"We Are All Treaty People"
All of our services begin by acknowledging that we are one with all peoples in the earth. This takes my mind back to the tower of Babel story in Genesis. There is one people and they decide to built a tower reaching into heaven. God notices their pride and stops the project. The tower is not completed. Because of pride, God separates the people into different languages. It is into this divided world that we are all born.
Being born again is the solution to the problem of a divided humanity. Giving up our lives under law we recover the original unity in our hearts and minds. This by the influence of God's Holy Spirit. That spirit being expressed as love which includes all and excludes none. Jesus, as the teacher of God's way, heals and restores our broken human being. We, as followers of Jesus' way, are called to participate in this work of healing and restoration. This takes us out of the world's way. Not in our imaginations but in our lived experience.
The talk this week features the place of indigenous peoples in the creation of God. These peoples lived in harmony with God's creation. In this they offer a way of healing for those of us who are lost in the way of power. That power being destructive of creation and our human being. Hopefully persons everywhere are realizing that human pride is destroying creation. Replacing it with the artificial structures built by our own hands. Now we have opportunity to reconsider our priorities. Hopefully, we will turn to "live with respect in creation", as we affirm in our United Church creed.
Here are our songs and words for this week:
These are the texts which inspired us:
Psalm 24:1-5 - The earth is the Lord's and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it; for he has founded it on the seas, and established it on the rivers. Who shall ascend the hill of the LORD? And who shall stand in his holy place? Those who have clean hands and pure hearts, who do not lift up their souls to what is false, and do not swear deceitfully. They will receive blessing from the LORD, and vindication from the God of their salvation.
Ephesians 1:3-6, 11-12 - Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will, so that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, might live for the praise of his glory.
Mark 6:21-28 - But an opportunity came when Herod on his birthday gave a banquet for his courtiers and officers and for the leaders of Galilee. When his daughter Herodias came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his guests; and the king said to the girl, "Ask me for whatever you wish, and I will give it." And he solemnly swore to her, "Whatever you ask me, I will give you, even half of my kingdom." She went out and said to her mother, "What should I ask for?" She replied, "The head of John the baptizer." Immediately she rushed back to the king and requested, "I want you to give me at once the head of John the Baptist on a platter." The king was deeply grieved; yet out of regard for his oaths and for the guests, he did not want to refuse her. Immediately the king sent a soldier of the guard with orders to bring John's head. He went and beheaded him in the prison, brought his head on a platter, and gave it to the girl. Then the girl gave it to her mother.