Learning from the Scripture of Nature, with Prof. Richard Groves.

Learning from the Scripture of Nature, with Prof. Richard Groves. Series: Spacious Christianity, Spacious Hearts A Spacious Christianity, First Presbyterian Church of Bend, Oregon. Scripture: Matthew 6:26-29.

Discover the sacred wisdom of nature this Sunday! Join us this week online as we explore how the seasons, scriptures, and soul intertwine. Experience a message that will reconnect you with the divine in the world around us.

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At First Presbyterian, you will meet people at many different places theologically and spiritually. And we love it that way. We want to be a place where our diversity brings us together and where conversation takes us all deeper in our understanding of God.

We call this kind of faith “Spacious Christianity.” We don’t ask anyone to sign creeds or statements of belief. The life of faith is about a way of being in the world and a faith that shows itself in love.

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Keywords:

Hospice chaplain, Sacred art of living, Nature as scripture, Sermon on the Mount, Spirituality, Celtic tradition, John Philip Newell, Environmental needs, John Muir, Ecological consciousness, Sequoia strength, Soul force, Climate change, Spiritual literature, Pilgrimage., presbyterian, church, online worship, bend, oregon

Featuring:

Rev. Dr. Steven Koski, Rev. Sharon Edwards, Becca Ellis, Brave of Heart, Prof. Richard Groves, Guests

