November 9, 2025 · Rev. Derek van Gulden · Psalm 23; John 10:7-10
Rev. Derek van Gulden sets a plastic Jesus amid a beach's worth of plastic and calls our dependence on it a modern golden calf, harming the sea, the poorest neighborhoods and perhaps even the water in the baptismal font. Psalm 23 reminds us we're given all we need; a refillable water bottle is a place to start.
Transcript
People of God, would you join me in a moment of prayer? Gracious and holy God, this morning I ask you to move the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts by your love, and help each of us this day not to be the instrument of our own or anyone else's oppression, but to be an instrument of peace in every step, in every breath, in every moment of every day. Amen.
Speaking of peace, that beautiful song that the kids and all of you sang together. Every time I hear it, I'm reminded of Mother Teresa who said a smile is the start of peace. So thank you, all of you. We forget how powerful that can be.
You've heard two pieces of scripture. I want to add one more. I know it's a surprise for those of you who come regularly, I want to read to you from Paul's letters to the Philippians in Philippians four, verses ten through thirteen. Rejoice in God greatly, that now at last you have revived your concern for me. Indeed, you are concerned for me, but had no opportunity to show it. Not that I am referring to being in need, for I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is like to have little. And I know what it is like to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well fed, and of going hungry, of having plenty, and of being in need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me. In any case, it was kind of you to share my distress.
Beautiful words of Paul. Beautiful words that we had from the other pieces of scripture.
Today is another walk on our journey through creation justice. We've been doing that journey since September. And today I wanted to talk to you about Plastic Jesus. If anybody was lucky, this last Wednesday, there was an amazing documentary shown across the street called Plastic People talking about the same stuff. You may not be aware of it, but in this world as a whole, humanity has created an insatiable demand and need for plastic. And plastic is everywhere. They believe plastic is in us. It ends up in water. It ends up in water of all kinds, whether it's salt water or fresh water. Even before. Before it is formed, it is a hazard. Plastic comes from petroleum. We don't have any of those plants around here, but in other parts of the country they do. And in many places you have refineries and you have places where they create plastic together. The toxic fumes that come from that hurt those who live around them, which tends to be in this country. Those who have less than people of color, immigrants, people on the low end of what we would consider the economic system. The rate of cancer in those areas is much higher than it is around here.
It is a serious thing, and we can't talk about creation justice without talking about the thing that we all. Well, I can only speak for myself. Have created a new idol, for this has become our golden calf.
Like you heard from Exodus this morning, I went down to the beach just for a little bit. And this is what I found. And yes, plastic Jesus is in the middle of it. When I graduated from seminary, my mother gifted me with plastic Jesus. But all around him. And the thing that's most fascinating is, yeah, we have water bottles. We have the ever present Starbucks. We have what was a cake plate, I guess. We have Dunkin Donuts, but not just any Dunkin Donuts. This is their holiday cup for the holidays. And if you get Dunkin Donuts like many of us do, the different seasons have different cups. Somebody said to me recently, they were coming over here and they had Dunkin Donuts coffee cup with them, and they said, Reverend Derek, the early part of the holidays has started, but how many of us find these things around the house? Yes. Cleaning products, milk, juice, the ever present water bottles. But what fascinates me more is the small stuff that's up here, and I invite you to come up later and look at it.
Little teeny pieces of plastic found on the beach and they get smaller and smaller. This one's getting so small you can hardly see it. There's many of those. Think about the creatures that live in the sea. How much of this stuff do they ingest? A lot. If we had a plastic, Would you call them? Thing that holds eight cans together. Beer cans, soda cans, whatever those are left out there. Animals, fish, other things that crawl and creep have been known to get those stuck on them. And as they grow, it gets tighter and they can't get free.
Last week was it. Last week. I can't remember now. We had a baptism last week. Baptism and communion. So this. Is the bowl from our baptismal font, which is right here. The water that went in there came out of our tap. Randolph. I mean Rockport water. And as I walked the beach and as I read this week about our insatiable need for plastic. I got really sad thinking we blessed this young boy. Ten month old with water. But at the same time did we bless him with plastic. It breaks my heart thinking that something so dear and precious to us in our faith could be harmful.
