climate change | Reviving Creation

The People’s Climate March is only a few weeks away, and conference calls to organize the event are coming thick and fast. In New York City at 11:30 a.m. on Sunday, September 21, tens of thousands of people – projected estimates run as high as 250,000 – will step out in the largest, most diverse climate march in history. I am told that over 850 businesses and labor unions, faith groups, schools and seminaries, and social justice, environmental and civic organizations have been working together to create this historic event. No single celebrity or entity is behind it – this will be a movement made of many movements, a collective call to action. As far as I can tell, it’s an unprecedented collaboration. I missed the 1963 March on Washington, but I don’t intend to miss this one.

The purpose of the People’s Climate March? To build momentum for a strong international climate treaty. To stand with front-line communities being hit hard by the impacts of climate change. To show world leaders gathered in New York City at a U.N. climate summit that we’re not willing to settle for more inaction.

In short, we hope to create a pivot toward justice and healing.

Speaking by phone with a range of religious leaders has generated a lot of creative thinking. People of different faiths will be marching together, and we’re looking for ways to keep our part of the march prayerful and focused. What shall we sing? How shall we express our deep conviction that Creation is sacred? How shall we particularly honor indigenous peoples whose religious traditions have always been connected with Earth? How shall we call upon Spirit as we walk together in all our diversity to protect life on this planet? What symbols might we carry?

Someone proposed making an Ark. We brainstormed possibilities. Maybe the Ark could be hauled on a flatbed truck that runs on biodiesel. Maybe it could be made of papier-mâché and pulled by volunteers. Maybe Sunday School children could walk alongside, wearing homemade masks of animals. But how would we frame the meaning of the Ark? What would we want it to represent? Rabbi Arthur Waskow, the indomitable prophet and the founder and director of The Shalom Center, offered to give an invocation and to develop something along these lines: “The Ark as an island of safety in a world of danger; the Ark as an act of creativity in a world that is stuck in old habits; the Ark as a community modeling Eco-system Earth.”

The Ark is an ancient symbol of hope: here is where human beings and the rest of the natural world learn to co-exist in harmony. Here is where we find refuge. Here is where bio-diversity is saved for generations to come. In times like these, when climate emissions are sky-rocketing and political will is flagging, when the draft of a major U.N. report warns of “severe, pervasive, and irreversible impacts” of climate change in the decades ahead, and when you can sit in stunned silence at your computer and watch a Greenland glacier melt before your eyes, it is good to tap into our inner Noah: to discover the self that is willing to rise up in response to God’s call to preserve life on Earth.

Channeling your inner Noah does not even require an Ark – sometimes a lobster boat will do. On May 15, 2013, Ken Ward and Jay O’Hara used a little white lobster boat to blockade the delivery of 40,000 tons of West Virginia coal to the Brayton Point Power Station, the largest coal plant in New England. Their action fired up a summer of protests and actions at the Brayton Point plant, and the owners announced last fall that the plant will shut down in 2017.

Ken Ward (left) and Jay O’Hara on the boat they used to block the delivery of 40,000 tons of coal to a power plant in Somerset. Photo © Ben Thompson

Meanwhile, Ken and Jay are about to stand trial on September 8 and 9 on charges of disturbing the peace, conspiracy, and motorboat violations. If convicted, they face up to nine months in jail. At the Fall River courthouse they will use a groundbreaking legal approach: they will admit to all the charges, but they will bring to the stand expert witnesses such as Bill McKibben and NASA scientist Jim Hansen. Ken and Jay will argue that their actions were necessary to defend their lives from the imminent threat of climate change. The Boston Globe recently featured an article (fancifully entitled, “The Climate Made Me Do It!”) about this historic case, which would be the first time that a climate necessity defense is used in American court.

People of faith will gather at the Fall River courthouse to express their solidarity with these two brave men. Will you join me there on Monday, September 8? For more information and to RSVP, please visit Lobster Boat Blockade.

As for joining the Climate March in New York City on September 21, here comes a last call to buy seats on our bus reserved for Episcopalians in western Massachusetts. More than half the seats have already been sold, so please reserve your seat today.

The bus will leave Springfield, MA at 6:30 a.m. on Sunday, September 21, stop in New Haven to pick up seminary students at Berkeley Divinity School/Yale Divinity School, and arrive in New York in plenty of time for the march. Holy Communion will be celebrated on the bus, so get ready for your first Eucharist on wheels! The Presiding Bishop is recording a homily for the occasion that will be broadcast on the bus. After the march, everyone is invited to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine for a vibrant interfaith service at 6 p.m. The bus will arrive back in Springfield on Sunday night.

