creation – Salvaged Faith

Symphony of Creation

Posted on October 18, 2020Leave a comment

Text: Psalm 98:4-6, Genesis 1-2, selected verses

Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth;
Break forth into joyous song and sing praises.

Can you hear the earth, the planet, the creation beneath and around us is bursting forth in song?
Do you hear the praise in the rustle of the wind in the trees?
Or the song of the birds?
Or the stirring of the crickets?

Many of us have spent more hours outdoors this year, walking on trails, taking bike rides, simply sitting on the porch.
When gathering indoors is risky, there is blessing in being able to take in a deep breath of fresh air and enjoying the world God has made.
It has been a great opportunity to take in the whole symphony of creation.
The interplay of sunlight and leaves.
The harmony of wind and wings.
The rhythm of footsteps.

I have read through the creation story in Genesis 1 numerous times, but it wasn’t until this past week that I was able to look upon it with fresh eyes.
I took a moment to focus just on the words of God in this text.
The commands.
The directions.
And I began to imagine God as a conductor, standing before an orchestra.

It was all a soup of nothingness, chaos, whirling, disconnected… like the sound of instruments as they each do their own thing, not paying attention to anyone else, but just on their own sound. No cohesion. No sense. No form.

But then the conductor raises their arms and begins to coax out unique voices and melodies…
Light!
Sky! Separate the water!
Land, appear!
Earth, green up!
Lights, come out!
Ocean, swarm!
Birds, fly!
Earth, generate life!

You see, God does not write solo compositions. God’s symphonies are complex and intricate. Each instrument playing its part, working together, creating harmonies.
Lyre and trumpets and horns…
Sunshine and cattle and fish…
They all have a part to play in the song of praise and goodness that God has designed.

And just when it appears to be finished, God adds one more part…
Humanity…
Us…
You and me…
Made in God’s image…
Reflecting God’s nature…
And God invites us to conduct as well…

I played the flute in marching band in high school.
Not only did we learn the instrumental parts, but we also had to learn our placements.
We had to learn to march and play at the same time.
We had to learn how to weave in and out of one another.
And although we couldn’t always see it, our patterns and movement created incredible forms and sound on the field.
But here is the thing.
Because of the direction we were moving, or our distance on the field, we couldn’t always see the conductor – the drum major – on the central platform.
And so we relied upon the other drum majors who were positioned a bit closer to us.
Their job was to keep their eyes on the central conductor and to keep in time with them.
Only then could all of us work together.
You and I…
All of humanity…
We are like those other drum majors.
Conductors with our eyes upon God, helping to shape the song of the universe.
Here is the thing I have learned about this song… this dance…
It doesn’t stay the same.
It moves.
It grows.
It changes.
Sometimes it soars triumphantly.
And sometimes it is a quiet whisper in the night.
As the world shifts and our situations change, the melody adapts as well.
You see, we are not called to inhabit only a singular tune.
We are called, to sing together.

Last week, I shared about how the Jewish faith found ways to continue singing, even though the melody had changed.
Sanctuary moved from the temple to the home.
The religious authority moved from the priest to the parent.
Prayer became less about sacrifice and more about an experience of God.
All around us, the melody has been changing and shifting and moving…
But friends, we are still singing.
And we are still singing together.

We transformed our week long Vacation Bible School into VBS-in-a-box and sent home packets of materials so that children of all ages could join us and learn what it means to be strong in the Lord.

We gathered to ring bells in a solemn memory of the lives that have been lost to Covid-19 – creating space for grieving and hope.
Whether you knew how to ring or not, all ages came together to help our neighborhood remember the lives of the people who have died.

Our Confirmation class adapted to a virtual format and continued to gather and learn together. They stood before the church in June to profess their faith and these amazing young people continue to offer their gifts through scripture and music and volunteering.
Bible studies and small groups have made a similar transition and we have lots of folks who are gathering to learn and pray and laugh together every single week.

We moved worship online and on the phone and recently outside. And in the process, we have found that there are people that we were not really able to connect with in the way we had done worship previously. Some of our homebound folks have felt incredibly disconnected, but now they are receiving a full order of worship and sermon each week in the mail. We have new people joining us online, and others connecting that have long been disconnected or moved away from our community. Each week, we have roughly 35 households connecting on Zoom, 40 on facebook, and 60 being reached through mail!

And, we’ve been able to take this opportunity to revitalize our organ so that when it is safe for us to gather together again, it is refreshed and restored and even better than it was before.
Your generosity continues to allow us to make decisions that are investing in the future of our church for years to come.

Diedrich Bonhoeffer once wrote: “It is not you that sings, it is the church that is singing, and you, as a member… may share in its song. Thus all singing together that is right must serve to widen our spiritual horizon, make us see our little company as a member of the great Christian church on earth, and help us willingly and gladly to join our singing, be it feeble or good, to the song of the church”
Over this past year, we have widened our spiritual horizons.
We have learned a lot about what it means to be the church.
And what we have discovered is that it is less about a physical space or a building.
It is about the community.
It is about relationships.
It is about keeping our eyes fixed on God even though the way before us has been uncertain.
It has been about leaning into the songs and the scriptures that provide us comfort and remind us we are not alone.
It has been about hearing the call to live out our faith beyond an hour on Sunday morning… but out in the streets and at the food bank.
We have remembered our call to look out for our neighbors and to do no harm.
We have challenged one another to see the beautiful diversity of our world.
Has it been comfortable? Or easy? No.

But have we been faithful?
Have we done our best?
Have we kept our eyes on the conductor, the author of creation, the Lord of our lives?
That, I think we have done.
We have stretched and sometimes failed and tried again and kept working at the task that is before us.
The task that has always been before us.
To join our voices together in the song of creation.
To praise God and make a joyful noise.
Amen.

The Breath of the Spirit (2.0)

Posted on May 31, 2020Leave a comment

note… the original sermon for Pentecost was written over 10 days ago because of staff vacations and our own pre-recording for worship in the age of Covid-19. But I couldn’t rest with this sermon and felt the Spirit keep nudging me to talk about how breath this past week has been stolen from so many… so here is the update God put on my heart this morning.

Text: John 3:1-8

Most of us are familiar with the story of Pentecost from Acts.

As the crowds gather in Jerusalem for the Feast of Weeks, fifty days after Passover, the disciples of Jesus were also in town. Suddenly, the Holy Spirit rushes in, sounding like a violent wind and appearing as tongues of fire.

And then, the Holy Spirit empowers the disciples to reach out and speak to all who gather around, each able to hear in their own native language.

