We continue our four-week worship series called Earth-Honoring Faith. The outline for this worship series began to develop earlier this summer when Matt and I attended a conference called Seizing An Alternative. We hope this worship series will encourage us to consider how our faith tradition calls us to honor the earth. The earth is in a time of peril and we believe our Christian tradition can both teach and encourage us to respond more faithfully in our daily lives.
Outline for Earth-Honoring Faith
▪August 16: Caring (Psalm 139)
▪August 23: Communion (John 6.56-69)
▪August 30: Consumption (James 1:17-27)
▪September 6: Climate (Romans 8:19-23)
We will turn this week from Communion to Consumption and reflect upon how our faith might shape the ways we consume.
Consider you consumption. Make a list of all the things you have consumed over the last week (food, gas for transportation, clothing purchases, air conditioning, lights, etc.).
Read James 1.17-27.
David Lose encourages us to “notice the startling claim James makes in the opening verse of this passage: ‘every generous act of giving…comes from above.’ Every generous act of giving. Not some generous acts. Not only Christian acts of giving (whatever those might be). But all generous acts of giving. And to that we might add all acts of mercy, or advocacy, or support, or friendship. All we do that is good comes from God. Which means that faithfulness is available to all of us: in our homes, places of work or volunteering, our schools and communities and more. Wherever you find yourself — or, more to the point, wherever our people find themselves — God is at work for the health of this world God loves so much.” http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=1618)
In what ways might your choices to consume “work for the health of this world God loves so much?”
Ludwig Feuerbach wrote, “Nature, the world, has no value, no interest for Christians. The Christian thinks only of himself and the salvation of his soul.” Wendell Berry concurs, “the indictment of Christianity by the anti-Christian conservationists is, in many respects, just… Christian organizations, to this day, remain largely indifferent to the rape and plunder of the world and its traditional cultures. It is hardly too much to say that most Christian organizations are as happily indifferent to the ecological, cultural, and religious implications of industrial economies as are most industrial organizations.”
In what ways might your choices to consume “work for the harm of this world God loves so much?”