(704) 599-9810 | Worship Sundays @ 10:55 a.m.
(704) 599-9810 | Worship Sundays @ 10:55 a.m.
At Holy Covenant UCC, we celebrate Earth Sunday by affirming our call to protect creation, seek environmental justice, and honor the sacredness of our planet.
Earth Day Sunday
Gospel Lesson: Mark 5:21 – 34
In a sermon woven with urgency, tenderness, and sacred challenge, Pastor Chris invited Holy Covenant into a moment of deep reflection and bold action. Preaching from Mark 5:21–34—the story of the woman who, after years of suffering, reached out and touched the cloak of Jesus—Pastor Chris drew a profound parallel between her long, unseen pain and the woundedness of our Earth.
The woman’s faith, persistent and aching, stirred Jesus to a radical act of unselfish love. He did not withhold healing. He did not count the cost. He offered wholeness freely, even when tradition and the powers of the day would have condemned her. So too, Pastor Chris urged, must we reach out—not only in desperate hope but in determined action—to heal the bleeding Earth.
He warned that healing will not come without sacrifice. We must lay down the comforts and conveniences that are harming creation. As an example, he called attention to the alarming North Carolina Senate Bill 261, which threatens to unravel environmental protections under the guise of “regulatory reform.” If we are serious about offering healing to the Earth, we must also be serious about resisting the forces that continue to wound it.
Pastor Chris called each listener to be a living vessel of Earth’s healing—not in passivity, but in active, loving defiance against harm, rooted in the radical compassion of Christ.
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