creation care | Reviving Creation

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Easter April 20, 2024 Delivered by the Rev. Dr. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Southborough, MA John 10:11-18

Following the Good Shepherd on Earth Day

Friends, it’s been a joy to spend the day together, to celebrate the pilot phase of An Episcopal Path to Creation Justice, to learn from each other, and to feast on the wisdom of some of our generation’s most visionary thinkers.¹ And isn’t it fitting that we end the day in worship! Worship is at the heart of everything we do.

Saying that reminds me of an afternoon ten years ago when I had just started my job as Missioner for Creation Care in the Diocese of Western Mass. There was so much we needed to figure out, like: What kind of Creation care webpages do we need to build? What material should they include? Should we start a monthly newsletter? Creating a diocesan ministry around Creation care was all so new, and we were making it up as we went along. So, what did I do? I headed straight for Vicki Ix, our diocesan Canon for Communication, so that we could have a good long talk and do some brainstorming. That’s where we came up with the framework for Creation care that we’ve been using in our diocese ever since – Pray, Learn, Act, and Advocate. It’s the framework behind An Episcopal Path to Creation Justice, and it’s one that several other dioceses around the Church have begun to pick up, too. I like this framing because it’s so comprehensive, making it clear that a full-bodied, wholehearted, clear-eyed response to our Gospel calling to love God and neighbor commits us to keep learning, to keep acting, to keep advocating, and – yes – to keep praying.

*With the Rev. Rachel Field, Project Manager of An Episcopal Path to Creation Justice*

You’ll notice that in the sequence – Pray, Learn, Act, and Advocate – we put Pray first. We could have lined the words up alphabetically, so they begin with Act, but to me it was important to begin with Pray. Prayer is at the heart of everything we do. I think of that wonderful prayer for guidance in our prayerbook, the one where we ask God to direct us in all our doings so that “in all our works begun, continued, and ended in you, we may glorify your holy Name” (For Guidance, 832). Prayer comes first, before we do a thing. Prayer comes in the middle, in the very midst and heat of action. Prayer comes at the end, as we let go and put the results in God’s hands. Today our prayers take place on the weekend before Earth Day and the weekend in Easter when we celebrate Jesus as our Good Shepherd. Scripture gives us many ways to imagine Jesus. In the Gospel of John, for instance, Jesus names himself as “the bread of life” (6:35), “the light of the world” (8:12), “the door” (10:7), “the true vine” (15:1). Each image has its own resonance and meaning, but Jesus as “the good shepherd” is the image that many of us treasure most. I am grateful that this year Earth Sunday coincides with Good Shepherd Sunday, for I need to be drawn again into Jesus’ consoling and empowering presence. Maybe you do, too. As we take stock of the living world around us and consider the faltering health of our planet, we recognize that the path our society has traveled for the last two centuries has led to an unprecedented human emergency: we are hurtling toward climate catastrophe and watching the web of life unravel before our eyes. Great populations of creatures – even entire species – have vanished in less than 50 years. In what scientists call a “biological annihilation,” human beings have wiped out more than half the world’s creatures since 1970. Meanwhile, the relentless burning of fossil fuels and the logging of forests are accelerating climate change, pushing our planet to break records of all kinds. Last year was the world’s warmest year on record, by far. Linked to these ecological challenges are the social justice challenges of economic inequity and white racism. Racial justice is so closely tied to climate justice that I’ve heard it said that we wouldn’t have climate change without white supremacy. Where would we put our urban oilfields, our dumping grounds and trash, our biomass plants and toxic incinerators – if we weren’t willing to sacrifice Black, indigenous, and people-of-color communities? The Sierra Club’s Director of Organizational Transformation, Hop Hopkins, has pointed out that, “You can’t have climate change without sacrifice zones, and you can’t have sacrifice zones without disposable people, and you can’t have disposable people without racism.”² In a world of so much injustice, violence, and uncertainty, where do we turn for guidance, solace, and strength? We turn to the Good Shepherd of our souls. How does his presence speak to you today? One thing I notice is that, as our good shepherd, Jesus holds everyone and everything together. A shepherd is the person charged with keeping the flock intact, united, and heading in the right direction. I find it reassuring to contemplate the image of God in Christ drawing us into something unified and whole, because right now so much seem to be splintering and breaking apart. The tapestry of life that was once intact is being torn apart as greenhouse gas emissions disrupt the planet’s atmosphere. Our human communities are likewise being torn apart by political division, economic division, racial division.

