Sermon 4-19-2009

Sermon 4-12-2009

Sacred Mud

When my children were young, I would excuse myself and say I was going out to play in the mud.  Many years later, they realized that it had something to do with gardening but I maintain I like to garden because I love to get my hands in the earth.  I love the way it feels and often peel off my gloves just so I can be one with the dirt.  I love the way it smells and often put a handful to my nose to drink in the fragrance.  I have learned to look for the castings from earth worms and the foot prints of animals.  I love to rescue it from bad weeds and rejoice in the lovely plants (like poppies) multiplying in it.

Touching the dirt makes me feel literally grounded.  When I preside at funerals, i dislike the bottles of sand offered by the funeral directors and go looking for a handful of real earth to throw on the coffin at the time of saying "ashes to ashes and dust to dust." To me the ideal of dying and becoming one with the earth is comforting.  I feel I came from the earth, was made in God's image and that my body will return to the earth and live on in other life.  I believe that my spirit will live on with God.   I will pass on this poem by Robert Service about Mud.  And I'll be in the garden with my hands in the mud.

Blessings, Karen

Mud is beauty in the making,

Mud is melody awaking;

Laughter, leafy whisperings,

Butterflies with rainbow wings;

Baby babble, lover's sighs, Bobolink in lucent skies;

Ardours of heroic blood

All stem back to Matrix Mud.

Mud is mankind in the moulding,

hjeaven's mystery unfolding;

Miracles of mighty men,

Raphael's brush and Shakespear's pen;

Sculpture, music, all we owe

Motzart, Michael Angelo;

Wonder, worship, dreaming spire,

Issue out of prima mire.

In the raw, red womb of Time

Man evolved from cosmic slime;

And our thaumaturgic day

Had its source in ooze and clay...

But I ahve not power to see

Such stupendous alchemy:

And in star-bright lily bud

Lo! I worship Mother Mud.

Musings over missing Sunday worship

Monday March 16th

Church bells rang out this morning and I was filled with longing.  I suddenly wanted to sing hymns, smell the fragrance of fresh flowers, and hear the comforting words of t;he Eucharist.

I missed church yesterday.  I was buried under piles of sheets and blankets wrestling with the flu.  I slept for almost two days. 

This morning, I'm listening to hymns on my computer sung by famous choirs with four strong parts and boy sopranos to sing the descants.  Our congregation never sounds like this but somehow as we sing these familiar hymns, you can hear the saints join in and there is a fullness; the angel choir fills in the spaces.

I have felt a compulsion to be in church since i was a child.  My family was not religious and so i rebelled by attending church (rebel without a clue).  I don't know if that is true.  I do know that I loved going to church.  i loved the was the music sounded, I loved the way the church smelled, I loved the cool tile floor on the warm spring days, I loved entering the mysterious darkness from the blinding light.  I loved the party that happened each week.  I loved that I could come in a nobody and i was welcomed like a somebody.  I loved being fed.  I felt included, transformed, invited and sent forth to do Christ's work.

I realize in writing this that i miss being part of the congregation.  now, that I am the eader every Sunday, I miss the opportunity of coming expecting to hear some refreshing challenging words and to sit with others and to receive the gift of Christ's body and blood to be renewed, to feel Gd inside of me.  I don't feel complete when I'm not in church.  Don't get me wrong, I love leading worship.  But I wish sometimes I could be I the congregation of a worship service I was leading. 

Beyond all of my strange longings, I had worked on a  sermon which I was beginning to like a great deal but now i won't be able to see how it turns our because it is a new week and I have new readings to interpret  Ah well.....the central theme is the first commandment comes out of God's love for us.  "I am your God who brought you out of slavery in Egypt, you shall have no gods before me."  I am your God, I acted in history for you.  I want you  to be my people.  Perhaps in three years when the lectionary cycle comes around again, I will find out how I would conclude this sermon.  For now, I am busy being part of this week and preparing for next Sunday.

Blessings, Karen

  

God Loves us too much to leave us alone

The Great do-Over Sunday

God created for the fun of it!

Yonder is the great and wide sea 

with its living things too many to number, 

creatures both small and great.

There move the ships,

and there is that leviathan,

which you have made for the sport of it.

                                Psalm 104: 26-27

I was fortunate enough to escape to a warm climate in January.  Our dear friends invited me and and my husband to go to Mexico for a week. One of the days, we went sailing in Banderas 

Bay.  

To our great joy, the fish decided to play along side of the sail boat.  

We saw some beautiful black, white and yellow fish, who looked like escapees from a large salt water tank.  Six dolphins swam and dove along side the boat in playful maneuvers.    And just when we thought it couldn't get any better, two whales, mother and baby surfaced, breached (we actually saw the fountain of water and heard their breathing) then they dove and were off on their long swim to Alaska.  This is migration time.  The whales are born in the warmer waters of the gulf of Mexico and then swim the full length of the continent, up the coast into the cold Alaskan seas.

All of these wonders are happening everyday as we get up, get coffee, complain about the weather or the news.  These "great leviathans which our God has made for the sport of it" share our world.

Today say a prayer for all of the wonders in creation, including yourself, which our God has made so well.

Blessings, Karen