The bus trip is being subsidized by the bishops of Province 1 (the Episcopal dioceses of New England), so a round-trip ticket costs only $15, plus a service charge. The Rev. Stephanie M. Johnson, Environmental Missioner for Province 1, will be the celebrant aboard the bus, and I will greet everyone when you arrive in New York.

Please bring a church banner. Clergy, please wear a collar.

Reserve a seat on the Episcopal bus and review FAQ here.

(For more transportation options, see below.)

Request a free pass to the 6 p.m. service at St. John the Divine (which will be crowded) here.

Even if you can’t make it to the march, your congregation can support the march in other ways. I know of two Episcopal churches – Church of the Holy Trinity (NY, NY) and Grace Church (Amherst, MA) – whose vestries passed a strong resolution endorsing the March. And congregations everywhere can register to be a Climate March Faith Community. To register as a Climate March Faith Community, go to GreenFaith here, and commit to carrying out four or more of the eight suggested actions. Suggested actions are straightforward: for instance, a congregation can encourage members of the community to join the climate march. It can offer a sermon about climate change, lift up prayers, or invite march participants to report back on their experience.

The most unusual suggested action is the last one: at 1:00 p.m. on Sunday, September 21, a congregation can “sound off” outdoors in support of climate action for 5 minutes and 50 seconds. Why 5 minutes 50 seconds? Because that’s 350 seconds. In the global atmosphere, the safe upper limit for carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas that causes global warming, is 350 parts per million. Currently we are close to 400.

How do we “sound off”? Churches will ring bells; synagogues will publicly sound a shofar; mosques will offer a public call to prayer; sanghas will ring a meditation gong or bell; Hindu temples will chant a mantra – or your community can carry out an outdoor walking prayer/meditation or design its own outdoor observance. “Sounding off” events will take place at 1 p.m. in a great rolling wave of sound around the world – from Europe and Africa to the U.S. and Asia.

The best part of the story of Noah’s Ark comes at the end. God makes a decisive promise to all of creation, human and non-human alike: “I have set my bow in the clouds,” God says (Genesis 9:13). From now on the rainbow will mark “the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth” (Genesis 9:16). Looking ahead to the climate march, I hold on to that promise. If there is going to be any kind of flood, let it be a flood of people filling the streets of New York. God has promised to stand with every living creature, and so will we.

In honor of Noah, and just in time for the Climate March, here’s a song to sing to the tune of “Jacob’s Ladder” — with lyrics by the Rev. Fred Small, Senior Minister of First Parish in Cambridge UU, and Co-Chair of Religious Witness for the Earth:

We are saving Noah’s cargo…. (sing 3x, closing with the refrain: Children of the Earth.)

Every creature has its purpose…

Wolves and whales and owls and otters…

Send a dove to find safe harbor…

In the rainbow, see God’s promise….

See you in New York!

If you are looking for other ways to get to NYC on Sept. 21 (train, light rail, carpool), stay tuned here, the Pioneer-Valley-focused site for getting to the March.

Also, 350MA.org has organized both September 20 and September 21 buses from cities across Massachusetts, including Amherst and Worcester. To order tickets, visit here. Sales end Sept. 10.

If you are traveling from Cape Cod, you can find bus seats here.

Sermon for the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 13A), August 3, 2014. Delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas at St. John’s Episcopal Church, Williamstown, MA Genesis 32:22-31 Psalm 17:1-7, 16 Romans 9:1-5 Matthew 14:13-21

Feasting on hope

It is a pleasure to be with you on this green, summer morning, and I’d like to thank your rector Peter Elvin for inviting me. I serve the diocese as your Missioner for Creation Care, and today’s Gospel passage provides a wonderful story for us to consider as we reflect on our call to protect the Earth.

