What is Your Name?

Preached at St Johns United Methodist Church (Memphis)
Summer Preaching Series
(Assignment: Select a children's story and use it along with a scripture text for the sermon. I chose Rumpelstiltskin and Exodus 3:1-15)
July 14, 2013

My name is Elaine. I’m told that my mother chose the name. She liked it because it was not too common and not too unusual. I wouldn’t meet my name coming and going and I wouldn’t be thought odd. At least not because of my name. It wasn’t until I was an adult, pregnant with my own baby and looking in the Dell Book of Baby Names (something I got at the grocery store check-out line,) that I learned what the name “Elaine” means. Light. Bright. Ahh. That fits. I was amazed that my mother, only minutes after meeting me, could have known me so well. 

Through the years there have been those who have given me other names. I have been known by some as the one who gets invited and included. I have been known by others as the one to shun and leave out.  I am recognized as wealthy by some while others would wonder how I get by on what I have in this world. In some situations I might seem the victim and in other situations I appear to have power. You have probably had the same experience. The world around us will do its best to define and categorize us, to name us and identify us according to the needs and pleasures of the world. Home, work, play and out on the sidewalk in the anonymity of the crowd.  If we let them, the people around us, will end our deeply personal and spiritual search for our name, our true identity. 

We come to this earth as we are, perfectly ourselves. And from the moment when we first breathe air into our lungs until the moment we breathe our last, we are living with the forces of sexism, racism, economic injustice, jealousy, resentment, self-doubt and fear. In the midst of this sea of sinful forces, how do we know our own name? How do we learn to recognize and claim the power of our own identity?

Rumpelstiltskin saves the girl (She’s never given a name.) whose father, a poor miller, wanted to impress the king. So he has made an outrageous claim to the king: My daughter can spin straw into gold. Wow! This pleases the king and he demands that the girl get to work. He puts her in a room with straw and a spinning wheel. If the straw has not been spun into gold by morning, she is doomed to die. Notice that it is not the father’s life on the line here. He is apparently off safely doing whatever millers do. We never hear another thing about him. Instead the story leaves us with this girl who has been identified as one capable of doing the impossible. We feel helpless sitting beside her as she stares at all that straw, stifling and trapped.

All of a sudden a little man walks in the room and he spins the straw into gold for her. She gives him her necklace in return. The next night he spins again when the king greedily demands more gold be spun by the girl. She gives her ring for his service. But on the third night when the little man spins straw into gold, the girl has nothing more to give in return and so the little man demands her first born should she and the king marry and have a child. “Of course!” she says. All of this seems unlikely to her.  After all-she was three days ago only a poor miller’s daughter, an ordinary piece of straw herself. 

The king is no dummy. He wants to keep for himself this spinner of gold. So he marries her and she has a child. Sure enough, the little man shows up again and insists that the baby belongs to him. Again the girl is challenged. Is she helpless? Is she only a victim? Her  strategy involves broken hearted sobs  which soften the heart of the little man. “Well, if in three days you can call me by my name—then I will relent and you can keep your child.”

Being the wife of the king, she utilizes her resources and sends royal messengers out into the kingdom in search of the little man’s name. One of the messenger’s overhears a little man singing as he danced around a fire in the woods: “Oh soon I’ll make my royal claim; the queen will never guess my name! Rumpelstiltskin in the wood; she would guess it if she could!” The queen’s messenger left the light of the burning camp-fire and returned to the palace with enough information to redeem the queen. The ordinary straw of her own life and identity became gold when she speaks the name: Could it be, then, Rumpelstiltskin? Ahhh. We are so satisfied by this ending! The nameless girl becomes the smart girl, the queen, and she leaves helplessness behind.

In the scripture story from the book of Exodus, we find Moses standing beside a fire while keeping sheep for his father-in-law. A bush is burning. A bush that oddly enough is not burning away. In the light of this strange fire, Moses hears the sound of his name. And he is called to do the impossible. “Go back to Egypt and tell Pharaoh to let my people go.” Who am I? Moses wants to know. He reminds God, the one who is calling from the burning bush, about his speech problem, his manslaughter charge back in Egypt and his deep longing to live in peace with his family. An ordinary life in Midian is not so bad. 

