Sermons on Environment (Page 3)

Healing the Earth

Photo by Evan Clark on Unsplash.com Revelation 22:1-5 Last night I had a dream. (But not a visionary one like Dr. King’s!) I was in seminary, and one of the students had been murdered. Many of us were involved in trying to dispose of the body quietly. As the dream progressed I became more and more worried about this and aware that I and others might go to prison. By the end of the dream I had decided that I…

Sky

Luke: 24:45-53 One of the things that I love about living here is the amount of sky that we can see. And I know that many of us find the beauty of a sunset to be a place and a time when we are moved beyond ourselves and experience God. The Apostles Creed tells us that “Jesus ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.” Scholars suggest that this creed originated in the second century or…

Humanity

Photo by Sandy Kumar @ Unsplash.com At first glance, it may seem a little strange that during the Season of Creation we celebrate humanity. But it is only strange when we persist in the idea that somehow we are separate from the rest of creation. When we shift our perception and realize that we are as dependent upon our environment as any other animal, we can see that we are just as much part of creation as a coyote, a…

Mountains

1 Kings 19: 8b – 15 Matthew 17: 1-13 As many of you know, I love the mountains. Being able to be in the Sierra gives me great joy. And so I am delighted that it is Mountain Sunday and I can share some of my holiday photos with you. Most of them are actually of the lakes, trees and boulders that we find in our mountains. Mountains are important in Scripture – Mt Sinai and Mt Horeb were very…

Enough is enough (plastic)

Luke 12:13-21 Today’s gospel story described one individual who had so much stuff that he tore down his barns and built new ones to hold everything. But then he died so it was all a waste. I can imagine Jesus’ listeners must have had a good laugh about that. Most of them couldn’t imagine being so wealthy that you would need bigger storage units, let alone demolishing the ones you have to build bigger ones. Unfortunately, it’s not a funny…

The Bigger Picture

I don’t usually watch television, but every morning I check the headlines on the BBC News app. This morning the first one is “Row over Trump team email trove.” If I were the BBC I might have led with the deadly attack on a Methodist church in Pakistan or the mudslide that has buried a remote village in Chile. Life is hard, and now we have learned our connectedness with others across the planet, we know more than ever about…