Anyone with a major addiction knows what it’s like to feel imprisoned: you can’t think straight; you can’t face reality; you can’t stop doing what you’re doing, however destructive it is to yourself and others. Because recovery from addiction is such a difficult process, addicts need the tough love of allies and friends in order to make the journey to freedom.
From April 12-17, 2015, members of the Harvard community will come together on campus to speak out for climate justice and to urge the university to divest its holdings in the fossil fuel industry.
For me, it’s personal. All my life I have been affiliated with Harvard. My father, John M. Bullitt, was a Harvard professor, specializing in 18th century English literature. When I was seven years old, he was appointed the first Master of Quincy House, and that’s where I grew up. Years later I returned to Harvard to earn a Ph.D. (‘84) in comparative literature.
Harvard was the place where I learned first-hand about addiction. As a graduate student, I confronted my father’s life-long alcoholism and helped to organize an intervention into his drinking. A few months later, I confessed my own addiction, which is to food. On April 13, 1982, I admitted that I was powerless and needed help. On that decisive day I began a journey to freedom, assisted by a community of friends who helped me stay the course. Recovery from addiction changed everything. Now abstinent, I finished my doctorate, left Harvard, and headed to divinity school to learn about the God who had just saved my life. I was ordained in the Episcopal Church and have served as a priest ever since.
On April 13, 2015 – thirty-three years to the day since I began my recovery from addiction – I will head back to Harvard to urge my alma mater to divest from fossil fuels.
Call it an intervention. Call it an act of hope. Call it a plea from one addict to another: liberation is possible. Together we can set a course to a more just and sustainable future. Together we can turn from death to life.
The juggernaut of our economic system is devouring the earth, relentlessly seeking to extract every drop of oil, every ounce of coal, and every trace of so-called “natural” gas. An addictive system is insatiable. It knows no limits. It rejects any regulation and restraint as it strains forward to grab the next dollar and franc and rupee and yen.
Like every addict, an addictive system can’t think clearly. It hides behind excuses and denial, distraction and delay. It prefers to talk about the problem rather than to take meaningful action. It insists, sometimes in all sincerity, that no other way of life is possible. It’s too late to change. We can’t stop – not yet, anyway. Not now. First let’s drill more oil wells, build more pipelines, suck out more tar sands, and blow off more mountaintops. Let’s find out how much more petroleum we can burn, how much more carbon pollution we can pour into the atmosphere, and how much more money we can make before we propel the world into climate chaos.
Divesting from fossil fuels is an act of recovery and liberation. It is a way of saying no: no to the fantasy that corporations can gobble up the earth with impunity, and the devil take the hindmost; no to the lie that where we invest our money doesn’t matter, as long we make more; no to the illusion that you can argue with an addict – by, say, engaging in shareholder activism – and provoke any fundamental change in the addict’s behavior.
Divesting from fossil fuels is a way to say no to a death-dealing, addictive system. Investing instead in clean renewables, such as wind, water, and sun, is a way of saying yes: yes to aligning our money with our mission and values; yes to safeguarding life as it has evolved on this planet; yes to making the rapid personal and societal changes we need to make if we’re going to prevent the web of life from unraveling.
As many addicts know, sometimes only a power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity. In the end, the most abundant and most powerful source of energy is the power of love. I put my trust in that power, in the divine Spirit that longs to “renew the face of the earth” (Psalm 104:31).
During Harvard Heat Week I will return to campus and risk arrest in an act of peaceful civil disobedience. I will do this for all kinds of reasons: because I love my son, because I love my grandchildren, because I love the holy Mystery that creates and sustains life. Above all, I will do it because, speaking as one addict to another, I understand how hard it is to change. Sometimes only love can stop a person, group, or society from self-destruction – the kind of tough love that stands fast, holds the addict accountable, and refuses to settle for a catastrophic status quo.
It’s a pleasure to be with you this morning and I’d like to thank your rector, Lisa, for inviting me to preach. I have heard many good things about St. John’s Church. I know that you honor the Gospel call to love and serve in Jesus’ name. I’ve heard about your annual “Mall for Humanity,” which generates funds for your outreach ministry. And I know that you support Connect Africa, an organization that helps children in Uganda, who have been orphaned by AIDS, to receive an education. So I know that the Spirit is alive and well in this congregation and that your hearts are open.
I’d like to preach about a subject that is very much on my heart these days, and I hope that you will give me a hearing, even though some people consider my topic controversial. As you know, I serve the diocese as your Missioner for Creation Care, so I travel from church to church, preaching the Gospel and speaking about our call as Christians to defend the integrity and sanctity of God’s Creation. I know that to some Christians, this ministry makes no sense. Many years ago I preached a sermon about the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Some of you may remember what happened: on Good Friday, in 1989, a supertanker ran aground, dumped millions and millions of gallons of crude oil along a pristine coastline in Alaska and caused one of the most devastating environmental disasters in history. Into that long-ago sermon I poured all my anger and heartbreak about humanity’s troubled relationship with God’s Creation. After the service was over, a friendly but baffled parishioner approached me and said, “Thanks for your sermon, but I don’t get it. What does religion — what does Jesus — have to do with ecology?”
That’s a question that has pursued me ever since. What does religion have to do with ecology? Would Jesus care about this? After all, isn’t paying attention to the natural world a rather suspect practice for Christians? Aren’t Christians supposed to be focused on “otherworldly” things like heaven and the salvation of our individual human souls? Some people scoff at Christians who emphasize the value, even the sacredness, of the natural world, charging that this is just a foolish, New Age mistake. Christians who care about the Earth must be naïve and sentimental “tree-huggers,” or “pagans,” or “do-good liberals.”
Joel Pett, Climate Summit
Despite what some people say, in fact we Christians belong to a tradition that proclaims the basic goodness and value of the natural world. In the first chapter of Genesis, as the universe is created, we read that “God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). In the second chapter, we read that the very first task God gives to human beings is to tend and care for the Earth (Genesis 2:15). Several chapters later comes the story of Noah and the flood, which ends with God making an everlasting covenant, in the sign of a rainbow, and that covenant is not just with human beings, but also with every living creature and for all future generations (Genesis 9:12). It’s not just human beings that God cares about, but all beings, the whole creation!
It seems that Jesus lived in close relationship with the natural world. He spent a lot of time outdoors, walking from place to place. In the Bible we meet him on hillsides and mountaintops, beside lakes and in deserted places. He speaks of seeds and harvest, of fig trees, vines, and weeds, of clouds and storms, sheep and hens. He teaches about God in elemental, basic terms, using images of fire and wind, water and stones. Jesus knew that the birds of the air and the lilies of the field could teach us about our relationship with God (Matthew 6:25-33). And he gave us bread and wine as an ongoing sign of his living presence with us.
So: believing that the natural world is sacred is not some outlandish heresy or fantasy. It is basic to Christian faith. It’s not that Christians worship the Earth – we don’t. We worship God, and God alone. But we have reverence for the Earth, because, as we hear in Psalm 24, “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it” (Psalm 24:1). The Earth and all its creatures ultimately belong to God – rivers, meadows, and trees, oceans and air, owls and otters, beetles and bumblebees. And all of it shines with God’s glory. Just listen to the first line of today’s psalm: “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows his handiwork” (Psalm 19:1). What a blessing! We live in a sacred universe.
Thinking about that brought to mind the words of “America the Beautiful,” which is one of our country’s most popular patriotic songs and which you can find in our hymnal (#719):
O beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain, for purple mountain majesties above the fruited plain.
When we consider the natural magnificence of this country, we join eagerly in the refrain, “America! America! God shed his grace on thee…”
Because we know that God’s creation is sacred, it’s painful to see the natural world being degraded by human activity. When we see those “spacious skies” being polluted by greenhouse gases that pour into the atmosphere as coal, gas and oil are burned; when we see those “amber waves of grain” withering away in the face of massive droughts caused by a changing climate; when we see those “purple mountain majesties” blown apart and taken down to extract coal, and “the fruited plain” spoiled by yet another violent deluge caused by climate change – when we see these things we feel grief and anger and regret. Nature can recover from some wounds, but human activities are overwhelming nature’s capacity to heal itself, and this beautiful land of ours is being desecrated.
