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| Former Okjokull glacier, Iceland (photo Rice University) |
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| Memorial Plaque for Okjojull glacier (Photo BBC News) |
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Opening Prayer: (Gayle)
Creator of Life, we revel in the riches of nature bursting forth in these early days of spring. At the same time, we are also aware of the fragility of our planet by the alarming thawing rate of our glaciers, the raging forest fires, the mega storm events, to name a few. Change our hearts and habits so we take the necessary steps to protect our Mother Earth. Amen
Opening Song: Come Be In My Heart, Sara Thomsen https://youtu.be/gwxldz6oH2w
Liturgy of the Word
First Reading
THE COOL BREATH of evening slips off the wooded hills, displacing the heat of the day, and with it come the birds, as eager for the cool as I am. They arrive in a flock of calls that sound like laughter, and I have to laugh back with the same delight. They are all around me, Cedar Waxwings and Catbirds and a flash of Bluebird iridescence. I have never felt such a kinship to my namesake, Robin, as in this moment when we are both stuffing our mouths with berries and chortling with happiness. The bushes are laden with fat clusters of red, blue, and wine purple, in every stage of ripeness, so many you can pick them by the handful. I’m glad I have a pail and wonder if the birds will be able to fly with their bellies as full as mine.
This abundance of berries feels like a pure gift from the land. I have not earned, paid for, nor labored for them. There is no mathematics of worthiness that reckons I deserve them in any way. And yet here they are—along with the sun and the air and the birds and the rain, gathering in the towers of cumulonimbi. You could call them natural resources or ecosystem services, but the Robins and I know them as gifts. We both sing gratitude with our mouths full.
These are the inspiring words of Robin Wall Kimmerer, from her essay,” The Serviceberry.” And we affirm them by saying, Amen.
PSALM: From Psalm 78 (Nan Merrill, adapted)
Our psalm response is: With The Divine there is love and renewal
Listen well, O peoples of the earth, to the inner promptings of the Spirit.
Let Silence enter your house that you may hear.
For within your heart Love speaks, not with words of deceit,
but of spiritual truths to guide you upon the paths of peace.
R: With The Divine there is love and renewal.
Who will awaken our sleeping minds and lift up our hearts to the Truth?
Through all generations the rivers have flowed,
but now they are polluted by greed.
Through all the ages the earth has yielded its bountiful harvest;
now valleys, mountains, forests and fields have been misused.
Greed has become the great destroyer of life.
We take without offering back.
We consume the earth with abandon.
We leave death, disease, and destruction in our greedy wake.
R: With The Divine there is love and renewal.
We cannot be spared what we have sown.
Generations to come will suffer from our destructive ways.
Their lives will be a mirror to blind and stubborn hearts.
Injustice, oppression and greed will turn back upon hearts of stone.
Children unborn will reap a harvest of lost dreams.
R: With The Divine there is love and renewal.
Even so, the Source of Life remains faithful,
ever ready to lead us out of the wilderness,
to speak to us in the Silence of our Hearts.
When will we live according to Love,
attune our hearts to the music of the spheres?
Who will rouse us from apathy
and quicken our spirits that we might serve Love?
For, if we turn back to the Beloved,
listening for Love's voice within our own hearts,
we will live with integrity;
we will radiate love.
R: With The Divine there is love and renewal.
Spirit of the Living God:
Gospel: John 8:2-11
Early one morning, at daybreak, Jesus went to the Temple. All the people started gathering round, so he sat down and began to teach them. The religious scholars and authorities brought a woman along who had been caught in adultery. Making her stand before all of them, they said to Jesus: “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now, in the Law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. What do you say about it?” They said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to bring against him.
Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. As they persisted in their questioning, he stood up and said to them, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Once again, he bent down and wrote on the ground; but, at his words, they all went away, one by one, starting with the oldest among them until the last one had gone. Jesus was left alone with the woman, still standing before him.
Jesus stood up again and said to her, “Sister, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She replied, “No one.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go on your way
These inspiring words are from the Gospel writer known as John, and we affirm them by saying, Amen.
Homily Starter:
In August of 2019, mourners gathered in Iceland to commemorate a death. The deceased was a glacier. The first glacier in Iceland to have died of climate change. Okjokull glacier (known as OK glacier for short), once covered almost 6 square miles, and was a living glacier which moved and shaped land with its alternating freezing and thawing each year. Having shrunk to less than half a square mile OK has now been declared “dead ice.” The plaque that pays tribute to this glacier and which also puts the human race on notice for our culpability in its demise is called “A Letter to the Future.” It reads as follows:
“OK is the first Icelandic glacier to lose its status as a glacier. In the next 200 years all our glaciers are expected to follow the same path. This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it. August 2019….415ppm CO2.”
Two-thousand years earlier, the Galilean teacher named Jesus had gathered a crowd in the Jerusalem Temple when some religious authorities interrupted both teacher and students by hauling a woman before them. The woman had been caught in the act of adultery. According to Mosaic law, these authorities said, the woman should be stoned to death. What did Jesus have to say about it, they asked. Also known to everyone present there that day was that according to Roman law, citizens of occupied countries were not allowed to carry out the death penalty. Of course, the authorities wanted to trip Jesus up here, to trap him into breaking either Jewish or Roman law. But Jesus responds from a place of greater authority, the place of love, of forgiveness, of second chances.
“Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” And one by one they walked away, the students and the authorities. Only the woman remained. Uncondemned by either the crowd or by Jesus, she is sent on her way.
The woman in this story has had a close call. Some might call it a wake-up call. Does she change her lifestyle? We don’t know. Like the sad young man who walked away from Jesus because he had so many possessions he didn’t want to part with, we don’t have a sequel to this woman’s story. We do know that at a particular moment, under a particular set of circumstances, the infinite love of the Divine, flowing through the person of Jesus, set her free to make a choice about how to live out her future.
Back to the dead glacier. On a much larger scale, we find ourselves called to judgement as a species. We live in covenant with the Earth and our lack of faithfulness to that covenant is manifest in death. The United Nations’ first comprehensive report on biodiversity completed in 2019 revealed that over 1 million species of plants and animals are in grave danger of extinction. This number is higher than at any time in human history. The fate of OK is a dramatic geologic symptom of what is happening biologically all over the globe.
There is no question that we have sinned against the very Earth that sustains us. And yet at the same time we are beloved. As we are. We remain uncondemned. The Divine lives in and around us, celebrating life with us every day. And like the woman, we go on our way. The question we must ask ourselves is the same we might wonder about her. Will we change? Will we embrace this opportunity to turn our lives around and in the process save the planet? As the plaque memorializing OK notes, only the future will know.
What did you hear in today’s readings? Please share your wise thoughts with the community.
Statement of Faith
We believe in the Holy One, a divine mystery
beyond all definition and rational understanding,
the heart of all that has ever existed,
that exists now, or that ever will exist.
We believe in Jesus, messenger of the Divine Word,
bringer of healing, heart of Divine compassion,
bright star in the firmament of the Holy One's
prophets, mystics, and saints.
We believe that We are called to follow Jesus
as a vehicle of divine love,
a source of wisdom and truth,
and an instrument of peace in the world.
We believe in the Spirit of the Holy One,
the life that is our innermost life,
the breath moving in our being,
the depth living in each of us.
We believe that the Divine kin-dom is here and now,
stretched out all around us for those
with eyes to see it, hearts to receive it,
and hands to make it happen.
Gayle: As we prepare for this sacred meal we are aware of our call to serve, and just as Jesus is anointed, so is each of us. We bring to this table our prayers for the community.
Prayers for the community are offered.
We pray for these and all unspoken intentions. Amen.
Gayle: Please join in praying the Eucharistic prayer together.
Blessed are you, Holy One, source of all creation. Through your goodness you made this world and called us to be Your co-creators. We give thanks for the diversity and beauty of life around us and within us.
We open our awareness to the goodness of all of creation and we remember our responsibility to serve. You invite us to build the earth into a community of love rooted in justice. You placed confidence in us, for you made us and you know that we are good.
In joy and in thanksgiving we join with all the faithful servants who have gone before us and we sing:
Here In This Place https://youtu.be/cVWY9ourooI
Denise: We thank you for Jesus, simple servant, lifting up the lowly, revealing you as God-With-Us, and revealing us as one with you and all of creation.
He lived among us to show us who we are and challenged us to know you. He taught us the strength of compassionate love.
Please extend your hands in blessing.
We are grateful for your Spirit at our Eucharistic Table and for this bread and wine which reminds us of our call to be the body of Christ in the world.
On the night before he died, Jesus gathered for supper with the people closest to him. Like the least of household servants, he washed their feet, so that they would re-member him.
All lift their plates and pray the following:
When he returned to his place at the table, he lifted the bread, spoke the blessing, broke the bread and offered it to them saying:
Take and eat, this is my very self.
(pause)
All lift their cups and pray the following:
Gayle: Then he took the cup of the covenant, spoke the grace, and offered it to them saying:
Take and drink.
Whenever you remember me like this,
I am among you.
(pause)
What we have heard with our ears, we will live with our lives. As we share communion, we become Communion both love’s nourishment and love’s challenge.
You are called, consecrated and chosen to serve.
Please receive Communion with the words “You are the face of the Divine.”
Communion Meditation/Song
Is this How the World Ends? The Many https://youtu.be/tXEkYG-JXuY
Denise: Prayer after Communion: Holy One, we are willing to do everything Jesus did, to re-create the living presence of a love that does justice, of a compassion that heals and liberates, of a joy that generates hope, of a light that illumines people and confronts the darkness of every injustice and inequity.
We trust you to continue to share with us your own spirit, the spirit that animated Jesus, for it is through his life and teaching, all honor and glory is yours, O Holy One, forever and ever. Amen.
All: Amen.
Let us pray as Jesus taught us:
Holy One, you are within, around and among us.
We celebrate your many names.
Your wisdom come; your will be done,
unfolding from the depths within us.
Each day you give us all that we need.
You remind us of our limits and we let go.
You support us in our power, and we act with courage.
For you are the dwelling place within us,
the empowerment around us,
and the celebration among us,
now and forever, Amen.
Adapted by Miriam Therese Winter
Blessing
Denise: Let us raise our hands in blessing pray together:
Holy One, hold us, envelop us in compassion because we are not yet who you made us to be. When we are tempted to fill up the empty spaces with things that create a deeper emptiness, lead us into the fullness of your grace. Let us walk with you today and every day, and if we stray along byways of our own choosing, turn us around and bring us home.
Amen.
Closing Song: A Simple Change of Heart, Carrie Newcomer https://youtu.be/nSaQQdOGYKE
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