Acts 16:9-15; Revelation 21:22-22:5; John 5:1-9 Yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling in West Virginia v. EPA was a prime example of putting lesser interests before the urgent task of doing all we can to mitigate the existential threat of climate change, a threat that looms ahead so large that it already shades our daily lives. As I worked in my garden weeding and watering and worrying about what lies ahead for our nation and our planet, I remembered this question from John 5:1-9: Do you want to be made well? The parish where I serve, Church of the Resurrection in Omaha, worshiped outdoors o ..read more

Our observance of Good Friday brings us into the reality of grief. Through the Good Friday liturgy, we deepen our sense of Jesus’s suffering and of the profound grief of his mother and his followers. Jesus’s trial and crucifixion happened long ago and far away, but because Jesus is for us a very real presence whom we name as both Lord and friend, the story touches us deeply. Often as we allow ourselves to enter into the story and share in the grief of his followers who witnessed this event firsthand, we find ourselves connecting this deep, cosmic grief — our sorrow at the brutality that nailed ..read more

 Love in a profit-driven system We call today Maundy Thursday because we focus on Jesus’s last evening with his disciples when he washed their feet after supper and then gave them the commandment — the mandatum — to love one another. Our Maundy Thursday Gospel (John 13:1-17, 31b-35) also tells us that before the Last Supper had begun, Judas had decided to betray Jesus. Matthew (Matthew 26:15) says that Judas had agreed to betray Jesus for thirty pieces of silver.  Hearing the story of Judas’s betrayal alongside the biblical account of Jesus’s last evening with his disciples, includ ..read more

Luke 19:28-40 Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.” According to Luke's Gospel, Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey and people shout, "Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!" But right away, some of those with religious power in Jesus’s day tried to silence the truth that Jesus lived and taught, the Living Truth that is the Christ.  History shows us that those in power will go to great lengths to hide the truth if the truth might get in the ..read more

 Monday of this week, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published the conclusions of Working Group 3, the group of scientists looking at what humankind needs to do to reduce the effects of climate change.  From one perspective, the report was hopeful, as the group did indeed list specific actions we can take and a timetable of when we need to have these actions in place in order to escape the worst consequences of climate change. From another perspective, the report was disheartening, emphasizing the urgency of making big policy changes and the nearl ..read more

Call it Candlemas or the Presentation of Our Lord (as we do in The Book of Common Prayer 1979) or even, as most people in the United States do, Groundhog Day, this day forty days after Christmas and midway between the Winter Solstice  and Spring Equinox marks a subtle turning of the seasons. Even this year, when February 2 finds most of Nebraska in frigid temperatures and other parts of the Midwest and Plains under winter storm watches and warnings, there is a noticeable difference in the slant of the sunlight and the length of days that helps us know in our bones that spring is on its wa ..read more

Today the church remembers the Holy Innocents, the children who died when Herod ordered the slaughter of all children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or younger (Matthew 2: 13-23). Holy Innocents 2021 comes with news of a Covid surge from the omicron variant causing a sharp increase in pediatric hospitalizations. Covid vaccine is now available for children who are at least five years old, but the youngest children cannot yet be vaccinated, pediatric vaccination rates are low, and unvaccinated children living with unvaccinated adults are at especially high risk. The urgency of pr ..read more

The COP26 climate conference is finishing its second week, and the negotiators for the nations represented are trying to reach an agreement. In the first week of the conference, delegates and heads of state talked about the need to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees C.; this second week was when they discussed how to get where we need to be. So far, the sorts of agreements reported to be under consideration fall far short of the goals set forth during the first week of the conference. The Church should be watching this closely, and we should be talking about what is happening this Sunday and ..read more

 September 29 Saint Michael and All Angels Morning Prayer The Psalm appointed for the Daily Office today (Psalm 8) tells us that we humans are just a little lower than the angels, that we have been given mastery over everything God created, including “the birds of the air” and “the fish of the sea” — all the living things in all the places plants and animals can live. Today, September 29, in the early morning I saw the headlines about the declaration of the extinction of the ivory-billed woodpecker, the collective death of every last one of these birds that were called the “Lord God Bird ..read more

 Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!” (Mark 11:9) At the end of this Palm Sunday morning, I joined a Zoom conversation with some members of First Congregational UCC in Hastings, Nebraska, at the end of their Lenten series about creation care. Their service included a sermon I had recorded earlier in the week. I’ve adapted the manuscript for that sermon here in order to share some of my current thinking about the wider church’s potential to respond in significant ways to the climate crisis. It’s ..read more