climate change | Reviving Creation

Sermon for the Sixth Sunday of Easter (Rogation Sunday), May 25, 2014. Delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, St. Paul’s Church, Stockbridge, MA. Acts 17:22-31 1 Peter 3:13-22 Psalm 66:7-18 John 14:15-21

In God we live and move and have our being

It is a pleasure to be with you on this Memorial Day weekend, and I’d like to thank your rector for inviting me to preach. As your Missioner for Creation Care, I am especially glad that today is Rogation Sunday. Celebrating rogation days is a custom that goes all the way back to the 5^th century. The word “rogation” comes from the Latin verb rogare, which means “to ask” and also gives us the root of our English word, “interrogate.” Rogation Sunday, the Sixth Sunday of Easter, is all about asking: we ask God to bless the land and to give us a fruitful harvest.

In olden times, people would celebrate rogation days by a “beating of the bounds”: priests and parishioners would gather outside the church building and walk in procession along the boundaries of the parish, asking God to protect it during the coming year. They would rededicate themselves to good stewardship of the particular piece of earth that God entrusted to their care. As far as I know we’re not going to do an outdoor processional today, and the entire service will be held inside (right?), but today we acknowledge with joy the fact that we worship the God who loves all creation into existence – seas and sky, warblers and whales, penguins and peonies. Here at the height of Easter season we celebrate the risen Christ who restores, redeems and heals not only human beings, but also the whole natural world (Colossians 1:20). Like generations of Christians before us, on this Rogation Sunday, we, too, want to rededicate ourselves to the care of God’s creation. In this morning’s first reading, we heard Paul proclaim, in his famous speech in front of the Areopagus, a hill beside the Acropolis in Athens, that God “made the world and everything in it.” The God “who is Lord of heaven and earth” does not live in buildings, “in shrines made by human hands” (Acts 17:24), but everywhere – in the vastness of the great outdoors and in the intimacy of this breath, this heartbeat. God “is not far from each one of us,” says Paul. “For ‘In [God] we live and move and have our being’” (Acts 17:27). In God we live and move and have our being. That is what Jesus is saying in today’s Gospel passage, which starts where last Sunday’s left off, in the middle of the section of John’s Gospel that scholars call Jesus’ farewell discourse. Jesus is saying goodbye to his friends, and as he prepares to go to the Cross and to return to the loving Father who sent him into the world, he shows his friends the path to the same union with God that he experienced throughout his life. What is that path? To love God and one another, just as Jesus has loved us. To abide in his love (John 13:34-35; 15:9-12). To share in his mission of justice, mercy, and compassion (Matthew 28:19-20). Soon the disciples will no longer see the human Jesus, so in order to empower his disciples to abide in that never-failing flow of love between God the Father and God the Son, Jesus will ask the Father to give them what he calls “another Advocate, to be with you forever” (John 14:16). That advocate – that counselor and sustainer, that comforter, helper and guide who leads us into all truth and who abides with us always – is the Holy Spirit. At its most basic level, that’s what it means to be a Christian: someone who, through the power of the Spirit, connects with and trusts in the ever-flowing love of God that is always circulating among us. Someone who bears witness in very tangible ways – even in the face of suffering and death – to the ongoing love, power and presence of God that fills the whole creation. Given the frightening news about human-caused climate change that we’ve been hearing in recent days, it’s clear to me that we need people like that – in fact, lots of people like that: people who are willing to face squarely the most challenging, even devastating facts, people who can reach into their reserves of courage, faith, and hope, people who can step out to bear witness to the God who entrusted the world to our care and in whom we live and move and have our being. A quick scan of the headlines will show you what I mean. The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations group, shows, in the words of one reporter, that “climate change is already having sweeping effects on every continent and throughout the world’s oceans… and [that] the problem [is] likely to grow substantially worse unless greenhouse emissions are brought under control…[I]ce caps are melting, sea ice in the Arctic is collapsing, water supplies are coming under stress, heat waves and heavy rains are intensifying, coral reefs are dying, and fish and many other creatures are migrating toward the poles or in some cases going extinct. The oceans are rising at a pace that threatens coastal communities and are becoming more acidic as they absorb some of the carbon dioxide given off by cars and power plants….[Ocean acidification] is killing some creatures or stunting their growth.” On top of this grim news, two landmark studies disclosed a couple of weeks ago that the huge West Antarctic ice sheet is starting to collapse and slide into the sea in a way that scientists call “unstoppable.” Researchers had expected that, despite human-caused climate change, the ice sheet would last for thousands of years, but the new studies found that the loss is happening much more quickly than scientists expected. The slow-motion collapse will eventually lead to a rise in global sea levels of 12-15 feet, “overrunning many of the world’s islands, low-lying areas, and coastal cities.”¹ When it comes to climate disruption, the scientific controversy is over. The science is settled. 97% of climate scientists worldwide are telling us with increasing alarm that climate change is not a future threat. It is our reality. Burning fossil fuels such as coal, gas, and oil emits gases into the atmosphere that make the climate hotter and more 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. Around the world we’re seeing the result in extreme fluctuations of weather. People in the American Southwest are experiencing a massive, record-breaking drought and a prolonged fire season, while people in the Balkans just endured an unprecedented deluge of rain that triggered thousands of landslides and forced tens of thousands of people to evacuate their homes. Boats plucked countless people to safety from their roofs. When weather erupts in such extremes, no wonder global warming is sometimes called “global weirding.” The environmentalist Bill McKibben puts it succinctly: “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 What must we do to turn this around? I wonder if we need a conversion of heart and a change of behavior as radical and transforming as Saul’s conversion on the road to Damascus, when he turned his life around and put his faith in Jesus Christ (Acts 9:1-19). A first step in that new behavior might be for us to recycle more, drive less, and quit using bottled water. Maybe we can eat local, organic foods and support our local farms and land trusts. We can install insulation and turn down the heat. As individuals we can and 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, as well. We need to join with other people and make it politically possible to do what is scientifically necessary. We need to push our political leaders to get this country and other countries on track to bring down the level of carbon dioxide 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? 400 parts per million, and climbing. So we have work to do. I invite you to imagine a church, imagine a diocese, in which every aspect of its life, from its preaching and worship services to its adult education and Sunday School, from its prayers to its public advocacy, grasps the urgency of protecting life as it has evolved on this planet. That is the kind of Church that we need today. We are facing the greatest challenge that human beings have ever faced, and as Christians we must take our stand in creating a world for our children and our children’s children that is habitable, peaceful, and just. I hope that you will form a “green team” or Creation Care committee – whatever you want to call it – here at St. Paul’s, and start to explore what you can accomplish together. I hope that those of you interested in building a network of people in the diocese committed to Creation care will give me your names, so that we can work together and support each other. I hope that all of you will consider joining me in New York City on the weekend of September 20^th and 21^st. Bill McKibben just wrote a new article calling for the largest rally in the history of the climate movement to be held that weekend in New York. As Bill McKibben put it, “If you’re wondering how to react to the devastating news that the Antarctic is melting out of control: New York. If you’re scared like I am by the pictures of the fire and drought across the West: New York. If you’re feeling like it’s time to change the trajectory of this planet: we’ll see you in New York.” On this Rogation Sunday, we ask God not only to bless the harvest and the land, the seas and the sky – we ask God to bless us with the Spirit as we take hold of our vocation to be healers of the earth. The melting ice in West Antarctica may be unstoppable, but so is the love that made us, that sustains us, and that calls us to stand up for life. There is so much left to save, so much good that we can do – if we act right now – to prevent the worst effects of climate change, so many ways that we can build a better world.Today, as we prepare to receive the bread and wine of the Eucharist, we open to the love that will never let us go, to the love that is stronger than death. We share in what Dante called “the love that moves the sun and other stars,” and we remember who we are – a people created by God to love and be loved, and sent out by God to make that love real in the world in every way we can. For in God we live and move and have our being. © 2014 Margaret Bullitt-Jonas

