September 24, 2023 – The Rev. Katharine Flexer

Exodus 16:2-15<br /> Psalm 105:1-6, 37-45<br /> Philippians 1:21-30<br /> Matthew 20:1-16 We’re coming to the end of this special season of Creation, timed to fall during the harvest season and wind up with the feast of St Francis, who’s become sort of the patron saint of creation. We’re offering prayers that bring the climate and creation to mind, offering our confession for how we have wasted it and not cared for it as God’s stewards. Last week a few of us joined the Climate March; out at our cemetery we’re installing solar panels; here at church we’re constantly looking for ways to make our buildings more energy efficient; we’re looking at a possible small group program that digs further into issues of creation and the climate crisis. Lots of different ways to bring home the point that seems like it should be so obvious, that we are called to be better stewards of creation. But it’s a point we all too often don’t think much about – until we have to, which the extremes of weather and drought and disaster are finally forcing us to do. We avoid it partly because it has seemed so vast to get our heads around; but I think we also avoid it because it’s something that requires a huge change of mindset for us. Our behaviors and structures have to change in ways that don’t feel fair. And we really don’t like it when things don’t feel fair. When my kids were younger, one of my last steps in preparing dinner was to get out two plastic cups and the gallon of milk, pour the milk into both cups, and then crouch down so my eye was at the level of the cups, to check and be sure the level of milk was exactly the same. I knew this was ridiculous. But I also knew that if I didn’t check, somebody else would. Two somebody elses, to be accurate. It had to be even. If you have kids, or you remember being a kid, you know exactly what this is about. If one kid gets something, the other has to get it, and the amounts have to be the same, exactly the same. It has to be fair. Whether kids or not, this sense of fairness runs deep in us. I had a conversation about this yesterday with guests waiting on line in the rain at our Saturday Kitchen – lots of upset when it seemed like someone had jumped the queue and wasn’t waiting for their turn. We don’t like it when someone seems to be getting something more than us or ahead of us, when there’s inequality in the system. This fairness is what we usually mean when we talk about justice. Think of the statue of Justice with her scales, weighing things out – justice measures and calculates to be sure it’s even, that everyone receives their share. That’s why we try to make laws and arrange systems so that t