Sermon for the Second Sunday of Easter (Earth Day/Creation Sunday), May 1, 2011. Delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, Grace Church, Amherst, MA

Acts 2:14a, 22-321 Peter 1:3-9
Psalm 16John 20:19-31

Hands-on faith

“[Jesus] said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.’”
John 20:27
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“Glory,” I kept murmuring the other day as I jogged down the hill behind Smith College. Trees were bursting into leaf; magnolia and forsythia were in full bloom; birdsong filled my ears; and I was inhaling the season’s first scent of cut grass. The sky was blue, the winter was over, and all I could say was “Glory, glory, glory.”

Earth Day fell on Good Friday this year, and rather than celebrate Creation Sunday on Easter morning, we decided to honor it today, on the Second Sunday of Easter. Now is our chance to give thanks for God’s Creation and to rejoice in the holy radiance that shines in every wild and quirky creature, in every branch and blossom, in every chipmunk and bumblebee. Sometimes, when I stand in a field somewhere and gaze at the Holyoke Range, or when I watch sunlight and shadow play across the Connecticut River, I feel what I imagine the disciples felt when they announced to Thomas with such joy and surprise, “We have seen the Lord” [John 20:24].

Maybe it is sheer sentimentality that makes us respond so deeply to the beauty of the world, but I don’t think so. Years ago, former Archbishop of Canterbury William Temple pointed out that we live in a sacramental universe, for the created world is like the sacrament of Baptism or Communion — it discloses the presence of God. William Temple’s insight is entirely orthodox, for Christians as far back as Irenaeus and on to Augustine, Aquinas, and Teilhard de Chardin perceived the whole universe as being the image of God. 1 That experience is what invites us in every Eucharist to turn to our Creator and proclaim, “Heaven and earth are full of your glory.”

So isn’t it interesting that the risen Jesus came back for a time in a body? He didn’t just vanish into thin air, into some ethereal, disembodied realm of light, but instead came back first in the flesh, as if to say: look for me right here, in the body of this world. Look for me here in your ordinary lives, here in the sights, sounds, and smells, the tastes and touch of the world. Here is where you will find me, for I am everywhere present. The created world is good — so says Scripture all the way back to Genesis. What is holy and what is natural, what is divine and what is physical — these apparent opposites have been embraced and interwoven in the incarnation of Christ, and all of it shines with God’s glory. As Jesus says to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe” [John 20:27]. Sometimes the best way to make contact with the divine is not to worry about abstractions and mental constructs, about what we believe or do not believe, but rather to reach out, as Thomas was invited to do — to make conscious contact, to discover the living God in the here and now, in the gift of this moment, in the flesh of the world, in the flesh of our daily lives.

Yet if the whole creation is radiant with the risen Christ, how much suffering the part of the universe that was entrusted to us, planet earth, is now enduring! The earth itself is being nailed to the cross. We learn about its wounds every day, from the BP oil rig explosion a year ago, that led to the largest accidental oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry, to the ongoing nuclear crisis in Japan, where radioactive particles have been released into the sea and air, and where workers are apparently still locked in a desperate struggle to prevent total meltdown. This week the South and Mid-West experienced an extraordinary series of tornadoes, the worst tornado season in decades, and our hearts go out to all those who in the course of a few terrifying days lost their loved ones, their livelihood, their homes, or their lives.

Were those record tornados related to global warming? Meteorologists seem to be split on the question, with most saying no, and some saying that the unusually warm waters of the Gulf contributed to the tornados’ power. Of course, no particular tornado, flood, drought, hurricane, or any other extreme weather event can be directly attributed to human-caused climate change. But it is clear that the earth’s temperature is not only rising, but rising increasingly fast. Nine of the ten warmest years occurred in the last decade. 2010 tied 2005 as the hottest year in 131 years of recordkeeping. Last year 19 countries endured unprecedented heat. Temperatures in Burma reached 117 degrees Fahrenheit, setting a record for Southeast Asia, while the ancient city of Mohenjo-daro in Pakistan hit 128.3 degrees Fahrenheit — a record not only for the country but for all of Asia, and the fourth hottest temperature ever recorded anywhere. 2

How serious is the threat to God’s creation? Here is what one mainstream environmental lawyer, Gus Speth, has to say: “…all we have to do to destroy the planet’s climate and [organisms] and leave a ruined world to our children and grandchildren is to keep doing exactly what we are doing today, with no growth in the human population or the world economy. Just continue to release greenhouse gases at current rates, just continue to impoverish ecosystems and release toxic chemicals at current rates, and the world in the latter part of this century won’t be fit to live in. But, of course, human activities are not holding at current levels — they are accelerating, dramatically.” 3

Jesus says to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe” (John 20:27). Are we willing to reach out our hands and to touch the wounds of creation? Are we willing to make contact with the pain of the earth? It is so tempting to turn away — maybe to catch up on email or pour a drink or clean the basement, anything that keeps us from looking directly and carefully at the destruction going on around us. We do need to take breaks; we do need to take care of business; but we also need to embark on a personal and social transformation that will enable human beings to live more lightly on the earth.

The good news is that the risen Christ is with us as we face and touch the wounds. As a contemporary theologian, Richard Rohr, has put it, “The fact that [Jesus] returns to embodiment tells us that salvation is first of all in this world, and embodiment is good. [Jesus] meets the disciples back at their jobs, the women in their very human grief, with friends for breakfast, with two [people] walking along a road, and first of all to a very human friend, Mary of Magdala. He does not leave this world. He re-enters this world as it is and reveals its radiance.” 4

It is clear to me that once we perceive the radiance of the world, we receive the motivation and the courage to protect it. Just as Jesus breathed his Spirit into the disciples on the day of Resurrection, so he breathes his Spirit into us, and with each conscious breath we draw in more deeply the presence and the power of God. Who knows what will be possible when we Christians awaken to the power that sleeps within us, and when we realize that our breath and words and hands can convey the reconciling, healing, and liberating love of God?

Traditionally during Lent and Holy Week we pray with the Stations of the Cross. Now that it is Easter, I have set up a small display for coffee hour that I’m calling “Stations of Creation.” On the table in the Connector you will find several ways to express your care for God’s good earth. I hope that you will start by signing a letter to Senator Scott Brown that will be hand-delivered to him on Wednesday by our friends at Massachusetts Interfaith Power & Light. Last year the Senate failed to pass a comprehensive climate and energy bill, so we are counting on the EPA to carry out its responsibility under the Clean Air Act to reduce the emissions that cause climate change. Let’s encourage Senator Brown to protect the EPA, and let’s applaud his commitment to create jobs in Massachusetts, for by shifting from fossil to renewable energy, we will not only tackle climate change but also generate new jobs.

You might want to sign a postcard asking State Senator Stan Rosenberg to support the updated bottle bill, which would expand the bottle bill — the 5-cent deposit that we pay on some beverages to encourage recycling — to include non-carbonated drinks such as water, juices, and sports drinks.

Or maybe you’ll want to pick up material about the Hitchcock Center for the Environment, our local center for environmental education, or to sign a postcard to the Governor urging him to close the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant. Or maybe you’ll pick up an application for a low-cost share of fresh vegetables from a new local farm in Northampton.

If you are a resident of Amherst, I hope you will make a plan to contact your Town Meeting members and ask them to vote for the “stretch code” at the May Town Meeting, which begins tomorrow night. Once Amherst passes the “stretch energy code,” we will become a so-called “Green Community” and therefore eligible to apply for state grants to fund energy-efficiency improvements.

After that, step outside and learn a few things from Mary Hocken about a skill that still eludes me: how to create a robust compost pile. It is a great time of year to get our hands back in the dirt!

“Reach out your hand,” Jesus says to Thomas and to all of us. There is so much healing that we can do, so much power to reconcile that God has given to us, so much life that we can help to bring forth. The risen Christ is among us and beside us and within us. Do not doubt, but believe.

1. Sallie McFague, A New Climate for Theology: God, the World, and Global Warming, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008, p. 53.

2. Facts in this paragraph are from research posted by Lester R. Brown’s Earth Policy Institute.

3. James Gustave Speth, The Bridge on the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008, p. x (Preface).

4. Richard Rohr, adapted from Radical Grace: Daily Meditations, p. 150, day 159, sent by email.

Third meditation for Good Friday, April 22, 2011. Delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, St. Paul’s Cathedral, Boston, MA

Isaiah 52:13-53:12John 18:1-19:42
Psalm 22

Down to earth: The way of the cross

“Now there was a garden in the place where he was crucified, and in the garden there was a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid. And so, because it was the Jewish day of Preparation, and the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there” (John 19:41-42).

The passion narrative starts in a garden, where Judas betrays Jesus, and it ends in a garden, where our Lord is laid to rest: sin in the first garden, and death in the second; betrayal in the one, and burial in the other. John’s Gospel clearly wants to remind us of the garden that begins the story of human sin and death, the Garden of Eden. Of course, on Good Friday we haven’t yet reached the end of the story. On Easter morning, from out of that garden-turned-wasteland where sin and sorrow dwell and death reigns supreme, the risen Christ will burst from the tomb. The garden will be transformed: from a place of death it will become a place where new life rises again. According to John’s Gospel, Mary Magdalene will be the first person to meet the risen Christ, and she will mistake him for a gardener (John 20:15) — a wonderful insight, for the crucified and risen Christ is indeed a gardener who brings new life.

Living as we do in this time of the earth’s crucifixion, how do we follow Jesus on the way of the cross and the path that gives life? How do we stay true to the mind of Christ, keeping our hearts open and responding with boldness and generosity to his call to give ourselves to this great work of healing? If ever there were a time to bear witness to our faith, now would be the time. If ever there were a moment to hold fast to our vision of a world in which human beings live in right relationship with each other and with our fellow creatures, now would be the time. Now is the time, as theologian Sallie McFague would say, to recognize that the world is not a hotel, but our home. 1 When we visit a hotel, we may feel entitled to use copious amounts of hot water, to throw towels on the floor, to use and discard everything in sight and then to head to the next hotel – in short, to exercise what she calls the “Kleenex perspective” of the world. But when we realize that in fact the earth is our home – that God created it and loves every inch of it and entrusts it to our care – then everything changes. We realize that we live here; we belong here; we can no longer tolerate a life-style that exhausts the planet’s resources and that treats land, sea, and sky alike as receptacles for waste.

