Today, we began with a scripture reading from Genesis 1, as I think this is the creation story most people know, and we will continue to use it as we also read other creation stories in the Bible.
But in this, we are reminded that water was an element in God’s creation, right after light, according to Genesis 1. We have already recognized the importance of water to life for us, other creatures, and the natural world. Knowing that water is a creation of God, how do we then consider water? Is it holy? How do we steward it – or care for it?
In 2014, we realized the importance of clean water with the water crisis in Flint, MI. But we have our own water issues in Lancaster County. In 2021, Penn State researchers found that 50% of our streams are impaired, primarily from agricultural runoff (fertilizers, sediment, and animal waste) as well as legacy contaminants from heavy industry along urban waterways. Brubaker Run, which travels through Rader Park, is on this list as is the Conestoga River, both of which eventually feed into the Susquehanna River and the Chesapeake Bay.
This is one of the reasons we are connected to the Interfaith Partnership for the Chesapeake. On their website is a kit called “Faithful Lawn Care,” which includes a prayer that states: May the waters from this land flow clean and healthy to sustain all life downstream from me.
Although the stream, as we have encountered it in Rader Park, is healthy because it is home to many aquatic critters, we need to consider what chemicals we may be putting into it, even inadvertently, through what is used on the gardens and what we put on our grass to make sure it is “weed-free.”
Where should our priority be as a congregation that espouses being environmental stewards? Do we want to do anything differently? Do we want to encourage any of our neighbors to be mindful of what runs off their properties and into the stream?
Water is also an important component of my spiritual health. There is something about moving water that soothes me.
It can be the ocean, a babbling brook, or a flowing stream. Maybe the sound is similar to being in my mother’s womb before birth. I don’t know why, but I know it brings a peace that few other things are able to do. When I hear Jesus speak of “living water” in our gospel reading, I equate it with moving water. Water that moves is able to sustain life in and around it. Whereas stagnant water can become poisonous if it doesn’t change. Water without enough oxygen in it prohibits life.
Like Deklan’s sermon last week, I want to say that nothing good grows in stagnant water, except the lotus. But as much as living water helps us, we also try to control it. Raging water scares us, which is why we get a thrill kayaking through rapids. But if the water is a tidal surge from the ocean, we are truly terrified.
If we are honest, we have done things like create dams to provide both control and energy, without considering the effect on the rest of creation. We prefer to be in control of things, including water, and for far too long, we have understood some of the latter verses of Genesis 1 to mean that we can do whatever we want with the water, as it was taught that we have “dominion” over the water and everything else.
And we have let our selfishness and greed decide what we do with the water. We didn’t care who put what into the water until the 1970’s when we realized we were starting to poison ourselves.
Personally, I’m concerned that as the climate continues to change, there will be a shortage of water. It will become an element for which we attack one another. And we can begin to change that future by taking steps now to value the water and the Holy Spirit, which is present in the water too.
I just realized that I’m focused on the water because that is easier to talk about than the Holy Spirit – that which makes it “living water” in Jesus’ words.
But the Spirit is in the water just as it “blows where it will.” It is not to be controlled by any of us. It is here to be helpful to us – to encourage us – to remind us that we do not have to prove our worthiness – and to remind us to think of more than ourselves.
God’s creation is not all about us! God’s creation was made for the benefit of all – without exception!
So, how do we shift to be more aware of creation? In what ways is God calling us to be advocates for creation in our area? Jesus’ “living water” offers us new life. What are we willing to do in return?
So this week, I could go on at length about the problems of the world.
As we were hit by a cyberattack, which not only overwhelmed our email system but also, through my email, got into some of my personal affairs. The good news is that after changing some passwords, this seems to be resolving. The bad news is that it occupied way too much of my time this week! It took my mental and emotional energy.
I also saw an email from my friend Megan Malick in her post for The New Path, where she states that this is a time for “Invisible Grief.” Around Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and graduations, these happy occasions have expectations that we will act in certain ways, which may not align with how we are feeling.
Like we talked last week, about how we don’t know what physical or health challenges one is dealing with, we also don’t know what grief may be there. The point of my sharing this is I think that was also true for the disciples during today’s scripture.
Let’s take a moment to reflect on the events leading up to today.
The person, Jesus of Nazareth, whom they had spent so much time with and whom they had come to know as the promised Messiah, was killed by the Roman Empire, and they couldn’t – didn’t stop it. They watched him die and knew his body was buried.
But three days later, they were told of his resurrection. The women found the tomb empty, and “two men in dazzling clothes” showed up and reminded them that he had told them this was what would happen. The women ran and told the disciples, but they did not believe. Then Peter went to the tomb and, after seeing the grave clothes, “he went home, amazed at what happened.”
Then Clopas and a friend were walking and talking on the Road to Emmaus, and a man joined them to listen and then shared the story of faith. And at the meal, he was revealed to be the risen Christ in the breaking of the bread. So they went to the disciples, who are still huddled together, and told them what happened. While they were telling the disciples their Emmaus Road story, Jesus Christ showed up among them and asked for something to eat and ate it to prove that he was a physical being and not a ghost.
Then he stayed with them for 40 days, where they may have thought everything was going back to how it had been. Until he took them out to Bethany, raised his hands, and was physically lifted into the sky and disappeared.
Emotionally, they had been at their lowest and were unsure of how to proceed, when suddenly Jesus was back with them. This had to have taken them a moment – to go from deep sadness and grief to joy-filled surprise. I’m sure they needed some time to believe what they were experiencing. It’s a “pinch me so I know it’s real” moment. I can only imagine they were thinking, “Now what?!?” In their bewilderment wondering, “What are we to do?”