But the light of the fire burns on and Moses is feeling challenged. Is he not the victim any longer, the baby in the basket at the mercy of pharaoh’s fears and jealousy? Is he no longer the outcast running from Egypt and pharaoh’s palace where he was a foster child never really belonging in the first place? The bush burns and pressure mounts for Moses to respond. He is being challenged to accept a new identity, to become somebody he is not—not yet.

“Well,” and we feel Moses’ frustration as he asks, “Who are you and what is your name? If I were to return to Egypt, who shall I say has sent me?” 

And God responds from the light of the fire: I am who I am. Tell them you have been sent by I am. 

It seems to be enough information. Moses begins his journey, living into his true identity; becoming the person he was created to be before the sins of this world caused him to see himself as something less than who he was. Moses moved into a deep relationship with God and he moved God’s people out of captivity and into freedom. The ordinary straw of his life was spun into gold. 

Our God is a liberating God. The story that brings us together for worship today (and every Sunday throughout the year) is a story of a redeeming and liberating God. We have placed our faith in a God who names us, claims us and sets us free to be co-creators with God—to take the ordinary straw of our lives and spin it into gold with God’s love as our inspiration. We identify ourselves as people who are moving toward the Promised Land with the God of love and life who created us and created the Promises that keep us moving forward with hope. 

A few years ago I was fortunate enough to go to Tijuana on a mission trip with the feminist theologian, Rosemary Radford Ruether, and nine other women. We saw first-hand the United States Border Patrol. We saw the walls, multiple walls that our tax money has built, each one with gaps and each one costing millions of dollars. We went into Tijuana, the television making capital of the world. The television in your home was most likely made by workers, probably women, in Tijuana.  Many of the men leave their wives and children in Tijuana and they go north with hope that they might find the Promised Land. 

So the women work in factories owned by citizens of the United States. These factories are called miguiladoras.  Women work long hours for very little pay in these maguiladoras. You and I own televisions, toasters, radios and cell phones made by our neighbors to the south. These women faithfully go to work, leaving their children in huts and shanties, breathing air, drinking water and playing in sand made dangerous and toxic by the pollution created by the waste from the maquiladoras where they work. The women work with a Velcro band around their wrist. When they need to go to the bathroom or get a drink of water the band is removed and the time- clock stops. They are not paid while taking care of their human needs. 

Nameless women, put in positions where they are asked to do the impossible. Provide for your family and keep them safe while the very factory where you work is spewing pollution in to the air, water and soil. 

On our mission trip we had the privilege of meeting the twelve women of the Tijuana Colectivo. They are mothers who want a safe environment for their children. They are women who have devoted themselves to the struggle for justice. They are committed to exposing the illegal practices of the maquiladoras. Globalization gives corporations the freedom to move around the world seeking cheaper labor and more lax environmental regulations. There are environmental regulations in Tijuana but those regulations often have no teeth, no one to see that they are enforced. Because after all—these neighbors to the south of us are simply straw, ordinary poor people. We don’t even know their names.

The twelve women of the Colectivo are at work every day, focused on cleaning up the environment by forcing the maquiladoras to change their practices. These women are poor; they live in an area they call shantytown with ten thousand other families. Their homes are made of discarded garage doors; three garage doors leaned against each other with a piece of tin for a roof.

Yet the women of the Colectivo are wealthy in their understanding of each person's right and responsibility to find purpose. They are wealthy in their capacity to connect with other people. They are rich in their respect for hard work and its rewards. The women of the Colectivo see themselves as stewards of the earth. They are training their children and their neighbors to respect the earth and to recognize responsible care of the earth as everyone’s sacred duty. The women have adopted as their slogan: “Tijuana is no trash can!”  Supported by the San Diego Environmental Health Coalition, a cross-border group advocating for a safer environment, the Colectivo has an office building in Tijuana and a plan for the future. And they have been empowered to spin straw into gold, to convince even Pharaoh to do what is right.  Their faith has been rewarded with some big victories in Tijuana.

The women of the Colectivo took us to their office where we were served lunch. They were so poor. (If you had seen the huts where they live and raise their children. Pictures of Jesus on the wall. The dirt floor swept clean. Colorful rugs.) So poor in my eyes. Yet they prepared a wonderful lunch for us and they were so happy to be hosting us at their work site, so delighted to be serving us good food. We ate tostados until we were full.

