Hymn Suggestions:

ELW 739 Touch the Earth Lightly

ACS 1065 Can You Feel the Seasons Turning

ELW 836 Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee

Thank you to all of you who open these pages to find words that may nurture your hope or deepen your commitment to God and all of God’s creation.  I feel privileged for the opportunity to write to you, at the same time that I feel humbled by the significance of the task and my own inadequacies.  Together we have the honor and the burden of speaking for God, and God’s world.  That is not only an audacious claim for any finite creature to attempt, but also a calling that seems inescapably necessary as we read the context in which we find ourselves today.  I feel heartened knowing that you, reader, are one of a growing congregation of God’s children who understand, care, and act.  This companionship in our mission is vital, providing us all with a fellowship in the word of hope.  Thank you.  My part is to offer my reflections for the month of June 2025.  May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be useful to the Spirit who enlightens, sanctifies, and enlivens us all.

As people of faith, we know that it is our duty and delight to live in harmony with the will of God our creator. As people of faith who wish to follow the way of God, our enlightening Spirit, we must seek and hold onto this wisdom with all the dedication we can muster.  And as people of faith who daily strive to attend to the will of God, as we read it in the texts of the Bible and witness it in the ample evidence available in the book of nature, we can become increasingly dismayed and alarmed by the denialism and distortions, the apathy and antipathy we encounter. 

As people of faith, we are well aware of the creation’s total dependence upon God; a total dependence that obviously includes our own dependence.  From our earliest lessons in Sunday school or from family devotions in our childhood, we learned the foundational truths that God created all that exists, and that the most basic truth is LOVE.  Not only that “God so loved the world,” but also that “We love because God first loved us.”  From these primary lessons we came to understand the Apostle Paul’s argument in 1 Corinthians 12 that “the most excellent way” is love, way before we ever found his letter.  Love which can be thought of as soft, gentle, or even weak is actually the eternal, enduring, resilient, and restoring power that binds all things together.  What unnerves me in these times is to recognize the actions and the ideologies of many who live as if these truths are not self-evident and choose to live as if the created order is both disposable and unlimited at the same time; moreover they espouse the idea that a spirit of coldness and ruthlessness is a sign of strength, while love and compassion are weak.  What we see on the world stage is a renewed callousness that calculates everything in the short term with utter disregard for the lasting effect or growing negative results. We witness not only how the way of violence breeds more resentments, retaliation and revenge, but also how ecologic damage results in increasingly damaging feedback loops.

On the Seventh Sunday of Easter, we gather to listen to and be blessed by the ‘high priestly prayer’ of Jesus. Throughout this prayer I am reminded of the instructions and encouragements Jesus gave to the disciples during his earthly ministry. Not only to love one another as I have loved you, but also to go and baptize and teach all that Jesus has taught us.  As Jesus prays, I get the sense that the previous instructions of Jesus, as good as they are, are not enough to sustain the disciples; and Jesus is praying for divine back-up to aid us in the task of acting in accord with God’s will.  We may all pray “thy will be done,” but we definitely need help to live it.  Jesus prays for a profound unity between us and our loving Creator that will be as powerful as the unity within God’s own self.  Throughout the time of instruction, Jesus had warned his followers of the challenges to come, discouragements that would test their faith, even persecutions.  Overhearing this prayer has the profound power of anchoring the followers’ hearts in the heart of God through the mystic union that originates not in our own doing or our own will, but by the love of the one who prays on our behalf.  This prayer grounds our identity in the Author of Creation, the Author of Life, the Author of Love.  Grounded in this One means that we attend to the life-giving patterns we can perceive through the study of creation, also known as ‘science.’  And with that wisdom we fulfill God’s call to ‘till and keep’ the earth, which is our home and our neighbors’ home.  Anchored in the heart of God we experience and share how unconditional positive regard builds up, how esteem given strengthens spirits, how compassion knits together relationships and communities.  Anchored in the heart of God we resist the malice, slander, and bullying of these days which tear down, estrange, and justify all forms of harm.  Anchored in the heart of God we pray to be a force that builds up and heals.  Like the old camp song so many of us grew up singing says, “we are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord,” this unity gives us power, perspective, and practice, resulting in “and they’ll know we are Christians by our love.”

Enlivened and enlightened, we see and approach the world around us from a foundation of love and compassion.  We affirm the beauty and wonder of creation as we resist the reduction of the world to a utility made only for our exploitation.  With perspective based on the divine pronouncement at the dawn of creation, “And God said it is very good,” we know that we must protect God’s handiwork from our sinful tendencies to take more than we need and leave waste and destruction as the legacy and poisoned inheritance all our relations in the future generations will suffer. We will defend and protect our neighbors’ homes, their way of life, their very selves, which includes the environment in which they live, so that they may thrive and be healthy.

Knowing that Jesus our prince of peace has prayed for this unity to not only be between each of us and with God, but also between one another, necessitates our continued action to ‘tear down the walls of hostility’ and to “love one another as I have loved you.”  Following the “way, the truth, and the life” of Jesus, we can do no other than to resist injustice in all its forms.  We seek the dignity of all, we see all people no longer from a human perspective, but through the eyes of Christ.

This prayer, like the force of gravity, pulls us into the heart of God and back to our truer selves.  Grounded in the unity of God’s love, we live by an ethic of love.  Our theology propels our praxis. Here we stand, we can do no other.  At a time when walls of division, hatred, and hostility are dividing God’s children into warring camps, we are called by this prayer to live out the meaning of our faith.  This is most certainly true.