"Now the green blade rises from the buried grain"

An online publication of the EcoFaith Network NE-MN Synod with Saint Paul Area Synod Care of Creation

Announcing the EcoFaith Summit 2024

Mark your calendars for the 2024 EcoFaith Summit: Cross+Currents in the Flood: Building Arcs Together for a Livable Planet with keynote speaker Larry Rasmussen! It will be held at First Lutheran, Duluth, on Saturday, April 6th. Registration will open on February 1st, which will be included in the February newsletter as well as a separate mailing.

Creation Advocacy

Creation Justice Ministries has released a January Action Alert which calls for a 2024 federal budget:

"Congress has been stalling on passing a 2024 budget since September 2023. With multiple continued resolutions and a long speaker of the House change mid-term, Congress has been greatly delayed in passing bills and funding important aspects of government that contribute to the care of God's creation. We need a budget passed for 2024 that will invest in clean energy, conservation for ocean, lands and endangered species, and continue essential programs. Send a message to your Congressional representatives now urging them to pass a clean budget before January 19th."

Take Action with Creation Justice Ministries

Minnesota Interfaith Power and Light is also organizing action, asking the Public Utilities Commission to hold Xcel to its original commitments to solar gardens. Their action alert reads:

"In the last decade, thousands of Minnesotans have signed up for 25-year contracts in community solar gardens, helping to spur the growth of solar energy across our state. Now, the PUC is considering a proposal that would allow Xcel to unilaterally modify their agreements with those Minnesotans, requiring those who saved money by going solar to pay $400 to $600 more per year for it. Please send an email to the PUC asking them to reject this proposal and keep Xcel accountable to its promises to solar users!"

Take Action with MNIPL

Advent at Kenwood Lutheran, Duluth

Green Blades Rising loves to share your stories of celebrating and caring for creation, knowing how your stories can inspire others.

Here’s an example of a congregation who brought creation into their sanctuary as they celebrated Advent with pine and birch branches, cloth mice, birds’ nests, a pond with minnows, and many owls, including one that watched over the preacher. In place of a manger, a tent. In place of an Advent wreath, a fireplace, where the pastor gathered children.

Pastor Jeff writes, "This Advent season our worship team decided to try something new. Guided by the Sundays and Seasons worship guide, we chose to not get caught up in the frenzy of the Christmas blitz, and invited our congregation to instead take a retrospective approach to Advent. So, we followed a different plan and brought the story of Mary and Joseph’s journey to Bethlehem into our worship space."

Read the full letter here

Pollinator Sanctuary Congregation News!

Bethlehem Lutheran in Brainerd Makes It Official!

In November ’23, Bethlehem, Brainerd’s leadership council voted to officially become a Pollinator Sanctuary Congregation, adopting the EcoFaith Pollinator Sanctuary guidelines. Bethlehem’s creation care team, led by Russ Schultz, made this recommendation to the congregation’s leadership in order to bring the whole congregation into this commitment.

They are in the planning stages of establishing a pollinator garden on church property where the goats they ‘rented’ in 2022 cleared the way*.

Funding for plants and materials will come from money the congregation contributes during their “noisy offering” this coming April.

Your Congregation can Become a Pollinator Sanctuary Congregation Too!

Here are guidelines and suggestions for becoming a Pollinator Sanctuary Congregation.

In order to raise awareness and support in your congregation for participating in this Pollinator Sanctuary movement, we encourage you to consider bringing it to your congregation council or annual meeting.

The Pollinator Project Steering Committee is currently in touch with 39 congregations in varying stages of becoming Pollinator Sanctuaries.

Is your congregation interested in this possibility too? Email pollinator project steering committee chairperson Tom Uecker at tomuecker1946@gmail.com and ecofaith@nemnsynod.org.

Free Pollinator Sanctuary Yard Signs and Pollinator Sanctuary Fliers are available at the NE-MN synod office, 1111 London Road, Duluth, MN 55802. Call ahead at 218-724-4424.

Invitation to NE-MN Congregations to Become 2024 EcoFaith Congregation Partners

Green blades of care and concern for the creation are arising in congregations throughout our synod and beyond! The EcoFaith Network of the Northeastern Minnesota Synod is nurturing these green blades in a growing web of relationships. In this critical time, God’s call to be stewards of the earth for the sake of the whole creation is germinating among us!