Creating a life-giving society will not be easy. Global market capitalism, the economic system that most of us take for granted, is based on gobbling up the natural resources of the world. As Sallie McFague points out, Christians have an obligation to advocate instead for economic systems that are just and sustainable. We need “to become informed about the global injustices of market economies” and to work “to change the policies and practices of so-called free trade that result in impoverishment and unsustainability.” We have a battle on our hands, for the powers-that-be make hefty profits from the status quo. Oil companies continue to make record profits and to push lawmakers to drill even more widely in our waters and lands. The Clean Air Act is under assault, as is the regulatory power of the EPA. And the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which boasts that it is the biggest lobby in Washington, is pumping tens of millions of dollars into the effort to deny the science of climate change and to block our country from making a transition to clean, safe, renewable energy anytime soon. 2

There is a political battle going on in which we must engage, so that what is scientifically necessary can become politically possible. We have our own personal battles to carry out, too, as we struggle to simplify our lives, to use less of the earth’s resources, and to acknowledge the tight connection between global warming and consumerism, since unlimited consumption is a major contributor to greenhouse gases. 3 Can we learn to live more lightly on the earth? Can we learn to share rather than to hoard? Can we hear the cries of the poor and the cries of the groaning earth rather than just our own insatiable appetite for more, more, more?

The personal and social transformation that this period in history requires is so profound, it can only be described in the language of religion. As one economist puts it: “Sustainable development will require a change of heart, a renewal of the mind, and a healthy dose of repentance. These are all,” he says, “religious terms, and that is no coincidence, because a change in the fundamental principles we live by is a change so deep that it is essentially religious whether we call it that or not.” 4

The transformation that we seek is symbolized by the cross. The old has died. Behold, the new has come. That is the language that speaks to me now, the biblical language of transformation. There is so much that needs to die, beginning with the small ego-self, that sinful, separated self that lives over and against all other beings and that claims no one but itself (and maybe its immediate tribe) as kin. A whole way of life needs to die, as well, if that way of life is driven by selfishness and greed, if it results in an ever-widening gap between the wealthy few and the impoverished multitude, and if it tears apart the very fabric of life upon which human beings and all other creatures depend.

Endings are real, disruptive, and scary, whether they are the end of oil, the end of empire, the end of a stable climate, or the end of our lives. But Christians, like people of other religious traditions, always live in sight of endings. And we dare to believe that by following the way of the cross, we can do what Jesus did: we can make way for new life to be born within us and among us. We can help turn the wastelands of the earth into gardens, into places where love and life can flourish.

Jesus provoked the powerful, and he endured suffering and death. Yet his consistent message was one of hope, not fear. Why? Because he was rooted in the love of God. Because he knew that nothing could separate him from the love of God. Because he had a vision of how human beings could live well on the earth in obedience to God, a vision of a beloved community of brothers and sisters living together in justice and peace. “I am the way,” Jesus said to his friends. “I am the truth and the life.” And from his words and actions, from his passion, death, and resurrection, a movement sprang up – a movement of passionate men and women who were convinced of the way of self-giving generosity and kindness, committed to the truth of love, and dedicated to a life of praising and serving God, whatever the cost might be.

At the cross of Christ we refuse 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. For here is our brother and savior Jesus, living for us, dying for us, rising for us, standing with us and calling us out to a life that is devoted to God’s shalom and to the healing and wellbeing of all, even when living such a life disrupts the powers-that-be.

In the light of the cross, what can we do to simplify our lives? I invite you to think of one way you can listen more deeply to the land and to learn from it. Maybe you want to start a compost pile, to check out a farmer’s market, or to start a small garden at your home or church. If you have some money to invest, you might invest in socially responsible funds or in local, green businesses. You might get an energy audit, or invite the neighbor you’ve never met before to come over for a cup of tea. We need to build up our local communities, to live in ways that are closer to the earth, more life enhancing, more about sharing than about consuming, more about self-restraint than about self-aggrandizement, more about generosity than about fearful survivalism, so that we can take care of each other when the hard times come. And together we will need to create the most diverse, bold, visionary, wide-ranging, powerful, hope-filled, hands-on, feet-on-the-ground, shoulder-to-the-wheel political and social movement that humanity has ever seen.

It is you for whom Christ came into the world, you for whom he died, you whom he now would fill with his presence and his Spirit. In a little while we will venerate the cross on which he gave his life, and then we will share the bread and wine of the Eucharist, given to us by God in Christ with such tenderness and at such great cost. We will gather at that holy table, as we always do, so that everything in us and around us can be lifted up and blessed — not only the bread and the wine, but also we ourselves, and the whole creation, every leaf of it and every speck of sand. Sharing the Eucharist helps us to perceive, at last, not only our own belovedness, our own blessedness in God, but also the fact that everyone is beloved, everyone is blessed. Everyone and everything is part of a sacred whole, and everyone is kin. In the strength of the blessed and broken bread, and of the blessed and poured-out wine, we dare to hope that human beings will respond with grateful hearts, and come to treat the world not as an object to exploit, but as a gift to receive, as something perishable and precious. We dare to hope that we will become at last who we were made to be, a blessing on the earth.

I invite us to take some time in silence as we consider the way of the cross. What in your life needs to die? What needs to be transformed? What small action step do you feel led to take that expresses your desire to follow Jesus and to live in a way that helps God’s creation flourish?

1. Sallie McFague, A New Climate for Theology: God, the World, and Global Warming, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008, p. 53.

2. Bill McKibben: Money Pollution — The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Darkens the Skies

3. McFague, op cit., p. 96.

4. Herman E. Daly, Beyond Growth: Economics of Sustainable Development, Boston: Beacon Press, 1996, p. 201.

First meditation for Good Friday, April 22, 2011. Delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, St. Paul’s Cathedral, Boston, MA

Isaiah 52:13-53:12John 18:1-19:42
Psalm 22

Sacred mourning

We are keeping company today with Jesus as he moves through his betrayal, arrest, and trial, and as he gives his life on the cross. I want to thank the Cathedral Scholars for chanting the Gospel for us with such clarity and fervor. The passion story may be deeply familiar to us, but this afternoon we can’t help but hear it with fresh ears. No doubt you know that today Good Friday coincides with Earth Day. This is the first, last, and only time that these days will overlap in our lifetimes — unless, of course, we plan to be around 84 years from now, in 2095, which is the next time it will happen. Of course we can dismiss today’s overlap of dates as nothing more than coincidence. But if it is just a coincidence, then I rejoice in the God who provides such coincidences. For when we place Earth Day and Good Friday side by side, or, to put it another way, when we take Earth Day and our concern for the ongoing integrity and vitality of life on earth, and bring it to the cross of Christ, we receive power not only to face the precarious state of our ailing planet, but also “to comprehend … the breadth and length and height and depth” [bbllink]Ephesians 3:18[/bbllink] of the redeeming love of God.

It is often in nature that I perceive the divine and come face to face with the glory of God, so in recent years the destruction of our life-giving and God-given eco-systems has struck me more and more as a crucial dimension of Jesus’ crucifixion. The meaning of Good Friday has opened up for me: I see the earth itself being nailed to the cross.

Back on that first Earth Day in 1970, some twenty million Americans — that’s one out of every ten of us — rose up to proclaim their love for the natural world. They took part in rallies, protests, and teach-ins, and demanded that our government take action to restore the environment. And it worked. Soon afterward, Congress passed the Clean Water Act, strengthened the Clean Air Act, and created the Environmental Protection Agency.

But forty years later, the troubled relationship between human beings and the rest of creation is starker than ever. A quick scan of the past year makes it clear how much we need a national and international movement to protect God’s good earth. A year ago this week we watched, aghast, as the BP oilrig exploded, killing eleven rig workers and spilling five million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, the largest accidental oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry. This week we watch, aghast, the ongoing nuclear crisis in Japan, where radioactive particles have been released into the sea and air, and where workers are locked in a desperate struggle to prevent total meltdown.

Meanwhile, “since the Industrial Revolution, emissions from human activities of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide have driven the earth’s climate system dangerously outside of its normal range.” 1 Of course there have always been natural cycles of warming and cooling, but for the first time in our planet’s history the cycle is now being driven by human activity. Heat-trapping gases released in the burning of fossil fuels are forcing the earth’s temperature to rise, and the earth’s temperature is not only rising, it is rising increasingly fast. Nine of the ten warmest years occurred in the last decade. 2010 tied 2005 as the hottest year in 131 years of recordkeeping. Last year 19 countries endured unprecedented heat. Temperatures in Burma reached 117 degrees Fahrenheit, setting a record for Southeast Asia, while the ancient city of Mohenjo-daro in Pakistan hit 128.3 degrees Fahrenheit — a record not only for the country but for all of Asia, and the fourth hottest temperature ever recorded anywhere. 2010 brought us a heat wave in Russia, fires in Israel, flooding in Pakistan and Australia, landslides in China, record snowfall across the mid-Atlantic region of the United States, and 12 Atlantic Ocean hurricanes — the kind of extreme weather events that climate scientists consider characteristic of a hotter climate. “Unless global temperatures are stabilized, higher sea levels from melting ice sheets and mountain glaciers,” combined with the expansion of warmer ocean water, will displace “millions of people as low-lying coastlands and islands are inundated.” 2 Heat waves and droughts will decimate harvests, and shrinking mountain glaciers will imperil the water supply of hundreds of millions of people.

Climate change epitomizes our assault on the natural world. Scientists tell us that modern industrial society, with its sudden expansion of our capacity to extract and consume the planet’s abundance for the sake of short-term profit, is simply not sustainable. For the past 250 or 300 years, human beings have been extracting goods faster than they can be replenished, and dumping waste faster than the earth can absorb it. Those who are rich live in a luxury once reserved for kings, while the billions who are impoverished struggle for clean water and a mouthful of food. Species are going extinct at a rate unprecedented since the death of the dinosaurs. 3 And the global climate with its delicate balance of gases turns out to be more fragile then we ever imagined.

How serious is the threat to God’s creation? Here is what one mainstream environmental lawyer, Gus Speth, has to say: “…all we have to do to destroy the planet’s climate and [organisms] and leave a ruined world to our children and grandchildren is to keep doing exactly what we are doing today, with no growth in the human population or the world economy. Just continue to release greenhouse gases at current rates, just continue to impoverish ecosystems and release toxic chemicals at current rates, and the world in the latter part of this century won’t be fit to live in. But, of course, human activities are not holding at current levels — they are accelerating, dramatically.” 4 Back in 1951, when I was born, there were 3 billion people on the planet; today there are close to seven billion.

