Creation Care as Radical Gratitude

Genesis 1: 1- 2:4 is the biblical story of creation.  In this understanding of creation, God speaks, separates, and names all that God created.  With each day (some undefined period of time), God looks at each aspect and animal of creation and declares that it is good.  All creation is filled with inherent goodness and beauty.  In verse 26 and 27, God creates human beings in God's image (imago dei). If we are created in the image of God, how do we respond to God as Creator?  If God takes the initiative in creation, what is our concomitant response?

One way to understand an appropriate response is to understand our responsibility of dominion (verse 26b) as stewardship and care.  We can become engaged with God's abundance in creation (Today's New International Version calls it a "vast array") by keeping and healing creation.

Another way to respond is to envision God's delight in creating.  I can just imagine God tapping into her creative side as he creates both mosquito and dolphin.  What fun it is to create anything new!  So...if we're made in the image of God, where do we find our delight?  Where do we tap into our creative energies to co-create with God?  If God calls us good, how do we use our goodness in creation care?

I leave you with these open-ended questions because we each approach creation care with our own priorities, our own gifts, and our own experiences with what God has created.  Out of our experiences, gifts, and priorities we find energy and passion to tend to the land, sea, air, and animals.

Grace and Peace,
Pastor Shelley

Growing in Abundance

God-of-the-Angel Armies, Israel's God says in Jeremiah 29: 4-14:  Build – Live – Plant – Eat.  We build that others may live.  We plant that others may eat.  Trinity has built an Education Wing, remodeled and updated our building, and added two playgrounds and new landscaping.  We have built on faith that we are following God's plans for us - plans for our wellbeing and our shalom.  We follow Jeremiah's truthtelling that when we build and plant on behalf of others, we will find our wellbeing.  Our shalom in tied together with the shalom of the Topeka community in which we live.  As our community thrives, so will we thrive.
With Little Explorers living in our building and playing on the colorful playgrounds, we see the abundance of seedlings who will someday be bright, stable, contributing sunflowers in our city.  As we see our children and youth thriving in the enriched environment our building and planting provides, we can envision their future as Son-seeking sunflowers.
Having built and planted in faith that God intended this service to our community, it is now our responsibility to eliminate the indebtedness so that we can follow the sun/Son into an even more abundant future.  We raise our alleluias for this continued act of faith that we give so that others may live.  Thanks be to God.


Grace and Peace,
Pastor Shelley

God Gets the Last Laugh

To the saying "The only sure things in life are death and taxes," I'd add "our need for forgiveness and God's love."  As we approach tax day (extended for 3 days this year), we generally have a sense of dread.  I dare to suggest that we often approach our regular propensity to sin and the need to confess our sinfulness to God with dread.  Yet 1 John 1: 1 - 2:2  (a Word of Life) reminds us that God eagerly awaits our confessions with an abundance of grace and mercy. Because God is light and Christ is our earthly and heavenly Advocate, we can confront our sin openly and honestly. When we step into the light of confession, God is eager to speak the Word of assurance:  "You are forgiven."

Last week was Easter Sunday when we celebrated the Resurrection:  God raised Jesus from the dead.  On this second Sunday of Easter (Eastertide), we celebrate that God has confronted death (our ultimate fear) face to face and has laughed at death.  Herein lies our assurance that laughter is how we live and love because it's how God loves and lives in us.  While never denying our sinful natures, 1 John points us toward the light of laughter.  We who walk in the light of Christ by confessing our earthly nature, are able to have fellowship with one another through our faith in the fellowship of our trinitarian God:  Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer.  This Sunday (Holy Humor Sunday), we'll laugh with joy as we celebrate our assurance of God's grace and mercy.

Let us live, love and laugh,
Pastor Shelley

Resurrection: God's Ultimate Covenant

Do you appreciate the mystery of cliff hangers?  Whether it be a book or tv show in a series, I hate the "who-done-it" mystery that keeps us hanging - waiting for resolution.  Remember the tv show Dallas & the question heard round the world?  "Who shot JR?"