And then we asked questions. I wanted to know, since the living conditions are so dreadful and dangerous in Tijuana, why the women stay. “Why don’t you go further south where the land is greener and safer?”

Maria responded to my question and Carlos translated. “I do not stay in Tijuana for myself. I do not stay here for my children although they are a big part of my inspiration and motivation. I stay in Tijuana and I work for justice because the earth depends on me. She is my mother. She gives me life and because of her goodness and generosity I was able to give life to my children. We work together: me, the air, the water, the soil. Together we make life. The earth is being spoiled by those who have forgotten to love their mother. The earth is being abused by those who care more for personal profit than life itself. I am here and I will stay here in Tijuana not because I want to but because I heard my name called from the burning furnaces of the maguiladoras.”

This is how we know our name. This is how we learn to recognize and claim the power of our own identity. As people of The Story-we turn, turn, turn and trust the one who brought us here in the first place. We hear the great I Am calling our name and inviting us to spin the ordinary straw of our lives into gold.

Amen

Called to The Promised Land

Suffering cannot be avoided in life but it does not necessarily have the power to destroy us. In my experience I have found injury and pain to be markers along the path toward the Promised Land. 

My father died when I was eleven years old. About a year after that my mother told me, “You were a disappointment to your father.” I recall that I was not surprised to hear it but I was stung by the pain. I asked my mother what it was about me that disappointed my father and she explained, “You are too loud, too boisterous. You just wanted too much attention. You were never the kind of girl your father had hoped for in a daughter.” He was gone. There was no opportunity to ask for confirmation from my father nor was there opportunity for me to change and earn my father’s approval. The label stuck: Disappointment. 

My father was a Nazarene minister and the Nazarene Church was all I knew until I went to college and saw more of the world. Because I started smoking and drinking beer, the Nazarene people rejected me. “You should be ashamed of yourself!” Dorothy Pickens told me. And so I was. I took my shame and left the Nazarenes.

Several years later, when my daughter was born, I took her to the United Methodist Church. We made a home there. I experienced my call to leadership while a member of the United Methodist Church. I could tell a good story and people noticed the power and effectiveness of that gift. I was appointed to serve my first church.  I grew in my faith and in my understanding of my own needs. When I found the courage to come out as a lesbian, the United Methodist Church invited me to leave.  The rejection left me feeling like an orphan.

I stumbled upon the United Church of Christ in 1994. I began to tell stories in a new place with a new set of people. More important, I began to recognize the light in myself and my storytelling. It occurred to me that my father might have been wrong about me. Maybe I was not a disappointment. My interest and energy were focused on homeless people. My vision then was to establish a laundry in Memphis, The River, where women without homes could wash their clothes while getting support for themselves and their children. Had I known myself better then, had I a more keen sense of God’s call on my life and passion, I would have stayed in Memphis and allowed God to build the laundry, allowed God to wash clothes and to increase my faith and focus on justice then and there. But I chose to put my profile out and enter the search as a local pastor for an established congregation. I was ordained on September 10, 2000 and left home to serve strangers in a faraway place.

Things went badly for me in the established congregation. I was painfully lonely without my partner and loneliness brought out the worst in me as I made huge leadership mistakes. I was not prepared to deal with the series of conflicts that ultimately sent me back home. Then I got in cross-hairs with a conference minister who became obsessed with his need to remove me from ministry in the UCC.  He saw to it that my standing as a UCC minister was terminated.  

Fortunately I have a loving partner, Anna Neal, who stands by me at all times.  She maintained the center for me while I wandered in grief, confusion, rage and resentment. I accidentally found my way out of the wilderness when I connected with theater people. Voices of the South, a local theater company, engaged me in a series of solo performance workshops, in 2009. Jerre Dye and David Prete saw me as a woman with an excellent story to tell and they helped me tell it well. I was loud and boisterous while I wrote my life story and it was staged as a one-woman show, “For Goodness Sake.”  I discovered the joy of loving myself.  I love letting go of shame. I delight in getting attention. It is, for me, an experience of liberation.

