Palm Sunday Reflection

A Reflection for Palm Sunday

by Abby Mohaupt

Matthew 21:1-11 Common English Bible (CEB)  

When they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage on the Mount of Olives, Jesus gave two disciples a task. He said to them, “Go into the village over there. As soon as you enter, you will find a donkey tied up and a colt with it. Untie them and bring them to me. If anybody says anything to you, say that the Lord needs it.” He sent them off right away. Now this happened to fulfill what the prophet said, Say to Daughter Zion, “Look, your king is coming to you, humble and riding on a donkey, and on a colt the donkey’s offspring.” The disciples went and did just as Jesus had ordered them. They brought the donkey and the colt and laid their clothes on them. Then he sat on them.

Now a large crowd spread their clothes on the road. Others cut palm branches off the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds in front of him and behind him shouted, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessings on the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” And when Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred up. “Who is this?” they asked. The crowds answered, “It’s the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.” 

I'm standing in the courtyard in front of Memorial Chapel at Stanford University. I've just asked my students in the course I've been co-teaching in Liberation Theology to leave the classroom and come outside. I'm going to ask them to make a web out of rope, a web made out of the things that connect us and things that define us. This is an activity that I've used with people of all ages: older and wiser members of congregations, third graders, seminary students, and--now--Stanford University students.

We stand in a circle. One student holds the end of the rope and she names something about herself--something that makes her, her. Together we find someone else in the circle that shares that part of her story. Together we build a web of our identities. Together we recognize that each of these pieces about ourselves matter. Standing in this circle, on this campus, I look at the faces of these students, and I am surprised.

•  I am too young to be teaching a class at Stanford, so I wear my clergy collar to class, to remind everyone that I'm supposed to be there.

•  I am educated at a Midwestern Liberal Arts university, and I didn't even think about applying to a school like Stanford when I was their age.

•  I am the female member of the teaching team and I've spent a lot of time loving on these two older male colleagues who invited me to challenge them.

Who am I to be asking these students to get out of their familiar classroom?

These surprises give way to the moment at hand and push away the fluttering in my belly. Instead I feel the solid rock under foot and the warm sun overhead.

I know these rocks and this sun. They are unsurprising because they are familiar.

Our connections are born out in this web of rope and the students look each other in the eye and they stand together. They see each other. They begin to know each other. They are not really strangers to each other. This is week six and they've been learning from each other, challenging each other, and teaching each other. But this is the first time they see each other.

I think about what it would have been like to see Jesus for the first time--to really see him in all his earthy glory. Having walked with him for years, listening to his stories, watching his healings, growing comfortable with this man named Jesus. He would have become so familiar.

And then he gets on a donkey and rides into the center of the city and he is so surprising. All of creation celebrates his entry and yet he is not what they expect.

•  He’s too peaceful to be the coming King.

•  He’s not educated or born into the ruling class.

•  He’s spent too much time loving on the peasants and the people in the fields.

Who is this who comes in the name of the Lord?

I know this story, this donkey, this singing.

There’s a familiarity to this story about Jesus, this leader who has come to us, humble and riding on a donkey. He is not what we expect, but he is exactly what we need, connecting us as we are, to each other, to creation, to God. Each part matters, even when it celebrates the arrival of this surprising Jesus, even when it groans with anticipation.

There’s something comforting in knowing that while I have internalized so many parts of me that just seem like not enough, I matter—I belong to this web, not to the insecurities of the world.

Too much of creation groans, too much of creation suffers because we forget that the web of creation includes us all. As we celebrate the recognition of Jesus in our lives, as we look toward this Holy Week, how will we see the web that connects us? How will we welcome Jesus with hosannas and joy?

Contributor: Abby Mohaupt works at Puente de la Costa Sur in Pescadero, CA, where she divides her time between coordinating volunteers, meeting with faith communities, and nurturing learning in children. Abby holds a M.Div. and a Th.M. in eco-feminist theology from McCormick Theological Seminary. She is the At-Large Representative for the PEC Steering Committee.