Are you still with me? Have you tuned out yet? It is no easier to listen to even a quick sketch of the damage going on around us than to it is to face the agony of Jesus on the cross. It is painful and scary to acknowledge this devastation, this crucifixion, and if I were speaking at a climate rally, I would probably leap right now to saying what we can do about it and what actions we must take. God knows that there is a lot that we must do, and do fast. But holy wisdom tells us that first we must stop on Good Friday and reflect deeply on how we respond. What do we feel in the face of the crucifixion of this beautiful world that God entrusted to our care? Where do we feel the ache of what has already been lost, and what we are likely to lose? We cannot rush ahead to Easter if we want truly to understand where we now find ourselves, if we want to change course, and if we want to draw upon the self-giving love of God who pours out his life for us on the cross. If we don’t take time to pray through our emotional response, we may do one of two unhelpful things: either become paralyzed with anxiety and do nothing, or go rushing off to do something, anything, not because the action is particularly effective, but simply because we want to stay one step ahead of our feelings. When we don’t stop to feel our love and grief, then our actions are likely to be motivated only by anxiety, worry, and fear.

If we feel the love we will also feel the grief. But, oh, there are so many reasons to avoid our grief! For starters, who wants to feel pain? Not I. What’s more, we may not want to look morbid, or we may fear bringing other people down. Maybe we’re afraid of being considered weak or emotional or sentimental. Maybe we’re afraid that once we start feeling the grief, we will succumb to despair.

I remember going to a weekend climate conference on Thomson Island in the Boston Harbor about ten years ago, and listening to a cascade of facts about thinning polar ice caps, melting glaciers, and the projected rise of the average worldwide temperature in one hundred years. I took copious notes, trying valiantly to absorb the information and not to go numb. But by Saturday afternoon, as I listened to a presentation by a doctor from Harvard Medical School, I was feeling overwhelmed. Before bed I went outside and stood alone under the stars, trying to assimilate what I had heard. At breakfast the next morning I looked for the doctor, and carried my tray to his table. 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.”

I considered that comment as I ate my cereal. On one level, it made sense. In the midst of battle, we need to act. We need levelheaded leaders who can say, This is what we must do. Let’s go. When labor organizer Joe Hill was dying, he reportedly said to his followers, “Don’t mourn. Organize.” Maybe it’s a guy thing, too — who knows?

Yet for the long haul we also need to sort out what we feel. Is not grief a way of expressing our love? Is not anger a natural response to injustice? Is not allowing ourselves to express our guilt and regret, our sadness and rage, a way of drawing close to the God whom we meet at the cross? It is in kneeling at the cross that we discover how close God is to us in our terror and vulnerability and sense of loss. When we look at Jesus dying an agonizing death, we look squarely at everything that frightens us, and does us harm. We face our fear, our sadness, and our guilt. And we see that all of it — all of it — has been taken up by Jesus, that all of it has been embraced by God. There is nowhere we can go, nothing that we can experience, that God in Christ does not share with us. Even our sin, even our willfulness and greed, our impatience and envy, our laziness and despair – all of that, and more, is met on the cross by the outpouring love of God.

So I invite you to let yourself kneel in your mind’s eye at the foot of the cross and to notice the love you feel for the earth, and where you most feel its pain. Is it the mountains of Appalachia, whose tops are being blown off so that coal companies can extract the coal that generates most of the electricity in this country, perhaps in this very cathedral? Is it the millions of acres of pine trees that have been killed from New Mexico to British Columbia by the mountain pine beetles that no longer die off in winter because the winters are no longer sufficiently cold? Is it the diminishing songbird population, the dying coral reef or alpine meadow, the polar bear on the iceberg or the elephant in the forest? Is it the refugees on the move in sub-Saharan Africa because Lake Chad has dried up, or the islanders forced to leave their homes in the Pacific Ocean because the sea is rising? Is it the poor in this country who struggle to pay high heating bills and who need help to weatherize their houses, if they have one at all? Is it something more modest and closer to home, maybe a particular field once full of meadowlarks and clover in which you wandered as a child but which has since been “developed” into a mall? Or a sweet little city park you once knew that has fallen prey to drug dealers and neglect? Where do you most feel the pain of the earth? Where do you hear the groaning of God’s creation? What do you need to bring to the cross of Christ, where Christ takes up what we cannot bear ourselves, and whose every word to us is love?

1. Facts in this paragraph are from research posted by Lester R. Brown’s Earth Policy Institute.

2. Ibid.

3. For two recent articles on mass extinction, visit “Multitude of Species Face Climate Threat” and “Saving Endangered Species as the Climate Changes”

4. James Gustave Speth, The Bridge on the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008, p. x (Preface).

Second meditation for Good Friday, April 22, 2011. Delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, St. Paul’s Cathedral, Boston, MA

Isaiah 52:13-53:12John 18:1-19:42
Psalm 22

Claiming kin

“…Standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, here is your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’ And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home” (John 19:25b-27).

I want to tell you right up front that I find this gesture deeply moving. Jesus is suffering unimaginable pain; he is dying; and yet his dying words are completely consonant with the life that he lived: he wants to build relationship. Even as he dies, he reaches out to these two people that he loves so much, his mother and the beloved disciple, and he offers them to each other, inviting them into a fuller, more intimate, and more conscious connection. Jesus spent his whole life generating lively connections among everyone he met, challenging relationships that were built on domination, exclusion, and rejection, and creating ever-widening circles of love in which no one was left out.

We might interpret this scene at the cross simply within the context of personal relationships: here is Jesus showing us how much we need each other, how much we matter to each other. To quote the King James Bible: “Woman, behold thy son… Behold thy mother.” Behold, there is so much love that human beings can give each other! Give it, Jesus says to us. You belong to each other! Let your care for each other be expressed and cherished and known!

Yet I hear in these words much more than Jesus’ longing to connect one human being with another. I also hear his longing to connect human beings with the rest of the created world, his longing to heal the deep split between humanity and our brother and sister beings. The one we call Christ is the one through whom all things were made, in whom everything is knit together, and toward whom all things on heaven and earth converge. As we read in Colossians, “…In him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of the cross” (Colossians 1:19-20). As he hangs on the cross, Jesus not only reconciles human beings with each other; he reconciles everything in heaven and on earth, including humanity with the rest of the creation.

This is may be a deeply biblical insight, but it is a very different spirituality than the one with which many of us grew up. I grew up believing that “spirituality” was completely disembodied and ethereal. The God I grew up with had no body. Being a good Christian was all about distancing oneself from the body and transcending the body — both one’s own body and the “body” of the natural world. The natural world and its diversity of buzzing, blooming, finned, and feathered creatures was essentially irrelevant and dispensable, only the backdrop to what was really important: human beings. As a matter of fact, since the time of the Reformation, Western Christianity has had very little to say about the salvation of the natural world and the cosmos, as if only one species, Homo sapiens, is of any real interest to God.

So what a healing it is, what a restoration of the ancient biblical understanding — an understanding that has never been forgotten by the indigenous peoples of the land — to know that Christ on the cross is reconciling all things, restoring all things, and revealing again the deep truth that the earth is holy. Its creatures are holy. The whole created world is lit up with the power and presence of God. The created world is “very good,” as God proclaims in Genesis [bbllink]Genesis 1:31[/bbllink], and the first task of human beings is to tend and protect it.

We human beings are on a long journey back to understanding our God-given connection with the earth. That’s our greatest task and calling at this point in human history: to find our way to union with God and all God’s creation, to learn to reclaim our partnership not just with our human fellows but also with all living creatures. Heaven knows that we humans do not live in right relationship with our brother and sister beings who are four-legged, feathered, or finned, nor with the larger eco-systems of trees and soil and waters on which both they and we depend.

Our estrangement from the natural world is clear in the ecological crisis that is upon us, and when we set this crisis in the light of the cross, we understand it as a moment of judgment, a moment of reckoning. Our society’s way of living – what the bishops of the Episcopal Church decry in a recent pastoral letter as “unparalleled corporate greed and irresponsibility, predatory lending practices, and rampant consumerism” 1– is a direct contradiction to the way of Jesus. We all know that we’re living in an unsustainable way. Depending on non-renewable energy and resources is by definition unsustainable. Consuming more resources than the planet can provide is by definition unsustainable. Producing a killing level of greenhouse gases is by definition unsustainable. Wiping out wilderness habitat and the myriad species upon which our species depends is by definition unsustainable. We are living beyond our ecological means.

Like it or not, we are the generation of the cusp, the generation that bridges the familiar and lovely old world of a stable climate, clean air, and temperate weather, of animals and birds that know when to migrate, where to nest, and what to eat, of farmers that know when and where to plant, of fishermen that find a catch — and this raw new world of sudden spikes in heat and cold, of wild winds and punishing droughts, of torrential rains and brutal heat.

As Bill McKibben writes in his latest book, global warming is “…our reality. We’ve changed the planet, changed it in large and fundamental ways… Our old familiar globe is suddenly melting, drying, acidifying, flooding, and burning in ways that no human has ever seen.” 2 And there is no going back. Human beings have irrevocably altered the earth into which you and I were born. As McKibben puts it, “The world hasn’t ended, but the world as we know it has….” 3 Our task now is not to stop global warming, because that is impossible. Our task is to “keep it from getting any worse than it has to get,” 4 and to find ways to live more “lightly, carefully, and gracefully” 5 in this new world.

What is the way forward? To kneel at the cross in a spirit of profound repentance. To express not only our love and grief, but also our guilt. To confess the ways that we ourselves benefit from the destruction of the earth, and to admit our own patterns of consumption and waste. And to listen afresh to these words of love: “Woman, behold thy son… Behold thy mother.” Jesus is showing us how to move forward: connect with each other. Choose each other. Claim each other as kin. Turn with love not only to your fellow human beings, but also to the other creatures of the natural world.