That’s when “two men in white robes” show up and ask them, “Why are they standing there staring at the sky?” Which sounds a bit insensitive, but the point is that they are to be about the work of Jesus. He had empowered them to do the healing work he had done and asked them to continue his mission by being his witnesses to the ends of the earth.
This was their role – to be witnesses – and they did it. This is what led to the creation of the Christian church. Because of their witness, the writers created the gospels. They were the storytellers of their time.
What are we to do with their stories, with our holy scriptures?
I think we are called to be the messengers who share the stories. Like the disciples, we cannot get stuck reminiscing about the past – about what the church used to be – about what we once did. We are called to look forward to what still can be, to listen and discern what the Spirit is saying to us.
Today, we will be praying a Litany of Gratitude for this space as it has seen baptisms, weddings, and great celebrations. It has also housed funerals and times of great loss and grief. This sanctuary has held it all, and the Spirit here still invites us each week. And the Spirit will journey with us as we go to the Bachman Center next week and be with us there for the summer during the renovation. There we will have a blessing of the space and give thanks for the Spirit that is always present when two or more gather in Christ’s name.
When we return after the renovation, We will rededicate this space for the continuation of its mission – of it being a place of inclusive refuge, a place of compassionate justice, and a place of environmental advocacy.
And our role is to continue to consider how we are living that out in our ministries. How are we reaching out to our community to tell them about the inclusive refuge we are working to be? How do we tell them that we care about injustice in our world? How do we tell them that we are working towards being better stewards of the environment?
As I sat with this scripture, 1 Timothy 6:6-12, I thought about the question, what is enough? How do you know when you have enough?
Then on Friday, I was on Route 30. I was coming back from York, and I was doing 75 in a 55 mph zone in the left lane. Don’t ever do that. I got past the on-ramp from Centerville Road and got over, and realized that I had a line behind me, and they went past me, going at least 85-90 and revving the engines. I thought I was already going over what is enough, what’s fast enough, what’s big enough, what’s shiny enough?
It seems that humanity was created with this longing, this hunger within us. But I think God gave us this hungering, hoping that we would hunger for God. I think that’s what that hunger was meant to be about. But God didn’t force us. But we are easily distracted, and we’ve been looking from the very beginning for something else that will fill that hunger. Something shiny or exciting or stimulating, like money, looks, the right body, the right clothes, the right car, or the right house. Do you get the point? We’re very good at trying to fill that hunger with other things. Besides a relationship with God.
So I leave you with the question today. At what point are you content? What does contentment look like for you?
Actually, the book of Genesis, where Genesis 11:1-9 came from, is a collection of origin stories. It’s trying to explain how things became as they are, how we got to where we are, and from the very beginning, we were discontent.
That’s the story of the Garden of Eden. They couldn’t be satisfied until they took from the tree of knowledge, the one that was off limits. The knowledge was too great a temptation.
And then we have Cain and Abel, the two brothers. And Cain couldn’t stand that Abel was favored by God because being favored was too great a temptation not to take.
In our scripture for today, although it seems to be about languages, it’s really about the fact that they weren’t satisfied. They were discontent. When they could make bricks and mortar, then they thought they could be gods, and they built a tower to the heavens. They weren’t looking for a relationship or to get closer to God. They just wanted to be gods to look down on all the other people. That was the problem. That was too tempting.
Yearning, which God placed within humanity, hoping that they would choose a relationship with God, instead became a yearning for power. The yearning for power is too great a temptation. We were created to be content. God wants us to be content with all God’s gifts. With that yearning, being satisfied in our relationship with God, then we can be at peace and it didn’t work.
God came to us in Jesus to show us what this looked like in a human being. And Jesus didn’t chase after money, shiny things, or anything at all. Jesus wanted to make relationships with people and help introduce them to God. Even when he sent out the 72, he said, Take nothing with you. Rely on the hospitality of strangers and as followers of Jesus, that is who we are to be those who extend hospitality to strangers. For we never know when we’re entertaining angels. We can be generous with what we have.
In our scriptures today, the writer said, “Be faithful, loving, dependable, and gentle” – Timothy 6:11.
This was the message that he wanted to get through to the church because obviously they were hung up on money. So he got a little bit more specific. The love of money causes all types of trouble.
Then we have this other sentence, which I think is so good to know, because there are all kinds of sayings that people attribute to the Bible that are not in the Bible. Like God helps those who help themselves. Not in the Bible. It’s Benjamin Franklin.
The other one is God won’t give you more than you can handle. Not in the Bible. It is not biblical. Actually, God shows you that God will be with you through all that life gives you. It does say “We didn’t bring anything into this world, and we won’t take anything with us when we leave” – Timothy 6:7. That is in the Bible, which I hear as a call to a simpler life. Our Amish brothers and sisters practice this. They also stay much more closely tied to the land. That’s a piece that I think we’re forgetting. We’ve got to get closer to the land right now.
We are living in incredible times, scary and yet filled with potential.
The breakage of our systems means we have an opportunity to create more just and caring systems than what we have now. Last Saturday, I caught a few parts of the FarmAid concert, and one of the pieces that I saw was an interview with Dave Matthews that I thought was profound. He essentially said life in this country won’t get better until we value people over profit. We need to see each person as our neighbor. Be willing to help and care for them.
We remember that Jesus gave us two commands. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your strength. That’s who we have to be. We haven’t done it well yet. We need to get better. That’s our challenge. But to do so, first we need to figure out, as a congregation, what is most important to us.
So, I have a challenge for you this week. I want you to think. About the world that you wish existed. What do you want to see in this world? I keep saying we are creating because it’s real. We are creating the world for these babies that we baptized today, and for all the little ones. We are creating the world that they’re gonna live in. What do we want that to look like?
Write it down because we need to start really getting clear on what we want, because if we’re clear on what we want, then we can come together and build it. We can organize and build those systems that we need.
