Category: Theological Animation

Blessing of the Bicycles

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Photo credit: Bayne Stanley

By Laurel Dykstra, Salal and Cedar

On May 29, Salal and Cedar and Fossil Free Faith organized “bike to worship week” and a blessing of the bicycles. Below is an article written by Laurel Dykstra for the Diocese of Westminster. Following the article is the order of service and intercessions.

Vancouver’s Christ Church Cathedral has a new bell tower but the bells ringing in the 120 year old church on May 29th were attached to the handle-bars of bicycles. With sacramental chrism oil, bicycle chain oil, holy water and prayers, Anglican Bishop Melissa Skelton, two priests, and a United Church Minister blessed bicycles, transit passes, and a host of people who are making an effort to reduce the environmental impact of their commute to worship.

While light from the stained glass windows colored their faces, a congregation of about twenty-five listened to a passage from Ezekiel about the prophet’s vision of a wheel within a wheel and they prayed for the safety of cyclists, fossil fuel divestment and the victims of climate disasters and wars for oil.   Led by a cross and banners and the bishop with miter, crozier and cope, cyclists and pedestrians processed out of the church to a hospitality station on the street where they offered coffee, snacks, bike maps and “ride-by blessings” to commuters on the bike route outside. Continue reading “Blessing of the Bicycles” →

Book Announcement: Where the Water Goes Around: Beloved Detroit

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dads bookNew book by Bill Wylie-Kellermann. Where the Water Goes Around: Beloved Detroit is a biblical and political reading of Detroit over the course of three decades by an activist pastor.

Detroit is a place where one can take the temperature of the world. Think on the rise of Fordism and auto-love, the Arsenal of Democracy, the practice of the sit-down strike, or the invention of the expressway and suburban mall. Consider more recently the rebellion of 1967, the deindustrialization of a union town, the assault on democracy in this Black-majority city, the structural adjustments of municipal bankruptcy, and now a struggle for water as a human right. Continue reading “Book Announcement: Where the Water Goes Around: Beloved Detroit” →

Wild Lectionary: Beware the Cataclysm!

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Photo by Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post

By Wes Howard-Brook and Sue Ferguson Johnson, Abide in Me

For readers of Wild Lectionary, there is hardly a Scripture passage more fitting than Genesis’ account of the Flood. The powerful, terrifying narrative is often reduced to a kids’ story, replete as it is with “cute” animals in the Ark. But, of course, beneath the surface is a story of divine near-omnicide, revealing a deep rift between the Creator’s vision and humanity’s response to God’s gift of the earth. In combination with the conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 7.21-28), this week’s texts offer a sobering reminder of the cost of human violence to the earth and its creatures, including sapiens. Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Beware the Cataclysm!” →

Reflections from a Liturgical Seasons Geek

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stationsBy Lydia Wylie-Kellermann. Published in Geez Magazine.

“The rain. The dew. The dryness. And then rain again, and dew, and dryness. The story of the circling year. From the rabbis, mystics, and farmers of sixteen centuries ago we have a book that tells the story of the circling year. That teaches us what to do if the delicate machinery should stop.”- Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Seasons of Our Joy: A Celebration of Modern Jewish Renewal

I can’t deny it. It’s true. I crave the church seasons. I count down the days to Advent. I throw All Saints Day parties. I keep folders of poetry and reflections for each season. Honestly, I’m really not all that high churchy, but the seasons have become a rhythm that I feel in my body. They ground me when the world feels crazy. They keep me moving. They slow me down. They keep me acting in the midst of hopelessness. They are a way of keeping time that feels dramatically different than the fast-paced, consumer driven clocks that surround us. Continue reading “Reflections from a Liturgical Seasons Geek” →

Wild Lectionary: The Harmony Way

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Randy and students at Eloheh Farm. Credit: Patricia McSherry

Trinity Sunday
Genesis 1:1-2:4a

By Randy Woodley

As a follower of Jesus from a Keetoowah Indian heritage, my “canon” consists of Scripture, creation, and the “Native American Old Testament” (God’s revelation to Native People through generations of culture and tradition.) Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: The Harmony Way” →

