Musings: Using AI & Reflecting on Earth Week

A few weeks ago I hinted that I would begin exploring the use of AI (artificial intelligence) in preaching…

Here are the prompts that I entered into Chat GPT and used as a launching point for my own writing: Earth Day, Climate Change, Season of Creation, death of the Pope and Genesis 9:8-17. The 'sermon’ as generated by Chat GPT is provided first, followed by the sermon that preached on Sunday at Visions United Church. And yes, the Chat GPT sermon is MUCH shorter!! I will work on my prompts and the settings for Chat GPT - maybe there is a way to suggest length: sermon with no nap, nap, long nap…?

Interestingly, Chat GPT even provided a sermon title - so I had to provide one as well - not my usual practice! I usually leave it to the reader to figure out what the title should be!

I also used AI to generate the image that is included.

Let me know what you think!

Lloyd 

The Covenant of Creation: A Dance of Promise & Care

Brothers and sisters, today we gather to celebrate Creation Sunday, a time when we turn our hearts and minds towards the beauty and wonder of the world God has lovingly made. In Genesis, we find the story of the rainbow, a powerful symbol of God’s eternal covenant with all creation. As we reflect on this narrative, we'll listen to the wisdom of Pope Francis, who calls us to a deeper understanding of our role within this divine covenant.

Let us begin by revisiting the story from Genesis 9:12-17. After the flood, God speaks to Noah: “And God said, ‘This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth.’”

In these verses, God’s promise is clear: a covenant not only with humanity but with every living creature and the very earth itself. The rainbow becomes a sign of hope and a reminder of God’s everlasting commitment to creation.

In his encyclical Laudato Si’, Pope Francis echoes this covenantal vision, urging us to reevaluate our relationship with God’s creation. He writes: “The covenant between humanity and the environment is broken... because of our sin of transgressing God’s law. Nature is filled with words of love, but how can we listen to them amid constant noise...?”

Pope Francis reminds us that creation bears the imprint of the Creator’s love, and it is our duty to listen to it, care for it, and cherish it.

Now, think about the rainbow. It's a bridge between heaven and earth, a reminder that we are called to be stewards of God's creation. Just as Noah was entrusted with the care of the earth after the flood, so are we tasked to care for our world today.

The beautiful covenant reflected in the rainbow is an assurance of God’s presence and love, yet it also calls us to action. In a time when our earth cries out from the scars of pollution, deforestation, and the loss of biodiversity, we must ask ourselves: Are we living up to our end of this covenant?

As followers of Christ, our call is to live with gratitude and responsibility in a world entrusted to our care. Pope Francis challenges us “to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.” Our environmental stewardship is not an isolated duty but is deeply connected to our care for humanity.

Let us, therefore, resolve to honor this ancient promise. Let the rainbow inspire us to hope and renewal. May we act with love and responsibility, joining in the sacred dance of creation’s covenant—a dance in harmony with God, with one another, and with the earth itself.

As we celebrate Creation Sunday, let the story of the rainbow illuminate our hearts, driving us forward in love and stewardship. May our actions reflect the beauty and promise of God’s covenant, and may we become bearers of that promise for generations to come. Amen.

 A Parable of Preservation

It has been a long time since I have set up a nursery. The first time Anna and I did it we tried to hang a wallpaper border around the room and the next day it fell down… we had to get a local painter to come and do it… but I do remember that the border had a Noah’s ark type theme… and even today it is a familiar theme, soft pastel rainbows and cute animals in wallpaper borders and  baby quilts and crib mobiles and toys.

If I were going to choose a Biblical theme for a nursery, if it weren’t a rainbow, I think maybe I would choose Jesus as the Good shepherd and have soft, wooly lambs as toys or the theme of Jesus welcoming the children and put pictures of children from all over the world on the wallpaper border – but I digress…

The Noah's Ark theme is still very popular… but I have to wonder why so many people want this story to be part of their baby's earliest years. I say that because it is a difficult story. It is a story of destruction, a world-wide flood which wipes out everything except Noah and what's in the ark with him and his family: not the kind of bedtime story I would want to tell my preschooler. It's also difficult because many of us find it unbelievable.