I know that some people are very concerned about climate change, and some people less so. As I see it, climate change is the great moral challenge of our time. 97% of climate scientists worldwide are telling us with increasing alarm that climate change is not a future threat. It is happening now, and for the most part is caused by us human beings. Burning fossil fuels is releasing gases into the atmosphere that make the world’s climate increasingly hot and unstable. Of course there has always been some natural variability in the planet’s average temperature, but ever since the Industrial Revolution we’ve been forcing the climate to change in a way that human beings have never experienced before.
But hey, we may be saying to ourselves, it’s been so cold this winter, and we’ve had so much snow! It turns out that massive snowstorms are linked to climate change, because warmer air holds more moisture. Some climate scientists are also studying the possibility that the rapidly warming Arctic is causing changes in the patterns of the jet stream, and making unusually cold air pour into some regions. As the world grows warmer we can expect more erratic and extreme fluctuations in local weather, and some places will sometimes become unexpectedly cold. Global warming does not necessarily result in warmer winters, but it does push the over-all direction of temperatures worldwide in only one direction: up. Yes, it was cold this winter here in New England, but other places were unusually warm, and on average the temperature of our planet worldwide is rising.
Because we love God, we feel a shock of penitence and remorse when we hear the commandment, “You shall not murder” (Exodus 20:12), for we don’t want to contribute to the mass extinction of life that is now underway around the planet. Because we love God, we feel a shock of penitence and remorse when we hear the commandment, “You shall not steal” (Exodus 20:15), for we don’t want to steal a livable world from our children and grandchildren. We want to be faithful stewards of the world that God entrusted to our care. We want to bear witness to the Lord of life, who rose from the dead and who proclaims that life, and not death, will have the last word.
What can you and I do? Well (thanks be to God!), there is a lot we can do. Individual actions add up: we can recycle more, drive less, be sparing in our use of water, and quit using bottled water. We can turn off lights when we leave a room. Maybe we can eat local, organic foods and support local farms and land trusts. I hope you’ll form a “green team” in this parish, and name a Creation Care Minister. I hope you’ll sign up to join a network of people in the diocese who care about Creation. I’d be glad to support you in any way I can. Here in Massachusetts we also have a strong and growing grassroots climate action group, 350Mass.org, and I hope you will sign up to receive weekly updates about their campaigns.
Together we can work for a swift transition from fossil fuels to energy that comes from wind and sun. I saw a wonderful bumper sticker this week. Beside a sketch of the sun were the words: One solution comes up every morning. Let’s use our imaginations here. What if everyone had solar panels on their roofs to generate their own electricity? What if these rooftop panels powered our homes and recharged the batteries of our cars? We would enjoy a level of personal energy independence that hasn’t been seen for generations! We wouldn’t be getting our energy from halfway around the world, but rather from a place as close as the roofs over our heads! And what if fields of wind turbines produced energy from wind? We’d be replacing dirty smokestacks and cleaning up the dirty air that kills 3 million people every year from illnesses related to outdoor air pollution. By making a swift transition from coal, gas, and oil to energy from wind and sun, we would become more energy independent, we would improve public health, and we would stabilize the climate. We’d be creating a lot more “green” jobs.1 And you and I would be praising God all the way. Let’s work together to make that happen.
“The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows his handiwork” (Psalm 19:1). With the blessing of God the Father, in the presence and power of the risen Christ, and inspired by the Holy Spirit, I pray that our churches will become centers of prayer and action for a greener and more just and stable world. I hope you’ll join me.
1. Thanks to Earth Policy Institute for supplying this vision and these arguments. For a fascinating account of the fast-changing politics of solar energy, read “Utilities wage campaign against rooftop solar,” (Washington Post, 3/7/15) and “Solar energy’s new best friend is … the Christian Coalition” (Washington Post, 2/20/15).
This guide will help you set up a Green Team at your church and will equip your congregation to become more effective in caring for God’s Creation. Green Teams expand environmental activities in our churches and help congregations to connect their faith with sustainable living. This guide offers a variety of specific activities from which you can select the ones that best match your church’s level of energy and engagement.
(Updated and adapted by Patrick Cage and the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas from “Green Team FAQ’s,” the Episcopal Ecological Network (EpEN).)
A Green Team (or Environmental Stewardship Team, or Creation Care Committee) is a core group of people in a congregation who are committed to raising awareness about the urgent need to protect God’s Creation and to work for environmental sustainability and responsibility. Green Teams develop sustainability in church life by increasing energy efficiency and conservation, decreasing consumption and waste, and, if possible, encouraging the use of clean, safe, renewable energy. Your group may also choose to engage in issues of public policy and to advocate for ecological and climate justice.
The Importance of a Green Team
Every congregation can find ways to better preserve and protect God’s Creation as an aspect of faithful discipleship. Forming a group that can inspire, implement and/or oversee environmental progress in your church is essential for long-term success. A Green Team avoids burnout by dividing and sharing tasks. By praying together and by creating opportunities to reflect on how protecting God’s Creation connects with their faith, Green Team members can offer each other a sense of community and moral support. A group also shows church decision-makers that there is a constituency that supports real change.
Starting a Green Team
To start a Green Team, begin by talking to friends within your congregation that might be interested in forming the core group with you. Talk with your clergy and staff to gauge their level of interest and support. Be sure to speak with whoever is in charge of facilities; begin to form alliances and to develop an understanding of how the church buildings work. Once you have gathered several committed people, announce the first meeting in your church’s bulletin and during announcement time at worship services. Your Green Team can include any number of people, as long as you conduct meetings and choose projects that keep your scale in mind.
What should we do during our first meeting?
Organize a potluck if the group is small enough! Invite everyone to share what led him or her to come to this meeting. Discuss goals and brainstorm possible projects, drawing on the suggestions below, if desired. Choose your first project, and set up a basic plan for how to complete it, with delegated tasks. Then set up a time to meet regularly to check in with one another.
What should we choose as our first project?
During your first meeting, after brainstorming, choose one project that can be quickly and inexpensively accomplished so that you build confidence and create momentum within your team. Be sure to consider the energy and interest of your group, the pace of change within your congregation, and how much support you have from clergy and staff.
Initial projects to make church life more sustainable:
There are many different ways to start treading more lightly on God’s green Earth. Below are a number of possible activities. Consider this a guide to prompt brainstorming for your own congregation, rather than a checklist.
Set up a bulletin board and post news articles and photos that relate to Creation care.
Provide Eco-Tips for publication in your church’s service leaflets or newsletters.
Minimize waste during coffee hour by replacing Styrofoam cups with mugs.
Connect your church with local recycling, composting, or e-waste resources.
Replace incandescent lighting with CFL bulbs and LED lights for your Exit signs.
Transition church land to organic greenscaping or community gardens.
Organize carpools to church services and events.
Encourage local, organic, and vegetarian-friendly foods at church events.
Ditch bottled water and serve tap water at church events.
Conduct an energy audit through your local utility company, or with the assistance of Interfaith Power & Light.
…or anything else! Be creative. Choose something fun.
Further Green Team Projects:
In addition to the ideas above, here is an expanded list of projects that could supplement “greening” church life by further engaging church members in environmental and climate justice:
Encourage your pastor to preach about climate change and to develop special worship services that honor God’s Creation. Celebrate an annual Creation Sunday, or an entire Season of Creation.
Host a movie night for your church and your local community. Watch a film like “Renewal,” “Chasing Ice,” or “A Climate of TRUST,” and hold a discussion afterwards.
Host a 100-Mile Potluck, in which as many foods as possible are grown or produced within 100 miles of the church.
Join your local chapter of Interfaith Power & Light and help your church to save money while it saves energy.
Build relationships with other groups in the congregation. Encourage Sunday School programs, Bible camps, adult education programs, and spiritual retreats that focus on care for God’s Creation.
