Author Archives: mbj

Sermon for the Fifth Sunday of Easter, April 24, 2016. Delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Bedford, MA. Acts 11:1-18 Psalm 148 Revelation 21:1-6 John 13:31-35

Keep it in the (holy) ground

It is good to be here at St. Paul’s and to worship with you this morning. My name is Margaret Bullitt-Jonas and I have a quite unusual ecumenical position as Missioner for Creation Care in the Episcopal Diocese of Western Massachusetts and in the United Church of Christ across Massachusetts. I travel around, preaching and leading retreats about God’s love for this precious planet and its inhabitants, human and other-than-human. My dream is to help create a wave of religious activism to protect and heal the web of life that God entrusted to our care. So I want to thank you for your leadership. You’ve installed solar panels, you’ve formed a Green Team, some of you have read and studied Pope Francis’ landmark encyclical, Laudato Si’, and I’m told that many of you want to explore how to connect with nature as a spiritual practice.

Preachers around the country are marking Earth Day today and speaking about the glory and the vulnerability of God’s Creation. How wonderful that our readings this morning include Psalm 148, that powerful song of praise to God from the heights and depths of creation, from every element and creature, from every nook and cranny: “Hallelujah! Praise the LORD from the heavens; praise God in the heights… Praise God, sun and moon; praise God, all you shining stars… Praise the LORD from the earth, you sea-monsters and all deeps; Fire and hail, snow and fog; tempestuous wind, doing God’s will; Mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars…Young men and maidens, old and young together. Let them praise the Name of the LORD…” (Psalm 148:1,3,7-9,12,13) This kind of ecstatic poetry springs from a perception that everything is connected, everything is alive with Spirit, everything is held together by a divine presence that sustains and upholds all things. That’s the vision of St. Francis of Assisi, whose “Canticle of the Sun” proclaims: “Praise be my Lord for our brother the wind, and for air and cloud, calms and all weather, by which you uphold life in all creatures.”    That’s the vision of poets like Gerard Manley Hopkins, who wrote, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.” That’s the vision of theologians like Martin Luther, who said, “God writes the Gospel, not in the Bible alone, but also on trees, and the flowers and the clouds and stars.” That’s the vision, I believe, of Jesus himself, a man who lived close to the Earth, whose ministry began by immersion in a river and who prayed and lived and walked countless miles outdoors. In his parables and stories, Jesus talked about God in terms of natural things: seeds and sparrows, sheep and lilies, rivers, wind, and rocks. Jesus was immersed in the sacredness of the natural world and it’s no wonder that in our sacraments we, too, make contact with simple earthy things: with bread, wine, water, and oil. We trust that God is in these things – that when we take in the consecrated bread and wine of the Eucharist, we take in God’s presence. This powerful perception that the natural world is holy awakens in some of us a deep response. We want to ensure that God’s sacred creation is treated with reverence. We feel a growing resolve to take action to heal and reconcile and restore the beautiful world that God entrusted to our care. Heaven knows that God’s creation is crying out for help. The web of life is unraveling before our eyes. In just 200 years – a blink in geologic time – human beings have burned so much coal, gas, and oil and released so much heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that atmospheric levels of CO2 are higher than our species has ever experienced before. So far that extra CO2 has forced the average global temperature to rise about one degree. That may not sound like much, but what’s so worrisome to scientists is that this process is happening so fast. Already oceans are heating and becoming more acidic; tundra is thawing; ice caps are melting; sea levels are rising; coral reefs are dying; massive droughts are spreading in some places and heavy rains intensifying in others. We’re on the edge, or in the midst, of what some experts call the sixth major extinction event on this planet. March 2016 was the hottest month ever recorded, which crushed the record set in February, which crushed the record set in January, which crushed the record set in December. A recent article in the Washington Post bears the title, “Scientists Are Floored by What’s Happening in the Arctic Right Now.” We know that the situation is urgent. We know we have only a short time in which to avert a level of climate disruption that would render the world ungovernable and possibly uninhabitable within the lifetimes of our children and our children’s children. The World Bank – hardly a leftist organization – recently warned that unless we quickly rein in greenhouse gas emissions, climate change will drive 100 million people into extreme poverty – extreme poverty – in the next 15 years. Just imagine for a moment the human suffering and social upheaval that this would engender worldwide. When I look around, I see a planet in peril, but – thanks be to God! – I also see person after person reaching deep into their souls and then standing up to join the struggle to re-weave the fabric of life and create a just and sustainable future. I see a wave of religious protest and activism rising up around the world, propelled in part by the release of Pope Francis’ Laudato Si’, which makes a powerful connection between the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor. I see people rising up for life, refusing to settle for a killing status quo, and proclaiming with one voice that climate change is a spiritual and moral issue that must be tackled without delay. Just think of all the signs we see of a new social order being born. We see people blocking the path of new fracked gas pipelines and being arrested for civil disobedience as they read aloud from Pope Francis’ encyclical. We see people lobbying for a fair price on carbon, so that we can build a clean green economy that provides decent jobs and improves public health. We see our own Episcopal Church deciding to divest from fossil fuels, since it makes no financial or moral sense to invest in companies that are ruining the planet. We see new coalitions being formed and new alliances being forged, as people realize that the environmental crisis is closely connected with the social crises of poverty, income inequality, and racial injustice. Right here in Massachusetts we have a strong grassroots climate action network, 350Mass for a Better Future, which has nodes across the state. When you sign up for the weekly newsletter or attend a node meeting near you, you’ll be hooked into a vibrant local effort. I’m also part of a new group, Massachusetts Interfaith Coalition for Climate Action, or “MAICCA” for short, which is bringing together Christians, Jews, Quakers, Unitarians, and people of all religious traditions to push for legislation that supports climate justice. Together we are fighting to keep fossil fuels in the ground and to accelerate a transition to clean, safe, renewable sources of energy, such as sun and wind, that are accessible to all our communities, including those that are low-income or historically under-served. As climate activist Bill McKibben has pointed out, “The fight for a just world is the same as the fight for a livable one.” The Church was made for a time like this – a time when God calls human beings to know that we belong to one Earth, that we form one human family, and that God entrusted the Earth and all its residents to our care. We may live in a society where we’re told that pleasure lies in being self-centered consumers who grab and hoard everything we can for ourselves and the devil take the hindmost, but we know the truth: our deepest identity and joy is found in being rooted and grounded in love and in serving the common good. As Jesus tells us this morning, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35). That love extends not only to our own little group nor only to our family and friends. It extends not only to our town, to our nation, nor only even to other human beings – no, that love extends outward to embrace and fill the whole glorious creation, including mountains and hills, trees and beetles and stars. God has placed us in and made us part of a miraculous, intricate, and living world, and when we listen closely we will hear what the psalmist hears: a shared song of praise to our Creator. I’ll close with the words of a contemporary song that echoes Psalm 148. Written by Kim Oler, the song (“Blue Green Hills of Earth”) is part of Paul Winter’s “Missa Gaia.” I offer these words to God as a prayer – a prayer of gratitude for the gift of life, and a prayer of hope that we can protect that life and pass it on to future generations. For the earth forever turning; for the skies, for every sea; to our Lord we sing, returning home to our blue green hills of Earth. For the mountains, hills, and pastures in their silent majesty; for all life, for all nature, sing we our joyful praise to Thee. For the sun, for rain and thunder, for the land that makes us free; for the stars, for all the heavens, sing we our joyful praise to Thee.    

