The Stories We Tell - Sermon on August 24, 2014

“The Stories We Tell”

Rev. Katelyn B. Macrae

Richmond Congregational Church

August 24, 2014

Texts:

Exodus 1:8-2:10

Romans 12:1-8

On Sesame Street they sang, "one of these things is not like the other, one of these things just doesn’t belong." And, at first appearance it may seem so as we approach these texts from Exodus in the Hebrew Bible and Paul’s letter to the Romans in the New Testament. And yet, the Revised Common Lectionary has paired them together ---- so let’s see if we might find the connections between them today.

When I was in seminary, this passage from Romans got right to the heart of the transformation and challenge I was experiencing as a student. I really resonated with this passage and went so far as to put it in my e-mail signature line!

When Paul issued this challenge to his first century community – "do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds" – he was trying to inspire a small community of believers who were seeking to follow a new faith tradition where they were surrounded by the dominant culture of the Roman Empire.

One example of this difference is Pax Romana vs. Pax Christi. Pax Romana, as practiced by the Roman Empire was peace by subversion, conquering and military rule whereas Pax Christi, was the peace that Jesus spoke of that could only be gained through loving and respecting neighbors, and having transforming relationships that went across the social and cultural divisions.

In our story from Exodus that we read this morning, the King seems to be practicing a similar type of rule to that of the Roman Empire. It says that the King did not know Joseph, who saved the Egyptians from seven years of famine by building up their grain stores. Finally The Hebrews have had an opportunity to follow the provisions of the Abrahamic covenant we heard about earlier this summer with Abraham and Moses. They’ve been fruitful and multiplied. But the King feels threatened by the growing numbers of Hebrew people, so he orders the killing of all of the Hebrew male children. Hebrew society was patrilineal, so by killing all of the males, the king was trying to wipe out the Hebrew people’s identity and connection.

In this story, the midwives (Shiphrah and Puah) do not carry out the king’s wishes. The scripture says that Shiphrah and Puah “knew God.” In a very subversive act, they lie to the king and say that the Hebrew women are “more vigorous” and give birth before the midwives have gotten there. One biblical commentator suggests the king must be unfamiliar with childbirth and the fact that the process usually takes many hours! The midwives use the king’s ignorance to their advantage. As Paul’s writes to the Romans many centuries later, the midwives would “not be conformed.”

Earlier this month, I discovered a BBC show called “Call the Midwife.” The series is about midwives working in the East End of London post WWII.  The midwives of Nonantus House are a community of young idealistic nurses and Anglican nuns, who together encounter all sorts of precarious situations made for TV drama – a Spanish-speaking woman with 19 children, whose husband only speaks English, excessive poverty, immigrant families domestic violence, racism, disease and the other challenges of urban poverty. These midwives find their niche in a community that sorely needs them.

The midwives accompany these women through the journey of childbirth, helping them to have healthy babies in spite of the conditions the children are born into.

The midwives also attend to residents other health concerns. In one episode, tuberculosis spread rampantly through the close confines of the East End.  The midwives learn that the hospital they work in conjunction with is getting an x-ray van to do lung x-rays to screen people for tuberculosis. But the van is slated to go to higher income neighborhoods first. The obstetrics doctor and one of the midwives goes before the hospital board and petition for the van to come to this low-income community first as the risk of spreading infection is much higher there.

The midwives are successful in getting the x-ray van to the neighborhood, and screen a record number of residents. With early detection, people infected are able to get treated quicker, and also slow the rate of infection for others.

As people of faith, I wonder, how are we like midwives? Are there ways that we can challenge the expectations and the norms of the dominant culture in places where there is dis-ease? Not just with justice and access to medical care, but with any number of concerns – such as hunger, housing, and poverty.

The bible is filled with stories where God does something new in the most unlikely of places and with the most unlikely of people. In today’s stories alone, think of how God chooses “unlikely” people to be ministers and midwives –

Paul, the author of Romans, was converted from Saul. Paul goes from working for the Roman Empire, to encouraging his community “not to be conformed” to it!

