Sermon for the First Sunday after the Epiphany: The Baptism of Our Lord
January 12, 2025
Prepared by the Rev. Dr. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas for Preaching for God’s World
I can’t think of a better day than today to speak about our Christian calling to care for God’s Creation. Today, on the First Sunday after the Epiphany, we hear, as we always do, the story of Jesus’ baptism. It’s one of the few events in Jesus’ life that is recorded in all four Gospels. Jesus is plunged by John the Baptist into the waters of the Jordan River. When Jesus emerges from its depths, the heavens are opened, the Spirit of God descends on him as gently as a dove, and a voice says: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased” (Luke 3:22).
We return to this story year after year because Jesus’s baptism is one of the basic stories that reveals who he is. It’s also a foundational story of our life in Christ, a story that reveals who we are, too. Most of us probably can’t remember our baptism and we may not give our baptism much thought. Yet today’s Gospel invites us to explore the power of Jesus’ baptism, and of ours. We live in challenging times, and I wonder if tapping into the power of our baptism can help us to live with clarity, compassion, and moral courage.
Before I reflect on baptism, I’d like to say a few words about the challenges that confront us. Just to look squarely at those challenges without tuning out or turning away is an act of courage. It takes courage to see clearly what human beings are doing to our precious planet. It takes courage to hold a steady gaze and to witness the melting glaciers and bleaching coral reefs, the withered fields and bone-dry reservoirs, the flash floods and massive downpours, the record waves of heat. It takes courage not to look away but to hold a steady gaze as climate change makes sea levels rise and islands disappear, as oceans grow acidic and full of plastic, and as vast populations of our fellow creatures disappear.1
Last October, a group of top scientists published the 2024 State of the Climate report.2 They were clear about the predicament in which we find ourselves. They wrote, “We are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster. This is a global emergency beyond any doubt. Much of the very fabric of life on Earth is imperiled.” They went on to say that “For half a century, global warming has been correctly predicted even before it was observed – and not only by independent academic scientists but also by fossil fuel companies. Despite these warnings, we are still moving in the wrong direction; fossil fuel emissions have increased to an all-time high, we are failing to avoid serious impacts, and we are witnessing the grim reality of the forecasts as climate impacts escalate, bringing forth scenes of unprecedented disasters around the world and human and nonhuman suffering.”
This is the world in which we live today, a world created and cherished by God, yet reeling from the heavy burden of human activities. So, as we return to the story of Jesus’ baptism, I consider it with a deep sense of seriousness and curiosity. Is it possible that in our baptism we’ve been given more power than we know? Is it possible that in this perilous and precarious time, we can draw fresh strength from our baptism? Is it possible that in our baptism God has given us great riches – riches that can give us strength to rise to the occasion and to act with compassion, clarity, and courage?
Image by falco from Pixabay
I’d like to name three of the riches that we receive in baptism. Maybe you can think of others – but here’s what I’ve got so far.
First, baptism gives us the power to live in love, to be rooted in love, to belong to a love that will never let us go. When we are baptized into Jesus Christ, we are baptized into the same compassion that led Jesus to step into the waters of the Jordan River and to be baptized by John. If you think about it, you’ll notice that Jesus didn’t need to be baptized. John the Baptist was preaching repentance from sin, but Jesus had no sin. He had nothing to repent, nothing to confess. He could have skipped the baptism and held himself separate from everyone else. He could have kept his distance and simply watched the masses of people crowding down to the river to confess their sins and receive forgiveness. And yet – he took the plunge. In an act of radical solidarity with all humankind, he stepped into the river and claimed the truth of interconnectedness.
Jesus chose to identify with all human beings, to identify with you, to identify with me. And not only with human beings but with the whole of God’s Creation. As John the Baptist said, those who are baptized into Christ are baptized “with the Holy Spirit and fire” (Luke 3:16). And you know what? The fire of God’s love keeps burning away all the chaff (Luke 3:17). Quickly or slowly, it burns away everything in us that is not love, opening our eyes so that we come to see the world as God sees it: as precious, sacred, and filled with God’s presence. The divine love into which we were plunged in baptism extends not only to us, and not only to human beings, but also to every sparrow and whale, every earthworm and orca, every maple tree and mountain.
So, baptism into Christ isn’t about joining a club or belonging to a tribe. It isn’t about affiliating with people who look like us or think like us. Baptism into Christ is a radical act of humility and compassion that joins us to the One who identifies with every human being and with the whole community of Creation. It joins us to a love that will never let us go.
Here’s a second gift of baptism: it puts our death behind us. In baptism, we are immersed in the waters of death. We have died in Christ; we have died with Christ. In a sense, our death has already taken place. It’s done. It’s over with. In baptism, we have died and been buried with Christ, and through the power of his resurrection, we are raised, here and now, to live with him. What this means is that we can acknowledge and face bad news without being overwhelmed by fear. The water we splash on a child at the baptismal font may seem inconsequential, but it’s a sign that we have nothing to fear from the death of the body. In fact, in the early centuries of the Church, Christians were called “those who have no fear of death.”3 To whatever extent we understand and trust that our death is behind us, we are set free from anguish and anxiety. We are set free to love without grasping, without possessiveness, without holding back.
And here is gift number three: baptized into a love that extends through all Creation and knows that life and not death will have the last word, we arise as healers and justice-seekers, as prophets and activists, as people unafraid to confront the powers-that-be. That’s what the early Church was known for. Remember the complaints that were lodged against the first followers of Jesus? They were charged with “turning the world upside down” and “acting contrary to the decrees of the emperor, saying that there is another king named Jesus” (Acts 17:6-7). As Christians we obey a higher authority. We refuse to settle for a killing status quo.