On Tuesday The New York Times reported the story of a man who was snorkeling in the blue waters of the South Pacific, photographing a humpback whale and her calf swimming less than 50 yards away. “As [the man] waited for the right moment, the playful calf swam right up to him, so close that he had to lower his camera. That’s when he felt a gentle tap on his shoulder. Turning around, [Bryant Austin] found himself looking straight into the eye of the mother whale, her body bigger than a school bus. The tap had come from her pectoral fin, weighing more than a ton. To Mr. Austin, her gesture was an unmistakable warning that he had gotten too close to the calf. And yet, the mother whale had extended her fin with such precision and grace — to touch the photographer without hurting him –that Mr. Austin was in awe of her ‘delicate restraint.’ Looking into the whale’s eye, lit by sunlight through the water, Austin felt he was getting a glimpse of calmness and intelligence, of the animal’s consciousness. The moment changed Mr. Austin’s life.” He went on to devote himself to making life-size portraits of whales, so that other people might perceive the grandeur of these enormous creatures, and might sense what he saw when he looked into that mother whale’s eye. 6

What a marvel it is to break out of our usual state of alienation from the earth and its creatures, and to begin to perceive how connected we are with the other beings all around us. In our fear and despair, it is so easy to feel that we are alone, and that if human beings have irrevocably damaged the creation, then we might as well give up the struggle to create a more just and sustainable future. But then our consciousness breaks open. We meet the gaze of a robin, or a fox, or a frog, we gaze at a tree, we feel the wind on our cheek, and we hear Jesus speak within us, “Behold thy son… Behold thy mother.”

When our inward sight is restored, and our eyes are opened to behold Christ in all his redeeming work, the earth comes alive again and Christ shows up in every sound we hear, in every handful of dirt that we hold, in every bird that we see. The God who created all things also redeems all things and fills all things. Through the crucified and risen Christ, divine love has woven together the human and natural worlds into one inter-related whole. We participate in that mystery, whether we know it or not. Awaken to it, take our place within it, and maybe we will find the strength we need to live more lightly on the earth and to exercise the same delicate restraint regarding our fellow creatures that the mother whale showed to that awe-struck photographer. The only way forward is together.

What would change if we began each day in the way that St. Patrick began his, consciously arising “through the strength of heaven: light of sun, radiance of moon, splendor of fire, speed of lightning, swiftness of wind, depth of sea, stability of earth, firmness of rock”? What would become possible if we asked our brother-sister beings for support? Most of us have never tried it, and I wonder if this might be how the Holy Spirit is now calling us to pray.

So I invite us to take some time in silence and to let the breath bring us images of the living beings that surround us — maybe a red-tailed hawk or a magnolia tree, maybe a frog or prairie dog, a wolverine or walrus, bumblebee or bat. Let images of our brother-sister beings come to you, especially those that are threatened or in danger. Can you sense their support? How different these creatures are from us, how particular and strange, and yet how much they can help us as we take our place in the family of things.

If you prefer, I invite you simply to bring awareness to your body, which in itself is already linked to everything else. Breathe in, and oxygen released by plants and trees flows into our body. Breathe out, and we exhale carbon dioxide that plants in turn absorb. Most of our body’s weight comes from water, just as the surface of the planet is mostly made of water. The salinity of our blood matches the salinity of the sea, as if we carry an ocean inside. Not only that — the carbon and other elements that make up our bodies are the same elements that composed the dinosaurs who roamed the earth sixty-five million years ago, and that will compose whatever beings inhabit the earth sixty-five million years from now. Our body connects us to green-growing plants, to the earth and its creatures, to the oceans, and to every being that preceded us and every being that will follow. Our body even links us to the stars, for everything that makes up our body ultimately comes from stars. Our bodies can become radiant with Christ’s presence.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Rejoice. We are not alone.

Behold thy son. Behold thy mother.

1. “A Pastoral Letter from the Bishops of the Episcopal Church” meeting in Hendersonville, North Carolina, March 13-18, 2009 to the Church and our partners in mission throughout the world.

2. Bill McKibben, Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet, New York: Henry Holt and Company, Times Book, 2010, p. xiii and book jacket. Italics in original.

3. McKibben, Eaarth, p. 2.

4. McKibben interview, op. cit.

5. McKibben, Eaarth, p. 151.

6. Yudhijit Bhattacharjee, “Whales’ Grandeur and Grace, Up Close,” The New York Times, April 18, 2011. For a fine article on whales, visit “Watching Whales Watching Us” (The New York Times, July 8, 2009).

Sermon for the Second Sunday in Lent, March 20, 2011. Delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, Grace Church, Amherst, MA

Genesis 12:1-4aRomans 4:1-5, 13-17
Psalm 121John 3:1-17

We are all in this together

“I lift up my eyes to the hills; from where is my help to come? My help comes from the LORD, the maker of heaven and earth.” (Psalm 121:1-2)

Just over a week ago, the earth opened up near northern Japan. Everything shook for miles around. Triggered by the earthquake, a wall of water three stories high slammed into coastal villages and farmland, sweeping away just about everything in its path and killing what this morning’s newspapers report as nearly twenty thousand people. Visible danger from the earth and ocean was followed by invisible danger from the air. Reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant began to leak radioactive gases, and this weekend engineers, scientists, and technicians continue their desperate struggle to prevent total meltdown in what has become the worst nuclear catastrophe since Chernobyl twenty-five years ago.

These events are unfolding half a world away, and yet their images sear into us. If we are willing to stay with them and to ponder them a while, they have the power to break our hearts. A man kneels in the snow, grieving in front of the wreckage where his mother was buried alive. An old woman covers her mouth as she weeps for her husband who died in the quake. A little girl stands up staunchly as a worker in a haz-mat suit scans her for radiation exposure. A 20-something young man rummages through his damaged house to gather up the few possessions that remain: a basketball, a jacket, a pair of gloves, a pair of sneakers, and some photos. That’s it. That’s what’s left.

Multiply these images many thousand times over, and maybe we can begin to take in the scope of this tragedy. It is hard to comprehend so much loss, to get our minds around it, and yet on a visceral level we sense our connection with our brothers and sisters on the other side of the world. Like them, we, too, want stable ground beneath under our feet. Like them, we, too, want the sea to keep its borders, the air we breathe to be clean, and our food and water to be free of contamination. Like them, we depend for survival on the basic elements of life, and we want to keep our loved ones safe. Never mind that a continent and an ocean separate us from the people of Japan — their fear is our fear, their suffering is our suffering, and their hope is our hope, too.

What can we do? We can pray, both as a worshipping community and in solitude at home. We can pray for the happiness and safety of the people of Japan, and if the whole situation seems too big or too complex to pray for all at once, we can choose one photograph to pray with, and lift up before God the particular person or persons in that scene. We can gather this afternoon at 4 o’clock, when representatives from diverse faith communities — Buddhist, Jewish, and Muslim, Lutheran, Congregational, Episcopal, and Unitarian — will hold a vigil for Japan, as we pray together in word and silence and with the haunting sound of a Japanese bamboo flute. It is good to make a space to grieve, a space in which to lament and to express our hope, for that is how the heart stays open and how the divine life can flow through us with power. At the center of every religious tradition is an experience of compassion that flows out to everyone, to all human beings and to the whole of creation. Now is a good time to join that flow.

And of course it is not only the people of Japan who need our prayers. As the little band of parishioners just back from Haiti can tell you, people on that island still suffer from the effects of a different earthquake and are grateful for our help. So we open our hearts today to the people of Haiti, and to those suffering from the earthquake in New Zealand, the floods in Australia, and the oil spill in the Gulf. We pray for those fighting for freedom in the Middle East, and for a just and peaceful outcome for what has suddenly become an international military intervention in Libya.

As for the crisis in Japan, what else can we do? We can express our care very tangibly by making a donation to any of many charitable organizations that are racing to help, among them Doctors without Borders, the American Red Cross, and Episcopal Relief and Development.

We can learn all we can about nuclear power, and take part in a revitalized and rigorous debate about whether or not nuclear power is a safe source of energy, whether it really makes sense for this country to become more reliant on nuclear power, and how to develop alternative sources of energy that are truly renewable, clean, and safe.

Here’s something else we can do. We can go outside and sing — sing with gratefulness for the return of spring, sing for the quiet earth beneath our feet, for the sound of birdsong in the morning, the renewed warmth of the sun, and the enormous full moon that is shining at night. We can hug the people who are dear to us, and smile at strangers on the street. On TV this week I learned that many Japanese people now greet each other not with the usual word for Hello — konnichiwa — but with another phrase — gambarimasho — which translates roughly as “let’s strive together,” or — a phrase I like even more — “we are all in this together.” Apparently that is what strangers now say to each other as they pass on the street: gambarimasho. “We are all in this together.” I can’t think of a better phrase to live by.

Above all, in these perilous times we can open ourselves to encounter Jesus Christ. Our Gospel reading for today — and for every Sunday during the remaining weeks of Lent — is a story about someone encountering Jesus. This morning we hear the story of Jesus’ encounter with Nicodemus; in the Sundays ahead, we will hear the stories of Jesus encountering a woman at a well, a man born blind, and a man named Lazarus. Why is encountering Jesus Christ so important? Because whenever we meet him, we become more fully alive. Because in his presence we are set free to love fully and to create a life that transcends death. Because through him we learn at the deepest level of our being that we are the Beloved of God.

Of course, like Nicodemus, we may be perfectly respectable people; we may be pious and law-abiding citizens, even leaders of our community, but at a deep level of our being we may be longing for something more. Like Nicodemus, we may come to Jesus by night, that symbolic darkness that represents our confusion as we search for the light. Like Nicodemus, we may already know a thing or two about Jesus — we may believe, for instance that he comes from God — yet we may yearn for a direct encounter with him at a depth that we have never known before.

What does Jesus say to our friend Nicodemus, who really stands for all of us in our search for God? “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above…No one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit” [bbllink]John 3:3,5[/bbllink]. What does this mean? As Christians, we naturally think of baptism, that immersion in water and the Spirit through which we enter the community of faith and begin our life in Christ. It makes sense to speak of baptism as the moment of our second birth, when a new way of life opens up for us. Our baptism is a decisive moment, a once-in-a-lifetime event, but it marks the beginning, and only the beginning, of the ongoing transformation of consciousness that is possible as we grow up to our full stature in Christ.