Many congregations such as yours are doing EcoFaith ministry. They pray regularly for the creation and the movement to care for it, God’s kingdom on earth as in heaven. They seek to integrate stewardship of the earth into every faith practice and facet of ministry.

We invite you to help us nurture this growing ministry by becoming an EcoFaith Network Partner Congregation in 2024. The EcoFaith ministry of our synod is financially supported by congregational and individual donations. We receive no funds through the synod’s budget. Please consider becoming an EcoFaith Partner Congregation in 2024 and make a financial contribution of any amount.

Learn more and find congregation partner forms here

EcoFaith Book Corner

EcoFaith Book of the Month

The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorching Planet

By Jeff Goodell

Book Review by Fredric L. Quivik, Saint Paul Area Care of Creation

For a long time, the threat of climate change seemed to be something in the future, and then more recently it appeared to be the near future. Now we realize that the effects of climate change are upon us. Jeff Goodell’s The Heat Will Kill You First addresses those effects head on. The term “climate change” can be a bit abstract, which is why it replaced “global warming” a few years ago. At the time, global warming seemed too alarming to some. But Earth’s climate is changing precisely because humans are warming our planet by excess discharge of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The Heat Will Kill You First clearly describes what that warming is doing to humans and environments.

Read the full review here

Through the College of St. Scholastica, Pastor Dave Carlson of Gloria Dei in Duluth facilitates two monthly book discussion groups, to which all are welcome:

Earth Harmony, Thursday, January 11 - The Planet You Inherit: Letters to My Grandchildren When Uncertainty's a Sure Thing by Larry Rasmussen (2022). Meeting 8:00-9:00 a.m. in person at Chester Creek Cafe in Duluth.
Religion & Science, Wednesday, January 17 - Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us by Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross (2023). Meeting 8:00-9:00 a.m. via Zoom. Contact Pastor Carlson for the link or for more information, pastor@gloriadeiduluth.org

This Month's Green Tips

Use these in your congregation's bulletins, Facebook pages, websites, or newsletters!

Here are Laura Raedeke's Green Tips from Lutheran Church of the Cross, Nisswa

The Problem of Plastic Waste and How We as a Society and as Individuals can Prevent the

Waste from Happening

Worshipping with the Whole Creation

Green Blades Preaching Roundtable

The Green Blades Preaching Roundtable weekly reflections by a variety of preaching writers on the ecological implications of each Sunday’s lectionary.

The Roundtable editor, Kristin Foster has some remaining openings for writers in 2024 and would welcome new and returning writers for these Sundays. Please email her if interested at revkristinfoster@gmail.com.

Season of Epiphany

January 7-February 11, 2024

Pastor Mark Dittmanson, Grand Marais, MN

Pastor Mark Dittmanson has written preaching reflections for each week of the season of Epiphany. He introduces his preaching reflections, writing:

If advent is the season of longing and waiting for the presence of God to come into our hearts and homes and this troubled world; and if Christmas in the event of the incarnation of God in the swaddled and embraced Christ child is the season of the answer to that longing; then Epiphany strikes me as a particularly Lutheran season for asking, “What does this mean?”

Epiphany is upon us and for me the arrival of these three seekers longing to know more fully what this means, that in the ‘fullness of time God sent his son,’ to be born, swaddled and loved as every child deserves. Incarnation leads me into a journey of seeking, or perhaps more accurately, being open to epiphanies of further revelation.

Read the full preaching reflections for Epiphany here

Baptism of our Lord

January 7, 2024

Genesis 1:1-5, Acts 19: 1-7, Mark 1: 4-11

This Sunday almost begs us to hold up in juxtaposition (or perhaps in remarkable complementary fashion) the beginning of creation, the infinity of Creator/God and the amazing physicality and earthiness of the baptism of Jesus, and of course the wild baptismal officiant with him in the water, his cousin John. We have been taught that the finite can convey the infinite. And here in this set of lessons I am reminded in a mind blowing way that the creator of the cosmos walked up to this dusty musty man of the wilderness and got down into the muddy waters with him.

