Don't forget - this Sunday is Earth Day Sunday, or, in the UMC, Festival of God's Creation Sunday. You can find worship resources and other materials here, from the Eco-Justice Working Group of the National Council of Churches.
Sermon 2/18/18 Mark 1:1-4, 9-15 Jesus in the Wilderness You’ve heard me say before that the gospel of Mark is my favorite gospel. Part of the reason I love it is because of Mark’s brevity. I don’t love that he’s short on details, exactly. I love that he seems practically breathless in getting the good news of Jesus to us, and that he seems to believe that the news is so good it isn’t even going to take very many words to convince you of his message! His frantic style strikes me as showing both how important and how convincing he believes Jesus’s message to be. But, then we arrive at a Sunday like today, and I find myself a little frustrated perhaps, or at least a little challenged by Mark. In the lectionary, the series of the first Sunday in the season of Lent always focuses on the temptation of Jesus – his time in the wilderness, where he confronts Satan, and commits to God’s path rather than the flashy alternative Satan presents. This is the fo
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John Wesley himself could be looked upon as an environmentalist. In his sermon on "The Use of Money," Wesley said: "We ought not to gain money at the expense of life nor (which is the same thing) at the expense of our health. …
"Some employments are absolutely and totally unhealthy," he wrote. He cited jobs that involve "dealing much with arsenic or other equally hurtful minerals, or the breathing of an air tainted with steams of melting lead, which must at length destroy the firmest constitution."