the story that sets the stage, later in this chapter for the saga of Sodom and Gomorrah… the story that many have interpreted as God’s judgement on being gay. But we know that the sin of Sodom is the sin of inhospitality, of abuse and domination. In fact, every other reference in the Bible that recalls the sin of Sodom… it has nothing to do with loving relationships between consenting adults. But it does condemn those who abuse, dominate and treat strangers with contempt.
By becoming an affirming congregation, you recognize that hospitality is the very thing that God is calling us to… just as Abraham demonstrates with his actions.
I’d like to tell you a little about my own story to set the context for why I find Sarah to be the most interesting character in our scripture reading this morning…
I met my husband 38 years ago, on the steps of the 519 Church St. community centre in Toronto. He had come to his first meeting of Lesbian and Gay Youth Toronto. I had been a regular attendee for a while at that point, in fact, I had just finished my term as the Coordinator.
We became fast friends and a year later we began to explore being in a relationship. Two years after that, we decided we wanted to have a ceremony that would be an equivalent to marriage because, as you know, same-gender marriages were not a thing. We found ourselves at Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto, a ministry that was targeted to the queer community. They offered Holy Union ceremonies for same-gender couples.
One of the requirements was to attend three prep sessions to explore your relationship and get to know the church in which you were going to hold this special event. At the first such event, the person leading the orientation explained that they would be tracking all the Holy Unions so that when same-gender marriages would be legal, they could try and get them recognized after the fact.
On the way home on the streetcar, Scott and I laughed hysterically at the thought that same-gender marriage would be possible in our lifetimes. Maybe long after we were gone… but the society we knew then was still highly homophobic and that kind of leap just seemed ridiculous.
Like Sarah in scripture who is caught laughing at the thought that she might give birth at her advanced age. It seemed impossible.
Scott and I, as well as Sarah, couldn’t be faulted for laughing. Every indication demonstrated that such things were fanciful thoughts… but never in our lives did we think it could be done. And of course, we would all learn that with God, all things are possible.
So much of the world changed in that short period of time. 15 years after our Holy Union, we were married in a United Church just north of Ottawa. And I’ve often wondered how things happened so quickly. I have a theory. I think that Harvey Milk was right.
Do any of you know Harvey Milk? He was the first openly gay politician to be elected to any office in the United States. He would become mayor of San Francisco. He believed that the most important thing we could all do to help advance gay liberation was to come out publicly.
The reason I think he was right is because as more and more people publicly shared this aspect of themselves with the world, the less it was foreign and unspoken by the majority. Suddenly people’s children, aunts and uncles, best friends and work colleagues, were fully open about who they were… and it was harder and harder to say terrible things about people… particularly people that we know and love… light and honesty was the best disinfectant of homophobia.
Progress happened quickly because people who said evil things were confronted by people who said, “No, that’s not true… someone I care about is gay”.
Of course, we know that homophobia is on the rise again and that people are choosing to protect themselves by going back into the closet. That’s not good.
But in an increasingly polarized world where people find themselves on one side of an issue or the other… where people yell at each other and attack each other personally for their beliefs or their positions… we may be losing the foothold of what it means to be in community and open to transformation.
Hospitality to strangers is a powerful image in scripture. It means welcoming someone without knowing which political party they vote for. It means feeding them even if they disagree with you. It means using the best flour because they are worth it even if they don’t look like you.
So what does that mean for a church that just became Affirming? It means that you don’t shy away from conversation with strangers. It means that when someone doesn’t share your views – you don’t avoid them and go hang out with people you know will agree with you. It means that we are willing to engage in conversation with one another, even in disagreement, so that we can exercise our empathy.
In the neighbouring regional council that I serve, they began a mystery visitor program whereby volunteers would go to churches where they had never been, armed with a checklist of things to look for… is it clear when the service is happening? Were they welcomed? Did the bulletin tell people when to sit or stand? Did people introduce themselves?. It’s a three-page checklist of good welcoming practices.
We heard the report of the visits. In more than half of the congregations, the mystery guest was not introduced to anyone and during coffee time (if there was one), they were largely left alone. On Sunday mornings, we like to see the people we know and connect with them… but for someone coming in for the first time, it’s hard for them to break into cliques. It’s like a child going to a school for the first time and trying to find someone to talk to at lunch.
If we are to be a transformative force in this world, we need to open up dialogue, have conversations with people we don’t know and engage. We need to be more like Abraham and less like the King of Sodom.
Another little piece of my history… I’ve had a diverse career path. I was active in politics for many years, then went into lobbying for wilderness conservation… and ultimately called to ministry. That journey taught me a lot about humanity.
I wanted to change the world when I was a teenager, that was the reason I did anything. So politics was the natural first choice… that’s where change took place after all… right?! After 17 years in politics, it became clear to me that our elected officials can’t do anything if their voters don’t agree. So it became clearer to me that we needed people to express how they feel about something in order for elected folks to make the changes… so I became a lobbyist.
In my work there, after 8 years, it had also become clear that lobby groups don’t change the population’s views, they can only group together the people who are already convinced.
In ministry… yours and mine… we are in the active work of transformation. We don’t start by assuming we’re always right… we rely on something outside of ourselves to help us discern and navigate a way forward… we listen for the call of the Holy Spirit, and we invite others to do the same. That sacred task of transformation is what we are called to engage in… it is what we need to change the world… to cross the divide and to dialogue with those with whom we disagree. Sometimes we might even realize that we were missing something important and we evolve in our thinking. Sometimes we say something that will resonate with someone else… maybe weeks later… but that will be transformative for them.
If we all sit in our cliques and never talk to strangers, God cannot perform miracles like God did for Sarah and Abraham. Like God did for many parts of the world who began to take notice of people who were in same-gender relationships.
While your process of becoming an Affirming ministry is complete, the real work lies ahead… to be willing to have difficult conversations… to welcome and be open to transformation by the stranger. To create sacred space where the encounter can help create the Kingdom of God.
I pray for you and your ministry. I celebrate this milestone and the many different achievements you have yet to undertake as you embark on this journey. Thank you taking this on. It is a special and valuable gift to the reshaping of the world. Blessings to you on that journey.