Most of us have heard the story before – in fact, many times before – and evidently it was a significant story for the early Church: it’s told more often than any other story in the Gospels. A story of Jesus feeding a crowd of thousands shows up in every one of the four Gospels, and the Gospels of Mark and Matthew even tell the story twice (Mark 6:30-44, Mark 8:1-9; Matthew 14:13-21, Matthew 15:32-39; Luke 9:10-17; John 6:1-13)! That’s how important this story was to the first Christian communities. The stories vary in their details, but the basic plot-line is the same: a crowd gathers around Jesus in a deserted place. Jesus teaches them and heals them. Hours pass, evening approaches, and by now everyone is very hungry, but there are only a few scraps of food to be found and no grocery store in sight. The disciples are baffled – maybe even desperate. What can they do? All they have rustled up are five loaves and two fish. Yet when these small offerings are placed in Jesus’ hands, he takes them, blesses and shares them, and behold – everyone eats and is satisfied, with baskets of leftovers to spare. This is a story of hopelessness shifting to hope, of scarcity transformed into abundance, of empty places filled to overflowing. Generations of Christians facing hard times – times of poverty or war, of personal loss or societal breakdown – Christians in times like these have clung to this story, for it assured them, as it assures us still, that even if we feel depleted, tired, or afraid, even if our stomachs are growling or our hearts are yearning, even if we’re sitting in a great crowd of people and feeling anxious, helpless, and alone, there is Someone – capital S, a holy Someone – within us and beside us who will meet us where we are and in whose presence we will be filled with hope and new life, even in the midst of suffering and grief. Now is a very good time to find our selves in this story, for the crisis of climate change is leading many of us to feel as if we’re sitting among those hungry, late-afternoon crowds in the Gospel story, out in the middle of nowhere with night coming on; and the hour is late. Just to say the words “climate change” and most of us tighten up; we duck and draw back; we feel a weight on our chest. The reports from scientists are increasingly urgent and grim, and it’s no wonder, when we allow ourselves to pay attention, that we react with a mix of disbelief, sorrow, and fear. Strictly speaking, most of us are probably not climate skeptics: we believe what the scientists are saying. It’s just that the situation is too much to take in – we can’t deal with it, we don’t know how to respond to it or what we can possibly do about it. How do you respond when you hear from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations group, that climate change is already having far-reaching effects on the world’s continents and oceans? In only two centuries, human beings have pumped so much heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the air that atmospheric levels of CO2 are higher today than they’ve been for millions of years. Recently I heard a climate scientist remark, “We are breathing from an atmosphere that none of our ancestors would recognize.” Burning fossil fuels, such as coal, oil, and gas, at present rates could raise worldwide average temperatures between 5 and 11 degrees Fahrenheit in this century, which would make the world extremely difficult 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 cars and power plants; 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. You know about that – you’ve been through Hurricane Irene. This 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.” As the environmentalist Bill McKibben has written, “Our old familiar globe is suddenly melting, drying, acidifying, flooding, and burning in ways that no human has ever seen.”¹ Given the many pressures on the planet’s web of life, we are now in the midst of Earth’s sixth major extinction event. Maybe half the world’s species could vanish before the century is out. When we hear things like this, most of us freeze. We shut down. We stop listening. We go into shock, into denial, or into despair. We get paralyzed. Either we tell ourselves that it can’t be that bad, surely this is not going to affect me or my children, surely climate scientists are exaggerating and this is just some awful mistake. Or we slide into hopelessness: it’s too late, we tell ourselves; we’re not experts; we don’t have the skills or knowledge or leverage to turn this around; we can’t make a difference; we’re goners; we’re cooked. Either way, like the crowds in the Gospel story, we sit on the grassy hillside as the hours tick by, unable to move, feeling increasingly anxious and empty. And unlike the crowds in the story, we don’t have any nearby villages to which we can go look for food. We’re out here by ourselves, facing an unprecedented historical situation, in which the whole human enterprise on this planet is at stake. Where will we find the inner food, the inner nourishment to meet this crisis with courage and hope? Today’s Gospel story suggests three ways that Jesus’ presence nourishes and empowers the crowds. First, he loves them. He has, as the Gospel says, “compassion” (Matthew 14:14) for them. Jesus knew in his very bones that he was deeply loved by God. He knew that he was cherished to the core, and he came among us to us to show us what we, too, are cherished. We, too, are the children of God. We, too, are beloved. Whenever we know ourselves as precious – whenever we take in the divine love that is streaming through us in every moment, in the gift of this breath and this heartbeat – whenever a person we care about turns and looks at us with eyes of love – whenever we gather together as a community and tell the sacred stories and share the sacred meal that remind us that God is with us – we touch the divine love that will never let us go. Hope comes back to us when we know that we are loved, for whether or not our efforts are successful, we know they are worthwhile – because we are worthwhile, and because God’s Creation is worthwhile. Jesus’ first gift to the crowds is the gift of love. His second gift is empathy. He shares in our suffering, in our brokenness and fear. At the end of the day in our Gospel story, Jesus was just as hungry as the crowds were – just as tired, just as thirsty. Jesus was fully human and he shared fully in the human condition. When it was hot, he sweated. When he was hungry, he needed to eat. Not only that – in this version of the story, Jesus was also feeling an immediate and very personal sorrow. Right before Jesus fed the five thousand, Matthew’s Gospel tells us that Jesus heard the news that his dear friend John the Baptist had been brutally executed. Out of that well of shock and grief, Jesus withdrew in a boat to a deserted place by himself, presumably to grieve and pray. Only then could he come out of prayer to share the Good News. The God we meet in Jesus is a God who shares our grief. I know that many of us can’t even begin to feel the cascade of losses that has already been initiated by climate change. We may be afraid that sorrow will overwhelm us, and that we will drown in the grief. But unfelt emotions can keep us immobilized, so it is good to know that Jesus is with us in our grief, that Jesus shares it and understands it and can give us a heart to hold it without being overcome by pain. It is good to feel our sorrow about climate change, because tears can water the soul. It is good to feel our anger and protest, because anger can be an energy for life. It is good to invite Jesus into our hopelessness, because in that place of emptiness, impasse, and waiting, God’s hope, not ours, can be born. So Jesus offers us, just as he offered the crowds, the gift of his love and the gift of his empathy. He offers a third gift, too: the capacity to act, the power to make a difference. What we have to contribute may seem very small. I mean, come on – all I’ve got here are five loaves and two fish! I’m not a climate scientist or a politician! I’m just an ordinary citizen with a pile of other responsibilities on my plate! What can one person possibly do? But of course there is plenty that we can do. We can recycle more, drive less, and be sparing in our use of water. Maybe we can eat local, organic foods and support our local farms and land trusts. We can install insulation and cut back on AC. 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, 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 parts per million, and climbing. So we have work to do. Hope arises when we move into action. I like to say that hope is love in action. So if you don’t already have a “green team” or a Creation Care committee (whatever you want to call it) here at St. John’s, I hope you’ll form one and will 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 you’ll read the blog posts on my new Website, Reviving Creation. And I hope that some of you will join me on Sunday, September 21st, when the largest rally in the history of the climate movement will be held in New York City, the People’s Climate March. As Bill McKibben puts 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.” 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. Jesus is among us now, just as he was among those hungry crowds, offering us here at this table the nourishing gift of his presence and power. There is so much left to save, so much good that we can do, so many ways that we can help to build a better world. I’ll close with the words of Edward Everett Hale: “I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something I can do.” What is Jesus inviting you to do?

