Author Archives: mbj

“Friend, move up higher”

I can’t think of another occasion in the lectionary when the first reading is so short – just a single sentence.  It comes from the Book of Proverbs, a collection of sayings that was traditionally attributed to King Solomon because of his legendary wisdom.  Since its advice is so succinct, and since it connects so clearly with today’s Gospel, let’s hear it again: “Do not put yourself forward in the king’s presence or stand in the place of the great, for it is better to be told, ‘Come up here,’ than to be put lower in the presence of a noble” (Proverbs 25:6-7). 

Listening to this admonition on Labor Day weekend, as we mark the unofficial end of summer, makes me think of the start of summer, when my family and I spent a week at a lake in New Hampshire. Every year our extended family comes to New Hampshire to visit a particular family camp, and we enjoy having a chance to swim, hike, and generally relax.  No one in my family will argue with me when I tell you that I’m not much of a cook, and for me one of the great pleasures of attending this camp is eating meals in the dining-hall, where for once someone else is the chef!  But here is the main thing.  Tables in the camp’s dining-hall are assigned according to a system of ranking that is based on how many years you’ve been coming.  The most coveted spots are tables by the windows, where diners enjoy a breeze, a view of the lake, and maybe the envy of other families.  By contrast, tables near the dessert tray are the least desirable places to sit, because there you are subjected to the noise and pressure of kids pushing past you as they make their eager way to the ice cream.  In between are the middling tables, which are ranked as more or less desirable according to their relative convenience, quiet, and lakeshore views.  Week by week the headwaiter works out which family will sit where, and keeps track year by year of everyone’s progress away from the dessert trays.  Presumably the goal is to work your way up until you, too, have earned the place of honor: a table by the window.

Assigning tables on the basis of seniority is one way to handle the human tendency to scramble for the best seats in the house.  We all know the struggle to be recognized, honored, and admired, to get ahead, to seek our own glory and satisfaction.  We feel the lure, in the words of today’s reading, to “put [ourselves] forward” and to “stand in the place of the great.”  Much of contemporary society encourages us to promote the individual self over the common good, and, in the face of every choice, to ask ourselves: “What’s in it for me?”  “How can I prove myself, promote myself, and show myself to the best advantage?” It is the urgent need to be recognized and valued that drives us to make a bee-line for the seats of honor, jealously to guard whatever rank and position we’ve managed to attain, and to look down from our small eminence on the unfortunate people stuck in the seats below, who presumably lack our wit or wealth or talent or knowledge or training or connections, or who simply haven’t been coming to camp as long as we have.

Everyone needs to be valued, but when we claim a place in the sun at the expense of other people, our perch is precarious.  As Jesus points out in today’s Gospel passage from Luke, when we clamber over others to grab the seat of honor for ourselves, it won’t be long before the host comes along to send us down to the lowest table.  It is a rhythm of our spiritual lives that happens again and again: whenever we proudly hold ourselves apart from other people, claiming for one reason or another that we are better than they are – our theology is better! Our politics are better! Our kids are better!  Our resume is better!  Our obituary will be better! –  God finds a way to burst the bubble and to deflate our pride. In the kingdom of God, there is no place, and no need, for self-seeking.

Here’s an example from my own life.  Back in 1994 I was riveted to the television as the O.J. Simpson murder trial played out in court.  As you may remember, he was tried for two counts of murder following the deaths of his ex-wife and her friend.  The case captured media attention, and has been called “the most publicized criminal trial in American history.”¹  Like many Americans, I had a strong opinion about the case, and I was among those who were convinced that Simpson was guilty.  I wanted him convicted and I wanted him in prison.  But more than that – I felt a malicious excitement, a vindictive thrill, as I watched the trial go forward and as I waited impatiently for him to get what I considered his just desserts.  I felt vengeful pleasure as I watched him squirm.  I was better than he was – I was superior, righteous, innocent.

And then one night I had a dream.  (It’s interesting how dreams can be a source of wisdom!) I dreamed that I casually told someone that I wanted a couple of people killed.  The person carried out my request, and returned to report that the murders had been done.  In the dream I felt no remorse, no guilt, no shame, just a surge of self-protective worry.  Would I get away with the murders?  Would I get caught? Would my bishop find out?  In the dream I didn’t care about the people who had died.  I wanted only to save my own skin. 