If you tend to be nostalgic, to put on those rose colored glasses and say, “Well, if it just was the way it was when I grew up”, I have a caution for you. It wasn’t good for everyone then. It was good for some, but not for all. And I think our call is, it has to be good for all or it’s not good for any of us. Because what hurts you hurts me. And what hurts me hurts you. Whether you realize it or not.
We are a country with great diversity already. Maybe the best place to start is to write down your favorite Bible verses. What are the verses that that lead your life? What are your guiding verses?
One of mine is “And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” – Micah 6:8.
Join us for a special retreat led by Rev. Kathryn Kuhn as we explore the deep connection between faith and nature through the lens of Celtic Christianity. “Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul” will be a time of reflection, grounding, and listening for Christ’s call to hope.
This retreat offers a perfect opportunity to embrace the beauty of creation, deepen your spiritual journey, and prepare your heart for Earth Day. We invite you to join us on Saturday, March 15, from 10 AM to Noon in the Youth Center and Rader Park as we live into our vision of environmental advocacy.
Come, be renewed, and experience God’s presence in the sacredness of the earth. Click Here to Register!
Blessings
If I would ask you, who are those in our culture you would name as blessed?
Think about that. Who does our culture say is blessed? I think about people who have extravagant materialist things such as houses or cars. People who have a good stock portfolio. People with large incomes. People who have achieved their dreams. Those are the people that our culture lifts up as blessed.
But who do we as the church name as blessed? Well, the word Makarios in Greek means blessed or to receive God’s favor. So, who is it that God prefers in the world? Well, God prefers the poor, the widow, the orphan, the stranger in our midst. Those are the people God tells us over and over and over to care for. That’s who God prefers. God is looking for us to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, visit the sick and imprisoned, and welcome the stranger.
So, let’s remind ourselves again about who Matthew’s audience is.
Because remember, we’re not in Mark, we’re in Matthew. Matthew is writing to this specific group of people who are Jewish and believe in Jesus. Scholars believe that they lived in Antioch of Syria in about 90 AD, which means they know that the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed.
They are still under Roman occupation and will be for another almost 400 years. There’s not much sign of that changing. They are living in a time where they are doing too bad. It’s believed that they’re not the destitute, but they know the destitute. They see it. They know of the people who are in need. And they, in trying to find God, are also trying to figure out how they still live obeying the Jewish laws and following what they know of Jesus.
Matthew Chapter 5 is written to help them know more about Jesus and what Jesus calls for. They try to stay in their synagogues and they get forced out. They don’t have a place to be. They are literally forming the first churches. They’re trying to come together and form churches and they still carry that Hebrew Bible belief in blessings and curses. That idea from Deuteronomy choose life or death. God wants us to choose life, but if we choose badly there are curses that come with. Like last week with the sheep and the goats, you either choose well, or you don’t choose well.
This was still the time that Jesus lived in, and it’s the time that Matthew’s audience lives in, even though it is 60 years later. They are under an authoritative regime that is taxing them so that the wealthy can maintain power and have their extravagances and others are losing everything. Because, once you don’t have the ability to pay your taxes, then they start taking your land, your cattle, your animals, and your property. If you speak out against the empire then you’re arrested, and the penalty for speaking against the empire is crucifixion. Don’t miss that, because that’s important in Jesus’ story. That’s why Jesus is crucified, because he was a threat to the empire.
Yet, Jesus starts his first teaching in Matthew with this long sermon, and it goes on into chapter seven.
I don’t know how many of you watch the series on Amazon Prime called “The Chosen’, but “The Chosen” has a great scene about this. Their interpretation is that they have the character of Jesus say, “I’m giving them a map to know where to find me.” Matthew 5:1-11 is a map. Think about that.
Jesus is saying he is going to be with the poor, with the grieving, with the humble, with those who seek justice, with those who show mercy, with those who are listening for God, with those who make peace, and those who are harassed for being themselves, that’s where Jesus is.
Then, that last line, Matthew 5:11, if you follow me, if you look for righteousness, if you hunger for righteousness, then you also will suffer. But your reward will be great in heaven.
My friends, I think that we need to be honest about where we are in this time and place.
We are living in a time when there is authoritarianism that is trying to rule our lives. They are trying to gain power from the very bottom in Hempfield School District, who doesn’t have a contract for teachers. All the way up. They want to take away freedom.
We are exhausted and afraid. We just need to admit that. Life right now is hard. Admitting your problem is the first step in healing so we need to name that we are exhausted and afraid. The antidote for being exhausted and afraid is awe and wonder, so we have to shift our focus from the stuff we hear on tv to god. Remember that, Jesus First.
We need to shift our focus and realize that we too are loved no matter what you are dealing with in your life, you are loved and you are worthy. You are accepted and you are welcome here. This is a safe space for you. We claim that in our vision that we want to be that safe space for people to be themselves. We want to offer comfort and strength, not because we have answers, but because we are on a journey ourselves for our own answers. We will walk eachother home.
Now, I want to invite you into a few moments of peace. I have the most awesome pictures from the James Webb telescope.
I’m going to begin with the words of God to Job. “Then God said to Job, ‘Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me if you know. Who set its measurements? Surely you know. Who stretched a measuring tape on it? On what were its footings sunk? Who laid its cornerstone while the morning stars sang in unison and all the divine beings shouted? Can you bind the chains of the Pallades or loose the cords of Orion? Can you lead forth the Maserath in their season or guide the bear with its children? Do you know the ordinances of the heavens? Can you establish their rule on the earth? Can you lift up your voice to the clouds so that a flood of waters may cover you? Can you send forth lightnings? So that they may go and say to you, here we are. Who has put wisdom in the inward parts or given understanding to the mind? Who can tilt the water skins of the heavens when the dust runs into a mass and the clouds cling together?'” – Job 38:4-7
“Then Job answered the Lord, ‘I know that you can do all things and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge? Therefore, I have uttered what I did not understand. Things too wonderful for me, That I did not know here and I will speak. I will question you and you declare to me I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye see you. Therefore, I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.” – Job 42:1-6
From Psalm 104 “Bless the Lord. Oh, my soul. Oh, Lord. My God. You are very great. You are clothed with honor and majesty, wrapped in light as with a garment. You stretch out the heavens like a tent. You set the beams of your chambers on the waters. You make the clouds your chariot. You ride on the wings of the wind. You make the winds your messengers. Fire and flame your ministers.”