1. Bill McKibben, Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet, New York: Henry Holt and Company, Times Book, 2010, p. xiii.

“I want to sink back into a certain innocence.”

My friend Ruth is describing what leads her to visit a place of natural beauty and to walk among trees. For the first time in her life she has been doing the kinds of things that social activists do: gather information about an issue, make phone calls, organize meetings, distribute leaflets, hire a lawyer, talk to reporters, voice opposition, articulate a vision. Never before has she been so acutely aware of the need for ordinary citizens to band together and to work for a better future, and never before has she participated in that effort with so much vigor.

Yet she also notices that the more active she becomes, the more she needs the solace of prayer. The more she moves forward to engage with other people in the effort to heal the world, the more she needs to draw back into periods of silence and solitude, of gazing and reflection. What Ruth so wonderfully calls “sinking back into a certain innocence” means being willing to relinquish for a while the impulse to figure out, plan, and analyze, to assess, define, and control. When we sink back into a certain innocence, we invite our hearts to be unguarded. We let go our agenda, drop our defenses, and open in childlike trust to the present moment. We allow ourselves to gaze, to rest, to be encountered, and to be changed.

I know that spending time alone doing nothing is anathema to most Americans. In unstructured moments, many of us whip out our cell phones, snag a cigarette, grab a snack, or get busy with the next task. A remarkable article published last month in the journal Science reports that, in one study, when participants were left alone in a room for a while, most of them chose to administer painful electric shocks to themselves rather than to sit silently, in solitude. Clearly it goes against the cultural grain if we recognize and honor our deep need for solitude, stillness, and contemplation.

This week I spent a couple of days on retreat with my husband Robert Jonas at our old farmhouse in Ashfield, in the hills of western Massachusetts. For two days it rained heavily. Clouds rolled and churned across the sky. Wind tossed the branches of the trees and blew wild patterns across the pond. Torrents of rain kept falling. For a long time my husband and I stood on the back porch, taking it all in. We weren’t alone, but we were quiet together, absorbed in watching and listening as rain pounded on the roof overhead and as it poured in sheets over the field and pond and woods beyond.