Three thousand people give their lives to Christ that day, receive the Holy Spirit, and the church is born.

Just six weeks before, those disciples had been gathered together behind locked doors. We heard this message right after Easter and also last week from Bishop Deb. Jesus is resurrected and shows these frightened disciples his hands and side and then he breathes on them, giving them the Holy Spirit. He offers them peace and sends them into the world.

This wasn’t the first appearance of the rushing, flowing, creative, breath of God.

In the first verses of our scripture, God’s breath, wind, Ru’ach, sweeps across the waters as the world is being shaped.

And in the second chapter of Genesis, God scoops up a handful of topsoil and forms it into a human being. Then, God breathes life, Spirit, into its nostrils.

Birth and creation and the Spirit go hand in hand.

And wherever the Spirit shows up, the finite and the infinite are closer together.

Our very first stop on our summer road trip is Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota.

For the Lakota people, their story of emergence into this world is connected with this sacred place. Emergence in this tradition is not creation per se, but when their people came to the surface and emerged from the spirit realm.

Their story begins in a time when the plants and animals were being brought into existence, but there were no people or bison living on the earth.

The cave itself, is known as Oniya Oshoka, the place where the earth breathes. This cave is believed to be a passageway between the spirit world and the surface.

The Creator instructed their ancestor Tokahe to lead the people through the passage when the earth was ready for them. When they emerged, they saw the hoof print of a bison who had come before and were told by the Creator, “follow the buffalo track and you will have what you need.”

Then the Creator shrunk down the entrance to the passageway, leaving it as a reminder of where they had come from.

As a child, my family traveled through the Black Hills in South Dakota for our family vacation one summer.

Yes, in this picture my brother and I ARE handcuffed together. You see, we made a stop at Wall Drug and got some of those novelty handcuffs… and when we got out to take this picture we couldn’t find the key!

However, we never found our way to Wind Caves.

In fact, it most people traveling through the area probably would have been unaware of the intricate network of caves just below the surface. The opening from the Lakota Emergence Story is just a small hole where the wind moves in and out.

In 1881, the Bingham brothers were traveling by and heard the sound of a blowing wind, even though it was an incredibly calm day. They sought out the source and the wind blew one of the brother’s hats right off!

Many came to see the sight and explore the caves and in 1903 it was officially designated as a National Park. It is one of the largest cave systems in the entire world and still has not been fully mapped!

Scientifically, changing barometric pressure causes the air to move through this the small natural entrance to Wind Cave.

Yet that unseen force, that natural in and out, reminds us of the breath of life blown into Adam’s nostrils.

It reminds us of the wind hovering over the waters.

It reminds us of Jesus breathing the Spirit of peace upon the disciples.

It reminds us of the birth of the church!

And as fundamentally as our own life depends on every breath in… and breath out… our life in God depends upon the flowing of that Rua’ch, Pneuma, Spirit in our own lives as well.

Think about your own breath.

Inhale.

Exhale.

That breath sustains you every minute of every day.

But how often do you really notice it?

The air entering your lungs.

The muscles moving as it leaves again.

The oxygen moving to every red blood cell.

I must admit I’ve been thinking a lot more about my breath this week.

I’ve been thinking about it after seeing those images of George Floyd struggling to breathe on the ground.

As a white woman, I confess that when Eric Garner cried out that he couldn’t breathe and died in police custody in 2014, I was upset for a little bit.

But my life went back to normal.

Lord have mercy.

Hear my confession that nothing in my life changed, when I could have breathed in your Spirit and could have spent these last six years building capacity and standing up against racism in our community.

The anger and frustration we see spilling out on the streets is a direct result of the fact that nothing has changed.

That what is normal is the systemic racism embedded in the fabric of our country.

I’ve been thinking about my breath every time I check the daily numbers of coronavirus cases and deaths here in Iowa.

Because of the essential nature of their work, the virus is disproportionately impacting our black and brown neighbors here in Iowa.

But I also think about the stories of children in the documentary “The Human Element” who couldn’t breathe because of asthma. The film explored a school in a neighborhood with a lot of industrial pollution where so many of its children have this disease they have an entire asthma protocol.

We are so busy prioritizing livlihoods over lives we can’t hear the people in our community telling us that they can’t breathe.

My insides are just twisted from grief and anguish.

It is Pentecost and it is 2020 and it feels like the world is on fire.

Maybe you feel the same.

Our gospel lesson for this morning comes from very early in the gospel of John.

Enter Nicodemus.

He was part of the ruling class in Jerusalem.

He had done everything in his life right.

He was the epitome of privilege and power.

And I think he felt like his world was on fire.

He knew that something had to give, something had to change, knew that there was something he wasn’t seeing.

And he was scared.

He was scared for others to know what he was wrestling with or how he felt…

In some ways, he was waiting to emerge…

So he goes to Jesus under the cover of night to have a conversation.

What he hears surprises him.

Jesus tells him that unless he is born anew, born from above, re-created… Nicodemus will not be able to see the Kingdom of God.

It’s as if he is telling him, as long as you remain hidden, in the dark, under cover…

As long as you are comfortable with things as they way they are…

If you refuse to let go and leave behind what you know…

Then you’ll never really experience God’s Kingdom.

Nicodemus takes Jesus literally and tries to figure out what it means to re-enter his mother’s womb…

And that is when Jesus brings the Spirit back into the conversation.

We emerge…

We are recreated…

We are born again…

We wake up…

We are able to see and know and participate in the Kingdom of God only by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus invites Nicodemus to set aside his privilege and power and to let the power of God fill his life and guide his actions instead.

And just like that very first breath in Adam’s nostrils brought him to life, when the Holy Spirit moves into our bodies and minds and souls, we come to experience a life that we couldn’t even comprehend before.

God breathes into our lives and changes everything.

All around us, our neighbors can’t breathe.

They can’t breathe because systemic racism is holding them down.

They can’t breathe because of pollution.

They can’t breathe because of an uncontrolled virus.

They can’t breathe because of hatred and frustration.

And I am taking a good long look at my own life today and thinking about all of the ways that I have directly or indirectly contributed.

How have I stifled the breath of God?

How have I kept that life-giving breath from entering their lives?

Where do I need to emerge, wake up, be born again?

As Tim Nafziger writes, “Jesus understand that power warps the way you view the world. The more power, the greater the warp. Being born again is what it takes to start seeing things again in their proper light.”

It all feels so impossible.

It feels overwhelming.

The grief, the division, the anguish is palpable.

But you know what… it was for the disciples, too.