But when we turn to the Good Shepherd, we touch the sacred unity within and beyond all things. We touch the Ground of our being. We meet the One through whom all things were made, in whom all things hold together, and toward whom all things converge (Colossians 1:16-17). At a time when so much seems to be divided and falling apart, we’re invited to sense the underlying wholeness and unity of all things and to sense the love that embraces all things, connects all things, sustains all things. On the surface, in the realm of our five senses, we may notice only differences, only what separates us from each other, but in the deep center of reality we meet the good shepherd who is holding everything together and luring us into communion with each other and with God. We hear the shepherd’s voice when we take time to quiet ourselves in prayer, to sit in solitude and silence and listen to the inner voice of love that is always sounding in our hearts. The good shepherd is the one who knows us through and through and who calls us each by name. Held in the embrace of that intimate love, we don’t have to keep trying to hold ourselves together – we are free to let go, free to fall apart, free to let ourselves feel our grief, feel our anger and fear as we respond to the climate crisis and to all the challenges of our lives. The good shepherd is there to hold what we cannot hold by ourselves, there to listen, there to protect and keep company, there to help us understand how deeply we are loved – and not just we ourselves, but all people – and not just all people, but all beings, the whole of God’s creation. That very personal experience of being loved keeps getting larger! The circle of love keeps expanding! As Jesus says, “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd” (John 10:16-17). It’s as if, beneath all the ways that human beings try to separate ourselves from each other and from the rest of the natural world, presuming that we can dominate and destroy with impunity – Jesus keeps calling us forward into one living, sacred whole.

*One of our three speakers, Robin Wall Kimmerer, gave a moving presentation about what it means to live in harmony with and to restore the land.*

We belong together for we are all kin. Our Good Shepherd created, redeems, and sustains the whole Creation, and that’s why we’re using such expansive prayers today – prayers that seek to honor the sacredness of the whole living world that is so lit up with the presence of God. We may be praying inside a building today, but our prayers are joining the prayers that are already going on outside, uttered in the wind and sunshine and by the birds and trees! Our voices are joining the voices of all Creation as we give thanks to God for loving us into being. When we tap into that deep-down truth of our basic belovedness, we discover fresh energy for life. We experience the same wave of Easter hope that filled the first followers of Jesus. When they saw that the stone had been rolled away from the tomb, when they met the Risen Christ in their midst and in their hearts, when they realized that life and not death would have the last word and that nothing could separate them from the love of God, their lives were charged with fresh meaning and purpose. They realized that they belonged to a sacred mystery that was larger than themselves, to a love that would never let them go. Sure – they were still mortal and frail, still vulnerable and imperfect people in a big, chaotic world, but they knew that they participated in a long story of salvation to which they could contribute, every moment of their lives, by choosing compassion over indifference, kindness over cruelty, love over fear. Their inner liberation gave them courage to resist the forces of death and destruction, and to obey God rather than any human authority (Acts 5:29). Indeed, the first Christians got into all kinds of trouble. Peter and the other early Christians were accused of “turning the world upside down” (Acts 17:6), for their devotion to the Good Shepherd apparently led many of them to spend as much time inside as outside the walls of a jail. Their witness to a transcendent, all-embracing Love shook the foundations of their society. That same wave of Easter hope fills Christians today and carries us now, every one of us who feels impelled to join our Creator in re-weaving the web of life, in building a gentler and more just society, and in getting us into what Representative John Lewis called “good trouble” as we fight to keep fossil fuels in the ground and to dismantle white supremacy. In a moment we will be nourished at this table as we share in Christ’s body and blood, and then we’ll hold a simple ceremony of commissioning as we bless each other on our way. On this Easter-Earth-Day weekend, we give thanks for the Good Shepherd who laid down his life for us, and we renew our resolve to be a blessing to the Earth that God entrusted to our care. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 1. At our Earth Day conference we heard from Robin Wall Kimmerer, Bill McKibben, and Mary Evelyn Tucker. 2. Hop Hopkins, “Racism Is Killing the Planet” The ideology of white supremacy leads the way toward disposable people and a disposable natural world, June 8, 2020, https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/racism-killing-planet

I am back from a trip to Assisi, Italy, to join an Anglican delegation of liturgists, theologians, and church leaders at an ecumenical gathering hosted by the Laudato Si’ Research Institute, and sponsored by the Anglican Communion, the Lutheran World Federation, the World Communion of Reformed Churches, the World Council of Churches, and other partners.