Standing on the porch, I noticed two ways of paying attention to the rain. One was to think about it. For instance, I could reflect on the fact that intense deluges seem to have become more frequent in my corner of the world. I could think about climate change, and how some places are flooding while other places are going dry. I could think about the fact that because of carbon dioxide emissions, the atmosphere now holds 5% more moisture than it used to, and that extreme downpours are another sign of a warming world. Thoughts typically generate more thoughts: I could then start thinking about the condition of the gutters or the roof; I could look to the past and reflect on my memories of rain; I could look to the future and start making plans for the next climate rally.

Thank God for thoughts and for the capacity to think. It is good, even essential, to know such things and to think such thoughts. Having a basic grasp of facts is a prerequisite to knowing what actions we need to take. But on that rainy day in Ashfield I didn’t want to think about the rain, to analyze or strategize – I wanted to perceive it with imagination and intuition and with all five senses, to encounter it in the present with the innocence of a child. What are you saying? Speak, Rain – I am listening.

Standing on the porch with my husband, I remembered the words of Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk and social activist, who wrote:

What a thing it is to sit absolutely alone, in the forest, at night, cherished by this wonderful, unintelligible, perfectly innocent speech, the most comforting speech in the world, the talk that rain makes by itself over the ridges, and the talk of the watercourses everywhere in the hollows! Nobody started it, nobody is going to stop it. It will talk as long as it wants, this rain. As long as it talks I am going to listen.

In the midst of the storm, Jonas and I listened to the rain’s “wonderful, unintelligible, perfectly innocent speech,” and watched as rain splashed all over the deck. The rain’s song was wild and wordless, an insistent oratorio. Patiently we listened. Eventually I grinned at my husband and pointed out how the water was dropping on the horizontal wooden boards, landing quickly like notes upon a staff. “It’s like reading a piece of music.”

Jonas took up the idea and before long he’d created a short video. I don’t know what he plans to name it, but I’m calling it Sonata for Deluge and Porch.

When it comes to addressing climate change, I want to speak up for the need for concerted, smart, and effective action. But I also want to speak up for the need for prayer and contemplation. Creativity, playfulness, and a fresh perspective arise in the space beyond thought. Wisdom emerges as we learn to sit quietly with ourselves and with the world around us, open to reality, just as it is.

I grew up dividing the world into two camps: “spiritual” people and “activists,” people who pray, and people who actively pursue social and environmental justice. Of course that is a bogus split. Contemplation and action are both necessary if humans are to flourish on this planet. Moving gracefully between them is as essential for life as breathing in and breathing out.

Back in the 14^th century, the Christian mystic John Ruysbroeck described God as “absolute repose and fecundity reconciled.” Rusbroeck goes on to say: “The Spirit of God breathes us out that we may love, and do good works; and draws us into [God’s] self, that we may rest in fruition, and this is Eternal Life… Action and fruition never hinder, but strengthen one another… They are the double wings… that take us home.”

Let’s say you step into an elevator, push the button for the 10^th floor, watch the doors slide shut, and cast a quick glance at the other passengers in the car. Lo and behold, you spot one of the Koch brothers! No, it’s the CEO of ExxonMobil! Or the CEO of TransCanada, the outfit behind the Keystone XL pipeline! Or maybe it’s President Obama himself! You swallow hard. This is your one and only chance to say in 30 seconds why you care about tackling climate change. What would you say?

Perfecting your elevator pitch is considered a key element in landing a job or making a sale. No doubt it’s also a basic skill behind speed dating, though personally I wouldn’t know about that. But even shorter than an elevator pitch, and sometimes as challenging to craft, are slogans, those pithy messages that you see on banners at a march or rally.

Here is a question that beset me this spring: if the Diocese of Western Massachusetts were to create a banner to bring to climate rallies, what should the banner say? I came up with several possibilities and ran them by focus groups that consisted of 1) my husband; 2) the Bishop; 3) the Communications Director; 4) the Social Justice Commission; and 5) the diocese’s new Creation Care group on Facebook. Although my research was neither systematic nor extensive, it was great fun to carry out and it generated vigorous debate. Before long a winning slogan emerged. Our diocese’s new banner will say: Love God, Love your neighbor: Stop climate change.

Climate Banner, Episcopal Diocese of Western MA

To me it makes perfect sense to link stabilizing the climate with loving God and neighbor. We express love for the Creator when we tend and safeguard the living world that God entrusted to our care. We express love for our neighbor when we work to stop climate disruption, which would devastate food supplies, cause flooding, intensify drought, spread disease, create refugees, and trigger violence and social upheaval.

