It’s Your Turn!
Dear Green Blades Roundtable Reader,
Throughout the year, a variety of preaching writers offer their reflections on the ecological and eco-justice implications of the lectionary. This month, it’s your turn! Each Monday for the next four weeks, you will receive the gospel of the day and the Connections with Creation from Sundays and Seasons, along with a prompt I write to begin your own process of reflection. Write a comment or question of your own in the comment box to share with others.
Let’s see what happens when it’s our turn!
May the conversation begin!
Pastor Kristin Foster, Editor, Green Blades Preaching Roundtable
Luke 10:1-11,Luke 10:16-20 NRSVUE
After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. 2 He said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. 3 Go on your way; I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. 4 Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals, and greet no one on the road. 5 Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house!’ 6 And if a person of peace is there, your peace will rest on that person, but if not, it will return to you. 7 Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the laborer deserves to be paid. Do not move about from house to house. 8 Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; 9 cure the sick who are there, and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ 10 But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, 11 ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.’
16 “Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.” 17 The seventy-two returned with joy, saying, “Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!” 18 He said to them, “I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning. 19 Indeed, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing will hurt you. 20 Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”
Connections with Creation
© 2024 Sundays & Seasons, reprinted with permission
Isaiah 66 does wonders for revealing the beauty of human intimacy without exploiting or oversexualizing human bodies. Here the depiction of breasts and bosom reflect the natural mutuality of humanity. Anthropomorphizing Jerusalem this way speaks to the dignity of the body and the way that, in healthy relationship, we can appreciate the particularities of humanity without exploiting one another. Such theological exploration of bodily intimacy isn’t new. For instance, fourteenth-century mystic St. Catherine of Siena spoke of Jesus as her wet nurse. As spiritual leaders, we can utilize examples like this to offer teachings that honor a holistic sense of bodily intimacy.
Pastor Kristin Foster's Conversation Starter
This season that the Church calls Ordinary Time, a name that always evoked a long yawn for me. But this year, Ordinary Time feels anything but ordinary, and I find myself yearning for my version of ordinary. Many of us feel bombarded by an almost constant state of multiple emergencies, including the escalating climate emergency and biodiversity emergency. Maybe Ordinary Time is just what we need to be recentered, to be fortified, to respond to these and other real emergencies?
The gospel for July 6 focuses on being sent as disciples to practice the Jesus Way. What about slowing down this month to explore the ordinary practices of discipleship, and Creation’s part in all of them? How can the ordinary practices of worship, prayer, study, inviting, giving, encouraging, and serving, with Creation as integral to all of them, fortify us for the extraordinary challenges of our times?
If we are exploring the practices of discipleship with the whole creation this month, let us begin this Sunday with the practice of encouragement. Discouragement is all around us and lurks within us too. We need to encourage one another: celebrating a successful rally or event, as did the 70 when they returned, allowing Nature itself to encourage us in its ordinary miracles, and centering our assurance on Jesus’ message, “The kingdom of God has come near” rather than how people respond at the time. As we face the stress and distress of these times, the practice of encouragement strengthens us for authentic discipleship.
This Sunday, notice also the creation-laden language of Isaiah 66 and Luke 10. Do not move too quickly to spiritual or metaphorical meanings. Take the language outdoors! Linger with the physicality of these images, so central to the lived experience of humanity for most of our history. How might we preach or listen differently when Creation is in the foreground instead of a backdrop, when we slow down to the speed of three miles an hour to read the Book of Nature hand in hand with the Book of the Bible?
Rev. Kristin Foster
Cook, MN
Kristin Foster, long term pastor on the Mesabi Iron Range of northern Minnesota, now retired from parish ministry, is the co-chair of the Northeastern Minnesota Synod’s EcoFaith Network and editor of the Green Blades Preaching Roundtable. Over four decades of ministry, including fifteen years as internship supervisor, she has written, preached, and worked for the rights of organized labor, the full inclusion of people of all sexual orientations and gender identities, and the empowerment of small communities. As pastor of Messiah Lutheran Church in Mountain Iron, she was also the founding chairperson of the Iron Range Partnership for Sustainability. She lives outside Cook, Minnesota with her husband, Frank Davis, on an old Swede-Finn farmstead. They take every available opportunity to spend time with their two daughters, their partners, and their three grandchildren.
Thanks Kristin for this opportunity. I'd like to focus on this portion of the text: (After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. 2 He said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.)
In roughly 2 weeks, I'll be hosting the 16th annual Daylily Dig for Malawi on my farm. We annually raise over $8000 for our companion synod in Malawi by giving away daylilies from my gardens on my farm. I returned home yesterday from an 8 day camping trip around Lake Superior with my granddaughter, during which time we experienced the incredible beauty of this part of the creation. While we were gone, my 30+ daylily gardens were well watered by rain, which of course means that the weeds grew amazing well too!
There is no way I can take care of these 30+ beds (some 50 feet long)! I need more laborers.
The solution is to invite the middle school youth from my congregation to come out to the farm to help with the weeding. But it gets better...while helping I also have the opportunity to explain to them what a companion synod is, how people in Malawi live and serve God by helping their neighbors, and how their weeding of the gardens will increase the likelyhood that visitors to my farm will be generous in their donations when they come to get daylilies on July 18/19. Since funds raised the past 2 years are being used this August to bring 5 Malawians to our synod to visit us, it makes this effort even more concrete for the youth.
It will also give me a chance to show them how my farm works, and how one can work with the soil and topography using rotational grazing of our chickens, goats and cattle.
I'm not sure that the youth will be rejoicing after a morning of weeding in the heat, but I do know that ice cream on the deck will help with that! And they will leave with a different understanding of how to work with nature, and what it means to have a companion synod in another part of the world.
What stories from your corner of the world will help young people better understand who they are in relationship to the land, and to their companion synod?