God-wrestlers and Judge-pesterers in the Family of Things

"Has anyone wrestled with  God? Has anyone struggled with the reality of the climate crisis and what the future will ve like for coming generations?" 

Rev. Laurel Dykstra from the Salal and Cedar Discipleship Community asked us these questions and more like them in her sermon last Sunday.  Like Jacob wrestling with the angel - whose identity we are never told - all of us at one time or another have wrestled with God when faced with injustice or things we don't understand. Rev. Laurel, offered that Jacob may have been wrestling with his brother Esau, whom he had wronged, or even God himself. It is this notion--that we may be seeing God when we are face to face with someone we have wronged or are close to--that should also motivate us to get to know the threatened species of our place--the species that are quickly disappearing because of our wrongdoing, because of human selfishness and greed.  

To help us on that road, Salal and Cedar brought flora, shells and antlers found along our shorelines and forested mountains. As various ferns, leaves and branches were passed from hand to hand we were encouraged to become acquainted with them.  If we did not know what they were we could learn by asking our neighnbor who may know. 

The gospel reading last Sunday centered on the story of the widow and the unjust judge. Rev. Laurel drew a familiar and funny analogy: like someone trapped in a tent with a pestering mosquito, the widow kept pestering the judge until she received the just judgement she was seeking. Likewise, drawing inspiration from Indigenous people opposing the Trans Mountain Pipeline, we too should "act, speak up and use our voices and bodies to protect what is vulnerable and valuable in this world."

We are grateful for Rev. Laurel Dykstra and the Salal and Cedar's fundamental challenge to us: as Christian disciples in an age of climate crisis and species extinction, God is calling us to re-learn our place--"not as  God's choses or the top of the good chain, but as Mary Oliver says in her poem, to know our place "in the family of things."