Let us pray: O God, you invite us to think outside the lines of our experience. You invite us to love outside the lines of our biases and pre-suppositions. May these words help to open our hearts and minds to this invitation. Guide these words and use them. Amen.

I must begin with a sort of disclaimer. I began preparing for today's worship more than a week ago. I knew that I was going to be away to attend the birthday party that I spoke about when the children were here at the front, followed by attendance at a continuing education workshop and a meeting of Northern Lights Presbytery. So, I got an earlier than usual start in my preparation for this Sunday in the church year. I was very excited by today's first reading when I read it a week ago last Tuesday because in many ways I think it serves as a credo for what The United Church of Canada hopes to be, and in particular for what Yellowknife United Church strives to be – a place of inclusive welcome and challenged assumptions about who is to be considered a part of the community. There was a strong sense of fuzzy boundaries and dotted lines in the words and images of scripture for this week in the Christian year.

So, remember that a good deal of this preparation was done before my attendance at the workshop and presbytery meeting.

The workshop which happened last Wednesday has been established as a requirement for all ministry personnel in The United Church of Canada. The topic for this workshop was a conversation about setting appropriate boundaries in pastoral relationships as well as a presentation of the latest changes to the Sexual Abuse policy and procedures of The United Church of Canada.

So here I was in this strange juxtaposition of bible passages that challenge us to open up the limits that we often put around inclusion in the community of faith and a workshop that very appropriately served as a reminder of the importance of keeping proper boundaries in our work as ministers involved in pastoral ministry.

The things we discussed in the workshop were not meant and should not be interpreted as being in contradiction with the message of Peter's dream – of a community of faith that should not be limited by preconceived notions of who is “in” and who is “out”.

One of the profound characteristics of the Christian faith has been its appeal across boundaries of culture and tradition. This has been both a blessing and a curse for Christianity. The curse has been that the Christian story has been told in culturally specific ways with utter disregard for the ways in which God's presence has been experienced by people who have lived and loved in ways that are different from others. This is far more than just an unfortunate interpretation. The residential school story in Canada shows just how wrong and sinful this interpretation of the Christian story has been. Mardi Tindal, former Moderator and a visitor to Yellowknife a little more than a year ago tweeted this from Pierre Goldberger – a United Church minister and professor attending the Montreal meeting of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission this week: minister Pierre Goldberger tells #trc event that we've betrayed our own values & holy scriptures of love & justice The history of the Christian church is full of similar stories, with the Christian gospel being anything but good news to large numbers of people around the world and throughout the centuries.

However, when properly understood and in the light of stories like that of Peter's dream and with an opening and inviting commandment as described in John's gospel today we know that there is a universal truth there – a truth that not only transcends cultural expectations but which lets itself be modified and changed by the cultures and traditions it encounters. Peter's dream was not one that told people to go out and make sure that everyone was changed to be just like him – it was a dream that said God's love was for everyone – not just the ones who are like us. It is a dream that says we will learn as much or more than we teach, it is a dream that says we will listen as much as we speak, that we will encompass insights and learnings from the people who surround us, that the more diversity our community encompasses, the more likely it is to be a mirror of God's community.

The big blanket envisioned by Peter – with animals of every kind is very much like the big tent metaphor which we use to describe The United Church of Canada, containing within it a diversity of people, a diversity of perspectives, a diversity of understandings. The metaphor of a tent which contains this broadening and deepening diversity is reflected in the recent desire of our church to move beyond becoming just a multi-cultural church – reflective of the country in which we live, to being an intercultural church – a community of faith that understands the importance of learning and growing in mutuality.

We see also the importance of moving beyond our traditional understandings of what church is – to a community with fuzzy boundaries and dotted lines – bound together in our desires for justice, ecological stewardship, and the sharing of spiritual understandings – contributing the story that is ours, but also listening to the story of others – as together we join in following the God who made us, the God who loves us, the God who asks us to love one another – not as people who have all the answers – but as people who have something to offer and something to learn.

The Easter story is the story of a widening circle of faith, a widening circle of faithful community, a widening circle of openness to new ideas of what it means to love God and to be loved by God and to be in the journey of faith together.

Let us live this Easter story in this post-modern world – a world that has opened our eyes to new ways of seeing, new ways of understanding spirituality and faith, new ways of understanding our failings, and new ways of defining fuzzy boundaries and dotted lines around what it means to be a community and therefore a community of faith.

I know that God will be with us. I know that God wants us to be involved in this way. Thanks be to God. Amen.