When I initially wrote this sermon, I said that on the day of Pentecost they were in Jerusalem celebrating.

But how can you celebrate when your leader has been executed by the empire?

How can you celebrate when you are still angry and frustrated and grieving?

It had to have felt impossible and overwhelming and they had to have still been afraid.

And that is when the Holy Spirit showed up.

Showed up with fire and with wind.

Turned the world upside down.

No doubt, some in that crowd had just fifty-three days before been crying out “Crucify Him!”

But the Holy Spirit showed up and they could see now what they couldn’t see then.

Three thousand people were born again that day.

Three thousand people woke up to a new way of life and living in the Kingdom of God where you put your neighbors first and love is the greatest command and you share what you have and make sure no one is in need.

I think again about Nicodemus.

If we follow his story through the gospel of John, we find him again at the end.

No longer is he hanging out in the night.

He emerges into public view, in broad daylight, after the crucifixion of Jesus.

In a time when it would have been the riskiest for him to do so, the Spirit pushes him to the seat of power to ask for the body of Jesus.

He puts his own life on the line for the sake of the Kingdom of God.

In the midst of all that seems impossible, Come Holy Spirit!

Come and blow your life-giving breath among our communities once again!

Come and breathe into our lives so that we might see Your Kingdom.

Come Holy Spirit!

Cleanse us of all within us that keeps others from breathing.

Cleanse us of all that has kept us from experiencing your life.

Burn away the sins of racism.

Melt away our tendency to put profits over people.

Come Spirit and help us to see things in their proper light.

Help us to see ourselves in our proper light.

Help us to see our neighbors in their proper light.

Your light.

Your life-giving, life-sustaining, cup-runneth-over, abundant love for all light.

Empower us to be your church.

Not in a building, but right where we are… in our homes, our neighborhood, our work, our world.

Come Holy Spirit and help us to set this world on fire once again with love and grace and mercy and kindness and forgiveness.

Let’s pray…

Spirit of God may we breathe in and hold your love within us.

May we breathe out and share it with the world.

Spirit of God may we breathe in and hold your peace within us.

May we breathe out and share it with the world.

Spirit of God may we breathe in and hold your life within us.

May we breathe out and share it with the world. (Christine Sine)

Sing! Play! Summer! – How Great Thou Art

Posted on September 1, 2019Leave a comment

Text: Psalm 8

There are moments in our lives when we cannot help but sing our praises to the Creator of the universe.

Maybe you’ve felt it standing on the side of a mountain…
resting on the sand with your toes in the ocean…
quietly sitting on a deer stand in the middle of the woods…
kneeling in the garden amongst the zinnias…
staring up into the heavens on a cool dark night…

That sense of awe.
Wonder.
Majesty.

Swedish pastor Carl Boberg had those feelings overcome him in the aftermath of a thunderstorm.
As he later reflected:
It was that time of year when everything seemed to be in its richest colouring; the birds were singing in trees and everywhere. It was very warm; a thunderstorm appeared on the horizon and soon there was thunder and lightning. We had to hurry to shelter. But the storm was soon over and the clear sky appeared.
When I came home I opened my window toward the sea. There evidently had been a funeral and the bells were playing the tune of “When eternity’s clock calls my saved soul to its Sabbath rest”. That evening, I wrote the song, “O Store Gud”.

As a paraphrase and reflection on Psalm 8, it allows us to pause in praise as we reflect on the wonders of creation. How could we not think of the Creator? How could we not sing of the Lord’s goodness?
As I’ve shared with you over these years, astronomy and physics have always had a special place in my own call story. While I began my studies seeking to better understand the universe, that search led me straight to religion and faith and deeper questions about God.
Dr. Olsgaard and I were working on an independent study when he handed me this book, God and the Astronomers, where Robert Jastrow describes precisely this shift:
It is not a matter of another year, another decade of work, another measurement, or another theory; at this moment it seems as though science will never be able to raise the curtain on the mystery of creation… [the scientist] has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries. (p. 106)
When we stop.
Really stop.
Stop and think about the vastness of the universe, the mystery of how it all came to be…
How could we not worship and bless God’s name?

So this morning, as we think about this hymn, I want us to spend some time in awesome wonder considering the world’s that God has made and our place in it.
And rather than talk about it, I want to invite you to see it from a new perspective with this short film from National Geographic.

Then sings my soul, my Savior God to thee… how great thou art.

You know it is amazing to hear those voices of astronauts who describe being able to hide the whole planet behind their thumb.
Just as the psalmist invites us to notice, when we start to pay attention to this great expansive cosmos… we begin to recognize just how small we are.
Just how insignificant our place.
Just how little we know.
And the incredible wonder that the Creator who made all of that, also made me.

Who am I in vastness of the universe?
As Eugene Peterson writes in the Message translation of Psalm 8 asks God:
Why do you both with us? Why take a second look our way?

Who am I that God would notice me… much less come to earth, take on human life, live and die for me?

The version of “How Great Thou Art” that has made its way into our hymnals and hearts holds in tension that awe of creation and the story of redemption and salvation.
As many of the songs we have experienced this summer, the hymns journey from the original author to our hymnals was long and winding and was carried by missionaries. Originally, the eight verses were sung to a Swedish folk tune and was published in the songbook of the Mission Covenant Church of Sweden.
In the early 1900s it was translated to German by a nobleman who heard the song in Estonia.
That German version made its way to Russia and was published in a Russian-language Protestant Hymnbook.
It was there that English missionary Stuart K. Hine and his wife came across the song. As they traveled through the Carpathian Mountains, he created a paraphrase of the first three stanzas in English and finished the final one back in England after WW2.

Hine’s version starts with the wonder of creation from Boberg, but he adds verses three and four with a focus on atonement and salvation.
The third verse was inspired by a woman named Lyudmila. She had learned to read by studying the Bible and when the Hines arrived in their village, they heard her reading aloud from the gospel of John to a houseful of guests. While they remained outside, they listened in as these folks heard for the first time the good news and literally cried out how amazing it was that Christ would die for them.

In the vast scope of the universe…
The sun and moon and stars…
How awesome is it?
How incredible?
How breathtaking?
That God notices you.
That God loves you.
That God went through death for you.

What is our response?
How could we possibly begin to give thanks?
We start with praise… singing, shouting, giving thanks to our God.