The “neighbors” we love when we work to stop climate change include everyone already suffering from the effects of climate change, such as rising seas and extreme storms. Those neighbors include our non-human kin that share the planet with us, and they include our children and our children’s children. As theologian Jim Wallis, the founder of Sojourners, comments in a recent blog about climate change, “We should not and cannot leave our children’s children with a fundamentally different planet. Perhaps we should replace the classic image of a polar bear on a small floating piece of ice, with an image of our great grandchild standing in line for his or her water ration.”

We have our marching orders: love God and neighbor. We have our banner. We’re all dressed up and we have a place to go: to New York City, on Sunday, September 21, when people from across the country will participate in what promises to be the biggest climate march in American history. Ban Ki Moon, United Nations Secretary-General, has summoned international leaders in government, business, finance, and civil society to New York that week for the 2014 U.N. Climate Summit, as part of a global effort “to mobilize action and ambition on climate change.” The People’s Climate March intends to amplify the urgency of that message, as tens of thousands of people who care about our planet’s future take to the streets of New York in a dignified, family-friendly, high-energy and historic march.

People's Climate March — People’s Climate March

According to organizers’ current plans, people of faith will march together. I like to imagine that lively crowd and its colorful tapestry of diverse religious symbols, vestments, and banners. I like to imagine the sight of banners held aloft from various churches in our diocese. I like to imagine the joy of walking alongside countless Episcopalians and other Christians, and alongside countless Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu men, women, and children as together we bear witness to our shared faith in the goodness of life as it has evolved on this planet.

Yes, this event takes place on a Sunday afternoon. What shall we who are Christians as well as those who may pray in other ways do about Sunday morning worship? Maybe clergy and members of your congregation can share prayers and a simple Eucharist as you ride the bus to New York City. Maybe your church can hold a special send-off worship service the night before. Maybe you can ask your church to pray for you on Sunday morning as you and other members of your congregation head out to the march.

As I imagine us walking through the streets of Manhattan, I can already sense our common commitment to protect and heal the global atmosphere upon which all life depends. And let’s face it: along the way we’ll have plenty of time to perfect our elevator speeches.

Here’s the last thing to say about our banner: like Jesus’ mission of mercy, justice, and compassion, and like the climate movement itself, the banner is too big for one person to carry. Close to eight feet long, our banner needs at least two or three people, maybe more, who can hold it high. Will you join me in taking a turn at carrying our banner? Love God, love your neighbor. Let’s stop climate change and head to New York.

• To sign up for the People’s Climate March, click here. You will receive updates as plans for the march come together. You can also follow People’s Climate March on Facebook.
• To ride one of the buses heading from your area of Massachusetts to New York City, sign up here.
• If you would like your church to follow the example of other churches by asking your Vestry to endorse the People’s Climate March, and if you would like me to send you a sample Vestry statement, please drop me an email (mbj@revivingcreation.org).
• If you are a member of the Diocese of Western Massachusetts and would like to join our Creation Care group on Facebook (which is by invitation only), please drop me an email (mbj@revivingcreation.org).

Sermon for Trinity Sunday, June 15, 2014. Delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, Grace-St. Paul’s Church, Tucson, AZ. Genesis 1:1 – 2:4a Canticle 13 2 Corinthians 13:11-13 Matthew 28:16-20

Holy Trinity: Joining the dance

It’s a pleasure to be with you this morning at Grace-St. Paul’s, and I want to thank your rector for welcoming me back. Some things have changed since the last time I was here. An array of solar panels has shown up on every roof! It’s fantastic! Some things in my own life have changed, too. Last fall I resigned from my job at Grace Church in Amherst, Massachusetts. I went to my bishop and told him that I didn’t want climate activism to be only a part of what I do – I told him that I felt called to focus all my energy on awakening people of faith to the urgency of tackling climate change, and that my dream is to help build a movement to protect life as it has evolved on this planet. Through the grace of God, funding was found, a position was created, and since January I’ve been serving the Diocese of Western Massachusetts as its first Missioner for Creation Care. Now I travel around the diocese like an itinerant 19^th century Methodist minister on horseback, or maybe like Paul Revere, spreading the word from church to church that climate change is not only coming, it is upon us, it is here, and that as people blessed and sustained and empowered by God we have the great privilege and holy responsibility to rise up and to do something about it.