In the gospel text for this week from Matthew, (which we did not read today but was in the Lectionary) the disciple Peter seems to get it right one moment, and then screw up the next. Do you remember the story from a few weeks ago when Peter walked on water for a few steps and then began to sink? Yet Jesus chooses Peter to be “the rock” of the church and gives him the keys to the kingdom.

In the story that we heard today during Children’s Time, Old Turtle speaks a quiet peace among everyone who is arguing about trying to understand who God is, based on their experience.  Everyone gets louder and louder.

They can’t hear or understand each other, because they are each hung up on their own ideas. Then Old Turtle, quiet unlikely old turtle, gets their attention. Old Turtle helps each creature understand they each have an understanding of who God is, and when they put all of these stories together, it points to a much richer understanding of God.

Maybe it’s like that with us as a community of faith, a community of unlikely followers, each with our own stories and gifts. When we take time to share our stories, and listen to each other, like putting together the pieces of the puzzle, soon, a greater picture of who God is, and what God can do, emerges.

In Paul’s letter to the Romans, he is writing to a small community, giving them an ethic for how to live together and practice their faith, in a dominant culture that does not necessarily welcome or appreciate their point of view. He urges them “not to be conformed, but to be transformed” – through learning, through discerning, through hearing the stories of God working in the world.

So it is with us as a community of faith here in Richmond, Vermont. We are not living in an oppressive Roman Empire, but we do live in one of the most secular states in the US.

And we have an important story to tell – the story of God’s transforming, abundant love and grace offered to all.  We are an amazing expression of the Body of Christ – some teachers, some ministers, some deacons, some preachers, some cooks, some artists, some money counters, each with a different story, a different skill set, a different understanding and experience of God.

As our children and educators head back to school this week, let’s be midwives for each other’s learning. Let’s tell the story of God who can and does work in unlikely ways with unlikely people in unimaginable situations, as well as in the day to day stuff of life. Let’s discern together. Let’s be transformed together. May it be so.

Amen.

If I Had A Backpack

If I Had a Backpack

Tune: If I Had a Hammer

Lyrics: Katelyn Macrae

August 15, 2014

If I had a backpack,
I’d pack it for school
Preparin’ for learning,
Everyday.
Learning ‘bout mathematics,
English and science,
And the history of my brothers and my sisters,
All over this land.

When I’m in the classroom,

Reading and writing,

Critically thinking,

And taking exams.

Sometimes I wonder,

What’s all the bother?

Why can’t there be love between my brothers and my sisters

All over this land?

Now I’m an adult,

And I’ve got a briefcase,

With my laptop,

And a smartphone.

But sometimes I ponder,

Are we any smarter,

When we have strugglin’ between our brothers and our sisters

In so many lands?

We are the Church,

Called by Jesus,

To live the Good News,

In every way.*

We learn in the morning,

We pray in the evening,

And work for love between our brothers and our sisters

in all lands.

Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh.

*or every day

“Wrestling with Scarcity and Abundance” - Sermon on August 3, 2014

“Wrestling with Scarcity and Abundance”

August 3, 2014

Rev. Katelyn B. Macrae

Richmond Congregational Church

Matthew 14:13-21

Prayer: Dear God, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our creator, redeemer and sustainer. Amen.

We all have stories and struggles that we carry with us as we go throughout life. Sometimes it is writers, artists, and other creative visionaries who are able to speak best to the human experiences that we all share.

  M.F.K. Fischer was a well known 20th century food writer. Her books were part food log part travel memoir. She said, "People ask me: 'Why do you write about food, and eating, and drinking? Why don't you write about the struggle for power and security, and about love, the way the others do?'...The easiest answer is to say that, like most other humans, I am hungry."

Food is such a basic human need, right there on the top of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, along with shelter and water.

In the spring of 2009, I visited El Salvador as part of a cultural immersion and learning experience with a group of students from my seminary. Our group came from many different denominational backgrounds, but our host was the Anglican Episcopal Diocese of El Salvador. We stayed in the church’s dorm in San Salvador, and each day would travel out to a different location. We visited schools, churches, health clinics and mission sites. We were there to learn about El Salvador’s history, especially about Bishop Oscar Romero, the El Salvadoran Civil War, and the church’s current work. One day, we went to a mountain top community that was building a water pump to get water from the river below up to their farming.

