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Green Blades Preaching Roundtable

24th Sunday after Pentecost

Year A
November 12, 2023
Rev. Matthew Cobb

Matthew 25:1-13

 

Eco-Memory and the Smart and Foolish Bridesmaids

 

Approach: A Brief Disclaimer 

When I think of inner ecology, environmental ecology and cosmic ecology, I recall three memories we always use as human beings; the transgenerational memory, the preverbal memory, and the verbal memory. When our work as human beings is to clean up our act here in this earth home, then these three ecologies intersect with these three memories. At this intersection of memory and ecology, we find a fourth memory, an ecological memory, to accompany these two trinities of knowing our context. This fourth reveals to us a quaternity, which is the missing link to ourselves and to our fullest participation in the cleanup. Eco-memory is a lens through which we read, listen, learn and act as ‘smart bridesmaids’.

 

A Case Example

Be prepared!

 

That was the Scouts’ motto as I was growing up in a church going, lower middle class family whose head of household had a firm grip on the old bootstraps in order to pull himself and all of us "up" and out of hard living and hard times. The school of hard knocks was the only foreseeable way to go, so that's how my dad went.

 

And yet, at what cost and is this similar to the role of the silly bridesmaids of Jesus’ parable in their insufficiency?

 

Not being prepared with sufficient energy for when the light is necessary in the darkness seems like the plight of most peoples, doesn't it? After all, when I interviewed the top envoy from the Vatican to the United Nations about the Millennium Development Goals (MDG’s), which have now evolved from 8 to 17 Global Development Goals, she had an interesting perspective on how to save the planet from certain auto-destructive behavioral patterns of the human race. I asked her, “Sister, what are the top three causes of the environmental crisis?” Her reply left me speechless and convicted on the spot and ever sense, “Extreme poverty, extreme poverty, extreme poverty.”

 

When I pray and reflect on my own relationship to poverty, I often ponder my own preverbal understandings and misunderstandings, just wondering how it was as an infant and toddler in a household that was climbing "up" and out of generational poverty and class discrimination. I'm intrigued by the challenges and opportunities that my memory reveals to me and how they are still alive within me on the road less traveled. I'm equally charged by this pre-understanding of fierce longing and unswerving determination to climb up and get the hell out of generational poverty. Most of my leadership challenges in ministry for almost thirty years of ordained service are still being framed in this preverbal context of tasting generational poverty.

 

And then, the Holy Spirit says, "the bridegroom is coming..."

 

If you are anything like me, you immediately jump to your feet and grab your personal device (iPhone, Android, et al) and run to greet him.  Except, once you reach the place where you will finally greet him, you realize that your battery charge is at 2%.

 

Go to the innermost, and be there as a unitive energy is welling forth from the darkness of the ground. Take care of yourself, love yourself. From this essence that you are you, simply and plainly, act, with no analysis, no forethought. Your conscience with the guidance of your deep unconscious awareness, what ancient traditions describe as bearing witness to what is, will always lead you and guide you as needed.

 

Stay there at home in the innermost essence of yourself. That is from there where you need to act. And you need to act now, as the time spent conversing and analyzing and passing time with no action are over.

 

Following the way inward to the innermost core of our being will allow us to read, listen, learn, and act under the influence of these restorative original instructions.

 

A Spiritual Solution

Due diligence!

 

In my experience, in order to retain indigenous traditions, American Indians act first and think later. Now, don't we all need to return to that original instruction and feel the presence of our own Indigenous root systems, and allow for more spaces to emerge in the soils where we are planted?

 

When we ponder this question in our daily walks, as our feet learn to lightly Grace this common Mother, then for the first time, again, we will be born from her into the garden of perpetual appreciation and respect.

 

So, how do we know what we know about anything, much less the Good News? Are Settler Narrative holders the silly bridesmaids of the parable, totally unprepared for the bridegroom? Will the American Indian Narrativ- keepers, the smart bridesmaids who stand still right where they are planted by Creator, provide the reality check we are desperately crying out to Creator to deliver?

 

To move from silly to smart is to both ‘be prepared’ and act from ‘due diligence’, right where you are most alive and connected to your innermost. Then, as we abandon our own unconscious unawareness and unreality, we will cease being silly and unprepared to Clean!! Our preparation and due diligence are what this Gospel medicine shares with all of our relations, One Nation and One Creator.

 

Outcome: A Revival of the Imagination

There is really nothing to do but stay on this land we all adore and really want to treat well, so we must learn to love this place by practicing the art of sharing power.

 

Restitution is paying for the Clean Up!

 

Recouperation is praying for the Clean Up!

 

Reparation is knowing who, what, when, where and why you are culpable for the Clean Up!

 

Restoration is acting first and thinking later, for the Clean Up of this Sacred Place cannot afford any more inaction.

 

Reconciliation is waiting to hear the verdict from future generations on how Creator sent a merciful judge to ultimately Clean Up!

Rev. Matthew Cobb
Rev. Matthew Cobb
Director of Evangelical Mission - NEMN Synod

The Rev. Matthew Cobb is a graduate of the seminary of the southwest in Austin, Texas (1996, MDiv), Creighton University (2001, MA), and the graduate theological union in the University of California, Berkeley (2008, DMin), Cobb was ordained in The Episcopal Church (1996) and served as a campus minister at Iowa State (1998-2001) and Kansas State University (2001-2005), a board certified health care chaplain (2005-2013), parish pastor (2008-2017), retreat center director (2017), and indigenous missioner (2018-present).

As Coordinator for Together Here Ministries, he has initiated a podcast entitled Broken Lands to further engage the strategic directive of the NEMN Synod and the ELCA on Bridge Building across cultural divides, while integrating the Repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery.

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