I invite you this week to take some time in nature.
Take a few moments and watch the leaves fall. Appreciate the colors. Put yourself in a place that feeds your spirit.
I’m attracted to running water. So, Brubaker Run makes a beautiful sound. Or if you can walk down the path at Doorworth Park, walk down to the Little Conestoga. Just listen to it or appreciate all that you see, all that our natural world, all the ways that our God is showing us that we’re going into a cycle of death.
That is true, but joy will come in the morning and there will be a resurrection in the spring.
Last fall, we affirmed our vision and mission, and one of the pieces of that is environmental advocacy.
We have taken this summer season to focus on some environmental issues, and we have aligned ourselves with the children’s faith formation class that’s meeting in Rader Park. We’re using the scriptures from their curriculum as our guide for this.
Interestingly, that makes July a lot about famine.
It is the theme that runs through most of the scriptures in July. I put this picture up for you, um, to show you where within the world famine exists. The places that are colored blue is where famine exists. You can see that the continent of Africa is not in good shape.
But there are other places, one of those places is Palestine. The number one cause of the famine is conflict. I’m going to say conflict, but it’s more than conflict, right? It’s violence. It’s violence that is hurting people. The second reason is the climate crisis. The third reason for famine is the rising costs of food.
So famine is a shortage of food. Which leaves people literally hungering. That causes people to migrate and that is what plays in to our story for today.
Today, we’re gonna look at Joseph. Joseph is a major character in Genesis. In fact, to read his story starts in chapter 37. It’s chapter 37 then it goes to 39, and it’s 39 to 45. You can read all of that and I’m going to try and tell you that in two minutes. Six chapters in two minutes. How’s that? But Joseph’s story is laden with conflict.
It begins when he’s a young boy and he has this dream that he is going to be great. He is one of twelve children to Jacob, the twelve tribes of Israel. Jacob becomes Israel. His name becomes Israel. They are the twelve tribes of Israel, if that rings a bell with you at all. Joseph, he is also his father’s favorite son. He is the firstborn to his father’s favorite wife. Yes, he had two wives. Remember, we can get way down in the weeds, and I’m gonna try not to go in the weeds today. But he is the favored son.
You may have heard of Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat. That was a musical. Joseph gets an ornamental robe. In the King James version of the Bible, it was described as a coat of many colors, which is where Andrew Lloyd Webber ran with the Technicolor Dreamcoat. But his brothers, all of his brothers envy him and decide they need to get rid of him. They need to be done with this troublesome brother. So, they take him out and they end up selling him into slavery. Interestingly, if you look at the backstory, he’s sold to the Ishmaelites, and I’ll let you track that rabbit trail yourself. But he ends up in Egypt at Potiphar’s house, and that doesn’t go well either, and he ends up in prison.
In prison, God continues to be with him. This ability that God has given him to interpret dreams comes in handy. Because they tell the Pharaoh who’s been having these dreams. This is where our scripture that we read today is focused. Where I think we can get caught in the weeds and we can see something amazing about God. When you read this story, it’s especially the scripture we read you can get caught with the lean cows and the dried corn, but what’s really happening if we back out of that detail, what’s really happening there is God is talking to Pharaoh and Pharaoh is listening.
I want you to stop and think about that for a minute. Pharaoh does not worship our God, does not worship the God of Israel, does not worship Joseph’s God. He may have heard of it, but he worships the Egyptian gods. Those are the gods of his people. But suddenly, he’s getting messages from another god. What we would call the one true god, who obviously doesn’t mind, or doesn’t have an issue talking to someone who doesn’t really believe in them, or listen to them, or think about them. That’s the God that we worship. A God who constantly reaches out, even to those who would be in opposition to God’s people.
God chose to talk to Pharaoh, and Pharaoh chose to listen. Think about that. That’s God working in all of that. We haven’t gotten to the Moses story yet, but we’ll hear about how God hardened Pharaoh’s heart. That’s a line from the story, from the Exodus story.
But here, God is softening Pharaoh’s heart because it will put Joseph as second in command of Egypt.
Why is that important? There’s going to be a famine in the land. What’s going to happen? Joseph’s family, the 12 tribes of Israel, are going to come to Egypt because they’re starving and they need food. Joseph is in the right place to help them. So all the conflicts of Joseph’s life, the sibling rivalry and the conflict with Potiphar’s wife that lands him in prison. All of that, God works through all of that to bring Joseph to a place where he can be reconciled, where this family can come back together and be God’s people. That’s how I want you to look at the story.
I had a very hard time finding a picture of Pharaoh. I use the Vanderbilt Christian library and they’ve got thousands of pictures, but not of Pharaoh. Pharaoh is the character in the right bottom corner. This is a picture from the Tuskegee Chapel that was done by the lambs. It’s their singing window and the majority of the characters are African, and it has words of the spirituals on there.
But, I can’t emphasize enough, I want us to think about what that says about who our God is.
That Pharaoh was so moved by God and these dreams that he ignored the ethnicities. He ignored the fact that Joseph was an Israelite. He ignored the different religions, that he didn’t follow the Egyptian gods. He ignored the social classes, because Joseph was a slave. In fact, when Pharaoh chooses him, Joseph is in prison accused of rape. How many people in prison accused of rape would get exonerated and made second in command of a country? Just think about that. We’re talking about a major shift that God brought about for God’s purposes.
