Author Archives: mbj

Below is a selection of published articles and unpublished talks by Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, produced since the early 1990’s. All are copyright Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, and may only be reproduced by permission from the author.

Sermon for the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 9C), July 7, 2013. Delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, Grace Church, Amherst, Massachusetts.

Isaiah 66:10-14Psalm 66:1-8
Galatians 6:7-16Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

Let us not grow weary

For the past few weeks Hilary’s sermons have focused on Galatians, and today, in the sixth and final text from Galatians that we’ll hear this summer, we reach a wonderful line: “Let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up” (Galatians 6:9).  What a strong and timely word of encouragement when we may feel tempted to quit!  The same encouragement shows up in other places, too.  In his Second Letter to the Corinthians, Paul writes, “Since it is by God’s mercy that we are engaged in this ministry, we do not lose heart” (2 Corinthians 4:1).  For emphasis, he repeats the phrase just a few lines later: “We do not lose heart” (2 Corinthians 4:16).  In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus tells the disciples the same thing, giving them a parable “about their need to pray always and not to lose heart” (Luke 18:1).

You and I need that encouragement, don’t we?  It is so easy to lose heart, so tempting to think that our efforts to serve God, our efforts to heal and protect and bring forth life on this planet are for naught.  We can feel that hopelessness not only in our personal lives, but in our collective life, too.  It can be discouraging to read the newspapers, depressing to follow the news, from this country’s deployment of drones and its ever-increasing use of surveillance to the ongoing violence in the Middle East.  Or take the issue that you know is most urgent to me, and that I’ve spoken about many times from this pulpit: climate change. We’re having another scorcher of a summer, with triple digit and often record-breaking temperatures in California, Arizona, and Nevada. The U.S. is experiencing deep drought in some places and wild deluges in others, such as the 13 inches of rain that fell this week on Florida’s panhandle in 24 hours.  Last summer the Arctic sea ice essentially melted, and this spring we learned that the atmosphere’s concentration of CO2 has reached 400 parts per million, a level not seen on Earth for some three million years. We’ve got only a short time in which to drastically reduce emissions and to wean the world off fossil fuels lest we catapult into catastrophe. But given the political and corporate forces arrayed against us to prevent substantive action on climate change, it’s no wonder that we can grow weary, no wonder that we can lose heart.

Yet here is Jesus, filled with the Spirit of God, sending out seventy disciples two by two to proclaim that the kingdom of God is near.  Evidently he sends them out with a sense of urgency, for they are to travel lightly, without purse or bag or sandals.  How precious their mission is, and how precious few these missioners are, for, as Jesus observes, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few” (Luke 10:2).  Off they go ahead of him into an often dangerous world, proclaiming a new way of living that is organized not around domination and power-over but around interdependence and mutual care, not around selfishness and greed but around sharing and self-giving, not around privilege for the few and poverty for the many but around justice and kindness for all.  These missioners are fired up by a vision of possibility that animates and inspires them. 

Meet two or three people like that, and you can’t help but have hope.

We are honored to welcome a similar group of missioners who have joined us this morning.  They come to us courtesy of Climate Summer, a leadership program for young adults who travel by bicycle to call for action on climate change.  Four Climate Summer teams have fanned out across New England, and the six members of this particular team are pedaling across Massachusetts, from Greenfield to Barnstable.  These folks are not necessarily Christian, but in some ways their experience resembles that of the 70 disciples that Jesus sent out.  They sleep where they can, and last night they used the Parker Room.  Like the 70 disciples, they gratefully receive whatever food is set before them, otherwise living on six dollars per person a day.  They travel lightly, with hardly a purse, bag, or sandals to their name – just a backpack and a couple of trailers, which they take turns hauling behind their bikes.  And wherever they go, they speak to whoever will listen – to students and parents, to journalists and radio announcers, to fellow activists and ordinary citizens – urging us to work together to create a more life-giving society and to build a better future beyond fossil fuels.1 

The Climate Summer team is about the same age as many of the elite firefighters who perished fighting a massive wildfire in Arizona earlier this week.  Like those heroes, these young people are fighting to protect a community – the human community, the community of life on Earth.  On this Fourth of July weekend, I want to say: this is what patriotism looks like. 