Sermon: Pentecost

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2015mlk1By Sarah Thompson, Albany Mennonite Church
4 June 2017

Ruth 1:11-18
Acts 2:1-12

I was glad when they said unto me, let us go into the house of the Lord.
It is indeed good to be with you today in Albany. The first time I came this way was to begin a cross-country bicycle trip that focused on the needs of young adults in the Mennonite church and raise money for Mennonite World Conference, an experience that brings Anabaptists together from all tribes and nations and tongues. It was a really good experience.  Continue reading “Sermon: Pentecost” →

Wild Lectionary: The Coming of the Holy Breath

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Djordje_Alfirevic_-_Breath_of_Earth
Djordje Alfirevic – Breath of Earth, CC 3.0 License

Pentecost

Acts 2:2-21
John 7:37-39
Psalm 104:25-35, 37

By Ragan Sutterfield

They were gathered for a festival of word and wheat, the harvest of plants grown from soil–breathing carbon, exhaling oxygen. Beneath the soil, the plant roots had spread a sugar feast for microbes who in turn gave their bodies for the wheat’s growth.  Those plants had now gone to seed, passing on their life to another season’s crop and in their abundance there was a harvest of bread for people and seed for birds and field mice and the life upon life that lives close to the ground.  It was at a festival for all these interactions, joined with a celebration of the coming of the Torah, those books that offered the story of a God who gives life to soil and cares about every detail of the material world.  The festival was Shavuot, Pentecost.  Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: The Coming of the Holy Breath” →

The Feast of the Ascension, Memorial Day and Doubling Down on the Incarnation

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AscensionBy Ched Myers

Note: This is an edited version of a sermon preached on the Feast of Ascension (5/28/17) at Farm Church at Casa Anna Shulz.  Above: William Blake, Ascension Day poem, 1794.

“People of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?” (Acts 1:11)

The Ascension is an underappreciated aspect of the Jesus story in the life of the church, both theologically and liturgically.  This is understandable; for many it tends to conjure “Beam me Up Scotty” escapist theology and rapture allergies.  Certainly in radical circles the Ascension has been largely abandoned or ignored.  I want to contend, however, that by doing this we are conceding to the trivializers an important trope of our faith.

40/50: Ascension Day in Church History and Culture

Ascension Day is an old feast of the church, dating back at least to the third century according to patristic witness.  It is traditionally celebrated on a Thursday (also known as “Holy Thursday)), the fortieth day of Easter, though many churches now celebrate it on the following Sunday, he last of Eastertide.  Next comes Pentecost: 50 days after Easter.  We are, in other words, in deeply symbolic terrain, given the importance of both 40 (think years in the wilderness) and 50 (think Jubilee) in the biblical narrative.  Continue reading “The Feast of the Ascension, Memorial Day and Doubling Down on the Incarnation” →

Weeping

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jesus-wept“Jesus knew what we numb ones must always learn again: (a) that weeping must be real because endings are real; and (b) that weeping permits newness. His weeping permits the kingdom to come. Such weeping is a radical criticism, a fearful dismantling because it means the end of all machismo; weeping is something kings rarely do without losing their thrones. Yet the loss of thrones is precisely what is called for in radical criticism.”
― Walter Brueggemann, Prophetic Imagination: Revised Edition

Wild Lectionary: The Predator Within

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2249220298_de45840ab4_o(1)Easter 7

Discipline yourselves, keep alert. Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour.  –1 Peter 5:8

by Ric Hudgens

We must not domesticate our understanding of the wild. I am not referring to domesticating wild places into civilized spaces. I am noting our tendency to romanticize the wild in a way that removes its sharp edges.  In the rewilding of our theologies we must deconstruct docetic expressions that remove the divine and human from nature. Also, we must keep the divine and human embedded in real nature – not a romanticized Disneyland nature where animals sing and dance or time lapse photography makes change appear sudden.

The natural world which is filled with the divine and the contains the human is also “nature red in tooth and claw,” as Hobbes wrote. There are predators. There are prey. Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: The Predator Within” →