Photo by Robert A. Jonas
(Photo by Robert A. Jonas)

Sometimes I am perfectly capable of scanning large swathes of bad news with aplomb, keeping my feelings at bay. I know how to brace myself before I open the morning paper, turn on the TV, or scan the news online. OK, world, I’m ready! Bring it on! Give me the latest list of apocalyptic woes! I can take it! I can handle it without blinking an eye!

But then comes a story about one small bird.

Researchers have confirmed the first death from malaria of a loon in New Hampshire. As the global climate heats up, diseases of the south, including malaria, are marching north. Although human beings are not susceptible to avian malaria, this tropical disease could have “devastating impacts” on birds with no natural resistance. To find a bird killed by malaria in the northern reaches of New England is a foreboding discovery. As one researcher observed, “This might be a canary in a coal mine situation.”

The metaphor is apt. In the old days coal miners would bring a caged canary into the mine to provide advance warning if dangerous gases like methane or carbon monoxide were building up. A canary is sensitive. A sickened or dead canary warned miners to take action quickly lest they, too, breathe their last. Today the whole world is in “a coal mine situation,” for extracting dirty fuels like coal, gas, and oil is releasing dangerous amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, disrupting the delicate balance of the climate and threatening the web of life.

A loon is our canary today. News that a loon has died from malaria spread by climate change stops me in my tracks, appalled. I love loons. Summer by summer our family spends a week in New Hampshire beside a lake. Loons’ haunting cries erupt in the night, thrilling and wild. During the day we watch for loons as we paddle our canoes, and if we spot one – precious sight! – we pause to let the boat drift so as not to disturb these shy birds. I am not a scientist, and I can’t describe how loons contribute to the intricate balance of life in the lakes and woods of northern New England nor how their loss would affect the ecosystem, but I do know that losing the loons would somehow empty the lake, leave an aching muteness in the air, and tear a hole in my heart.

I weep for loons.

The first session of a 3-day retreat on spiritual resilience and climate change, for clergy of the Episcopal Diocese of Delaware
The first session of a 3-day retreat on spiritual resilience and climate change, for clergy of the Episcopal Diocese of Delaware (photo by Max Joseph Wolf)

Can we grieve the losses brought about by a changing climate? I raised that question last week with Episcopal clergy from the Diocese of Delaware when we gathered for a three-day retreat in Pennsylvania at Pendle Hill, a Quaker center for study and contemplation. We talked about how easy it is, in the face of the danger and loss brought on by climate change, to go numb, change the subject, minimize the threat, and find a way to distance and distract ourselves. Most of us don’t challenge outright the science of climate change – we know it’s real, we know that human activities account for most of it, we know it’s already having profound, damaging, and sometimes irreversible effects worldwide. But most of us do engage in a kind of everyday climate denial: we avoid thinking about it. We consider it someone else’s problem. As the Australian ethicist Clive Hamilton points out in Requiem for a Species, we resist the truth about climate change for all kinds of reasons:

“Sometimes facing up to the truth is just too hard. When the facts are distressing it is easier to reframe or ignore them. Around the world only a few have truly faced up to the facts about global warming… It’s the same with our own deaths; we all ‘accept’ that we will die, but it is only when our death is imminent that we confront the true meaning of our mortality.”

When the full truth of the climate crisis finally breaks through our defenses, we experience what one journalist has called the “Oh shit” moment we all must have.  Our denial breaks down. We realize that the people we want to ridicule as “alarmists” are conveying news that is both terrifying and true.

I remember exactly where I was when I had my “Oh shit” moment. It was a warm July night in 2002 and I was standing on the edge of Thompson Island, looking out over Boston Harbor. I was deep into an intensive weekend conference on the science and politics of climate change. I had spent the last couple of days jotting down facts about droughts and floods, sea levels and hurricanes, the connection between a warming world and a rise in infectious disease. I’d taken notes on the extreme social disruptions likely to be unleashed by global climate change, on the millions of refugees that would go in search of food and water, on the wars that could erupt over increasingly scarce natural resources.

I had taken in all the facts I could, I had fought valiantly against the temptation to daydream or space out, and now I was reeling. Deeply shaken, I stepped outside into the dark. I stood in silence for a while, breathing the night air. The whole planet seemed to be tilting under the stars, as if the ground were shifting beneath my feet. The old world I’d lived in was gone.

I tried that night to assimilate what I’d heard, to regain my balance, and to find my way back to God. That night I tried to sleep. The next morning I went looking for Paul Epstein, the doctor from Harvard Medical School whose presentation on climate had so overwhelmed me. I carried my breakfast tray to his table and asked if I could have a word with him. I told him how stunned I was by what he had told us.