But we also respond with a life filled with gratitude, service, and love.
As a lesser known verse, translated by Hine, reminds us:
O when I see ungrateful man defiling
This bounteous earth, God’s gifts so good and great;
In foolish pride, God’s holy Name reviling,
And yet, in grace, His wrath and judgment wait.
For as the Psalmist is quick to remind us, we were placed here in this moment for a reason and a purpose.
To have dominion over creation.
Put in charge of God’s handcrafted world.
Tasked with responsibility for the ground beneath our feet, the air we breathe, and all creatures that inhabit it… including our neighbors.
O mighty God! Brilliant Lord! How great thou art!
May we ever live up to this task.

This is Love: For Future Generations

Posted on May 5, 2019Leave a comment

Text: Leviticus 26 and Matthew 6: 25-33

It isn’t often that we turn to the book of Leviticus for the primary reading for our reflection. And even more rare that we would turn to such a difficult passage.
This section of Leviticus is known as the Blessings and Curses of the Covenant.
In the verses that precede, it reminds us of what that covenant entails: not making idols, worshiping God alone, keeping the sabbath, and respecting God’s sanctuary.
It lays out what will come to those who faithfully live by God’s decrees and keep the commandments: seasonal rain, abundant harvests, peace in the land, taming of the dangerous beasts and enemies turned away.
And that promise from the beginning of creation… that promise from the first chapter of John’s gospel… that promise from the end of it all in the book of Revelation…
If we are faithful and worship God alone…
If we are faithful and keep the sabbath…
If we are faithful and respect God’s sanctuary…
God will set up residence among us. God will dwell with us.

But.
If we refuse to obey.
If we turn our back on God’s commands.
If we stop paying attention to the way God wants us to live, then it clearly lays out what will happen: disease, crop failures, enemies will pour in, the wild animals will attack, the cities will be destroyed… and it gets worse… but I conveniently skipped those parts because they really aren’t child appropriate.
When the final destruction is brought to the land as a consequence of this sin and disobedience, here is what I find really intriguing…
“With you gone and dispersed in the countries of your enemies, the land, empty of you, will finally get a break and enjoy its Sabbath years. All the time it’s left there empty, the land will get rest, the Sabbaths it never got when you lived there.” (Leviticus 26: 34-35 MSG).

Today, on this Native American Ministries Sunday we are also taking the opportunity to celebrate creation.

This Sunday is an important mission opportunity because of the reality that as United Methodists, our heritage has been one of destruction and removal for these our siblings. In our efforts to spread the good news and expand capitalism and win the west, we forcibly removed Native Americans from the land. This effort is merely one step in acts of repentance and in working to restore and rebuild community where we have destroyed it.

While our modern Western worldview often separates us from the rest of creation, imagining that we are over and above the rest of created beings, Indigenous Peoples of the world, as Randy Woodley puts it:

“understand their relationship with creation as paramount to the abundant life God intends for all humanity. In other words, to be human is to care for creation. If we want to live our lives together in abundance and harmony, and if we want future generations to live their lives together in this way, we must realize we are all on a journey together with Christ to heal our world.” (Woodley, Randy. “The Fullness Thereof” Sojourners. May 2019.)

The pre-modern Israelites were also intimately connected with the land upon which they lived. Following God’s commands included keeping the Sabbath, giving rest to not only one another, but the animals and the earth, too. What other Sanctuary is there to respect for these wandering Israelites than creation itself? To be human, to be made in God’s image, was to steward the planet in God’s name (Genesis 1:28).
When we are faithful and care for one another and the land and worship God by caring for this earth, it is not only we who benefit… but so too the generations to come.
But this chapter in Leviticus also reminds us that when we fail to obey and when we use and abuse one another and the land itself… then the land will spit us out. We are sowing seeds of destruction not only for ourselves, but for generations to come.

On the one hand, we often reject the idea that a disease or disaster that falls upon a child is a direct result of the sins of their parents.
When a blind man was brought before Jesus, he was asked who sinned, the man or his parents, and Jesus turned the question inside out and said that the man was blind in order to show God’s glory (John 9).
But the reality is, there are long term consequences of our decisions in the world today. And as we have treated this earth as a resource to plunder or a convenience for our own sake, rather than a gift to steward, we are witnessing the impact of failing to obey.
I read a study this week that showed a link between an increase in asthma and our tendency to produce male shrubs and trees.
We prefer male plants because they don’t produce fruit and so are often far easier to clean-up in urban areas. But what we did not consider is that male plants produce far more pollen. The flowers on female plants catch and trap that pollen to fertilize the fruits they bear, removing it from the air.
But by intentionally and systematically reducing the number of female trees in our urban areas, we have unintentionally exacerbated a health problem.

All around us, our decisions are having an impact upon our planet.
Glaciers are melting.
Species are becoming more vulnerable and disappearing.
Topsoil is disappearing.
Severe weather is becoming more frequent and disastrous.
As Woodley writes, “Earth is out of balance, and as a result all God’s creation is in peril.”

Where might we turn?
How might we learn once again what it means to be in relationship with the earth?
As we hear Job speak to his friends in our call to worship, we can listen to the earth and the creatures around us.
As Jesus reminds, we should consider the lilies and the birds of the air and how God cares for them.
And we can turn to the wisdom and understanding of people like our Native American siblings who have remained connected to the land and have not forgotten what it means to respect God’s sanctuary.

In fact, as we consider this passage from Leviticus, I am reminded of the Great Law of the Iroquois Confederacy, the founding document of the oldest democracy on Earth. They included a principle that perhaps would be helpful for us today.
“In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations.”

Think again of those words from Leviticus about the impact of our faithfulness to God: abundance, peace, life for ourselves and future generations…
And hear these words from The Great Binding Law of the Iroquois where they explain this “seventh generation” principle:

The thickness of your skin shall be seven spans — which is to say that you shall be proof against anger, offensive actions and criticism. Your heart shall be filled with peace and good will and your mind filled with a yearning for the welfare of the people of the Confederacy. With endless patience you shall carry out your duty and your firmness shall be tempered with tenderness for your people. Neither anger nor fury shall find lodgement in your mind and all your words and actions shall be marked with calm deliberation. In all of your deliberations in the Confederate Council, in your efforts at law making, in all your official acts, self interest shall be cast into oblivion.

Let me just pause right there… let self interest be cast into oblivion. Doesn’t that sound like Jesus reminding us not to worry about what we will eat or what we will wear? If we think about the future generations and the world around us, our needs will be taken care of, too.