Support local green energy through a program such as MassEnergy in Massachusetts.
Install solar panels on your church’s roof.
If your congregation has an endowment, work with the investments committee to divest from fossil fuels.
Encourage everyone to join the climate movement and to sign up to receive newsletters from your local climate action group, such as 350MA.org in Massachusetts.
Organize church field trips to witness the beauty of creation and to participate in rallies.
When circumstances call for it, participate in nonviolent civil disobedience or ease the financial burden of people who choose this step.
Reach out to other churches in your area. Create an ecumenical event.
How can I make our Green Team more effective?
As you consider ways to improve the work of your team, you might consider the following questions:
Are you accomplishing the goals you have set for yourselves?
Are you meeting regularly (even if only once per month)?
Do you have a sense of community commitment?
If your goals are proving elusive, are you able as a group to set new goals and to analyze errors without blame or despair?
Are you welcoming newcomers, and do you accommodate differing interests and schedules?
Tips for Success:
Focus on achievable, incremental changes. Don’t try to do everything at once. Let engagement grow like a mustard seed.
Don’t be bashful! When your Team is graced with successful completion of a project, share this in your church announcements. Use the church website and banners to inspire others and potentially to attract newcomers. Reach out to regional denominational leaders. If your Green Team achieves something major, like divesting from fossil fuels or building a community garden, contact your local media!
Connect action and education. Combine a movie night on plastics with efforts to reduce your congregation’s consumption of petroleum-based products. If your church joins a compost pick-up, let church-members know that they can do the same in their own homes.
Continue to reflect on how this work connects to the values of our faith.
Whatever you decide to do, have a blast doing it! Let it bring your church together.
Scriptural Resources:
“No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.” –Matthew 5:15-16
“Again, truly I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.” – Matthew 18:19-20
“Again he said, “What shall we say the kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it? It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest of all seeds on earth. Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds can perch in its shade.” –Mark 4:30-32
“For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” –Romans 8:19-21
“The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it; for [God] founded it on the seas and established it on the waters.” –Psalm 24:1-2
Friends, it is good to be with you this morning. Thank you, Cat, for inviting me to preach. I serve the diocese as your Missioner for Creation Care, so I travel from church to church, preaching the Gospel and speaking about our call as Christians to heal the Earth. I am blessed by the timing of this invitation to speak, for across the U.S. this weekend Americans are celebrating the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., a man who gave his life, quite literally, to the quest to heal our country’s great racial divide, and who dreamed of a world in which men and women of all races could live together with justice and mutual respect. Racism and racial justice is of course a vital issue in our country right now, a topic of intense debate as we observe in several cities the tragic tensions between some white police officers and the people of color that they were sworn to protect. Across the country people are exploring hard questions about white privilege and institutionalized racism, about how far we have come as a society and how much farther we have to go before we finally manifest what Dr. King called the Beloved Community.
Dr. King recognized that race relations do not exist in a vacuum. He understood that racism intersects with other patterns of violence, including poverty and militarism. If he were alive today, I believe that Dr. King would add a fourth item to what he called the “triple evils” of poverty, racism, and militarism. To that list I believe that he would add environmental destruction, especially human-caused climate change. For unless we stabilize the global climate and rapidly reduce our emissions of greenhouse gases, we will unravel the web of life and destroy any possibility of Beloved Community for human beings and for most of the other beings with which we share this precious planet. The struggle to end racism is linked to the struggle to end poverty, the struggle to end war, and the struggle to protect life as it has evolved on Earth. Racial justice, social and economic justice, environmental justice, climate justice – all these struggles intersect. In the end we share one struggle, one dream, one deep and God-inspired longing: the desire to build a peaceful, healthy, just, and sustainable world.
It is God who whispers that dream into our hearts, God who plants that longing in us like a seed that grows into a mighty oak, God who stirs us out of our complacency and sends us into action. It is God who gives us a heart to care, and strength to keep fighting the good fight. For it can be difficult to keep going, difficult to keep the faith in the face of sometimes brutal opposition and the sheer inertia of business as usual.
There is a wonderful scene in the movie Selma, a movie that I hope you will see, if you haven’t already. The movie is set during the turbulent three months of 1965, exactly fifty years ago, when Martin Luther King, Jr. was leading a campaign to secure equal voting rights. Early in the movie we see David Oyelowo, the actor playing Dr. King, awake at home late at night, restless, anxious, and acutely aware of the threats against his own life and against the lives of his wife and children. Should he keep going and head to Selma? He is resisting the powers and principalities of this world and he has reached the limit of his strength. In that late-night hour he picks up the phone, dials, and says to the person on the other end of the line: “I need to hear the Lord’s voice.” The friend he has phoned is the legendary Gospel singer, Mahalia Jackson, and into the phone receiver she begins to sing very tenderly, “Precious Lord, take my hand.”
It is an intimate moment, as intimate as the moment recorded in this morning’s first reading, when late at night the boy Samuel hears the voice of God speaking his name in the darkness (1 Samuel 3:1-10). When God speaks to us in that intimate way, often without any words at all, we feel mysteriously addressed. In that quiet, intimate encounter we feel known by name, touched very personally by a loving power that sees us, knows us through and through, loves us to the core, and gives us strength to carry on. This is the experience of the psalmist who writes – marveling and full of wonder – “Lord, you have searched me out and known me; you know my sitting down and my rising up; you discern my thoughts from afar” (Psalm 139:1). This is the experience of Philip, who hears Jesus call him to follow, and of Nathaniel, who realizes that Jesus saw, and knew, and thoroughly understood him even before they’d met (John 1:43-51). As Christians, we open ourselves to be seen and known, loved and guided by an intimate, divine presence that will never let us go. That is what prayer is, and it gives us strength. And when we’ve lost touch with that divine presence, when we feel frightened, despairing, or overwhelmed, we rely on each other to help us find our way back to God, just as Philip helped Nathaniel, as Eli helped the boy Samuel, and as Mahalia Jackson helped Dr. King. As people of faith, we are in this together, and when any of us lose heart, we try to help each other, as individuals and as a community, to turn again to God and to make our appeal: Precious Lord, take my hand.
I feel as powerfully as ever that call to prayer, that call to community, and that call to active, faithful service and advocacy. I don’t usually carry a newspaper into church – actually, this is the first time I’ve ever done it. But I want to show you the front page of yesterday’s New York Times, which gives a map of the world colored in shades of red to indicate all the areas that were above average in temperature last year. The year 2014 broke the record for the hottest year on Earth since we started keeping records.
But hey, we may be saying to ourselves, it’s been so cold in New England! It turns out that below-average temperatures in our region may be indirectly linked to climate change. Some scientists are studying the likelihood that the unusual dips they are noticing in the jet stream are connected to the rapidly warming Arctic and the exceptionally warm waters of the Pacific Ocean. Bottom line is that the phrase “global warming” is probably much too simple – a better term might be “global weirding.” As the world grows warmer we can expect more erratic and extreme fluctuations in local weather, and some places will sometimes become unexpectedly cold. Yet all the while the average global temperature is heading in only one direction: up.
In just two centuries – a blink in geologic time – we have burned so much coal, gas, and oil and released so much heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are higher today than they’ve been for hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of years. I heard a climate scientist say, “We are breathing from an atmosphere that none of our ancestors would recognize.”
Sticking to business as usual could raise average global temperatures between 5 and 11 degrees Fahrenheit in this century. That may not sound like much, but in fact it would make the world extremely difficult for humans and other creatures to inhabit. Oceans are already heating and becoming more acidic; tundra is thawing; ice caps and glaciers are melting; sea levels are rising; coral reefs are dying; massive droughts are spreading in some places and heavy rains are intensifying in others. Last spring we learned that the huge West Antarctic ice sheet is starting to collapse and slide into the sea in a way that scientists call “unstoppable.” The latest climate report from the U.N. warns of food shortages, waves of refugees, and the mass extinction of plants and animals, if we keep to our present course.