“How do you bear it?” I asked him. “What do you do with your feelings?”

“I don’t get into my feelings,” he told me. “I focus on what I can do.”

Thus Dr. Epstein taught me one of the options after our denial breaks down: we can get busy and focus on action. His comment reminded me of what labor organizer Joe Hill reportedly said before he died, “Don’t mourn. Organize.” Some of us definitely prefer not to mourn. Most of us, in fact, prefer to engage our painful emotions as little as possible. We lock them away or we leapfrog over them. After all, we don’t want to look morbid, weak, or sentimental. Or we may dodge our feelings for fear of being overcome by anxiety or despair, or of drowning in sorrow. We may fear that experiencing our emotions will become a substitute for action or even sabotage our capacity to act. And you can’t argue with the fact that taking action is essential. In the midst of the battle to protect life as it has evolved on this planet, we do need to act. We do need levelheaded leaders who can say, This is what we must do. Let’s go.

Yet I’m convinced that for the long haul we also need to notice and experience what we feel. Is not grief a way of expressing love? Is not anger a natural response to injustice? Doesn’t learning how to ride the energies of grief and anger in a skillful way bring forth actions more likely to be wise, compassionate, and effective?

By the time that long-ago weekend workshop was over and the ferry was carrying us back to shore, I realized that I had no wish – indeed, no ability – to take action regarding the climate crisis unless I gave myself permission along the way to notice what I was feeling. After all – I’m a recovering addict. Nearly 35 years of recovery have shown me the value of respecting my emotional life: listening inwardly and honoring, even befriending, what I feel prevents me from careening into compulsive and willful behavior.

I was beginning to clarify my own approach to living with what James Howard Kunstler has since called “the long emergency,” that extensive period we are now entering, in which human beings must deal with a host of coinciding global problems, from climate change to water scarcity and economic instability. Yes, we will need to master the facts and to understand what we’re facing as accurately as we can. Yes, we will need to take action, and to do it together, building community as we go. But I would add this, too: we will also need to stay in touch with our feelings, to give ourselves room to protest and to grieve, to mark what we have lost and to name what we hope to preserve. I, at least, need such a space as a creature needs air.

So, in the course of last week’s retreat with the clergy of Delaware, we spent an evening session talking about our heartbreak. We reflected on the crucifixion of the Earth and on where we hear the groaning of God’s Creation. Then each of us took a piece of paper and a handful of oil pastels and spread out around the room to draw whatever came to us – perhaps a prayer, a poem of protest or grief, a confession of guilt, a plea for forgiveness, or a cry for help. As soft music played, each of us confronted and gave form to our pain. When we had finished our drawings, we placed them on the floor around the altar and talked about what the prayer exercise had been like and where we find hope. Tomorrow morning we would go ahead and focus on what we could do, but tonight we would pause to honor our pain.

Photo by Robert A. Jonas
(Photo by Robert A. Jonas)

When Lazarus died, Jesus wept (John 11:35). After pausing to feel his love and sorrow, Jesus performed a mighty act. He brought forth life out of death. He prayed to God and called out to Lazarus, and Lazarus stepped out from the tomb.

I don’t know if we’ll be able to prevent catastrophic climate change, but I do know this: When we mourn the losses caused by a disrupted climate, even a loss apparently as small as the perishing of a loon, we immerse ourselves in the love that will never let us go. Besides, God seems to have a soft spot for birds. The Bible offers images of God resembling a dove (Matthew  (3:16), a hen (Matthew 23:37), and an eagle (Exodus 19:4), and, as the Gospel song puts it, “His eye is on the sparrow.” (To hear a wonderful performance by Lauryn Hill and Tanya Blount, turn up the volume and visit here.) Grieving can be a sacred act. By the grace of God, grief can reconnect us with the love that brings forth life, the imperishable love that creates, redeems, and sustains. With that love breathing through us, who knows what we’ll accomplish together?

Here is a poem by Elizabeth Cunningham that I shared at the retreat.

                      Heart Prayer

You can only pray what’s in your heart.
So if your heart is being ripped from your chest
Pray the tearing

if your heart is full of bitterness
pray it to the last dreg

if your heart is a river gone wild
pray the torrent

or a lava flow scorching the mountain
pray the fire

pray the scream in your heart
the fanning bellows

pray the rage, the murder
and the mourning

pray your heart into the great quiet hands that can hold it
like the small bird it is.

Licensed to Robert A. Jonas by DollarPhotoClub
(Photo licensed to Robert A. Jonas by DollarPhotoClub)

A reflection written for Wednesday in Holy Week (March 23, 2016) for the Episcopal Diocese of Western Massachusetts

John 13:21-32
 
I find it intriguing that John’s account of the Last Supper, unlike the versions told in other Gospels (Matthew 26:20-29; Luke 22:14-23), does not include the institution of the Eucharist. Instead, the Fourth Gospel tells the story of Jesus washing his disciples’ feet, a story we re-enact on Maundy Thursday. Then, right before Jesus launches into his farewell discourse, the meal concludes with the evocative scene of Jesus placing bread in the hands of his betrayer. The Gospel writer does not explicitly mention the Eucharist, but surely the reader is invited to notice how the gesture resembles what happens in the Eucharist.

Jesus knows exactly what he is doing. He has just declared that one of the disciples will betray him. The disciples have exchanged uncertain glances: Is it I? Is it you? Jesus has told the beloved disciple, who is reclining next to him, “It is the one to whom I give this piece of bread when I have dipped it in the dish” (John 13:26). Then Jesus takes a piece of bread, dips it in the dish, and places it in the hand of Judas Iscariot, who swiftly departs into the night to betray his Lord.

The story – like so many moments of our life – is brief but consequential. Jesus has deliberately and consciously placed the piece of bread – placed his very life – in the hands of the one who will betray him. And because we know that every person in a Gospel story, when seen with contemplative eyes, is an aspect of ourselves, we know that Jesus does the same for us. However misguided we may be, however malicious or confused, Jesus turns to us just as he turned to Judas: with compassion, offering us the gift of himself, putting his life in our hands. Whenever we stretch out our hands at the Eucharist to receive the bread of life, we may be as guilty as Judas, yet God in Christ meets us with steadfast love and willingly bears the suffering that results from our wayward ways.

