Sunnyvale Pres, it is wonderful to be worshiping with you once again! Given Hardy is away and I am stepping in to support, I am grateful to Rev. Hardy for the invitation. I pray for safe travels for him, Rev. Karin, and everyone on the Sunnyvale Ireland trip. I appreciate the partnership in ministry that exists between your congregation and my Fellowship. Monday marks Earth Day, and this Sunday’s theme will focus on our role as Christians in relationship to the planet. We are in the Christian spiritual/liturgical season of Eastertide, a time of celebration, so a sermon of encouragement that speaks to re-framing perspectives and new life is very much called for!

In that same spirit, a rarest of rare occasion has occurred and right after I preach my sermon, I will be delivering that same sermon to University Public Worship at Stanford. It is a first time experience to be double-booked back to back on a Sunday, and it is not an arrangement I would wish on anybody. I ask for your understanding as I slip out the side door after the sermon. Forgive me, and take delight in knowing that Stanford won’t be the first to find out this time.

With compassion, care, and a gentle reminder of our shared humanity,

Rev. Annanda Barclay

When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

During that day’s cool evening breeze, they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden; and the man and his wife hid themselves from the Lord God in the middle of the garden’s trees. The Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?”

The man replied, “I heard your sound in the garden; I was afraid because I was naked, and I hid myself.”

He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Did you eat from the tree, which I commanded you not to eat?”

The man said, “The woman you gave me, she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate.”

The Lord God said to the woman, “What have you done?!”

And the woman said, “The snake tricked me, and I ate.”

The Lord God said to the snake,

“Because you did this,

you are the one cursed

out of all the farm animals,

out of all the wild animals.

On your belly you will crawl,

and dust you will eat

every day of your life.

I will put contempt

between you and the woman,

between your offspring and hers.

They will strike your head,

but you will strike at their heels.”

To the woman he said,

“I will make your pregnancy very painful;

in pain you will bear children.

You will desire your husband,

but he will rule over you.”

To the man he said, “Because you listened to your wife’s voice and you ate from the tree that I commanded, ‘Don’t eat from it,’

cursed is the fertile land because of you;

in pain you will eat from it

every day of your life.

Weeds and thistles will grow for you,

even as you eat the field’s plants;

by the sweat of your face you will eat bread—until you return to the fertile land,

since from it you were taken;

you are soil, to the soil you will return.”