So I invite us this Lent, especially in a time that seems so precarious and unpredictable, to find practices that deepen our awareness that we are the Beloved of God. Knowing at every moment that we are God’s beloved is what sets us free to love generously and boldly, and to live through a time of turmoil with creativity and even joy. That was the experience of Jesus, and I want to quote from my husband Robert Jonas, who writes in his recent book, The Essential Henri Nouwen: “From his deep center of belovedness in God, Jesus could see and undergo the most painful human experiences and still emerge radiant with mercy, beauty, and love. Because he was secure in his knowledge that he was the Beloved, Jesus was able not only to tolerate extreme suffering, but also to undergo it in a way that brought new hope and life to others.” 1

One way to let Jesus encounter us is to let ourselves bring to mind and consciously absorb our encounters with everyone who has ever loved us. Every person who has loved you, everyone who has in some way conveyed to you that you are significant and wanted, is a doorway to the love of God. So I encourage you to take some time to try out this exercise, and to give it a good long try — a full ten minutes, say — for it is so easy to brush love away, to say to ourselves, “Oh, I didn’t really deserve that; that wasn’t real; that didn’t matter; there’s no need to let love in.” Well, the love that we push away may be Jesus himself knocking on our door, urging us to come out of the darkness and into the light. “Grace, for the Christian believer, is a transformation that depends in large part on knowing oneself to be seen in a certain way: as significant, as wanted.” 2 That is what Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote a while back, and I think he is right. So can we suspend for a while our strenuous refusal to let ourselves be seen with eyes of love?

Here is the exercise. It is very simple. Begin by taking a few minutes in silence to center yourself. Then ask yourself: Who has helped me know that I am significant? That I am wanted? Don’t hurry or strain for anything, but just wait patiently and let images arise. See the faces or sense the presence of people who have believed in you…. who have valued you…. who have let you know that you matter to them…. They may be family members or friends; neighbors, co-workers, or strangers; they may be living or dead. They may be people that you have known for a long time or people that you only met in passing. As each person comes to mind, let yourself rest in the warmth of his or her gaze. How do you respond? Can you let the love in? Notice what comes up for you.

That’s all there is to it, but it is a powerful practice. As we take in the love that has been given to us over the years, and as we take in the bread and wine of the Eucharist, given to us by God in Christ with such tenderness and at such great cost, we come to perceive and know not only our own belovedness, our own chosen-ness, our own blessedness by God, but the fact that everyone is beloved, everyone is chosen, everyone is blessed. Everyone and everything is part of a sacred whole, and everyone is kin.

Gambarimasho. We are all in this together.

1. Robert A. Jonas, editor, The Essential Henri Nouwen, Boston and London: Shambhala, 2009, p. 59.

2. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, in “Body as Grace,” Our Selves, Our Souls and Bodies: Sexuality and the Household of God, ed. Charles Hefling (Cowley, 1996), p. 59.

Sermon for the Second Sunday after Christmas Day, January 2, 2011.
Delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, Grace Church, Amherst, MA

Jeremiah 31:7-14 Ephesians 1:3-6, 15-19
Psalm 84: 1-8 Matthew 2: 1-12

The journey of the wise men

Happy are the people whose strength is in you! whose hearts are set on the pilgrims’ way. – Psalm 84:4

When I think about the three kings, what leaps first to mind are the crèches that I unpack every year a couple of weeks before Christmas. On the piano in the living room I put the tall, earthenware figures of Mary, Joseph, and the baby, of shepherds and sheep, and — yes — of the three kings and their camels. On the mantelpiece goes a miniature nativity set in which each teeny-tiny figure is made of clay, delicately painted, and no more than one inch high. On the coffee table I put the plastic figures and the cheap wooden stable that children can play with to their heart’s content without making their grandmother worry that something is going to break. No crèche is complete without its three kings, and when the Twelve Days of Christmas are over, back go the various kings and camels into their boxes, where they spend the rest of the year stored in the basement.

As I pondered today’s Gospel, I got to thinking: what would happen if the wise men walked out of those crèches and into our lives? What would happen if these figures — so easy to trivialize as nothing more than decorative props for a mid-winter festival that we pack away when the festival is done — what if the wise men actually came to life for us? What if their journey informed and deepened our own spiritual search, and propelled it forward? What if their experience of seeking and finding the Christ child was an archetypal journey, one that could lead us into a move vivid and lively relationship with Christ? So I began to read the story for its spiritual significance, as a sacred story about how to grow in intimacy with God.

Four parts of the story stood out for me.

The first, of course, is the star, that mysterious, shining presence that startles the wise men and sends them out on a search. Ancient tradition held that an unusual star could appear in the skies to mark the birth of someone special, such as a king. That is how the wise men interpret what they see: something out of the ordinary is taking place, something truly significant is afoot, and out the door they go, leaving their ordinary lives behind as they follow the light wherever it leads.

I think it is worth pointing out that although every painting, movie, and Christmas card that depicts the journey of the wise men shows a dazzling star above their heads, we don’t actually know from the biblical story whether anyone but the wise men can see that star. King Herod, the chief priests and scribes, don’t seem to know anything about the star until the wise men arrive in Jerusalem and tell them about its rising. So the star may be visible to the eye or it may be perceptible only to one’s inward sight; it may be seen or it may be unseen. Either way, it is significant, for it signals the birth of something new in the world. It heralds a presence and power that is just now being born. The wise men are wise, indeed, for they spot that star and they set everything aside to follow where it leads.

Probably every spiritual journey begins with a star. At some point we get a sense — perhaps a very vague one — that there is something more to life than the ordinary round of tasks and responsibilities, something above and beyond, or perhaps within, material reality that can give a larger meaning and purpose to our days, something that is beautiful and shining and that lights up the world. So we set out on a quest to follow that star and to see where it leads. We may name the quest in different ways — maybe we call it a search for meaning or wholeness, a search for happiness or peace. Maybe we seek to know that we are loved, or to draw closer to the divine Source of love. Maybe, as some Greeks say to Philip in the Gospel of John, we express our desire in a simple, straightforward way: “We wish to see Jesus” John 12:21.

However we name that desire, deep down we want to know God. And so, like the wise men, we set out, and what beckons us forward is a star, a subtle, shining presence that keeps company with us, and that we follow as best we can. For most of us, most of the time, following the leadings of God is not like having a GPS fastened to the dashboard of our car, delivering clear-cut instructions: “Turn left in .2 miles; take the freeway; turn right in 4.3 miles.” Like it or not, the star of Bethlehem is more elusive than that, so we have to develop an attitude of careful listening, a stance of open inquiry, and a practice of prayer that develops our sensitivity to the glimmers of the holy. It takes practice to stay attentive to the star, for, as Boris Pasternak once wrote, “When a great moment knocks on the door of your life, it is often no louder than the beating of your heart, and it is very easy to miss it.”

The star is the first thing that catches my attention in this story, and the second is Jerusalem. Where does the star lead the wise men? Straight to Jerusalem, straight into the center of political and economic power, where King Herod the Great, a client king appointed by Rome, rules with the same ferocity that Stalin wielded over his own country in the 1930’s. We might wish that following a spiritual path were purely an individual and internal enterprise — that following the star meant nothing more than developing a personal practice of prayer or going away on periodic retreats. There are plenty of contemporary books and speakers out there that define spirituality in a very individualistic way as being mindful of your own mind and cultivating your own soul — and of course that is part of the journey. But right from the beginning, from the very moment that Christ is born, it is clear that following his star also means coming to grips with the social and political realities of one’s time. Being “spiritual,” for Christians, is not just an interior, individual project of “saving ones soul” — it also has a civic dimension, a political dimension, and as the wise men faithfully follow the star, they are drawn straight into the darkness and turmoil of the world, where systemic power can be used to dominate and terrify. Without intending it or knowing it, the wise men even contribute to Herod’s program of terror, for Herod takes the information that they give him and uses it to order the slaughter of all the children under the age of two who live in Bethlehem.

Following the star evidently means being willing to become conscious of the darkness of the world, and even to perceive how we ourselves are implicated in that darkness. With my taxes, I am paying for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; with every turn of the ignition key, I burn fossil fuels that add to global warming. Until I recognize how I am caught up in and how I contribute to the contradictions and injustices of our political and economic system, I am not following the star and accompanying the wise men into Jerusalem.

We notice, too, that King Herod trembles at the news of the star — in fact, its rising frightens him. The powers that be are terrified whenever God in Christ draws near, for God’s love is always a threat to those powers; it opposes everything in us and around us that is selfish, greedy, and motivated by the urge to dominate, control, and possess. As I read it, the wise men needed to come to know those powers, both within themselves and in the world around them, if they were going to find and follow Christ.

So they entered Jerusalem, and they saw what they saw; they learned what they learned. Then, keeping their eyes on the star, they kept going, “until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy” Matthew 2:9b-10. This is the third part of the story: the encounter with Christ. What a beautiful line that is — “when they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy.” The long, long journey with all its uncertainties and privations, its cold nights and its restless, ardent searching, has reached its fulfillment. The star has stopped, and the wise men can be at peace at last, they have arrived at last, they have found what they were looking for, at last! They enter the house, they see Mary and the child, and they fall to their knees in a gesture of deep reverence and humility.

Do we know what that’s like? Of course we do. We glimpse such moments whenever time seems to stop, when, for instance, our minds grow very quiet in prayer, we surrender our thoughts, and we seem to be filling with light. Or maybe it happens when we gaze at something that captures our complete attention — maybe a stretch of mountains or the sea, or when we take a long, loving look into a child’s sleeping face, or when we are completely absorbed in a piece of music. In moments like these, it can feel as if we are gazing through the object on which we gaze, and seeing into the heart of life itself. Love is pouring through us and into us, and all we can do is throw up our hands, fall inwardly to our knees, and offer as a gift everything that is in us, just as the wise men open their treasure chests and offer everything that is in them. Worship is what happens when we come into the presence of what is really real. When we come to the altar rail at the Eucharist, whether we choose to stand or whether we kneel as the wise men did, like them we stretch out our hands to offer everything that is in us, and like them we receive — we take in — the living presence of Christ.

Finally, the fourth element of the story is its last line: “… having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road” Matthew 2:12. In other words, the wise men refused to cooperate with Herod. They deceived him. They resisted him. The wise men have been called the first conscientious objectors in the name of Christ. They are the first in a long line of witnesses to Christ who from generation to generation have carried out acts of non-violent civil disobedience in Jesus’ name. The journey of the wise men is our journey, too, for, as Gregory the Great reportedly remarked in a homily back in the 7th century: “Having come to know Jesus, we are forbidden to return by the way we came.”

So, as we set out together into a new year, I hope that you will join me in keeping the wise men at our side, rather than packing them away in a box somewhere.

Like them, we can attune ourselves to the guiding of the star, and renew our commitment to prayer and inward listening.

Like them, we can enter Jerusalem and all the dark places of our world and soul, following wherever God leads, and trusting that God’s light will shine in the darkness.

Like them, we can make our way to Christ, and kneel in gratitude.