The seminar had a mouthful of a title: The Feast of Creation and the Mystery of Creation: Ecumenism, Theology, Liturgy, and Signs of the Times in Dialogue. But its focus was clear: Has the time come to add a Feast of Creation to the liturgical calendars of Western Churches?

It was a delight to make new friends and a thrill to meet the Rev. Canon Dr. Rachel Mash at long last. Based in South Africa, she serves as secretary of the Anglican Communion Environmental Network, and she is one of the leading lights in the movement to support a Season of Creation. In her remarks at the conference, “A new season for the calendar of the Church? I hope so!,” she gave a brief overview of Anglican engagement in a Season of Creation and explained why many of us now believe that the time is ripe for the Feast of Creation to be formally integrated into Western liturgical calendars. (I hasten to correct two points in her address: first, I am by no means solely responsible for the Season of Creation worship guides that were released in many Episcopal dioceses in 2022 and 2023 – my colleague, the Rev. John Lein, did most of the heavy lifting; and second, 28 dioceses, not 16, endorsed last year’s edition.)

The ecumenical seminar began and ended with prayer. Before plunging into questions of theology, liturgy, and practice, we spent an afternoon in the garden behind San Damiano, the church that St. Francis re-built and where he wrote most of his Canticle of the Creatures. In the company of birdsong and wind, sunshine and grasses, we sang and prayed our way through his poem. Then, after walking back into town, we gathered outside Cittadella Laudato Si for a prayerful, sunset contemplation of Brother Sun. Again, after the conference ended, many of us hiked in silence up Mount Subasio, the mountain where St. Francis and his followers lived and prayed in caves, and we shared in an ecumenical outdoor Eucharist at the altar of St. Francis.

Conversations at the ecumenical seminar were lively, intense, and sometimes deeply moving. None of us yet knows what will come of this effort. But I do know that it was a blessing to spend time with global Christians from diverse communities who share a passion both for the God who creates, redeems, and sustains all things and for the beautiful, threatened planet that God loves so much.

Here’s an excerpt from a prayer composed by one of the liturgical scholars who attended the Assisi conference, with my suggested addition in brackets.

O loving God, who spoke
and all things were created –
O eternal Word made flesh,
who became one with your creation –
O creator Spirit, who breathes in us,
who renews the face of the earth –
O holy and glorious Trinity,
we praise you and we pray to you
with all our heart!
…
Bless us with clarity and courage
for our mission to cherish and tend
earth and air, seas and rivers,
peoples and communities.
Guide your Church
to the patterns of prayer that will form us
to be [loving kin of our fellow creatures] and
good stewards
of all that you have entrusted to us.
O holy and glorious Trinity, Creator God,
we praise you and we pray to you
with all our heart. Amen.

___________________________________________________________________________________________

Episcopal News Service published a good article (3/25/24) about the seminar: “Anglicans take part in ecumenical seminar in Assisi about God as creator“

Rev. Margaret created a short video for the Episcopal Church in Colorado,“Climate Crisis & Reorienting Ourselves to Hope.” It’s the final video in a five-week Lenten series for the diocese, entitled Journey through Lament: Leaning into the Brokenness of Our Communities and World.

You can view the video here.