So – watch out, world! Wherever Christians are found, you will find people working – sometimes in difficult circumstances and against terrible odds – to bear witness to the love that has set us free. There are countless ways we do this, beginning with listening to the voices of Indigenous peoples, racial minorities, and the poor – the communities that are hurt first and worst by a changing climate. Some of us will resolve to ease back from a high-consuming lifestyle and begin living a more climate-friendly life, to cut back strongly on our use of fossil fuels, to switch our households to clean sources of energy, to eat less meat and to shift to a plant-based diet. Some of us will plant community gardens and pollinator gardens and find ways to support local land trusts that protect forests and farmland. Some of us will push big banks to quit funding fossil fuel expansion. Some of us will press elected officials to advocate for strong climate legislation, renewable energy, and good, “green” jobs. When speaking inside the halls of power isn’t enough, some of us will join the growing numbers of faith-filled people who bring our message to the streets, carrying out disruptive, peaceful civil disobedience and putting our bodies on the line.
Baptism gives us more power than we know – the power to attune ourselves day by day to the divine Love that created, redeemed, and sustains the whole Creation. If ever there were a time to bear witness to our faith and to the power of our baptism, now would be the time. If ever there were a time to hold fast to our vision of a world in which human beings live in right relationship with each other and with all our fellow creatures, now would be the time. Now is the time to take hold of the prophetic power of our baptism and to confront the forces within us and around us that are unraveling life on Earth.
How will you live out your baptism in the year ahead? How is God calling you to tap into the power that is yours in Christ?
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1. This paragraph is from Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, “Spiritual Practice and Sacred Activism in a Climate Emergency,” published in Buddhist Christian Studies, https://revivingcreation.org/spiritual-practice-and-sacred-activism-in-a-climate-emergency/
2. William J. Ripple et al, “The 2024 state of the climate report: Perilous times on planet Earth,” BioScience, Volume 74, Issue 12, December 2024, pp. 812–824.
3. Olivier Clement, The Roots of Christian Mysticism (first published in French as Sources, Paris: Editions Stock, 1982; first published in English, London: New City, 1993), p. 107.
This sermon is published here at Preaching for God’s World.
This morning, the day before the 2024 election, I awoke feeling immobile, almost paralyzed. It wasn’t fight or flight today – it was deer-in-headlights freeze. Curious, I listened for words that might arise from within. I heard “petty,” the tempting tug toward avoidance and distraction. I also heard “immensity.” The immense waves into which our country has been plunged are too vast to be seen clearly. Full understanding will come later.
Image by pinkzebra from Pixabay
Meanwhile, politicians, pundits, and opinion-purveyors rush to explain what’s going on and what’s likely to happen next. How did our country reach this degree of internal division and distrust? How much chaos and violence will erupt in the days ahead? To what extent will brutality and cruelty become official policy? How many lies will be spoken and driven like nails into a crucified Earth? Drill, drill, drill. Climate change is a hoax. I haven’t even mentioned the looming threats to the separation of church and state or to democratic norms, national security, immigrants, women, racial minorities, those who are gender nonconforming, or the poor.
With so much hanging in the balance, we search for signs in polls, focus groups, and interviews. I empathize with the ancients who scanned for messages in tea leaves and stars. Until the polls close, some of us will valiantly knock on doors, join phone banks, or plead for last-minute funds. Yet even after all the votes have been cast, the election won’t be over. We await the unspooling of conspiracy theories, along with claims of election fraud and stealing. Our nerves are taut. We brace ourselves. We try to breathe.
I turn to the poets. In “The Second Coming,” written shortly after World War I, Yeats gives us words to express our dread as we shiver at the brink of a harrowing election. The first stanza reads like a news report from the AP wire. It rings true. Whoever wins, contests, or unjustly seizes the election, we recognize that things are falling apart. The center does not hold.
I walk with the narrator into the second stanza, yearning with him for breakthrough and transformation, for the release of justice and mercy, for the triumph of goodness and truth. Indeed, I long with the narrator for Christ’s Second Coming. But no – what the poet sees emerging from the collective unconscious, from the Spiritus Mundi, is something else entirely: not God’s reign of mercy, love, and truth, but a terrifying Beast with vacant, pitiless eyes, slouching towards Bethlehem to be born. Resistance is futile – the desert birds may be “indignant,” but they are merely “shadows” that “reel” helplessly against the Beast’s inexorable approach.
I sit for hours with the poem, which means sitting with the possibility that the human experiment has failed. Have we indeed lost forever any sensitive attunement between what is human and what is wild, between falconer and falcon? Is everything flying apart and breaking down? Was human innocence nothing more than a “ceremony,” a superficial performance now drowned once and for all by the bloody reality of our lust for violence and power? Are we in the process of experiencing what some students of history consider the collapse of our civilization?
Just as I turn to the poets, so, also, I turn to Scripture. Less than four weeks from now, on the First Sunday of Advent, Christians will hear Jesus speak about his second coming – that last, great day sometime in the future when everything will be gathered up in love, when all that is broken will be healed, all that is estranged will be reconciled and forgiven, and the Lord of life will return at last to reign in glory.
This is the Second Coming that Yeats called into searing question even before human beings carried out and endured the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust, even before all the other instances of genocide and injustice enacted in the hundred-plus years that have passed since Yeats wrote this masterpiece of a poem. Beset by despair, do we sense already the hot breath of the Beast against our neck?
Yet to followers of Jesus, the promised Second Coming does not overlook or minimize the reality of social and ecological breakdown caused either by random forces or by human ignorance, malice, or greed. Biblical texts about the Second Coming sound a tragic note, for Jesus is bracingly realistic about the human condition. In several Gospel passages he foretells “wars and rumors of wars” (Mark 13:7); in mythic terms he speaks of earthquakes, famines, and persecution; he describes “distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken” (Luke 21:25-26).
As we head to Election Day and beyond, I hear three messages in passages about the Second Coming that give me strength. The first is: Don’t be surprised by suffering. Jesus warned of social breakdown and conflict. He anticipated natural and even cosmic disruption. Don’t be surprised by suffering, these texts remind us. Don’t take your suffering or the world’s suffering to mean that God is powerless, doesn’t care, or has abandoned us. Everything we experience is held within the loving gaze – indeed, within the embrace – of a just and merciful God. So, don’t be surprised.