1. See also: http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=131369&org=NSF&from=news; http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/center/articles/2014/los-angeles-times-05-12-2014.html 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 (http://www.billmckibben.com/)

I have never been to Nebraska and I don’t know anyone who lives there. The more than 7,000 entries in my address book include no one from Nebraska. Yet, Nebraska, dear Nebraska – you are in my prayers.

Nebraska sits squarely in the path of the proposed 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline, and for months the state has been divided over the project. There is still no pipeline route through Nebraska, which is one reason that building the Keystone XL pipeline has repeatedly stalled.

A friend of mine here in western Massachusetts shares ownership of a Nebraska farm. One recent weekend she leaves me a long voice message. TransCanada has approached her family and wants to run the Keystone XL pipeline across a corner of her land. Every member of the family has to sign the contract in order for the deal to go through, but she doesn’t want to sign. Her husband is standing with her, but her brother and two cousins disagree. They have decided to sign it.

Of course, they tell her, they would prefer not to. They know that the excavation of the tar sands is leaving an environmental catastrophe in Alberta. They’ve heard the reports that extracting the tar sands in Canada and transporting the dirty fuel by pipeline down to the Gulf of Mexico risks causing leaks that would contaminate the region’s soil and water. They know that burning the tar sands could aggravate climate change, including severe weather and drought. None of them wants the pipeline to go through their land. But what can you do? The oil industry looks unstoppable. The pipeline seems inevitable. Besides, TransCanada is sweetening the deal by offering to pay premium prices upfront before it receives state and federal approvals, promising landowners that they can keep the money even if the pipeline is not approved. One cousin does the math and figures that if they refuse to sign the contract, they could end up with only a quarter the price that TransCanada is now offering, plus they would sacrifice pocketing $55,000 now. You might as well bow to the inevitable: sign the paper and get the best possible deal.

My friend is a gentle person, an Episcopalian so soft-spoken that people often have to lean forward to catch what she is saying. By nature she is a peace-lover and she has no desire to create dissension in her family. But when it comes to justice and to doing what she believes is right, she has a spine of steel. The lawyer for her farm checks the fine print and finds loopholes that leave little protection in the case of a leak. She researches groups in Nebraska that are fighting the pipeline, among them Bold Nebraska, Nebraskans for Peace, the Sierra Club, and Natural Resources Defence Council. She learns that she is not alone: 115 Nebraska landowners are holding out and have not signed contracts. She offers to pay each of her family members the money they would have received from TransCanada if they’d signed, for she doesn’t want them to suffer financial loss for doing the right thing.