As I wrote today’s sermon, I had to do some wrestling. How in the world does Trinity Sunday, which we celebrate today, connect with climate change? How does understanding God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit help to inform and inspire our struggle to stabilize the climate and to pass on to our children and our children’s children a sustainable, just, and habitable world? That is not an idle question, for the news from climate scientists in the last few months has been increasingly grim. Maybe you heard about the recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations group, which 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…” On top of this bleak news, last month two landmark studies showed 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 The environmentalist Bill McKibben has commented that it’s as if we were running Genesis backwards. Given the perilous situation in which human beings and all other living creatures now find ourselves, what can we learn from the doctrine of the Trinity? What gift of hope can we receive as we consider the God we meet as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? A quick word about history: probably no doctrine of the Church developed with more contentiousness and controversy than the doctrine of the Trinity. After the life and death of Jesus Christ, generation by generation Christians searched the Scriptures and found hints and clues that suggested how to think about the nature of God. They pondered passages such as the ones we heard this morning. At the end of Second Corinthians, Paul blesses his community by invoking “the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit” (2 Cor. 13:13), and at the end of Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus commissions his disciples to baptize “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:18). From these biblical hints and clues, from their ongoing lives of prayer, and from their forays into Greek philosophy, in the 4^th century the teachers and scholars of the Church began to hammer out the doctrine of the Trinity. It took many acrimonious arguments to work out the phrasing of the Nicene Creed, and it took decades for that Creed to be accepted across the Church. In fact, one of the causes of the Great Schism between East and West was whether the Spirit proceeds from the Father or whether it proceeds from the Father and the Son – the so-called “filioque” debate, to use the Latin word, as you’ll see in your service leaflet in the note at the end of the Nicene Creed. That is how much it mattered to the Church that we get it right when we think about the Trinity – a thousand-year-old Church split over who proceeds from whom! I am grateful that our Christian forebears thought so rigorously about the nature of God, and that they gave us an intellectual framework for speaking about the divine. It matters how we think about God. But no matter how subtle, even brilliant, our analysis, there are limits to what the intellect can do. God is not an object – even a very big object – that we can separate from other objects and then analyze, dissect, and probe, as we might study a star in the sky or a specimen in a lab. God is not an object at all, but a mysterious Presence that abides within and beyond all things; not another being among many beings, but the very Ground of all being; not a monolithic, omnipotent Man in the Sky but a dynamic communion of self-giving love. We can’t know the Trinity from the outside, by thinking about it, but only from the inside, by experiencing it. As St. Augustine put it long ago, “We come to God by love, not by navigation.” And he describes the Trinity very simply as the Lover, the Beloved, and the love that flows between. Step into that flow of love, and we are caught up in a love affair that has been going on since before time began. The divine Mystery that we call “God” is an ongoing exchange of love between God the Father – the Lover, the Creator – and God the Son, the Beloved. Flowing between them is the never-ending, tender love of the Holy Spirit. God is one, and yet God is also three, a dynamic relationship, a giving and receiving of love. When the early Councils of the Church debated the nature of God, they came up with a wonderful image of the Trinity as a dance. The word in Greek is perichoresis and it means a “dance-around” of love. Imagine that! At the center of reality, a dance of love is in full swing! Jesus came to invite us to join the dance. He was completely caught up in a love affair with God, his beloved abba, which is the Aramaic word for Father, and through the Holy Spirit, our counselor and comforter and the guide who leads us into all truth, we, too, are drawn into the flow of love between God the Father/Mother and God the Son. Our baptism in the name of the Triune God signals the fact that God is not just “out there,” but also “in here,” and that from the very beginning, God has made a home in us. 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 circulating everywhere. 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. Someone who knows, as we heard in the creation story from Genesis, that we are made in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:26), who is a dance-around of love – which is why, when we give and receive love, we feel most joyful and alive, and most truly and fully ourselves. The so-called “dominion” that God gives to human beings in the Genesis story is permission not to dominate or exploit the other creatures of the earth, but rather to love as God loves, to exercise a dominion of love that protects the wellbeing and integrity of God’s creation. So in the face of the climate crisis, we Christians have a chance to show who we really are: people whose very nature and truest identity is to love as God loves; people who are willing to face squarely the most challenging, even devastating facts; people who can reach into our reserves of courage, faith, and hope and can step out to bear witness to the God who entrusted the world to our care. There is so much that we can do. We can recycle more, drive less, and be sparing in our use of water. Maybe we can eat local, organic foods and support our local farms and land trusts. We can install insulation and cut back on AC. 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, 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 parts per million, and climbing. So we have work to do. And the dance of love that is circulating within us will empower us to do this work. The Diocese of Massachusetts recently decided to divest from fossil fuels, reasoning that if it’s unethical to ruin the world by burning fossil fuels, then it’s unethical to profit from that ruin. The Diocese of Western Massachusetts, where I serve, is in the midst of debating whether or not to divest its portfolio, and perhaps that it is a conversation that some of you can initiate or join here in the Diocese of Arizona. Divestment is one of the best strategies around for mobilizing a movement that will eventually accomplish what we really need: a stiff price on carbon and strong, binding international treaties. Meanwhile Bill McKibben has written an article calling for the largest rally in the history of the climate movement. It will be held in New York City on the weekend of September 20. As McKibben puts 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.” I’m not going to ask you to expand your carbon footprint by joining me in September at what’s being called the People’s Climate March, but maybe you can invite your New York friends to come, and your friends in New England, and anyone who lives, let’s say, a half-day’s train ride from Manhattan. The melting ice in West Antarctica may be unstoppable, but so is the love that made us and sustains us and 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, so many ways to help build a better world. On this Trinity Sunday we celebrate the living God who is beyond us, and among us, and within us, the God in whose image we are made, the God who meets us in every Eucharist and who sends us out to make love tangible and visible in the world. “Go,” the Risen Christ says to his disciples in today’s Gospel reading from Matthew. Don’t hang around and worship me. Go. Take part in my mission of mercy, justice, and compassion. Step into the dance and invite everyone else to join in, too. And, whatever comes, “remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). c) 2014 Margaret Bullitt-Jonas

