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

What's in a Name?

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose - By any other name would smell as sweet," Juliet says to her star-crossed lover, Romeo. Here Juliet tells Romeo that a name is an artificial, meaningless convention, and that she loves the person who is called "Montague", not the Montague name and not the Montague family. Romeo, out of his passion for Juliet, rejects his family name and vows, as Juliet asks him to "deny (his) father" and instead be "new baptized" as Juliet's lover. This one short line encapsulates the central struggle and tragedy of Shakespeare's play. 

The Bible has different take on "what's in a name."  When God re-names Abram to Abraham and changes Sarai's name to Sarah, it is to signify the everlasting covenant that God makes with this faithful but barren couple in their 90's.  God says to them in Genesis 17: 1-7, 15-16:  "You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations." (NRSV, v 4b)  God too claims a new name for Godself:  El Shaddai - God of the mountains - the One who created heavens and earth - God of the highest mountains and the lowest valleys - God of all creation.  In this second covenant of the Hebrew Bible, El Shaddai blesses Abraham and Sarah with the promise of a child and the royal promise that Abraham and Sarah's descendants will forever be God's people.

It's fitting that the gospel lesson  (Mark 8: 31-38) paired with this second covenant is Jesus' answer to the immediately preceding question Jesus poses to the disciples:  "Who do you say that I am?" (Mk 8: 29).  Jesus goes on to foretell his death and resurrection, which will define his disciples as Christ followers:  "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross..." (Mk 8: 34). What does it mean to be named a Christ follower?  How does it change us?

We can begin to claim our identities as Christ followers by trying to understand what it means for Jesus to claim his identity as Messiah - a process Maya Angelou succinctly critiques in response to someone who identifies himself as Christian with "What?!  Already?!"

God took the initiative with Abraham and Sarah.  God names Jesus at his baptism as "Beloved Son."  In baptism God claims us and names us as children of God.  In covenanting with our descendants, our Messiah, and with us, God initiates the relationship with re-naming.  Our challenge is to respond to our new names  as Abraham and Sarah did - fall on our knees and rejoice.  Our challenge also is to avoid responding as Peter did by rebuking and rejecting the servanthood sacrifices Jesus lays out for us.

What's in a name?  The answer:  Our very identity and relationship with our Lord.

Survival After the Flood and God's Promise of New Life

Lent 2012 at Trinity will be a time to ponder God-Promises  -  those promises God vows throughout the Hebrew Bible (our Old Testament), culminating in the ultimate promise of salvation and eternal life through the resurrection of Jesus the Christ.  We will celebrate this final, climactic covenant on Easter, April 8th.

Meanwhile, in Genesis 9: 8-17, God initiates and establishes God's first covenant.  After flooding the corrupt and wicked earth, saving 2 of every creature and Noah's extended family, God shoots his unstrung war bow across the sky to remind us of God's vow never to destroy the earth again.  In God's act of re-creation (beginning again with a remnant) is the promise of new life.

The problem is:  we continue to sin.  And as we begin Lent - 40 days for contemplation to consider our wicked ways - Jesus begins his ministry with his baptism in Mark 1: 9-15.  Immediately following his baptism, Jesus is driven into the wilderness, where temptation besets him.  This is the same wilderness of our lives, where temptations flood us with the attractiveness of the idols and lies that we can be in control and be our own gods.

The mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting.  In this permanent, eternal covenant, God's mercy trumps God's judgment.  God's Promise of everlasting life, with the possibilities of new life that only God is mighty enough to grant, we find the comfort and challenges to partner with God in our kingdom wilderness.  May the rainbow always remind us of the possibilities that we might bridge the gap between what is and what can be as God works through us.

Grace and Peace,
Pastor Shelley

Dare to Remember. Dare to Forgive.

This Sunday we at Trinity, as well as people of diverse faiths, will gather to worship - many of us within the context of the 10th anniversary of 9/11. We will remember where we were and what we were doing on the morning of 9/11 and what we did afterward. We'll remember how this tragedy touched our lives and how our world has changed since then. These are powerful memories and reflections.