This story challenges me to stay awake and to be honest with myself. Of course I much prefer to identify with the beloved disciple who reclines on Jesus’ breast, but there is a Judas within me, too. For all kinds of reasons and in all kinds of ways I cause harm. Day by day I need to stay awake and pay attention, so that I notice when my Judas-self is showing up.

The story also invites me put my trust in Christ. When I understand my resemblance to Judas and am overcome by guilt or shame, when I am tempted to berate myself, to reject and condemn myself, can I put my trust in the mercy of Christ? Can I begin to extend a Christ-like compassion to myself? Surely the more I know that I myself am a betrayer of love, and yet am forgiven, the more I will come to treat myself and other people differently – more gently and with greater compassion.

I imagine the courage and compassion that it took for Jesus to hand the bread to Judas – to extend to his betrayer, at the cost of his life, the same unconditional love that he extended to everyone. Perhaps that selfless love is why Jesus speaks in his next breath of the “glorification” of the Son of Man (John 13:31-32). We, too, glimpse God’s glory when we experience a boundless compassion for ourselves and for each other.

Yet Judas was not able to let that love in. Luci Shaw wrote a powerful poem (from her collection, A Widening Light: Poems of the Incarnation) that looks ahead to what comes next.

Judas, Peter

because we are all
betrayers, taking
silver and eating
body and blood and asking
(guilty) is it I and hearing
him say yes
it would be simple for us all
to rush out
and hang ourselves

but if we find grace
to cry and wait
after the voice of the morning
has crowed in our ears
clearly enough
to break our hearts
he will be there
to ask each again
do you love me

 

————————————————————————————

The Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas
Missioner for Creation Care
Episcopal Diocese of Western MA
Mass. Conference, United Church of Christ
(RevivingCreation.org)

#0601,Pipeline march, Greenfield church,3-'16

On Day #3 of a four-day, 46-mile walk to stop the construction of the Kinder Morgan NED pipeline, scores of activists gathered in the sanctuary of St. James Episcopal Church in Greenfield, Massachusetts, for a spirited rally organized by Sugar Shack Alliance. St. James Church is a grand old beauty of a building, a neo-Gothic stone structure that was consecrated in 1849. The sanctuary buzzed with excitement as a diverse crowd took their seats, many of them walkers eager for encouragement after a long day of tracing the route of the proposed pipeline on foot.

#0600,Greenfield Episcopal,3-'16As a Christian climate activist, I found it stirring to realize that the rally was taking place on the eve of Palm Sunday, the day that Christians around the world step into Holy Week. Here were the stately altar and lectern arrayed in cloths of traditional red colors for tomorrow’s service, yet here, too, were banners draped across altar, pulpit and lectern, crying out in large letters: “No Prisons, No Pipeline. Shut It Down,” “Respect Existence, Expect Resistance,” and “Love Will Win.”

At first I was startled to see these messages spread out across the sacred space, but then I realized that their meaning was exactly right and resonated with Palm Sunday: we were here to celebrate non-violent confrontation with unjust power. On Palm Sunday, Christians remember Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem and the cheering crowds that cast palm branches on the ground to welcome him. Jesus was on a collision course with imperial Rome and all the powers of this world that rule by force and domination. He came to proclaim the power of God’s love. He came without armor or weapons, riding not a war-horse but a humble donkey, as the prophet Zechariah foretold: the king of peace would come on a donkey (Zechariah 9:9-10).

Margaret stands in the 10 x 15 foot cabin in Ashfield modeled by Will Elwell after Thoreau’s cabin at Walden Pond, photo by Robert A. Jonas
Margaret stands in the 10 x 15 foot cabin in Ashfield modeled by Will Elwell after Thoreau’s cabin at Walden Pond (photo by Robert A. Jonas)

I think that Jesus would rejoice in the wave of non-violent action against fossil fuels that is rising up around the country. Growing numbers of individuals and groups are confronting the unjust political and corporate powers that hold society – and the very Earth itself – in a deathly grip. Resistance to fracked gas is mounting, from Seattle to Seneca Lake, from Ashland, Oregon to Ashfield, Mass., where last week Will Elwell, a local resident, constructed with his friends a replica of Thoreau’s Walden Pond cabin, placing it directly in the path of the proposed Kinder Morgan pipeline. On the eastern side of Massachusetts, in the West Roxbury neighborhood of metropolitan Boston, activists are fighting to stop the construction of the Spectra Energy pipeline project, which would bring highly pressurized fracked gas through a densely populated area and terminate at a station beside an active blast quarry.

Opening the rally with prayer
Opening the rally with prayer

 

Whatever our faith tradition, the resolve to stand up for life and to resist a deathly status quo springs from a deep place in the human spirit. So I was grateful to have a chance to offer a brief word of blessing as the rally began. Looking out at the faces of all these good people who long as ardently as I do for a more just, peaceful, and sustainable world, I invited the crowd into a spirit of prayer. I called upon the Spirit of love, the divine Mystery that we call by many names, and I prayed to God:

“Through our own experience and in the words of your prophet Isaiah, we know that:
Those who hope in you
will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint (Isaiah 40:31).
“Thank you for the love that you pour into our hearts through the power of your Spirit (Romans 5:5).
“Thank you for your power working in us that can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine (Ephesians 3:20).”

I asked God’s blessing on each person present and on the great work that we’ve been called to do.

After that, speakers came forward to articulate a particular argument for keeping so-called “natural” gas in the ground. Why were we struggling to block this pipeline? Because of our right to clear air and clean water. Because of the risk to public health from leaks and explosions. Because of conservation areas – farms and forests, scenic trails, wetlands, and rivers – that must remain intact. Because in Article 97 the constitution of our Commonwealth protects conservation lands and open space (a provision that the Tennessee Gas Pipeline Company is challenging aggressively in court). Because forced surveys of land violate the Fourth Amendment and constitute “unreasonable search and seizure.” Because we are committed to a clean energy economy. Because it is reckless to invest another dime in new fossil fuel infrastructure. Because we are pushing hard to avert catastrophic climate change.

