Earth Ministry Website

The Earth Ministry website is an outstanding ecumenical resource for growing in your desire to care for creation, go green, get eco-friendly, fight global warming and environmental degradation.

Going Green Blog

I will be compiling some resources here on going green in the next day or so in prep for this weekend. The ELCA Advocacy website, found in the links column on this blog, is a good starting point. I ordered a Green Bible yesterday, along with a poverty and justice bible, through Amazon.

The Delaware/Maryland synod has a blog dedicated to going green and has some excellent links and resources. it appears to be a fledgling project with a few contributors. Linda Lovell, a woman I met when I was in seminary and doing some parish field work during my second year, is a contributor to it.
Apparently SePA synod has a Green team, devoted to bringing eco-justice to Southeast PA Lutherans.

I hope and pray that we will initiate a way of encouraging and equipping Lower Susquehanna Synod Lutherans to become more environmentally conscious and green. I am not as green as I should and could be. I hope that we will move together toward a greener future that embodies a sustainable way of life on planet earth.

10,000 acres of graves

This morning on the Today show I heard a story about a man who stumbled on 10,000 acres of graves. Bud Merrit was hiking in Milledgeville, Georgia when he stumbled across the forgotten cemetery. (Read the entire story.)He found one and then uncovered the rest. Numbered stakes connected to the buried dead from a large mental hospital. These were the graves associated with a massive mental hospital that housed 13,000 residents. he has found about 25,000 graves, all numbered withuot names. Some of the graves and names are recorded in a log that begins over 160 years ago. There are over 100,000 graves in the U.S. that are unnamed. How many more are buried without recognition?
This man made it his mission to reclaim the dead, to find out who they were, to tell their stories. One man lost his wife, his kids, and his home in one day. He checked into the mental hospital and died six weeks later a broken hearted man. He was buried with only a number on a stake to mark his earthly presence. His identity has been restored and his body claimed and buried by family.
Restoring and reclaiming the dead, giving them a story and a life, redeeming them from the grave; sounded like good news. The image of these thousands of unmarked, forgotten graves broke into my morning and reminded me of the promise of Christ to come again and take us to be with him. How many unknown, unclaimed, forgotten children of GOD will be claimed and restored to life on the day of resurrection? How many will be freed from the grave?
Death will be swallowed up in victory. I guess I am struck by the possibility that GOD might raise to life all of those unnamed, forgotten victims, all those nameless dead. To us, nameless. But not to GOD. "For I have called you by name, you are mine, says the LORD. Bud Merrit's story is a gospel story. The Kingdom of GOD is like a man who happened upon an old, forgotten grave yard. Upon finding it, he did not abandon the dead, but sought to give them names and stories and to remember them into conscious existence, as if they might speak to us. At the last day, all will be remembered, restored, named, and given life.

how long, O Lord?

I am a Pastor and a Lutheran Christian. Therefore, worship is a significant part of my life. I believe, however, that every act that is pleasing to God and consistent with the way of Jesus, is an act of worship. But for many, worship is a holy hour on Sunday mornings.
Worship. I want to spend a moment addressing an important aspect of worship. Not music. Not art. Not the type or "model" of worship that has been debated in the modern age as part of the culture wars. But another intersection between culture and the worship of GOD. Time.
How long is too long to worship God? The sports gods require anywhere from several hours to several weeks or even months of devotion. You can't play a round of golf in less than three hours. The entertainment gods require no less than 22 minutes (average length of a 30 min. sit com) to as long as several hours for a film, a concert, or a live show. The ad gods can catch your attention in 30 to 60 seconds. Pop culture thrives on fast paced media, in one ear and out the other. Pop songs are not longer than 5 minutes. Somewhere between a sound bite of information and a five hour baseball game, that's how long the gods of our culture expect our devotion. And that's how much we give. More time and money is devoted to these gods than I can mention here. You know. We're all guilty of worshipping these idols.
But what about the worship of GOD, the one who raised Jesus from the dead? The one who commanded us to love one another, who commanded us to make disciples, to baptize and teach, to do this in remembrance of me? How long does it take to worship Jesus in the assembly of believers? An hour? 30 minutes?

From "By Way of the Desert: 365 Daily Readings" I read this on June 8, 2009:
"From new moon to new moon, and from Sabbath to Sabbath, all flesh shall come to worship before me, says the LORD." Isaiah 66:23.
Two desert hermits met and cooked some lentils. They decided to worship God before they ate. One of them recited the Psalms; the other read and meditated upon two Major Prophets. When morning came, the visiting hermit departed. They never ate their lentils.

Could it be that asking chronos questions with respect to worship is asking the wrong question? If worship is aligning one's actions to one's hearts deepest devotion and affection, then is not the length of time we spend in worship a foolish question? Might one characterize one's devotion in terms of how long one spends in worship, as opposed to how short? If you are willing to devote four hours to golf every week, but only one hour to worship of the Holy Trinity, what does that say? Cubs fans have stuck with the Cubs for a long time. Years of disappointment and unfulfilled longing. They are the poster children for misplaced devotion, but also in uncharacteristic faithfulness. What might be learned about us from these disparities? We are weak, idolatrous, sinful, and faithless? Yes. Forgiven? Yes. But are we freed from our bondage or do we prefer slavery to the idols of our age, who offer no promises worth trusting.

In the above story from the desert hermits, worship precedes and even supplants eating. And it seems that the center of their devotion was God's Word, not their own stomachs or agendas.
To whom are we most devoted? Is that not the question we might ask? Everything else is merely an idol, the self being the most highly praised idol of all. We are devoted to our own comfort, our own wants, our own expectations.
May we come to see worship of GOD as an act of true devotion that transcends chronos time; and may we come to see our days lived in relationship with Jesus and every action therein as a form of spiritual worship.