Before the water pump, the villagers had to walk up and down a steep hill to fetch water for all of their daily living needs as well as for their animals and crops. As you might imagine, this process of going down, getting water and then carrying it back up, was tedious and challenging.

The church had been working with this community for a number of years. Before the water pump project, they helped the community build a bridge.

The community was up on the top of the mountain, and during the rainy season, the road would flood and became impassable for a car.

Like the location in our Gospel story from Matthew, this place was not only hard to get to, there was also very little there to feed people.

During El Salvador’s Civil War an entire generation’s worth of farming knowledge was lost. People working in the fields were easy targets for aerial bombing. People stopped farming, and many picked up weapons. They were trying to survive.

After the war ended, people such as the ones who lived in these mountain communities, tried resume their lives. But they had lost the knowledge of the previous generations’ farming techniques. Seeds were not saved from year to year.  Much of the fertile soil was depleted.

People who tried to grow crops were starting from scratch. They had to learn how to farm and borrow money for seeds and fertilizer. Given this, new farmers could barely turn a profit.

The church in El Salvador had a vision that if they could teach people organic farming practices such as saving seeds, using natural fertilizer, and growing crops better suited for their soil, it would help people to better provide for their communities, and hopefully, eventually, climb out of poverty. As people transitioned from learning how to use guns to learning how to garden it was a literal turning of swords into plowshares.

The church committed itself to this vision that that another way was possible for the people of El Salvador.

Yet, economic and political realities in El Salvador, and other Central American countries, persist. Even with all the good work of NGOS and religious organizations, economic security and stability is far off for many people. Gangs run rampant. There are not the same opportunities for people to get education, there aren’t that many “middle class jobs” and many families now rely on relatives working abroad in the United States to send remittances home. Almost everyone knows or is related to someone who has gone to “El Norte.”

People risk their lives to cross the border – to the American dream of freedom and prosperity. But what they often meet is anything but that. If they do make it here, many take below minimum wage jobs, endure unsafe working conditions and yet pay taxes and are a vital part of our economy.

We can no longer ignore the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants who are residing in the United States. Our current immigration policies need drastic reform. It is time for people of faith to step up and be the visionaries that say “another way is possible.”

On Thursday, a group of UCC leaders joined with other religious and social justice advocates in front of the White House to call on President Obama to stop the mass deportations of children, and reform our immigration policies. In addition to this action, the delegation also visited legislators, and encouraged them to take action before their August recess.. 

Da Vita McCallister, the Conference Minister for Children and Youth in the CT Conference, posted on facebook to explain why she was going -

“I have tried to imagine how desperate I would have to be to tell my 16 year old son, ‘take your nephew (almost 3 years old) and these two sandwiches. Walk to California and give the first person you see this note. It has the name of a friend of mine and she will take care of the two of you."

And yet, there are mothers who feel they have no other choice but to do this.

As food writer M.F. K. Fisher wrote - “Like most other humans, I am hungry….”

I imagine that the crowds gathered around Jesus in that deserted place were hungry too. They were not only physically hungry but hungry for the comfort of being in a safe place.

In the verses immediately before our story from Matthew’s Gospel begins, Jesus’ cousin, John the Baptist was beheaded by Herod and his head was served up on a platter. No doubt, the people following Jesus had heard about this. They were also grieving the loss of John the Baptist, and not sure what Herod might do next.

Our story begins– “Now when Jesus heard this” – this being the beheading of John - he took a boat to a deserted place by himself to grieve. The people followed on foot. Even though Jesus was trying to be alone, Matthew says that Jesus “had compassion” for them – he healed and cured the sick all day.

But as it got to be close to nightfall the disciples were concerned.  They came to Jesus and asked, “Should we send them into the village so that they can buy something to eat?” Remember, they were in a deserted place. And so they scratched their heads and dug around through their pockets and in their bags.

