A special sermon for your 2016 Earth Sunday service

Many thanks to Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell, Minister Emerita, First Unitarian Portland, OR for creating a special Earth Day sermon on climate justice to share with UUs across the denomination. Her sermon – “The Moral Demands of Climate Change” – is a clarion call to action.

Download the sermon as a PDF or as a Word doc (allows you to add other worship elements and/or resize as a pulpit copy).

Since her retirement from the ministry in 2009, Marilyn continues to speak and write and has focused her energies on climate change justice issues. These two recent Huffington Post articles are particularly informative: “Civic Disobedience and Climate Change” and “Top Ten Reasons We Don’t Talk About Climate Change.”

Marilyn consistently brings a moral voice to many public hearings, protests, and actions that oppose new fossil fuel infrastructure in the Pacific Northwest. During a recent Lobby Day during the 2016 Oregon legislative session, she spoke on the “Theology of Climate Change” at the Healthy Climate Prayer into Action Gathering sponsored by Oregon Interfaith Power and Light. In the video, she echoes some of the themes in her Earth Day sermon.

Marilyn is a long-time friend of UU Ministry for Earth and contributed two sermons to UUMFE’s 2004 worship resource, Honoring Earth*. A revisit to those sermons revealed their timelessness. “Making the Earth Sacred Again” is her self-avowed very first environmentally focused sermon, written in 1999. It is still as fresh as the day it was written. In “The Living Water” from 2000, she accurately presages our current water troubles, including poisoned waters as in Flint, MI.

*Honoring Earth contains a wealth of environmental and justice oriented worship resources including (1) opening/closing words and chalice lightings; (2) prayers and meditations; (3) drum, dance, chant, and song; (4) readings; (5) sermons; (6) worship service sampler; (7) celebrations and rituals; and (8) quotations. This timeless resource is available for download through UUMFE’s website store.