A second message: Don’t be afraid. Although many people “will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world,” we should take heart. “Now when these things begin to take place,” says Jesus, “stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near” (Luke 21:28). “Stand up!” he says. “Raise your heads!” What bracing words to hear when we may feel like curling up in a ball or ducking our head under a pillow! It’s easy to feel hopeless about ecological collapse and climate change, easy to feel overwhelmed amidst a society being rent asunder. What can I possibly do? We may say to ourselves. What difference can I possibly make? But here comes Jesus, telling us to stand up and not be afraid. Our redemption is drawing near. He is very close (Luke 21:27).
And here comes message number three: Don’t fall asleep. Stay awake, says Jesus. “Be alert at all times” (Luke 21:36). Look for the small but telling signs that God is among us, bringing forth something new. Just as the branch of a fig tree becomes tender and puts forth its first, soft leaves, assuring us that summer’s abundance is near, so Jesus urges us to notice that even amidst chaos, violence, and endings, God’s kingdom (kindom) is drawing near. Even as some things collapse and fall away, something beautiful and new is being born.
As I hear it, Jesus is calling us to stand up and take part in that birth – the birth of a new community, the birth of a new society that lives more lightly on God’s good Earth and treats human beings and our fellow creatures with reverence, compassion, and respect. Here we are, in this perilous time, being called to stand up, raise our heads, and bear witness in word and deed to God’s never-failing love, which embraces the whole creation.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Sermon for the Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 19B)
September 15, 2024
Delivered by the Rev. Dr. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas at the closing Eucharist for “Spiritual Resilience in Days of Trouble,” a conference and retreat for Provinces IV & V, held in Nazareth, KY
Isaiah 35:1-7, 10Proverbs 1:20-33Psalm 19Mark 8:27-38
Who are you? The ecological self
We’ve spent the last few days praying and reflecting on how God speaks to us in and through the natural world. On this Sunday morning in the very center of Creation Season, I wonder which of today’s readings most quicken your heart.
Maybe it’s the opening Song of Praise from Isaiah, where the prophet holds up a vision of the wilderness rejoicing and the dry land bursting into life, bursting into song. The God we love promises to come in glory, and although all of us shiver in fear sometimes when we consider what lies ahead as the Earth continues to warm and as eco-systems tremble on the brink of collapse, the poetry of Isaiah dares to set before us a future shaped by hope: we place our trust in a God who is with us and who comes to heal and save not only human communities but also the whole of God’s Creation. Because we are eager to align our actions with that longed-for future, we join the prophet in saying, “Strengthen the weary hands, and make firm the feeble knees… Be strong, do not fear!” Our liberating, life-giving God is among us and will give us strength day by day to serve the divine love that encompasses every person, every creature, every leaf and tree, every grain of sand. Like all the prophets, Isaiah reminds us that God planted within us an unshakable longing for justice, for kindness, for the Earth to be filled with the glory of God as the waters cover the sea (Habakkuk 2:14). That’s the future the prophets hope for, and when that God-fueled hope awakens within us, we feel God’s energy. We are pulled off the sidelines and into the holy struggle to save everything we can as we work to build the more beautiful world that we long for.
The low wall of a gazebo served as our altar. During the service we gazed at the trees and felt the breeze.Or maybe it’s the passage from Proverbs that speaks to you, with its poignant image of divine Wisdom as a woman wandering the streets and public squares. She is crying out in search of someone who will listen to her counsel. She is warning that panic and anguish will be upon us if the wayward and the complacent refuse to listen, refuse to change course (Proverbs 1:20-33). I’m guessing that today’s prophets feel a lot like that – I know I sure do, and maybe you do, too – for scientists tell us that we have only a short span of time in which to change direction, to make a swift and just transition to clean renewable energy like sun and wind, and to avert the most catastrophic level of climate change. The reading from Proverbs is a piercing call to repentance for the sake of God’s Creation.
Or maybe you want to linger on Psalm 19, with its breathtaking opening line: “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows [God’s] handiwork.” Those words are uttered by someone whose eyes are open to the presence of God in the living world, and we know what that’s like: we’ve spent time reflecting on how we meet the living Christ not only in the pages of Scripture, but also in the natural world. We’ve felt the quiet joy that can come upon us as we roam the gardens and trails of this place, as we listen for God in the wind and the birds, as we lift our eyes to gaze at an expanse of trees or look down to examine the smallest twig. And I haven’t even mentioned the moon and the bats and the fire! Psalm 19 reminds us that the crucified and risen Christ is at every moment giving himself to us in and as the living world around us.
All these passages reward contemplation, but it’s the Gospel passage that caught my attention. It begins with Jesus asking his disciples an easy question, “Who do people say that I am?” The answers come quickly – oh, some say you’re John the Baptist or Elijah or one of the prophets. Then Jesus sharpens the question: “But who do you say that I am?” There’s nothing like a good question to put us on the spot and shake us awake! Peter, like a good student, supplies what is presumably the correct answer: “You are the Messiah.” Yet it quickly becomes clear that Peter has no idea what that means. He doesn’t understand that Jesus is a Messiah who freely shares in our suffering and death, who endures humiliation and rejection, and who calls us to take up our cross and follow.
My point is that Jesus’ question, “Who do you say that I am?” can’t be answered glibly. We’re all on a journey to discovering who Jesus really is, who God really it. Even a supposedly “correct” answer must be held lightly and patiently re-examined. Some questions are best kept open and lived into. As poet Rainer Maria Rilke famously advised in his Letters to a Young Poet, “Try to love the questions themselves… The point is, to live everything. Live the questions now.”1
That reminds me of how Francis of Assisi prayed. He spent most of his life outdoors, and I learned somewhere that when he prayed, he simply opened himself to God’s presence and contemplated two questions, “Who are you? And who am I?” Holding those questions changed him: he began to experience himself as interpenetrated with the rest of God’s Creation, so that eventually he could speak of Brother Sun, Sister Moon, Brother Wind and Air, Sister Water, Brother Fire, Sister Earth, our Mother. Francis came to experience himself as kin with everything – he didn’t imagine that human beings were separate from the rest of the world that God created, much less that humans were “above” or “better than” the other creatures that God cherishes, or that we had any right to dominate or oppress them.