Now I’m going to do something we never do in sermons – to invite you Climate Summer folks to stand up.  Would you please give us your name and tell us where you’re from? . . . . 

I hope that many of you will take a few moments at coffee hour to speak with these young people about what they’re learning and about the campaigns they’re working on.  It is good news that we have among us such witnesses to life, and not only here, but also in many places around the country and the world.  Now that signs of a climate crisis are becoming unmistakably clear, a worldwide movement is rising up to proclaim that it is possible to protect life on this planet – we don’t have to settle for letting ocean levels rise, entire species disappear, carbon emissions foul the air, and our children inherit a scorched and chaotic world.  Last week the United Church of Christ became the first national church group to divest from fossil fuels,2 making it crystal clear that this is a moral battle.  It would be unthinkable for us to profit from slavery, and it should become just as unthinkable for us to profit from the production and burning of coal, gas, and oil. Even the chief economist for the International Energy Agency says that two-thirds of the world’s carbon reserves must stay in the ground if we’re going to prevent runaway global warming.3  So the divestment movement is beginning to take off.

The summer may be heating up, but so, too, is resistance to fossil fuels.  During the last two weeks of July, statistically the hottest stretch of the year, local groups across the country “will be fighting against bad energy projects: coal ports and coal-fired power plants, tar sands pipelines….tar sands refineries,”4 and the banks that invest in them.  As Bill McKibben says, “It’s time to stand up – peacefully but firmly — to the industry that is wrecking our future.”  I hope you’ll check out the handouts at coffee hour that give a list of local actions, and I hope you’ll consider taking part in one. You don’t have to ride a bicycle across Massachusetts in 90-degree heat to stand up for life – there are many ways to serve God, many ways to bear witness to love – but whatever you can offer will be welcome, for, as Jesus says, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.”

I want to close by commenting on two other things that Jesus says in this Gospel passage. After the seventy return with joy from their mission and report on their success, Jesus says, “I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning” (Luke 10:18).  What does this mean?  Well, do you remember that familiar injunction to “Think Global, Act Local”?  Jesus suggests that we do more than that – he invites us to think cosmic.  When we act in love, our efforts have an eternal significance.  The results of our efforts may or may not be as obviously successful as were the efforts of the seventy disciples, but whenever we act in love, Satan falls from heaven like a flash of lightning. This poetic image portrays the hidden, cosmic power of every act of love to overthrow the power of evil.  So when I feel weary or lose heart, I sometimes remind myself of what Jesus saw – “I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning” – and I find fresh energy to do the good that I can.

A second thing that Jesus says to the 70 disciples after they return is that their deepest joy should spring not from the success of their efforts, nor even from knowing that acting in love has a cosmic effect, but rather from knowing that whatever they do, their “names are written in heaven” (Luke 10:20).  Their names, your name, all our names – are held close in God’s heart. We don’t have to earn God’s love.  In fact, there is nothing you can do that will make God love you any more, and nothing you can do that will make God love you any less. Your name is written in heaven, and that is cause for joy, indeed. 

So, whatever battles you may be fighting today, whatever works of love you may be engaged in, I hope you and I will take to heart the words of St. Paul: “Let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up” (Galatians 6:9). 

1. “Cyclists Launch Anti-Fracking Drive In Greenfield,” www.recorder.com.

2. “United Church Of Christ Is First National Church Group To Divest From Fossil Fuel Investments,” www.washingtonpost.com

3. “Two-Thirds Of Energy Sector Will Have To Be Left Undeveloped, Bonn Conference Told,” www.irishtimes.com

4. Bill McKibben, “United We Sweat,” Orion, July-August, 2013, p. 13; online at www.orionmagazine.org

Sermon for the Seventh Sunday of Easter (Proper 4C), June 2, 2013. Delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, Grace Church, Amherst, Massachusetts.

