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 10:38-42 NRSVUE
38 Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village where a woman named Martha welcomed him.[a] 39 She had a sister named Mary, who sat at Jesus’s[b] feet and listened to what he was saying. 40 But Martha was distracted by her many tasks, so she came to him and asked, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her, then, to help me.” 41 But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things, 42 but few things are needed—indeed only one.[c] Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”
Connections with Creation
© 2024 Sundays & Seasons, reprinted with permission
While scripture does speak of light as an image for God, the Bible likewise depicts the holiness of protection that shadow and darkness provide. This week, both natural shade from the Oaks of Mamre and the covering of the tabernacle’s woven cloth appear as signs of God’s providence. Complementing our emphasis on God’s enlightening action with God’s protective presence is one way to invite different kinds of people to find themselves in the good news. Try to vary worship imagery in ways that celebrate God’s presence in darkness. A reading of God’s Holy Darkness by Sharei Green and Beckah Selnick (Beaming Books, 2022) during a children’s sermon is a great way to introduce such truth.
Pastor Kristin Foster's Conversation Starter
If you are exploring the practices of discipleship this month with the whole creation in view, today would be the day to highlight the practices of inviting and studying. Abraham welcomes strangers to find shade under a tree. He offers them water from a water source. What are the gifts of Nature right around us, that mark where we live like the oaks of Mamre? How do they join us in offering hospitality? How can we bring Nature close as a welcomer, so that people can find the peace and the nourishment that only Nature provides?
Moreover, as disciples of Christ, how are we offering welcome not just to our own species but to the more-than-human Creation? What about chemical free lawns, or no-mow-Mays? What about bird feeders and bird baths? What about becoming Pollinator Sanctuaries? What about Monarch Way Stations? What about welcoming native plants into our yards? What about planting trees who might grow to become the next generation’s Oaks of Mamre?
Mary is sitting at the feet of Jesus to learn. Where might we place a bench simply for sitting in a small patch of nature, an invitation to ourselves and others to ponder Jesus’ words “there is need of only one thing”?
Nor do disciples limit our practice of study to the Bible. Understanding and caring for the Earth creation benefits from science as well as other disciplines. Those who deny climate change and denigrate scientific put us and the health of the Earth in graver danger. How can we integrate respect for environmental and other science into our scope of discipleship?
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.
I've actually been preparing our worshiping community to explore practices of discipleship for our Season of Creation this autumn, but used today's topic of hospitality to offer a foretaste of the feast to come. We talked of Mary and Martha's partnership in extending hospitality to Jesus--the "better part" being recognizing Jesus as "the main course," and how Jesus is our gracious host at Holy Communion (the high-point of worship). But then I concluded my sermon with a revisit to the Oaks of Mamre, noting how easily we neglect the hospitality of the trees in this story. "When it comes to neglecting creation care as the main thing to which Jesus calls us, would that we would listen more attentively to the one “in whom all things hold together” (Col. 1:17), "Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing…” (Lk. 10:41-42a) May we all choose the better part: extending God’s triune and all-embracing love to all people and all creation in the new life and Spirit of Jesus Christ. Amen"