In last week’s column I promised to provide some readings and other aids for a worshipful approach to a service aimed at a greater awareness to the climate catastrophe that awaits us.
Thus this week’s blog comes in two sections.
May 12 2013
Suggested readings: portions of Isaiah 24, Matthew 24 Romans 8, Revelation 21-22
Responsive reading
FORGIVE US AND TEACH US
All: With the whole creation we wait for the purifying fire of judgement
Leader: In our arrogance and pride
we have grabbed what was not ours
and abused what was entrusted to us
only for safekeeping.
All:
We have taken your name and dishonoured it
We have flouted your fixed order and
In willful defiance and deliberate ignorance
Have shut our ears to the pleading of your people
And the groaning of your creation.
Leader: Forgive us for breaking your covenant
For enslaving the poor of the earth and
Unloading on them our paper moneys created
Out of nothing by our banking magic and now demanding
Their blood.
All:
Forgive us for breaking your covenant.
We have paved our planet with our greed for speed
And our need to escape from ourselves
And now we have upset the laws of creation
At our own peril.
Leader:
Forgive us for breaking your covenant.
We have done business to enrich ourselves
At the expense of creatures and creation and now
Have imprisoned our souls and imperiled the cosmos.
All:
Teach us to live again,
To live the true life of joy and peace
Of loving you as you want to be loved
Of loving others and ourselves as you want us to.
Leader:
Teach us to live the true life of joy and peace and justice
As your covenant children
A life of obedience
Of truly responding to your word
Your laws in creation, your word in Jesus Christ and
Your spirit in us.
All:
So that we can prepare ourselves to live
The full life of your new creation
When we have become what we are
When we will see you as you really are
When all our hurts are healed
When all our wars are ended
When all church walls are gone
When the Bible be no more, your word be in our hearts,
When everything in earth and in the starry expanse
Will be made new
When justice will reign and each eye will see at last
That this world belongs to God.
LET THE EARTH HEAR OUR VOICE
Tune: To God be the Glory.
Our soil is in trouble, our waters unclean.
The air we are breathing – the smog can be seen-
has slowly been poisoned, with storms often mean.
Where then are we going? Where then have we been?
Refrain:
Shout it out, shout it out: Let the earth hear our voice
Shout it out, shout it out, let the trees too rejoice.
O come, love creation, the Scriptures, God’s Son
And give them the glory, great things he has done.
Our lungs we corrupt, our bodies we stone,
Our highways are death ways, our morals far gone,
TV is most nonsense: we reap what we’ve sown.
To combat this trend: what have we all done?
Refrain:
Economy now has been changed to consume.
With spending we want to create a new boom
which only will lead to create a new tomb,
And we, the world’s Christians, we’ve hastened this doom.
Refrain;
We reasoned that God has redeemed just our soul
Just church work was holy, just heaven our goal
while secular world not worthy our dole
All this is now taking a serious toll.
Refrain:
The main cause why we the world’s Christians so erred
The Scriptures alone we regarded God’s word,
To honour God’s earth has an equal reward
God’s word is the Scriptures, Creation, the Lord.
Refrain:
Shout it out, shout it out: Let the earth hear our voice
Shout it out, shout it out, let the trees too rejoice.
O come, love creation, the Scriptures, God’s Son
And give them the glory, great things he has done.
I admit it is not great poetry or great prose. However, it carries a message, and with a bit of effort and patience it is even fit for communal singing. So give it a try.