1 Kings 8:22-23, 41-43Psalm 96:1-9
Galatians 1:1-12Luke 7:1-10

On being set free

Starting today, for six weeks our lectionary includes passages from Paul’s letter to the churches of Galatia.  Over these six weeks, we’ll have a chance to immerse ourselves in Galatians, to ponder the epistle almost in its entirety.  I am delighted, because this letter includes one of my all-time favorite lines in the whole Bible: “For freedom Christ has set us free.  Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1). We won’t hear those particular lines for several weeks, but already in this morning’s reading Paul is sounding the great theme of his letter to the Galatians: freedom.  He makes an opening salutation, one that Randy often uses when he begins his sermons – “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” – and then Paul jumps right in to describing what Christ has done for us: he “gave himself for our sins to set us free from the present evil age” (Galatians 1:3-4).  He gave himself… to set us free. 

Galatians has been called “the Magna Charta of Christian liberty,”1 for in this letter Paul makes a spirited defense – in the words of one scholar, a “bitterly polemical”2 defense – against those who would try to limit the freedom that is ours in Christ. Scholars don’t seem to agree on the location of the churches to which Paul was writing, nor on when this letter was composed, but, as one scholar puts it, it is clear that this letter “reflects a critical moment in the early Christian movement’s struggle to define its mission and identity.”3

What was at stake? The issue in Paul’s time was whether or not a Gentile had to become a Jew before becoming a Christian – whether or not a man had to get circumcised and to follow other elements of Jewish law and ritual in order to become right with God.  The struggle, in other words, was whether we are made right with God by doing certain things, by performing certain rituals, by carrying out certain good works that earn us our salvation, or whether Christ’s dying and rising is the decisive event that sets us free. Paul was convinced that the Christ event had set us free and that we shouldn’t go crawling back into the various traps that keep us restricted and small. The trap that he identified in his own day was the trap of believing that we must purify ourselves in certain ways, must follow certain rules, and must carry out certain obligations, before God in Christ will love us and save us and accept us. Of course there’s nothing wrong with doing good works or performing rituals, but they are not what saves us. Paul couldn’t be more vehement in defending our freedom in Christ, and twice he pronounces “accursed” anyone who proclaims “a different gospel” (Galatians 1:8-9; 1:6).

So what does it mean to know freedom in Christ?  Surely being free in Christ does not mean acting like the proverbial college freshman who arrives on campus and feels delightfully entitled to express every impulse, indulge every whim, and try every illegal substance because somehow the rules no longer apply. As any addict will tell you, in the end there is nothing more confining or death-dealing than to give free rein to our cravings and impulses – we end up trapped. 

Freedom in Christ is not self-indulgence or anarchy, but the deep ordering of our desires. When we know what we love most, we are set free. When we know what we long for more than anything else, when we find something big enough to die for, something big enough to live for, then we are set free. When we become aware of something so beautiful and so true that we want to give ourselves to it totally, with nothing held back, then we are set free. We know what to hold on to, and what to ignore or let go.  We have found our compass, found our North Star.  Whatever the circumstances of our lives may be, we know what we want to bear witness to, what we want to embody. We are free.

People who have discovered their freedom in Christ know that we don’t have to earn our salvation. We don’t have to impress anybody or prove ourselves to anybody. We can finally quit the ego’s desperate, insatiable quest for other people’s approval, for other people’s sympathy and admiration, because people who are free in Christ are people who know that we are loved.  Nothing and nobody can take that love away, and we don’t have to do a thing to earn it. We are loved for no reason – not because of anything that we have done or for anything that we will do, but simply because we are.  God loves us not because we’re lovable, but because God’s nature is to love. That is what we see when we gaze at the cross: a God who loves us completely.

So it’s worth paying attention to the many ways in which we limit our freedom and trap ourselves in a small place. For instance, we can take at look at our inner self-talk. Do we have a habit of thinking harsh things about ourselves?  Do we belittle ourselves and put ourselves down?  It’s also worth paying attention to the ways in which we do or do not encourage other people to step into their freedom.  Do we give other people our full attention, without expecting or demanding that they be a certain way?  Do we approach other people without preconceived expectations of who they are and what they need and what we intend to (quote-unquote) ‘get out’ of the conversation?  Are we basically trying to promote and prove ourselves, or are we giving ourselves in love?  Alan Jones contends that “‘We either contemplate or we exploit.’ We either see things and persons with reverence and awe, and therefore treat them as genuinely other than ourselves; or we appropriate them, and manipulate them for our own purposes.”4 

It’s all about growing in freedom, and about setting others free.  Every time we receive the Eucharist, it’s as if Christ were saying to us: “I love you, and I want to set you free.”  As Paul says, “For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1).