People encircle the sanctuary, holding signs that represent all the towns that have voted against the pipeline
People encircle the sanctuary, holding signs that represent all the towns that have voted against the pipeline

I was particularly touched by the remarks of cultural anthropologist Lisa McLaughlin of the Nolumbeka Project, who spoke about the ancient Native American burial grounds that must not be disturbed. She pointed out that in addition to the particular places that Native American tribes deem sacred, the whole landscape has its own “naturally sacred geography.” For Native Americans, she said, the struggle against the pipeline represents a clash of cultural values: one set of values considers the Earth to be profane and dead, with humanity entitled to dominate and exploit, and the other set of values views the Earth as sacred and alive, with humanity existing as part of nature.

The latter understanding is the perspective that Pope Francis lifted up in his encyclical Laudato Si, which in many ways draws from the best of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. A recent sermon by Br. Keith Nelson, SSJE, conveys beautifully this way of seeing the world. He writes: “We must become students of the air, the soil, the waters, the birds and beasts, whose simple being is prayer. From them, we must re-learn how to live well and live deeply in union with the Creator.”

People who protest gas pipelines, compressor stations, fracking wells, and other extreme forms of energy extraction are people who understand that human beings are connected to the larger web of life. We have a moral responsibility to bless the Earth and its inhabitants rather than to desecrate, destroy, and demean what has been entrusted to us.

The need to keep fossil fuels in the ground is urgent. February 2016 was the hottest of any month ever recorded, which crushed the record set in January, which crushed the record set in December. A recent climate report in the Washington Post bears the title, “Scientists Are Floored by What’s Happening in the Arctic Right Now.” Last year, 2015, was the hottest year on record.

In the face of the profound assault now being unleashed on our planet, what are we called to do? Once we know that “the heat accumulating in the Earth because of human emissions is roughly equal to the heat that would be released by 400,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs exploding across the planet every day,” what changes do you and I need to make in our work and witness?

Those who hope in the LORD.... (image by Robert A. Jonas)
Those who hope in the LORD….
               (image by Robert A. Jonas)

On Palm Sunday Jesus rode into Jerusalem with no army except a crowd of supporters and a handful of friends, most of whom soon melted away into the darkness, betraying him, denying him, or simply fleeing. He rode with no weapon but the weapon of truth, no power but the power of mercy, no strength but the strength of love. He entered the city with no weapon, and yet, the Gospel tells us, “the whole city was in turmoil” (Mathew 21:10) – it was shaken. The Greek word used here is one that describes an earthquake. The powers-that-be in this world are shaken up when the king of peace rides into town, when he rides into the boardrooms and back rooms of our country, when he rides into our hearts.   There is an upheaval in the center of reality.

This is the holy upheaval that I glimpse in the climate movement. Some of us may suffer as Jesus suffered – indeed, the environmental activist for human rights and indigenous rights, Berta Caceres, was martyred in Honduras on March 3, 2016. We don’t know if our own efforts will succeed any more than Jesus’ did. After all, Jesus’ life apparently ended in failure: just days after his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, he was arrested, tortured, and crucified.

Cabin raising -- no, cabin risen. Photo by Robert A. Jonas
Cabin raising — no, cabin risen                                (photo by Robert A. Jonas)

Yet faith beckons us to stand with Jesus against the power of Empire. And faith tells us that if we live in the spirit of Jesus, we, too, will be raised to new life in him. I grinned when I saw the “Cabin Raising” sign on the corner of Beldingville Road, pointing the way to the Thoreau-inspired cabin to protest the pipeline.  On the sign, someone had crossed out “raising” and scribbled “raised.” Yes, that cabin has gotten raised, all right, and so have our spirits. A week after Palm Sunday, Christians will proclaim on Easter morning that Christ has risen. That is why we join the Jesus Movement: because we believe that love, not death, will have the last word. Because we know that those who hope in God will renew their strength; they will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.

A presentation to clergy and lay leaders in the Episcopal Diocese of Western Massachusetts that was given on Parish Leadership Day, March 5, 2016. A handout of suggested action steps is available for download here.

Friends, I’d like to take a page from writer Anne Lamott, who wrote a book a few years ago called Help, Thanks, Wow. She calls these our three most basic prayers, and they make a good framework for these remarks about caring for God’s creation, though I’m going to shuffle the deck a bit and take them in this order: Thanks, Wow, and Help.

“Thanks” comes first.

Thank you to every congregation that is exploring how to live more lightly and sustainably on the Earth.

Thank you to you churches that have joined Massachusetts Interfaith Power & Light and gotten an energy audit, maybe even looked into solar panels. I look forward to seeing which church in our diocese will be the first to go solar.

Thank you to you folks who have switched your homes to clean renewable energy from local sources – a step that is easy and inexpensive to take, thanks to an outfit called Mass Energy.

Thank you to everyone who is reining in your own consumption of fossil fuels by walking more and driving less, by turning out lights and turning down the heat.

Thank you to all who are “fasting” from wasteful over-consumption and from actions that pollute.

Thank you to everyone who is looking for ways large and small to “go green,” so that in our individual lives and in our communities we truly bear witness to the God who loves every inch of Creation and who entrusted the Earth to our care.Flower show, 2015

A special thank you to you clergy who are preaching about the climate crisis. I know that some fine preaching is going on, for some of you have sent me copies of your sermons. I also want to thank you lay leaders who encourage your clergy to preach about climate and who assure them of your support. Because it’s not easy to preach about climate. All kinds of voices tell us that the topic is too controversial, too political, and, besides, who are we to speak about climate – we’re not experts on the subject, we’re not scientists.

So thank you to everyone who sees through that fear and who understands that preaching and teaching and acting boldly on climate is not a political issue – we don’t care about the climate crisis because we’re Democrats or Republicans or members of any particular party.