Jesus said to them, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.”

“We’ve got nothing here but five loaves and two fish,”

Jesus, also keenly aware of the thousands of people out there said, “Bring them here to me.” Jesus sees the meager offerings that the disciples have to feed the people, and he blesses them any way. In his actions, Jesus casts this vision that this food can and will be enough. Instead of focusing on scarcity, he sees the opportunity for abundance.

It’s similar to how the church in El Salvador saw an opportunity to teach people to farm – and therefore to move out of scarcity towards abundance.

In a few minutes we will celebrate Communion.

There is a great Latin American Bread Prayer that goes – Give bread to those that are hungry, and a hunger for justice to those who have bread.

As we break bread, let this be our prayer. Because when we pray, we’re not only asking for God to do something, but we’re also transformed through the process of prayer.

Lynn Bunyak, the VT Conference minister wrote this about prayer this week –

“By praying we open ourselves to God's work within us, making us more compassionate and able hear God's call more clearly. Prayer is a subversive act that not only changes the world, but changes us and our relationship to the world filled with people whom God loves with an everlasting love.”

Friends, as we go about our week, may we take time to pray, and as we pray may we be open to how God might be calling us to be the artists, visionaries, writers, and people of faith who can further the narrative of God’s abundant generosity for all of God’s children.

May it be so.

Amen.

Seatbelts, Lifejackets, and Bike Helmets - Sermon from August 10, 2014

“Seatbelts, Lifejackets, and Bike Helmets”

August 10, 2014

Rev. Katelyn B. Macrae

Richmond Congregational Church

Matthew 14:22-33

Prayer: Dear God, may the words of my mouth, and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight. O God, our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer. Amen.

By a show of hands, how many of you consider yourselves safety conscious?

Growing up my parents were always very safety conscious with my sister and I. We held hands and looked both ways before we crossed the street. We buckled our seatbelts before the car moved and sang “Buckle Up for Safety.” We wore bike helmets for riding bikes, and lifejackets for boating. I started wearing a ski helmet long before they became the norm, and I still remember the neon yellow and pink knee and elbow pads that I had for my roller blades. Wearing safety equipment was just part of what we did in the Macrae family.

Though my parents were safety conscious, they also encouraged my sister and I to play and explore outside.

One late spring day when I was in second or third grade, my dad and I were out in the river and a gust of wind came up and our little row boat capsized. The water was cold. Another boater came over and pulled us to safety. We were okay. But this incident has forever cemented my belief in wearing life jackets when boating!

I can imagine that if life preservers did exist two thousand years ago, the disciples would have been happy to be wearing them.

This story that we read today appears only in Matthew’s Gospel. It’s the second time that Jesus ministers to his disciples in the boat. The first time they’re in a boat going across the sea, and the storm is raging. Jesus is asleep through the storm, and so they wake Jesus up and he calms the storm.

This time, the disciples are by themselves in the boat. This story from Matthew follows on the heels of our story last week where Jesus and the disciples fed the 5,000. Jesus tried to get away to a quiet spot after learning of John the Baptist’s death. But, the crowds followed him and he didn’t get a chance to mourn. So now, after the day of healing, and an evening of feeding, Jesus finally gets away to a quiet place to pray. He sends the disciples, who are also tired and grieving, across the sea so that they can continue ministering.

The storm rages all night long as they journey to the other shore. In this time period, the sea and nighttime were associated with evil spirits, and the devil. You can imagine the disciples’ stomachs sinking with fear when, at around 3 AM, they see this shadowy figure coming towards them in the mist – walking on the water.

Who is it? What is it?

 They are wrapped in fear - “It’s a ghost.”

Jesus calls back, “Take heart, It is I; do not be afraid.” Other translations render this phrase as “Take heart, I am, do not be afraid.” Calling himself “I am” links Jesus with the name of God used in the Hebrew scriptures, “I am who I am.” This is quite the opposite of what the disciples may have thought was coming towards them in the midst of the storm.

But even with this reassurance, Peter decides to test the shadowy figure in the mists -

He calls to Jesus, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.”