We began the retreat with a contemplative meditation on weeds, leaves, and wild flowers.So, let’s do what Francis did – let’s ask Jesus the same question that he asks us, “Jesus, who do you say that I am? Who am I, in your eyes?” We could explore who we are by considering passages from Scripture, but instead I suggest we take a moment to pray with a guided meditation from Rooted and Rising.2 Who are you? That’s a great question to ask as we close out this retreat.
If you like, feel free to close your eyes. I invite you to bring awareness to your body and to notice that as you breathe in, you’re taking in oxygen, which is released by trees and all green-growing things. As you breathe out, you exhale carbon dioxide, which in turn is being taken up by trees. Breath by breath, you are exchanging the elements of life with plants. . . As you follow your breath, let yourself feel your connection to the air, and to trees, the grass, and everything green.Now let yourself feel the weight of your body in the chair…. Notice your connection to the earth. You are as solid as the earth, and made from the same atoms of carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and hydrogen that make up the earth. To the earth, in the end, your body will return – earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. . . As you feel the weight of your body in the chair, feel your kinship with the earth.Now let yourself sense the inner motions within your body…. Maybe you’re aware of gurgling in your belly or the throb of your beating heart. Maybe you sense the circulation of blood as it moves through your body. Most of your bodyweight comes from water, just as most of our planet’s surface is made of water. Your blood is mostly water, and the saltwater content of your blood’s plasma is the same as the saltwater content of the sea. It’s as if within your body you were carrying rivers, lakes, and the ocean. Let yourself savor your body’s kinship with all fresh waters and with the sea.Now scan your body. Get a sense of your body as a whole. We’ve considered how your breathing connects you to the air and to plants. . . how you’re your body connects you to the earth. . . how the waters inside your body connect you to the planet’s waters and seas. . . Now consider this: all the elements that make up your body come from stars that exploded millions of years ago. . . Your body is made of the same elements – the carbon and nitrogen – that circulated through all the creatures that have ever lived, far into the distant past, and that will circulate through any beings that inhabit the world far into the distant future.Our bodies connect us to the air and to plants, to the earth, to waters and the sea, to the animals, and to the stars. Let yourself appreciate the goodness of the amazing body that God has given you and feel your kinship with the whole creation. Amen.
Thanks for sharing in this. Did you feel it? Did you glimpse your intimate connection to our brother-sister beings and to the Source of life itself? Joanna Macy calls this the “ecological self,”3 the self with a wide-open identity who knows we are part of the living body of Earth and of all that is. Joanna Macy may be Buddhist, but her deep insight into the nature of things shouldn’t surprise Christians. If we asked Jesus, “Who do you say that I am?”, I wonder if he’d say: “You are members of my body, you are members of each other, you are beloved members of the living world that I create, redeem, and sustain. You are never separated from me.”
That’s why he gave us the sacrament of Holy Communion, a core practice to sustain us and to strengthen our resilience and resolve to take bold climate action and join in the great work of building Beloved Community and healing God’s Creation. In a few moments, we will gather at this holy table so that everything in and around us can be lifted up and blessed – not only the bread and the wine, but also we ourselves and the whole creation. When the celebrant lifts up the bread and wine, all of Creation is lifted up. When the celebrant blesses the bread and wine, all of Creation is blessed. Christ meets us in the bread and wine, and once again God gives God’s self to us through the natural world. When we stretch out our hands to receive the bread, we take in what is natural and we take in Christ.
In the strength of the blessed and broken bread and of the blessed and poured-out wine, we dare to hope that we humans will respond with grateful hearts and come to treat the living world not as an object to exploit, but as a gift to receive, as something perishable and precious, utterly loved by God. We dare to hope that we will remember who we are and become at last who we were meant to be, a blessing on the earth.
After the post-communion prayer, we will hold a simple ceremony of commissioning as we bless each other on our way.
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1. Rainer Maria Rilke, “I want to beg you… to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer,” in Letters to a Young Poet, revised, transl. M.D. Herter Norton (NY: WW Norton & Company, 1934, 1962, 1954), 34-35.
2. Leah Schade and Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, ed., “Kinship with Creation,” Rooted and Rising: Voices of Courage in a ClimateCrisis (Rowman and Littlefield, 2019), 76-77.
3. Joanna Macy, World as Lover, World as Self, foreword by Thich Nhat Hanh (Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 1991) and Joanna Macy & Chris Johnstone, Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in without Going Crazy (Novato, CA: New World Library, 2012). See also the work of Thomas Berry, Mary Evelyn Tucker, and Brian Swimme.
Imagine watching a wave of commitment to honor God’s Creation sweep across The Episcopal Church. It would be a thrill, right? That’s what it’s like for me, anyway, as I note that fifty dioceses – almost half the dioceses in our Church – have now authorized the 2024 edition of Season of Creation: A Celebration Guide for Episcopal Parishes.
Dioceses that authorized the 2024 Season of Creation worship guide as of August 29, 2024. Graphic by John Buterbaugh from the Diocese of Central New York.
On June 20, when the worship guide was officially released, Episcopal News Service reported that 42 dioceses had approved it for use during this year’s Season of Creation (Sept. 1-Oct. 4). Over the summer, eight more dioceses authorized it, too:
The Rt. Rev. Jennifer Reddall, Diocese of Arizona
The Rt. Rev. Paula E. Clark, Diocese of Chicago
The Rt. Rev. Robert Skirving, Diocese of East Carolina
The Rt. Rev. John H. Taylor, Diocese of Los Angeles
The Rt. Rev. Marty Stebbins, Diocese of Montana
The Rt. Rev. Barry L. Beisner, Missionary Diocese of Navajoland
The Rt. Rev. Dr. Jonathan H. Folts, Diocese of South Dakota
The Rt. Rev. Dr. Shannon MacVean-Brown, Diocese of Vermont
It’s been a joy to see how an effort I began two years ago with my gifted colleague the Rev. John Elliott Lein has borne fruit! The first version (2022) of our worship guide was authorized by a handful of dioceses; last year’s version (2023) was endorsed by 28 dioceses; this year, a full 50 dioceses have stepped forward.