1. http://www.nasa.gov/press/2014/may/nasa-uci-study-indicates-loss-of-west-antarctic-glaciers-appears-unstoppable/#.U3FiNflLWRO 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

Take a moment to feel the earth beneath your feet. As you inhale your next breath, take a moment to give thanks for the air that is flowing through your lungs. Notice the living world around you. In awakening to the gift of God’s creation, you are not alone! Today (June 5) is World Environment Day, and people around the world are turning with grateful hearts to oceans, rivers, and trees, to birds, marine animals, and mountains, as we honor our corner of creation and remember how interdependent everything is.

The United Nations invites us to celebrate World Environment Day, or WED, a pretty fine acronym evoking the possibility that one day human beings and the rest of creation will be “wed” together in love. That may sound impossibly quaint or far-fetched, given humanity’s collective assault on the natural world, from deforestation and the spread of toxic chemicals to species extinction and climate change. But it’s a vision that speaks to my heart. To play with the marriage imagery, I’d say that humanity and the rest of creation could definitely use some marital counseling.

So today is a good day to refresh our personal relationship with the natural world. We can ask ourselves: What kind of relationship am I creating with the living world around me? Do I hurtle through the day with my head down, absorbed in my own thoughts, wired for worry and ignoring my non-human kin? Or do I make myself available for encounter? Do I notice the hawk overhead, the shining leaf and passing cloud? Do I give myself permission to slow down and pay attention, to relish each breath and to bless the ground with every step? Is there something I can do this week to express my affection for the web of life of which I am a part, and my concern for its well-being?

Love every leaf. So says Father Zossima, the Russian Orthodox abbot in The Brothers Karamazov, a novel that I read in high school, studied in college, and studied yet again while completing my doctorate in Russian and comparative literature. From his deathbed, the abbot describes the ecstatic perception of reality that inspired his life.

Love all God’s creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love.^[1]

A version of that passage is taped to the back of every “Compassion Mandala” icon made by Robert Lentz, a wonderful image for meditation and prayer. The image shows a Christ-figure surrounded by golden light, bending over to embrace the Earth. Without a word, the image portrays the all-embracing compassion of Christ, whose love extends not just to each of us as individuals, and not just to human beings, but also to the whole creation.

If you want to safeguard our world, which is so loved by God (John 2:16), please join me in New York City on the weekend of September 20^th and 21^st for the largest rally in the history of the climate movement. As environmentalist Bill McKibben puts 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.” Here is a link for more information about the march, and to register, and here is Bill McKibben’s article, “A Call to Arms: An Invitation to Demand Action on Climate Change.”

I imagine a crowd of Christians from across New England, the Atlantic seaboard, and beyond, gathered on that September weekend in New York, along with thousands upon thousands of other people. I imagine us walking, singing and carrying banners from our respective churches. I imagine us witnessing to a creative and redeeming God who loves the world with an all-embracing love and whose Spirit empowers us to tackle the biggest challenge that human beings have ever faced. Find a way to come! I’ll see you there.

1. Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, translated by Constance Garnett, revised and edited by Ralph E. Matlaw, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1976, p. 298.

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.