My greatest fear is being trapped, being forced to stay in a place, a situation or relationship that no longer feels healthy, that no longer nurtures my creativity and spontaneity. So it is ironic that I have found the satisfaction for my deepest longing inside the county jail. I transferred my standing as a minister to the Progressive Christian Alliance, a group of justice seeking ministers who have moved their ministries outside the walls of the established church. In January of 2010, I went to the jail and said, “I have a theory. I believe that people, once given a chance to be creative, will find a way to set themselves free from whatever is holding them back.” I started the Prison Stories program, a creative writing and performance program for women. The success of that program can be measured by the number of women who say, “I have been set free from my secrets and shame.”

My journey from childhood to the Promised Land has been long and circular. Looking back I see places where I might have been stuck with bitterness and depression. My spirit could have died while my body continued to breathe. But I have always believed that God intends for each one of us to truly engage in the life we’ve been given. I don’t know why my father felt disappointed in me. I don’t know why my mother felt the need to tell me about his disappointment. I do know that the pain of that struggle has propelled me into a place where I can help set captives free. And that means the world to me. I am free to be powerful, useful and good at what I do. I am called to use this one loud and boisterous life I’ve been given to call attention to the love of God for all of us. Nobody needs to feel ashamed, rejected, unfit or like a disappointment to God. That is the story I am called to tell in this, the Promised Land.

Testing the Soil

(for David Hancock)

I just want to tell you
I did love you very much that day.
Lying in the pasture,
two cows across the ravine.
We put our faces to the ground,
buried our chins in the dirt,
not really to plant them
but more, to test the soil, it seemed.
Our eyes met
across waving grass blades--
two fireflies rising.

You spoke to me of Christmas
though spring had just begun.
You wished me glad, most glad, tidings
for the seasons of my life.

Part of us still lives in that field
behind your mother's house. Our chins
long planted elsewhere now.
The light of the fireflies
has never burned out.

Elaine Blanchard
(1973)

One of My Oldest Poems

Daughter

Sitting in our neighbor's rusted swing-
daughter in my lap-
Said, "The day will come
when I can no longer hold you like this."
Three year old reply, "I can sit beside you; you can always hold my legs."
Sunlight bathed us both and
warmed tender violets under the weeping willow,
urged life from the great magnolia
with velvet brown petals surrounding her trunk.
Why on earth,
I wondered, would I want to hold your legs?
Rusted swing squeaked us gently
back and forth.

Elaine Blanchard/1979

According to the Women

Luke 24:1-12

March 31, 2013/ Easter

Preached at Prescott American Baptist Church

According to the women something happened that was extremely unusual, out of the ordinary according to the laws and principles of this world. 

We say some unusual things in our Christian faith and we do some odd things. I remember when my daughter was younger she had two good friends who lived next door, two little girls. Their family didn’t go to church. We did go to church and the girls asked if they could go with us. The little one, Ashley, was five years old and she sat in my lap during worship. It was first Sunday, communion Sunday. When I stood to go for the bread and wine I asked her, “Would you like to go up with me?’ She curled her nose up and shook her head, “No! I ain’t drinking no blood!”

I was surprised that she was paying such close attention to what was being said in church. And I have never forgotten her reaction because she made it plain: As Christians we believe some unusual things and we do some odd things. It’s important to recognize how strange our beliefs are. Because we need to come to terms with the strangeness of our faith in order to realize the miracles and mysteries of our faith. 

Early in the morning the women went to the tomb. They were prepared to anoint the body of Jesus with spices and herbs. They expected him to be dead. When they found the stone rolled away, they still expected Jesus to be dead. They were perplexed and then they were terrified by the appearance of two men in dazzling clothes. “Why do you look for the living among the dead?”

The women were looking for a dead body, intending to pay their respects and be together as they continued to mourn the loss of someone very special in their lives. We know how to deal with death even if we don’t want to deal with death. It comes with a familiar routine.

They were terrified. It can be a challenge for us to accept that the real world contains miracles and mysteries like resurrection. 

I met Elaine Flowers one cloudy cold day in the middle of December, 1983, because I was depressed. I wasn’t happy with myself and I doubted that I was a person of any value. I heard about Elaine by way of our minister at the time. He had heard about Elaine at a ministers’ meeting in town. I agreed to go see her. Being a help to somebody else can sometimes lift the spirits. I went to meet Elaine out of duty (the minister suggested that I go) but with some longing too. I was hopeful that something good could and would happen for me. 