Transcript

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Welcome to worship at First Presbyterian. We, at First Presbyterian practice a spacious Christianity, which means, no matter where you are in your faith journey, you belong and there is space for you at the table, there is space for your doubts and questions. We believe doubts and questions are a gift that invite us into deeper conversations and a more authentic faith. We believe diversity is a strength. Every story is sacred and everybody matters. We do our best to live the spacious and radical love of Jesus so that all might have a chance to flourish in this world. We are so glad to connect with you in this way. We would also love to worship with you in person if you're ever in the neighborhood on Sunday mornings at 830 or 10am and never hesitate to reach out to us to learn more about us or how we might support you. I hope you enjoy this worship service. Welcome. A prayer from the uncomgah Gray also known as the northern ute people. Earth teach me stillness, as the grasses are stilled with light. Earth teach me suffering as old stones suffer with memory. Earth, teach me humility as blossoms are humble with beginning. Earth, teach me caring as the mother who secures her young earth, teach me courage as the tree which stands alone. Earth, teach me limitation as the ant which crawls on the ground. Earth teach me freedom as the eagle which soars in the sky. Earth teach me resignation, as the leaves which die in the fall. Earth teach me regeneration as the seed which rises in the spring Earth, teach me to forget myself as melted snow forgets its life. Earth. Teach me to remember kindness as dry fields weep in the rain Amen. Hi, my name is Richard groves. I'm a hospice chaplain, and about 30 years ago, my wife, Mary and I moved to central Oregon and established the sacred art of living center with a focus on the ministry of end of life, spirituality and care. It was just about that time we were moving into our home here, and we planted about 40 small sapling trees, mostly Aspen and sugar maples, and have watched them grow over the years until this time of the year, just like we see all around us, there's a burst of color of yellows and oranges and red, no wonder this is a favorite time of The year for many people, I think nature is more than just a month on the calendar that we turn over and move on to another season. I think nature is like a scripture. In fact, some of the earliest fathers and mothers of the church wrote about the fact that nature is God's first scripture before there was the written word, there was the creation around us. In fact, Martin Luther went so far as to say, I think there might be a parallel between the four Gospels and the four seasons of the year. We're in good company when we talk about nature as a teacher. When we look at the Gospels, we find that all of Jesus' major teachings and most important lessons were never taught inside of a temple or a man made building. They were always taught out in nature, the Sermon on the Mount, the sermon by the edge of the lake, the holy wheat field, the holy vineyard, the holy sheep, the holy pearls of great price, holy, this holy that Jesus knew that people would remember better the lessons that he was teaching, if they could relate to them in the tangible metaphors of nature. Just look at these verses from the Sermon on the Mount. These are the verses after the famous Beatitudes. I love this translation from the tese interfaith Bible. Consider the birds of the air. Why they do not sow or reap or bother to store food away in barns, and yet doesn't your heavenly Father feed them? Are you not as valuable or even more so than they are? Jesus also uses the seasons to talk about what's going on in the world around people. At that time, there was a lot of anxiety, there was a lot of political tension, there was a lot of polarization and divisiveness. Sound familiar? And so in that same sermon on the mount. He goes on to teach this. He says, I want to tell you something important. Why are you so anxious about life? You're worried about things like what you will eat or drink, or about your body and what you will wear is not life itself more valuable than food and the body worth more than your clothing. Can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? What great advice, what an invitation to sort of antidote a world and a time of anxiety with words that console us, and then with an invitation to move outside of our heads, our worrying minds into the creation of nature, where we learn a different kind of lesson. So this same passage goes on to give a final piece of advice, I would say, an invitation, during this special time of the year, Jesus says, why not stop for a moment and take time to look at all the flowers of the field. They do not labor or spin. Yet, I tell you, not even Solomon, in all his splendor, was dressed like one of these, if that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here, today and tomorrow, can be tossed into the fire. Will not your beloved take care of all that you need, put your faith in what really matters. There is a wonderful example of bringing together the inner seasons of our lives and the seasons of nature. This is the time of the year when a lot of us enjoy going out to pumpkin patches, when we can take a walk in the woods and kick and smell the ripeness of the leaves that are falling and even though we know that, ironically, this is part of death, it's also somehow part of the mystery of change beyond death and the life that we know will come back after wintertime in the spring, I was a hospice chaplain in the Air Force for a number of years as a volunteer chaplain, and these days of the year, at the end of October and beginning of November, were always a special time, because I was dealing with people in the military who came from many different spiritual traditions. We would celebrate the days of the dead with our Hispanic brothers and sisters. We would celebrate Reformation Day on October the 31st with our Protestant sisters and brothers. We would celebrate All Saints and All Souls Day, which was a very important part of the calendar year for many people in mainline churches and Catholic Sisters and brothers. But I think one of the things that I always like to point out that wasn't known to a lot of us is that so many of the cultures and traditions of this time of the year actually go back to another cultural tradition that we may be unaware of, the Celtic tradition. The Celts were the ones in pre Christian days who brought forward so many of the traditions that we still honor this time of the year, even carving pumpkins and dressing up in costumes and Trick or treat, putting a candle in the window, lighting a candle to honor our beloved dead. All of that goes back to the ancient Celts. One of the home places, the sacred places of the Celtic tradition is the Isle of Iona in Scotland, in the Outer Hebrides islands, Iona also has special significance historically for the Presbyterian Church. Church. For many years, I've taken pilgrims to Iona and have spent a week or 10 days on this tiny island that has so much history, the history of pre Christianity and the history of early Christianity. One of the great teachers on Iona is a man by the name of John Philip Newell. His books now have become very popular. They're some of the most popular, best selling spiritual literature for the last 10 years. His book about sacred land and about the spirit of the land is not only about a revival of Celtic spirituality in our time, it's also about an invitation to pay greater attention to the environmental needs of our era, and to realize that deep in the Celtic tradition, deep in the scriptures, deep in the teaching of Jesus, is an intimate call for the respect and honoring of nature out there and nature in here. We are very lucky. John Philip Newell is coming to Bend Oregon in February of 2026 for a two day special program. It's going to be held at First Presbyterian Church. I know that people from up and down the west coast, from Canada to Los Angeles, are going to come here to sit at the feet of really a great, inspiring master teacher. This same program is also going to be broadcast live internationally. I hope you'll take a moment to go and check out the First Presbyterian of Bend website to learn more about the details of John Philip Newell's retreat and also how you can register for that event. I guess I'd like to leave this as a final invitation for you at this time of the year that as we move from October into November and into the wintertime of the year, we'd have something very special to look forward to that nurtures and brings warmth to this beautiful, sacred time. I think we can all say a big Amen to that. You I'm standing here in the John Muir Grove in the Royal Botanical Gardens of Edinburgh in Scotland. This is where we honor John Muir as one of the greatest modern prophets of ecological consciousness and action in Scotland, of course, we claim John Muir as ours. He was born just down the coast from Edinburgh in Dunbar, but we're very happy to share him with the world and indeed, with America, where he spent most of his life. We need John Muir's vision and voice among us today more than ever. Muir said that all terrestrial things are essentially celestial. That is, everything of Earth is essentially of heaven. All matter is essentially spirit. In other words, this stuff, the stuff of the human body, the stuff of the body of the Earth is sacred stuff. Where did Muir get this vision? Did it this way of seeing? Did it just come out of the blue? No. Muir can be seen to stand in an ancient stream of Celtic wisdom that stretches back at least to the second century in the Common Era, in the second century, we hear Celtic Christian Teachers speaking about the earth being formed out of the substance of God. So what we do to this stuff, the stuff of the human body, how we handle one another in relationship, how we care for the most vulnerable, how we care for the body of the Earth. This is how we handle and care for the divine within us and all around us. Muir was a prophet, and by that, I mean he did two things. One, he was willing to and gave himself to denouncing the sacrilege of the natural world that was happening in mid 19th century America, and that laid. Stage for the sort of neglect and abuse of the earth that has now led to climate change and the environmental crisis of this moment. But as well as denouncing the sacrilege of nature, Muir was committed to again and again, announcing the sacredness of the natural world. And he called his readers again and again to fall in love with the earth. He speaks of coming to know passion of love for the earth that is the strength and the sustenance and the inspiration for the holy and the urgent work of caring for the Earth. Today, what we need at this moment in time is the strength of these great sequoia trees, not only individually, but their strength of growing another, the strength of being intertwined in their very roots. Muir speaks about us needing to become Sequoia like. And I believe that this is not simply what we need. This, in fact, is what we can access. The great strength of soul that is within us, what someone like Mahatma Gandhi called soul force. The challenges of this moment in time are so great that my prayer for us is that we may access the Sequoia strength and that we can care for the future of our children and grandchildren and our grandchildren's children, may John Muir's Voice and vision bless us in this holy work. Friends, pay attention. Be astonished. Take nothing for granted. Recover a sense of reverence and awe for God's holy earth. Let the earth heal you, that you might remember our first and the holiest calling is to love and heal the earth. May it be so. Thank you so much for joining us, and we hope you enjoyed this worship service. If you would helping make these broadcasts possible ways. First, Presbyterian seeks to serve our community. You can make a financial gift online at bend fp.org, every week, we hear from someone thanking us for the gift of these broadcasts and what a difference they make. Your support makes that possible. Our church is committed to reach beyond our walls, bringing hope where there is despair and love where needed the most. Your generous support helps us to be generous in love. Go to our website, bend fp.org, and click on the link. Give online. Your support difference in people's lives. Thanks again. I hope to see you next week