Joseph’s interpretation really was not really all that remarkable. In your abundant years, save it. Because there’s going to be lean years. That’s just good economic wisdom, right? Yet, it reminds the people to have a longer vision. Don’t just worry about today and what feels good for today and waste, but look at the longer vision.
Our church is going through lean years and we are trying to take that longer vision.
We’re relying on the abundance that has been part of our heritage. Literally, we say we’re standing on the shoulders of the saints who came before us and their generosity. Because we are in lean years right now. You can be part of making that sustainable through your sustaining gifts. You can be part of continuing that ministry. A ministry of reconciliation within our community, within those whose lives we touch. In ways that we support and advocate for God’s creation. In ways that we welcome all people as children of God and offer inclusive refuge.
So, I have a hard question for you to consider. When, like Pharaoh, do we let go of our need to be right? To be in charge and listen to the wisdom of the one that we perceive as less than us. Because that’s where God’s working through. God’s working through the children, through the youth, through those who have not walked through the doors yet.
I’m also wondering, what are the famines of our lives? For what are you hungry? What are you starving for? What are the situations that can lead us to listen to the wisdom of another?
When we wrote The Mission and Vision, these statements came with the core values. We believe that God’s love is stronger than fear. We value social justice and inclusion. We are called to care for our environment as God’s creation. May these be words of wisdom for us. May they encourage our faith in God who loves and works in the world in ways that we do not understand, and with people that may surprise us.
May they remind us of God’s abundance that we do not have to fear. Thanks be to God, Amen.
The scriptures for today are actually a sermon I preached last week. Maybe I’ll just use the same sermon, right? That’s what pastors usually do, right? They just regurgitate stuff but, I couldn’t do that to you all.
I did what I usually do and I woke up this morning and I said “God, what do you want to say to your people? What do these people need to hear from you on this day?” And, as I ask God to inspire me, “what are the words that your congregation needs you to hear?”
I kind of laugh because, the irony is that this scripture is on planting and seeds and I still know very little about planting and seeds.
I just kind of asked everybody, “how does stuff grow?” I asked a lot of questions about, you know, slugs, and “How do you fight slugs?” This is Lucy’s ongoing battle, but, we’ve got to the point where we realized that we were gonna be moving so we didn’t do any like upkeep on our gardening and you know what? Stuff grew.
We didn’t water, we didn’t plant, but stuff grew. Not anything good, obviously, but there’s so much stuff in there that we’re just like, well, it’s gonna be the next persons to deal with. Which can be another sermon, right? Like, if you don’t take care of your own garden, things are gonna grow. Most of the time, it’s things that you do not want. But something will grow.
Today we have these parable images.
We all know the parables, there are some more famous ones, like the prodigal son or the parable of the sower and the seeds, which is gonna be next week. I know that this summer, the theme is the environment. How do we relate as Christians? How is this important to us? Why should it be important to us? Why should we care? And does it even matter?
You can be like me and take an attitude that I’m not going to be around, so that’s going to be somebody else’s problem in a couple months when everything’s just exploding in the garden. But don’t tell Lucy, I do not care for gardening. When we moved in, Lucy had an interest in gardening, and we talked about it, and I said I’m not into it, and of course, we ended up gardening. We’ve had a garden, and it’s produced some pretty cool stuff, but not this year, thankfully.
I’m sure there’s the same people here today who are very passionate about the environment, and what happens to this world, and what’s going to continue to happen. I know there’s people like me that could care less about my garden and rather just have grass. It’s easier to care for. Mow it once every couple weeks. That’s who I want to talk to today.
There’s no reason to preach to the people who understand the environment and care about the environment and realize why it’s important. They’ve had the foresight. They understand why it’s important to act now.
Then on the other side, it’s people who could care less and expect this proverbial, someone, will take care of it. There is no someone. You are it. You have to do it.
That’s who I want to focus the reading on today. That’s who I think these parables are speaking to. I think, out of habit, I just assumed that this was one of those, let your faith be like a seed where you kind of just plant it and take care of it and somehow it grows. But the closer I read these parables, I realized that it’s not talking about our faith being like seeds.
I want to read these parables and these scriptures in a way that’s more inciting, especially to the people that are hands off environmentalists. What if these parables were about money? More specifically, your money. Like, I was able to reach over and grab your wallet and your bank account and talk about it. What if I could just pull up your statement and show everybody what you’ve been spending? Show everybody what you’ve been saving for? Show everybody your retirement funds? What if I could pull out your checkbook and read out your balance sheet? For everybody to hear. Alright, now it’s a little bit more serious.
Some people perked up. Oh, I don’t know about that. It makes me uncomfortable. But this is something that matters to you, right? Let’s reread the parables. With the thought that your bank account really does tell you what’s important in your life.
The paraphrase reading for today is, this community that gathers on Sunday morning, as if someone were to take their own money and invest it wisely. And after a long time, because that’s how safe investing works, and the money would have actually accrued a profitable interest, and no one knows how. Some of you actually do know how. The stock market works and interest works and for the rest of us it’s just magic. But the second reading would follow.
When you first start working in life, your bank account is terrible. After some time of savings, it starts to look strong, the stocks begin to grow, and with a retirement plan finally comes to bear fruit and returns with substance. That’s when it’s time to retire. And that’s when the Grim Reaper comes and gets you, right? And it’s all over. No, actually. No, no, no. That’s the time when you retire and you can enjoy the fruit of your labor. You can enjoy the investment that you’ve worked so hard for. With what can we compare the Kingdom of God?