We have no record of a world-wide flood and even if we did, it's hard to conceive of one boat, even one boat as big as five largest cruise ships in the world containing all the animals of the world: elephants and guinea pigs, rhinos and wildebeests. If you can imagine that, well, more power to you! If you have difficulty believing this story happened, that's OK because you are not alone and I am not asking you to. I'm asking us to look at this story today as a parable.

Jesus told parables to convey truth. The parables he told might have happened, a man going down from Jericho might have been waylaid by bandits and rescued by a Samaritan. It could have happened, but whether it really happened or not is not essential to our understanding of what it means to love our neighbors. The parable is true even if not historically factual.

So, let's begin to consider this story of Noah and the ark as a parable.

One popular understanding of this story is that God, lifeforce of the Universe, got so angry at the evil and violence in the world that God decided to end it all. When the story is told that way, the truth that is conveyed is that God is angry and that we better watch out in case God decides to do it again. At the very least, we should be like Noah so that God will rescue us for being good. That's one way you might read this story as a parable.

But I read it differently. I notice that God, lifeforce of the Universe, is depicted not so much as angry, as grieving. God is sorry that the creation has become corrupt and full of evil. God is disappointed, like a parent in pain and distressed by the choices her children are making. The decision to wipe out the earth is not made in anger, but in pain and regret.

I notice that after this decision is made, the focus is not on what was destroyed, but what was saved. Four times the story repeats the list of the kinds of animals and the people who boarded the ark and were preserved. I'm beginning to see this as a parable, not just of destruction, but of preservation.

When I was a teenager in Sunday School student and my teachers talked about the prophets, I learned that the prophets foretold the future. I associated them with fortune-tellers and palm readers.

But as I got older, and especially during my time at the Atlantic School of Theology, I realized that the prophets didn't have a crystal ball. They weren't predicting the future by some kind of magic. They were simply telling the people the logical outcome of their actions. Isaiah warned about false piety. He said that observing religious traditions without incorporating the values of that religion into your life would lead to a meaninglessness relationship with God. Amos warned about taking advantage of the poor and not providing social safety nets. He said that would destroy the peace.

With the prophets' warning in mind, I read this story as a parable of preservation, and I wonder: what is the logical outcome of the ways many humans live now? If we continue to destroy the environments where animals live, isn't the outcome that wild animals will be pushed into more contact with humans and that eventually there won't be any more animals? If we continue to pollute our rivers and oceans, isn't the outcome that we won't have water that is fit to drink? Today worldwide one person in five lacks access to safe drinking water and water pollution contributes to the deaths of 15 million children under age 5. What would the prophets say?

There are prophets, there are warnings, but like ancient Israel , we don't always attend to them.

In August, Pope Francis in a video released by the Vatican offered this prophetic wisdom: "If we took the planet's temperature, it will tell us that the Earth has a fever. And it is sick... We must commit ourselves to the protection of nature, changing our personal and community habits."

There's another thing I notice about Noah. It's not raining when he builds the ark and rounds up all the animals. With no clouds in the sky, somehow, he believes God and acts to preserve creation. Is there a hole in the ozone? Are the mercury levels rising in our lakes and rivers? Some scientists say yes. Some politicians say no. Most of us can't go and measure these things for ourselves. But following Noah's example, I'm inclined to err on the side of preservation.

There's an irony in this story. Genesis 6:5 says that the Lord decided to wipe out human beings from the earth because of their inclination was toward evil. But then after the flood, after Noah and his floating zoo were saved, God says “I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth;” Do you get that? Before the flood, God says that people have a tendency to sin, to be evil and that's the reason to wipe them out. But afterwards that same human tendency to evil is the reason God chooses never to destroy the earth.

God says, “Never again.” “No matter how bad people get, I'm not going to do this again.”

The human tendency for sin is unaffected by the flood.

People don't change. God does. God chooses an entirely different way to respond to human sin: God decides to stay with creation.