This is the sort of news that wakes me up at night and pulls me into prayer: precious Lord, take my hand. It is also the sort of news that propels me out of bed in the morning, eager to find a way to be of use. Once we have grasped what the bishops of the Episcopal Church call “the urgency of the planetary crisis in which we find ourselves,”1 there is so much we can do, so many ways that we can contribute to the healing of Creation. Thank you for the work you’ve done here at St. John’s to conserve energy, switch to efficient light bulbs, and use cloth rather than paper napkins. Our individual actions add up: we can recycle more, drive less, be sparing in our use of water, quit using bottled water. We can turn off lights when we leave a room. Maybe we can eat local, organic foods and support local farms and land trusts, maybe even leave them some money in our wills. I hope you’ll form a “green team” in this parish, and name a Creation Care Minister. I hope you’ll sign up to join a network of people in the diocese who care about Creation. I’d be glad to support you in any way I can.
I also hope you’ll sign up to receive a weekly newsletter from the grassroots group, Climate Action Now, which is centered right here in the Pioneer Valley. If we work as isolated individuals, our success will be limited, for the scope and speed of the climate crisis require action on a much broader scale. So we link arms with other people and we join the movement to make it politically possible to do what is scientifically necessary. The climate movement is gaining momentum, and many of us are inspired by Dr. King and the civil rights movement. Last week I spent a day in Amherst with other local climate activists, studying the principles of non-violent civil disobedience as practiced by Gandhi and Dr. King. Along with more than 97,000 people across the U.S., I have signed a pledge of resistance, a pledge to risk arrest in non-violent direct action if the Keystone XL pipeline is approved. Stopping that pipeline has become a powerful symbol of the urgent need to keep 80% of the known fossil fuels in the ground, where they belong. Fossil fuel companies now possess five times the amount of coal, gas, and oil that, if burned, would force the average global temperature to rise far higher than the 2 degree threshold that gives us a 50-50 chance of preventing runaway climate change. So now is the time to make a swift transition to clean, safe, renewable energy, such as sun and wind.
In this unprecedented time, many of us feel called anew to listen to the tender voice of love that God is always sounding in our heart, and then to embody that love in the world as bravely and clearly as we can. If ever there were a time to bear witness to our faith that life and not death will have the last word, now would be the time. If ever there were a time to take hold of the vision of a Beloved Community in which human beings live in right relationship with each other and with all our fellow creatures, now would be the time. The collapse of the ice sheet in Antarctica may be “unstoppable,” but so is the love that calls us to stand up for life.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu fought for racial justice and against apartheid in South Africa, and now he is one of the world’s champions of climate justice. Reconciling human beings to each other, to God, and to the rest of Creation is what Tutu calls the “supreme work” of Jesus Christ. Thank you, my brothers and sisters in Christ, for joining me in that supreme work.
1. In 2011 the bishops of the Episcopal Church issued a pastoral teaching on the environment that begins with a call to repentance “as we face the unfolding environmental crisis of the earth.” For the full text of “A Pastoral Teaching from the Bishops of the Episcopal Church,” meeting in Province IX, in Quito, Ecuador, September 2011, visit here.
Margaret was recently interviewed about plans for non-violent civil disobedience if the Keystone XL pipeline is approved. Click here to view the clip: WGGB-TV, Springfield, MA (Jan. 10, 2015).
There are countless reasons to lament and lose heart. Scan the headlines and take your pick: racism and torture; hunger and sickness; poverty and war; a web of life that is unraveling. I know a woman who heard one piece of bad news too many, and found herself walking around her house, howling.
I give thanks for her wails, for her willingness to be pierced by the suffering of the world and to let herself lament. It takes courage to lament. I dispute the injunction attributed to labor organizer Joe Hill, who reportedly said, “Don’t mourn, organize.” I advocate for both: let’s mourn and organize. It seems to me that allowing ourselves to mourn is a good way to keep our hearts supple and soft, and a good way to resist the pressure to go numb. Shedding tears is a way to water the soul. And mourning can be an act of resistance too, a way of shaking off the dominant consumer culture, which prefers that we stay too busy, distracted, and anesthetized to feel a thing.
From within our grief, a Spirit is moving among us, inviting us to dream big dreams and imagine new possibilities. Especially in this Advent season, Christians look ahead with hope for Christ to be born afresh within us and among us. What can you do – what can I do – what can we do together – to help this birth take place and to heal a hurting world? How is the Spirit inviting us to join the movement for justice and renewal that is already in our midst, sprouting like tender, new leaves on a tree?
Here comes a list of four sightings of the Spirit by just one person in just one week – and an invitation for you to take part.
#Light for Lima, First Congregational Church, Ashfield, MA, Dec. 7, 2014
In the hills of western Massachusetts, a small group of people gathers outdoors on a December night. Under a dark sky, we light candles. Surrounded by quiet, we sing. We are only a handful of intrepid souls as we stamp our feet and blow on our fingers to keep warm in the cold night air. But inwardly we are warmed by the knowledge that people all around the world tonight are doing just what we are doing: praying for the climate talks in Lima, Peru.
The spirit of the Lord God is upon me… [God] has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted…[and] to comfort all who mourn. (Isaiah 61:1-2)
Leaning forward in a circle of chairs and listening intently, seven Christian leaders from across New England meet in a Framingham retreat house to pray, dream, and strategize. How can the larger group to which we belong, New England Regional Environmental Ministries (NEREM) become a catalyst for societal change and a transformed church? How can we inspire a spiritual awakening in the face of climate change?
We ponder the fact that hearing a trusted pastor preach about climate change is often what moves churchgoers to accept that climate change is real and to take action to slow it. Yet many parishioners have never heard anyone preach about climate change. In my travels from church to church, I often meet with groups of parishioners and I often ask who has heard a sermon about climate change. In most such gatherings, not a single hand goes up.
I won’t disclose what NEREM envisions for next year, but now is the time to start preaching and hearing good sermons about climate change. One way for clergy to begin is to sign up to join the National Preach-in on Global Warming, sponsored by Interfaith Power & Light, which will be held on the weekend of Valentine’s Day, February 13-15, 2015. The Website is full of resources, with sermon ideas, prayers, discussion and activity ideas. Or pick another date. The date doesn’t matter. What matters is conveying the urgency of the hour.
“…to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.” (Isaiah 61:3)
On a Wednesday night in the city of Springfield, Massachusetts, a diverse group of concerned citizens – Hispanic and white, wealthy and low-income – meets to strategize how best to implement and fund a climate action plan for the city. The leaders of this effort – Arise for Social Justice, the North End Organizing Network and Climate Action NOW – have organized the Springfield Climate Justice Coalition.
Back in October we held a march through the city’s streets, gathered 200 people for a rally on the steps of City Hall, and rejoiced when the City Council unanimously passed a resolution to adopt a Climate Justice Plan for the city and to establish a staff position to carry it out. Now comes the hard work of building a grassroots base to ensure that the mayor, Dominic J. Sarno, implements the resolution. Over pizza and oranges we exchange ideas, jot notes on newsprint, and start to divvy up tasks.
At the end of tonight’s meeting, I invite everyone to stand up and take each others’ hands. I feel awkward. This coalition seems so fragile and new. Can we, should we, pray together? I look around the circle of friends and strangers, take a breath, and speak briefly about the traditional Christian virtues of faith, hope and love. In fighting for this city, we express our faith that we can imagine a better future; we share our hope that we can build that future together; and we manifest the love that gives us strength. I ask God’s blessing on our work, and pray that our work will be a blessing for the city.
If you would like to join the Springfield Climate Justice Coalition, please contact Michaelann Bewsee (michaelannb (at) gmail.com) of Arise for Social Justice, or Susan Theberge (susantheberge (at) comcast.net) of Climate Action Now.