We care about the climate crisis because we’re human beings, because we want to pass on to our children a habitable and healthy world, a world with clean air to breathe and clean water to drink.

We care about the climate crisis because we refuse to wipe out life as it has evolved on this planet and because we know the situation is grave – record heat, record levels of atmospheric CO2, record melting in the Arctic, a precious web of life on the brink of – or already – unraveling.

We care about the climate crisis because we’re Christian – because God’s love is being poured into our hearts through the power of the Holy Spirit and because we have chosen to follow Jesus’ way of love, justice, and truth. So thank you to all you good folks who in so many ways are expressing God’s love for our precious blue planet and for all its inhabitants, human and other-than-human.

That was Thanks. Here comes Wow. Wow is my response to what happened last year as a surge of religious energy rose up all over the world to safeguard life. How many of you have read or heard of the Pope’s encyclical Laudato Si: On Care for Our Common Home? Released last June, it was greeted with admiration by religious leaders around the world and elicited statements on climate action by Anglicans and Evangelicals, Muslims and Jews, Hindus and Buddhists. Never before have so many faith groups spoken out so strongly and so unequivocally about our moral responsibility to the poor, who bear the brunt of a changing climate, and about our spiritual responsibility to honor the sacredness of “this planet Earth, our island home.”

Kingbird, photo by Robert A. Jonas
Kingbird, photo by Robert A. Jonas

By the end of last year, faith groups of all kinds – including our own diocese and the Episcopal Church, at last summer’s General Convention – helped build the fossil fuel divestment movement to reach a combined total of $3.4 trillion in assets committed to divestment. Wow. And faith groups helped generate the momentum that brought us to the landmark climate agreement in Paris last December, when 196 countries came together through the U.N. and pledged to change the course of the global economy and to cap global temperature increases at 2º or ideally 1.5º degrees Celsius.

To all of this, I say: Wow. The wind of the Holy Spirit is blowing.

Here comes my last word to you: Help. I need your help. The Earth needs your help. This is an all-hands-on-deck moment, for the only way to avoid shooting past that 1.5º or 2º degree Celsius cap that protects us from runaway climate change is to keep 80% of known fossil fuel reserves in the ground. We simply cannot burn all that oil, coal and gas. We must transition quickly to clean sources of energy like wind and sunshine. This is a struggle, and we need your help.

I hope you’ll connect with the grassroots climate movement, either through 350Mass for a Better Future, which has nodes across the state, or through Climate Action Now, which is centered in the Pioneer Valley. Important campaigns are going on right now in Massachusetts to stop new pipelines, to divest our pension fund, and to make solar energy accessible and affordable to all. The campaign to put a fair price on carbon is asking for interfaith support, and I’m happy to say that the bishop of this diocese and the bishops of the “other” diocese in Massachusetts have all signed on.

People of faith are deeply engaged in the climate struggle, and some of us are getting together to make the faith basis of our work very explicit: I’ve been helping to launch a new group called Mass. Interfaith Coalition for Climate Action. If you’d like to help grow that interfaith coalition here in western Massachusetts, please sign up (send an email to: interfaithclimatecoalition@gmail.com). My clergy friends: I hope you sign up for Interfaith Power & Light’s Faith Climate Action Week and preach on climate at least once this April.

I am grateful for your help, and glad to offer you mine: all are welcome to sign up for blog posts at my Website, RevivingCreation.org, and I’d be glad to come to your parish to preach or teach or lead a retreat about caring for God’s creation.

So to God we say:

Thank you. Thank you for your marvelous Creation and for giving us ears to hear the cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor.

Gracious God, we say “Wow” when we see your awesome power transforming people’s lives and inspiring us to stand up for life.

And please help us, God – help us to stay grounded in your purpose for us and to become the people you created us to be, people who are a blessing to the Earth.

All this we pray in the presence and power of Christ Jesus, whose way we follow and whose guidance we trust. Amen.

Sermon for the Second Sunday in Lent, February 21, 2016. Delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas at Grace-St. Paul’s Church, Tucson, AZ. Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18 Psalm 27 Philippians 3:17-41 Luke 13:31-35

Fasting from carbon

I am blessed to be with you this morning. My husband and I now come to Grace-St. Paul’s whenever we visit Tucson, and I am grateful to be with you again. This is a special place: I feel the Holy Spirit here. Thank you, Steve, for inviting me back to this pulpit.