No one here will disagree with my interpretation. Is it accurate? Is it theological? Who knows, but I know what I said is true. That’s how we all feel about money. That’s how we all view money, that we can’t just, you know, throw money around and live like it doesn’t matter. No one’s gonna pull me aside later and tell me, oh, that was bad theology or bad life advice. Because we believe in our finances, it adds up. We do numbers and things have to equal at the end and we believe in being responsible for our finances, Right?
This is where I get you to fall into my trap. It’s easy to focus on our future for our own comfort internally. But we also took the same attitude that we already have about our finances and looked outwardly.
You planting a tree today, you’ll never sit under the shade or enjoy its fruit. But who will? Who will enjoy this tree? Maybe you’re children, but most of them are kind of grown up. Maybe you’re like my parents, but the most important person in their life is their grandchildren and their children. That’s who’s going to be able to reap the reward from this tree. As the saying goes, the best tree is the one that was planted 50 years ago. Because it’s not just about trees.
There’s so many other things around the world that are causing way more damage than you, whether or not you plant one tree. I don’t see any of you jumping on your private jet and flying to Europe to get cheesecake from a specific hotel. That’s not who we are. So why should the environment matter? After all, you’re just one person. What does it matter? Why should the environment matter? Because this is what you’re leaving to your grandchildren.
I close with this. The mustard seed, I’ve been told it’s very small. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one in my life, but that’s what the Bible says, so I guess it has to be true.
But, it grows into a large shrub. A shrub, not a tree. I mean, I’m imagining a shrub’s not that big, but I guess this grows into a large shrub. It doesn’t say that it covers the whole earth with its shade. It doesn’t even provide food for the entire world. It doesn’t fix all of humanity’s problem.
But it does give a place to rest, for some. It does alleviate the harshness of life, for a few. And in the grand scheme of life and eternity, your small and insignificant act today, it won’t do anything. Whether or not you recycle today, it doesn’t matter. Whether or not you are active in the way you look at the environment, it doesn’t matter. But there will be one individual that that will affect.
One individual that may be able to find shade under that tree and appreciate that. This enormous tree that you’ve invested in. You’ve changed their world. You’ve changed their eternity. You changed their family’s future. Being green isn’t about you today. It Isn’t about you being conscious of the environment today.
Being green is you thinking about eternity. This world in eternity and what that would look like.
Those who follow you can’t do anything for themselves until a later time. So it’s up to you to be responsible for them today. May it be so.
This summer season, we are focused on the environment. This is a part of our mission and vision to be advocates for the environment.
So we are looking at the scriptures with that lens. That is what, for me, keeps the scriptures alive, it’s all about which lens do you look at it through. So looking at this through the environmental lens this season.
I bring you to think about our world environmentally. Naturally. There are a lot of challenges in front of us.
We know that there is pollution in the air and in the water. We may not see the pollution in Lancaster. It’s not the same as the smog of the 70s, at least not here. But, I hear all the time about the quality of our air is not good.
That’s specifically noted by people who have breathing issues. We’re in some kind of a valley, where a lot of things reside in the air. Then there’s the water. I talked two weeks ago about the pollution in the oceans, but we know that our streams are polluted.
We are part of the Interfaith Partnership for the Chesapeake because we are trying to make sure that the bay and the wildlife there survives and thrives. We don’t want it just to survive. That is a food source for us. Even our little Conestoga is on the list for Pennsylvania of streams that they are watching for the quality of the water, which means our Brubaker Run is, as it feeds into the little Conestoga.
So, it comes literally to our backyard that we need to be thinking about all of these things. The weather patterns are changing. That is going to affect our food supply, and that will create even more challenges for us.
So we hear scripture, “For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth.” – Isaiah 65:17
We hear God is creating a new earth. Thank you, Jesus, you saved us again. And we are all in. Until we realize that God’s doing that in God’s way and has maybe, I believe, listened to our prayers, taken them into consideration, but is working from God’s view, not ours. There is a very true statement that says no one likes change except the change that they want. If the change is our idea, we are all in. But if it’s someone else’s idea, well, maybe not. Not so sure. The problem is, we don’t agree on the changes.
Another thing to remind ourselves of is that throughout the Bible, God favors the poor. The poor, the oppressed, the marginalized. The language of the Bible is often the widow, the orphan, the one on the outside who is starving, who doesn’t have adequate shelter, clothing, food. I’m gonna go out on a limb, but I don’t think there’s anybody in this space who’s food insecure. I think we’re all gonna know where at least one of our meals is coming from today. But there are people in our world who are.
So, we have to. recognize that the changes God brings about may not necessarily benefit us. That’s something to sit with. I love this scripture because it reminds us of Isaiah 11, the peaceable kingdom scripture. In Isaiah 11, it says that the lion and the lamb will live, will lie down with each other, meaning they will live in harmony. It goes on, it’s got quite a list of all the kinds of things. It ends with that verse about the child and the hole of the asp, and you’re going, a kid and a snake, really? But it’s this idea of all of God’s creation living in harmony.
This scripture today ended with this motif also, with “The wolf and the lamb shall feed together” – Isaiah 65:25. Predator and prey no longer in that adverse relationship, but finding food together.
Actually, what I found interesting, and I’ll go back and read that to you, is that the three instances are all about what they eat. It says, “The wolf and the lamb shall feed together. The lion shall eat straw like the ox; but the serpent, its food shall be dust! – Isaiah 65:25. It’s all about eating.
I’m not going to deal with the serpent and why the serpent’s going to eat dust. But you know what that other part says? It says we ought to be vegetarians. Now I’ve heard all of my life that I should eat more vegetables. Isaiah is telling us the same thing. Do you know what? If we ate more vegetables, it’s better for our planet. Because the impact on our planet of raising the meat, particularly the red meat, and I am the first one to sign up for a good burger or a good steak, please hear that. But I know that that has an adverse effect on our planet. At least the way we do our corporate growing and raising of cattle. The grass fed steers and cattle that’s a different story. That’s healthier.