When I woke up, I felt a pang of shock and sorrow.  One thing was clear: I needed to pray for O.J. Simpson, and I needed to pray for myself.  I had been visited by a dream that punctured my pride, and showed me that everything that I thought I saw in him – the casual violence, the capacity to kill, the failure to feel remorse, the desire at all costs to save his neck and reputation – was also in me.  On a human level, we might be very different people, but on a soul level, we were basically alike: both of us sinners who failed to live up to the love that made us and that gave everything for us.  I still believed that Simpson was guilty and I still wanted him convicted, but the thrill was gone.  I could no longer watch his trial with self-righteous glee, for in contemplating his guilt, I also saw my own.

Pride tells me to claim the head table for myself, but God, in infinite mercy, sends me back down to the lowest table.

Pride tells me to pretend to be purer than I am, better than I am, other than I am.  God tells me to accept the truth: like everyone else, I am an inextricable mixture of darkness and light, capable of both kindness and cruelty, of both tenderness and malice.  I am not just my idealized self, my “best” self; I am also my “shadow” self, the parts of myself that I want to push away and to project onto other people.

Pride tells me to separate myself from the lowly, the outcast, and the criminal.  God tells me to discover my union with them.

Pride tells me to justify myself by criticizing and condemning other people.  God tells me that nothing human is alien to me, that everything I see outside me is within me, as well.

Pride tells me that there is a shortage of love in the world, and that if I don’t make it to the top, I will lose, I will be left, I will be alone.  God tells me that love is infinite, and that I will taste the sweetness of that love in all its fullness only when I understand that ultimately I am not separate from anyone or anything.

Pride tells me that I must forever earn and deserve and hoard whatever love and recognition I can get.  God tells me that at every moment, all of God’s love is entirely mine – and yours – and ours – no matter who we are or what we’ve done. It’s free, and it’s a gift.

Again and again God gently bursts our bubbles of pride and our impulse to separate ourselves from other people, and deepens the rich soil of humility within which our souls can grow like a vigorous plant.  Isn’t it interesting that the word “humility” is closely related to the word “humus”?  It is in the rich, loamy soil of humility that we are grounded, that human beings come home to our true Selves and discover our union with everyone else and all creation. 

But pride is a tricky thing, and the ego can take Jesus’ parable and turn it into a game of self-seeking way down at the lowest seat at the table.  Pride can turn us into the very paradigm of piety, modesty and unassuming humility – “Oh, I wouldn’t dream of taking not even the lowest seat – no, I’ll just sit here on the floor, thank you, right here in the dirt, no, really don’t trouble about me, I don’t need even a bite to eat, you take the food, eat everything you like, I’ll just wait here, suffering silently, don’t give me a moment’s thought.”  And secretly we’re congratulating ourselves – “What a humble person I am!  Aren’t I selfless and pure and spiritually advanced!” – and essentially claiming the seat of honor.

The surprise, of course, is that there is nothing grim or gloomy or self-hating or secretly self-aggrandizing about true humility.  Do you think that the people in Jesus’ parable who were sitting at the lowest place spent the whole meal picking at their food and hanging their heads in self-hatred, or congratulating themselves on being so holy?  I don’t think so.  As I imagine it, throughout our lives God sends us back to the lowest place, until finally we begin to notice that it is those who can happily sit at the lowest place who are truly free.  They are the ones who are no longer puffed up with pride.  They are the ones who have finally accepted the fact that they are utterly dependent on the grace of God.  They are the ones who claim nothing for themselves and who can then hear the tender words, “Friend, come up higher.”  It is when we are in that place of emptiness and poverty, that place of honest humility, that God in Christ touches us with love and fills us with joy.  Yes, when I awoke from my so-called “O.J. Simpson” dream, I was embarrassed and chastened and ashamed of my self-righteous pride, but in that moment of repentance and of finding myself in the lowest place, I also tasted a quiet joy, the relief of being set free from the desperate, endless tendency to pull myself up by putting someone else down.  There is joy in facing the truth: we are one with all human beings and with the merciful love of God. 

And so I imagine all of us finally coming to laugh and sing at the lowest place at the table.  The hunger in our hearts for status and recognition will have been satisfied at last: we will know that we dwell within the infinite embrace of God, within a circle of love that has no top and no bottom, no first and no last.  “Friend, move up higher,” the Host will say to us, but there will be no “higher”: the first will be last, and the last will be first, and the terms “first” and “last,” and “higher” and “lower,” will no longer have any meaning, for all of us will be drawn into the holy circle of love that invites all of us to the feast and that leaves no one out.    

We taste that feast this morning, as we come together to celebrate the Eucharist.  None of us has earned a place at this table.  None of us has done a thing to deserve to be here.  But we are all invited.  We are all welcome.  We are all loved to the end, whatever our status or lack of status in the world.  What a gift!  The kingdom of God is near.

