2009 Lenten Reflections and Worship Resources
View the Environmental Lenten and Holy Week Worship Resource
Joining the Hymn of All Creation
Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea,
and all that is in them, singing,
“To the one seated on the throne
and to the Lamb be blessing and honor
and glory and might forever and ever!”
-Revelation 5:13
"Living Earth" Writer: Rev. Yvette J. Schock. Lenten Worship Resource: Kim Winchell.
Design and editing: Brewer Communications, Inc. Earth photo courtesy of NASA.
Subscribe to "Living Earth: Joining the Hymn of All Creation" by visiting the ELCA e-Advocacy network sign on page.
Click here to view back issues of the Lenten series. Welcome to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's Lenten e-mail series,
Living Earth: A 40-day Reflection on our Relationship with God's Creation. This year’s theme, “Joining the Hymn of All Creation” reminds us that our relationship with our neighbors, our world, and all creatures, great and small, is a gift of communion given us by God from creation’s beginning. In Genesis we hear the call to “tend and keep” the earth (Genesis 2:15), but in our sin we have turned our backs on the call to be God’s stewards and have rejected the gift of living as part of one whole, healthy earth community. As Lutheran ethicist Larry Rasmussen notes “[w]e are most ourselves when we are most intimate with the rivers, mountains, forests, meadows, sun, moon, stars, air, soil, rocks, otherkind, and humankind.”
[1]
Through the course of these reflections we invite you on a journey of urgency and hope: Together we will give thanks for God’s gifts of abundance; face the hard facts of our misuse of creation; read of signs of hope for a new way; and learn how we can live into God’s promise to make all things new in Christ. Each week you will find resources for learning and suggestions for individual and communal action focusing on a range of environmental issues. Every Wednesday reflection provides a link to “Creation Waits With Eager Longing” a resource that includes outlines for worship appropriate for a group, and each Sunday will bring news of Christians practicing their faith by caring for creation. Weekly themes of Reflection, Remembrance, Rediscovery, Repentance, Reconciliation, and Recommitment lead us finally to our celebration of Easter, when we rejoice in the good news of God’s power for redemption, renewal and the reconciliation of all things.
This is a limited subscription. The first e-mail began on Ash Wednesday 2009, and the last e-mail will arrive Easter Sunday.
[1] Rasmussen, Earth Community, Earth Ethics (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1996) 326.
2009 Environmental Lenten and Holy Week Worship Resource
"Creation Waits with Eager Longing!"
A Lenten journey of Reflection, Remembrance, Rediscovery, Repentance, Reconciliation, and Recommitment on our way to becoming more faithful stewards of God’s creation.
Click here to view the weekly themes for the Lenten Wednesdays. You may download and use the resources for your congregational needs.
Holy Week Theme Suggestions
Our care of creation is part of our calling, as God’s people; it is not an “extra” we just lift up from time to time. Ideally, our earthkeeping is – or will become – woven into the life and practice of our congregations and our personal lives as Christ’s disciples.
Therefore, even in the holiest times of the church’s liturgical observances, it should be possible to find creative, and faith-filled, ways to incorporate our care for God’s creation. After all, as we read in Colossians 1:19-23, it is through our Lord Jesus Christ that “God was pleased to reconcile to himself
all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross” (v20, italics added). Furthermore (v23), “the hope promised by the gospel that you heard … has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven.” The “good news” is for all of creation; and we are to be bearers of that good news.
In the course of this special Lenten worship series we have been invited to hear the Spirit’s urging to respond to a wounded creation, which waits with such eager longing, and to re-join in the hymn of all creation with renewed joy, hope, and vigor.
May our Holy Week journey, through Christ’s passion to the incomparable wonder and praise-filled celebration of Easter Morning, bring both the renewal of our lives and the increased motivation for us to be healers of creation.
Feel welcome to use the following resources for Holy Week:
Palm Sunday 
Maundy Thursday
Vigil of Easter
Easter Day