And she contacts each of them to say that she is not signing and that she hopes they understand.

Three days after phoning me, she tells me the outcome. Her husband continues to stand with her, and her other relatives have now accepted her decision not to sign.

“My brother said that he was willing to sell his soul, but that he didn’t mind too much if I didn’t sell mine: by not selling my soul, I prevented him from selling his. My cousin who manages the farm confessed last night how relieved she was that I’d said ‘No.’ She didn’t really want to take ‘blood money,’ and she knew from past dealings with the pipeline company how sleazy it was.. My other cousin, the one I was afraid of talking to, refused my offer to pay her the amount of money she would have gotten from the pipeline company. She said, ‘No way. I don’t feel good about this.’”

My friend added, “So I haven’t ruined all my family relationships and no one has accepted my offer to pay them the equivalent of pipeline money, though for now I’m leaving it on the table. I guess we’re all in there with the other pipeline resisters.”

My friend’s story gives me hope. You never know how many people will be changed when you refuse to submit to apathy and resignation. You never know what will happen when the Spirit impels you to speak out, even when doing so causes conflict with family members. You never know – until you do it – how much energy for life will be released if you stand up and resist the forces that are destroying life. You never know if taking care of your own small corner of the world may end up changing the course of history.

Curious about our fellow Episcopalians in Nebraska, I checked out what that Diocese had to say about the Keystone XL pipeline. I was delighted to find an Easter reflection by Archdeacon Betsy Blake Bennett. Her message connects our Easter hope with the landowners, activists, and people of faith who are resisting the pipeline. It concludes:

When Bill McKibben’s Do the Math tour visited Omaha, he said that he became discouraged at first when people pointed out that he was involved in a David and Goliath situation, but then he remembered how that story ends. Easter tells us the end of the story, and it calls for an alleluia response.

Alleluia! Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!

I have just added a new entry to my address book: the Episcopal Diocese of Nebraska. Let’s keep the prayers coming.

Sermon for the Second Sunday of Easter, April 27, 2014 (Earth Day/Creation Sunday). Delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, St. Francis Episcopal Church, Holden, MA Acts 2:14a, 22-32 1 Peter 1:3-9 Psalm 16 John 20:19-31

Do not doubt but believe

Every year on the Sunday after Easter we listen to the marvelous and mysterious story from John’s Gospel that we just heard. Jesus shows himself to the disciples on the evening of Easter Day and then returns a week later to convince the disciple we call Doubting Thomas that yes, the Risen Christ is real.

“Put your finger here and see my hands,” Jesus says to Thomas, showing him the wounds. “Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” And then Thomas finds his faith, saying, “My Lord and my God.” As I’m sure some of you noticed, two days after Easter Sunday we celebrated Earth Day, which means that this year Easter Week and Earth Week almost completely overlapped. As your new Missioner for Creation Care in this diocese, I’d like to reflect on Earth Day in light of our Easter joy. And what great timing for me, because I get to do this in a community named after St. Francis, a Christian who discerned God’s Presence in non-human creatures and in nature herself, and who experienced that connection so deeply that he called the sun his brother, and the moon his sister in Christ. Our Easter proclamation and our Easter hymns and prayers make it abundantly clear that Christ’s death and resurrection are good news not just to human beings but also to the whole and every part of Creation – to river and mountain, whale and sparrow, forest and field. At the Great Vigil of Easter, when we mark Jesus’ passing from death to life, one of the first things we do is listen to someone chant these ancient words:

Rejoice and sing now, all the round earth, bright with a glorious splendor, for darkness has been vanquished by our eternal King.