Epiphany 2 B

January 14, 2024

1 Samuel 3: 1-10, 1 Corinthians 3:1-10, John 1:43-51

God's call comes when we least expect it, and often to those we least expect. God is always the God of surprises. We, as the church, need to be like Eli as he woke up to God’s activity, we need to be encouraging everyone to hear the voice that calls them forth into all they are created to be. We need to be like Philip with a simple bold disarming invitation, ‘come and see.’ God’s Word was probably not rare in those days after all, but perhaps the skill of listening was rare. Might that be true again? You know it is. Where is God’s voice resounding today? How has God called you to come and see? Come and see in the unexpected.

Epiphany 3 B

January 21, 2024

Jonah 3: 1-5; 10, 1 Corinthians 7:29-31, Mark 1: 14-20

Jonah went to Nineveh and he went to preach to the people whom he hated. He entered the evil pagan city with a simple message from God that sparked an absolute national transformation so thorough that from the king to pauper to livestock – everyone, all in the nation repented, and all turned to the one true God they had never before worshipped. And that was the last thing that Jonah wanted to see – his ultimate enemy, the people he loved to demonize, the people he loved to hate – on them God bestowed mercy; God showed love to Jonah’s enemies. Yes, everyone in this story repented and changed in the presence of God, or almost everyone.

Epiphany 4 B

January 28, 2024

Deuteronomy 18:15-20 1 Corinthians 8: 1-13 Mark 1:21-28

Today we have a little story early in the gospel about Jesus and a miracle, but there is the bigger story under and around this one, much bigger. Picture this: Jesus, Emmanuel, God-with-Us, the One who created the ever-expanding universe with a word, just by speaking, “let there be light,” and something far more amazing than just a big bang theory happened – yes, in this story this God clothed in human flesh and wearing a homespun Nazarene robe, has just walked into worship. Not only that, he has started teaching, and dazzles everyone. Imagine that, Jesus is at a local church, they called it synagogue, it was their worship service, and he is participating. That is a powerful detail. The creator of the universe goes to church.

Epiphany 5 B

February 4, 2024

Isaiah 40:21-31, 1 Corinthians 9:16-23, Mark 1:29-39

We all encounter from time to time, moments when our powers to control outcomes seems small to negligible. The longer we live the more aware we become of powers beyond our finite scope. You don’t have to look far...That might feel more than discouraging, if humanity is all we had to go upon. But there is a higher authority. And it is to that higher court that we are going in prayer for our friends and family. We have come to understand what was revealed to Elijah, that the “still small voice” he needed to listen to was not inside him, it was a gift from God, guidance from a loving creator.

Transfiguration Sunday

February 11, 2024

2 Kings 2:1-12, 2 Corinthians 4:3-6, Mark 9: 2-9

This event in the gospel story was memorable; all three of the synoptic gospels, Mark, Matthew and Luke, tell this story with very little variation. Later in his life Peter would write to fellow Christians and describe that day on which he saw Jesus transfigured before him. As Peter related his memory he talked about the meaning of that day in terms of an affirmation that everything they learned from Jesus and learned about Jesus was pure revelation from God on High. The experience must have carried strength with it to affirm his faith. Moreover, I would speculate that every time he started to run on empty in his spirit and begin to doubt either himself or his faith he would go back to his memory closet pull out one of those experiences to give him strength.

Connections with Creation

January

January 6 – Epiphany of Our Lord

Epiphany encompasses the startling discovery that fear is not warranted about something unexpectedly strange. “A multitude of camels shall cover you” (Isa. 60:6) sounds nightmarish, until we know the pronoun “you” refers to the land, and those camels bear gold and frankincense. Worshipers might share their own epiphanies about species they once feared or loathed but now respect. Entomologists, for example, are converts to wonder about insects. Can we be grateful when we walk through clouds of insects, knowing of their global decline? Paul’s revelation was that the mystery of Christ’s grace makes Gentiles “fellow heirs” in God’s covenant with Israel (Eph. 3:6). Today the Spirit calls us to see anew an old revelation: how even disliked nonhuman creatures are integral subjects of Christ’s governance.

Read all Connections with Creation for January and February

Check out the Green Lectionary Podcast!

Creation Justice Ministries produces a podcast that it describes as "a conversation on scripture with a creation justice lens." Check it out here!

Trying to figure out how Faith and Science work together every week?

Listen to The Faith and Science Podcast, following the Revised Common Lectionary each week and try to answer that question. It can be found at wherever podcasts are found or at

https://thefaithandsciencepodcast.podbean.com/

Read. Watch. Listen. Share!

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