Elaine Flowers was thirty-two years old and she had cancer, a tumor in her pelvic region that had expanded into her thigh. Elaine refused to see a doctor or to be treated in any way other than to pray for healing. She had three children. Tonya was ten, Clay was eight and Brandy was five. Their father was gone by the time I met them. He couldn’t handle the cancer and he couldn’t make sense of Elaine’s faith in God’s capacity to heal her without any earthly assistance. 

They lived in a shack surrounded by a muddy yard. Most of the paint was missing from their house and so were the front steps. Somebody had stacked concrete blocks in front so you could get up to the door. On my first visit I found Elaine on the couch. She was watching Jimmy Swaggart on the television. I would learn to sit with her and listen to Jimmy Swaggart preach. Elaine trusted him and felt inspired by him. 

Elaine had her own church, Apostolic Pentecostal Temple of Faith. They were no longer coming to see her. The people in Elaine’s church said that she was blocking God’s healing power by some secret sin she was hiding from them and trying to hide from God. So they told her they could not be part of her life until she fully confessed. 

My Sunday school class purchased a tree for the family and we decorated it with the kids. We put gifts under it for Christmas morning and brought food for dinner. I entered into a routine with Tonya, Clay and Brandy. I took them to the YMCA on Wednesday afternoons and we swam in the pool. I took them to the park and to see their pick of movies on weekends. I brought pizza to the house, sat on the couch with Elaine and listened to her talk.

She trusted God to do the right thing with her life. She believed that God could be trusted with her life. She expected God to heal her. She searched her heart and soul regularly for any sin that might need to be confessed and she could not find any secrets in her soul. She didn’t think of herself as all that righteous so it wasn’t as if she thought she was perfected. She just couldn’t think of anything she was hiding from God—or me. 

The tumor grew and Elaine weakened. Her mother came from East Tennessee and stayed with her. She joined Elaine in praying for healing. And she took the three children back to East Tennessee with her when Elaine died. She’s buried in Henderson, Tennessee.

It is such an unusual kind of faith that we find ourselves offended by Elaine’s behavior. We want to accuse her of abandoning her children, being reckless with the gift of life itself, blame her for her death by pointing out that adequate treatment might have cured her cancer and made her well again. But what about unusual faith? 

I was there and I can tell you that Elaine expected God to be in control at all times. She believed that God could do all things. And as she was dying she looked forward to being with God. She trusted that God, who had given life to her and to her children, would provide for Tonya, Clay and Brandy.

To tell Elaine’s story is to tell a story of extreme faith. Being with Elaine for two years set me free from my own emotional downward spiral. My faith was not like Elaine’s faith but being with her opened my eyes to see God in deeper ways. Talking with Elaine allowed me to see myself in new ways. And when we stood by the grave I had questions, for sure. But I knew for sure she was not really dead. Her life had taught me that much. Being part of Elaine’s life had helped me to see the difference between the living and the dead. Even as she was dying, Elaine’s faith was vital, compelling and full of hope.

The women came to the tomb to anoint a dead body because they expected to find what they had always found. A person who is dead stays dead. They were terrified—at least for a while—they were terrified. “He is not here, he is risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee…?” 

And they did remember. Not just his words but what it was like to be with him, to talk with him, to eat with him, to see him as he made choices and entered into relationships and tasks. The women remembered. He had made them wonder if something unexpected might happen. He had caused them to feel like their own lives had value. Their own lives might be part of something real and eternal. They remembered.

Leonardo Da Vinci said:

Once you have flown,

You will walk the earth

With your eyes turned skyward;

For there you have been,

 There you long to return.

Once we have walked with Jesus, listened to him, shared our own story with him, shared bread and wine with him and watched him work miracles in the streets of our city—we can no longer walk on the earth without great expectations for love in our lives. We trust the miracles and mysteries of our faith because we trust Jesus. We find ourselves looking upward with hope in our hearts.

I think about Elaine Flowers and I recognize that you might hear her story today and put her in a category as crazy or suicidal. I would think the same thing—except that I knew her, sat beside her, ate in her home and spent days with her children. She expected miracles every single day. Nothing would be too great for God. She trusted Jesus in life and in death.

Every once in a while we meet somebody who walks with us into a deeper faith. Every once in a while we recognize that there is no need to feel alone, anxious or afraid. This unusual faith that we share embraces us in the mysteries-- even in life.