“They shall build up the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations.” (Isaiah 61:4)
Diana Spurgin, Lucy Robinson, and Margaret Bullitt-Jonas at No KXL rally, Dec. 13, 2014
A creative spirit is at play among us: the rally features a tuba and an enormous black plastic pipeline, placards full of pointed messages (“There is No Planet B”), and opportunities for singing, chanting, and banging pots and pans to make noise. We mark four-and-a-half minutes in silence, too, remembering that the body of Michael Brown, a black teenager, apparently lay on the ground for four and a half hours after he was shot by a white policeman in Ferguson, Missouri. The movement for climate justice is intimately linked to the quest for social and racial justice.
The climate rally’s most combative moments are provided by a loud-mouthed, fat-cat banker who wears a top hat and a suit festooned with fake money. She strides up and down the sidewalk, carrying a mini-pipeline on her shoulder, from which dangles a cloth doll, several small stuffed animals, and the placard “R.I.P.” She launches into a rousing debate with a 7-foot-tall polar bear. Is the Keystone XL pipeline safe? Will it make us energy independent? Will it create lots of jobs? Will it protect the climate?
Street theater: face off between a banker and a polar bear
Despite the sneers of Mr. Money-Bags, the patient arguments of the polar bear win the day. The proposed Keystone XL pipeline, which would run from Alberta, Canada to the Gulf Coast, would carry toxic tar sands that would then be shipped for export overseas. The pipeline would allow the most polluting oil on earth to reach world markets. Mining this oil is already destroying the land, water, and health of the people and wildlife of Alberta. The new pipeline creates a risk of spills – the first Keystone pipeline spilled 14 times in its first year of operation. Experts estimate that the pipeline would provide only 50 permanent jobs. And according to NASA scientist James Hansen the pipeline would propel us into a catastrophic level of climate disruption.
Thousands of citizens across the country have signed the Keystone XL Pledge of Resistance. Please consider adding your name and pledging to join in non-violent direct action to stop the pipeline.
If you wish to participate in and to receive updates about events in western Massachusetts tied to the national Pledge of Resistance campaign – including a training meeting on January 3 – please email Dave Roitman (droitman1(at)verizon.net). We expect to carry out an act of non-violent civil disobedience sometime between mid-January and March. It will be timed so that it happens on the same day that 97,000 other people take action, as part of the national Keystone XL Pledge of Resistance. A short fact sheet about the pipeline by Friends of the Earth can be downloaded here.
“For as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord GOD will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations.” (Isaiah 61:11)
In the face of the confusion, brutality, and violence of the world, we grieve and mourn. And we also mobilize, strategize, and organize. In our longing for a just and peaceful world, we trust that we share in God’s longing to bring forth “a new heaven and a new earth” (Revelation 1:1). As Brian Swimme writes in his “Canticle of the Cosmos”:
The longing that gave birth to the stars
The longing that gave birth to life
Who knows what this longing can give birth to now?
It is a pleasure to worship with you on this Second Sunday of Advent, and I want to thank my friend Cricket for inviting me to preach. Since last January I’ve been serving the diocese as your Missioner for Creation Care, so I travel from church to church, preaching the Gospel and speaking about our call as Christians to protect the Earth. I am honored to be back at St. Stephen’s. Six or seven years ago – as if anticipating my present ministry – I visited this parish to talk about climate change, and I still haul my groceries in a canvas bag that someone gave me, emblazoned with the words “Living Green, St. Stephen’s.” Thank you for your ministry of Creation care!
I find it consoling, and strengthening to the heart, to turn to this morning’s readings and to hear the opening lines from the prophet Isaiah: “Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem” (Isaiah 40:1-2a). For couldn’t we use some comfort right now? Couldn’t we use some tenderness? So many issues are confronting us today, from racial injustice and economic disparity in this country to ISIS, and infectious diseases abroad and at home.
As for climate change, I know I’m not the only one who sometimes wakes up in the middle of the night, anxious about the planet’s basic health. In just two centuries – only a blink in geologic time – we have burned so much coal, gas, and oil and released so much heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are higher today than they’ve been for hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of years. The average worldwide temperature is rising, and if we stick to business as usual and keep to our present course, we could raise average global temperatures between 5 and 11 degrees Fahrenheit in this century. This may not sound like much, but in fact it would make the world extremely difficult for humans and other creatures to inhabit.
I know that climate change can seem distant and abstract, like something that’s going to happen to somebody else in a far-off place at a distant time in the far-off future. After all, it’s been cold this week in western Massachusetts, and we’ve had snow on the ground. A couple of weeks ago many parts of the U.S. endured some record-breaking cold as Arctic air began pouring south across the Plains and Midwest, burying Buffalo in a snowfall that was unusually severe even by that city’s standards. Climate scientists have noticed in recent years an unusual number of extreme jet stream patterns, and they are studying how big dips in the jet stream are linked to the rapidly warming Arctic and the exceptionally warm waters of the Pacific Ocean. It turns out that the phrase “global warming” is too simple – a better term might be “global weirding.” In a warming world, we can expect more erratic and extreme fluctuations in local weather, and some places will sometimes become unexpectedly cold. Yet all the while the average global temperature is heading in only one direction: up. 2014 is on track to be the hottest year worldwide since record keeping began in the 1800’s, according to the World Meteorological Organization, and 14 of the warmest 15 years have occurred since the year 2000.
So what I bring with me this morning, and what I want to place on the altar for God’s mercy and healing, is our painful awareness that climate change is not a future threat. It is our reality. Oceans are heating and becoming more acidic; tundra is thawing; ice caps are melting; sea levels are rising; coral reefs are dying; massive droughts are spreading in some places and heavy rains are intensifying in others. How do we pray with this? What would Jesus do? How does the Holy Spirit call us to respond as we watch the web of life as we know it unravel before our eyes? Last spring we learned that the huge West Antarctic ice sheet is starting to collapse and slide into the sea in a way that scientists call “unstoppable.” The latest climate report from the U.N. warns of food shortages, waves of refugees, and the mass extinction of plants and animals, if we keep to our present course. Of course, here in this country and around the world it is the poor who are hit first and hardest.
In a situation that speaks so much of death, of hopelessness and fear, it is deeply reassuring to hear God say, through the prophet Isaiah: “Comfort, O comfort my people.” For of course we do need comfort. We need fresh confidence and hope, for we fear for our children and our children’s children. We know that if we just keep doing what we’re doing, just keep carrying out our usual daily activities in our usual way, then within two, three, four generations we will bring an end to life as it has evolved on this planet.
Advent brings us the bracing and enlivening call of the prophets, the people who dare to face the world’s darkness and to proclaim that the light of God is coming and indeed is already here. Isaiah is speaking to a people in exile, a people who have lost their homeland and for whom everything familiar has been destroyed. All around him, Isaiah sees injustice, alienation, and loss, and he is keenly aware of the brevity of life: “the grass withers, the flowers fades” (Isaiah 40:7). Yet Isaiah can sense the enduring glory and power of God. He can feel God’s presence and sense God’s coming, and he knows in his bones that God’s justice, goodness, and beauty will prevail at last. “The glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together” (Isaiah 40:5).
John the baptizer comes to us, as Isaiah did, with a call to prepare the way of the Lord (Isaiah 40:3; Mark 1:3). John may seem like a strange guy, a man on the margins who lives in the wilderness, eating nothing but locusts and wild honey and wearing nothing but animal skins. But this almost archetypal Wild Man is on fire with hope for God’s coming, passionately confident that the Savior of the world will come at last with power. Unlike most of us, John refuses to go through life with one hand on the parking brake. He doesn’t settle for cynicism, apathy, or phony optimism. He doesn’t settle for living grimly in the darkness nor does he try to pretend the darkness away. He faces the darkness of the world: he grieves it, protests it, and does everything in his power to bear witness to the light. In the end he is willing to endure imprisonment, even death, for the sake of the light that is coming into the world.
Who will stand with John the baptizer and stand up for the long-term future of this planet? I see a line of prophets stretching from Isaiah to John the baptizer to Jesus, and beyond, to the prophets of today – to all the people whose lives proclaim that life, and not death, will have the last word, all the people who embody in words and actions their trust in the enduring love of God and their hope in the life of the world to come.