Questions for reflection and discussion:

1. What happens in your body when you don’t feel hope?
2. Have you ever thought of hope as having power?
3. The Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas says that hope is forward facing. What do you think she means by this?
4. Hope moves us out of withdrawal and into engagement. What is something you can do personally when it comes to the changing climate and ecological devastation? What is something we can do together?
5. What is the difference between hope and Christian hope?
6. The Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas says that Christian hope holds hands with faith and love. How do you nourish your hope with faith and love, so it doesn’t fade away?
7. What does it look like to take hold of faith when we’re in a hopeless place?
8. What do you love so much that you would give everything, perhaps your very life, to protect it?
9. How do we share our deep Christian hope with people outside our congregations?
10. The video mentions Rebecca Solnit’s quote that “Action is impossible without hope,” and “Hope should shove you out the door.” How can you commit to the future so that the present is inhabitable?
11. The Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas says that her ultimate hope is to be “the possibility of the presence and love of God being fully expressed in the world.” She invites us to name our ultimate hope and to live inside it. What is your ultimate hope?

The Episcopal Church and a new Season of Creation liturgy

Anglican Communion Environmental Network (ACEN) is creating a series of success stories about environmental justice at the parish and diocesan levels, “Action for Change: Mobilizing the Church for Environmental Justice.” ACEN released a webinar in which Rev. Margaret tells the story of how she and Rev. John Eliott Lein created a Season of Creation liturgy in 2023 that was authorized by 27 dioceses in the Episcopal Church. The video was just released and is about 7.5 minutes long.

I particularly commend two other short videos in this series: a video by the Rev. Laurel Dykstra about Salal + Cedar, the extraordinary eco-justice ministry that she founded in the Anglican Diocese of New Westminster, centered in Vancouver, British Columbia, and a video by the Rev. Rachel Mash (Environmental Coordinator for the Anglican Church of Southern Africa) on “Greening Your Canons,” a brilliant way, as she puts it, to “change the DNA of the Church.”

Sermon for the Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost (October 15, 2023) by the Rev. Dr. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas and posted at Preaching for God’s World Matthew 22:1-14

Your invitation to love’s banquet

Jesus’ parable of the wedding feast has been interpreted in all sorts of ways, some of them helpful – some of them, not so much. Over the years, commentators have interpreted the parable as an angry rebuke of the religious authorities who rejected Jesus; as an allegory to justify the destruction of Jerusalem by Roman soldiers in the year 70 C.E.; and as an account of why early Christian communities opened their doors to Gentiles as well as Jews. At their worst, interpretations of the parable smack of conscious or unconscious anti-Semitism; at their best – well, let’s give it a shot. What meaning can this parable have for us today? In particular, can it give us any spiritual guidance in these turbulent times?