To say just a word about myself: after 25 years of parish ministry, I now serve as Missioner for Creation Care in the Diocese of Western Massachusetts. My dream is to help create a wave of religious activism to protect the web of life that God entrusted to our care. So I travel around, preaching and teaching and leading retreats about God’s love for this precious planet and its inhabitants, human and other-than-human, and the need to take action to express our faith. My particular concern is the climate crisis, so you can probably imagine my delight when I learned a few weeks ago that the couple who funded the first two years of my ministry raised the money by selling off their oil stocks. This is happy news to someone who believes, as I do, that divesting from fossil fuels is an expression of our moral values and will help propel a shift to clean energy. So here we are in the second Sunday in Lent, a season for renewing our lives in response to the love of God. Thanks to the passage from Genesis, today we have Abram standing at our side, an old man who, along with his wife, was landless, childless, without an heir. The door to his future was completely closed, shut tight, locked, and throw away the key. Nothing good lay ahead. Then God spoke to Abram in a vision and made a promise, the kind of promise that God made to a whole line of prophets, one after another: the door to the future was open. Through the grace of God, Abram’s life would bear fruit; he would bring forth life; he would convey blessings that would reach far into the future, blessings as countless as the stars. And Abram responded with faith. He trusted in God’s promise. He stepped out into an unknown and open future, trusting that God would guide him and that God would make him a vehicle or channel for new life. Today is a good day to stand with our faithful brother Abram and to reaffirm our trust in God’s promise that even when the future looks bleak or chaotic, even when we see no way forward, God is with us. God will open a path where there was no path, provide a way where there was no way, and pour divine hope into our hearts when our own hope is gone. Heaven knows there are reasons to fear for the future. The web of life is unraveling before our eyes. In just 200 years – a blink in geologic time – human beings have burned so much coal, gas, and oil and released so much heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that atmospheric levels of CO2 are higher than our species has ever experienced before. So far that extra CO2 has forced the average global temperature to rise about one degree. That may not sound like much, but what’s so worrisome to scientists is that this process is happening so fast. Already oceans are heating and becoming more acidic; tundra is thawing; ice caps are melting; sea levels are rising; coral reefs are dying; massive droughts are spreading in some places and heavy rains intensifying in others. We’re on the edge, or in the midst, of what some experts call the sixth major extinction event on this planet. 2015 was the hottest year on record, shattering the record set just the year before. We know that the situation is urgent. We know we have only a short time in which to avert a level of climate disruption that would render the world ungovernable and possibly uninhabitable within the lifetimes of our children and our children’s children. The World Bank – hardly a leftist organization – recently warned that unless we quickly rein in greenhouse gas emissions, climate change will drive 100 million people into extreme poverty – extreme poverty – in the next 15 years. Just imagine for a moment the human suffering and social upheaval that this would engender worldwide. We know we can do better than that. And as people of faith we refuse to stand idly by and to let business as usual destroy human communities and destroy life as it has evolved on the planet. As Pope Francis so beautifully explained in his landmark encyclical, Laudato Si – in a message that was picked up and amplified by Anglican, Jewish, Muslim, and many other religious voices the world over – we bear a moral and spiritual responsibility to respond boldly to the climate crisis. Lent invites us to come back into balance, to align our lives with our deepest intention, and to make the changes we need to make in order for God’s love to be manifest more fully in our lives. Today, in the presence and power of God, and with Abram at our side, we dare to ask some big questions: Through the grace of God, how can my life bring forth new life? How can I contribute to a better future? How can I live so that my life becomes a blessing to those who come after me? As Ella Fitzgerald once put it, “It isn’t where you came from, it’s where you’re going that counts.” You know, there are many ways to be healers in the world, many ways to help our neighbors. But regarding climate change, here come three suggestions. One: sign up online for the Ecumenical Lenten Carbon Fast. During Lent, we seek to restore the limits that give life. Let’s you and I learn how to fast from carbon. Let’s you and I learn together how to make choices that cut back dramatically on our use of fossil fuels. This is an honorable, and I would argue, a necessary, Lenten practice. When you sign up for the Ecumenical Lenten Carbon Fast, you receive a daily email with inspirational reflection and a specific action step to reduce your personal consumption of dirty energy. Right now the fast is being carried out by thousands of Christians who care for God’s Creation. Two: write a postcard to your members of Congress. After the service, stop at the table for Citizens Climate Lobby and pick up some postcards. You might think that writing a letter or postcard to your member of Congress is a waste of time, but it’s not: your representatives probably have no idea that you care about climate change and that you’re tracking what they’re doing. And Citizens Climate Lobby is pushing for a way to price carbon that will get us off fossil fuels, create new jobs, and accelerate a transition to a new economy based on clean, renewable sources of energy, like sun and wind. Last summer I joined scores of other faith leaders to lobby on behalf of Citizens Climate Lobby in Washington, D.C. We didn’t push for carbon pricing because we were Democrats, or because we were Republicans, or because we were socialists or members of the Green Party. It wasn’t politics that propelled us to support carbon pricing. It was faith: faith in a God who utterly loves us and all Creation, faith in a God who envisions a healthy, just, and sustainable society, faith in a God who wants our lives to be a blessing to the vulnerable poor and to those who come after us. Three: go to the Website 350.org, sign up to receive emails, and build the global climate movement. 350.org is the grassroots non-profit that is helping to create a wave of global resistance to keep coal, gas, and oil in the ground, where they belong. This coming May, actions will be held in places all over the world to “shut down the world’s most dangerous fossil fuel projects and support the most ambitious climate solutions.” Already the movement to keep fossil fuels in the ground is gaining momentum. People are blockading oil trains and protesting the construction of new pipelines; thousands of so-called “kayaktivists” took to the water in Seattle to block an oil-drilling rig; and two men in a lobster boat near Cape Cod disrupted the delivery of 40,000 tons of coal. Just this week, beloved writer Terry Tempest Williams took part in an auction in Salt Lake City that was selling off leases for oil and gas drilling on public lands. As a climate protester, she bought up land rights on a parcel near Arches National Park in Utah in an effort to prevent any drilling. Later she commented, “It has deeply shaken my core as an American citizen to watch these beautiful, powerful public lands that are all of ours, and our inheritance, being sold for $2 an acre, $3 an acre… I’m both heartsick and heartbroken and outraged.” Yes, it can be heartbreaking to take part in the struggle to stabilize the climate and to heal our relationship with the Earth. But the pain we feel is an expression of love, and love is what sustains us, and guides us, and will see us through. So I invite you to take up my three suggestions: to join the Ecumenical Lenten Carbon Fast; to sign postcards to your legislators on behalf of Citizens Climate Lobby; and to join 350.org and the global climate movement. As people of faith, we’re here for the long haul. We’re not going away. We’re going to keep fighting for a future that runs on clean energy like sun and wind. We’re going to keep fighting for a society and an economy that leave no one out. As Pope Francis reminded us, the cry of the Earth is intimately connected with the cry of the poor. We hear that cry. We share that cry. And we intend to answer it, by divestment and direct action, by voting and lobbying, by making personal changes in our lifestyle and, perhaps, by engaging in peaceful civil disobedience. A new world is on the horizon, and we hope to act like midwives, helping that new world to be born. We hope to act like Abram, trusting in God’s promise of new life. And we hope to act like Jesus, who when Herod threatened to kill him, refused to be intimidated or deterred. Despite all the forces arrayed against him, Jesus continued to heal and to set free. He refused to be stopped. “Today,” he said, “tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way” (Luke 31:33 ). And so it is for us. We, too, must be on our way — on Jesus’s way — today, tomorrow, and the next day. Who knows what God in Christ will be able to do through us, now and in the days ahead?    

