In the current issue of the Presbyterian Outlook, I read these words in an article “Keeping the Unity of the Spirit”:
“In a time of great division and few nuanced conversations, people of faith have an increased responsibility to work toward reconciliation. Such unity comes only by way of the Spirit — and yet we have a role to play in speaking the truth in love, staying at the table and refusing to give up on the promise that Jesus Christ brings together every tribe and nation.”
The Easter Sunday shooting in Sri Lanka and the shooting in the synagogue in California on the last day of Passover, remind us how far we have to go to be reconciled to one another, and to find the peace that is Jesus’ gift to his disciples in every age – a peace that passes understanding, a peace the world cannot give.
I shared with our children from the PCUSA’s Children’s Mission Yearbook for Prayer and Study, a story about mission work in Sri Lanka, an island nation in the Indian Ocean, with people from many different backgrounds and religions – Christians, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists. For 25 years, a civil war has been fought there between the government and a rebel group.
“God’s love for you is abundant,” the story tells us. “No matter what you do, it will always be there. One place you can see God’s abundant love is in the kindness and consideration shown by the people around you.”
In the midst of on-going civil war, the Joining Hands Network (Praja Abhilasha) of Sri Lanka gathers people from all these groups to work together. They show one another kindness, and offer the hospitality and comfort of their homes and share their food.
Let us refuse to give up on the promises of Jesus and pray for the working of the Holy Spirit among us, as we struggle to stay at the table and to find words to speak the truth in love, and be reconciled to one another.
Elizabeth
Today is Earth Day, and I’m spending some time reading materials gathered by Presbyterians for Earth Care. I’ve learned a great deal from John Tallmadge’s article “Toward a Sustainable World.” His words are a challenge to faith communities to strengthen our connections with creation, and to tend to those relationships through our daily choices – in what we consume, how we get from place to place and how we treat the beings around us, along with the water, soil and air.
Tallmadge writes: “In our time, human activity has subjected the social and ecological systems of planet Earth to unprecedented stress. Global climate change, habitat loss, extinctions overpopulation, and pollution degrade the biosphere, while epidemics, poverty, resource depletion, inequality, war and violence degrade the human world. Present habits and trends cannot be sustained without serious and perhaps fatal damage to the Earth and its community of life.
In a sustainable world, humanity and nature would flourish in mutually enhancing ways. Human communities would care for one another, using resources modestly and equitably, without impairing the ability of future generations or other life communities to meet their own needs. How can the world’s churches help us pursue such a worthy, and indeed such a vital goal
It may help to realize that sustainability is not something we achieve and then we’re done; it’s something that has to go on forever, requiring a deliberate transformation of our way of living. It’s not a simple problem like baking a cake, or a complicated problem, like putting a man on the moon; rather it’s a complex problem, like raising a child or making peace in the Middle East. Complex problems have many possible solution, none given or forseen; they can arise only through learning and change from within, on the part of all components within the system. If you are part of the problem, you have to be part of the solution.
Gazing down this strenuous, uncertain path, we can take some light and comfort from our religious life. Faith can provide direction and purpose in the midst of uncertainty. Hope can help us cleave to more promising visions of the good life and human flourishing. Sacrifice can help us embrace the challenge to do more with less for the sake of the greater good and a deeper sense of fulfillment. And community can encourage and support us as we disentangle ourselves from the webs of privilege, entitlement and wasteful consumption spun by industrial capitalism.
Because social change happens one person at a time, we believe that congregations can become seedbeds of transformation. A deliberate program of green faith, green learning, green living and green outreach can foster right thinking and right action in our individual lives as well as our lives in church, neighborhood, city and bioregion. With each other’s help and encouragement, we can become the change we wish to see in the world.”
I give thanks for thoughts shared that help me to see in new ways and challenge me to become a part of the change I wish to see in the world. May we all commit to rise to meet the challenge on this Earth Day 2019.
Elizabeth
In her book From Advent’s Alleluia to Easter’s Morning Light, poet
Ann Weems writes:
“Where have the forty days of Lent gone?
We’ve had forty days to remember who Jesus is.
Forty days to find out who Jesus is.
Forty days to look and to listen to this man from Nazareth,
this man who walked into the hearts of the people,
this man who “stirred their imagination,”
this man who is still walking in to the hearts of his people,
still stirring the imagination of the people.
Holy Week is upon us.
We will raise our palms in joyful recognition!
We do know him. Surely we do know him. . . . “
The ways we experience Holy Week have changed through the years. When I was a little girl at First Presbyterian in Harlan, we had services each evening, journeying day by day with a real sense of walking with Jesus in his final days. At Rustburg Presbyterian, we had noonday services and luncheons with the whole community coming together day after day. I wonder if Tuesday is still Presbyterian Day, complete with that specialty chicken salad plate; I wonder if the men’s quartet from Appomattox Courthouse Presbyterian still sings “Lead Me to Calvary” on their day each year? In Laurinburg, too there were community noonday services, and in my time there, St. Mary’s “Stations of the Cross” on Good Friday was held in the church parking lot, inviting all to take part. I remember the blessing of carrying the cross from one station to another. One year we held noonday services in the downtown Storytelling and Arts Center on Main Street!
It seems Maundy Thursday Communion, with a Tenebrae Service of Shadows, and a sanctuary open for guided meditation on Good Friday represent the effort of most churches to mark the week. While we’re not to live “in the past” or to dwell on “former things” it’s a blessing to remember the richness of the Holy Week journey in days gone by, and to try in all the ways we can to make an intentional journey through the gathering darkness of this week to the cross. It’s a blessing to enter the silence and uncertainty and grief of Holy Saturday; It’s a blessing to greet the risen Savior on resurrection morning!
In her poem “Lost and Found” Ann Weems reminds us:
“As we approached Jerusalem
the crowd stood at the gate
and cried in tear-choked voice:
“We are lost in his death.”
Upon the hill the angels sang:
“We are found in his rising.”
Giving thanks for fresh new words for the Lenten/Easter Journey, for all that God has done for us in our Lord Jesus Christ, and for those streams of mercy, never ceasing.
Elizabeth