For once we have grasped what the bishops of the Episcopal Church call “the urgency of the planetary crisis in which we find ourselves,” and once we begin to repent for our acts of “greed, overconsumption, and waste,”1 there is so much we can do, so many ways that we can contribute to the healing of Creation. We can recycle more, drive less, and be sparing in our use of water. We can turn off lights when we leave a room. Maybe we can eat local, organic foods and support our local farms and land trusts. We can install insulation and turn down the heat. I am so glad that you already have a “green team” here at St. Stephen’s, and if you’d like to join a network of people in the diocese who care about Creation, I hope that you will give me your name and contact information. I’d be glad to support you in any way I can.
As individuals we should do everything we can to reduce our use of fossil fuels, but the scope and speed of the climate crisis require action on a much broader scale, too. We need to join with other people and make it politically possible to do what is scientifically necessary. We need to push our leaders to make a swift transition to clean, safe, renewable sources of energy, such as sun and wind. We need to quit our addiction to fossil fuel and to bring down the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to a level that allows life as it has evolved to continue on this planet. Here in Massachusetts we are blessed to have a growing network of volunteers called 350Mass.org, which is engaged in many local campaigns and has a group right here in Pittsfield. I hope that many of you will sign up with 350Mass.org to receive weekly emails, to read the news and connect.
In these fearsome times, Advent reminds us that God longs to comfort our hearts, to speak in our depths a tender word of hope. And God calls us to be bearers of comfort and hope to the world around us, to be a “herald of good tidings” (Isaiah 40:9), as Isaiah says. 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.2 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.
I will close with a prayer written for today, the Second Sunday of Advent, by one of today’s prophets, Archbishop Desmond Tutu. As you may know, thousands of the world’s diplomats are gathered right now in Lima, Peru, to negotiate the foundation of an international climate treaty that will be finalized in Paris next year. We urgently need that U.N. treaty to be just, to protect the poor, and to be strong enough to avert catastrophe. And we urgently need, as individuals and as a society, to awaken at last to the call to love God, our neighbors and our dear, God-given earth as ourselves.
With hope-filled hearts, let us pray.
Holy God, Earth and air and water are your creation, and the web of life is yours. Have mercy on us in the face of climate chaos. Help us to be keepers of your Earth: to simplify our lives, to reduce our use of energy, to share the resources you have given us, to raise our voices for justice, and to bear the cost of change. Amen.
1. In 2011 the bishops of the Episcopal Church issued a pastoral teaching on the environment that begins with a call to repentance “as we face the unfolding environmental crisis of the earth.” For the full text of “A Pastoral Teaching from the Bishops of the Episcopal Church,” meeting in Province IX, in Quito, Ecuador, September 2011, visit here.
2. Sallie McFague, A New Climate for Theology: God, the World, and Global Warming, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008, p. 53.
Here on the First Sunday of Advent we are beginning a new church year, embarking on a new season, making a fresh start. Now is the time, as our opening Collect says, “to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light.” During these four weeks that lead up to Christmas we prepare to celebrate the first coming of Christ, when God became incarnate in Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem. And we prepare for his second coming, too. We look ahead to that last, great day sometime in the future when Christ will come again, when everything will be gathered up in love, when all that is broken will be healed, all that is estranged will be reconciled and forgiven, and the Lord of life will return at last to reign in glory.
Christianity is full of hope about where we are ultimately heading – into the loving arms of God – but it is also bracingly realistic about the suffering and turmoil that will take place in the meantime. Today on the first Sunday of Advent, as we do every year, we must grapple with the Bible’s portrayal of the end-times, which include frightening predictions of social breakdown and cosmic turmoil. In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus foretells “wars and rumors of wars” (Mark 13:7); he speaks of earthquakes, famines, and persecution. As we heard in today’s passage, when the Son of Man comes at the end of time, we can expect that “The sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken” (Mark 13:24).
It’s scary stuff. So what do we make of apocalyptic passages like these? How do these biblical passages about the end times help us to live with faithfulness, confidence, and hope? As you know, I serve the diocese as your Missioner for Creation Care, so I do a lot of speaking and preaching about climate change and about the urgent need for human beings to change course and to take action to protect and cherish the world that God entrusted to our care. According to a new poll about American attitudes to religion and the environment, about half – 49% – of the respondents believe that recent natural disasters are evidence of biblical end times. Apparently, about half of Americans believe that climate change caused by human beings is somehow preordained, part of God’s plan.
Fatalism…and the Seeds of Doubt (by Jack Ziegler). Used with permission.
Could this be true? Should biblical accounts of the end times evoke and amplify a sense of fatalism about climate change? Should Christians settle for a helpless shrug of the shoulders as we consider the devastation that climate change is already causing or likely to cause, if it continues unchecked? I recall a cartoon in which a mother, father, and their young son huddle around a toaster. Two smoking slices of bread have just popped up, burned to a crisp. The mother looks mournfully at the burned toast and declares, “It is God’s will.” The father intones, “Had the toast been destined to be edible, it would be so.” The small boy grips the table with his two hands, looks up at his parents, and says, “B-b-but…”
I admit it: I’m standing with that child and saying “But!” I refuse to believe that it’s God’s will that human beings burn the Earth to a crisp. I refuse to believe that destiny, fate, or the biblical end times give human beings permission to unravel the web of life and to destroy the world that God created and proclaimed “very good” (Genesis 1:31). I believe that God’s presence fills and sustains our precious, living planet, and that all of it belongs to God – meadows and rivers, soils and seeds, animals and oceans. As the psalmist says, “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it” (Psalm 24:1). And the first task given to human beings is to care for the earth and to exercise a loving dominion as stewards and caregivers.
We’re having some difficulty with that assignment. Climate change caused by human activity is already having drastic and far-reaching effects around the world. In only two centuries – just a blink in geologic time – human beings have pumped so much heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the air that levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are higher today than they’ve been for hundreds of thousands of years. I heard a climate scientist remark, “We are breathing from an atmosphere that none of our ancestors would recognize.”
When we burn fossil fuels such as coal, gas, and oil, we release vast quantities of carbon and heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere, as if the atmosphere were an open sewer. This practice could raise worldwide average temperatures between 5 and 11 degrees Fahrenheit in this century, which would make the world an extremely difficult place for humans and other creatures to inhabit. Already our planet is changing before our eyes: oceans are heating up and becoming more acidic as they absorb some of the carbon dioxide released by power plants and cars; tundra is thawing, ice caps are melting, sea levels are rising, coral reefs are dying, massive droughts are spreading in some places and heavy rains are intensifying in others. Last spring we learned that the huge West Antarctic ice sheet is starting to collapse and slide into the sea in a way that scientists call “unstoppable.” The Pentagon recently issued a report asserting decisively that climate change poses “an immediate risk to national security” and is a so-called “threat multiplier,” increasing the likelihood of terrorism, infectious disease, global poverty and food shortages. The latest climate report from the United Nations warns of waves of refugees and of the mass extinction of plants and animals, if we keep to our present course. Of course, here in this country and around the world it is the poor who are hit first and hardest by the impacts of climate change.
How serious is the threat? As environmental lawyer Gus Speth puts it: “…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… 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.”[1]
So – is this the end times? I don’t know. No one knows. Jesus repeatedly told his followers, as he does in today’s Gospel, not to speculate as to when the end times would come (Matthew 24:3-8; Mark 13:3-8; Luke 21:7-11) – even Jesus himself did not know. But what we do know is that at some unexpected moment, the last day will come – whether it be the last day of our lives or the last day of the world. Until that day, Jesus urges us to be faithful witnesses to the enduring love of God. The biblical end time passages and their frightening imagery of chaos and distress were not given to us so that we can indulge in helplessness, resignation, or fatalism, but just the opposite: in order to sustain our hope and perseverance even in the midst of crisis.