I’d like to close with a story about how I glimpsed my freedom in Christ in the most unlikely of places.5 It’s a story about the first (and, so far, the only) time that I was arrested.  Back in 2001, when the administration was pushing an energy policy that involved new drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, I headed down to Washington, D.C. and joined a small group of interfaith activists.  After holding a worship service in front of the Department of Energy, twenty-two of us knelt down in front of the doors to protest our country’s relentless use of fossil fuels. We sang, we prayed for God’s Creation, and, when the police told us to move or be subject to arrest, we refused to move.  Before long I was in handcuffs and locked in a police wagon.  Over the course of a very long afternoon and into the night, we were transferred from one jail to another, each one more apparently God-forsaken than the last, as if we were making our own small descent through Dante’s circles of hell.  By nightfall our group was locked into a row of cells that ran along a corridor, and I found myself confined with fellow priest and environmental activist Sally Bingham in a small, dark space supplied with a dirty toilet and two bare, metal bunks painted olive green and etched with graffiti.  We were anxious, tired, and unsure how much longer we would be detained.  Our nerves were frayed.

We had had nothing to eat or drink all day, so when a guard appeared with a pile of bologna sandwiches, stacks of donuts wrapped in cellophane, and cups of Kool-Aid, I took notice.  I was hungry, but I don’t eat meat and I can’t eat sugar, so I wasn’t sure what to do. Finally I accepted a couple of bologna sandwiches and asked for a glass of water. I peeled off the bologna and gloomily studied the meal in my hands: bread and water.  Basic jail food. 

Just then someone called from an adjoining cell, “Watch out.  The bread’s moldy.”

With growing despair I examined my slice of bread.  I couldn’t see anything green, but it was too dark to get a good look.  All in all the bread looked fairly loathsome.  I took a quick bite, figuring that if I gulped it fast, maybe I wouldn’t notice my disgust.  But as the bread touched my tongue, I remembered the Eucharist.  I remembered how Jesus gives himself to us in the bread and the wine. My disgust vanished, along with my sense of deprivation.  I took a second, slow bite of the bread and ate it with reverence.  I took a sip of water.  To my surprise, I suddenly saw that I had everything I needed.  My anxiety slipped away.  I was filled with gratitude and completely at peace.  I knew that I was free.  It didn’t matter that I was still in jail.  It didn’t matter that I had no idea when I would get out.  None of that mattered.  I was being fed from within, as if a river of joy were secretly flowing through me.

I looked around my cell in disbelief.  No, I wasn’t hallucinating.  I could see that everything was exactly as it had been: the same bleak walls, the same metal bunk, the same rows of bars.  Nothing had budged.  But everything had changed.  It was as if my outward circumstances had suddenly fallen away, or as if they were filled with a hidden radiance.  Everything material seemed to open beyond itself, to be secretly as spacious as the wild Arctic wilderness.  The powers-that-be thought they had imprisoned me, but actually I was free.  I almost burst out laughing.

May freedom be ours today, and every day, as we welcome and ponder the mystery of Christ within us and among us. How is Christ inviting you to be set free?

1. Introduction to “The Letter of Paul to the Galatians,” The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha, RSV, New York: Oxford University Press, 1973, p. 1410.

2. Richard B. Hays, Introduction to “The Letter of Paul to the Galatians,” The HarperCollins Study Bible (Fully Revised and Updated), NRSV, HarperCollins Publishers, 2006, p. 1972.

3. Ibid.

4. Alan Jones, Soul-Making: The Desert Way of Spirituality, p. 29, quoted by Belden C. Lane, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 202.

5. For a longer essay that includes this story: Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, “When Heaven Happens,” in Heaven, edited by Roger Ferlo, NY: Seabury, 2007.

Margaret’s reflection on the Climate Revival, “Reviving the Climate, Restoring our Souls,” posted by Episcopal Diocese of Western Massachusetts, is here.

Sermon for the Seventh Sunday of Easter, May 12, 2013. Delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, Grace Church, Amherst, Massachusetts.