Of course, then after that, in that same service, we had communion. Now, when I was growing up, communion, you either dunk the bread in the chalice and ate it, or you got a little glass. One of these. I can remember very clearly the church I was eventually ordained in in Vermont when I joined, they. Well, we need a young person to be a deacon, a young male. And I was like, no idea what that means, but I'll go. And it turns out that every communion Sunday, the deacons put everything together and help serve, but afterwards had to wash about three hundred and fifty little teeny glass things. And I remember the pastor saying, yeah, we can get plastic ones, but these are better until about two months later when an eighty four year old woman who worked on the same team I did for communion was walking over towards the sink with two racks of those glass little cups. She looked over both shoulders and then went oops and dropped them and they all shattered. Now we had many more, but that was probably a good hundred plus. We cleaned it up and the pastor looked and said, well, I guess that's a sign we have to go with the plastic ones, which the deacons had already bought. I'm not saying that was done on purpose, but thinking back to it, we thought, oh great, we don't have to spend all this time cleaning all these little things and thinking back on it now, what a tragedy.
During the pandemic, the use of plastics skyrocketed even higher than it's been because so much of what we did, we had to get delivered to us. And a lot of us in the Christian faith started getting pre-done communion plastic things where everybody got one. You peel the back off the top off. There was a little wafer and you peeled again. And under the wafer was juice. In the pandemic, when and this we started using when we first could come back in person. We did it for all the right reasons and we'd do it again because of that. But it increased the amount of plastic being used all over.
I have a friend that works in a grocery store in Vermont, and he said they noticed that the amount of bottled water people were buying was insane. And it wasn't because the storm was coming. It wasn't going to be hot. It was just what people were doing. I don't know if the difference between getting bottled water and water that comes out of the tap now at one point. Tap water has always been regulated bottled water for many years. It may still not be regulated. You don't know what you're getting in it. There are places that sell bottled water that they took out of the tap, but not around here. Mains all got the spring, so you get the fresh stuff.
But if you think about the way we live our lives. We have, in a sense, created an idol. An idol that is so hard to get away from. Because how many of us today will pick up or use a piece of plastic, and it goes way beyond what you find there. I think every one of us, we store food in it. We use stuff to wrap plastic to wrap around, and there are pieces of cling wrap up there. There's, of course, a big Ziploc freezer bag that I found buried. Don't worry if anything was organic in it, it's not there anymore.
But when we look to Scripture, when we look to our faith. And in those three stories. My favorite, of course, is Psalm twenty three. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. Just those words right there for me are enough. But when you go on and listen to the rest of it. God is anointing with oil, preparing a feast before me in the presence of my enemies. Every aspect of that, the whole Psalm that is so well known cries out, all you need. You're given.
So as we go through life, how can we start to make a change? One. We can switch from bottled water To one of these. Of course, I realize the top is plastic, but it's a start. How many people have something like this? They're great. Somehow I have four one, one, one for every season or for hiking or whatnot. That's a good place to start.
Another place in churches. And please forgive me, deacons. We could buy the glass ones of these again. Yes. It will not hurt us. We have two ways of cleaning them. We don't need a little brush. We have a three sink system and we have a dishwasher. That's a start. The other way is starting to use things other than plastic cups and plates, which I think we already stopped using. Is that correct? We got rid of those a couple of years ago, which is great.
But in our own lives. Look at the stuff you use at home every day. Look at the stuff you use at work or anywhere. Think about how could I use something different? I don't know if plastic goes into the making of ribbon just because the season's coming up where lots of ribbon is used. No clue. But think about it. My granddaughter has taught me. Grandpa, you can take a paper bag and you can use it as wrapping paper. And then you can draw things on it. And you can use twine to wrap it in. Now, I don't know what twine is made of. Years ago, rope was made of hemp. But for us to just be aware. How to change from plastic. Being an idol that brings so much destruction to the created world and to all creation, including humanity.
We have to start somewhere. Like Mother Teresa says, a simple smile is a start of peace. Simply buying a water bottle that's not made of plastic and maybe doesn't have a plastic top. Maybe a way to start. Maybe this Christmas you buy people you know and don't think they have one of these. Buy them one. It doesn't have to say L.L. Bean's on it, but this was a birthday gift to me. And they're great places to put plastic stickers. So. If you like plastic stickers on your water bottles, I don't work for them. I'm not advertising them. But life is good. Has a big one. No plastic and all the stickers that they make about life as good as all over it. But it's not plastic.
May we be so blessed to find a way to overcome our insatiable need for plastic. And now I would like to ask you in your bulletin, or you were handed out a piece of paper like this. It's a call and response prayer involving our use of plastic. Do people have it? So you all will read the parts that are bolded. [the congregation reads a call-and-response prayer about plastic pollution, by Jessica Bwali of Tearfund]