Walter Bruggeman, a world renown respected Old Testament scholar, says it this way, “[The flood] has effected an irreversible change in God. It is clear now that such a commitment to the creation on God's part is costly. The God-world relation is not simply that of strong God and needy world. Now it is a tortured relation between a grieved God and a resistant world.”

God chooses to suffer rather than to cause suffering. God chooses to be in covenant with us, with people and even with the animals, rather than to wipe us out, to punish us for evil. And that suffering love goes on through the generations until we see its ultimate expression in the cross.

If you're looking for a child-friendly parable of preservation, there is a lovely book on the bookshelf at Sackville United Church about Noah's wife by Rabbi Sandy Sasso called A Prayer for the Earth.

It's not a Bible story, but a Jewish midrash. Midrash is an imaginative opening, another way into a Bible stoy that helps us understand it in a new way.

Here's a midrash by Cherie Karo Schwartz.

Noah and his family stepped out from the ark into the first sunshine they had seen in forty days and stood upon land. When they saw the clean new Earth, Noah and his family wept for joy. God wept with them. God spoke to Noah and his family, saying:

“I am your God who brought you forth into this new land. Look around you and see the cleansed Earth. Listen and hear the sounds of animals and see the wind moving through the trees. The world is once again new. I know the world cannot always be this way: it does not seem to be human nature to always be good. But you and the generations to come after you can try.”

Noah was willing to do whatever God asked of him.

God continued, “I will make a covenant with you., the first of the world's new people. I will give you a sign that I am with you, one that will remind you that the world was created in peace and then re-created in peace, to remain so for all time. The sign will be a bow, that fills the heavens, an arc of light. But this will be a new light, one that shines through the waters of a flood or a rain of tears. This light will show all the colors of beauty that can fill your lives as you live in peace.”

Then God bent toward the Earth with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm and made an arc across the sky. And just where the hand of God had been, there was a sheltering band of every color spread out across the clear blue sky.

First, red for the blood that gives people life.

Then orange, for the flames of warmth that bring comfort, and for the fire of the soul.

Yellow, for the sun which helps all things grow, in the full light of day.

Green, for grass and trees, and the plant's new life.

Blue, for the sky and the sea, connecting heaven and earth.

Indigo, for the dawn and the dusk, at the beginning of the day and of the night.

And violet, for the deep night, when the world rests and renews itself.

Noah and his family gazed at the beautiful arc of light, watching the rainbow flow from one end to the other. They saw it touching near and far, bridging sky and ground.

And then Japheth, Noah's youngest son, asked his father, “We came full circle in our journey on the ark, from dry land to water and once again to dry land. Why doesn't the rainbow come full circle?”

Noah puzzled over his son's question. He looked up to study the arc of colors in the sky. Then he answered:

“Perhaps the rainbow is a sign. Not all things are yet full circles. God has begun the work by making the arc in the heavens. Making the arc come full circle here on earth will be our work.” And so it remains…” our work: amen.

Looking Ahead

Today I am in Sackville for the morning where Julia and I will gather for our weekly staff meeting after which I will spend some time preparing for the Atlantic School of Theology Senate meeting that I will attend on Wednesday. The afternoon will be spent preparing a liturgy for Sunday and then a pastoral visit to end the day.

Tuesday morning I will participate in the gathering of the Lectionary Study Group in the morning and attend to pastoral matters in Moncton the afternoon.

Wednesday morning will be devoted to the AST senate meeting with pastoral and hospital visits in the afternoon.

Thursday morning will see me in Moncton again for meetings and visits and then back in Sackville for a meeting in the evening.

Friday and Saturday will be days off and on Sunday May 4th I will be in Sackville offering leadership and Julia will be at Central United Church.

For the week of May 5th (Red Dress Day, the National Day of Awareness for MMIWG2S), I will be in Moncton on Monday and Sackville on Tuesday and from May 7, 8, and 9th I am in Halifax attending the AST Homecoming Event and taking part in lectures and workshops with Dianna Butler Bass.