“Earth Icon” is based on Andrei Rublev’s icon, “The Trinity” (also known as “The Hospitality of Abraham”). Watercolor and gold leaf, copyright 2022 Edith Adams Allison. Used with permission.
Not only that – delegates at the Episcopal Church’s 81st General Convention voted this summer to pass a resolution that supports the adoption of an ecumenical Feast Day of Creation in our liturgical calendar. This resolution sprang from the ecumenical summit held in Assisi last spring, where, as part of the Anglican delegation, I learned about this mighty effort to incorporate an ecumenical Feast of Creation into the lectionary of Western Churches. I helped to draft the resolution, and I live in hope that progress on its fulfillment will be announced next year, when Churches around the world mark the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE.
In this perilous era of climbing heat, massive floods, and widespread drought, when the web of life is faltering and Americans are locked in a razor-thin contest between Presidential candidates with wildly diverging views on climate change, environmental justice, and what it means to be a caring, responsible human being, I give thanks that our Church is proclaiming with fresh energy the fullness of our salvation in Christ, which includes God’s whole Creation.
May our prayers for Earth and all her communities be strong, and may they ignite resolute, effective, concerted action – including voting – to protect and heal the world that God entrusted to our care.
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The new 2024 Liturgical Guide may be reviewed and downloaded here: https://newcreationliturgies.org/season. Bishops may authorize the materials all the way to Sept. 1. The names of endorsing dioceses listed on the pdf file will be updated until Sept. 1.
To authorize, contact season@newcreationliturgies.org.
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When does a funeral become an act of resistance? When we come together to mourn everything we’ve lost because of a rapidly changing climate. When we dare to disclose how much sorrow and dread we feel every day as we watch the living world being destroyed. When we use the power of ritual to pull us out of fear and isolation into solidarity, courage, and the resolve to act. When our broken hearts impel us not only to grieve in private but also to protest in public.
Photo credit: Ken Schles
On July 8, two hundred people gathered on a sultry summer morning at the Manhattan headquarters of Citigroup, the largest funder of fossil fuel expansion to the tune of $396 billion in the last eight years alone. Our memorial service was organized by ThirdAct.org and one of a series of nonviolent direct actions being carried out this summer to protest Wall Street’s ongoing financing of climate chaos.
This was perhaps the most moving and memorable climate protest I’ve ever attended or helped to lead. Unlike the multitude of climate rallies whose mood is almost predictably defiant, this one was somber. After listening to speakers, of which I was one, we walked in slow procession around the massive, glass-fronted headquarters of Citigroup, led by a bagpiper. The stream of mourners included eight people dressed in sackcloth and ashes, walking single file and wearing signs such as “Ocean acidification,” “Hurricanes,” “Heat domes,” “Bleached coral.” When we reached the area in front of the building, mourners transformed the plaza into a cemetery, setting up tombstones that named individuals killed by heat and other climate stressors. Many people lay down as if dead, while others outlined their bodies in chalk: this wasn’t just a mass death, this was a crime scene. Instead of exchanging familiar chants (What do we want? Climate justice! When do we want it? Now!), we kept silence and listened to bagpipes and to the wail of a single voice, a woman’s anguished keening – “Can you hear the Earth? She is crying. She is dying.”
When the gong was sounded three times, the people risking arrest crowded the doors of Citibank, lying down or locking arms. Forty-six people, including Bill McKibben, were arrested, adding to the hundreds already arrested this summer in a variety of direct actions that, whether playful or solemn, family-friendly or intense, aim to disrupt and defy the ongoing corporate greed that drives fossil fuel expansion.
What strikes me now, looking back, is that actions like these remind me how to live well in a perilous time: we find friends, we link arms, we open our hearts, we stand with the trees, we stand with the suffering, we stand with the poor, we pray for the dead, and, yes, we fight like hell for the living.
I was the closing speaker before the procession began. Here is what I said:
I know it’s hot – but let’s pause for a moment to appreciate the living world around us, to notice the gift of sun and sky overheard, to notice the trees and green-growing things which give us oxygen that fills our lungs and with whom we exchange the elements of life as we breathe in and out. Let’s notice the good Earth beneath our feet, supporting our every step.
We are here today to stand up for life and we are not alone. We breathe and speak and march in the company – and with the support – of all the creatures and elements with whom we share this planet. We affirm our kinship with them, our interdependence, our mutual belonging.
With every religious tradition and with people of faith and good will everywhere, we renew our insistence that the Earth is holy and that it was given to us to cherish and protect, not to destroy.
Some of us are here because we’re frightened. Big banks like Citibank which finance fossil fuels and fossil fuel expansion are pushing the planet to record levels of heat, causing massive droughts, floods, monster hurricanes, wildfires. It is frighteningly clear that unless we change course fast, we won’t be able to leave our children and our children’s children a habitable world.
Some of us are here because we’re sad. Big banks like Citibank which fund fossil fuels are unraveling the web of life before our eyes, and we weep to acknowledge what we have lost and may soon lose, from coral reefs and glaciers to predictable seasons and moderate weather.
Some of us are here because we’re angry. We’re morally outraged when big banks like Citibank continue to pour money into building new pipelines and new fracking wells, although climate scientists around the world and organizations like the International Energy Agency and the United Nations have called for an end to any fossil fuel expansion. We’re outraged when big banks like Citibank continue to exploit and pollute frontline communities and to devastate the lives of Brown, Black, and Indigenous people.
Fear, sorrow, anger may have brought us here. But above all, we’re here because we love. We love this beautiful Earth. We love its creatures. We love each other. We love our children. The spirit of love that connects us to each other and to the land compels us to call upon Citibank: Quit propping up fossil fuels! Quit funding climate chaos! Invest instead in clean energy, and climate resilience, and healthy communities!
