24 February 2022 – Chapel – Drew Theo Chapel

GATHERING MUSIC

CALL TO WORSHIP

Alex Matlins

As the story goes, God so longed for a relationship that God set the whole process of creation into perpetual motion.

We remember.

God formed the heavens and all the worlds. God spoke into being the night with its many lights and the day with its bright sun.

We remember.

God made all the fruit-bearing and sheltering trees, all the seed-born vegetation, rocks, springs, mountains, and valleys. God fashioned all the creatures of the waters, air, and earth. All that is seen and unseen, God made.

We remember.

Then, with dust from the four corners and earth from the center of the world, where later the Temple was to be, God made us—temples of earth, blood, skin, and bone. Made from the earth of everywhere, the whole world was our home.

We remember.

OPENING PRAYER

Shin-Young Kim

Creator God,

We know that you breathed a soul into the nostrils of the first earth creature and they became a living, soul-filled being — a living temple of earth and blood, endowed by you with a breathing soul. In that moment of creation, all of humanity took a deep, quickening breath and received a soul.

God, you remind us, with each breath we take, that something of you lives in us. With this breath of life, we were formed for freedom, endowed with the ability and the response-ability to make choices. We are grateful for your invitation into partnership in the ever-evolving creation of the world to come.

Amen.

SONG

“For the Beauty of the Earth” (vs. 1-2) – Pierpoint/Kocher

For the beauty of the earth,
for the glory of the skies,
for the love which from our birth
over and around us lies;
Refrain: Lord of all, to thee we raise
this our hymn of grateful praise.
For the beauty of each hour
of the day and of the night,
hill and vale, and tree and flower,
sun and moon, and stars of light; (Refrain)

SCRIPTURES

Leah Wandera

God Uses the Earth to Teach Us

What are you learning? What is the seminary teaching you? It is important, according to the Bible, to study the Earth and the environment. The Bible says that knowledge of God and God works can be found in understanding plants and animals and the delicate web of life:

Job 12:7-10

But ask the animals, and they will teach you; the birds of the air, and they will tell you; ask the plants of the earth, and they will teach you; and the fish of the sea will declare to you. Who among all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? In God’s hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of every human being.

Romans 1:19-20

For what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world God’s eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things God made. So humans are without excuse!

MESSAGE

Meryne Warah, GreenFaith

SONG

“For the Fruits of This Creation” – Fred Pratt Green/Francis Jackson

1 For the fruits of this creation,
thanks be to God;
for good gifts to every nation,
thanks be to God;
for the plowing, sowing, reaping,
silent growth while we are sleeping,
future needs in earth’s safekeeping,
thanks be to God.

2 In the just reward of labor,
God’s will is done;
in the help we give our neighbor,
God’s will is done;
in our worldwide task of caring
for the hungry and despairing,
in the harvests we are sharing,
God’s will is done.

3 For the harvests of the Spirit,
thanks be to God;
for the good we all inherit,
thanks be to God;
for the wonders that astound us,
for the truths that still confound us,
most of all, that love has found us,
thanks be to God.