But, we have to look at that. We have to think about it. If we all ate vegetables, we could grow our own food. Also helpful to the planet when we’re not trucking in stuff from all over the place. But we like to eat strawberries all year long, and they only grow for three weeks in May & June. Did you notice it was earlier this year? The strawberry festivals used to be mid to late June. Well, they’re pretty much over now. That’s that climate shifting. That’s the weather pattern shifting. That’s the temperature change. It’s going to affect our food.
I’m going to encourage you, hopefully at the end of this sermon to think about and to watch for where God is doing something different in our world.
But one of the good articles that I heard recently was Krista Tippett’s “On Being” radio show. She had two environmentalists on. They’re noticing that the environment has more elasticity and the ability to adapt than we realized. That’s good news. That’s really good news. But it also takes a long time. So that does not take us off the hook for changing how we live.
In fact, a friend of mine showed me a picture of a turtle who climbed a curb. I would not have guessed that a turtle could do that. That it walked across the road, hit a curb, and it actually could go up the curb and onto the sidewalk without ending up on its back and being stuck. It is changing, but it takes time.
Last weekend, Mark Achtermann and I were at the Penn Central Conference Annual Meeting, up at the Penn Stater.
Which was both our annual meeting and the spring meeting of the possible future Keystone Conference, which is that our four conferences are looking to go together to be one.
It was a wonderful experience. When you put 600 people together in worship, the spirit is palpable. You could feel it in the song, in the spoken word, in being together. We talked about the changes, how this change will affect us. Pennsylvania is currently divided into four sections for the United Church of Christ, and we would all become one conference for the United Church of Christ, it means change.
We talked about the joys of that and the challenges. Fortunately, we spent some time not just naming the challenges, but thinking through what we need to do to address those challenges, as opposed with just saying, “here’s the list of cons. Here’s why we shouldn’t do it.” No, if we’re going to do it, then these things also need to happen to address this.
It was powerful. It was very enlightening and uplifting. No decision was made, in case you’re wondering about that. The decision will be made on November 9th at a fall meeting. That’s when our delegates go to the meeting. I don’t know if it’s virtual or in person yet, I don’t think they decided that. But, we have time. We have time to think about it. We have time to make good choices. For more information visit www.FEMA.gov.
The thing that was really striking to me is their motto. “Together we are stronger.”
That’s where we all came down to. That together, we as the four congregate conferences becoming one conference are stronger.
This was Sunday morning worship, last Sunday, and the person preaching up on the podium was the Reverend Dr. Karen Georgia Thompson, who is our General Minister and President of the United Church of Christ, was there to do the sermon. It’s important for you to know what she said.
These are my short notes. She named that we are a denomination of diversities, not just a diversity. It’s not just ethnic diversity or racial diversity, but there’s a a lot of ways that we are different, including, and this might surprise you, we have 30 languages within the United Church of Christ. 30 languages. 30 languages spoken, 29 different languages written. Do you know what the one language that is spoken and not written in the United Church of Christ is? This is fun! You are there. It’s Pennsylvania Dutch. We are the one language that is spoken in our denomination but not written.
Fun fact, We are not a binary political system. We are a covenant of inclusivity and love. I think that was the most important statement she made. We are a covenant of inclusivity and love.
In the picture to the right is a cross that we made. Each person was asked to draw their hand on a piece of fabric and they covered this cross. They put a bunch of them on a wall. We actually took a hand to bring home with us and pray for that person. But it’s this idea of together we are stronger and that is true for us as a congregation also.
We are also stronger together. We are stronger together. And together, we can make a greater impact on our environment. I know that there are environmentally minded people in our congregation, people who recycle faithfully, people who may drive hybrid cars or some of you may even have electric cars to make sure that you’re being responsible in that way.
But together, we have the ability to make a statement to our community about how much the environment matters to us.
Our park does make part of that statement. But a lot of people don’t know about our park. We can be more vigilant about what we do, how we live together. That’s what I want the environmental team to be looking at. So if you signed up for that, that’s where we’re headed. We want to look at what things could we do differently here that would be more environmentally friendly or environmentally responsible.
It’s shocking to me when I see the pictures that come out of Ukraine or Gaza. When I think about environmentally friendly, caring for the environment, war is not. Right? And I was stuck on the phrase, Choose War No More. But, what that did was that led me back to Isaiah 2:11, “Beat swords into plowshares. and spears into pruning hooks.”
We need to change our mindset because wars and that type of aggression are not helping us either. We need to learn how to live together, to respect one another, to respect one another’s boundaries, that goes for both sides, Hamas and Israel.
Then we can be the people of God and create the peaceable kingdom because we are made in God’s image.May it be so, Amen.
A good friend suggested that I create this sermon as a sermon for my granddaughter, Frankie. So we can share this with her later in life, to tell her about all that there is, all of the creation that I love so much.
Milky Way Pictured from Independence Pass in Colorado
There is so much that God has made for us to appreciate and our response was to be in awe and worship of our God.
Two Spiral Galaxies Passing. Captured by the Hubble Telescope
That God took the time to put this all together. As Christians, we believe both. We believe in evolution. We believe it started billions of years ago, probably with a big bang. And we believe in intelligent design. We believe that there are webs of life and things that are created that are beyond our understanding.
We are grateful that we have minds that can see some of these pieces. That we can develop things like the Hubble telescope to show us galaxies far away from here, and what’s happening much further than we can see or imagine.
Because there is so much that God created and is still creating. But that it all started at one point, and all of it comes together.