Cast not over your shoulder behind you the warnings of the nephews and nieces should they chide you for any error or wrong you may do, but return to the way of the Great Law which is just and right. Look and listen for the welfare of the whole people and have always in view not only the present but also the coming generations, even those whose faces are yet beneath the surface of the ground — the unborn of the future Nation. (http://7genfoundation.org/7th-generation/)

The love of God has been poured out in the gift of creation.
And it is a gift we are meant to pass down from one generation to the next.
Today, we choose whether we will be faithful to God’s commands and create peace and abundance and life for those who will come after us.
So in every decision you make today and tomorrow and for all your days, keep that question in the back of your mind:
How will this impact my children?
How will this impact my grandchildren?
How will this impact the world seven generations to come?

May we be faithful and love and respect God’s sanctuary – not just for ourselves, but for the generations that follow.

Mystery: Restored!

Posted on November 25, 2018Leave a comment

Text: Job 42:1-6, 10-17

This morning, I want to tell you a story about little Henry.
Henry walked to school every morning with his grandpa. And along their way, Grandpa would stop at the neighborhood store for a newspaper and a cup of coffee.
At the register, there were bins full of candies and gum and chocolates and every single morning, Henry would ask Grandpa if he could have some.
Every single morning, the answer was no.
Well, after several weeks of watching this, the cashier started to have a soft spot in her heart for the little boy. So one morning, as Grandpa and Henry came up to the register, the cashier said, “Good morning, Henry! How about this morning you reach in and get some of that candy you want… on me!”
Oh, he was SO excited! He reached out his hand to get some candy and then quickly pulled it back.
Instead, he grabbed Grandpa’s hand and shoved it into the bin with all of the sweets.
Grandpa was a bit stunned, and pulled back a whole fist full of candy.

As they kept walking to school, Grandpa was a bit puzzled. “Henry,” he asked, “Every single morning you ask me for candy… this is exactly what you have always wanted… why didn’t you pick out the candy yourself?”
Henry looked back at Grandpa with a grin on his face. “It is, Grandpa… but your hands are so much bigger than mine! My little hand was too small to get everything I wanted!”

There is a sense of Henry’s wisdom in our story of Job.
You and I, we are so small.
Compared with the stars and the oceans and the mountains and the vast diversity of creation, we are tiny specks of dust.
We might want to reach out and grab knowledge and answers and truth and faith… but our little hands are too small to get everything we want.
God’s hands are much bigger.
God’s wisdom is far greater.
God’s power is beyond our comprehension.

Last week, our youth took us through some of the mystery of God’s power and might.
We were reminded through song of just how powerful God is and how through the grace and the love of God, we can walk through the valley of the shadow of death and not be afraid.
When oceans rise, we can rest in God’s embrace.
In our troubled seas, God is our peace and God’s love will lead us through.
When we can’t feel a thing and are falling short, God says that we are loved and that we are held.

These messages of power are so important to the story of Job that we have been following these last few weeks.
At the beginning of November, we began to explore this little morality play in which a perfect, upright man, Job, is tested by God.
The Accuser has this question… will Job continue to be perfect and upright and faithful if things start to go badly for him? Or is he simply a fair-weather friend?
God allows this little experiment to proceed and Job’s flocks and livelihood and children are taken away from him. Even his own bodily health is impacted and he is covered in sores and finds himself in pain all day and night.
But still he refuses to turn his back on God.

The second part of our story involved Job’s friends.
They are convinced that Job must have done something wrong in order to have all of this punishment brought upon him.
They, like Job, firmly believed that good things happen to good people and that bad people get what they deserve. They see God as being the arbiter of retributive justice – where punishment and blessing is given out based upon someone’s faithfulness and goodness.
But for every one of their speeches, Job has one of his own.
He has done nothing wrong. He is innocent. If only he could have his day in court and stand before God, he could make his case and God would have to relent.
Job still believes at this point that God gives people what they deserve… and if he is being punished it is undeserved… and therefore… God is wrong.
Job is actually putting God on trial.

And as Isabel and Olivia reminded us in their message last week… God might be annoyed and a little upset at Job’s whining… maybe even perturbed at Job’s accusations… but the message God speaks out of the chaos and directly to Job’s heart is this: I created this whole world. I made everything in it. I understand how it works and am the very power that sustains it all. And… I love you. I’ve got your back.

For three chapters, God goes on and on and on about “the incomprehensible magnificence and immeasurable power of divine majesty.”
Were you there when I laid the earth’s foundations?
Have death’s gates been revealed to you?
Where’s the road to the place where light dwells?
Can you guide the stars at their proper times?
Do you know when mountain goats give birth?
Did you give strength to the horse?
Is it due to your understanding that the hawk flies?
Can you control the great beasts of the earth like the behemoth and the leviathan?

Job is stunned into silence.
He thought he had God all figured out… that God’s justice was some kind of divine math in which your goodness earned you points and blessings.
It actually reminds me of the television show, The Good Place, a comedy that explores ethics and morality and what we owe each other. The foundation of the afterlife in this universe is that for every good thing you do with selfless intent, you rack up points that allow you to enter “the good place” a place of eternal satisfaction.
But when you cuss, or stiff a waitress, or murder someone, points are deducted and without enough points, you end up in “the bad place.”

Job is living his life in a certain way, following all of the rules, making sacrifices for not only his potential sins but also those of his children, because he thinks that is what faith is about. Trying to earn God’s favor and blessing.

What he didn’t realize is that he already had it.
We all do.
The God who set the stars in motion and who knows about the birth of every mountain goat and how to direct the flight of a hawk also knows you and me intimately.
God knows every hair on our head.
God knows the divine plans in store for each of us.
And God’s justice is not a math equation.
Rather, it is a complicated, holy, grace-filled effort to take every broken, hurting, sinful thing in this world and to redeem and transform it back towards its holy purpose.
Job had only heard about God before… but now Job has seen God.
And God is far bigger, greater, more awesome than he ever imagined and his tiny way of grasping and understanding the world has been torn apart.

I think, if anything, this morality tale we find in the book of Job was an effort by early Jewish theologians to take apart what they believed was a very limited way of seeing God in the world.
So many people think that God is an impersonal judge who tallies right and wrong and who sits on the divine bench handing out punishments and rewards. And with such a calculated understanding of the divine, we can make no sense of that ancient question of why bad things happen to good people or why there is suffering in the lives of innocent people.
But our scriptures of our faith have a vastly different message for us about who God is and how deeply God cares for us.
Our God got down in the dirt and formed the first humans and breathed into them the breath of life.
Our God took imperfect people like Abraham and Noah and Jacob and through them, in spite of them, because of them, set in motion the divine plans for all the people of the world to be blessed.
Our God heard the cries of the people when they were caught in slavery in the land of Egypt and raised up a leader to bring them home.