Rejoice and sing now, all the round earth! Christ is risen! Today’s Gospel story invites us to explore the good news of Christ’s resurrection by taking stock of our doubts and then letting them go. Doubting Thomas stands for all of us who wrestle with doubt – doubt about what Jesus accomplished on the cross and doubt about the reality of the resurrection. Doubt is a perfect theme for Earth Day, too, for when it comes to climate change, which is at the top of everybody’s list of concerns on Earth Day, we hear a lot about the doubters, don’t we? A Gallup poll released on Earth Day shows that one in four Americans is “solidly skeptical” of global warming and refuses to believe that human-caused climate change is real. Other members of the public are on the fence and don’t know what to believe, assuming that the jury is still out and that scientists have yet to reach a consensus on the reality and causes of climate change. I’m sure there are many reasons that some people still doubt that human-caused climate change is happening. If you’re a gardener or a farmer, you know how much you love the piece of ground that is in your care, and how precious and beautiful the natural world is. If you’ve gardened in one place for a while, you may have started to notice the subtle changes taking place as the years go by: how a particular flower now blooms two weeks earlier than it used to, or how migratory birds now arrive at a different time. In some respects climate change is very local, but many busy, rootless, urban folks don’t have that kind of intimate relationship with a specific ecosystem.¹ Today, most people worldwide live in cities, and many of us who live in modern, post-industrial countries work indoors and travel to work inside a vehicle. Many of us spend a lot our work time and leisure time relating to a computer screen or a TV screen. The natural world can seem very far away, and we may be completely unaware of what’s taking place right in our own backyards. What’s more, a good many special interest groups are working hard and spending millions of dollars in a deliberate campaign of disinformation to make the American public stay confused. The same folks who spread doubt some years ago about the risk of smoking tobacco are throwing their weight behind some of the current efforts to mislead the public about the reality of climate change.² But the truth is that the scientific controversy is over. The science is settled. 97% of climate scientists worldwide are telling us with increasing alarm that climate change is not a future threat – in fact, it is not a threat at all. It is our reality. Burning fossil fuels such as coal, gas, and oil is releasing gases into the atmosphere that are forming a blanket around the Earth and making the climate hotter and more 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. Around the world we’re seeing the result in extreme fluctuations of weather: droughts and floods, record heat waves and unusual bouts of cold weather. No wonder global warming is sometimes dubbed “global weirding.” The environmentalist Bill McKibben puts it succinctly: “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.”³ So when I hear Jesus say to Doubting Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe,” I hear Jesus inviting Thomas – and us – to face the truth of crucifixion. We might wish away the reality of the violence and the wounds. We might wish very ardently that none of this wounding of our dear planet were happening, that we weren’t seeing dying coral and melting ice-caps, rising seas and rising numbers of refugees. But it is happening, and just as on Good Friday the disciples couldn’t pretend that Christ’s wounds on the cross weren’t real, so we, too, can’t pretend that the wounds to God’s Creation aren’t real. Yet because of Jesus’ crucifixion, we know that God is with us in our suffering and in the planet’s suffering. We know, and God knows, that all Creation is groaning (Romans 8:22). And because of Easter we also know that death does not have to be the end of the story. “When it was evening of Easter day, the first day of the week,” Jesus comes and stands among his disciples and says, “‘Peace be with you’” (John 20:19). Can you feel the impact of that moment? The Risen Christ comes to his guilty, worried, frightened friends and says “Peace be with you.” It is peace that he gives them. Forgiveness. Acceptance. However much they’ve abandoned and denied him, he loves them still. In fact, in this one short passage Jesus says “Peace be with you” three times, as if the disciples need to hear that message again and again – partly in order to undo Peter’s three-fold denial, but also so that all of them and all of us will experience that forgiveness deep in our bones. Maybe that moment marks the beginning of our own resurrected life: when we hear and take in how much God loves us and how completely we are forgiven, no matter what we have done. We humans are hurting this Creation, which God has given us as a free gift to love and to steward – and yet, we are forgiven. And from this place of being forgiven, we can now act to right the wrong and can live in a different way. So it is not only peace that Jesus gives to his disciples. He also sends them on a mission. “As the Father has sent me, so I send you,” he says, breathing into them the Holy Spirit, the same creative wind and energy that moved across the face of deep at the very beginning of creation. Jesus not only shares in our suffering, he not only loves and forgives us – he also sends us out to bear witness to the resurrection, to the wild, holy, and completely unexpected fact that through the grace and power of God, life – not death – will have the last word. Through the power of the Risen Christ, we are sent out to be healers of the Earth, sent out to take our place in the great work of healing the wounds of Creation, sent out to restore the web of life upon which we, and all creatures, depend. What can we do? We can recycle more, drive less, and quit using bottled water. Maybe we can eat local, organic foods and support our local farms and land trusts. We can install insulation and turn down the heat. As individuals we can and should do everything we can, 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 political leaders to get this country and other countries on track to bring down the level of carbon dioxide 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? 400 — and climbing. So we have work to do. I invite you to imagine a church, imagine a diocese, in which every aspect of its life, from its preaching and worship services to its adult education and Sunday School, from its prayers to its public advocacy, grasps the urgency of protecting life as it has evolved on this planet. We are facing the greatest challenge that human beings have ever faced, and we refuse to get bogged down by doubt, denial, or despair. I am delighted to hear that you are forming a green team or a Creation Care task force – or whatever you want to call it – in this parish, and that you will start exploring what you can accomplish together. I hope that anyone interested in building a network of people in the diocese committed to Creation care will give me their name, so that we can work together and support each other. I am grateful for Doubting Thomas, for he gives voice to our doubt – doubt that we can prevent catastrophic climate change, doubt that we can make a difference, doubt that resurrection is even possible. But just as Jesus invited Thomas to move past his doubts, so, too, Jesus invites us to receive the gift of his forgiveness and the power of his energizing Spirit. Today at the Eucharist we will stretch out our hands to receive the body and blood of Christ, just as Thomas stretched out his hands to touch Christ’s wounded hands and side. 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. Do not doubt but believe.

1. Naomi Klein has written an excellent essay about why so many Americans are not responding to the climate crisis: “The Change Within: The Obstacles We Face Are Not Just External,” posted online on April 21, 2014; appeared in May 12, 2014 edition of The Nation. http://www.thenation.com/article/179460/change-within-obstacles-we-face-are-not-just-external 2. Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. M. Conway, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming (http://www.merchantsofdoubt.org/); see also Ross Gelbspan, The Heat is On (http://www.heatisonline.org/); and Union of Concerned Scientists’ 2007 report on ExxonMobil http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/solutions/fight-misinformation/exxonmobil-report-smoke.html 3. 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 (http://www.billmckibben.com/)

Sermon for the Second Sunday in Lent, February 24, 2013. Delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, Grace St. Paul’s Church, Tucson, Arizona. Listen to an audio recording.

Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18	Philippians 3:17-4:1
Psalm 27	Luke 13:31-35

“Look toward the heaven and count the stars”

“The word of Yahweh came to Abram in a vision, ‘Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield’God brought him outside and said, ‘Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them So shall your descendants be.’ And [Abram] believed Yahweh.” (Genesis 15:1, 5-6a)

It is wonderful to be back at Grace St. Paul’s and to worship with you again. I am delighted that today’s readings bring us the story of our brother Abram, this man who longed so much for life to flow through him. You know the story Abram and his wife Sarai were old, and they had no children. Although the couple yearned to bear a child, Sarai was unable to conceive, and to all intents and purposes it seemed impossible that they would ever have biological descendants. Yet the word of God came to Abram in a vision, and Abram received that mysterious assurance that only comes when our minds grow quiet and we listen attentively in the silence. “Do not be afraid,” God whispered in Abram’s heart. “I am your shield.” And then, on that memorable night, “God brought [Abram] outside and said, ‘Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them’” (Gen 15:5).

You live right here in the Tucson desert, so you know what that’s like: you go out into the desert on a quiet night, you stand in the company of ancient mountains, you look up, and you see a sky brimful of stars. Even if you’ve seen it many times before, you can’t help but be seized by amazement. Wherever you look, there they are: stars and more stars more constellations than you could possibly name. Abram couldn’t count them any more than we can, and in that moment of silent wonder, he heard God’s promise: “So shall your descendants be.” Now comes the story’s pivotal sentence, the sentence on which everything depends: “Abram believed Yahweh.” He believed Yahweh. He trusted that somehow his longing to give life would be fulfilled. In the silence of his heart, he heard the divine promise, and he believed what he heard. He accepted it. He put his trust in it. No, let’s put it in stronger terms he committed himself to that promise, even though there was no tangible evidence to back it up.

I relish this story of Abram because he is the archetype of every person of faith. Abram is a spiritual companion to everyone who feels a deep longing to be fruitful and who dares to trust that somehow that longing will be fulfilled. Of course the desire to give life can be expressed in all kinds of ways. Sometimes it takes a literal form, as it did with Abram and Sarai, in our desire to conceive and bear children, and to raise a family. But the desire to give life is expressed in many other ways, too by the desire to heal or to reconcile, by the desire to speak truthfully and kindly, to be patient and to listen more carefully, by the desire to create something beautiful, to tend a garden, feed the hungry, work for justice, or in some other way to make the world a better place. Whoever we are, whatever our age or circumstances, God has planted deep within us a desire to bear fruit, a longing for our lives to be a blessing to those who come after us. We want to bless the future by the choices that we make today. We want life to flow through us through our hands and words and thoughts and actions.

That’s no surprise, really, for that is what Jesus came to do: to give us a path to life. “I have come that you may have life,” he tells us, “and have it to the full” or, as another translation puts it, “I have come that you may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). “I am the bread of life,” he says (John 6:35). “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life” (John 14:6). And whatever Jesus has, he wants to share with us (c.f. John 14:20, 15:4, 14:27, 15:9, and 17:21-26).

Lent is a season that calls us to reclaim our God-given longing to be fully alive and to be bearers of life. During these forty days we are invited to pause and take stock of our personal lives and of our life together on this planet. In Lent we have an opportunity to confess where we have gone off-track, and to repent and ask God for strength to amend our ways. It turns out that Lent is a season that we dearly need, for it is crystal clear that the present path on which our species is headed is a path that leads to death, not life. Whether we are keenly aware of it, or are able only to glimpse it out of the corner of our eye, to some degree all of us are conscious that the web of life on this planet is unraveling. We humans are destroying wildlife habitat on land, sea, and air at an alarming pace, and we have already burned enough coal, gas, and oil to raise the planet’s average temperature by more than one degree. If we stick to our present course, business as usual, the earth will be an average of four or five degrees hotter before the century is out. Nine of the ten warmest years occurred in the last decade, and scientists recently confirmed that 2012 was the hottest year in U.S. history. At the end of last summer, scientists reported that Arctic sea ice had melted to a record low as one headline crisply put it: “Half of Polar Ice Cap Missing.”

Meanwhile we are seeing around the world a chaotic array of weather extremes intense flooding, droughts, and storms maybe including this week’s snowfall in the desert. Although any given day may be cold, the long-term trend is going in one direction: toward heat. The drought here in Arizona and other Western states, one of the worst in American history, was front-page news in yesterday’s New York Times.¹

We’ve never had a Lent in which the choice before us has been so clear: will we stay true to our heart’s deep call to be bearers of life? Will we cast our lot with Abram and trust that even if the task before us seems impossible, even if preventing runaway climate change seems beyond our reach, nevertheless we will “stand firm in the Lord” (Philippians 4:1) whose love sustains us, who tells us again and again, “Do not be afraid,” and who urges us to believe that our acts of love and justice will bear fruit in ways we cannot even begin to imagine? “Look toward the heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them. So shall your descendants be.”