According to the women he is risen. We know this to be true because each day that we live we know Jesus and his redeeming love in our lives.

Amen

Matters of the Earth

Luke 19:28-40

Preached at Prescott American Baptist Church

March 24, 2013

 

We gathered on Ash Wednesday, a few weeks ago, and received ashes on our foreheads—reminders that from dust we have come and to dust we shall return. It is true that our bodies are made of the same atomic structure as dirt. If you break our bodies down to the basics—we are carbon and water. 70% of our body is water. Our lungs receive oxygen and expel carbon dioxide. When we die and the air leaves our lungs, the water evaporates—we are dirt.

I look at you. You look at me. We like to imagine there is so much more to us than dirt, water, gases. It’s important for us to recognize the similarities and the connections between us and the other matters on this planet. It’s important because we do have the most complicated brain. Consequently we have the most responsibility when it comes to being inhabitants of the earth.

The universe is 13.8 billion years old. Our home, Earth, is special in that we have this blanket of atmosphere that holds light and warmth around us. We can breathe and plants can grow here. Clouds form, rain falls and evaporation occurs. Cycle after cycle sustains life as we know it. 

David Roberts tells us in his You Tube TEDX Talk called “Climate Change is Simple,” that the Earth’s climate has been stable for 10,000 years. The temperature has remained the same plus or minus 1 degree Celsius. During that 10,000 year period we have known the dawn of agriculture, invented the wheel, come to appreciate the printing press and grown to depend on the internet. 

But things are warming up now and the warming has been going on since the pre-industrial age. It is related to our digging up carbon (scurrying for gas and oil) and throwing greenhouse gases up into that life sustaining blanket of atmosphere that surrounds us. Currently there has been a rise, 0.8 degrees Celsius, in our temperature. 

Scientists say the threshold of danger is 2 degrees Celsius. But they are trying not to scare us with that prediction. The real safety concern will come when the temperature reaches 1.5 degrees Celsius and it is a certainty that we will reach that temperature and blow past it. In fact we will reach 3 degrees Celsius during this century-- just from the momentum of the last century and its green gas emissions.

So, out of curiosity, what will things be like on Earth when the temperature reaches 4 degrees Celsius? Hell on Earth. The sea level will rise at least three to six feet, 40% of the earth will exist in persistent drought conditions, half of the known species will be extinct and hundreds of millions of refugees will be on the move looking for shelter and food.

According to scientists we are on track to hit 6 degrees Celsius within this century.

What does all of this science have to do with our Christian faith and this Holy Week, our journey with Jesus into Jerusalem? 

I believe that Jesus gave his life and love not only for human beings but to redeem all life: algae on the surface of the pond, weeds that border the highway, robins that scurry from worm to worm, old dogs tied to chains in the back yard, rivers choked by urban trash and small gray stones that cry out for life and love to be nurtured and respected forever and ever.

As people of faith and responsible neighbors to our trees, mountains, rivers and icebergs, we can respond in helpful ways to the current climate crisis. It all begins with us and our faith in the one who created us—along with everything else. We have been created in the image of God and that means we have the compassion of Christ, the wisdom of the Holy Spirit and the love of God within us. We have the capacity to be healing and redemptive agents in this world.

First we have to care. It begins with caring about the dirt, water, air and plant life.

Bill McKibben (in his Rolling Stone article in July 19, 2012) says, “If you told Exxon that, in order to avoid wrecking the climate they couldn’t pump out their reserves, the value of their companies would plummet.”  The Exxon CEO, Rex Tillerson recently said that the company intends to spend $37 billion a year (that’s $100 million a day) searching for yet more oil and gas. There is no intent on the part of the fossil-fuel industry to cease and desist in the destruction of our Earth.

We do not have an engineering problem. Environmentalists and engineers know how to turn this ship around and slow the process, cool the climate. We do not have an engineering problem. What we have is a greed problem. There’s just way too much money being made on oil, gas and coal.  Those who are making the most money and enjoying the most economic power will not be the ones who start the movement to tenderly and respectfully care for and redeem our mother, the Earth.

Chief Seattle said it many years ago and I am sure you have heard it before:

Teach your children

What we have taught our children—

That the earth is our mother.