In the end, what we find in the Book of Job are not easy answers to the question of why there is suffering. In fact, Job gets no answer or explanation for why so much was taken from him.
Instead, Job discovers that we are allowed to cry out when we suffer.
We should protest against injustice.
And we should open our lives and our hearts up to discover the ways that God is far powerful and more holy than we could ever imagine.
Before, Job had only heard about God.
But in the midst of his suffering and his yearning for truth, he encountered the very presence of God.
God reached out to him and in the process, Job found himself having a real, deepened, humble relationship with the Lord.
In our lives, we will face difficulties.
We will encounter diagnosis and questions that we cannot comprehend.
We will find ourselves asking why such awful things are happening in the world.
In these last few weeks, I have heard this very community raising up cries of concern for the death of loved ones, illness, wildfires, mass shootings, war, hunger, and homelessness.
None of these situations are deserved.
Innocent lives are impacted or harmed or taken far too soon.
We want answers and solutions.
And I think what we discover in the Book of Job is that there is no quick fix for the problems of this world. We can’t explain away why these things happen in a few words.
What we find instead is the presence of a God who is with us in the midst of it.
A God who hears every cry.
A God who seeks, in the words of Sharon Lynn Putt, “not to condemn and punish but to reconcile, to redeem, and to restore all of us to each other and to God.”

In the verses that we skipped in our reading for today, God reaches out to Job and invites him to offer up prayers and offerings for those three friends who had such a limited understanding of what was happening in Job’s life.
You see, even in the midst of restoring Job’s possessions, God is also working to redeem those relationships between Job and his friends.
And God is working to help transform and expand their understanding of how this world hangs together, too.

Our task, as we live out the truths of the Book of Job, is to listen to the suffering of others. To listen to our own pain. To not hide it, but hold it up into the light where God can show us that we are loved when we can’t feel a thing. We are strong when we think we are weak. We are held when we think we are falling short. We belong to God even when we think we don’t belong.
In that moment, we, like Job, can relent. We can surrender. We can lay our whole lives at the feet of God… knowing, trusting, believing… that no matter what happens, we are held in the hands of God.
Like Henry, our little hands aren’t big enough to fully grasp and understand the ways of this world. But God’s are.
Thanks be to God. Amen.

illustration adapted from Discipleship Ministry preaching notes

The Peaceable Kingdom

Posted on December 17, 2017Leave a comment

Since the end of September, we have had a guest at the Dawson house… a young female cat named Twiggy.
Twiggy belongs to my brother and sister-in-law who are just finishing up ten weeks in Germany getting to know the new company they work for. They also have a black lab, Rachel, but she was staying with a family that better understands how to take care of dogs.
Now, Twiggy is adorable and playful… but she is also ferocious and territorial and quickly became the alpha in our house. My husband has nick names for both of our kitties… Black Cat and Fat Cat… he affectionately refers to her as Satan cat. This is an evidence-based conclusion… She is known to hiss and growl, strike and chase the other cats, block their way to the food, and overall, causes a lot of racket.
The other day, though, I walked into the bedroom. All three kitties were curled up sleeping on the bed together.
For that moment, there was peace again in the Dawson house.

In our candle-lighting text for this morning, we hold before us a vision of that kind of peace for all creatures. The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard with the young goat, the calf and the lion will feed together, and a little child shall lead them. (Isaiah 11)
When we look around us today, this is not the reality we experience.
We read about violence in Jerusalem, we lament the five-year anniversary of Sandy Hook, and just this morning, there are reports of a suicide bomb and gun attack on a Methodist church in Pakistan…

Our relationships with one another and with the animal life of this world was intended to be very different. As the days of creation unfold in Genesis, God commands the waters and sky and land to be filled with a diversity of creatures. And unlike the plants, each of these new creations require relationship in order to reproduce. God then shifts attention towards humanity, creating us “in God’s own image,” so that we might care for and have dominion over all the living things that breathe.
And then verse 30 tells us – God gives to all creatures all the green grasses for food. What is laid out in this chapter is not a science-based description of the violent food chain we experience… but of peace and sustenance.
The vision of the peaceable kingdom we long for in the new creation is simply a restoration of how God created us to live.
But as the next chapters of Genesis tell us, and as we explored in the first week of this series, humanity quickly rebels against God’s plan.
We were cut off from the abundant life of the garden. All of creation was impacted – from the soil to the air to the creatures that were to be our companions and helpers.
John Wesley, on of the founders of our United Methodist tradition wrote about how our sin shook the foundations of creation and changed our relationship with what he calls the “brute creatures” of this world. Although they were formed to be our helpers, no longer do the creatures love and obey humanity – they flee from us or would seek to destroy us. Just as our hearts are caught up in violence and destruction, so too, do they turn and destroy one another. Nearly every creature on earth “can no otherwise preserve their own lives,” Wesley writes, “than by destroying their fellow creatures!” (“The General Deliverance”)

As John Wesley notes, it isn’t just the large creatures of prey that are violent; even the “innocent songsters of the grove” eat forms of life that are lower on the food chain than themselves.
In 2015, when I took the Organic Ministry class, I spent an entire day each month on my friend Tim Diebel’s farm, Taproot Garden. One of my favorite things to do during our afternoon sabbath was to sit by the chickens and watch them interact and strut around the yard. They appear so gentle and beautiful, but they are part of the violent circle of life. When you watch them there in the yard, they peck and scratch and will rip apart any worm or bug that crosses their path.
“The girls,” as Tim calls them, are well cared for. He lets them out of the coop every morning, pampers them with choice feed and treats from the garden, gathers their eggs, and safely tucks them in every night. Occasionally the chickens get territorial, and sometimes bigger ones would pick on the smaller ones, so multiple coops and a process for integrating new birds into the flock helped to manage that process. But you can’t guard against every danger and you can’t change the fact that chickens are also prey.
My heart broke one afternoon as I saw a post from Tim on his blog about “nature’s harder edge.”
Just as he was heading out to put the girls to bed for the night there was a commotion in the yard. The chickens were in chaos and making a ruckus and Tim caught out of the corner of his eye something larger that had been scared away by his presence. When he finally had a chance to take in the scene, three dead hens were found. It had been foxes, who had watching for just the right moment to grab dinner.
In the midst of his grief, Tim’s words capture the tension of what it means to live in this time of longing for the new creation:
“Here in the rawness of God’s order are pests and diseases in the garden and thieving birds and squirrels in the orchard. There are moles tunneling through the yard, and there are predators above and around the chicken yard attentively watching for and eventually seizing their hungry opportunity. It’s beautiful out here, and serene, but it’s also torn feathers and blood, rot and thorn.”
The reality of torn feathers and blood, and the pain and the violence, death and destruction, amplify the longing of all living beings for the peaceable kingdom.

