Readings FIRST LESSON The first lesson is from Longing for Running Water: Ecofeminism and Longing for Running Water: Ecofeminism and I agree with Sallie McFague that it is precisely the perspective of the body that will allow us to introduce the issue of ecological salvation. Our economic exploitation projects have enslaved the earth and the powers of nature and made them into an object to be used for unbridled profiteering. It is our actions that have put the earth in bondage, that have damaged it, polluted it and impoverished it. For this reason, it is the earth that is both the subject and the object of salvation. We need to abandon a merely anthropocentric [that is, human-centered] Christianity and open ourselves up to a more biocentric understanding of salvation. To Jesus’ humanistic perspective, we need to add an ecological perspective. This new way of doing things seems to me perfectly justified, because it maintains not only the most fundamental aspects of Jesus’ perspective but also the understanding that we are a living body in constant evolution. SECOND LESSON The first lesson is from the Gospel of Luke Chapter 24, verses 36 through 48 While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. Jesus said to them, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And when Jesus had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, Jesus said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence. Then Jesus said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.”
|
This Week's Sermon Date: April 26, 2009 Title: Take Care of Me Message Delivered By: Rev. Joe Mc Murray There was a very devout Baptist family from Georgia, the Melvilles. The Melvilles decided to buy a home and make everything in the house reflect their strong Baptist tradition. They were determined to make everything look and feel Baptist through and through. I’ll spare you the details of what the décor looked like, but when the Melvilles were finished with the house, they were more than satisfied. But one thing was missing. And so they went to the local rescue shelter to look for a dog. Mrs. Melville said to the on-site vet, "We’re looking for something very specific.” The vet asked, “Alright, do you want a full grown dog, or a puppy? We don’t have a lot of puppies, but we have a lot of dogs.” “Well,” she said, “we want something more specific than just its age.” “Alright,” said the vet. “We have large dogs and small dogs and medium sized dogs. We have short-haired dogs and long-haired dogs. We have hunting dogs, terriers, and toy dogs. What type of dog you’re looking for?” “Well,” said Mrs. Melville, “We know those things are important, but not as important to us as a real, genuine Baptist dog." The vet scratched his head, and thought about it for a minute, and then he began to nod, saying, "Yeah, you know I think I know where I can get a dog that fits that description exactly. Give me your address and I’ll bring him by this afternoon." So the vet brought this large, shaggy dog out over to the Melville’s home to meet the family. “This is Amos,” the vet said. "Now I know he may not look like a Baptist dog, but the name certainly fits.” Mrs. Melville said, “The name doesn’t really mean anything.” And Mr. Melville said, “Let's see if this is a real Baptist dog." So he said to Amos, "Amos – Bible – go fetch a Bible!" And instantly, Amos ran into the bedroom, grabbed a King James Bible from the nightstand, and with the book in his mouth, ran back to Mr. Melville and plopped the book at his feet. His tongue was hanging out and his tail was wagging, and Amos seemed very proud of what he’d done. Very impressed, Mrs. Melville said, "Let's see if Amos knows his Bible. “Amos, turn to Psalm 23!" Without hesitation, Amos opened the Bible with his snout and pawed through the pages until it came to stop at Psalm 23. He was so proud of his accomplishment, and his tail continued to wag. Amazed and astounded, Mr. and Mrs. Melville agreed that Amos was the dog for them, so they wrote a check to the vet from the dog pound, and he left. The next day, the Melvilles were entertaining visitors, and showed Amos to their friends. They assured them that “Amos, the Baptist dog” could do anything, and they proved it by repeating all the tricks from the previous day. Finally, the friends asked, "Well, that’s all well and good, but can Amos do other tricks that normal dogs can do?" Mr. Melville paused and said, "Hmm, you know, I don't know. We haven’t tried anything else." He looked at the dog, and ordered, "Amos – heel!" But instead of moving behind Mr. Melville’s left leg, Amos suddenly stood on his hind legs, placed his paw on the man's forehead, bowed his head and began to pray. "I knew it was too good to be true!" exclaimed the exasperated Mrs. Melville., "This dog isn't Baptist! It’s Pentecostal!" Please pray with me: God thank you for this lovely day. Thank you that all the things we’ve needed, you’ve given to us in the appropriate time. Thank you that all the people we’ve needed, you have allowed them to pass through our lives. Thank you that everywhere we look, we find the beauty of your creation. Give us the courage to show our thanks in return and to care for the magnificent world you have given to us. And may my words and all of our thoughts be pleasing to you. Amen. Today is the 3rd Sunday of Easter, and we also celebrate Earth Day—a time when we stop and focus on the environment. During this time, we consider the health of our planet, the welfare of our wildlife, and the state of our natural resources, including fresh air, clean water, and the entire ecosystem that supports our livelihood and our health. Is it just me, or does it seem rather obvious to us all that rather than one day out of the year, every day should be called Earth Day? I know life is tough for most of us—tougher for some than others, particularly in the past few years. And we get tired—tired of having to maintain all the systems and communications and details and responsibilities and directions we’re given. We also have days when we want to say, “Okay—I really do want to do the right thing, but just for today, I want things exactly the way I want them. If I want to eat ice cream—to heck with the diet, I’m going to have ice cream—no, not the lowfat frozen ice milk stuff but Haagen Daas.” “Today I want real butter on my bread instead of ‘I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter.’ To heck with my cholesterol count—one day certainly isn’t going to kill me.” Maybe you’re having a “blue” day and you just really want everything that day to be yours and let you surround life, for a change. There are days when I feel that way – and not only that, I want all the people in my life to fit into the category that I’m in. I don’t want to argue about anything. I don’t want any muss or fuss. I want everyone to just agree with me—accept the fact that I’m right—even just for today. No arguments, no differences of opinion. No waves. And then, sometimes, we might take things to the extreme. I don’t want anybody to challenge me today. I only want to be around people that I’m comfortable with. I don’t want any hassles. I don’t want to have to watch what I say. I don’t want to have to make nice—be pleasant—be on my guard—be politically correct in my speech or even in my thoughts. And if I have a can of soda or beer or a bottle of water, or there’s a stack of cardboard that I don’t want to mess with, and I don’t recycle them, that’s okay—there’ll be other bottles and cans and cardboard boxes tomorrow. I’m finding more and more people where this type of day is the rule, not the exception. And that’s more than a little disturbing to me. But we’ll come back to that in a minute. Today we find the disciples talking about the experience on the Road to Emmaus, and suddenly, there he is again—Jesus appears to them once more. It seems to us as though they’re seeing more of the resurrected Jesus than they ever did of the eating, sleeping, preaching, teaching Jesus. Last week we heard about Thomas and the doubts he had. We learned that a faith without doubt is a certainty, and certainty is certainly not a component of faith. But there are different kinds of faith and each of us has a different experience of our understanding of God and God’s action in our lives. This was reflected in the various measures each of the disciples required of themselves in order to restore their faith in the risen Christ and believe that he was risen and among them. It is always up to us to be open and to determine how God is made manifest to us, or through what mechanisms we come to know God whether these be through human interaction, through nature, mystical communication, or transcendent manifestation—whatever they might be. The earth herself is such a mechanism—a vehicle through which God makes God’s presence known to us. If we believe in a Trinity that encompasses the Divine, the human, and the spiritual, how far a distance is that really from the belief that God is in all things—that God is in us—that God is in the earth, the air, the water and the wind. The essence of God is in all things, yet God can neither be defined nor limited within one thing. Ivone Gebara writes of God as Earth—and distances the history of humanity that believed (as many still believe) that humankind’s purpose is to dominate the earth. Imagine, anyone trying to dominate something that is of God! And if the earth is a part of God, it’s hard to imagine how we could mistreat the earth—yet sadly, we have—and even more sadly, we still do. Though we are slowly moving away from this understanding of dominance, we still accept the philosophy that if a thing does no harm to us personally, then no harm has been done. And yet each and every day we’re realizing that that just is not so. The harm we do to our beloved planet is harm that we do to each other—and to future generations—and thus, to God. We know that what we’re doing to the earth is changing it, and not for the better. I could stand here and rattle off statistic after statistic and your eyes would glaze over and some of you would nap, and others would nod and lament, and we’d all leave feeling a bit guilty and then go about our business as usual. But here we are almost a full decade into the 21st century. We have deep concerns for our planet, and we should. The state of our ecology is worrying a lot of people, but not enough people are worried. You may have noticed the rather petulant dialogue that was going on between the city and county, the media and certain citizens over who should recycle, who realistically could recycle, and who, ironically really didn’t have to recycle if they didn’t want to. I was a bit embarrassed by it all, really. Key West is such a fantastic island community, but we don’t even do half of what we should do to keep our island a paradise. I know there were efforts made a couple of years ago—maybe it was even last year—to help the Key West environment by helping to green MCC Key West. And I know that we’re doing something more than what was happening prior to that. But when I began to look around, to see how much energy we waste, to see what we use even when we’re not here … when I began to realize that all the different groups that met here—not to single out anyone because we did it in our own Fellowship Hour as well—were putting recycling in the garbage, and throwing garbage in