It is Christmas time, a time when many of us are busier than usual and fully caught up in the good feelings of being with family and giving gifts, as well as the many needs right in front of us.

But in the midst of this Advent season, the Bishops of our United Methodist Church have asked us to stop and remember, with them and with the world’s leaders who are meeting right now in Copenhagen, that God’s entire creation needs our attention. The Council of Bishops invites our personal participation in an initiative they are calling God’s Renewed Creation: Call to Hope and Action.

You can read the Bishops’ full letter to all members of the United Methodist Church at
www.hopeandaction.org. Here are some excerpts:

A Pastoral Letter from the Council of Bishops of The United Methodist Church: God’s creation is in crisis. We, the Bishops of The United Methodist Church, cannot remain silent while God’s people and God’s planet suffer. This beautiful natural world is a loving gift from God, the Creator of all things seen and unseen. God has entrusted its care to all of us, but we have turned our backs on God and on our responsibilities. Our neglect, selfishness, and pride have fostered:

• pandemic poverty and disease;
• environmental degradation, and
• the proliferation of weapons and violence.

Despite these interconnected threats to life and hope, God’s creative work continues. Despite the ways we all contribute to these problems, God still invites each one of us to participate in the work of renewal. We must begin the work of renewing creation by being renewed in our own hearts and minds. We cannot help the world until we change our way of being in it.

We all feel saddened by the state of the world, overwhelmed by the scope of these problems, and anxious about the future, but God calls us and equips us to respond….

First, let us orient our lives toward God’s holy vision. This vision of the future calls us to hope and to action. God’s Spirit is always and everywhere at work in the world fighting poverty, restoring health, renewing creation, and reconciling peoples. Aware of God’s vision for creation, we no longer see a list of isolated problems affecting disconnected people, plants, and animals. Rather, we see one interconnected system that is ‘groaning in travail’….

Second, let us practice social and environmental holiness. We believe personal holiness and social holiness must never be separated.

Third, let us live and act in hope. As people in the tradition of John Wesley, we understand reconciliation and renewal to be part of the process of salvation that is already underway. We are not hemmed in to a fallen world. Rather we are part of a divine unfolding process to which we must contribute….

Our Bishops pledge themselves to being part of the work of God’s people, in every place and from every tradition, for the healing and renewal of the earth. They ask every United Methodist, every congregation, and every public leader: Will you participate in God’s renewing work?

As your pastor, I’ll confess that I have often felt that environmental concern is just past my point of fatigue and willingness to change the way I get through my days. But this call from the Bishops of my church reminds me that the well-being of God’s creation should fall higher on my priority list than “Yeah, I’ll get to this someday….”

Let’s keep talking, into the New Year, about how we might work together to strengthen our commitment to be part of God’s work of re-creating the earth.

With blessings and love in these final days of Advent,

Kathi