Wesley reflected upon the violence of creation, but also had harsh words for how the brute creation is treated with cruelty by “their common enemy, man…” and… listen to these words, to what Wesley calls us, “the human shark, [who] without any such necessity, torments them of his free choice.”
From inhumane confinement operations, to dog or cock fighting rings… from the neglect experienced by so many pets to the ways some beasts of burden are abused. Not only did Wesley believe that in the new creation these creatures would be restored to full and abundant life… that all dogs and cats and lions and bears WOULD go to heaven… but that God’s creatures would “receive an ample amends for all their present sufferings.”
He encouraged people to reject our sense of entitlement and to remember God’s care for every inferior creature… in the hope it would soften our hearts towards them here and now. And he was not alone.
Charles Spurgeon wrote, “cruelty hardens the heart, deadens the conscience, and destroys the finer sensibilities of the soul … For the man who truly loves his Maker becomes tender towards all the creatures his Lord has made.”
And so we cannot divorce Isaiah’s vision of the peaceable kingdom in our focus text for this week from the verses that precede it.
In verses 1-5, we hear good news of hope for all who are needy and oppressed. The promised one will come to transform all relationships, human or otherwise.
And as Gene Tucker notes, “the rule of justice in human society is followed or paralleled by a transformation in the relationship among animals and between animals and human beings.” When our hearts are right, peace will prevail for all creatures.
And God calls us to account.
In these days of Advent, we are comforted by the image of peaceful animals around the manger and we hear the good news shared with the shepherds and sheep in the fields of Bethlehem.
But the expectation of Advent is not only about preparing our hearts for the birth of Jesus, but for Christ to come once again.
We are waiting for God’s kingdom to burst forth and set us free from the endless cycle of violence and death, revenge and pain.
We are waiting for that day of endless peace, justice and righteousness.

How shall we wait?
Well, first, we need to remember that when the Prince of Peace comes, there will be a great reckoning… Our Great Shepherd will gather the flock together and as much as we want to identify with the sheep and not the goats, we have to remember our obedience to God is shown in how we care for the most vulnerable of this world – the least and the last and the lost.
So, this season of Advent is a great time to remember the creatures around us…
You could donate items to local animal shelters and veterinary offices like old towels, pet food, and cleaning supplies. We also collect pet food and take it out with Joppa when we visit the homeless in our community.
Or you could give the gift of animals through Heifer International and help empower small-scale farmers across the world…
or maybe, you could foster or rescue an animal yourself.
God has never stopped calling us to practice care and dominion for the creatures of this world.
And when we do so, when we take up our responsibility, we are ushering in the peaceable kingdom in our little corner of the world and stewarding it until that day comes the little child shall lead us into the promises of the new creation.

Eve Meets Mary

Posted on November 26, 2017Leave a comment

Lately, as I’ve made my way home from work here at the church, I can see the stars in the sky. And it’s not because I’m here until 10pm.

No, the days are growing shorter… the air colder…
This is the time of year when we are preparing ourselves for the longest night, the winter solstice, and while the daylight wanes, we are clinging to reminders that better days are ahead.

Right here, in the midst of this season of darkness, we remember that it is in the darkness that new life comes.
The bulb has to be planted within the cold, dark earth to bring forth its buds.
Babies grow and are formed in the dark warmth of the womb.
And in this “bleak midwinter” we set out our evergreens and yule logs to remember that resurrection and eternal life are ours.
We are waiting, you see, during this time of Advent for the birth of the child spoken of by prophets… the Savior, Messiah, Prince of Peace, Light of the World.
And… as people born on this side of his birth, life, death, and resurrection… we are still waiting.
Advent you see, is not only a season of remembrance. It is also a time to look forward. The fullness of that kin-dom that Christ came to bring has not yet fully been realized.
All we have to do is open the newspaper to know that God’s will has not been done on earth.
We are still waiting.

Earlier this week, I heard news reports that the Island of Puerto Rico still only has power for 46% of its residents. The devastation of Hurricane Maria was so severe that months after the winds and rain poured down, rural areas still do not have any access to resources.
But not only Maria… the impacts of Hurricane Harvey in Texas and Louisiana are still being felt.
While it is not as present in the news, the continual onslaught of storms in Louisiana has had a doubled impact because of the simultaneous destruction of wetlands. The dead zone in the Gulf created by run-off farther up the Mississippi and the altering of the flow of the Mississippi for human habitation has devastated the area. The US Geological Survey now reports that nearly 1,900 square miles of land have disappeared in the last seventy years.
Sometimes, the sin and destruction and pain of this world is almost too much to bear.
Sometimes, it feels like we have been waiting too long.
Sometimes, it is hard to have any hope when we look out at reality.

Maybe that is why I find so much comfort in the words of The Archbishop of Denver, Charles J. Chaput. He defines hope as a choice, “a self-imposed discipline to trust in God while judging ourselves and the world with unblinkered, unsentimental clarity.”
Those words remind me that hope is not a naïve sentiment or wishful thinking.
We can look out unfiltered at the world that surrounds us… and we find hope at the intersection of what we see and our faithful trust in God
Hope doesn’t shirk away from problems or difficulties, but enters into them, confident that God will be there and will bring order, life, and joy out of the chaos.
That hope is not only for you and me. It is for all of creation. This whole world is waiting with us.

In Paul’s letter to the Romans, we are reminded that “the whole creation waits breathless with anticipation for the revelation of God’s sons and daughters. Creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice – it was the choice of the one who subjected it – but in the hope that the creation itself will be set free from slavery and brought into the glorious freedom of God’s children. We know that the whole creation is groaning together and suffering labor pains up until now.”

Whatever was intended for creation, with the tree of life and fertile land and those first humans holding dominion over it all, is not what we experience today. When we read through those first chapters of Genesis, there is no mention of rainfall or storms, no death, no decay, only life, and life abundant.