Let’s take it from the top. Once upon a time there was a king – a wise, all-powerful king who decided to hold a wedding banquet for his son. He got everything ready and prepared a feast of the finest foods. He sent out invitations to his chosen guests, saying “Everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet” (Matthew 22:4). But the guests refused to come. Twice they were asked, and twice they turned him down. They “made light” of the invitation, the story tells us, and some “went away, one to his farm, another to his business” (Matthew 22:5), while the rest attacked and killed the messengers. If we read this through the lens of spiritual experience, what might this part of the story mean? What comes to my mind are the many times that I refuse those invitations to the feast. Too often I act like one of those guests who is handed a beautiful, hand-engraved wedding invitation: I cross my arms and say, “Nope; not interested.” Has this ever happened to you? Maybe you’re sitting indoors, and you’ve been inside all day, getting some work done, and you look up and notice that the sun is now low in the sky, casting a marvelous golden light across the purple underbelly of the clouds, and some part of you stares and says Oh! And you want to get up and gaze out the window for a while – or even step outside. But you don’t. Or maybe there’s a man with a loose gray coat and an unshaven face who is standing on the sidewalk where you just parked your car, and as you put a quarter in the meter, he mumbles a request: could you give him money to buy a cup of coffee? You look across the street and sure enough, there’s a coffee shop right there; even if you don’t want to give the man cash, you could perfectly well walk across the street and get him a cup of coffee. But you don’t. Or maybe you feel stressed and distracted, or maybe sad and discouraged, and you sense a deep tug to prayer. You know that new life will blossom in you only if you get yourself to sit down and pay attention to what is going on inside, only if you let yourself rest for a while in God’s embrace. But do you let yourself pause to take in that nourishment? You don’t. You’ve got other things to do – good things, important things. That inner tug can wait. If you ignore it long enough, maybe it will go away. Invitations to love’s banquet can take many forms, and they come not just once, but every day, and many times a day – maybe as an invitation to gaze at the beauty of the world, or as an invitation to be generous, or as an invitation to pause for a while to give the lover of our souls our full and undivided attention in prayer. Yet how easy it is to say No! I have a million excuses – I’m too busy, too focused on my own agenda, too distracted or overloaded to relinquish my worried, busy mind and to let my awareness open and to drop into my heart. That’s a loss, because deep at the center of our being is an unquenchable thirst for union with the divine. Deep in our guts, our bones, our very DNA, is an irrepressible yearning to move toward the Source of life, the All, the Ultimate, the Holy One. Call it what you will – human beings the world over, whatever their religion, share a desire for what one writer calls “the union on this earth and in this body of the human with the divine. This is the true spiritual marriage, the consummation of love that in one way or another is the aim of every ritual and every practice in every religion.”¹ It’s no wonder that the Bible so often uses wedding imagery to express the complete and intimate union of God and God’s people, or of God and the individual soul. Sometimes the Bible depicts the bridegroom as God; sometimes the bridegroom is Christ. Sometimes, as in this parable, we are invited to be guests at the wedding, and sometimes we ourselves are the bridegroom or we ourselves are the bride. Love poets and mystics know all about the ecstasy of spiritual marriage. Take, for instance, St. Francis of Assisi, whose feast day we recently celebrated. Francis gazed deeply into the natural world as if into a mirror, and he saw reflected back to him the outpouring love of God. For him, God was not an entity “out there” – God was within him and around him; God infused and sustained and shone out from all things. Here is a little poem adapted from St. Francis²: Such love does the sky now pour, that whenever I stand in a field, I have to wring out the light when I get home. The human longing for union with God is universal, but how quickly we repress it, ignore it, or push it away! Who knows why? Maybe we don’t want to feel our need and vulnerability; maybe we’re afraid to relinquish control; maybe we’re convinced we’re not good enough and we can’t possibly be loved that much. But if we keep pushing God away, if we keep shutting ourselves off from the invitation to love and to be loved, then before long we will start to experience God as the enemy, and that’s the next part of the parable: some guests mock the messengers and blow them off, and other guests seize, mistreat, and kill them. The passage tells us that “the king was enraged” (Matthew 22:7). He sends in his troops, destroys the murderers, and burns their city down. As a spiritual story, this parable is quite accurate and exact: when we turn ourselves into the enemy of God, eventually we begin to experience God as an enemy. God has not changed, but we have – we have pushed God away and have deliberately alienated ourselves from the divine. Before any spiritual union can possibly take place, maybe that stubborn, resisting part of the self needs to be brought low and to fall away. All of us who, at some point, have made a mess of our lives, who have made terrible mistakes and headed too far down a willful, self-centered, and defiant path, know what that’s like. Sometimes the ego must be crucified before the soul can be born. Yet the invitation to love never ceases. In fact, it keeps getting wider, deeper, more expansive, and more inclusive. There is no guest list now. The king’s love reaches out to everyone. The wedding is ready, he says; the feast is about to be served and the food is hot. He sends messengers into the streets to invite everyone to come, both good and bad, and they stream into the wedding hall until it is filled at last. If you read this as a story of the interior life, it seems that only now – after our pride and defiance have been humbled and brought low – only now can we understand that every part of ourselves is being invited to the feast, that everything in us that we have cast away, abandoned, and rejected is being invited into the presence of God to be welcomed and healed and made whole. Our whole selves are invited to the feast, and everybody else is invited with us. There is no need now to shrug hopelessly and to say that we must settle for being alienated from each other, that we have keep living driven, restless, distracted lives, that we have to make peace with poverty, with racial injustice and economic injustice, that we have to condone destroying the earth and that we have to tolerate an endless succession of wars. Now we know the truth: we have been invited to feast at the table of divine life. We have been invited into the very heart of God, and in the strength of that divine presence we are sent out into the world to bear witness to God’s justice and mercy and love. The parable ends with the startling little story of the guest who comes to the feast with no wedding robe and is summarily bound hand and foot and thrown into the outer darkness (Matthew 22:11-14). Maybe this is a reminder to stay humble: God loves us completely and invites everyone to the feast, but we have our own work to do: to clothe ourselves day by day with the intention to love. As St. Paul puts it in Colossians, our job is to “[strip] off the old self with its practices and [to clothe ourselves] with the new self…” The passage continues: “As God’s chosen ones… clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and…forgive each other… Above all, clothe yourselves with love” (Colossians 3:9-10, 12-14). In short, we wear the right clothes to the wedding feast of life when we clothe ourselves with love. We are living through a time of extraordinary stress, a time in which each of us must clarify who we are and what we value. So, here is what I want to tell you. When love’s holy invitation comes, I want to say yes. When love calls me to marvel at the sunset, to stop and gape at the beauty of the world, I want to say yes. When love calls me to walk across the street to bring someone a cup of hot coffee and to add some honey to it, and some milk, as well, because that’s the way he says he likes it, I want to say yes. When the divine call comes to sit down in prayer and to give the lover of my soul my full and undivided attention, I want to say yes. As Mary Oliver writes in her poem, “When Death Comes,”³ When it’s over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. I want to say yes to life, yes to God, yes to the One in whose invisible, irresistible Presence we step fully into life, daring to connect deeply with ourselves and each other, refusing to be spectators, refusing to hold back, stepping out to create a world – and to fight for a world – in which everyone has a chance to experience how deeply God loves them. The banquet table is prepared, Jesus says to us. Will we come to the feast? I will give the last word to Rumi, a Sufi poet who ends one of his poems⁴ like this: On a day when the wind is perfect, the sail just needs to open and the love starts. Today is such a day. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 1. Roger Housden, For Lovers of God Everywhere: Poems of the Christian Mystics, (New York City: Hay House, Inc., 2009), xiii. 2. St. Francis of Assisi, “Wring Out My Clothes,” in Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West, translated by Daniel Ladinsky (New York, Penguin Compass, 2002), 48. 3. Mary Oliver, “When Death Comes,” New and Selected Poems (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992), 10. 4. Jalaludin Rumi, “On a Day When the Wind is Perfect,” in Love Poems from God, 80.