the few containers set aside for recycling—it really disturbed me. Not here, I thought. Not in this beautiful island home. Surely not here—not where people practice the motto, “One Human Family.” That motto most certainly extends to our beloved animal companions, and to the ducks and the pelicans and the chickens—even to the iguanas and the lizzards—and to the plant life and to the ocean. Certainly people who worked so hard to make and keep Key West so beautiful would not be petty about participating in a fairly innocuous way to do our part toward making the world just a little closer to perfect—the way God created it in the first place. But then I was seeing it all around me. And I was seeing it happening with people I really, really have come to care about. And though I realized it didn’t change the way I felt about them—because that’s what unconditional love is about, isn’t it?—it made me want to become more of an outspoken advocate for the earth—for God’s creation. So I have to make a choice: compromise something I fundamentally believe or become even more of a nuisance than I already am. I’m sure you’ll have no doubts about which path I’ve chosen. You cannot tell me that we can put women and men on the moon but we can’t figure out how to harness the natural energies that surround us each and every day. I will tell you this. The earth is changing. From the time when I listened to WIRL radio in Peoria, Illinois until today, the earth has changed in dramatic ways. If you’ve seen the comparison photos of the polar ice cap today from 20 years ago—the glaciers are melting at an alarming rate. The snows of Mt. Kilimanjaro have nearly disappeared, even though it’s been talked about for 25 or 30 years. Now it’s really happening. It seems so overwhelming to us—all these changes happening to us and the changes being required of us—because it is overwhelming. Yet we know that if everybody does their part—if each of us does just a little bit each day—it can have a profound and positive impact on the future for ourselves and our children and our children’s children. We are just a few weeks out from Easter, yet I am still reminded of Resurrection in so many ways. I am aware that transformation is possible for all of us and for our planet. And today’s scripture brings that to light for today in a unique and special way. Jesus could not be contained, even after his death. Even the bolted doors of the upper room could not contain him. When Jesus came, all fear left the disciples. Will we lock the doors of our hearts, thinking we can turn a blind eye to what’s happening all around us, refusing to believe the dire straits of our planet, even when we see it right in front of us? Jesus was eager to be seen—he appeared several times to the disciples after his resurrection. As Jesus appeared again and again, to be known in a new and wondrous way even to those who knew him so well, so too, the earth yearns for us to know her—to see her for all that she is as a unique gift from God—to act responsibly toward her—to respect and lover her—to ease her pain when she suffers and to diminish the pain we have caused her. Jesus mentioned the scars he bore after the crucifixion – the marks that bore the punishment his body took at the hands of his oppressors. The earth’s body is filled with the painful scars we have placed upon her—the scars of war and misuse and overpopulation—yet she yearns for a healing balm that only humankind can provide. Jesus was not passive—even in death. He came to his loved ones in the midst of their fear and their grief. He came to them with peace on his lips and love in his heart. He brought a mission for them—to carry on his message of peace and love through the healing of humankind. Jesus did not passively appear. Nor does the earth lay passive before us. She screams at us through wind and storms and floods that we have stripped her of the dignity with which God had made her—the most beauteous and bountiful planet, over all the other planets in our solar system. God adorned her with life and abundance and blessing. And God trustingly made us as proud caretakers of God’s beloved earth, as human inhabitants with the freedom and the knowledge and the means to keep her in better shape than we found her when we were born. Thus far, we have failed in the caretaker department. We might hear God say, “Don’t quit your day job.” But there is still time. There is still time. May God help us to believe in and act out in justice for this gift we call the Earth. May we respect her as a gift from God—an extension of God. The Earth is all the evidence we need that God and the abundance God offers is everywhere—surrounding us all the time. If you’d like to help me, to help our church building and community, and to help our city to become better caretakers of these gifts God has given us, send me an email. I mean it, send me an email that says, “Let’s Go Green for God” or anything you want. I want to mobilize us to make this an action plan for our future. And I’d love to do it with you. And speaking of an appreciation for natural resources, today is the day we honor the multitude of volunteers that come and go from this church, making us better than we otherwise would be, and bringing us closer to God’s mission of hospitality, well-being and life-giving wholeness to all who enter our space. And though “thank you” is never enough, it’s time that we take time to say thank you. And here’s how we’re going to do it. But before I do I want to acknowledge and give thanks to Eric and Gail and anyone else who had something to do with the wonderful idea of honoring our beloved volunteers. For without you, we are nothing.
|
Selected Past Sermons