Responding to Climate Justice with Faith

Dear Friends,

In January I reflected on my participation in a Presbyterian Hunger Program Joining Hands reflection/action trip to learn about the effects of climate change and environmental degradation in Peru. As a result of the trip, the group collaborated on a statement, which has been published, Statement on Climate Justice: A Faithful Response.

Photo courtesy of Joe Tobiason 

I find it a powerful statement for anyone who does work on climate justice. It resulted from a joint effort of the young adults of Peru and Bolivia, staff of Joining Hands Peru, and those traveling with the Presbyterian Church (USA). It begins with what we believe about climate change, and what we saw on the trip: “Every day we hear and see the evidence of climate change in the change of seasons, food production, availability of water, disappearing glaciers…”

The statement then moves to what we need to do: “... we feel it is our duty and calling to stand in solidarity and to act faithfully for climate justice. With political will and people’s actions, we can influence things for the better.” The statement calls for action by authorities on adaptation and mitigation, adoption of climate measures, rigorous review of extractive industries, financing and research for renewable energy and energy efficient technologies, and the building up of local economies.

The statement ends with our commitments. For me, the most important is the last commitment, “Pray for one another, support one another, and call others in the church and society to join us in being conscious of the consequences of climate change and active supporters of climate and environmental justice for a healthy world for all.”

There is one thing we can do right now to be active supporters: urge our representatives to oppose “fast track” legislation. Read more about it as it pertains to the Trans Pacific Partnership and contact your representative at this Action Alert from the Presbyterian Church (USA) Office of Public Witness.

In Christ,

Sue Smith, PEC Treasurer

Prayer: O Lord God. Your creation is in trouble. The climate is changing, affecting all that you created in the beginning, the skies, the dry ground and the seas. Yet your Holy Spirit moves among us and brings people together who support each other in the work of bringing about the new heaven and the new earth. Give us strength for the journey. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Sue Smith is a member of First Presbyterian of Rumson, NJ. She is the Treasurer of Presbyterians for Earth Care and a GreenFaith Fellow. She is currently a student at New Brunswick Theological Seminary.

Oil Transport by Rail Spells Disaster

Oil by Rail?

Submitted by Rev. Holly Hallman

Am I my brother’s keeper?  Gen 4:9

Let’s say you have a lot of oil and you want to sell it. To do that you have to get it from where you are to where the people are who will refine it so you can get your money. To move it you need a long tube-one that stretches from you to the market. The natural choice would be to connect sections of tube to each other and lay them end-to-end from here to there. The wrinkle comes when someone wants a lot of money for their right of way, or to a spot where something special happened and the land is sacred.  In frustration, you might just decide to take an old pipe and make it bigger. You might buy property outright for your tube. Or, you might look around and see that you can use short pieces of tubing set on wheels and roll your oil from A to Z. Boom, that’s it!  Brilliant!

There is something wrong with this idea of oil in a moveable tube!  Perhaps you had never heard of Lac Megantic where an oil train exploded and killed 47people. There are lots of small towns all across this country and Canada that I haven’t heard of that are endangered by this pipeline on wheels. 

Great Northern Tunnel in Seattle
Photo by Alex Garland

In Seattle, “The Great Northern Tunnel is a one mile double tracked railroad tunnel under downtown, completed by the Great Northern Railway in 1905, and now owned by the BNSF Railway.”[i] Not far from the northern portal of that tunnel is the Salmon Bay Bridge that was opened in 1914. It has a single track and carries all the rail traffic that moves up the coast to northern Washington and British Columbia. Those lines were built to carry passengers and freight but now carry all of the northbound coal and oil that comes from Montana, North Dakota and Alberta, BC.

Salmon Bay Bridge in Seattle

Don’t think for a moment that your town is exempt!  On Valentines weekend three trains had derailments, one in Alberta, one in Ontario and one in West Virginia. More and more, we are learning that where there are tracks there is potential for oil transport disasters.

West Virginia exploding oil train

When our great rail systems were built over 100 years ago they were intended to carry a much different cargo. Today the nation’s grain still moves by rail. Beside nearly every silo there is a train track. These long trains carrying crude are making insufferable delays for people and perishable foods.

Rail lines split towns and cities in two, often leaving the need for emergency services and those who supply them on the opposite sides of slow, mile to mile-and-a-half long oil (and coal) trains.