In a historic moment, on Oct. 4, 29 U.S. denominations and faith organizations joined together to launch One Home One Future, a multifaith campaign to strengthen vitality, relevance, and community connection across generations to care for God’s creation in local congregations nationwide.

This campaign is organized by Blessed Tomorrow, the faith arm of ecoAmerica, a network of major institutions and thought leaders in five sectors — faith, health, communities, higher education and business — who have inspired millions of Americans on climate change in counties and communities nationwide.

The One Home One Future campaign springs from the conviction that people of faith have a moral imperative to safeguard children, communities, and future generations. The holy scriptures of the world’s Abrahamic religions teach that God’s creation — the Earth — is sacred and that we are called to protect each other and the world that God entrusted to our care.

For instance, in Jewish texts we read: “Look at My works! How beautiful and praiseworthy they are. Everything that I have created, I created for you. Take care not to damage and destroy My world, for if you destroy it, there is no one to repair it after you” (Midrash Kohelet, Rabbah 7:13).

In the sacred writings of Islam we read: “The world is beautiful and verdant, and verily God, be He Exalted, has made you His stewards in it, and He sees how you acquit yourselves” (The Prophet Muhammad, Saheeh Muslim). In my own Christian tradition, we read that Jesus Christ came to reconcile our relationships with each other, with God, and with the land. “Through Christ, God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross” (Colossians 1:19-20).

With climate change bringing New England unprecedented bouts of extreme rainfall and flooding, sticky heat, unpredictable seasons, and increased rates of Lyme disease because of the expanded range of ticks, it is painfully clear that climate change is not a threat in a far-off future or a faraway place but is already a here-and-now reality. The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has called for the immediate reduction of planetary carbon emissions to levels 45% below 2010 levels by 2030 to avoid climate catastrophe.

We have seven years to meet these IPCC goals. Auspiciously, the number 7 is also prominent and important in sacred texts and faith traditions, representing wholeness, perfection and completion.

We can meet these goals! But more of us are needed to help advance solutions.

