The power went forth
Sermon for April 27, 2025 Earth Day Celebration
Did you know that gardening can help improve your health? That digging in the soil with our bare hands brings us into contact with microbes that are necessary for our body to function optimally? What about hiking in the woods? The Japanese call it forest bathing. There are microbes that fall from trees that also are healthy for our bodies. What about walking barefoot in the grass or on the beach or along a path? It is called earthing, that our bodies connection with the world’s energy improves circulation, lowers the blood pressure, and helps to calm our mind. A study was done that people in the hospital who could see trees and nature outside their windows had a positive influence in lowering anxiety and decreasing pain. There is power in the natural world to heal and strengthen our bodies.
This should be of no surprise because we are not separate from nature. We especially know this up here in Cook County, living here reminds us daily that we are part of the natural world. People come to Cook County and the Boundary Waters, the most visited national park in the country, because they want to experience nature without the conventions of the modern world.
The story we hear this morning from the Bible is about a different power, but no less of God. This power also has the ability to heal. I do enjoy the Gospel of Mark’s telling of this story, for in it we find that Jesus is only aware of what is happening, but not in control. In the Gospel’s of Matthew and Luke, it is by Jesus’ say so that the woman is healed. But here in Mark, it is explicitly that the ‘power’ as it is described has its own agency and that agency reacts and interacts with the woman who just touches the hem of his cloak. It is a power that is available to all.
The gospel writer of Mark is the first to try to tell the story of Jesus. This is some two hundred and fifty years before the Nicene Council which decided who Jesus was, along with the Holy Spirit. He does name the Holy Spirit as this gospel begins with the baptism of Jesus with her (I have an Assembly of God pastor who believes that the Holy Spirit is a she) descending upon Jesus, but then drives him (not leads him) out into the wilderness for forty days. So what this power is in the Gospel of Mark is undefined, is it love, the Holy Spirit, something else?
In the beginning, in the first creation story we are given the power over nature. In the second creation story of the Garden of Eden, we are given the responsibility to care for the world. Through Moses and the covenant with the Hebrew people, they were, and we are, given the choice to choose live or to choose death. That choice is power. Right now, our current administration is choosing death in removing protections for people, the vulnerable, and for the planet and all life. In our prayer list, we hold in prayer those communities that are being affected by fire, flood, and tornadoes. I don’t know when, especially if we consider those around the world when we can take this off. For in humanities greed, we have upset the balance and the covenant between us, God, and the world, and the power of nature is being unleashed, or as the insurance industry calls it, an act of God.
I do admit that I stare at my phone more than I stare out my window at nature. although I do enjoy sitting down at the harbor on Friday mornings and sitting under the silver birch tree in my yard. I have seen many stories about a moose, a dolphin, a crow or some other animal getting the attention of a human in order for us to help their mate or child or parent or even, at times, another species who is in trouble. I have seen relationships started and sustained between the human rescuers and those animals who were helped. When we choose life, the tie that binds can do some pretty amazing things. Maybe, just maybe, the name of this power is love. May the love of God, Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, guide us and the world this day and through this time so we, all life, and the world be healed by its power.