I was a parish priest for 25 years, and I’ve officiated at many funerals. I’ve prayed over, and laid to rest, the bodies of young and old. Today we’re going to participate in a funeral for the world we love. That breaks my heart. And it puts steel in my spine. I stand with you to proclaim that life, not death, will have the last word – to proclaim that love, not hatred or indifference, will have the last word. I stand with you to say that together we will fight for a better future.
We gather not only with fear, sorrow, and anger, but also with the fierceness of love, as we demand that Citibank quit funding dirty oil, gas, and coal, and turn with us toward life.
People of faith and good will cry out: Let it be known. Let it be known. The Earth is sacred, and we won’t stand idly by and let it be destroyed.
ThirdAct.org, the community of climate and democracy activists over 60 that was founded by Bill McKibben, was the lead organizer of this event and produced an excellent two-minute video.
Rev. Margaret is quoted in Common Dreams, “Elders Arrested Protesting Citibank Funding of Planet’s Destruction” (July 8, 2024), saying: “Citibank is destroying the world that God loved into being and entrusted to our care. At this decisive moment in history, we teeter on the brink of climate chaos. Now is the time for Citibank to choose life and to stop financing fossil fuels.” The article includes photos and a good short video.
To learn about Summer of Heat on Wall Street, visit Summerofheat.org. #Summerofheat
Rev. Margaret is quoted in Common Dreams, “Elders Arrested Protesting Citibank Funding of Planet’s Destruction” (July 8, 2024), saying: “Citibank is destroying the world that God loved into being and entrusted to our care. At this decisive moment in history, we teeter on the brink of climate chaos. Now is the time for Citibank to choose life and to stop financing fossil fuels.” The article includes photos and a good short video. Third Act produced a two-minute video that captures the power of the event. The New York Times also reported on this and other nonviolent direct actions being carried out this summer to protest Wall Street’s financing of fossil fuels, “Protesting the Backers of Big Oil With Die-Ins, Drums and Song” (July 11, 2024).
As of its official release on June 20, the 2024 edition of Season of Creation: A Celebration Guide for Episcopal Parishes has already been authorized for use in 42 dioceses during this year’s Season of Creation (Sept. 1-Oct. 4). Rev. Margaret led the project’s growth from a local resource to adoption by a third of the Episcopal Church’s dioceses in the U.S. A press release in Episcopal News Service lists the bishops who endorsed its use in their dioceses within three weeks of pre-release review, and describes the history and contents of the worship resource. The new 2024 Liturgical Guide may be reviewed and downloaded here: https://newcreationliturgies.org/season. Bishops may authorize the materials all the way to Sept. 1, the Feast Day of Creation and the first day of Season of Creation. The names of endorsing dioceses listed on the pdf file will be updated until Sept. 1. To authorize, contact season@newcreationliturgies.org.
Rev. Margaret testified in favor of a resolution for General Convention that supports adding a worldwide, ecumenical Feast Day of Creation to our liturgical calendar. In an article reporting on the hearing (6/10/24), Episcopal News Service summarized her comments in this fifth and final online hearing ahead of the 81st General Convention, which will meet in Louisville, KY, June 23-28.
Sermon for the Fifth Sunday of Easter
April 28, 2024
Delivered by the Rev. Dr. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas
All Saints Episcopal Church, Worcester
1 John 4:7-21John 15:1-8
Earth Day: Abide in love
My message today boils down to three words: Abide in love. I hope you’ll keep listening, but I will confess right up front that everything I have to say will be a riff on that. Years ago, when I was in seminary, someone told me that a preacher should never say the word “love” in a sermon unless the readings assigned for the day clearly justified it. It’s advice I’ve ignored in pretty much every sermon I’ve ever preached, but if any day called for preaching about love, today would be the day. By my count, the word “love” shows up in some form a full 29 times in today’s passage from the First Letter of John: “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love…” (1 John 4:7-8). And so on.
And there’s another word that gets almost as brisk a workout in today’s readings: the word “abide.” That one shows up 14 times in our readings from the Letter of John and the Gospel of John. Put them together, and here’s what you get: “Abide in love,” and John himself will say it: “Those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them” (1 John 4:16b).
At All Saints Church, Worcester, with the Rev. Sam Smith (Rector) & the Rev. Meredyth Ward (Priest Associate)Abide in love. There’s rich meaning in those words on every level. To start with the most interior level, what would it be like for our minds to abide in love? Our minds are often quite scattered and distracted, jumping from one thing to the next like drops of oil bouncing on a hot frying pan. Moment by moment our minds are looking ahead and making plans; now they’re looking back into the past; now they’re analyzing and judging, having opinions about this and that: I like it, I don’t like it.
Abiding is different. Abiding in love means that our agitated, jumpy minds learn to become steady so that we can rest in the present moment, giving everything we do our full attention. Abiding in love can mean what’s sometimes called practicing the presence of God: we find ways throughout the day to keep bringing our awareness back to God’s loving presence, maybe by repeating the name of Jesus or by bringing awareness to our breath, consciously breathing in God’s love every time we inhale. Abiding in love can mean taking regular time to pray alone and in silence so that we can listen to the inner voice of love that is always sounding in our hearts. We tend to think that we have to reach out for God, as if God were far away, a distant destination we will eventually reach, maybe after we die. But in fact, as many spiritual teachers attest, through an attentive practice of quiet prayer we come to realize that God already abides within us, that God is our Source and is simultaneously within and beyond us.
Abide in love! What an invitation that is to go through the day with an intimate sense of God’s presence!
The invitation speaks at a wider level, too, in our relationships with other people. What would it look like if you were abiding in love in your contact with others? Abiding in love might mean renewing the intention to be honest and vulnerable and real; it might mean listening carefully to someone, offering encouragement and support, trying to “be there” for the other, even if it comes at a cost to ourselves; it might mean the hard work of admitting mistakes, of apologizing and making amends; it might mean reaching out in love to those who are different or forgotten, to the stranger, the marginalized, the lost. Abide in love – that’s about creating and cultivating relationships that flow from the love that God’s Spirit is always pouring into our hearts (Romans 5:5).