Over 70% of people in the United States are concerned about climate change, but many do not think that those around them are concerned or know what to do to make a difference. Thankfully, our local municipalities are beginning to organize an effective response. Northampton has launched a new climate action department and Easthampton is developing a climate action plan.

Local leaders and residents understand that we need to quickly reduce emissions, increase the adoption of clean energy alternatives, and improve our communities’ capacity to withstand climate shocks.

Meanwhile, leaders of many faiths are putting aside past differences and coming together to broaden inclusion for climate action. As Pope Francis wrote in “Laudato Si’,” “We need a conversation which includes everyone, since the environmental challenge we are undergoing, and its human roots, concern and affect us all … We require a new and universal solidarity.”

That is why the Episcopal Church and the Diocese of Western Massachusetts are joining over 25 denominations and faith organizations that have come together to create One Home One Future, a seven-year multifaith campaign to strengthen congregations and scale creation care and climate action in congregations and communities across the U.S.

Through One Home One Future, people of faith and spiritual people are answering the call to care for God’s creation and to ensure that our common home is thriving for our children and future generations. I hope you will join me in taking visible action in our homes, congregations, workplaces and communities, and in helping others to do the same.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Rev. Dr. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas is an Episcopal priest who works to advance climate justice for the two Episcopal dioceses in Massachusetts and for Southern New England Conference, United Church of Christ. She is a member of the Leadership Circle of Blessed Tomorrow and lives with her husband in Northampton.

This essay was published on October 5, 2023, as a guest column in the print edition of Daily Hampshire Gazette (Northampton, MA).

Why do we need to preach on Creation care?

In April 2023, Rev. Margaret gave the opening presentation for a webinar hosted by Church of England Environment Programme. The webinar, “Preaching for God’s World,” featured an international panel of speakers. Her presentation, “Why do we need to preach on Creation care?” is posted on the Church of England’s YouTube channel and at the top of this webpage: Environment in prayer, worship and teaching | The Church of England. The entire webinar is here: Preaching for God’s World Including the environment in your preaching – YouTube.

Sermon for the Feast of the Transfiguration, August 6, 2023 Delivered by the Rev. Dr. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas at the Chapel of St. James the Fisherman, Wellfleet, MA Exodus 34:29-35 Psalm 99 2 Peter 1:13-21 Luke 9:28-36

Transfiguration: When we see Earth shining

We couldn’t ask for more powerful readings than the ones we consider today on the feast day of the Transfiguration. Today we are summoned to the mountaintop to celebrate the transforming power of God. In our first reading, Moses is coming down from Mount Sinai, carrying the Ten Commandments that establish the covenant between God and God’s people. He has been praying on the mountain, listening to God with the love and attentiveness with which one listens to a friend (Ex. 33:11), and the skin of his face is shining (Ex. 34:29). He is radiant with God’s glory.

Today’s Gospel passage from Luke is also set on a mountain. Soon after Jesus tells his disciples that he will die and rise again, he takes with him Peter, John, and James and goes up on the mountain to pray. In the solitude of that holy mountain, with its long, sweeping vistas and its cold, clean air, Jesus’ prayer grows into an intense religious experience that recalls the experience of Moses. “While (Jesus) was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white” (Luke 9:29). To describe this change, Greek manuscripts use the word “metamorphosis” (metemorphothe); Latin manuscripts use the word “transfiguration” (transfiguratus est). Whatever you call it, it’s the same thing: at the top of the mountain, Jesus is swept up by the love that sustains the universe. What Dante calls “the love that moves the sun and other stars”¹ so completely embraces Jesus that who he really is, who he has always been, is briefly revealed. A dazzling brightness emanates from his face, his body, even his clothes. The sacred radiance at the center of reality is shining through him, bursting through his seams, streaming from his pores, and even the three sleepy disciples can see it. What just happened? The holy presence that secretly abides within every person and every part of the created world has suddenly, briefly become visible to the human eye. The vivid image of Jesus lit up from within aligns with the experience of mystics from every religion who speak of a vibrant, shimmering energy or light that flows through everything, although usually we don’t see it. In Asia, the cosmic life force is called chi in Chinese and prana in Sanskrit, and in many Eastern traditions, enlightenment is associated with a flow of energy throughout the body.² Christian mystics speak of the Holy Spirit as a Presence or energy that moves through our bodies and the whole body of Creation. For Christians, there is something deeply personal in this energy: it is the dynamic, creative Presence of the Holy Spirit. When we sense its presence in ourselves or in the outside world, God seems to light up the edges of things or to shine out from within them. We see the hidden depth behind the surface of ordinary reality. The eternal makes itself known to us, and we may experience it as light, although it is beyond the reach of ordinary sight. That’s where the language of paradox and poetry comes in, where mystics speak of a “dazzling darkness” or a “dark radiance,” just as in this passage Luke uses the language of paradox when he describes Jesus’ experience in terms of both a dazzling light and an overshadowing cloud (Luke 9:29,34). Something about perceiving that radiant darkness awakens our love.