I was thrilled to learn ten days ago that on Ash Wednesday more than forty activists from all over the country were arrested outside the White House in a peaceful act of civil disobedience. Why did they decide to break the law? Because they were challenging the President to confront the climate crisis and to reject the Keystone XL pipeline, a pipeline that would carry what some people are calling the dirtiest oil on the planet from Canada’s tar sands to the Gulf of Mexico. Many of those arrested carried on their foreheads the smudge of ashes. As a friend of mine, Jim Antal,² wrote in an eloquent statement to explain his arrest, “Repentance is essential if we are to find a way forward. Ash Wednesday is a good day to be arrested because civil disobedience is a form of repentance Our generation must now repent of the sin of wrecking God’s creation.”

Then, a few days later, on the first Sunday in Lent last Sunday! somewhere between 35,000 and 50,000 people gathered on the Mall in Washington, DC, in the largest climate rally in history, to voice their opposition to the Keystone pipeline and to urge a swift transition to clean, safe, renewable sources of energy. Can it be that the climate movement in this country has finally sprung to life? Can it be that the God who lures and coaxes us to become agents of life is speaking now in the hearts of men and women all over the country and indeed, all over world inviting us to stand up and speak out and change course?

The battle for life to flourish on this planet is just that a battle. Energy companies already own a pool of fossil fuels that is five times larger than the amount of fossil fuels that if burned would catapult the global climate into catastrophic, runaway change. So we are fighting to keep that carbon in the ground, where it belongs. We are fighting for our future. We are fighting for a habitable planet, and for the survival and flourishing of life not just human life, but life as it has evolved around the world.

Standing up for life can be risky, as Jesus well knew. In today’s Gospel passage, some friendly Pharisees warn him to turn back, because Herod Antipas wants to kill him. But Jesus refuses to step away from the life-giving path along which God is leading him, whatever the cost may be. “Today, tomorrow, and the next day,” he replies, “I must be on my way” (Luke 13:33). In short, he won’t be stopped. Like Abram, Jesus chooses to live by faith. He puts his trust in the unseen God and keeps going. No wonder it’s so inadequate to think that we who follow Jesus are a fixed institution or cling to a rigid set of beliefs! The Church is not a building we’re a movement! We’re a community of people joined with Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit, and we are on the move like Abram, like Jesus to stand up for life in an often death-dealing world.

How is God inviting Grace St. Paul’s to take a leadership role in this city and in this diocese in addressing climate change? I know that you already have a strong Creation Spirituality Ministry here, and I salute you for that! Maybe there is more you would like to do. Maybe you will want to join the Annual Ecumenical Lenten Carbon Fast, which delivers free daily emails during Lent, with suggestions for reducing your carbon footprint. Maybe you’ll want to discuss divesting from fossil fuel companies as a symbol of your commitment to heal the earth. Maybe you’ll want to convene conversations among lay people and clergy in the diocese about how to create a political economy that does not depend on ravaging the earth, or how to build emotional resilience in the face of almost inconceivable loss, or how to help each other move past our fear and despair and to keep listening for the voice of a loving God.

Now is the perfect moment to stand up for life, for we’re living at a pivotal moment in human history when our choices really matter. As philosopher Joanna Macy points out, we live between two competing possibilities: the possibility of life unraveling on this planet and the possibility of creating a life-sustaining society. We don’t know how the story will end, so it matters what we do. It matters whether or not we are growing in love for ourselves, for our neighbors, and for the earth on which all life depends. It matters whether or not we are finding a way to become healers and transformers in a troubled world.

After making the covenant with Abram, God says to him, “To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates” (Genesis 15:18). Moved by the love of God in Christ, we, too, want to be able to say to our descendants: I give you a flourishing world. To quote another climate activist (Eban Goodstein), we want to be able to say to our children and to our children’s children:

I give you polar bears. I give you glaciers. I give you coral reefs. I give you ice shelves as big as a continent. I give you moderate weather. I give you a stable climate.

May God sustain and bless our efforts in the years ahead.

1. “Thin Snowpack in West Signals Summer of Fire and Drought,” by Jack Healy, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/23/us/in-drought-stricken-heartland-snow-is-no-savior.html.

2. “Ash Wednesday 2013: A Good Day To Be Arrested as an Advocate for God’s Creation and for Future Generations,” by the Rev. Dr. Jim Antal, Minister and President of the Massachusetts Conference of the United Church of Christ.

Rev. Dr. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, preaching at Grace St. Paul’s Episcopal Church,
Tucson, Arizona, on June 10, 2012: “Collision, Confrontation, and Climate Change”

Sermon for Evensong Service on the Feast Day of St. Andrew, November 15, 2009.

Delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, Grace Church, Newton, MA

Isaiah 55:1-5

John 1:35-42

Spiritual transformation

My dear friends at Grace, I bring you greetings from another Grace — Grace Church in Amherst, where I serve as Priest Associate. It is wonderful to be with you on such a festive evening, to hear your choir, and to preach from the pulpit where I last stood in 1996 — when all of us were just a bit younger than we are today. Hanging on the wall of my study at home is a large, framed portrait of this congregation gathered on the lawn beside the church under a bright, blue sky. It is a portrait that makes me happy, and I look back with affection at my years of ministering with you. It is good to see how this parish continues to thrive, and I am grateful to Miriam, your Rector, for inviting me here tonight.