Again and again, in different ways Jesus came to say, “Fear not” (see, for instance, Matthew 6:25-34, Matthew 8:26, Matthew 10:31, Matthew 14:27). In Advent he summons us not to faint from fear and foreboding, nor to let our love grow cold, but rather to stay awake and be alert for the small but telling signs that God is in our midst, bringing forth something new. Just as the branch of a fig tree becomes tender and puts forth its first, soft leaves, assuring us that summer’s abundance is near, so Jesus urges us to trust that even in the midst of chaos, violence, and endings, God’s kingdom is drawing near. In the very midst of endings, something new is being born. Will we take part in that birth?
Advent and its end-time readings tell us that in the face of climate change, we should not give ourselves up to apathy, indifference, or despair. In this perilous time, God calls us to stand up, raise our heads, and bear witness in word and deed to God’s never failing love. “It is like a man going on a journey,” Jesus says in that tiny parable concealed in today’s Gospel. The man leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, “each with his work” (Mark 13:34). Each of us has our own work to do, as we keep faith with the God who is faithful to us.
And when it comes to healing Creation, there is so much we can do! We can recycle more, drive less, and be sparing in our use of water. We can turn off lights when we leave a room. Maybe we can eat local, organic foods and support our local farms and land trusts. We can install insulation and turn down the heat. If you don’t yet have a green team or a Creation Care team (whatever you want to call it) here at Trinity Church, you can form one. If you’d like to join a network of people in the diocese who care about Creation, I hope you will give me your name and contact information. I’d be glad to support you in any way I can.
As individuals we should do everything we can to reduce our use of fossil fuels, but the scope and speed of the climate crisis require action on a much broader scale, too. We need to join with other people and make it politically possible to do what is scientifically necessary. We need to push our leaders to make a swift transition to clean, safe, renewable sources of energy, such as sun and wind. We need to quit our addiction to fossil fuels and to bring down the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to a level that allows life as it has evolved to continue on this planet.
Here in western Massachusetts we are blessed to have a strong grassroots group, Climate Action Now, which is involved in many local campaigns. I hope that you will sign up to receive weekly emails, read the news, and connect. Tomorrow an important U.N. climate change conference will begin in Lima, Peru, and I hope that you will join me in praying for its success. (I invite you to take part in #Light for Lima, a series of vigils that will take place around the world on December 7, right in the middle of these crucial climate talks.)
Now is the time to clean up our act, to sort out our life, to cast away the works of darkness and to put on the armor of light.
Now is the time to abandon whatever stupefies us and puts us to sleep – whether it be the call of consumerism or a fondness for cynicism or helpless resignation.
Now is the time to look ahead and to embody a robust hope, for, as Paul says, “the night is far gone, the day is near” (Romans 13:12). It’s as if we were standing in the doorway of a dark house, looking out to the hills beyond, and in the sky we can see the first glimmer of sunrise. Behind us is darkness, but ahead of us, light.
Christ has come, so the dawn is shining on our faces.
Christ is here, so we know we are not alone.
Christ will come again, so we step out boldly through the doorway, leaving everything less than love behind.
1. 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).
How do we stay spiritually grounded in the midst of tackling very complex issues? That question came to mind as I sat with a row of panelists behind a table in the chapel of Amherst College, waiting for my turn to speak. The focus of the conference was on whether we can make a carbon fee and rebate work in Massachusetts. Every speaker emphasized that in order to solve the climate crisis we must put a price on carbon emissions and put the money that is raised back into people’s pockets. My role on the panel was to address the spiritual and ethical foundation for supporting a carbon fee and rebate.
Climate XChange, an organization of advocates and citizens working for a carbon fee and rebate in Massachusetts, had assembled some leading thinkers to address the issue’s complexities, including Professor James Boyce, who teaches economics at UMass/Amherst; State Rep. Tom Conroy (13th Middlesex), the author and co-sponsor of the 2013 Carbon Tax Bill; Dan Gatti, the Executive Director of Carbon XChange; and State Rep. Ellen Story (Third Hampshire District). The moderator was Professor Jan Dizard, who teaches sociology and environmental studies at Amherst College.
I was glad to be the last panelist to speak, for as I listened to my co-panelists, I could see how much time, patience, and effort it takes for economists and politicians to explain clearly – and for listeners to grasp – how the carbon rebate will work, how it will achieve emissions reductions, and how it will be set up so that lower income and disadvantaged residents are not harmed. (For a clear and pithy explanation of how a carbon fee and rebate works, view this 4-minute clip from the forum, in remarks by economist James Boyce.)
Enacting a carbon fee and rebate is one of the most promising tools we have for changing consumers’ behavior, reducing our use of dirty energy, developing clean, renewable energy, creating green jobs, and stabilizing the climate. (Another promising tool would be for our government to quit subsidizing fossil fuel companies, but that’s another story.) A carbon tax can also strengthen a region’s economy: British Columbia has had a carbon tax since 2008, and that province’s economy has become the fastest growing in Canada.
But from the discussion in Amherst that night, it was clear to me that understanding how a carbon tax works, and pushing for its passage, will take a good deal of effort, stamina, and skill. What will keep our personal and collective energy from flagging? From what source of spiritual and ethical wisdom will we draw as we struggle to build a better future?
The answer, it seems to me, is no further away than our body, where everything begins. We may come from different spiritual traditions, or from none, but we all have a body. Perhaps through our bodies we can tap into a spring of spiritual energy that will renew our hearts and give us strength and guidance for the struggles ahead. What follows is based on what I said to the audience in Amherst about the spiritual and ethical foundation of our efforts to secure a carbon tax and to stabilize the climate.
I invite you to take a moment to feel your feet on the ground. Beneath the floor is the earth. Let yourself feel the support of the good earth beneath your feet. Feel the sensations of your feet on the floor, and let the good earth hold you up. Feel how solid your body is, as solid as the earth… I invite you take a couple of good, deep breaths. As you take in the sweet air and then let it go, feel the air passing into and out of your lungs. Notice that you are exchanging the elements of life with plants and green-growing things… Take a moment to experience yourself as a living creature, connected to the earth and air and to all living beings.
As we sit here with our feet on the ground, breathing with awareness, we may notice that none of us owns our breath. Our breath does not belong to us. We can’t hold on to it or save it up for later. We simply receive it freely and then let it go. Moment by moment, each breath is given to us. Breath by breath, we receive the gift of life. All of it is gift – everything we see and hear and taste and touch. This is where amazement springs up, along with wonder, gratefulness and awe. Here we are! Breathing!
Gratitude is the wellspring of all spiritual traditions, and from gratitude flows the perception that everything is precious. Everything is sacred. We belong to a sacred Mystery that is much larger than we are. We are part of a much larger whole. In our stressed and busy lives it’s easy to forget that we are part of something greater than ourselves, which is why so many of us come home to ourselves when we spend time outdoors – when we climb a mountain and get the big view, or when we pause in the midst of a busy day to admire a bird or a tree.
When we are spiritually awake we feel our connection, our kinship, with other living beings, human and other than human. We recognize that we’re in this together, that all of us are part of one single, precious, and intricate web of life. Perceiving the world like this elicits a certain tenderness: we want to nurture and protect the mysterious gift of inhabiting a living planet. That’s the spiritual wisdom we can learn from being aware of our feet on the ground and our lungs filling and emptying with air.
But our bodies also teach us about the ethical dimension, the justice dimension of the world. The good earth beneath our feet is the same earth that fossil fuel companies are blowing apart by mountaintop removal in order to extract coal; the same earth that is being violently injected with tons of chemicals that crack apart shale, release natural gas and methane, and poison rivers and streams; the same earth that is flooding in some places, going dry in others, and manifesting unpredictable, violent extremes of weather because of the abrupt changes inflicted by global warming.
The life-giving air that fills our lungs is the same air into which fossil fuel companies are pouring greenhouse gases as if the atmosphere were an open sewer; the same air that contains more carbon dioxide than it has for millions of years; the same air whose delicate balance is being disrupted and destroyed.
Our own bodies connect us to the wounding of the world and to the cries of the poor, who are affected first and hardest by climate change, and who are already suffering from its effects, including extreme storms and rapidly rising seas, food and water shortages and infectious diseases.