Acts 16:16-34Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21
Psalm 97John 17:20-26

Ascend with Christ, Live with Joy

Today is the Sunday after Ascension Day, which we marked on Thursday.  The Bible gives two different accounts of the Ascension.  One comes at the end of Luke’s Gospel and completes the story of Jesus’ life on earth; the other comes at the beginning of the Book of Acts and launches the stories about the early church.  In both cases we are told that Jesus was crucified and that he rose from the dead and appeared for forty days to his disciples.  At the end of those forty days, the risen Christ withdrew from the disciples’ sight.  He no longer lived bodily on earth with his friends, but, as we hear in the Book of Acts, “he was lifted up, and a cloud took him from their sight” (Acts 1:9).  As Luke’s Gospel describes the Ascension, here is what happened: “… [Jesus] led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them.  While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven.  And they worshiped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and they were continually in the temple blessing God” (Luke 24:50-53).

The other day I was having lunch with my friend Andrea Ayvazian, the pastor of the UCC church in Haydenville, and we got to talking about how curious it is that Luke says that the disciples responded to Jesus’ ascension “with great joy.”  Joy?  Why joy?  The disciples had already said goodbye to Jesus once.  They had watched him suffer a brutal death and had felt the anguish of forever letting him go.  Then, to their amazement, he had come back as the risen Christ, truly himself but now shining with divine glory.  For forty days they had been blessed by his presence among them; they had received his forgiveness, guidance, and strength.  And now he was leaving them again, never to appear in such visible, tangible form!  You would think that they would have felt bereft!  That they would have been heartsick at grieving yet another loss!  Today’s Collect suggests as much, with its poignant appeal to God, “Do not leave us comfortless.”

So why did the disciples feel such joy?  During the ten days between Jesus’ withdrawal from the disciples’ sight and the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the disciples were living in an in-between time – the risen Christ had left them, and the fullness of the Spirit had not yet come.  Yet they were filled with joy, rather than with sorrow and anxiety.  How was that possible for them, and, maybe more to the point, how might that be possible for us?  For we know what it’s like to live in an in-between time.  We experience it as individuals, when something comes to an end and the new has not yet come, when we find ourselves in-between, waiting for someone or something, not sure what will come next or how things will turn out.  We know that in-between space as a community, too, for our rector left Grace Church a while ago, and, even though we enjoy the very capable leadership of an interim rector, we wonder who the new rector will be and how God in Christ will find fresh expression among us.  It can be difficult to wait during an in-between time, and easy to become worried, irritable, or impatient with our selves and one another.  So why is it that the disciples, in their own in-between time, were filled “with great joy,” and what value did they find in waiting?

I’ll offer three possibilities.

First, they received this in-between time as a gift in which to absorb what God in Christ was doing for them.  To use the traditional imagery: at Christmas, God in Christ descended among us, becoming fully human, and on Ascension Day, God in Christ ascended back up to heaven, carrying with him all that is human – and in fact all of creation – into the heart of God.  The Ascension marks the complete reunion of earth and heaven, of matter and spirit, of human and divine.  Thanks to the Ascension, every aspect of life, every aspect of our selves, has been infused with the life of God.  There is nowhere we can go, nothing that we can experience, that God does not share with us. 

So I imagine that the disciples joyfully used the period after Jesus’ ascension to absorb what had happened and what it meant.   What it meant for them, as it means for us, is that everything that is in us, every part of us – our anxiety, our despair, our distractedness, our inertia and impatience – everything, the parts of our selves that we like and the parts of our selves that we don’t like – has become transparent to God.  There are so many parts of our selves and of the world around us that we want to avoid, scorn, and push away – we don’t welcome them, they are too painful, maybe they frighten us – but lo and behold, God is found there, too.  God is everywhere now; there is nowhere we can go, where God is not.  The love of God in Christ embraces it all.

So the ten days between the Ascension and Pentecost, just like the interim period between one rector and the next, give us a precious opportunity for self-examination, as individuals and as a community.  Are there parts of yourself, or of this community, or of the world that you think are beyond God’s reach?  Thanks to the Ascension, everything in us as individuals and as a community, and everything in the whole wide world, is now held in God.  Nothing is left out.  All of it has been redeemed.  All of it can be transformed.  All of it is open to God’s grace. 