New documents, videos, and news stories pile up in email inboxes every single day. To enumerate all the wrongs that this “new” pipeline creates would be difficult, tedious and depressing work. Instead, let’s go back to the opening scripture. Am I my brother’s keeper?  The Bible/God’s answer is in the affirmative. Furthermore, we know our kinship extends to every species on our planet. Noah was commanded to bring pairs of all things to the ark so they could continue to flourish. Our brothers and sisters walk, swim, fly, creep, and more. Together we make up the whole. And, yes, we are caretakers!

PEC honors this caretaking of our brothers and sisters!  Whether the oil is coming through a pipeline or by rail, its use is desecrating God’s good earth, clear skies and sacred water. We are advocating on many fronts for discontinuing the extraction and use of fossil fuels, for stronger rail safety standards, for no new export terminals, and for clean air and water.  Not this (see below).  We hope you will join us!

Crude oil trains in North Dakota

Rev. Holly Hallman

PEC Vice Moderator and Co-chair Advocacy Committee

Prayer: Creator of all things bright and beautiful, guide us as we examine how our use of energy and our use of money might turn the tide away from the darkness that fossil fuels are spreading across your earth. Amen

Resources:

Heavy Traffic Still Ahead

Marine and Rail Oil Transportation Study

MOMENTA video

[i] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Northern_Tunnel

HEALING WATER

HEALING WATER

Discerning PEC’s 2015-16 Advocacy Priorities

We believe that we owe it to our supporters to continually spotlight a range of concerns.  There are so many to choose from!  During the last General Assembly cycle our focus was on fossil fuels.  For the 2016 General Assembly in Portland, Oregon the emphasis will be on water.  Let there be no mistake!  Those of us who are charged with steering Presbyterians for Earth Care (PEC) do not think, for a moment, that any of the fossil fuel issues are resolved!

In September 2014 at a conference in Alaska we chose our current topic. The rising seas and the shift in ice patterns are destroying coastal villages.  The disappearance of the summer ice in the Arctic Ocean and the rush to drill, tour and colonize the area presents new challenges.  The Pebble Mine looms over Bristol Bay and the last natural salmon run on the planet.  There is a push to strip mine for coal in the Matanuska Valley, using water essential for the production of Alaska’s food.  We haven’t had to look very far to find the link between the fossil fuel issues of the last GA cycle and the new focus on water.  For example, strip mining takes huge amounts of water from pristine sources and returns it to the waterway poisoned, blackened and useless to fisheries, agriculture and the vital systems that make life sustainable for birds and beasts.  Many attending the Alaska conference brought stories from all over the USA that had similar, anecdotal, accounts with a devastating water component.

The next question is how do we, a volunteer group, research and publish issues we decide to highlight?    Our plan is to take an issue a month.  One person will present to the Advocacy committee the aspects of concern and support those with a theological base.  The Advocacy group will reflect and refine the work in order to publish it and promote it as a potential overture, resolution or resource.  It is our intention to add a paper to our Advocacy webpage each month.

The topics that we want to address in the immediate months are:

• Oil by Rail: linking transport to water issues
• Aquifer depletion in the center of our nation
• Fracking and the immediate effects it has on water
• Precautionary Principle-Moving an overture from the dusty shelf to center stage
• Challenges to the Chesapeake Bay
• Industrialized animal farming and the repercussions it has related to water
• The Mississippi Delta: a disaster that keeps getting more devastating

It is our desire to find topics that grow into overtures as they are studied and held up for examination by the Advocacy arm of PEC.  To understand the importance of the new focus, watch Water:  Sacred and Profaned.

Further, we hope that we can capture the attention of people who want to bring an issue to the group for reflection and expansion.  As much as we want polished works for publication, we also want to build a process that takes our supporters from having a concern to having a useful tool for Advocacy.  If you would like to join this effort contact presbyearthcare@gmail.com.

Holly Hallman,

PEC Advocacy Committee Co-Chair and Vice Moderator

Prayer: Beloved creator, water heals and yet needs healing.  Open our eyes to see You within each drop, snowflake and cloud.  Open our hearts to seeing each as sacred.  Amen