So, Jesus calls Peter, “Come.”

He climbs over the gunwale, and his feet touch the surface…

He takes a few steps…

He’s actually walking on the water!

But then, then a gust of wind comes up and Peter gets scared, and it’s only then that he begins to sink…

He cries out, “Lord, save me.”

Immediately Jesus grabs his arm and pulls him up and out of the deep, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”

Then Jesus and Peter get into the boat with the disciples, and the wind subsides.

The disciples recognize Jesus as the Son of God and they worship him.

The theological term for this kind of a story is a “theophany” - a story of God appearing.

This story gives us a glimpse of the intimate relationship that Jesus had with his disciples and the way that he cared for them. It also gives teaches us about human behavior. Peter’s actions remind us how quickly we can go from confident and cocky to crying out for help in the face of our fears.

One message we can take from the story is that we should try to avoid what Peter did. He let his doubt and fear get in the way, and began to sink. Therefore, if we can just keep our eyes on Jesus, no matter the storms, and just have faith, we won’t sink. But the reality is that very few of us will ever cultivate such a singular and unwavering faith. 

Sometimes, like Peter, we balance between faith and doubt. We can get distracted by the waves and the wind of family concerns, economic hardship, illness and disease, broken relationships, and news headlines. We feel the need to challenge and test Jesus to see if he is real. This story reminds us that even with all of our fears and doubts and questions and challenges; Jesus wants to be in relationship with us.

Jesus responds to Peter’s challenge with an invitation… “Come.” 

And Peter is doing fine walking on the water, until suddenly he’s not. Peter is literally in over his head when he realizes Jesus for who he is. Jesus comes to Peter, Jesus saves Peter, just as Jesus comes to us -

And through the questioning, struggle, challenge and the embrace, we, like Peter, can arrive at a greater and deeper understanding of who God is, and how God longs to be in relationship with us. Our relationship with God, like bike helmets, seatbelts and lifejackets doesn’t guarantee that we’ll always be free from harm.

But it equips and empowers us to grow, to explore, to try new things, to question, to take risks, to get out of the boats and walk beyond our comfort zone.

Our relationship with God, challenges us to try seemingly impossible and foolish things –

o   Like feeding 5,000 people with 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish

o   Walking on water

o   Or, Being a community of faith, changing people’s lives, advocating for peace and justice, and abundant love, in a dominant culture that says the church is no longer relevant.

That’s the God that I want to be in relationship with -

God who comes to us in our deepest nights,

God who calls us beyond our comfort zones and challenges us,

God whose hands save us from our foolishness and whose love wraps around each of us like a life  

     jacket we can never remove.

God who climbs into the boat with us to ride out the wild storms.

Thanks be to God for this relationship.

Amen.

In God's Garden

Rev. Katelyn Macrae

July 13, 2014

Richmond Congregational Church

Text: Isaiah 55:10- 13 and Matthew 13:1-9; 18-23

We had a kid once who came to camp. He was a city kid, and this was his first time in nature, his first time with bugs and grass and lots of trees, and swimming in the lake. It was all new to him.

We also had camp pigs that summer on loan from the Heifer Project. He loved to walk by the pig pen, any chance he could get.

Which was great, except for two things -

One, he could have spent all day at the pig pen, which made it hard when the campers were supposed to be doing other things.

Two, the pigs weren’t so good at staying in the pen.

No matter how much reinforcement was put in the fencing, the pigs, mysteriously, found a way out. They would run around camp and then the staff would have to go chase the pigs and put them back in the pen.

Have you ever chased a pig?

Pigs do not want to be caught, let me tell you that!

I think that God’s love is kind of like the pigs escaping from the pen, no matter how much reinforcement is put on the pen – God’s love wants to escape, it can’t be contained. Or maybe God’s love is a versatile, grow anywhere, GMO-free seed.

---

Our story today comes from a series of parables in the Gospel of Matthew. Jesus used everyday objects - mustard seeds, coins, fish nets, seeds and soil – in his parables to illustrate his lessons. Today there were so many people gathered to hear Jesus’ that he had to go out in a boat in the middle of the lake just to be able to see everyone and teach them. Jesus was attracting a lot of attention.