I was thinking about what has changed in our lives since I preached here thirteen years ago. One thing that stands out for me is our increasing awareness of the enormous, even decisive, challenges that confront the whole human enterprise. Today we see much more clearly than we did ten or fifteen years ago that we are facing a convergence of powerful trends — climate change, the rise of the world’s population, species extinction — that influence each other and reinforce each other and together present a grave threat to the future of life as it has evolved since Homo sapiens first emerged in Africa some 200,000 years ago.

Take climate change, for instance. We now know that burning fossil fuels such as coal and gas and oil releases heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere. The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has reached a level today that hasn’t been seen on earth for at least 800,000 years, and probably much longer. In just the last few years, scientists have determined that the safe upper limit for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is 350 parts per million. If we want to keep living on a habitable planet, if we want human civilization to keep flourishing as it has for the past 10,000 years, if we want to pass on to our children and our children’s children something like the beautiful, diverse, and lively earth into which you and I were born, then we have to stabilize the global level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at no more than 350 parts per million. What is the level now? Almost 390, and climbing.

Already the effects of climate change are visible in far away places like Asia, where the Himalayan glaciers are rapidly melting, and where the many rivers that are fed by those glaciers — providing fresh water to hundreds of millions of people — are now at risk. In far-off Africa, deserts are spreading. In the Pacific Islands, rising seas are flooding the coasts, and one low-lying country, the Maldives, is in line to become the first nation to be destroyed because of climate change. Closer to home, here in New England global warming is already affecting right whales, lobster, and Atlantic cod. Within the century we may lose our maple, birch, and beech trees, along with habitat for our state bird, the black-capped chickadee.

At the same time that climate change is stressing the limits that allow life as we know it to continue, the world population continues to grow. Can you guess how many people have been added to the planet since I was here in 1996? One billion. Today the world’s human population numbers 6.7 billion, and, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, by 2050 it will be more than 9 billion. ¹ That makes for a heavy burden on the world’s fresh water supplies and arable land, and on our capacity to grow enough food.

Then factor in another trend, species extinction. A report released earlier this month shows that degraded habitat is threatening a record number of species — 12% of all bird species, 28% of reptiles, 37% of all freshwater fish, and 21% of all mammals — this according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, whose so-called Red List of Threatened Species is considered the authority on the status of the world’s creatures. ²

I haven’t even mentioned the other unsettling trends that might spring to mind, from deforestation to ocean overfishing. The point is that in the last decade or so it has become abundantly clear that we are looking at the approaching possibility of what one thinker, Duane Elgin, calls “an unprecedented whole-system crisis.” ³ The ground is shifting under our feet. We sense the approaching end of an old way of being and wonder what new way of being we can create in its place. 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 resources 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. The global climate with its delicate balance of gases turns out to be more fragile then we ever imagined.

As a result, many of us now walk around with a more or less vivid awareness that a chapter of human history is coming to an end. More and more people around the world are searching for ways to create something new – to bring forth a human presence on this planet that is “environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling, and socially just.” ⁴ We don’t have much time to accomplish this, so it is a precarious and precious time to be alive and to take part – if we so choose – in this great work of healing.

So I come to the Gospel tonight with a more than casual interest. I come to the Gospel tonight looking for spiritual nourishment in a time of evolutionary crisis. I come to Jesus and the familiar story of our brother Andrew, looking for clues to a path forward. What spiritual leap of consciousness can help us to pull together as a human family? What spiritual wisdom can incite and inspire us to become healers and transformers of the world? What spiritual insights can help us to root ourselves in the divine love that is always with us, even in a time that is so charged with peril?

Tonight I want to give you three words based on our Gospel reading, three words that perhaps can point the way to our spiritual awakening. The first word is Seek. As we heard in the story, Andrew and an unnamed disciple of John the Baptist happen to see Jesus walk by. When they start to follow Jesus, Jesus turns and asks them, “What are you looking for?” John 1:38. In other words, what do you seek? What really motivates you? What do you want most deeply? Jesus asks a version of this question many times. To James and John, the sons of Zebedee, he asks, “What is it that you want me to do for you?” Mark 10:36. To blind Bartimaeus, he asks, “What do you want me to do for you?” Mark 10:51. To Mary, who stands weeping at the tomb, he asks, “Whom are you looking for?” John 20:15. To the crowds, he says, “Ask, and it will be given; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you” Matthew 7:7.

Jesus knows that spiritual growth involves a search and a seeking, and he challenges us to keep probing our desires, to clarify them, to carry out what we might call an archaeology of desire. On the surface level, we want all sorts of things, the sorts of things that modern industrial society tells us are important — plenty of money and a heap of possessions, a big house, the latest gadget, cars, boats, fame, power — in short, success in the eyes of the world. But scrambling for goals like these is just what has landed us, and the rest of the planet, in the crisis in which we now find ourselves. So Jesus asks us to dig deeper. What are you looking for — really? It is only when we touch into our deeper desires — perhaps a desire for wholeness or a desire for meaning, a desire for loving interpersonal relationships or for inner peace, that we can begin to sense what is perhaps the deepest longing of all, the desire to draw close to the divine Source of love, the desire for union with God.