Our faith explains the brokenness of creation – the cycles of destruction, natural disasters, violence, and death by pointing to a single moment: When Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit in the Garden (Genesis 3:6-7).
At that moment, everything changed.
That first sin, that first rejection of God’s intentions, had an impact on the entire world! God confronts Adam and Eve and there is not only punishment for the snake and the two humans, but as Genesis tells us, “cursed is the fertile ground because of you; in pain you will eat from it every day of your life. Weeds and thistles will grow for you, even as you eat the field’s plants; by the sweat of your face you will eat bread – until you return to the fertile land.” (Genesis 3:17-19)
We acknowledge this pain of creation even in the songs we sing this time of year. We proclaim how “fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains repeat the sounding joy”…. But we also sing about the groaning of the earth itself and its longing for redemption… “no more let sins and sorrows grow, nor thorns infest the ground.” (Isaac Watts, Joy to the World, UMH #246)

And as our Advent candle reading from Isaiah lifts up, it was not only the first sin of Adam and Eve that impacted creation, but as we continue to sin, the earth dries up and withers. (Isaiah 24:4-5)
Theologically, we are called to remember that our selfishness, our disobedience, our breaking of the covenant impacts the physical world around us. Because of our continued sin, the whole of creation is trapped in a cycle of death, enslaved by decay, and waiting to be set free.

So where is the hope that Paul writes of in Romans? Where do we turn for hope as we look out at the groaning of creation today?

One afternoon I stumbled upon an image that took my breath away.

It was drawn by Sister Grace Remington who is a member of the Cistercian Sisters of the Mississippi Abbey here in Iowa. It depicts Eve, clad only in the flowing locks of her hair and clutching that forbidden piece of fruit. Her leg is entwined in the grip of a snake; her head hung in shame. Evil, sin, and death are her legacy. It is our legacy.
But with one arm, she reaches out and places her hand on Mary’s womb.

Mary stands there full of grace and mercy.
She gently touches the face of Eve as if to tell her it is okay. She holds her other hand over Eve’s and together they feel and experience the life of the one who was coming to redeem and restore all the creation.
There is hope.
When Paul writes about the groaning of creation and all of God’s children, he describes that pain as nothing compared with the “coming glory that is going to be revealed to us.” (Romans 8:18)
And then in verse 22, he uses the Greek word synōdinō to portray this reality; a word used only once in scripture to describe the agony of childbirth.
Creation is suffering labor pains.
Something new is about to be born.

In this season of Advent, this image of Eve and Mary fills my heart with possibility and invites me to hear the words of Romans 8 in a different light.
So often, I hear the frustration and groaning of the text, instead of diving in to see the good news.
Yes, the world around us is groaning, but they are labor pains. Creation itself is about to be delivered, to be release, to be set free to become what God fully intends for it.
In his letter to the Romans, Paul keeps pointing back towards Adam, because in those first human beings, we see God’s ultimate intention for the human race.
Paul believes that in Christ, in that child that would be born of Mary, the human project finds it’s completion (Jospeh Sittler).
In the beginning, there was a part for humanity to play – tending the garden, carrying the image of God, helping all of creation to thrive.
And now, as Christ is born into our lives and we claim the Spirit of God that sets us free, it is our job to take up that role once again.
As this image conveys, in Christ, we find release from our temptations… that snake of sin that would bind us is being stomped on by Mary.
In Christ, we find forgiveness for past transgressions… the head hung in shame and guilt is gently touched, the hand is embraced.
The way we have lived on this world – using and abusing God’s gifts for our own intentions – doesn’t have to be the way that we move forward.

In fact, Paul tells the Romans that those who have been set free by the Spirit of Christ have an obligation to live as God’s sons and daughters right here and now.
Not for our sake.
Not for selfish reasons.
But because the whole earth is waiting for us to do so.
The love and mercy of Christ reaches out to us as the descendents of Adam and Eve and yes, we are offered forgiveness, but more than than, we are empowered by God’s Spirit to live differently.

Paul believed that God linked the restoration of creation with you and me, and so I find hope in this season of Advent in the possibility that people of faith can help to change the tides of decay.

All throughout this season, we will highlight some of those stories and ways we can make an impact, but these Christmas Trees here at the front of the church remind me of one…

In the midst of that loss of habitat and wetlands in the Louisiana delta, people are working to restore the wetlands and help mitigate the impact of storms by collecting used Christmas trees.
As they deposit them into threatened bayous, they become the basis for new marsh vegetation and they help to reverse erosion.

We have a choice of how to live on this earth and whether or not we will obey the call of God to care for all of creation.
Just like this image of Eve, may we be transformed by the birth of Christ into our lives, so that we might be the hope for the world.

NOTE: This sermon is an adaptation from chapter one of my book, “All Earth Is Waiting.”

The Wealth in our Wallets instead of the Well-being of the World

Posted on June 1, 2017Leave a comment

This afternoon I watched the United States join two nations… Syria and Nicaragua… in being the only three nations in the entire world that are no longer signers of the Paris Climate Accord.

As I listened to the justifications, what I heard over and over again was the mention of a few economic sectors that will be impacted negatively and are disadvantaged because we are choosing to prioritize a different future for the world. Our President spoke about a drastic and unfair “redistribution of wealth” through the International Green Fund and how instead we need to put America First. His focus is solely on the wealth and wallets of the few, instead of the well-being of the many.

Well, if we are really going to put Americans first, perhaps we should think about all of these ways that Americans will be impacted if we do not make drastic changes to halt climate change. The link is the official report of the National Climate Assessment and includes data from thirteen different U.S. government agencies. The impacts include health, agriculture, energy, coastal migration, extreme weather, and are broken down by sector, region, and show the risks if we do nothing.

One of the most disheartening aspects of the argument to withdraw is that we need to stop worrying about other people and focus only on ourselves and what is best for ourselves. And yet, as I understand the Christian faith and my calling to live our the love of Jesus Christ in the world, my duty is to love my neighbor and to set free the oppressed and to care more for the well-being of others than I do myself. Even if we stick with the idea that we, as Americans, are leaders in protecting the environment, the thought that we can just take care of ourselves without helping to bring others along doesn’t even find a home in scripture. For as Jesus teaches the disciples in the gospel of Luke, we have been given this world as a gift and we are called to be its stewards. “Much will be demanded from everyone who has been given much, and from the one who has been entrusted with much, even more will be asked.” (Luke 12:48)

In this chapter filled with parables, we are called to remember the worth of even the sparrows, to guard ourselves against all greed, to sell our possessions and give to those in need, and to make wallets that won’t wear out. And then, ironically, Jesus lifts up the fact that the crowds “know how to interpret conditions on earth and in the sky” (12:56). We know when its going to rain or when a heat wave is coming. Except, it appears that our government can’t see the conditions on the earth and in the sky. We refuse to acknowledge our impact on the world around us. We are willing to put our own personal gain above the well-being of the world.

“Where your treasure is, there your heart will be too.” – Luke 12:34

Lord, have mercy on us.