Writer Barbara Brown Taylor suggests that Jesus used these everyday images in his parables to stand in for other things so that he would not get arrested while teaching. He taught in such a way that he people who knew what he was talking about would get his point, and those who were out of the know would just shake their heads in confusion.

Today’s parable is one of the most recognizable – it’s called the Parable of the Sower.

This is the title, but yet so much of the focus of the story seems to be on the ground that the Sower visits – a well trod path, rocky ground, thorny ground, and finally, fertile soil.

As I hear this story, I can’t help but wonder – how do I get to be the good soil? Am I the rocky soil? Am I full of thorns?

In fact, I was going to bring in some compost today for the children’s sermon and have a conversation about what makes for good soil. I was going to have mix all of this stuff up together and see what happens as the compost decomposes. However, I didn’t think that the Trustees would be too keen on having a compost bin in the Sanctuary!

In her book Seeds of Heaven, Barbara Brown Taylor, writes that we have a 1:4 chance of getting to be the right kind of soil. Who doesn’t want to be the good, fertile soil?

But if we keep our eyes on the dirt, we’re likely to get lost in the weeds, and miss the greater point of Jesus’ parable.

It’s called the Parable of the Sower, not the Parable of the Soil, for a reason. Notice that the sower sows seeds everywhere, not caring where they will land, how evenly spaced apart they are, or what kind of fruit they are predicted to yield. Imagine God as the sower, sowing seeds extravagantly, indiscriminately.

Season after season, God sows seeds in fertile fields, and war zones, and well trod paths. God sows seeds through the shopping malls and parking lots, and hospital rooms, and even pig pens at camp. God sows seeds of God’s word, and when these seeds take root, they bear the Fruits of the Spirit - love, joy, peace, kindness, gentleness, forgiveness, patience, self control, generosity, and faithfulness.

They bear the fruits of the spirit in sometimes unexpected places.

---

 It was not an easy week at camp for our city kid. He had to go home a bit earlier than the other campers. As a staff we wondered, did we fail him because he didn’t make it through the full week? We had to ask ourselves, how do we define “success” at camp? Is staying through the whole week the most important thing? In the days that the camper was here – what kind of community did he experience?

When we started to think about it this way, we realized that whether or not he stayed until Saturday, he still got to come to camp, and discover new things, play outside, and be a part of a community who loved and cared and supported him the best ways that we could.

Our job as camp staff was to help create experiences where our campers might be recipients of some of God’s seeds. We showed this camper God’s love – and maybe, maybe, something took root in him.

---

Yesterday I attended the 25^th anniversary celebration at Covenant Hills Christian Camp near Cabot, VT. Covenant Hills is a camp co-founded by the Vermont Conference of the United Church of Christ and United Methodist Conference. Former Richmond Congregational Church Member Fran Walker sold some land to the camp to help make it possible.

It was my first time at Covenant Hills, but as I listened to people speak about the power and the importance of this camp and its impact on their lives, I was continually impressed with the similarities with my own experience at UCC camps in Maine and Connecticut.

One of the statistics that Jeff, the camp co-director, highlighted is that if a child attends Sunday School every Sunday for a year, they get about 52 hours of faith formation. But, if a kid attends camp for one week – they get about 130 hours of hands-on faith formation, learning how to be a part of a community, experiencing nature, and learning about the connections between Creation and our Creator. That is more than double what a child will get if they attend Sunday school every Sunday. As a local church is so important to support this camping ministry, encourage our kids to go to camp, and support them with scholarships.

As demographics shift, and people, especially our families, have more and more choices about where and how to spend their summers, and their Sunday mornings, we must also be open to new ways of being church, so that our camps, and our churches, will have a future 25, 50, 100 years from now.