And like them, we, too, can rise to our feet with a new-fired passion to be agents of justice and healing, and a renewed desire to give ourselves to God, for “happy are the people whose strength is in [God, and] whose hearts are set on the pilgrims’ way.”

Homily for the Bishops’ Advent Retreat, Wednesday, December 1, 2010.
Delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, Barbara C. Harris Camp & Conference Center, Greenfield NH

Isaiah 25:6-9 Psalm 23
Matthew 15:29-39

I put my trust in you

What does the future hold? What is the world coming to? Where are we headed? These are Advent questions, and they are also the questions that beset me as I study climate change. Will human beings learn at last to live in a peaceful, creative way on our planetary home? These are not abstract, neutral questions, but urgent questions, the kind that wake me up in the middle of the night.

I want to tell an Advent story that took place five years ago. In the fall of 2005, Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita – strengthened by the unusually warm waters of the Gulf – plowed into Louisiana and Mississippi. Millions of Americans were evacuated. Within a matter of hours, most of an American city lay in ruins.

Soon afterwards, a small group from my parish, Grace Church in Amherst, began organizing a service trip to Mississippi. In late November we would drive down a truck full of supplies, sleep in a makeshift camp, and do whatever was needed – haul debris, dig mud, offer a shoulder to cry on, or just listen and pray. I was eager to go, but then I received an invitation to join a delegation of interfaith religious leaders who would attend the upcoming United Nations climate change conference in Montreal. It was the first international summit since the Kyoto Protocol came into force, a gathering to discuss the future of the fight against global warming — the same group that is meeting this week in Cancun, Mexico.

The two trips overlapped, and I could not take them both. How should I lend a hand in the fight against climate change – head down to Mississippi or up to Montreal? Stand in the mud with my brothers and sisters, or try in some small way to influence world leaders? Both efforts were worthy. I debated what to do. Finally a friend reminded me that if you are watching dead or wounded people floating down a river, it is important that someone rescue them and tend to them. But it is also important that someone head upstream and stop the war.

I decided to go to Montreal.

In late November, I flew to Canada as part of the U.S. Climate Action delegation, which included representatives of Interfaith Power & Light. For several days I mingled with delegates sent by the World Council of Churches, attended climate workshops, listened to speeches, and wrote editorials. Best of all, on a cold Saturday afternoon I marched through the streets of Montreal. I had never stood shoulder to shoulder with so many climate activists. Seven thousand protesters walked through the city, a throng of all sorts of people — parents pushing strollers, the sturdy middle-aged, the valiant elderly, and a large contingent of young adults fairly bouncing with glee. I, too, was buoyed by joy. Here was the most vigorous celebration of Advent that I could imagine. The placards and banners rang out the season’s urgent themes: Now is the time to wake from sleep, to clean up our act, to sort out our lives, to cast away the works of darkness and to put on the armor of light.

“The time is high,” read one sign.

“People in power: wake up!” read another.

One sign declared in big black letters: La terre n’est pas une guimauve. I understood the first part: The earth is not…, but the meaning of the last word escaped me. I pushed through the crowd to view the placard’s other side: a sketch of a round earth skewered like a marshmallow on a stick, suspended over flames.

No, the earth is not a marshmallow, although we are treating it like one.

One group of protesters streamed in from the east, and another from the west, everyone cheering, waving signs, or playing drums. When the two crowds met, we marched together down the road that led to the building where the pale blue U.N. flag was whipping in the wind. There we held a rally, and we were not alone. Companion marches were being held simultaneously in 29 countries around the world.

That ebullient march was one of the gifts I received on the trip to Montreal, a glimpse of the burgeoning worldwide movement that draws upon humanity’s deepest reserves of hope, and calls upon the world’s political and corporate leaders to protect life as we know it on this planet.

The other gift came as a surprise, when I was alone one morning in the hotel. By then I had been in Montreal for several days, and I was steeped in the stark reality of climate change. I had studied the aerial photographs of Mount Kilimanjaro, newly naked, bereft of snow, and had listened to reports of “climate witnesses” from Argentina and the Arctic. I had learned about the many ways that climate change puts stress on organisms and eco-systems, and had heard survivors of Katrina speak about the particular vulnerability of the poor and dispossessed. I had listened as the delegates debated, and had read about our government’s intransigence, its complete refusal to take the issue seriously.

After a restless night, I woke up gasping with anger and sorrow, needing badly to pray. Death was prowling nearby and I was ardent for life. I sat in the hotel room and let my anguish spill out before God – grief for what we have lost and the harm that has been done, rage at the inertia and indifference that kill with such abandon. I felt utterly helpless. Dear Lord, what can I do? What can any of us do?

Then, as if to one side, I heard a quiet message.

I put my trust in you.

Startled, I opened my eyes and looked around. Who said that? I had heard the sentence as clearly as if someone were standing in the room. I had often said those very words to God, but now the message was addressed to me. How bizarre. Was there some mistake? Who was speaking? How could God trust me?

I saw that I had a choice: to accept the message or to reject it, to believe it or to blow it off. The message was as improbable as the message that the angel Gabriel delivered to Mary so many years ago: you are a virgin, you will conceive a son, and he will be the savior of the world.

Yeah, right is surely a sensible response.

Yet God’s hope for the future hung on Mary’s willingness to trust and her decision to say yes. Perhaps it hangs on our own willingness and our decisions, too. Who knows how many such messages are delivered every day to the countless faithful of every religious tradition around the world? Trust the good, wherever you find it. Trust love. Trust the truth. Trust yourself. Who knows how much energy for life would be released into the world if we dared to believe in those intimate, hidden encounters when, at a deep level of our being, we are offered a divine word of love, an assurance of forgiveness, an expression of trust?

Musing in my hotel room, I considered the words: I put my trust in you. What I heard in those words was the quiet assurance that I was exactly where I was meant to be, and that I was not alone. I was trusted. I was loved. My task was simply to keep listening to the deepest truth within me, and to follow where it led.

I decided to accept the message that I had received. Maybe I was a fool to do so — I will never know, at least not on this side of the grave. But I learned again that there is a fountain within us that is not contingent on outward circumstance, an upwelling of love that comes from nowhere. Maybe that is what gives us hope even in the midst of loss, terror, or failure.

I touch that hope in every service of Holy Communion. During this retreat we have been considering the resources that Christian theology and practice can offer us in the face of the environmental crisis now unfolding in our midst. My short list of essential Christian resources would have to include the sacrament of Holy Communion.

It is here at this table that we receive the simple elements of bread and wine, and realize that these apparently ordinary things – like Nature herself – are actually filled with God.

It is here at this table that we learn to eat mindfully, to take God’s creatures of bread and wine into our hands with reverence and a grateful heart.

It is here at this table that we share the one loaf and one cup and discover that a bit of bread can fill us and a sip of wine can quench our thirst. We don’t have to grab for more; we don’t have to be greedy “consumers” who must constantly replenish ourselves with material things in order to reassure ourselves that we matter or that we exist. At this table we discover that in sharing what we have, our hearts are satisfied at last.

It is here at this table that God gives God’s self to us, and we in turn give ourselves to God. It’s here at this table that our bonds with God in Christ, with each other, and with the whole Creation are restored and renewed. I wish that this last point was made explicit in our Eucharistic prayers, so I have taken the liberty of changing the wording of the post-Communion prayer. 1

1. A line in the Enriching Our Worship post-Communion prayer was changed from “you have united us with Christ and one another; and you have made us one with all your people in heaven and on earth” to “you have united us with Christ and one another; and you have made us one with all your people in heaven and on earth, and with all creation.”

Sermon for the First Sunday of Advent , November 28, 2010.
Delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, Grace Church, Amherst, MA

Isaiah 2:1-5 Romans 13:11-14
Psalm 122 Matthew 24:36-44

Sleepers, wake!

“You know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep.” – Romans 13:11

A few weeks ago, a group of parishioners sat around a table in the Parish Hall, talking about the creeds. It was a Wednesday night, and it was Nancy Lowry’s idea (thank you, Nancy). At her suggestion, we organized an adult ed. series that gave participants a chance to talk about how we make sense of the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds, and where the creeds baffle or trouble us. As you can imagine, it was a lively conversation. At one point, some of us started discussing which line of the Nicene Creed was currently our favorite, and why. I jumped into the fray and named my favorite line: “we look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.”

Why do I love that line? Because it orients me toward the future with an attitude of expectation and hope. Because it tells me where to focus my attention, so that I keep watch for the in-breaking realm of God. What do we look for? “We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.” We look for signs of divine power, for unexpected, life-giving words of kindness or forgiveness, for the grace-filled “coincidence,” for the act of selfless courage or the gentle hand that reaches out to clasp a neighbor’s hand. We look for the dawning realization that everything is connected and that I am kin with all that is. God is coming toward us from the future, inviting us to enlarge our minds, to see with new eyes, and to stay awake.

Today is the First Sunday of Advent, the beginning of the new church year, and, as one preacher puts it: “part of what we do during this season is to prepare to celebrate the coming of Christ as a baby in Bethlehem. But that is not where we start on this Sunday. We do not start at the beginning of the story. We start at the end.” 1

We start the Advent season by looking to the end of time — to the last great day when Christ will come again in glory, and everything in heaven and on earth will be gathered up in love. The prophet Isaiah evokes in stirring terms the future that awaits us. All the peoples of the earth will draw together and worship the one God, and God will “beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more” (Isaiah 2: 4b). It is a powerful vision, a vision of ultimate peace and hope that rings deeply in the human heart.

When will that great day come? We do not know. Jesus himself warns that no one knows the details, no one holds the map or the time-table that can tell us exactly when and how the reign of God will finally be accomplished – not the angels of heaven, not Jesus himself, but only God the Father. But we do know this: at some unexpected moment, that day will come. So we must stay awake. “You know what time it is,” Paul says. “It is now the moment to wake from sleep” (Romans 13:11). God will come among us, Jesus says in today’s Gospel, as unexpectedly as a flood, as decisively as a kidnapper, as secretly as a thief. These disturbing images shake us up, and that’s the point: God may break in at any moment, so at every moment we must be ready to welcome God. “Keep awake therefore,” says Jesus, “for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming” (Matthew 24:42).

Later on, St. Paul will soften Jesus’ imagery, saying that God will come like a thief only to those who are not prepared to meet God; presumably those who do love God will greet God’s coming with joy [c.f. 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11). But in any case, the injunction to wake up and stay awake is repeated throughout the New Testament. We hear it elsewhere in the Gospels, in First Thessalonians (1 Thessalonians 5:6-8), the Book of Revelation (Rev. 3:1-3; 16:15), and Ephesians, which gives our next hymn its opening words: “Sleepers, wake!” (Ephesians 5:13; Hymn #71).

