September 27, 2026
READINGS and MESSAGE
EXODUS 17:1-17
How fitting for today that our first reading, which is coming from Exodus, deals with two of the elements of the earth which we have been focusing upon…and if you remember last week with the quail and the manna, the folks were grumbling because they had no food…well today, they have no water and the complaints become unbearable for Moses so he calls upon Yahweh for help…so today’s focus is stones or rock or dirt and Moses strikes the rock with his staff and water comes bubbling out…and stones come into play further on in this passage as Moses needs to sit upon stones so to hold his staff in the air during the battle with Amalek…
PSALM 78:1-4, 12-16
This Psalm this morning is classified as a ‘wisdom’ Psalm…its purpose is to instruct the present from the experiences of the past…we learn from our parents and these traditions are passed on to children and children’s children…and this is a sacred duty laid upon all parents according to the testimony or the commandment given to Israel long ago…and the purpose is to keep the faith and preserve history for future religious education… and verses 12-16 are just a reminder once again of the history of the Red Sea, and the striking of the rock and a reminder which will maintain and intensify the faith…
MATTHEW 21:23-32
What needs to be kept in your mind when you hear the Gospel passage this morning is that with this being year ‘A’ in the lectionary, we haven’t shared the passage of Jesus cleansing the temple – turning the tables upside down and creating chaos of the ones who are selling pigeons and doves and so on for the folks to offer them as burnt sacrifices…economy of religion…
So the priests and elders are testing Jesus with John’s baptisms and whether these baptisms were from heaven or human origin…and the second part of Jesus’ answer stuns them with the reality of who gets into the kingdom of God or not…
ELEMENTS of the EARTH - ROCKS – SOIL – DIRT - “EARTH”
So we’ve embarked on a little journey together in the last few Sundays dealing with Air and last week, Water…so far, it’s a journey dealing with the different elements of the earth in this time of Pentecost…and now what I would like to do is to focus for a little while on ‘earth’ or soil or dirt and rocks and sand…let us turn our thoughts to the earth which we tread upon – the earth where the seeds are planted and germinated and hopefully, produce crops that will sustain us and the world beyond…but there’s a lot more to it than that…a lot more to earth or dirt or soil than we take granted for…there’s a huge theological component to it…
Let’s begin with a question or maybe a couple of questions and you may think that they don’t have anything to do with soil or rocks and so on – but they do…So here’s the questions…
What is God like? …
Who is God? …
They’re big questions which I know that I couldn’t begin to answer in a few words so I’m going to try to expand upon it a bit and bringing in one of the most important elements of the earth – earth…or soil…or sand and rocks, and you know, sometimes intellectual humility encourages us to say as little as possible in response to the two questions about God…God?... God is large, high and lifted up, distant and vague…we sometimes can’t say too much in the definitive realm…and that certainly is a respectable way to view God…God is beyond our human concepts, outside of our mere human experience…until we meet the one who tread upon this earth… Jesus…Jesus was and is God’s self-definition…how does God think?...what does God want out of us? … Who is God? …
and there is an answer to this…it’s an earthly answer…and it might come from the mind of God as if the Holy One was speaking these words to us…
“If people are missing what I am trying to share, then I think that I need to become something just a little more visible, a little more pragmatic– earth.. I need to become the soil…I need to become something where people can really see me with their own eyes and their own understanding…for without soil, nothing will exist…I need to be more visible”…
And I say, (as if God needs to be more visible in our lives than God already is), that we sometimes need to be reminded…again…and again…because quite often we miss what is right in front of us…quite often we can’t see the complete forest for the trees…God is the earth we walk upon…God is creation…
and if we begin to destroy this creation, we begin to destroy ourselves…our hopes, our dreams, our visions…the world we leave behind for generations to follow…we begin to lose our connectedness to everything which exists… So I see earth or soil and rocks and dirt as very pertinent metaphors or depictions of what or who God is…earth is filled with nutrients – nutrients which transfer themselves into the germination process and then the growing process of plant-life, which in turn produces oxygen…it’s our planet Earths’ ecological wonder which sustains us…it’s our God breathing into us – life…and when Jesus walked upon this earth, that’s what he was connected to – the earth…he knew its unmistakable importance and connection to everything…how it sustained life and how it also became a most powerful monetary impediment or obstacle to many, for ownership can have its complications, just internalize some of the parables which Jesus shared…the parable of the fig tree…the parable of the vineyard…and so on…one of the Earth’s elements – earth or soil, is so important in the big picture….
In my travels in my life I’m reminded of the places where I’ve lived while I was a student minister and also when I became ordained and settled…they were rural and no, they weren’t at the end of some small railway line or the end of a dirt road – they were vibrant small towns and villages where everyone knew everyone else and what you did, everyone knew…and one of the most important things was that the soil or the earth made all of the difference in the world…for farming and raising cattle was dominant and you made your life around the earth or the soil and it became precious… more so than we will ever think…and there was oil underneath this earth and huge care was taken to tap into this oil and to not upset the environment but to work in concert with each other – farmer and petroleum folks alike…and this is what creation asks of us, to work with the earth so that it sustains us through countless generations…and to tread softly wherever we are in God’s creation…
So I ask each of you to open your eyes to the beauty of colour and shape of this earth…tune your ears to the rustle of leaves and the babble of water… lift your nose to the scent of flower and fruit…reach out your hand to the texture and the touch of the living earth…with your whole being, taste the goodness of the God of creation…so may you share your joy with the God who planted a garden…in Eden…and called you to look after it…may you find your peace in the Christ who prayed in the garden that God’s will might be done…may you experience the love of God in that garden whose leaves are for the healing of the nations…for the God of the garden waits to bless you and hold you in eternal keeping…. Amen.