Jim Thomas, a staff member at the Vermont Conference, came and preached here at Richmond Congregational Church in March. One of the challenges he issued from this pulpit, is that we need to be out and visible in the community. We need to go where the people are, and be out and visible in the community. Similarly, one of the goals of the new directors at Covenant Hills is to make their programming more accessible and open to people of all ages by offering more opportunities for retreats, intergenerational camping, and possibly a series of Confirmation retreats for churches across the state.

It sounds like a Sower approach!  Taking seeds out and sowing them about joyfully all the while knowing that some will land in rocky places, some will land among the thorns, and some will land in the fertile soil and take root.

Only God knows what the soil composition is. There’s not a special way to measure success in the Kingdom of God. Even the parable says that the yields will be different, some thirty, some sixty, some hundredfold. Likewise, we can’t necessarily measure success with predicted yields or only look for the most fertile soil.

In Tielhard de Chardin’s poem The Slow Work of God he writes, “We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability— and that it may take a very long time.”

De Chardin encourages us to trust in God working in our lives in God’s time, and to

remain open to the process.

As we move together as a faith community in this new relationship together, and dream and vision how God is calling us,  let us be sowers, casting about God’s seeds of love – freely, indiscriminately, joyfully – wherever we go.

May it be so.

Amen. 

Planting Seeds of Hope

“Planting Seeds of Hope” AUDIO RECORDING
Psalm 23; Acts 9:36-43
Hope UCC, Alexandria, VA
Fourth Sunday of Easter, April 21, 2013
Katelyn B. Macrae

Prayer: O Great Creator, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight. Amen.

Earth Day and the UCC’s 4/1 Earth Campaign invites us to pause and focus our attention on the beauty of creation and the amazing work of our Creator.

Today is an opportunity to give thanks for beauty and nature’s bounty that reminds us just how wonderful and creative God is. But more than just focusing our attention on the nature’s beauty – on the bright blue of the bird’s wings, Or how the suns rays fill the sky at sunrise, Earth Day and the UCC’s 4/1 Earth campaign also call us to account for the ways that our living on this sacred and hollowed ground has also led to environmental degradation and destruction, and how our religious tradition can contribute to earth’s destruction as well as earth’s redemption.

In my final semester at seminary, I took a class with about religious and environmental ethics. In the classroom we were a mix of theology and environmental science students. Mary Evelyn Tucker, one of our professors, cautioned those of us coming from the Divinity School about how the stories from our religious traditions has wrought danger on the environment. She asked us to look at our stories of origin, how our universe came to be - our cosmology – such as the story from Genesis that we shared in the Call to Worship.

Tucker says, “the story of cosmology gives us a sense of our place in the universe. And if we are so radically affecting the story by extinguishing other life forms and destroying our own nest, what does this imply about our religious sensibilities or our sense of the sacred?” (Worldly Wonder 1).
 
What does it imply for our sense of the sacredness of creation if we are destroying it, and perhaps ourselves in the process?

The before and after pictures Alberta Tar Sands in Canada shows how the boreal forests are destroyed after it has been strip mined for tar sands, which are processed to make oil. When we consider the proposed Keystone Pipeline XL this is where the oil is coming from. 

In addition to increased energy demand, global warmings’ impact is shown in the melting of the polar ice cap. Since 1979, the Polar Ice Cap has decreased 20%. The red boundary line marks where the ice cap was in 1979.

Warmer oceans and rising temperatures impact all of God’s creation.

Our West Virginia mountains have a hard time praising the glory of God after their mountaintops have been removed.
And birds of the air find it difficult to soar to the heights of the heavens after their wings are coated in oil. (BP Deepwater Horizon disaster).

Friends, these pictures confront me with the very real consequences of living in a country, and in a world that has an incredible dependence and an insatiable appetite for fossil fuels. These images also remind me that things I do as part of everyday living - when I drive in my car, or turn on the light, or check my email – are part of much larger and more complicated systems.
 
Did any of you see the documentary – No Impact Man? It came out a few years ago and was streaming free on Netflix. The documentary follows a writer, Colin, and his family living in New York City, on their quest to have a zero Carbon Footprint for one year.

