April 19, 2009: EARTH DAY SHOWING of GOD’S LOVE
1 John 1:1-5, John 20:19-25, Psalm 133
Eileen Parfrey -- Springwater Presbyterian Church
Boy, wasn’t last week fun? We were crammed-full in worship, kind of making a person wonder, which holiday is more important, Christmas or Easter? The readings from John and 1 John give us an answer, but first I have to ask you, have you noticed that we read this story every year on the Second Sunday of Easter? The one about Jesus appearing in the locked room and Thomas needing more proof. It’s like the lectionary committee assumes that no one’s going to be here anyhow, so who’s going to notice the repetition? The whole seven weeks between Easter and Pentecost can be seen as one way of answering which is more important, Christmas or Easter. We start, not with doubt, as we’ve casually come to call Thomas’ story, but we start with Thomas’ expression of a very human need to experience the reality of God’s salvation.
Our need for concrete experience has gotten tangled in my mind with a daily online meditation I’ve been reading from Richard Rohr. He began this week by asserting that Jesus’ last name isn’t “Christ”—as in Jesus Christ. It’s a title, he says, a way of helping we humans understand the implication of the passion. After a week meditating on this, I’ve come to the same conclusion as the writer of 1 John. Without the incarnation, Christ’s passion is meaningless. If the God Jesus only pretended to suffer and die, the resurrection is no big deal. On the other hand, without Christ’s passion—his real, actual life and death and resurrection—the incarnation is no bigger a deal than the Greek myths about Zeus taking human form in order to seduce human women.
Incarnation and its implication for resurrection is what makes these texts perfect for our observance of Earth Day. You may have figured out after nine years with me that I’m not big on making non-religious holidays part of our worship life together. Hallmark card opportunities don’t usually make it to our Sunday mornings. Not that I’ve received any Earth Day cards lately. Earth Day this year, however, struck me as a wonderful opportunity to embrace our human desire to see, touch, and experience the reality of God in the world. It’s not a liturgical coincidence that this happens on a Sunday when we remember our older brother, Thomas the Twin, who needed to see and touch and experience the risen-ness of his teacher, the one on whose teachings he had staked his life. Later in the story, this so-called doubter, makes the fullest Christological confession in the whole gospel. “My Lord and my God!” he cries, when given a concrete experience of the risen Christ, the Son of God. In the text I chose to read today, Thomas expresses what we all need sometimes: an assurance we can perceive.
As if in acknowledgement of that human need, the Church made concrete experience a cornerstone of our worship. We call those concrete experiences the sacraments. In baptism and communion, we take ordinary things (water, bread, wine) and use them to communicate Divine grace. In embracing Earth Day today, we remind ourselves that, through regular sacramental access in worship to these things-of-creation-become-holy, we are empowered to celebrate and share God’s abundant resources. We’re only human, God knows. We’re grounded in the physical world. In God’s wisdom, this physicality is how we help bring about God’s vision for peace and justice.
Today we remember that Earth does not belong to us. God loves all of creation, not just humans. God created the first humans and gave us our first job, the care of creation. Just so, Christ’s work of salvation wasn’t just for humans. It is God’s desire to redeem all of creation, which God did through a human being, his own Son. Later in the service, we will bless and commission the earth-keepers among us as an act of discipleship, a recognition of our baptismal vows to try to be like Jesus.
St Francis gave us a beautiful prayer that praises God through all of creation, whom he recognizes as brothers and sisters. May it be true for all of us, that we join creation in praising God.
THE FOLLOWING IS THE REST OF THE SERVICE, THE “SO WHAT” OF THE SERMON:
Responding to the Word
Creation Mediates God’s Presence
In response to hearing God’s Word proclaimed, we offer ourselves in relationship. You are now invited to bring forward what you brought that symbolizes God’s presence in creation for you as ac covenantal gesture acknowledging God’s presence, providence, abundance, imagination.
Moment for Mission
We are still “responding” to God’s Word proclaimed
In a corporate vein, let us collude together as to how we will be “sent” in mission as stewards of God’s creation, by looking at concrete actions we can take. What we can do as a congregation to reduce/reuse/recycle in these categories:
Food/clothing/shelter
Transportation
Earth, water
Power
Enacting the Word
Commissioning of Those Who Care for the Earth
Stewards of the earth are invited to stand to receive a blessing and commissioning:
Foresters, farmers, tree growers, Master Gardeners, nursery workers; soil and water commission, county agricultural, extension, teachers, 4-H; members of the congregation’s Green Team; Master Recyclers, chemists, inventors, regulators; those who recycle at home (reduce, reuse, recycle) and who commit today again to try
As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.
There are many gifts but one body. There is one body and one Spirit, just as we are called to the one hope of our calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.
We are called by God to be the church of Jesus Christ, a sign in the world today of what God intends for all humankind.
The great ends of the church are the proclamation of the gospel for the salvation of humankind; the shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship of the children of God; the maintenance of divine worship; the preservation of the truth; the promotion of social righteousness; and the exhibition of the Kingdom of Heaven to the world.
The call of Christ is to dedicated and willing discipleship. Our discipleship is a manifestation of the new life we enter through baptism. Discipleship is both a gift and a commitment, an offering and a responsibility. Springwater congregation, the grace bestowed on you in baptism is sufficient for your calling because it is God’s grace. By God’s grace we (and all of creation) are saved. God has called you to a particular service—a service given to you through the first human ancestors. Show your purpose by answering these questions. Who is your Lord and Savior?
Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior.
Will you be Christ’s faithful disciple, obeying his Word and showing his love?
I will, with God’s help.
Do you welcome the stewardship of tending the Earth, because you are determined to follow the Lord Jesus, and because God has called you to this task to love your neighbor and to reconcile the world?
I do.
[place your right hand on the person to your right, and bless each other] Faithful God, in baptism you claimed us; and by your Holy Spirit you are working in our lives, empowering us to live lives worthy of your calling. We thank you for leading all of us to this time and place. Establish us in your truth, guide us by your Spirit, that in your service we may grow in faith, hope, and love, to be faithful disciples of Jesus Christ, to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit, be honor and glory, now and forever.
Almighty God, grant us wisdom and grace to serve as your stewards of the Earth. Amen.