mbj | Reviving Creation

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.

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.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Coverage of the July 8 event:

Bill McKibben wrote a beautiful essay about the memorial, “A Very Moving Funeral: Mourning climate dead outside Citibank’s front doors”

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.

The New York Times reported on this and other nonviolent direct actions being carried out to protest Wall Street’s financing of fossil fuels, “Protesting the Backers of Big Oil With Die-Ins, Drums and Song” (July 11, 2024).

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 4:7-21 John 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 Justice*

You’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. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 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

Rev. Margaret is quoted in The Martha’s Vineyard Times in an article (3/27/24) about how faith communities on the Island are working together to address climate change. She will head to Martha’s Vineyard on April 5 for a weekend of climate-related events, including speaking at the Hebrew Center’s Shabbat service, preaching at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, and leading a retreat on climate resilience for people of all faiths. The theme of the weekend is One Home One Future, the national multifaith campaign to educate, support, and mobilize congregations around climate action.

I am back from a trip to Assisi, Italy, to join an Anglican delegation of liturgists, theologians, and church leaders at an ecumenical gathering hosted by the Laudato Si’ Research Institute, and sponsored by the Anglican Communion, the Lutheran World Federation, the World Communion of Reformed Churches, the World Council of Churches, and other partners.

The seminar had a mouthful of a title: The Feast of Creation and the Mystery of Creation: Ecumenism, Theology, Liturgy, and Signs of the Times in Dialogue. But its focus was clear: Has the time come to add a Feast of Creation to the liturgical calendars of Western Churches?

It was a delight to make new friends and a thrill to meet the Rev. Canon Dr. Rachel Mash at long last. Based in South Africa, she serves as secretary of the Anglican Communion Environmental Network, and she is one of the leading lights in the movement to support a Season of Creation. In her remarks at the conference, “A new season for the calendar of the Church? I hope so!,” she gave a brief overview of Anglican engagement in a Season of Creation and explained why many of us now believe that the time is ripe for the Feast of Creation to be formally integrated into Western liturgical calendars. (I hasten to correct two points in her address: first, I am by no means solely responsible for the Season of Creation worship guides that were released in many Episcopal dioceses in 2022 and 2023 – my colleague, the Rev. John Lein, did most of the heavy lifting; and second, 28 dioceses, not 16, endorsed last year’s edition.)

The ecumenical seminar began and ended with prayer. Before plunging into questions of theology, liturgy, and practice, we spent an afternoon in the garden behind San Damiano, the church that St. Francis re-built and where he wrote most of his Canticle of the Creatures. In the company of birdsong and wind, sunshine and grasses, we sang and prayed our way through his poem. Then, after walking back into town, we gathered outside Cittadella Laudato Si for a prayerful, sunset contemplation of Brother Sun. Again, after the conference ended, many of us hiked in silence up Mount Subasio, the mountain where St. Francis and his followers lived and prayed in caves, and we shared in an ecumenical outdoor Eucharist at the altar of St. Francis.

Conversations at the ecumenical seminar were lively, intense, and sometimes deeply moving. None of us yet knows what will come of this effort. But I do know that it was a blessing to spend time with global Christians from diverse communities who share a passion both for the God who creates, redeems, and sustains all things and for the beautiful, threatened planet that God loves so much.

Here’s an excerpt from a prayer composed by one of the liturgical scholars who attended the Assisi conference, with my suggested addition in brackets.

O loving God, who spoke
and all things were created –
O eternal Word made flesh,
who became one with your creation –
O creator Spirit, who breathes in us,
who renews the face of the earth –
O holy and glorious Trinity,
we praise you and we pray to you
with all our heart!
…
Bless us with clarity and courage
for our mission to cherish and tend
earth and air, seas and rivers,
peoples and communities.
Guide your Church
to the patterns of prayer that will form us
to be [loving kin of our fellow creatures] and
good stewards
of all that you have entrusted to us.
O holy and glorious Trinity, Creator God,
we praise you and we pray to you
with all our heart. Amen.

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Episcopal News Service published a good article (3/25/24) about the seminar: “Anglicans take part in ecumenical seminar in Assisi about God as creator“

This is a slightly adapted text for a video I created at the request of the Episcopal Church in Colorado as part of its Lenten series, “Journey through Lament: Leaning into the Brokenness of Our Communities and World.” The YouTube video is available here.

At the end of Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer, the officiant sometimes concludes the service with this line from Paul’s Letter to the Romans: “May the God of hope fill us with all joy and peace in believing, so that we may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Romans 15:13). Our God of hope wants us to abound in hope! Hope is one of the great Christian virtues, but honestly, given the social and ecological breakdown going on all around us, where do we find hope? How do we maintain it? Take climate change, for instance. The 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. 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.