Our lectionary scriptures speak a powerful word to us: Matthew 18: 21-35 and Genesis 50: 15-21.

Among our myriad of mixed feelings about 9/11, the theme of forgiveness has tortured many through these last 10 years. In our gospel, Jesus commands the demanding work of forgiving others 70 x 7 times - in Jesus' day this represents no end to the process of forgiveness. Forgiveness is a repeated theme throughout Jesus' ministry. Here, it's especially harsh when a wicked steward, who having just been forgiven a huge debt, chooses not to forgive a fellow slave who owes him a debt. The king then hands the wicked steward over to torture. The parable ends with Jesus' promise: "So my heavenly Father will also do to everyone of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart" (Mt 18: 35). For those who respond to 9/11 or other acts of violence or betrayal with a desire for vengeance, I find that revenge is rarely sweet nor healing. Jesus shows us a path toward healing and wholeness through forgiveness.

Most compelling to me is the reminder in our daily praying the Lord's Prayer when we plead with God to forgive us our sins/debts/trespasses as we forgive the sins/debts/trespasses of others - as if the measure of our forgiveness by God rests upon our choice to forgive others. However, Jesus reminds us that we've already been forgiven and that he, as the Son of God will be with us always, to the end of the age. Through this I realize that my response of forgiveness is a response of gratitude for the unlimited grace and mercy I've already received from God. How can I but forgive - especially as Jesus promises to walk with me through this hard work of forgiving?

In Genesis 50, when Joseph promised his brothers who had attempted to have him killed, that they had nothing to fear (Fear Not!) because God intends to bring good out of what had been intended for evil. Shalom is God's intent for all of life. How do we bring ourselves to trust in God's power to heal? Forgiveness 70x7 times is a good set of first steps.

Ten years after 9/11 as we dare to remember and dare to forgive, how can we re-commit ourselves to peace and justice? How do we create a new future out of memories, forgiveness, and coming together? Our answer lies in our commitment to God's kingdom here on earth in which our ultimate loyalty is to God's vision - God's steadfastly loving nature - God's right to judgment.

Grace and Peace, Pastor Shelley

Casey Anthony, Harry Potter, and the Mixed Field

For those who had been following the Casey Anthony trial, the verdict seemed completely unexpected last week. How could she have been found not guilty? Facebook and Twitter were filled with people crying out about how wrong the jury was, how evil Casey is, and how justice did not prevail for the little girl who died.

Read this week the parable of the wheat and weeds (Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43), complimented by the story of Jacob’s ladder (Genesis 28:10-19a).

Where is God in the face of perceived injustices? Where was justice, righteousness, or the truth? It seems as though no one will ever really know what happened with Caylee and the circumstances surrounding her death. Ms. Anthony will be released tomorrow, although where she will live or what she will do now is a mystery.

In the parable of the wheat and the weeds, we like to think that it is obvious that we are the wheat, and people like Casey Anthony or O.J. Simpson or Fred Phelps or Lord Voldemort are the weeds that have been planted in our lives by the evil enemy. We are in the right, and they are in the wrong, so why doesn’t God just pull up those weeds right now? Why doesn’t God let Her justice reign down right now? How can a good God let these things happen? Does God care about what goes on “down here”?

What we read and hear in the Genesis story is that in the most unexpected times and at the most unexpected places, surely the presence of the Lord is here. Here. Not over there, up there, or down below. Right here, right now, the presence of the Lord is here, wherever we go, wherever we are. And what that says, in the midst of our field/world of wheat and weeds, is that God does care. God is the great farmer, wiser than our impulsive and judgmental selves, taking care not to harm the wheat in order to rip out the weeds now. God knows that evil, as real as it is in our world today, is only temporary.

(image courtesy of fanpop.com)

The last Harry Potter movie ended on a note that felt like good would never triumph, that evil has all the real power, and that love was going to be defeated by hate. This Friday, when the last chapter of the Harry Potter series is released, the world will discover the true and final ending. And we as the church have our real ending as well. The real ending is the resurrection, not the crucifixion. The real ending is the promise we find in Christ – that He came, that He is in this place today, and that He will come again. Alleluia, and amen.