Colin stops taking the elevator and public transportation, the family even washes their clothes by hand in the bathtub, and only buys local food. Colin uses a solar power generator for his laptop so that he can blog about the experience. The movie is both funny, and very serious, as illustrates just HOW enmeshed our daily activities are with carbon consumption and how complicated it is to extricate ourselves from these ways of living.
 
On Earth Day, we remember that we are a part of creation, and how we live on this earth has an impact. We can’t just turn and point the finger of blame at past generations, or governments or corporations, and act as if it’s always someone else’s fault or someone else’s responsibility to clean the world up. We are all in this “mess” together.  

On Earth Day, like on Good Friday, we take the time to acknowledge the places in this world where no life seems possible.

Psalm 23 provides familiar comfort in such times - The Lord is My Shepherd, I shall not want….Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I shall fear no evil for thou art with me…”

While we take in the barrenness of this landscape, we acknowledge that there is death and loss and environmental destruction.

But the story doesn’t end here. These psalmists’ words also give us comfort and hope. 

For yea, though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we shall fear no evil! We are not alone! God, our shepherd, is with us as we walk!
 
Christina Hutchins writes that we don’t know much about the valley in Psalm 23.

“We don’t even know if the valley of the shadow of death is the very same valley as that of the green pastures. Is it one place in two different seasons?… Is the grass-blooming valley a return to what had been previously demolished, the way that nature, when we let it, with time and a cessation of active destruction, heals itself and may heal us?”[1]

Death Valley, which you see above, looks completely different from the previous picture – and yet they are the same place.  In observing nature, we learn how possibility blooms in places that seemed barren and desolate.

In the cycles and seasons Nature teaches us how life and death are intertwined. A fallen tree becomes a home for bugs who eat the tree, and help it decompose to become soil that provide nourishment for other trees and in the forest. Or, for those who like to garden, think about how this year’s compost becomes next year’s garden fertilizer.

Like nature’s cycles and seasons, this story from Acts that we heard this morning also shows the movement from life to death to life. This story of transformation shows the power of God’s community gathering together to work for change.

Dorcas was a generous woman who shared her resources with those in need. When she died, the whole community experienced a loss – but they weren’t ready to accept her death. And so they took all of their resources, all of their energy, and went to get Peter. And as Peter was inside with Dorcas praying and doing his work, the community waited outside and prayed too. Dorcas lived again!

 
Biblical scholar Stephen D. Jones suggests that while the obvious miracle of the story is that Dorcas is revived, the underlying miracle is the miracle of the community who mustered all of their resources together. It was because of their persistence, and God’s grace, that new life was possible again.

Just like that community in Acts - when we combine our energy and efforts and act together for one Earth, through planting the vegetable garden at Hope, writing advocacy letters, and singing and praying about the wonders of creation, our collective actions proclaim that death and destruction and degradation do not have the last word. We are people of Hope, and we believe that with God’s help and the work of our hands, new life, and new growth are possible!

In your bulletin today you should have received a piece of butterfly paper. I invite you to pull it out now and hold it in your hand.

This paper is full of possibility – because it contains the seeds of Hope!

As you hold this paper in your hand, take a few moments to think about where you would like to plant some Hope in the world. It has been a difficult week, especially for those of us with ties to Boston. Is there a place, or a person, or a cause that comes to mind? If so, please write this down on the paper.

These butterflies are made of paper with wildflower seeds. If you take it home and put the paper on top of some soil in a cup, and water it - seeds will sprout in a few days!

Then you can go out and actually plant these seeds of hope in a place that could really use it! Or, if it’s not a physical place that you have in mind, or it’s too far away, consider planting these seeds in a place where you will see them often. Then each time you see these seeds of hope blooming you can say a prayer for your concern.

In the coming weeks, as we continue in the 4/1 Earth campaign let us plant seeds of hope and water them with our prayers. Let us sow these seeds freely and wildly, for God knows the world needs it. Amen.

 

 

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[1] http://www.ucc.org/worship/samuel/april-21-2013-1.html, Dr. Christina Hutchins
Pacific School of Religion
Dr. Riess Potterveld
Pacific School of Religion