What shall we say about hope? Hope is forward-facing – it’s the capacity to look toward the future with confidence that something good is ahead – but then we learn that by 2050, over a billion people could be displaced due to natural disasters and climate change.¹ Or we learn that current global climate policies set the world on a path to heat by about 2.7 degrees Celsius by 2100, which would threaten modern human civilization within the lifespan of children born today.² Hear things like that and it’s easy to be overcome by helplessness and by what theologian Sallie McFague calls a “crushing state of futility.”³ Say the word “hope” too glibly and it reeks of escapism and wishful thinking.

But I’m here to tell you that it’s precisely in a time like this, when the stakes are so high, that we need to recover the power of Christian hope.

What happens in your body when you don’t feel hope? If you’re like me, you contract. When I go into a hopeless place about the climate crisis, I feel small, helpless, alone. There’s nothing I can do, nothing to be done, it’s all going to hell, and I might as well quit trying to change that – might as well curl up in a ball of anxiety and despair, or distract and numb myself – maybe with entertainment, a drink, shopping, something.

Hope feels different in the body. Hope expands us, it connects us, it moves us out of withdrawal into engagement, out of isolation into relationship. When we’re in a hopeful place, we find energy and courage to act. We know that what we do matters and that even if we can’t do everything, we won’t refuse to do the something that we can do.

How do we nourish hope? It helps to remember that hope does not exist on its own. St. Paul repeatedly links hope with other virtues, other powers of the soul, such as faith and love. In his First Letter to the Corinthians, he writes: “Faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:13). I imagine hope standing in the middle, holding hands with her two sisters – faith and love.

So, when we find ourselves in a hopeless place, it’s good to remember faith. Take hold of faith! Faith is confidence in things not seen (Hebrews 11:1), in the hidden God who sent us into this world, who is with us now, and who will welcome us home at our journey’s end. Hope arises from faith, because with the Unseen One who loves me, I can step into the future, asking: What shall we do together? I love You and I want to live and act in alignment with You. Even if I see no outward hope, my hope is in You. And I know that whatever happens, whether I live or die, I am yours (c.f. Romans 14:8).

Again, when we find ourselves in a hopeless place, it’s good to remember love. There is so much to love in this beautiful world of ours, so much that we want to save. We can’t save it all, but we can commit ourselves to saving everything we can. Likewise, we can hold in mind the young people in our lives with whom we have a heartfelt connection to the future. Our love for those young people strengthens our resolve to live and act in hope. We don’t want to fail them. We want to protect, as best we can, the conditions that will make their lives safe and peaceful and possible in the decades ahead. What do you love so much that you would give everything, perhaps your very life, to protect it?

And maybe we haven’t even met the ones who most count on us to be living signs of hope. Terry Tempest Williams writes, “The eyes of the future are looking back at us and they are praying for us to see beyond our own time. They are kneeling with hands clasped that we might act with restraint, that we might leave room for the life that is destined to come.”⁴

Christian hope, fortified by faith and love, can keep us steady in a turbulent time. Jesus sets before us a great hope that the reign of God will come on Earth. As long as we live, we intend to pray and work for God’s will to be done on Earth as it is in heaven. That’s our big mission, our constant hope, the hope that will never fade away. In the near term, our hopes must be flexible and multiple, like strategic plans that we change as needed while we carry out the larger mission. In the near term, hope is a shapeshifter: depending on outer circumstances, our hopes change; we hope for this, we hope for that, and our hopes ebb and flow, rise and fall, depending on how things are going and how things turn out. Of course, that’s life, that’s normal, that’s how it works, but if that kind of hope – hope in the things of this world – is all we’ve got, we are vulnerable to despair: if my candidate wins, if that policy passes, if my biopsy comes back clean – hurray! my hope is fulfilled! And if I don’t get the outcome I want, then my hope drains away. Unless I have some other, deeper source of hope, I bounce around like a little boat on the surface of the ocean.

Christian hope gives us the deep grounding we need: it springs from deep within us and is replenished day by day from our ongoing relationship with a God who loves us and all creation and who will never let us go. Christian hope sets us free to release the false hopes to which we’ve probably been clinging – hopes like: “When it comes to climate change, everything will turn out fine. Progress will continue. Experts will figure this out. Someone else will fix this.” Such idle hopes are fantasies that give hope a bad name – no wonder “hope” in climate circles is sometimes denounced as a sop and a drug, as nothing more than “Hope-ium” to soothe us, to keep us passive, quiet, and feeling good.