But there’s an even larger level to think about: what might it mean to abide in love in relation to the living world around us? Jesus invites us in today’s Gospel to abide in him as he abides in us. To express that intimacy, he uses an image from nature: he is the vine, and we are the branches – that’s how close we are to him. Have you ever noticed how many of his parables and stories use natural images? I think of him speaking about sheep and seeds, about sparrows, lilies, weeds, and wheat. Jesus lived close to the Earth. In the Gospels we see him walking along the seashore and up mountains, taking boats out on the lake, spending weeks alone in prayer in the wilderness. Jesus understood the inherent sacredness not only of human beings but also of the whole created world, all of it lit up with the presence of God.
And his life, death, and resurrection was good news not only for human beings but also for the rest of the living world. The Bible tells us that God loved the whole world into being, sustains all things through the Holy Spirit, and through Christ redeemed and reconciled all things in heaven and on earth “by making peace through the blood of the cross” (Colossians 1:19). Protecting the Earth that God entrusted to our care is not just an “add-on,” a sideline or optional hobby for a few Christians who call themselves “environmentalists” – it is central to being Christian.
So, when Jesus says, “Abide in love,” I hear a summons to take hold of the deep ecological meaning of what it means to follow him. We need to hear that call to abide in love, for we have broken faith with the living world. Our society’s relentless extraction and burning of coal, gas, and oil is pushing our planet wildly out of balance. Every living system is in decline and the web of life is unraveling before our eyes. The world keeps breaking records for heat, and last year was the warmest year on record, by far. We now live in a world where atmospheric rivers can fill the sky and a month of rain can fall in one day; where wildfires can be so intense that they create their own weather; where hurricanes can be so fierce that we need to create new categories for storms. It’s not surprising that many of us can lie awake at night, wondering what the future will hold for our children.
So – now is the time to reclaim our God-given connection with the earth. Now is the time to renew our union with God and all God’s creation, which includes not just our human fellows but all living creatures and the larger eco-systems on which we all depend.
I hope you’ll join me after the service to talk about what we can do. Now is the time, as theologian Sallie McFague would say, to recognize that the world is not a hotel, but our home.1 When we visit a hotel, we may feel entitled to use copious amount of hot water, to throw towels on the floor, to use and discard everything in sight and then to head to the next hotel – in short, to exercise what she calls the “Kleenex perspective” of the world. But when we realize that in fact the earth is our home – that God created it and loves every inch of it and entrusts it to our care – then everything changes. We realize that we live here; we belong here; we can no longer tolerate a lifestyle that exhausts the planet’s resources and that treats land, sea, and sky alike as receptacles for waste.
In a few moments we will share the bread and wine of the Eucharist, given to us by God in Christ with such tenderness and at such great cost. We will gather at that holy table, as we always do, so that everything within us and around us can be lifted up and blessed – not only the bread and the wine, but, also, we ourselves, and the whole creation, every leaf of it and every grain of sand. Sharing the Eucharist helps us to perceive at last not only our own belovedness, our own blessedness in God, but also the fact that everyone is beloved, all beings are blessed. Everyone and everything are part of a sacred whole, and all living things are kin. In the strength of the blessed and broken bread and of the blessed and poured-out wine, we dare to hope that human beings will respond with grateful hearts and come to treat the world not as an object to exploit, but as a gift to receive, as something perishable and precious. We dare to hope that we will become at last who we were made to be, a blessing on the earth, a people who abide in love.
1. Sallie McFague, A New Climate for Theology: God, the World, and Global Warming, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008, p. 53.
Sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Easter
April 20, 2024
Delivered by the Rev. Dr. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas
St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Southborough, MA
John 10:11-18
Following the Good Shepherd on Earth Day
Friends, it’s been a joy to spend the day together, to celebrate the pilot phase of An Episcopal Path to Creation Justice, to learn from each other, and to feast on the wisdom of some of our generation’s most visionary thinkers.1 And isn’t it fitting that we end the day in worship! Worship is at the heart of everything we do.
Saying that reminds me of an afternoon ten years ago when I had just started my job as Missioner for Creation Care in the Diocese of Western Mass. There was so much we needed to figure out, like: What kind of Creation care webpages do we need to build? What material should they include? Should we start a monthly newsletter? Creating a diocesan ministry around Creation care was all so new, and we were making it up as we went along.
So, what did I do? I headed straight for Vicki Ix, our diocesan Canon for Communication, so that we could have a good long talk and do some brainstorming. That’s where we came up with the framework for Creation care that we’ve been using in our diocese ever since – Pray, Learn, Act, and Advocate. It’s the framework behind An Episcopal Path to Creation Justice, and it’s one that several other dioceses around the Church have begun to pick up, too. I like this framing because it’s so comprehensive, making it clear that a full-bodied, wholehearted, clear-eyed response to our Gospel calling to love God and neighbor commits us to keep learning, to keep acting, to keep advocating, and – yes – to keep praying.
With the Rev. Rachel Field, Project Manager of An Episcopal Path to Creation JusticeYou’ll notice that in the sequence – Pray, Learn, Act, and Advocate – we put Pray first. We could have lined the words up alphabetically, so they begin with Act, but to me it was important to begin with Pray. Prayer is at the heart of everything we do. I think of that wonderful prayer for guidance in our prayerbook, the one where we ask God to direct us in all our doings so that “in all our works begun, continued, and ended in you, we may glorify your holy Name” (For Guidance, 832). Prayer comes first, before we do a thing. Prayer comes in the middle, in the very midst and heat of action. Prayer comes at the end, as we let go and put the results in God’s hands.
Today our prayers take place on the weekend before Earth Day and the weekend in Easter when we celebrate Jesus as our Good Shepherd. Scripture gives us many ways to imagine Jesus. In the Gospel of John, for instance, Jesus names himself as “the bread of life” (6:35), “the light of the world” (8:12), “the door” (10:7), “the true vine” (15:1). Each image has its own resonance and meaning, but Jesus as “the good shepherd” is the image that many of us treasure most.