Other religious traditions also urge their followers to awake from sleep. I think, for instance, of a story about the Buddha. It seems that soon after his enlightenment, the Buddha passed a man on a road. The man marveled at the Buddha’s radiance and serenity, and he asked, “Who are you? Are you a god?”

“No,” said the Buddha.

“Are you a wizard or magician?”

“No,” said the Buddha.

“Then what are you?” asked the man.

“I am awake,” the Buddha replied.

The word Buddha means “awakened one,” and every one of us is called to be awake.

Please don’t misunderstand. I have nothing against sleep. I function best if at night I manage to get eight hours of sleep, and my family would be the first to tell you that I am a nicer person when I do. Dreaming is also important — many of us learn what is going on within us when we pay attention to our dreams, and dreams may even convey messages from God. Sleep is good, and dreams are good — but not sleepwalking or daydreaming through our lives.

How many ways are there to fall asleep? I bet we could come up with a hundred. Take habits, for instance. Habits can put us to sleep. They can dull our awareness and close down our perception. Again, I want to be honest here: I love my habits. I’m a creature of habit. Habits give a reassuring order to my day, a pleasant sense of stability. But doing things the same way day after day can also be a way to fall asleep.

Case in point: for twenty years I lived in Watertown, a suburb of metropolitan Boston, and I often went out jogging. The nearest bit of nature from our front door was the Charles River, about ¾ of a mile away. For twenty years I would leave the house, run down the hill, turn right on Mount Auburn Street, reach the bridge at Watertown Square, turn left at the river and run east, making a big loop counter-clockwise that circled me back to my house about an hour later. I ran this route day after day, season after season, year after year, and I got to know it like it the back of my hand. I knew every storefront, every donut shop and driveway. I knew where to watch for cracks in the sidewalk, where to spot the ducks, and at which curve of the river I was likely to catch the wind in my face.

Finally the time came to make our big move to the Pioneer Valley. With excitement, my family and I began to uproot our selves, and we started packing up our belongings. On our last day in Watertown, I went out for a farewell run. As always, I headed out the front door and down the hill. But for some reason, this time I changed direction. Instead of turning right, as I had for twenty years, I turned left. It was the identical route, but now I was running it clockwise, and to my astonishment, everything looked different and new, as if I had never seen it before. I had never noticed that tree, never spotted that arrangement of houses, never realized that the angle of light changed at that particular corner of the road. I had been busily running that course for years, but I might as well have been running it in my sleep.

That’s a pretty harmless example, but it got me to wondering: What else was I doing in my sleep? Where else was I sleepwalking? What else had I missed?

When I want to remember what it means to be awake, I go to my bookshelf, pull out Walden, and immerse myself in Thoreau’s brilliant, cranky, and opinionated quest to wake up and cut through the torpor, fantasy, and illusion of daily life. I agree with his bracing assessment that “We are sound asleep nearly half our time.” 2 And I relish his provocative suggestion, “To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?” 3

How awake, I ask myself, am I willing to be?

Thoreau was not in any conventional sense a religious man, but he had his own way of looking for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. He writes, “We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn…” 4

Both religious and non-religious thinkers clamor for human beings to wake up, and never has that call been more urgent than it is now. What spell has befallen us so that we assault the life-systems on this planet that keep our species and all other species alive? What will it take for us to wake up, and to see through the illusion that we have all the time in the world, that the world’s (quote unquote) “resources” have no limits, and that we can mine and drill, log and burn, get and spend as much as we please? Can we help each other to awaken, and find ways to bring forth on this planet a human presence that is “environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling, and socially just”? 5 That is great work, indeed — a high calling.

Where have you fallen asleep? Where are you bound up in habit, dulled by routine, awash in trivia?

Here are three suggestions for an awakened Advent.

1) Cultivate an attitude of expectancy. Today is a brand new day, a clean slate, an open field of fresh possibilities. How will God show up today?

2) Take a good look at your life. Make room for self-examination. Where do you need to “lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light” (Romans 13: 12)? Where do you need to relinquish old habits of egotism and greed, of violence and unkindness – the old patterns, as Paul says (Romans 13:13), of drunkenness, quarreling, and jealousy?

3) Make space for solitude and silence. Nothing is so like God as silence. Nothing opens our hearts or awakens our minds more surely than “the silence of eternity interpreted by love.” 6 Drop in on the Rector’s Contemplative Bible Study that will meet tomorrow and every Monday afternoon for silent meditation on the Gospels. Check out Bill Holladay’s new Wednesday night series on praying through Advent with the prophet Isaiah.

Now is the time to abandon whatever stupefies us and puts us to sleep.

Now is the time to look ahead with hope, for “the night is far gone, the day is near” (Romans 13:12).

Grab the smelling salts! Sleepers, wake! Today, and every day, we look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.

1. The Rev. Dr. Amy Richter, “November 28, 2010 — First Sunday of Advent,” Sermons that Work.

2. Henry David Thoreau, Walden, in The Portable Thoreau, edited, and with an introduction, by Carl Bode, New York: Viking Press, 1947, 1962, p. 570.

3. Ibid, p. 343

4. Ibid.

5. Visit The Pachamama Alliance.

6. John Greenleaf Whittier, from Hymn #652, “Dear Lord and Father of mankind”

Sermon for the Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost, October 17, 2010.
Delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, Grace Church, Amherst, MA

Genesis 32:22-31 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5
Psalm 121 Luke 18:1-8

Persistence in prayer

Today’s parable of the persistent widow and the unjust judge invites us to reflect on the value of persistence in prayer. Persistence may seem a very humble virtue to consider. Persistence has nothing particularly shiny or glamorous or heroic about it. It’s not a warrior in flashing armor astride a white stallion who gallops in to save the day. It’s not a powerbroker in a gorgeous Armani suit issuing commands from behind a bank of microphones. Persistence is much more modest than that, much more hidden and humble. Persistence in prayer is like a helpless widow who just won’t quit. That woman is tenacious. She is resolute, dogged, determined. She won’t be put off and she won’t take no for an answer. Push her down and she only springs back up like weeds. That widow so pesters the unjust judge — she so wears him down with her repeated pleas for justice — that the hard-hearted judge finally gives in and grants the request so that he can be rid of her at last.

If a selfish, indifferent judge will relent and grant justice in the face of such persistence, how much more, says Jesus, will “God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to [God] day and night” (Luke 18:7)! God is nothing like that unjust judge — God is generous, abounding in mercy, and eager to bring justice. So Jesus gives his disciples a word of encouragement. “Pray always,” he tells them, “and do not lose heart” (c.f. Luke 18:1).

The Gospel writer tells this parable because Luke knows, and Jesus knows, and God knows how easy it is to lose heart. The early Christian communities were suffering persecution. They were praying, as Jesus taught them, “Thy kingdom come.” They were waiting on tiptoe for his return in glory, for the consummation of all things, for the great day when justice and mercy and kindness would prevail at last on earth, and everything broken would be mended, and everything alienated and estranged would be reconciled and healed. But that day never seemed to arrive. Christ’s return in glory seemed to be delayed. Had God forgotten them? Would the peace and justice for which they longed never come? Was their faith only so much hogwash?

Similar questions may beset us today. The news pouring in from the newspapers, TV, and Internet is often chilling and bleak, and there are plenty of voices inside us and around us that tell us to give up the fight for a just, kind, and sustainable world. “All is lost!” the voices say. “It’s too late. We’ll never reach a fair and peaceful resolution to the logjam in the Middle East, never put an end to unjust wars, never stop racism, classism, or homophobia, never stabilize the climate or end the cascade of species extinctions. We’ll never create the world that our children need and that our hearts are longing for. The whole thing is hopeless and we’re going to hell in a handbasket.”

Actually, I’ve never understood how to picture that expression, “going to hell in a handbasket,” but you catch my drift: there are voices inside us and around us that urge us to quit and to slide into despair. Have those voices found a foothold in your soul? Are there times when you feel overwhelmed by the darkness of the world and want to crawl into a safe little cubbyhole and pull the covers over your head? Are there times when you want to raise a fist in cynicism and blame, or to drown your fears in too much alcohol, television, shopping, or busyness? If you know what it is like to feel discouraged, disappointed, or just plain depleted, then this Gospel passage is for you.

“Pray always,” Jesus is saying to you. “And do not lose heart. Do not lose heart.”

Persistence is what we need in a time like this, persistence in faith, persistence in prayer. Persistence has fueled who knows how many breakthroughs in medicine, technology, science, and the arts. I heard a story somewhere that Thomas Edison made a thousand failed attempts to find a successful light filament. When Edison’s assistant complained about all that wasted effort, Edison replied, “Ridiculous! We now know a thousand ways it doesn’t work!”

Persistence is useful in many human enterprises, and it is essential in prayer. Why is it essential? What is the value of persistence in prayer? For one thing, it brings us closer to God. Being persistent in prayer means that we keep showing up, keep making ourselves available for encounter, keep sharing what is truly on our minds and hearts. Prayer is not like speed dating. I have never done speed dating, but I understand that it is a kind of breathless round-robin event in which you meet a great many people very quickly on a superficial level. Persistent prayer is not like that. It’s about taking our time and daring to go deep so that we can form a long-lasting relationship with the divine. For of course the great promise of prayer is that we don’t have to settle for second-hand information about God, or for concepts of God, or for ideas about God. The promise of prayer is that we can come to know God directly, through our own experience. It is one thing to hear a preacher tell you, over and over, Sunday after Sunday, “God loves you. God is with you. God will never let you go.” It is quite another thing to discover that truth for oneself, to come to that knowledge oneself in the depths of one’s being.

So the first reason to be persistent in prayer is because that is how we cultivate a long-term relationship with God. A second reason is that prayer changes us. Prayer is not like mechanically firing off a series of faxes or making a bunch of automated robocalls, as if we can pray and at the same time stay at a safe distance from God. No — prayer makes us vulnerable. Prayer makes us real. If we are honest with God, if we are candidly sharing our hopes and fears, our confusion and disappointment, then we’re getting up close and personal. Prayer is more like making love than like sending a fax, more like engaging in a wrestling match than like sitting politely at a tea party.