But that’s not the same as Christian hope. Christian hope is not some vague “pie in the sky when you die” – no, it looks squarely at the truth and accepts with bracing clarity the reality and tragedy of sin and suffering. Let’s not kid ourselves. Modern society has overshot the planet’s limits. We’re living as if the Earth had no limits, as if we can extract, burn, consume, and waste to our heart’s content, without harmful consequence. No wonder the living world is being crucified and our complex society is reeling and might collapse. We do well to stand at the foot of the cross, to acknowledge our sorrow, guilt, and shame, and to pray for guidance and forgiveness. Our faith gives us space to lament and grieve – to love what God loves and to weep with a broken heart with Jesus.

Christian hope accepts reality, but acceptance is not the same as resignation. Christian hope rejects defeatism and spurs us into action. And it gives direction and purpose to our lives. God has planted in our hearts a deep desire, an unquenchable hope for justice, for kindness, for the Earth to be filled with the glory of God as the waters cover the sea. This is the world that I hope for, and when that hope is held before my eyes, I know what I should do.

The cross is sometimes held before a Christian’s eyes when they are on the point of death. Why? Because in the cross is our hope: amidst agony, violence, and death, amidst humiliation and shame, amidst the worst that human beings can do to each other and to the suffering Earth, God’s loving power and presence endure. Through the power of God revealed on the cross, life will rise again from the dead, though we don’t know how.

That’s the fierce and holy hope that sends us out to plant gardens and save forests, to install solar panels and build resilient communities, to listen to the voice of indigenous people and racial minorities, to push banks to quit funding fossil fuels, to lobby for smart regulations, to vote for climate champions, to change our lifestyle – what we buy, what we eat, how we build and heat our homes. It pushes us out, it drives us to connect with groups like Greenfaith, Third Act, and One Home One Future, and even to carry out acts of civil disobedience and spend time in jail.

The historian and activist Rebecca Solnit describes hope well when she says: “Hope is not like a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky… Hope is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency…Hope should shove you out the door, because it will take everything you have to steer the future away from endless war, from the annihilation of the earth’s treasures and the grinding down of the poor and marginal… Hope,” she says, “calls for action; action is impossible without hope…To hope is to give yourself to the future, and that commitment to the future makes the present inhabitable.”⁵

So, here we are, breathing in God’s Spirit with every breath, standing in hope with faith and love beside us, renewing our resolve to do everything we can to save life as it has evolved on Earth, even as we let go the outcome and entrust the results to God.

I’ll end with this. Years ago, I tried to name my ultimate hope and what I wanted to embody in my life. I came up with this statement: I am the possibility of the love of God being fully expressed in the world. That’s my North Star – in a sense that’s my identity, who I truly am, the purpose for which I was born. Until the day I die I want to be the possibility of the love of God being fully expressed, fully known, fully embodied in the world, no matter what happens. That’s my deepest hope. How would you name yours?

Here’s what I want to say: Decide what you hope for and then live inside that hope.

Questions for reflection and discussion:

1. What happens in your body when you don’t feel hope?
2. Have you ever thought of hope as having power?
3. The Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas says that hope is forward facing. What do you think she means by this?
4. Hope moves us out of withdrawal and into engagement. What is something you can do personally when it comes to the changing climate and ecological devastation? What is something we can do together?
5. What is the difference between hope and Christian hope?
6. The Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas says that Christian hope holds hands with faith and love. How do you nourish your hope with faith and love, so it doesn’t fade away?
7. What does it look like to take hold of faith when we’re in a hopeless place?
8. What do you love so much that you would give everything, perhaps your very life, to protect it?
9. How do we share our deep Christian hope with people outside our congregations?
10. The video mentions Rebecca Solnit’s quote that “Action is impossible without hope,” and “Hope should shove you out the door.” How can you commit to the future so that the present is inhabitable?
11. The Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas says that her ultimate hope is to be “the possibility of the presence and love of God being fully expressed in the world.” She invites us to name our ultimate hope and to live inside it. What is your ultimate hope?

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The video can be viewed on YouTube here.

1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10037158/

2. https://insideclimatenews.org/news/28012024/with-world-warming-scientists-warn-of-unrest-and-authoritarian-backlash/

3. Sallie McFague, A New Climate for Theology: God, the World, and Global Warming (Minneapolis: Fortress Press: 2008), p. 157.

4. Terry Tempest Williams, Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert

5. Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities (Chicago, IL: 2004, 2006, 3rd ed.), p. 4

Rev. Margaret created a short video for the Episcopal Church in Colorado,“Climate Crisis & Reorienting Ourselves to Hope.” It’s the final video in a five-week Lenten series for the diocese, entitled Journey through Lament: Leaning into the Brokenness of Our Communities and World.

You can view the video here.

Questions for reflection and discussion:

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