Well this cliff-hanging technique is how Mark ends his gospel with Jesus' resurrection.  We can get more resurrection details from the other three gospels.  But if we stick with Mark we can wrap ourselves up in wondering.  Why did Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of Jesus, and Salome come to the tomb early Sunday morning when Sabbath was over, if they knew the tomb was sealed with a huge stone?  Why did they purchase sweet smelling spices to anoint and embalm their beloved Jesus if they would have no access to his body?  How was the stone rolled away?  Who was the young man in white robes sitting in the empty tomb?  How did he know what had happened to Jesus?  Why were the women so afraid and terrified when they heard that Jesus had been raised - as Jesus had predicted before his death?  What kind of story ends with the women running away telling no one, when they were instructed to tell the disciples and Peter?

As Tom Long says, "Is this any way to run a resurrection?" (TG Long, "Dangling Gospel," The Christian Century, 2006.)

This open-ended ending is an invitation for us to continue the story of proclaiming to the world that Jesus has lived, died, and been raised to new life.  This non-ending means that our lives and our testimonies carry the story into our time and place.  This cliff hanger invites us into a mystery of faith - provocative and inclusive of our experiences of Jesus who goes ahead of us as part of God's Promise - God's Covenant with us.  Where/when/how do you see Jesus whispering, inviting, and beckoning you to follow?  Who will you share stories of Jesus with?

Grace and Peace,
Pastor Shelley

The Promise of a King and a Lamb

Sunday is April Fools' Day, technically not a holiday recognized by the church. But I think there is something to the fact that Palm Sunday is falling on April Fools' Day this year. Who do you think of when you think of fools, of something foolish? Today, in the workplaces or at school or even at church, we feel shame and humiliation if we say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing. We don’t want to be fools – on April Fools' Day, we want to be the ones playing the tricks, not the ones being made a fool!

Read Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29 and John 12:12-19.

The Gospel reading this week shapes how our Palm Sunday feels. It is mostly a joyful celebration of Jesus as the promised King, Jesus as the one to fulfill the covenant, Jesus as a miracle worker, who can bring life out of death. The people offer a welcoming parade, pledging their loyalty to Jesus as the King of Israel, running after him, stampeding after him. And yet, we end not with their joy, but the Pharisees as they continue to plot, their current plans being foiled yet again. Their presence, however, seems to be an ominous sign that reminds us of what will come later this week: a meal, a betrayal, a trial, a cross, a tomb.  

And yet, somehow, Jesus plays us all. Jesus takes on the role of the fool on Palm Sunday – riding in not on a warhorse but a young donkey, his feet probably dragging on the ground. Jesus the king rides the animal of peace, not the Messiah the people expected to violently overthrow Rome. Jesus lets the people call him king, knowing that later in the week they would be calling for his crucifixion. Jesus turns everything upside down, making wisdom foolish: emptying himself that we might be filled; saying that the last will be first and the first will be last, to save your life you must lose it; feeding multitudes with a couple loaves and fish; healing those who were said to be beyond help; and bringing life out of a dead Lazarus in a tomb. 

In a court, the fool or jester was the only one who could actually speak truth to power, who could actually criticize the king or queen or government, who could mock those in power through the gift of humor. It is said that Queen Elizabeth once threatened her fool because he did not criticize her severely enough! That is the role of Christ on April Fools' Day, on Palm Sunday: to subvert the Roman concept of Lord, to speak to the power of peace instead of violence, to find value in the people who are marginalized and oppressed. As a fool, Jesus invites people to see and live in the world in a different way. For Jesus himself is the stone that the builders rejected – only for that very stone to become the chief cornerstone, the foundation of it all. Jesus fools us, as we are promised a king and are given a sacrificial lamb. As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians, “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.” Thanks be to God for responding to our Hosannas with the foolishness of the Messiah, the only one who could really save us once and for all.

Grace and peace,

Pastor Kate