That is the spiritual and ethical context in which I welcome a carbon tax and rebate. Putting a stable and meaningful price on carbon, and distributing the fee in a way that is fair and does not harm the poor, is an essential step in moving toward a fossil free economy and healing the devastation of climate change.
We need to protect the web of life, which is unraveling before our eyes. We need to move quickly to build a just and sustainable future for our children and our children’s children. We need to plant our feet firmly on this beautiful earth, to take a good deep breath of air, and to press together for a strong, fair, and equitable carbon fee and rebate plan. I hope that Massachusetts will lead the way.
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A YouTube video of part of the conference is here (MBJ’s remarks begin at 8’30”).
Climate XChange is pushing for a carbon fee and rebate in Massachusetts.
Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL) is supporting national carbon-pollution fee and dividend legislation. CCL is a non-partisan, international, volunteer organization whose mission is to create the political will for a stable climate and to empower individuals to have breakthroughs in exercising their personal and political power.
It is God who whispers that dream into our hearts, God who plants that longing in us like a seed that grows into a mighty oak, God who stirs us out of our complacency and sends us into action. It is God who gives us a heart to care, and strength to keep fighting the good fight. For it can be difficult to keep going, difficult to keep the faith in the face of sometimes brutal opposition and the sheer inertia of business as usual.
There is a wonderful scene in the movie Selma, a movie that I hope you will see, if you haven’t already. The movie is set during the turbulent three months of 1965, exactly fifty years ago, when Martin Luther King, Jr. was leading a campaign to secure equal voting rights. Early in the movie we see David Oyelowo, the actor playing Dr. King, awake at home late at night, restless, anxious, and acutely aware of the threats against his own life and against the lives of his wife and children. Should he keep going and head to Selma? He is resisting the powers and principalities of this world and he has reached the limit of his strength. In that late-night hour he picks up the phone, dials, and says to the person on the other end of the line: “I need to hear the Lord’s voice.” The friend he has phoned is the legendary Gospel singer, Mahalia Jackson, and into the phone receiver she begins to sing very tenderly, “Precious Lord, take my hand.”
It is an intimate moment, as intimate as the moment recorded in this morning’s first reading, when late at night the boy Samuel hears the voice of God speaking his name in the darkness (1 Samuel 3:1-10). When God speaks to us in that intimate way, often without any words at all, we feel mysteriously addressed. In that quiet, intimate encounter we feel known by name, touched very personally by a loving power that sees us, knows us through and through, loves us to the core, and gives us strength to carry on. This is the experience of the psalmist who writes – marveling and full of wonder – “Lord, you have searched me out and known me; you know my sitting down and my rising up; you discern my thoughts from afar” (Psalm 139:1). This is the experience of Philip, who hears Jesus call him to follow, and of Nathaniel, who realizes that Jesus saw, and knew, and thoroughly understood him even before they’d met (John 1:43-51). As Christians, we open ourselves to be seen and known, loved and guided by an intimate, divine presence that will never let us go. That is what prayer is, and it gives us strength. And when we’ve lost touch with that divine presence, when we feel frightened, despairing, or overwhelmed, we rely on each other to help us find our way back to God, just as Philip helped Nathaniel, as Eli helped the boy Samuel, and as Mahalia Jackson helped Dr. King. As people of faith, we are in this together, and when any of us lose heart, we try to help each other, as individuals and as a community, to turn again to God and to make our appeal: Precious Lord, take my hand.
I feel as powerfully as ever that call to prayer, that call to community, and that call to active, faithful service and advocacy. I don’t usually carry a newspaper into church – actually, this is the first time I’ve ever done it. But I want to show you the front page of yesterday’s New York Times, which gives a map of the world colored in shades of red to indicate all the areas that were above average in temperature last year. The year 2014 broke the record for the hottest year on Earth since we started keeping records.
But hey, we may be saying to ourselves, it’s been so cold in New England! It turns out that below-average temperatures in our region may be indirectly linked to climate change. Some scientists are studying the likelihood that the unusual dips they are noticing in the jet stream are connected to the rapidly warming Arctic and the exceptionally warm waters of the Pacific Ocean. Bottom line is that the phrase “global warming” is probably much too simple – a better term might be “global weirding.” As the world grows warmer we can expect more erratic and extreme fluctuations in local weather, and some places will sometimes become unexpectedly cold. Yet all the while the average global temperature is heading in only one direction: up.
In just two centuries – a blink in geologic time – we have burned so much coal, gas, and oil and released so much heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are higher today than they’ve been for hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of years. I heard a climate scientist say, “We are breathing from an atmosphere that none of our ancestors would recognize.”
Sticking to business as usual could raise average global temperatures between 5 and 11 degrees Fahrenheit in this century. That may not sound like much, but in fact it would make the world extremely difficult for humans and other creatures to inhabit. Oceans are already heating and becoming more acidic; tundra is thawing; ice caps and glaciers are melting; sea levels are rising; coral reefs are dying; massive droughts are spreading in some places and heavy rains are intensifying in others. Last spring we learned that the huge West Antarctic ice sheet is starting to collapse and slide into the sea in a way that scientists call “unstoppable.” The latest climate report from the U.N. warns of food shortages, waves of refugees, and the mass extinction of plants and animals, if we keep to our present course.
This is the sort of news that wakes me up at night and pulls me into prayer: precious Lord, take my hand. It is also the sort of news that propels me out of bed in the morning, eager to find a way to be of use. Once we have grasped what the bishops of the Episcopal Church call “the urgency of the planetary crisis in which we find ourselves,”1 there is so much we can do, so many ways that we can contribute to the healing of Creation. Thank you for the work you’ve done here at St. John’s to conserve energy, switch to efficient light bulbs, and use cloth rather than paper napkins. Our individual actions add up: we can recycle more, drive less, be sparing in our use of water, quit using bottled water. We can turn off lights when we leave a room. Maybe we can eat local, organic foods and support local farms and land trusts, maybe even leave them some money in our wills. I hope you’ll form a “green team” in this parish, and name a Creation Care Minister. I hope you’ll sign up to join a network of people in the diocese who care about Creation. I’d be glad to support you in any way I can.
I also hope you’ll sign up to receive a weekly newsletter from the grassroots group, Climate Action Now, which is centered right here in the Pioneer Valley. If we work as isolated individuals, our success will be limited, for the scope and speed of the climate crisis require action on a much broader scale. So we link arms with other people and we join the movement to make it politically possible to do what is scientifically necessary. The climate movement is gaining momentum, and many of us are inspired by Dr. King and the civil rights movement. Last week I spent a day in Amherst with other local climate activists, studying the principles of non-violent civil disobedience as practiced by Gandhi and Dr. King. Along with more than 97,000 people across the U.S., I have signed a pledge of resistance, a pledge to risk arrest in non-violent direct action if the Keystone XL pipeline is approved. Stopping that pipeline has become a powerful symbol of the urgent need to keep 80% of the known fossil fuels in the ground, where they belong. Fossil fuel companies now possess five times the amount of coal, gas, and oil that, if burned, would force the average global temperature to rise far higher than the 2 degree threshold that gives us a 50-50 chance of preventing runaway climate change. So now is the time to make a swift transition to clean, safe, renewable energy, such as sun and wind.
In this unprecedented time, many of us feel called anew to listen to the tender voice of love that God is always sounding in our heart, and then to embody that love in the world as bravely and clearly as we can. If ever there were a time to bear witness to our faith that life and not death will have the last word, now would be the time. If ever there were a time to take hold of the vision of a Beloved Community in which human beings live in right relationship with each other and with all our fellow creatures, now would be the time. The collapse of the ice sheet in Antarctica may be “unstoppable,” but so is the love that calls us to stand up for life.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu fought for racial justice and against apartheid in South Africa, and now he is one of the world’s champions of climate justice. Reconciling human beings to each other, to God, and to the rest of Creation is what Tutu calls the “supreme work” of Jesus Christ. Thank you, my brothers and sisters in Christ, for joining me in that supreme work.