So I imagine that being one reason for the disciples’ joy.  A second reason was that they trusted Jesus’ promise that he would send his Holy Spirit.  So they prayed.  In fact, they practically threw themselves into prayer.  Luke’s Gospel ends with the words, “they were continually in the temple blessing God” (Luke 24:53), and early in the Book of Acts, Luke speaks of the disciples “constantly devoting themselves to prayer” (Acts 1:14).  Jesus is always ready to meet us when we pray, for we pray with him and in him; in fact, you might even say that when we feel the impulse to pray, that it is the living Christ within us is that is drawing us to pray.  In today’s reading from the Gospel of John, we overhear Jesus praying for us: “that they may all be one.  As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us… I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one” (John 17: 21, 23a).   SSJE Brother Mark Brown points out that “If Christ is in me, and Christ is in you, we have something in common. We are no longer separate. We are no longer separated by so many miles – or by race or class… We have something of our essence in common.”

Prayer is what held the disciples together after Jesus ascended into heaven, and in praying in union with him they discovered how intimately connected they were to each other.  Prayer is what can hold us together, too, in this in-between time, this time of transition.  Prayer can fill us with joy, as we put our trust in the coming of the Holy Spirit and in the good things that God has prepared for us.

Finally, here’s a third reason that the disciples were filled with joy when Jesus ascended into heaven: they were a band of people who were convinced that the kingdom of God had come among them and that they had an essential part to play in making that kingdom real.  Theologian John Dominic Crossan points out that John the Baptist had a monopoly, but Jesus had a franchise.1  John the Baptist centered his ministry around himself, which meant that if the powers-that-be killed John the Baptist, his ministry was over.  But Jesus shared everything he had with his friends; he gave his power away; he passed everything he had to us, and entrusted it all to us.  So, as John Dominic Crossan says, “By the time the authorities came for Jesus, the Kingdom movement could no longer be stopped simply by executing Jesus.” 

We see that in today’s marvelous story from the Book of Acts, when Jesus’ followers were arrested for disturbing the city (Acts 16:16-34).  With Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and ascension, a movement began, a movement that stretches straight from the ascension to Grace Church and beyond, a movement in which we have each other, and cherish each other, and find Christ in each other, and encourage each other to bear witness to Christ’s saving love in the world despite all the forces of injustice and oppression.  We are free to choose this life, this destiny, or not.

So, yes, it is true that news reports from around the world give us plenty of reminders of human malice and violence, but it is also true that in Christ we can practice kindness and respect in all our own relationships, and can join peace and justice movements that advocate for policies that build a world that is free and just and safe.  Yes, it is true that atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide have reached levels not seen for millions of years,2 but it is also true that we can quit business as usual and join the movement to protect life on this planet.  Last week in Washington, D.C., I watched a climate statement get signed by the leaders of the Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and the Church of Sweden, committing them “to leading a conversion of epic scale, a metanoia, or communal spiritual movement away from sin and despair toward the renewal and healing of all creation.”  We feel sadness and alarm for our ailing earth, but we can renew our resolve to take part in the urgent work of healing.

There is cause for joy in this in-between time, cause for giving thanks, cause for lifting our hearts as Jesus ascends into heaven and we await the coming of the Holy Spirit.  If we have the faith and strength to face life’s challenges, it will be through the One whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.  It will be through the One who lived and died and rose for us.  When the celebrant calls out, “Lift up your hearts,” we have the joy of calling back in reply, “We lift them to the Lord.”

1. http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Christianity/2004/04/Jesus-Kingdom-Program.aspx

2. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/11/science/earth/carbon-dioxide-level-passes-long-feared-milestone.html

Margaret reflects on the Climate Revival and the climate summit in an essay, “Rising with Christ: Confronting Climate Change,” posted by Episcopal News Service.

Margaret was a panelist at a D.C. climate summit in May 2103 sponsored by the Episcopal Church and the Church of Sweden, “Sustaining Hope in the Face of Climate Change: Faith Communities Gather,” and is quoted in an article by Episcopal News Service.