Before you embark on a protest march on a day that is bitterly cold – 18 degrees Fahrenheit with a gusty wind – you take stock and prepare yourself. As walkers of all ages assemble in the fellowship hall, you greet old friends, meet new ones, and debate whether or not you’ll really need those two layers of long underwear when you head outside (you will).

A definition of faith painted on the parish hall of the UCC Church, Conway, MA
A definition of faith painted on the parish hall of the UCC Church, Conway, MA

Even more important, you recall your intention. You recollect the yearning that drew you today to a small church in a small hill-town of western Massachusetts. You’re here to commemorate Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., by walking a section of a proposed pipeline. Along with scores of other hardy souls, you’ll be tracing part of the route of Northeast Energy Direct (NED), a 400-plus-mile gas pipeline that would cut through Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. The project is backed by Tennessee Gas Pipeline, a subsidiary of Kinder Morgan, and today is the last day of a 3-day trek to oppose it.

Give me a North Star before I set out on a journey! Give me a destination and the desire to reach it! There it is on the wall above me – a line from the Bible in big bold letters: “Faith is being sure of what you hope for and certain of what you do not see” (Hebrews 11:1).

I’m sure of what I hope for: a peaceful, just, and holy world.

I’m certain of what I do not see: an abiding Love that fills all things.

The Earth flag flies in the wind
The Earth flag flies in the wind Photo © Robert Jonas, 2016

Faith is what fills me and what sends me out to contribute what I can. So here I am on a wintry morning, along with scores of men, women, and children, impelled by faith to take action on behalf of God’s good Earth and all her creatures.

People oppose the Kinder Morgan pipeline for all kinds of reasons. For starters, it would pass through some of our region’s most environmentally sensitive areas; threaten the purity of aquifers and the quality of public drinking water; disrupt lands legally committed to being conserved in perpetuity; and allow the company to seize public and private land by eminent domain. What’s more, it would further commit the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to reliance on a dirty source of energy; delay the urgently needed transition to clean renewable energy; and condemn the world to additional climate change, because methane, which is released during the production and distribution of natural gas, is a potent greenhouse gas that damages the climate. Many good alternatives exist, and our state’s Attorney General has concluded that this fracked gas pipeline is entirely unnecessary. (For details, visit NoFrackedGasInMass.org and Pipeline Awareness Network for the North East, Inc.)

Marching through Conway Photo @ Robert Jonas, 2016
Marching through Conway
Photo @ Robert Jonas, 2016

After the marchers have put away their coffee cups and chairs, gathered in a circle, and given their names and hometowns, I offer an impromptu prayer. Someone shares a glorious, heartfelt song. Then we grab our coats, pick up our banners and signs, and head out the door, into the bracing cold wind.

I am amazed to discover that people have come not only from nearby towns such as Ashfield, Conway, Greenfield, and Shutesbury, but also from as far away as Connecticut, New Jersey, and North Carolina. Several members of Beyond Extreme Energy traveled a distance to join us, eager to stop all new permits for fossil fuel infrastructure and to advocate for clean, safe, renewable energy.

The last time I spoke with Ted Glick and other leaders of Beyond Extreme Energy was when I ran into them in DC during the Pope’s visit to the United States. At that point the BXE folks were deep into an 18-day, water-only fast in front of the headquarters of FERC, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. FERC is the agency charged with issuing permits for new fossil fuel infrastructure, and, as the BXE Website explains, “For years citizens groups have utilized FERC’s procedures to try to prevent the dramatic expansion of gas pipelines, compressor stations, storage terminals and export terminals.” None of these efforts have yielded anything: FERC remains intransigent, functioning, in effect, like a rubber stamp to the gas industry. In fact, this week environmental groups in Massachusetts are among 165 groups nationwide that are calling for a federal investigation into FERC, which they decry as a “rogue agency that is blatantly biased towards the pipeline companies it purports to regulate.” FERC no longer serves the common good.

Encountering opposition: build the pipeline Photo © Robert jonas, 2016
Encountering opposition: build the pipeline
Photo © Robert jonas, 2016

It was FERC’s intransigence that led BXE members to start the Fast for No New Permits. Their Website describes the personal faith that motivated some of them to fast, and it quotes a man of faith, Pope Francis. In the words of his encyclical, Laudato Si: On Care for Our Common Home: “It is no longer enough, then, simply to state that we should be concerned for future generations. We need to see that what is at stake is our own dignity. Leaving an inhabitable planet to future generations is, first and foremost, up to us. The issue is one which dramatically affects us, for it has to do with the ultimate meaning of our earthly sojourn.”

It is good to walk beside Ted Glick, good to be walking with others who hold fast to the possibility of creating a better future. It is good to do what we can within legal limits: to file petitions, speak at public hearings, lobby politicians, organize demonstrations, and vote wisely. Just last week I filed a motion for “intervenor” status on behalf of our diocese’s Social Justice Commission, which would give us the right to participate in hearings, file briefs, and challenge FERC decisions.

Black Lives Matter: climate, racial, and economic justice intersect Photo © Robert Jonas, 2016
#Black Lives Matter: climate, racial, and economic justice intersect Photo © Robert Jonas, 2016

But the day may come – in fact, for some people of faith, that day is already here – when we realize that fasting and prayer, voting and vigils aren’t nearly enough to slow the climate crisis. More radical action, such as non-violent civil disobedience, is necessary. A week of global action is being planned for May 7-15, 2016. As Martin Luther King, Jr., once said, “We’ve played havoc with the destiny of the world… Somewhere we must make it clear that we are concerned about the survival of the world.”

We don’t know if we will be successful, even if “success” is defined, in very basic terms, as preserving human civilization and preserving a habitable world. 2015 was the hottest year in recorded history, and 2016 looks likely to be even hotter than that. But it’s not the certainty of success that propels us – it’s the certainty of faith. We are sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. So we step out in faith, risking our comfort and maybe much more. To quote Dr. King one last time, “Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.”