1. “Confusion for Simpson kids ‘far from over'”, USA Today. February 12, 1997, cited by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O._J._Simpson_murder_case (retrieved on 8/31/13).

Fires of Love

Today’s Gospel is one of those startling passages that practically grabs you by the lapels and shakes you awake.  Forget about sliding into the pew on a quiet August morning and cruising through church half-asleep – Jesus’ words are urgent, edgy, and unsettling.  “I came to bring fire to the earth,” he cries, “and how I wish it were already kindled! … Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth?  No, I tell you, but rather division!  From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided: father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law” (Luke 12:49, 51-53).

“Hey, what a sec!” we may be saying to ourselves.  “What’s going on here?  Isn’t Jesus supposed to be the Prince of Peace?” And if we’re thinking of dismissing this passage as something that the historical Jesus couldn’t possibly have said, we may be chagrined to learn that some contemporary New Testament scholars argue that the pointed sayings of Jesus – the ones we want to set aside because they make us uncomfortable – are often the very ones that are most historically accurate. 

Still, on the face on it, this is quite a prickly passage.  Heaven knows the earth already has enough fire to go around!  We see fire everywhere we look, and also within ourselves: fires of anger that can consume the soul, fires of lust that can fuel infidelity, jealousy, and revenge, fires of hatred that can tear communities and even entire nations apart.  Nearly every family I know has enough conflicts of its own without wanting Jesus to fan the flames of division. 

So what is this fire that Jesus longs so ardently to bring to the earth, and what sort of division does it bring?  It’s not the fire of anger, lust, or hatred; it’s not the fire of greed, possessiveness, or jealousy.  It’s the fire of divine love.  Jesus is on fire with the love of God that alone can quell the fire of hatred and that alone can bring true peace.  Jesus’ mission and quest and deepest longing is for God’s peace, God’s shalom – that Hebrew word that means not just the absence of strife or war, but well-being, wholeness, reconciliation with one another, with God, and with the whole creation.¹ 

“Blessed are the peacemakers,” Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, “for they will be called children of God” (Matthew 5:9).  At the beginning of Luke’s Gospel, Zechariah recognizes Jesus as the long-awaited peacemaker, as the Savior who came “to guide our feet into the way of peace” (Luke 1:79).  Near the end of Luke’s Gospel, in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus stops those who are reaching for their swords.  When someone strikes the slave of the high priest and cuts off his ear, Jesus declares, “No more of this!” (Luke 22:51), a cry for peace that echoes down through the centuries.

The early church carried forward Jesus’ message of shalom.  Paul wrote in one letter, “Be at peace among yourselves” (1 Thessalonians 5:13), and in another, “Let us then pursue what makes for peace and for mutual up-building” (Romans 14:19), and in another, “…agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you” (2 Corinthians 13:11).  Paul’s Second Letter to Timothy is as timely now as it was then, when he advises his readers to “have nothing to do with stupid and senseless controversies: you know that they breed quarrels” (2 Timothy 2:22b-23).

At the heart of Christian faith is a quest for peace, but what Jesus makes clear in today’s Gospel is that dedicating our selves to God’s peace, to God’s shalom means becoming a people of fire.  Fire is an ancient symbol of God’s presence and power (Gen 15:17, Ex 14:24, 19:18, Deut 4:11, 5:22-24, Isaiah 30:27), and Jesus baptizes with the Holy Spirit and fire (Luke 3:16).  At Pentecost, when the disciples receive the Holy Spirit in all fullness, “tongues, as of fire” (Acts 2:3) appear among them and rest on each of them.  Divine love is like fire: it warms, it illumines, and it also purifies, burning away everything that is false, deceitful, and impure, everything that is less than love.

How do we tend the divine fire that we received in baptism and that longs to blaze up within us?  Tending the fire of divine love has an inner aspect and an outer aspect, and I’d like to say a word about each. Inwardly, we tend the fires of love by cultivating a loving awareness of ourselves.  For instance, we try to become more mindful of our motives: what was it that impelled me to say that thing just now?  Was I motivated by love or by something else?  Cultivating the fire of loving awareness leads many of us to take time to sit in quiet prayer.  If we want to strengthen the fire of awareness, we’ll need stretches of time in which to steady our busy minds and to notice more accurately the whole drama that is going on inside us – the stories that we’re telling ourselves, the thoughts that preoccupy us, the often harsh judgments we make against other people and ourselves.  We’ll need time to listen for the inner voice of love that is always sounding beneath the surface, time to feel the holy love that burns in our hearts like a gentle fire. 