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Easter, April 21, 2013. Delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, Grace Church, Amherst, Massachusetts.

Acts 9:36-43Revelation 7:9-17
Psalm 23John 10:22-30

The LORD is my shepherd

“The LORD is my shepherd;
I shall not be in want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures
and leads me beside still waters.” (Psalm 23:1-2)

Sometime this week the first balmy days of spring arrived.  Magnolia is now in bloom, Barn Swallows and Eastern Phoebes have returned, lilac is in leaf, and over in Hadley you can stand in front of Whole Foods and – if you’re up for it – suck deep into your lungs the aroma of cow manure.  Spring is with us in all its beauty, and this morning, as planned, we are celebrating Creation Sunday, the Sunday closest to Earth Day, which is tomorrow.  But good luck to preachers (like me) who planned to preach this morning about the natural environment, because all week our attention has been riveted not to our gardens nor to the well-being of planet Earth but rather to the bombings at the finish-line of Boston’s Marathon, and then to the suspense and drama over the ensuing days as the City of Boston was locked down and the manhunt intensified. 

What a week it has been.  We’ve been in shock.  We’ve wept over the death of innocents.  We’ve been forced to consider the softness of the human body, how vulnerable it is to being wounded and maimed.  We’ve seen how swiftly a day of accomplishment and joy can be transformed into a scene of unbearable carnage and loss.  We’ve watched a vital metropolis turn into what looked like a ghost town, its streets emptied of everything but police vehicles, and its people (quote-unquote) “sheltered in place.”  We’ve had a brief taste of the fear that millions of people the world over feel daily who are subject to violence from war, drones, or terrorist attack.  We’ve felt gratitude for the courage and selflessness of everyone who rushed to tend the wounded, to comfort the bereaved, to search out the perpetrators and to protect the city.  After five long days we exhaled with relief when the second suspect was caught, though our sense of triumph was tempered by remembering those who suffered injury and those who died.

Here on this Good Shepherd Sunday, I invite us to hold before God’s loving eyes all that we’ve witnessed and heard, and all that’s been stirred up within us.  I invite us to take a few moments together in silence to breathe in the love of God.  With every breath in, we receive the love of God; with every breath out, we let go into God.  As we breathe love like this, I invite us to bring to mind images of the week just past, and to let them be touched or blessed by the Good Shepherd, who knows us each by name.  We have witnessed trauma this week, and we’ve also witnessed acts of courage and kindness, so let’s give ourselves the gift of silence as we bring ourselves consciously into the presence of the One who abides with us, who sustains us, and who will never let us go. 

(Silence)

Strong and gentle Shepherd of our souls, we lift up to you everything that is in us – our fear and sense of helplessness; our confusion and bitter anger; our aching sorrow for the waste, the loss, the pain; our gratefulness for the goodness that dwells in so many people’s hearts; and our determination to end violence and to build a culture of peace.  Help us to resist quick judgments and the lust for revenge.  Give us bold and compassionate spirits, and fill us with the deep peace that comes from knowing: “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me” (Psalm 23:4).   Amen.

It is good to abide in the presence of Jesus the Good Shepherd, for especially in a turbulent or fearful time, we need that kind of grounding.  We need to attend to the inner voice of love that is sounding deep within our hearts, when so many of the outer voices around us are frightened or cynical or shrill.  As Jesus says in today’s Gospel, “My sheep hear my voice.  I know them, and they follow me” (John 20:27).  When we hear that voice and sense that presence, we know that we’re not alone.  We know that we are sustained by a power greater than ourselves.  We know that we belong to a love that will never die, and that nothing and no one can destroy.  And when that love springs up again within us and around us, like grass pushing up through the asphalt, our spirits revive and we open ourselves to the possibility that the power of God, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine (c.f. Ephesians 3:20).

You who know me know by now that violence against the Earth is what has most captured my attention.  The violence that human beings take out against each other mirrors the violence that we take out against the Earth, and the Good Shepherd’s love impels us to become healers of violence in every way we can. 