“What are you looking for?” is a question that keeps us alert to our deepest intentions, so that moment to moment we can check and see whether or not what we are about to say or do, or what we have just said or done, is in alignment with our deepest desires. For those who hunger for a world in which human beings live at peace with each other, with other creatures, and with their Creator, keeping a focus on what we seek gives us a compass for the journey ahead. If I know what I really seek, then perhaps I can live with a little more restraint — I can commit myself to significantly reducing my carbon footprint; I can turn off extra lights, turn down the heat, and wear a sweater indoors; I can walk more and drive less; I can forego the trip to the mall, share more of what I have with my church and with the poor, and live with greater simplicity, gratefulness, and joy.

If Jesus’ first word to us tonight is Seek, his second is Abide. When the two disciples ask where Jesus is staying, he answers, “Come and see.” And, the story tells us, “They came and saw where he was staying and they remained with him that day” John 1:39. “They remained with him that day.” And we can, too. Day by day we, too, can remain with Jesus; we, too, can abide with him. Like Andrew and the unnamed disciple, we, too, can have intimate, daily contact with our teacher and savior and friend, and let not just our mind but also our character and values, our hopes and dreams — in fact, our whole being — be shaped and changed through daily, personal contact with the one with whom we remain, the one with whom we are abiding and who abides with us.

When we abide with God in Christ, we take time to pray, to sit in silence and listen to the inner voice of love, and we wander outside to gaze in wonder at the living, natural world through which God is always revealing God’s Self to us. Abiding with Jesus means opening oneself to his love, and daring to tell him the truth of our hopes and fears, our needs and wounds. Abiding with Jesus means letting him breathe into us the breath of the Holy Spirit, so that with every breath we take, we breathe in the love of God, and with every breath we release, we release that love more fully into the world around us. Abiding with Jesus means that we die to an ego-centered self, an ego-centered life, and open ourselves to becoming a vehicle of God’s energy and love.

Seek. Abide. Those are two messages I hear, and the third is Reach out.

Andrew is the first person in John’s Gospel to recognize Jesus as the Messiah, the Christ who embodies and conveys the fullness of God’s presence. And he is also the first Christian evangelist. According to the story we just heard, as soon as Andrew recognizes Jesus as the Messiah, he goes out to find his brother Simon Peter and brings him to Jesus.

Now I know that some of us cringe at the thought of (quote/unquote) “bringing someone to Jesus.” To my ears, anyway, it can sound so narrow and self-righteous, so pompous and smug, so — well — evangelical, in the very worst sense. But it is worth noticing that the Gospel story does seem to imply a three-part movement of spiritual transformation that goes something like this: seek out what matters most to you and let your life be guided by that deep purpose and intention; abide today and every day in a loving relationship with God in Christ, letting it form and transform you; and then — reach out. Let the love that you have known spill out into the world around you. Let the joy and freedom and intimacy that you have known in Christ pour out to every person you meet.

The world around us is in so much pain. There is so much loneliness around us — so much anxiety and fear. Can we find ways to connect, to heal, to serve? Can we find ways to express and share and embody in very tangible ways the love that we have known in Christ? I suppose that this is one test of the spiritual journey — whether or not we are actively looking for ways to be healers and transformers of the outside world. Bearing witness to Christ can take many forms, but given the crisis in which we now find ourselves, from climate change and population growth to species extinction, finding some way to serve God in the larger world has never been more urgently needed.

After this service is over, I am heading straight to the Boston Common, where several hundred young people, in partnership with the Massachusetts Council of Churches, are gathering for a climate rally to urge our Governor and legislature to commit the Commonwealth to using 100% clean electricity within ten years and to doing our part to bring the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide back down to 350 parts per million. I find the group’s motto quite catchy: “Nothing less than 100%. Nothing more than 350.” I will be one of the speakers at the rally, and even though I don’t plan to mention the name of Jesus, I do see this work as being part of my call to evangelism, part of my call to invite and encourage people to find a more socially just, environmentally sustainable, and spiritually satisfying way to live on the Earth. I would be happy to give any of you who want to join me a ride into town. But above all I want to support you in finding your own way to reach out, your own way to serve. I don’t know anyone who is a happier than the person who has sought and found a way to serve.

Seek. Abide. Reach out. I give thanks to Jesus for his encounter with our brother Andrew, and for showing us a path to spiritual enlightenment and social transformation just when we need it most.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

1. Footnote updated in 2021: In its International Data Base, the U.S. Census Bureau now predicts a world population of 9.7 billion by 2050.

2. “Degraded Habitats Push More Species to Extinction,” by Ben Block on November 3, 2009

3. “The Breaking Point: An Interview with Duane Elgin,” by Carter Phipps, What is Enlightenment?, Spring/Summer, 2001, p. 30. This article also discusses the triad of climate change, over-population, and species extinction.

4. “Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream,” a symposium sponsored by the Pachamama Alliance.