April 23, 2107

Earth Day

For Meditation and Reflection:
“The idea that we live in something called the environment is preposterous. The world that environs us, that is around us, is also within us. We are made of it, we eat, drink and breathe it; it is bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh.”
-Wendell Berry
Welcome and Announcements

Opening Prayer : Oh, Great Creator,
We come before you in a humble manner. We pray for all our relations in nature.
We pray for all those who walk, crawl, fly and swim. May there be good health
And healing for this earth. May there be beauty above us; may there be beauty
Below us; may there be beauty in us, and may there be beauty around us. We ask that this world be filled with Love, Beauty and Peace.
-Medicine Grizzly Bear, Spokane, WA 1990

Responsive Call to Worship:
Leader: O, Lord….How strong and good and sure your earth smells, and everything that grows there.
All: Bless us, our land and our people.
Leader: Bless our forests with oak, maple and hickory, with fruit, nuts and wood that sustains us.
All: Bless us, our land and our people.
Leader: Bless our fields with ripe berries, green plants that make our bodies Strong.
All: Bless us, our land and our people.
Leader: Be with us, oh Lord, guide us to help the earth, and all who dwell here.
All: Be with us, oh Lord, and bless this whole world.

Opening Hymn: This is My Father’s World – #58, Red hymnal

Today’s Scripture Readings: Acts 2:14,22-32; 1 Peter 1:3-9

Sermon by Tena Brass – “Waste Not”

Responsive Hymn: Fairest Lord Jesus – #67, Red hymnal

The Offerings and Offertory Music

Joys and Concerns

Lord’s Prayer (Traditional, with “debts”)

Closing Hymn: For the Beauty of the Earth – #55, Red hymnal

Prayer of Benediction:
All: Dear God, teach us to know our interconnectedness with all beings.
Leader: We are not the giants of our dreams, nor the dwarves of our fears. We are a part of the whole, with a share in its purpose.
All: Teach us to grow with each other and with all living creatures. Let us go forth in peace to love and to serve others.

Sharing the Peace as we go…….And we hope you can join us for post-worship coffee and conversation in Fellowship Hall.

Thoughts for the Day and Week

We speak of sustainability and social responsibility over a latte, which is okay, because the cup is recycled and the coffee grower is slightly less exploited that he was ten years ago, but he is still required to grow our coffee and not welcomed to come sit and sip with us.

On The Fifth Day
By Jane Hirschfield

On the fifth day, the scientists who studied the rivers
Were forbidden to speak, or to study the rivers.
The scientists who studied the air were told not to speak of the air,
And the ones who worked for the farmers were silenced,
And the ones who worked for the bees.
Someone, from deep in the Badlands, began posting facts.
The facts were told not to speak, and were taken away.
The facts, surprised to be taken, were silent.
Now it was only the rivers that spoke of the rivers,
And only the wind that spoke of its bees,
While the unpausing factual buds of the fruit trees
Continued to move toward their fruit.
The silence spoke loudly of silence,
And the rivers kept speaking, of rivers, of boulders and air.
Bound to gravity, earless and tongueless,
the untested rivers kept speaking.
Bus drivers, shelf stockers, code writers, machinists,
Accountants, lab techs, cellists kept speaking.
They spoke, the fifth day, of silence.

-Read by the author, at the Washington, D.C. March for Science, April 22, 2017

Announcements:

Sunday, April 23rd

Our Worship leader will be Tena Brass, She will be celebrating Earth Day, and her worship topic will be “Waste Not”. She encourages everyone to bring one or more non-perishable food items to be donated to the local Food Bank.

The Lovettsville Historical Society will hold its monthly meeting in the sanctuary at 2:00 p.m. The speaker will be Patrick Schroeder, Historian at the Appomattox Courthouse National Historical Park, who will talk on “Myths About Lee’s Surrender”.

“Jammin at James” will be held in the sanctuary from 6:30 – 8:00. Please come (and invite your friends) to participate in the open mic, or just enjoy the good music. Anyone who would like to provide a light supper for the musicians and attendees, please contact Tena Brass or Lauranne Oliveau.

Sunday, April 30th

Services will not be held at St. James today. On this fifth Sunday of the month, we plan to travel to share worship with Grace Episcopal Church in Brunswick. Service at Grace is at 10:00 am, and the address is 114 East A Street, http://gracebrunswick.org/. Anyone needing directions or wishing to share a ride, contact Tena or Janell.

Sunday, May 7th

Our Worship leader will be Rev. Esther Ziegler, from St. Michaels, MD.

We are continuing our project to collect pill bottles, which are needed by organizations sending medicines overseas. A collection box is on the pew in the back of the Sanctuary. Please save your medicine containers (rinsed and with the labels removed, please) and donate them to this worthy cause.

Our Statement of Faith

We gather in worship as an inclusive community, an open & affirming community of faith that transcends any distinctions based on gender, sexual orientation, nationality, race, or religion.

Our formal worship flows into a living worship of love and support for one another as we pursue ways to reflect God’s reign of mercy, justice, and peace in our community and throughout the world…

….along with a continuing search for ways to celebrate the goodness of life together ….and always reaching out to draw others, with total inclusiveness, into this communal experience.