Looking Ahead to September 29, 2019 -- Offering Gratitude through Creation

This week our Stewardship series leads us to a look at Creation.



And remember we have a coin collection for Mission & Service.

The Scripture Readings this week are:

• Genesis 1:26-31
• Amos 5:21-24

The Sermon title is How Are WE Doing?

Early Thoughts: Gratitude can spur us to many things. At the World Religions Conference earlier this month the Imam who was speaking made a wonderful connection between gratitude and compassion while answering a question about compassion fatigue. I think that gratitude also makes it easier for us to be good stewards. Gratitude reminds us what we have to be thankful for. Gratitude reminds us of what gifts we have been given. Then I believe that gratitude enables us to ask the question "what do I do now ?" with different eyes.

The difference a year can make...

Our stewardship of creation has been in the news a lot this year, what with forest forest in the Arctic and the Amazon, record heat in Europe, and the phenomenon centered around Gretta Thunberg. And we have to ask indeed "How Are We Doing?".


Many of us interpret the first commandment in Scripture "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth." not as freedom to do whatever suits us best but as a commandment to take care of the creation that the Creator repeatedly calls Good. So how have we done?

Most scientists would say not so good. Some say we are on the eve of destruction, that the tipping point is near. What might the Creator say?

Is God using people like Gretta Thunberg to send us a message?

In the Amos passage we have a God who tells the people that they have failed to live as they should. Through Amos God tells the people that they have their priorities totally wrong. They have committed to the rituals and motions laid out in the law but have failed to live out the spirit of the law. To live in God's way means to live in relationship with our neighbours. To live in God's way is to live symbiotically with the creation of which we are a part.

When it comes to creation what might it mean to let "justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream"?

It is a hard question for a nation like Canada which really has always been a nation whose economic backbone has revolved around resource extraction (trees and rocks and petroleum). It is a hard question in a world culture where people see the need to make a change but have grown very accustomed to the benefits of an unsustainable lifestyle.

Every week our Explorer group sings the first verse of "This is Our Father's World". That hymn speaks of the "music of the spheres" ringing in our ears, of hearing God pass. It reminds us the the world is not ours. It is God's. We use it as a loan from God (or in some more secular language as a loan from our descendants). In an industrialized world we have lost the way when it comes to using it wisely. We may have started to see it as an entitlement or a tool rather than a gift. Where do we go from here?
--Gord