It feels right that the first reading this morning is the story of Jacob wrestling with that mysterious adversary that might be an angel or perhaps even God Himself (Genesis 32:22-31). When we are persistent in prayer we must wrestle with our shadow, with our temptations, doubts, and anxieties, and perhaps even with God. In that arduous process we are, like Jacob, both wounded and blessed. Wounded, because we must acknowledge and accept how small we are, how mortal, finite, incomplete, and prone to sin. Blessed, because we discover how loved we are, how completely cherished. We may be small, but we belong to what is infinite; we may be mortal, but there is a life within us that will never die.

In my own experience of trying to pray like the persistent widow and to bring before God my longing for justice and peace, I have discovered that the more I weep over the suffering of the world, and the more ardently I long for the healing of our relationships with one another and with the earth, the more I sense that it is God’s sorrow that is moving through me, and God’s longing for healing that is filling my soul. Do you know what I mean? I hope that you have had that experience, too. It seems that the desire in our hearts for a world in which all beings can flourish is not a desire that begins with us. It is God’s desire flowing into us, God’s desire that is being expressed in our prayer. When we hunger and thirst for righteousness, it is God within us who is hungering and thirsting; when we long for peace, it is God’s longing that we share; when we pray with compassion for the poor and weak, it is God’s compassion that we experience.

This perception should make us bold in prayer, for God seems to be whispering our ears: “Yes, your longing for justice and mercy is my longing, too. Let that longing grow large, and let it burn bright. Whatever the circumstances may be, in good times and bad, be steadfast in your faith and persistent in your prayer.”

Praying puts us in touch with inner resources that we never knew we had. It can fill us with energy, confidence, and determination. Yet prayer also teaches us to let go. Contemplative prayer, in particular, in which we notice and accept every moment as it comes, can ease the ego’s addictive grasping and its urge to control.

I went back this week to re-read part of a marvelous book by the psychiatrist Gerald May, a book entitled The Dark Night of the Soul. With great care, Jerry May describes how contemplative prayer can transform our lives. Through such prayer we learn, he says, to expect nothing, to cling to nothing, and to hold on to nothing. In that experience of open-handed trust and non-grasping, we become “part of…a flowing energy of willingness, an eternal yes resounding with every heartbeat.” 1 Can you imagine it? A yes with every heartbeat. Yes. Yes. At this point, we no longer hope for peace or for justice or for healing, because we no longer hope for any particular result or any particular thing. We simply experience what Jerry May calls “naked hope, a bare energy of open expectancy.” 2

In the last pages of the book he tells a thought-provoking story. He writes:

…[In] the summer of 1994 I joined a small pilgrimage to Bosnia. I had the opportunity to speak with poor people who had lost everything: homes, possessions, entire families. As they told us their stories through tears of grief, I sensed deep hope in them. Through interpreters I asked if it were true. “Yes, hope,” they smiled. I asked if it was hope for peace. “No, things have gone too far for that.” I asked if they hoped the United Nations or the United States would intervene in some positive way. “No, it’s too late for that.” I asked them, “Then, what is it you are hoping for?” They were silent. They could not think of a thing to hope for, yet there it was — undeniable hope shining in them. I asked one last question. “How can you hope, when there is nothing to hope for?” The answer was, ‘Bog,’ the Serbo-Croatian word for God. 3

“Pray always,” says Jesus, “and do not lose heart.” I will give Teresa of Avila the last word.

Let nothing trouble you, let nothing make you afraid, All things pass away. God never changes. Patience obtains everything. The one who possesses God lacks nothing. God alone is enough.

1. Gerald G. May, M.D., The Dark Night of the Soul: A Psychiatrist Explores the Connection Between Darkness and Spiritual Growth, HarperSanFrancisco, 2004, p. 192.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid., p. 193.

Sermon for Earth Ministry’s 16th Annual Celebration of St. Francis (held at Olympic View Community Church, Seattle, WA), October 2, 2010. Delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas.

Galatians 6:14-18
Psalm 148:7-14Matthew 11:25-30

When a leaf needs to speak

As I prayed about this sermon, I knew that I wanted to give you something, but what kept coming to mind were not ideas, or even words, but images of a leaf. I kept imagining myself standing here and holding up a leaf. I decided to trust what was coming to me in prayer, so I wandered about, looking at trees, and came back with this [holding up a leaf].

As I imagined holding this very leaf before you, I asked, “OK, Leaf, what do you have to say to these good people?” And the leaf gave me three messages.

The first one: Here is the world in all its beauty. This leaf is unlike every other leaf. If you spent just five minutes examining its stem and veins and color and shape, you would see that this leaf is a very particular leaf, one that has its own contribution to make to the world, just as each of us has our own particular part to play in the whole web of life. This particular, irreplaceable leaf emerged in connection to the rest of the tree: its stem connected to a branch, the branch to the trunk, and the trunk to the roots. From below, the roots absorbed water and nutrients that were drawn up the tree-trunk and passed along to the leaf. And from above, sunlight shone down and made the leaf grow. So this leaf is intimately connected to sunshine and water, to dirt and cloud, worms and sky. And this leaf is connected to us, and to every creature that shares what the Book of Genesis calls “the breath of life” (Genesis 1:30). When we breathe in, we take in oxygen that the leaves have released, and when we breathe out, we exhale carbon dioxide that the leaves in turn take in as food. With every breath we exchange the elements of life with plants.

What a beautiful world we live in — one that is so very particular, so full of such unique and exquisitely designed creatures as a leaf, a tree, a person. And everything is so interconnected. Here is the world in all its beauty — that is the cry of mystics from every religious tradition, and the deep perception of things that animates the Bible, when in the Creation story God takes a look at the world that God has made, and pronounces it “very good” (Genesis 1:31). Everything is particular; everything is connected. Study this leaf with a quiet eye, and you will glimpse the imperishable, shining through what perishes. You will see the invisible, illuminating what can be seen.

Here is the world in all its beauty, the leaf says. And it says a second thing, too: Here is the world in all its fragility. This leaf is soft and easily torn, and it has been separated from its tree. It speaks about the vulnerability of the world, about its mortality and pain. Week after week last summer, we were riveted to the terrible sight of oil and gas gushing up from the floor of the sea, a mile down deep in the Gulf of Mexico. The BP oil spill is one of the most violent assaults on the natural world that any of us have ever seen. And yet, as Bill McKibben points out, if everything had gone smoothly, if the oil had made its way “up through the drilling pipe, onto the platform, off the gulf into some refinery and thence into the gas tank of a car,”1 the damage it would have created would have been even more extreme. The relentless burning of dirty energy is changing the planet in “large and fundamental ways,” and, as McKibben points out, global warming is not just a future threat. It is, he writes, “no longer a threat at all. It’s our reality? Our old familiar globe is suddenly melting, drying, acidifying, flooding, and burning in ways that no human has ever seen.”2 “We’ve undermined the basic physical stability of this planet,” he says.3 Of course, different places can have a string of cool or warm days, but the average planetary temperature is going in only one direction. NASA reports that the first half of 2010 set a record for global temperature.

Fragile, afflicted, under assault — that is a truth about the world in which we live. When we acknowledge that, we pierce the illusion that human beings can treat the earth with impunity, drilling, mining, dumping at will, burning fossil fuels without care for the consequences, buying the next new thing, and the next, and the next — as if nature were at our beck and call, a supposedly endless supply of “resources” for the use of a single species, as if the natural world were a business, and we were holding a liquidation sale.

When we see the world’s fragility, we allow ourselves to grieve what human beings have done. We break through our numbness and denial, and feel the anger and sorrow that spring from love. We find the courage to acknowledge our uneasiness and fear, and the moral clarity to admit that we need to change course.

This is where a third message speaks from the leaf: Here is the world in its need and longing to be healed. The world is beckoning us, inviting us, even crying out to us: Stand with me! Protect me! Set me free! If we perceive the beauty of the world, if we perceive its fragility, then we can’t help but hear its call to each of us to become a — what shall I say? The traditional word is “steward,” but I am looking for a word that is more robust and urgent than that. How about “a healer,” “a liberator,” “a guardian,” “a protector”? We need, as McKibben says, to find ways to live more “lightly, carefully, and gracefully”4 in the world. We need to join the search that so many others have begun, the search to bring forth a human presence on the planet that is “environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling, and socially just.”5 We don’t have much time to accomplish this, so it is a precarious and very precious time to be alive. We have a chance to take part ? if we choose ? in a great work of healing.

What does that look like in our own lives? We take the steps that individuals can take. Maybe we recycle, drive less, and quit using bottled water. Maybe we eat local, organic foods and support our local farms. Maybe we install insulation, put up solar panels, turn down the heat, use AC in moderation — hey, you know the drill.

Working to stabilize the climate begins at home, but it cannot end there. The scope and speed of the climate crisis require action on a much broader scale. We need to push our political leaders to get this country and other countries on track to bring down the level of CO2 in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million, the uppermost level that many scientists say is safe for life as we know it to continue on this planet. What is the level today? 390 — and climbing. There is work to be done.

The good news is that we have an opportunity every day to bear witness to the God who loved us, and all Creation, into being. The face of the Risen Christ shines out in every leaf and blossom, in every chickadee and butterfly, in every worm and wren. When we take action to mend the fabric of life that seems so swiftly to be unraveling, we express our reverence for God. Although it was a struggle to stop the deathly flow of oil that erupted at the bottom of the sea, nothing can stop the love of God that is being “poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Romans 5:5). That love will guide and sustain us in the work that lies ahead.

Here is the world in all its beauty? its fragility? and its need and longing to be healed.

If I could, I would place this leaf in your hand, and yours, and yours, and yours. We need people who live with grateful awareness of life’s beauty and fragility — people who are willing to take the risk, and bear the cost, and carry the joy of standing up for life.

This sermon is based on my Baccalaureate Sermon delivered at St. Timothy’s School, Stevenson, MD, on June 5, 2010.

1. Bill McKibben, “It’s about the carbon: What’s worse than the gulf oil leak?” The Christian Century Magazine, June 1, 2010, http://www.christiancentury.org/article.lasso?id=8460

2. Bill McKibben, Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet, New York: Henry Holt and Company, Times Book, 2010, p. xiii and book jacket. Italics in original.

3. Bill McKibben interview, Democracy Now!, April 15, 2010 < http://www.democracynow.org/2010/4/15/mckibben >

4. McKibben, Eaarth, p. 151.

5. “Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream,” a symposium sponsored by the Pachamama Alliance ? < http://www.awakeningthedreamer.org >