Whatever befalls the earth

Befalls the sons and daughters of earth.

If men spit upon the ground,

They spit upon themselves.

This we know.

The earth does not belong to us;

We belong to the earth.

This we know.

All things are connected

Like the blood which unites one family.

All things are connected.

Whatever befalls the earth

Befalls the sons and daughters of the earth.

We did not weave the web of life;

We are merely a strand in it.

Whatever we do to the web,

We do to ourselves.

Joan Chittister says we should all be on suicide watch right now, our belts, knives, all glass and access to heights removed from us. Until we come to our senses and learn to truly care. Care about life.

For life Jesus walked on into Jerusalem. For life Jesus gave his body and blood. For love of life on this earth- Jesus stretched out his arms and died. 

People and the earth are connected throughout our stories of faith: That colt, tied up and waiting. It knew somehow that it would play a part in redemption’s story. In Genesis we read that because of the sin of Adam and Eve the earth produced thorns and thistles. The prophet Isaiah tells of a time of peace on earth when cows and bears will graze together, a time when lions and lambs will lie down side by side. Matthew tells of a star that used its light to announce that the Messiah had come to earth. The earth shuddered and quaked when Jesus died. The Bible reminds us repeatedly that all life is connected and all creation belongs to our story of faith. 

Here we are, creatures made of dirt and knowing that to dirt we will return. We gather together to worship our God in this nice church building, seated comfortably in pews that guarantee we will not fall on the floor. We trust the wood. Gravity holds us in our seat and promises us that we will not float upward and bump our heads on the ceiling. We trust the physics. Our lungs fill with oxygen over and over again as we worship. We hardly think of it nor do we worry about whether or not we are taking too much oxygen from the atmosphere in this room. We trust the abundance of oxygen to keep us alive. 

It is that trust that will motivate and empower us to be faithful ambassadors for the Earth and its future. We have been given grace and mercy. We know it. That’s why we’re here and willing to walk with Jesus. We want to be part of his redemptive story and love—even though we know the cost. We care. With this one little life we’ve been given—we care. 

As we walk with Jesus this week let’s pay attention to the things we love, the things that love has given us. The soft arms of our partner embracing us and beginning the day. The smell of coffee brewing. The encouraging songs of the birds. Trees budding and flowers blooming. Colored eggs that speak of new life. The eager eyes of children. Music that gives rhythm to our work and play. Food and drink that sustains and excites us. Friends who know us and continue to love us anyway. Our pets who look at us with adoring eyes. 

Praise God. Praise God. Praise God for this place we call home, our Earth, and all the beauty on it. Give the stones a break. Give the earth a chance to survive. Follow Jesus into Jerusalem and give your life for all the things you love.

Amen

 Benediction: The Summer Day

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean-- the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

Mary Oliver, The House Light Beacon Press Boston, 1990.

Credits

God Speaks in Many Tongues, Joan Chittister, Benet Vision, Erie PA, 2013

Luke, Interpretation Series, Fred B. Craddock, John Knox Press, Louisville, 1990

“Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math: Three Simple Numbers that add up to global catastrophe—and that make clear who the real enemy is” Bill McKibben, Rolling Stone Magazine, July 19, 2012

David Roberts You Tube on climate change: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7ktYbVwr90

Learn, Connect, Respond…

Read: “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math: Three Simple Numbers that add up to global catastrophe—and that make clear who the real enemy is” Bill McKibben, Rolling Stone Magazine, July 19, 2012

Watch: David Roberts You Tube on climate change: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7ktYbVwr90

Co-sign an open letter to President Obama calling for bold climate action at http://350.Org

Contact and join the local Sierra Club. http://www.sierraclub.org

Demonstrate against the Valero oil refinery here in Memphis, one of the key players in the Keystone XL Pipeline Project and the main refiner of Bakken crude from the fracked field of North Dakota and Montana.  

The University of Tennessee plans to lease a portion of the Cumberland Research Forest lands held in public trust to private companies for extracting oil and gas through the practice of fracking.

 Sign the petition:

http://org.credoaction.com/petitions/tell-ut-and-the-state-building-commission-don-t-frack-the-cumberland-plateau?time=1361647316

Talk with your family, friends and groups about how much you love the earth. Discuss your love for life and how you can be a faithful servant for life and love.