You can view the entire service here https://www.trinitycovenant.org/creation-groans
Prelude So Will I
Introduction/Reflection
To lament is not merely to be sad. It doesn’t happen simply by crying (though there’s nothing wrong with crying – we should do it more often in church). To lament is to intentionally remember and tell the truth about what should be in light of what is and wrestle with God – sometimes angrily, impatiently, frustratingly, about what we so often and dangerously forget - that we are connected, all of us, that we are fragile, all of us, that we are beautiful, that we are broken, and that we hurt (in all the ways that that can be heard). We lament when we painfully announce that the what the world actually is, is not what it should be, what it will be, and that we need God to do something about it.
Now, take a moment to welcome one another – reverently – as ones created by Almighty God.
Call to Worship
Lord, help us remember what we too often forget
That you made the world – the trees, plants, animals, oceans, mountains, and us
We are one world – a community of creation.
Lord, help us remember what we too often forget
That the earth mourns, creatures groan, because of degradation, greed, pride, sin
We are responsible – we have failed to care and follow your ways.
Lord, help us remember what we too often forget
That dirt is spiritual, salvation – ecological, discipleship – environmental
And our spiritual vocation is to worship with, serve, and reverence, all that you have made.
Amen.
Song: This is My Father’s World
Romans 8:18-23
I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning and in travail together until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.
Song: How Much Longer & Prayers for Climate Justice
Our passage tonight comes from the Prophet Jeremiah, chapter twelve, verse 4:
How long will
the land lie parched
and
the grass in every field be withered?
Because those who live in it are wicked,
the
animals and birds have perished.
Moreover, the people are saying,
“He
is blind to our ways.” ~ Jeremiah 12:4
This passage turns us toward our Lenten series, Creation Groans, where over the next month we will be exploring Scriptures unflinching argument that all of of creation is interconnected and that our sin is an environmental disaster.
We have something to learn – all creation laments because of us. What the land mourns is the effect that human wrongdoing has had on all its non-human inhabitants. Sin, according to Scripture, IS not merely a spiritual disaster but an ecological one. Thousands of years before climate scientists existed, the prophets repeatedly announced that people’s was the source of environmental degradation. The prophet Hosea will speak of the Lord offering an indictment against Israel stating, “There is no faithfulness or loyalty, and no knowledge of God in the land.” And because of that behavior, “Therefore the land mourns, and all who live in it languish; together with the wild animals and the birds of the air, even the fish of the sea are perishing.” (Hosea 4:1-3) Hosea wasn’t an environmental scientist but understood the ecological crisis of sin far better than we do. In verse 3 he depicts the effects of human sin as a kind of “un-creation,” because he lists the creatures (humans, wild animals, birds, and fish) in reverse order to the sequence in which they appear in Genesis 1. Likewise, in Jeremiah 4, the prophet will lament that the earth is once again becoming tohu vabohu [waste and void]. That Hebrew phrase only appears in one other place. It occurs in Genesis 1:2, where it describes the earth before anything was created. Friends, we must lament with our brothers and sisters – plants, animals, flowers, fish, oceans, that the world is being undone, uncreated, by us. We must lament that we are the disorderly factor in the world. We have forgotten that the natural order and moral order are always connected, the spiritual world is always the created world, that matter and soul always belong together. The Franciscan mystic Richard Rohr reminds us that, “Religion has only one job description: how to make one out of two.” Sin always seeks to be gap-creating – making us believe that we are separate and trying to separate us from God, each other, ourselves and all of creation. The word “diabolical” literally means to “throw apart” in the Greek. We must lament this gap and lament the fact that we have somehow believed that we are above creation, over it, and in doing so have done unspeakable things to it.
We are dirt that thinks it’s God. There is nothing wrong with being dirt. Dirt isn’t sinful, it’s good, the book of Genesis tells us so. Most people aren’t aware that humanity’s creation was a deeply important play on words in Genesis 2:7: And God formed the ‘adam [human being] from the ‘adamah [dirt]. One translator tries to capture the word play by stating, “humans come from humus.” It’s when we forget that we are dirt that we become so very dangerous. We forget that we are a part of creation and the most dangerous animals on the planet (way scarier than sharks) because we are the only one’s foolishly capable of imagining that we’re God (except for maybe cats). The Bible never speaks of animals or plants sinning against us – only us against them. It’s because we are the ones who can wrongly state that “God is blind to what we do.” We’re dangerous because we are image-bearers who forget that we are made of fragile clay. Jeremiah will declare, “Even the stork in the heavens knows its times; and the turtledove, swallow, and crane observe the time of their coming; but my people do not know the ordinance of the Lord” (Jeremiah 8:7). This “not-knowing” is willful ignorance, a refusal to believe that we are not like the stork, the turtledove, the swallow. It’s our odd forgetfulness that we are creatures first and foremost. We are made. We are fragile. We forget that we are more kin with grass, dogs, dirt, and salmon, than we are with God. And because we forget, we must lament. So we are going to rehearse and practice Genesis 2:7 tonight. We are going to dust ourselves with what we are, and remind ourselves that death and discipleship go together, dirt and humans are inextricably linked, spirituality and environmentalism have always been our tradition. We must remember, the earth is counting on us. We must lament because we forget.
Confession of Sin
Imposition of Ashes - “You are loved by God, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”
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