At some point God created this piece called the sun and created this planet with the ability to sustain life as we know it. With all of the gases, the oxygen, and then the plants and all of the other pieces so that we could live here.
It is such a gift to us. We even had the ability to go to the moon and be able to see the earth in its entirety, to be able to look back on the planet that we live on.
But unfortunately, there are still people who think that the story I just read is a history story. They think that the Earth is the center of the universe. But we know that that’s not true. We’ve seen that the sun is the center of our galaxy and that there are so many other galaxies. There’s so much more.
We want you to embrace both, to embrace that God was in all of its creation and that it is so much more than we can imagine.
That there are places on this earth like the Amazon rainforest, with it’s trees and plants, they are part of this ecosystem. That it all works together to keep our air clean, to keep our streams clean, to feed all of the creatures. To give the creatures home. Because home is so important to us.
God created the seeds and in the water, God put all those creatures to help us learn more, to help us have food, to have them so that they can feed together.
He gave us animals in this great web of life. Animals that we love and animals that we’re not so sure we want to be around. We’re still trying to figure out why you made the cockroach and what is its purpose. It has lived long. It’s one of the longest living beings and we haven’t found its purpose, but, we believe there’s a purpose, that everything has a purpose.
You created us. You created us in all of our diversity, with all of our skin tones, and hair colors, and eye colors. You called it good. You called all of it good, just as you created it. It was perfect, but you gave us minds. In our minds, we believe that we know better. That we know better than you. So we start tinkering with things. We’re not content with the way it was. We want more. We want it to be easier. We don’t want to have to work so hard.
We can be better at taking care of your creation. But we want life to be easier and we want to make money.
So in the Amazon we’ve created roads and we have deforested parts. Now we’re suffering because we didn’t replant the trees. We didn’t care for God’s creation the way we were intended to.
Because we just wanted it to be easier. We wanted to be able to get bigger trucks in there to take out more of the wood so we could build more things. More homes because there were more people and we needed to. Some of that’s good and some of it was just about greed. We weren’t kind in the ways that we did it.
We didn’t do it in ways that sustained God’s creation.
We created these plastics because we didn’t want to have to do the dishes all the time. We wanted to be able to throw things away, but then we ended up with too much garbage. So, back in the 70s, we decided that since we were running out of space for the garbage, we’d put it on barges and send it out to sea, because that’s a good idea.
At least we don’t have to look at it. We didn’t realize that we were contaminating the water. We’ve created an island, an island in the Pacific that is plastic and is uninhabitable. We have killed God’s creatures because they are full of plastic. The plastics break down into microplastics that are like little beads all over the ocean floor. They’re in our food because the fish that we eat have them in and they’re in our water supplies.
We haven’t been good at making sure that we clean up. We just wanted it to be easier. We wanted to throw everything away instead of washing it. We found out it wasn’t good.
The places that we live, we wanted more. We just wanted it bigger and brighter and light. Now we can’t even see the stars because we’ve made so many lights. And we’ve ruined the beauty of your creation. Because we wanted it to be easier. We wanted to be able to have what we wanted, what was going to make us happy in the moment.
We didn’t think about the fact that we have such a potential for destruction.
I was reminded this morning about the 80th day of D Day coming up this week. That means that we’re not far from the 80th anniversary of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. It left me wondering, what does that look like now? Has nature been able to finally come back there? Or is it still all dead and destroyed?
Because we have such a potential to create good, and we have such a potential to destroy. But God only has a potential to create. God has the potential to destroy, but God looks to create life. We cannot create life out of nothing. We need God’s help. We’re created, God created us to create more people, but we cannot just take nothing and create life.
We’ve been trying. AI will be part of your world, Frankie. That is where we are trying to have technology take over life. There’s such advantages, but we have to look at the costs.
We have not always looked at the costs of our actions.
One of the pieces that we are seeing is that the temperature of our earth has risen. From 1880 until 1980, the first hundred years, of them watching and paying attention to the temperature of the earth, it was fairly stable. But since 1980, we have been on a sharp incline.
In 2020, the chart shows that actually we were at one degree Celsius over the north, what they’re calling the baseline, which was closer to where the 1880 to 1980 was. Since 2020, we are now 1.4 degrees Celsius over baseline. So we went up 0.4 in those four years. We’re still going up.
Carbon dioxide has increased 427 grams parts per million, the global temperature is 1.4x higher, we’ve been losing 12.2% of our Arctic ice every decade since 1980. There are only so many 12.2% after 1980. So, we’ve lost about 50% of the Arctic ice since 1980.
I don’t know what life is going to look like in the 22nd century.
What I do know, is that this congregation has made a commitment to environmental advocacy, to environmental stewardship, and to making a difference. So, what we can do is we can do the research. To find out what are the steps we can take together as a church in stewarding our property and encouraging our community to be better stewards.We can do that research together and we can tell people about it.
We do still have a choice. I’m hearing that 1.5 degrees Celsius, some of the scientists think that that’s the point of no return.
But we still have the ability to change how we live. The question is, will we?
I want to do it for you because I want you to have and to see the beauty in the world that I have seen. To see the stars at night. To be able to put your hands in the soil and grow food for yourself and food for others.
Get ready to roll up your sleeves and embrace our mission of environmental care and advocacy as we dive into the work of caring for God’s earth.
Join Church of the Apostles UCC on April 7th, 2024 at 10:30 AM for our Rader Park & Brubaker Run Clean-Up. Starting by the garden shed in the park, let’s unite from 10:30 AM to Noon to beautify our community space.
Before the clean-up, members and guests are invited to attend worship starting at 10 AM, where our congregation will bless all our volunteers. Afterward, Rev. Kuhn will lead those willing to help down to the park.
As environmental advocates, Church of the Apostles UCC is committed to preserving and nurturing our natural surroundings, starting with maintaining the beauty of our own park.