So at the end of last summer, when a friend invited me to help organize a “Climate Revival” in downtown Boston, I immediately said yes.  To me the word “revival” conjures up images of an open tent, a crowd of people singing with fervor, and a breeze of hope blowing through the air.  I admit it – this is all fairly imaginary.  I’ve never been to a revival, much less helped to lead one.  But what really caught my attention was the idea of a “climate” revival.  What if we created an event that inspired Christians of every denomination to roll up their sleeves and set about doing some serious climate-healing?  What if we brought together top leaders of many branches of the faith and mobilized a religious movement to protect life on this planet?  God knows that we need a movement like that, for the Earth is under violent assault.  As Bill McKibben pointed out in a recent article,1“…the Arctic – from Greenland to its seas – essentially melted last summer in a way never before seen.  The frozen Arctic is like a large physical feature.  It’s as if you woke up one morning and your left arm was missing.”

I don’t want to incite panic, but only if we see and face the physical trauma that our planet is undergoing will we break out of our denial and inertia.  And only if we root and ground ourselves in the love of God will we break out of our helplessness and despair, which tell us that it is too late to change course, that efforts to protect life as we know it on this planet will be defeated, and that catastrophic climate change is inevitable.

I give thanks that a movement to strengthen environmental sustainability is arising around the country, a movement that demands an end to dependence on fossil fuel, an end to oil subsidies, an end to environmentally risky projects that jeopardize and pollute eco-systems. 

The Climate Revival2 is scheduled for next Saturday, and as you know, the Presiding Bishop is coming to preach, as is the national leader of the United Church of Christ, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Bill McKibben have sent in video recordings.  It will be the region’s largest and most denominationally diverse gathering of Christian leaders on the issue of climate change.

But here’s the thing.  The violence that took place in Boston this past week may prevent us from holding this event, which is to be at Old South Church and Trinity Church on Copley Square, just steps from the finish line of the Marathon.  Will the police shut us down?  Someone told me right before this service that today’s Boston Globe reports that a memorial run will be held in Boston that day and that it will cover the last mile of the marathon – in which case, the Climate Revival might have to be postponed.  I don’t yet know.  But I hope that we’ll be able to hold it, for all who come will have an opportunity to mourn our losses, and, just as importantly, an opportunity to deepen our confidence in the power of the Risen Christ and to strengthen our resolve to become living witnesses to the power of Resurrection.  In one way or another, people will be gathering next Saturday to bless the place in Boston that has been so violently assaulted.

Even if you can’t join us, or even if the Revival is postponed, I hope you’ll enjoy today’s special coffee hour, where you can sign postcards advocating for clean energy, pick up some low carbon tips, and make a donation to plant trees.  If you like, you can support the Nature Conservancy’s initiative to Plant A Billion Trees,3 a dollar at a time, in the Atlantic Forest of Brazil, which is one of the world’s largest and most endangered tropical forests.  Tropical forests are the lungs of the Earth, releasing oxygen and storing enormous amounts of CO2, so let’s make those lungs strong.  Or you can chip in to buy a new tree for Grace Church, which we hope to plant on Pentecost.  This afternoon at 3:00 o’clock in the Parish Hall we will show the movie “Gasland,” an award-winning film about fracking, and we’ll be serving free popcorn. 

In a few moments we will baptize a wonderful little girl, Gianna Mattrey.  As much as I’d like to, I can’t promise that Gianna – or any of us the rest of us – will always feel safe.  I can’t promise that her life will always feel comfortable.  I can’t promise that she won’t experience times of heartache, that she won’t face periods of difficulty, challenge, or loss.  But what I can promise is that she will be sustained every moment of her life by the mercy and tenderness of God.  What I can promise is that the Good Shepherd will give her life meaning, purpose, and joy.  What I can promise is that the Good Shepherd will call her by name, and that wherever she goes, she will be at home in God’s heart.

May the Good Shepherd extend His loving arms over Gianna, over us, over the City of Boston, and over the whole Creation. 

Surely your goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever. (Psalm 23:6)

1. “Is the Keystone XL Pipeline the “Stonewall” of the Climate Movement?,” by Bill McKibben, April 8, 2013 (This piece was first published on TomDispatch)

2. For information and updates, check Facebook or http://www.macucc.org/events/detail/1104

3. Learn more at plantabillion.org.