I am grateful that this year Earth Sunday coincides with Good Shepherd Sunday, for I need to be drawn again into Jesus’ consoling and empowering presence. Maybe you do, too. As we take stock of the living world around us and consider the faltering health of our planet, we recognize that the path our society has traveled for the last two centuries has led to an unprecedented human emergency: we are hurtling toward climate catastrophe and watching the web of life unravel before our eyes. Great populations of creatures – even entire species – have vanished in less than 50 years. In what scientists call a “biological annihilation,” human beings have wiped out more than half the world’s creatures since 1970. Meanwhile, the relentless burning of fossil fuels and the logging of forests are accelerating climate change, pushing our planet to break records of all kinds. Last year was the world’s warmest year on record, by far.
Linked to these ecological challenges are the social justice challenges of economic inequity and white racism. Racial justice is so closely tied to climate justice that I’ve heard it said that we wouldn’t have climate change without white supremacy. Where would we put our urban oilfields, our dumping grounds and trash, our biomass plants and toxic incinerators – if we weren’t willing to sacrifice Black, indigenous, and people-of-color communities? The Sierra Club’s Director of Organizational Transformation, Hop Hopkins, has pointed out that, “You can’t have climate change without sacrifice zones, and you can’t have sacrifice zones without disposable people, and you can’t have disposable people without racism.”2
In a world of so much injustice, violence, and uncertainty, where do we turn for guidance, solace, and strength? We turn to the Good Shepherd of our souls. How does his presence speak to you today? One thing I notice is that, as our good shepherd, Jesus holds everyone and everything together. A shepherd is the person charged with keeping the flock intact, united, and heading in the right direction. I find it reassuring to contemplate the image of God in Christ drawing us into something unified and whole, because right now so much seem to be splintering and breaking apart. The tapestry of life that was once intact is being torn apart as greenhouse gas emissions disrupt the planet’s atmosphere. Our human communities are likewise being torn apart by political division, economic division, racial division.
But when we turn to the Good Shepherd, we touch the sacred unity within and beyond all things. We touch the Ground of our being. We meet the One through whom all things were made, in whom all things hold together, and toward whom all things converge (Colossians 1:16-17). At a time when so much seems to be divided and falling apart, we’re invited to sense the underlying wholeness and unity of all things and to sense the love that embraces all things, connects all things, sustains all things. On the surface, in the realm of our five senses, we may notice only differences, only what separates us from each other, but in the deep center of reality we meet the good shepherd who is holding everything together and luring us into communion with each other and with God.
We hear the shepherd’s voice when we take time to quiet ourselves in prayer, to sit in solitude and silence and listen to the inner voice of love that is always sounding in our hearts. The good shepherd is the one who knows us through and through and who calls us each by name. Held in the embrace of that intimate love, we don’t have to keep trying to hold ourselves together – we are free to let go, free to fall apart, free to let ourselves feel our grief, feel our anger and fear as we respond to the climate crisis and to all the challenges of our lives. The good shepherd is there to hold what we cannot hold by ourselves, there to listen, there to protect and keep company, there to help us understand how deeply we are loved – and not just we ourselves, but all people – and not just all people, but all beings, the whole of God’s creation.
That very personal experience of being loved keeps getting larger! The circle of love keeps expanding! As Jesus says, “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd” (John 10:16-17). It’s as if, beneath all the ways that human beings try to separate ourselves from each other and from the rest of the natural world, presuming that we can dominate and destroy with impunity – Jesus keeps calling us forward into one living, sacred whole.
One of our three speakers, Robin Wall Kimmerer, gave a moving presentation about what it means to live in harmony with and to restore the land.We belong together for we are all kin. Our Good Shepherd created, redeems, and sustains the whole Creation, and that’s why we’re using such expansive prayers today – prayers that seek to honor the sacredness of the whole living world that is so lit up with the presence of God. We may be praying inside a building today, but our prayers are joining the prayers that are already going on outside, uttered in the wind and sunshine and by the birds and trees! Our voices are joining the voices of all Creation as we give thanks to God for loving us into being.
When we tap into that deep-down truth of our basic belovedness, we discover fresh energy for life. We experience the same wave of Easter hope that filled the first followers of Jesus. When they saw that the stone had been rolled away from the tomb, when they met the Risen Christ in their midst and in their hearts, when they realized that life and not death would have the last word and that nothing could separate them from the love of God, their lives were charged with fresh meaning and purpose. They realized that they belonged to a sacred mystery that was larger than themselves, to a love that would never let them go. Sure – they were still mortal and frail, still vulnerable and imperfect people in a big, chaotic world, but they knew that they participated in a long story of salvation to which they could contribute, every moment of their lives, by choosing compassion over indifference, kindness over cruelty, love over fear. Their inner liberation gave them courage to resist the forces of death and destruction, and to obey God rather than any human authority (Acts 5:29). Indeed, the first Christians got into all kinds of trouble. Peter and the other early Christians were accused of “turning the world upside down” (Acts 17:6), for their devotion to the Good Shepherd apparently led many of them to spend as much time inside as outside the walls of a jail. Their witness to a transcendent, all-embracing Love shook the foundations of their society.
That same wave of Easter hope fills Christians today and carries us now, every one of us who feels impelled to join our Creator in re-weaving the web of life, in building a gentler and more just society, and in getting us into what Representative John Lewis called “good trouble” as we fight to keep fossil fuels in the ground and to dismantle white supremacy. In a moment we will be nourished at this table as we share in Christ’s body and blood, and then we’ll hold a simple ceremony of commissioning as we bless each other on our way. On this Easter-Earth-Day weekend, we give thanks for the Good Shepherd who laid down his life for us, and we renew our resolve to be a blessing to the Earth that God entrusted to our care.
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1. At our Earth Day conference we heard from Robin Wall Kimmerer, Bill McKibben, and Mary Evelyn Tucker.
2. Hop Hopkins, “Racism Is Killing the Planet” The ideology of white supremacy leads the way toward disposable people and a disposable natural world, June 8, 2020, https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/racism-killing-planet