As we sit, we will probably notice all kinds of unhelpful attachments – maybe a need to be praised and liked, a fear of being criticized or found lacking, or an incessant comparing of ourselves to other people, to see how we measure up.  I wonder how many social situations look outwardly peaceful because so many of us are trying so hard to look good, to fit in, and to be accepted, and are so afraid of speaking about our vulnerable places, and about what really matters to us.  In our families we may be so eager to get along “peacefully” with each other that we never face the hard truths of alcoholism or abuse or betrayal. We may avoid speaking our truth, for fear of upsetting those who are closest to us.  Or we may try to fit in by joining the complainers, the ones who tend to look for what’s wrong and who’s wrong.  We’ll join in criticizing someone else to show that we’re angry, too!

But if we want to live with integrity and to love ourselves and others well, we’ll have to quit being so invested in what other people think of us.  We’ll have to quit comparing ourselves to other people, quit being so enmeshed in their opinions.  We’ll have to grow in detachment.  We’ll have to stop as we enter the door of relationship, and to reflect on our intentions, needs and motives. 

There is a wonderful story about how the early Desert Fathers trained their students to love wholeheartedly by learning to die to self and to neighbor.²  A seeker came to Macarius the Egyptian, the great abbot of the monastery at Scete, and asked him how to become holy.  The abbot told him to go to the nearby cemetery and to hurl insults at the dead, to yell at them for all he was worth, even to throw stones at them. “The young man thought this strange, but did as he was told and then returned to his teacher. ‘What did they say to you?’ Macarius asked. ‘Nothing,’ the brother replied. ‘Then go back tomorrow and praise them,’ answered the abbot, ‘calling them apostles, saints, and righteous men.  Think of every compliment you can.’ The young man once more did as he was told, then returned to the cloister, where Macarius asked, ‘What did they say this time?’ ‘They still didn’t answer a word,’ replied [the seeker]. ‘Ah, they must indeed be holy people,’ said Abba Macarius. ‘You insulted them and they did not reply. You praised them and they did not speak.  Go and do likewise, my friend, taking no account of either the scorn of [people] or their praises.’”

That’s what holy detachment looks like, when we’re set free from the ego’s anxious impulse to make an idol of being recognized or praised, of belonging or of fitting in. When Jesus speaks of coming to bring not peace, but division, I interpret that as Jesus coming to root out or burn away everything in us and between us that is false and unjust, everything that inhibits real love.  Upheaval of the old order can be divisive, messy, and painful, but out of that holy disruption, God’s shalom — a deeper, more inclusive peace – is born.

The same holds true in the outer world, as well.  We tend the fire of divine love when we are faithful to God’s longing for the flourishing of life not only within ourselves, our families and our immediate communities, but also in the wider world.  Often enough, standing up for God’s shalom means going against the grain and provoking controversy.  It means refusing to settle for a status quo in which the poor go hungry, landfills overflow, lakes die, entire species disappear, gas-guzzlers foul the air, and the global climate is scorched.  Many of you are engaged in that shared struggle for shalom.  I see it in your witness against drone violence and excessive militarism, in your service to the homeless and the hungry, your search for a just peace in the Middle East, your support of a school in Haiti, your quest to save farmland and open space, your opposition to casino gambling in western Massachusetts, your effort to raise your children in an atmosphere of kindness and respect.

And here is Jesus, living for us, dying for us, rising for us, standing with us and calling us to a life of fire, to a life of inner and outer transformation dedicated to the healing and wellbeing of all, even when such a life creates division and disrupts the powers-that-be. 

John of the Cross, a sixteenth-century mystic, wrote a poem that begins with these lines:

O living flame of love
That tenderly wounds my soul
In its deepest center! 

I invite you in the silence to sense that living flame of love within you, to let it tenderly wound your soul in its deepest center.  Among all the fires of this world, only one can redeem us, the fire of love.³

1. Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. Gerard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley, abridged in one volume by Geoffrey W. Bromiley, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1985, p. 209.

2. Belden C. Lane, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 169, citing Apophthegmata Patrum, The Sayings of the Fathers, Macarius the Great, 23, in Patres Graeci 65.272C.

3. T.S. Eliot, “Little Gidding,” The Four Quartets: “The only hope, or else despair/ Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre — /To be redeemed from fire by fire.” Also: “We only live, only suspire/ Consumed by either fire or fire.”

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