*Breezes flow through the Chapel of St. James the Fisherman in Wellfleet, as we join the rest of the natural world in praising God.*

We may not consider ourselves mystics, but anyone who has ever been overcome by the beauty of the world – anyone who, in contemplating the world, has ever experienced a wave of wonder and gratefulness and awe – anyone who has ever spent time looking into the eyes of a baby or studying the details of a leaf – anyone who has ever gazed for a while at a mountain range or watched the sparkling waters of the ocean knows what it’s like to see the hidden radiance of Christ, whose living presence fills the whole creation. Whenever we look at the world – whenever we look at each other – with eyes of love, we see the hidden radiance, the light that is shining within each person and each thing, although they may know nothing about it. Seeing the world with eyes of love is to see the world shining – to see its suffering, yes; to see its brokenness and imperfection, yes; but, also, to see it as cherished by God, as precious in God’s sight, as shining with God’s light. To see the world with eyes of love is to see it with God’s eyes. As we gaze at Jesus transfigured on the mountaintop, shining with the radiance of God, we see what Moses saw, what Jesus saw, and what poet Gerard Manley Hopkins saw: “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.” I believe this is one of the great gifts that people of faith can offer the world in this perilous time: the perception of creation as a sacred, living whole, lit up with the glory of God. For let’s be clear: we were born into a society that does not see the Earth like that. Most of us were not taught to see the natural world as sacred and lit up with God’s glory. It’s as if a veil were placed over our minds, just as Moses placed a veil over his face (Ex. 34:33). When our minds are veiled, we no longer see God’s glory. We see the natural world as nothing more than the backdrop to what really matters: the human drama. Nature becomes something to be ignored, used up, exploited at will, dominated, assaulted without a second thought. We experience ourselves and other human beings as essentially separate from and even “above” the rest of creation, entitled to do anything we want to it, with no regard for its integrity or value or needs or rights. By now we know where that perception of the world has taken us: scientists are reporting with alarm that the web of life is unraveling before our eyes and that human civilization is at risk of collapse. Gazing at Jesus shining on the mountain is like medicine for our troubled spirits. It removes the veil from our eyes and restores our inward sight. We are gazing on the one who loved us into being, the one who tells us that life and not death will have the last word, the one in whom all things hold together (Col. 1:17) and whose presence fills the whole creation (Eph. 4:10). We are gazing at the one who, at the end of Mark’s Gospel, commissions his disciples to go into all the world and proclaim the Gospel good news to the whole creation (Mark 16:15). That’s our mission, as disciples of Jesus: to bring good news in word and deed to the whole creation, for the whole world is shining with the love and presence of God. So, when we see God’s creation being desecrated and destroyed – when we see God’s good Earth being poisoned by toxins and pollutants, and laid waste by corporate greed – when we learn from scientists that a mass extinction event is now underway, a “biological annihilation”– when we recognize that burning coal, gas, and oil is pushing the planet to break stunning new records for heat, causing droughts, floods, and monster hurricanes, drowning cities, and accelerating wildfires – when we understand that the people hurt first and hardest by the effects of a changing climate are the poor – when we realize that, unless we change course fast, we will not leave our children and our children’s children a habitable world – then we are moved to take action. For we want to bear witness to the love of Jesus that is shining on the mountain and shining in our hearts. We want to honor the sacredness of God’s creation and to protect it from further harm. When it comes to tackling climate change, there is so much that individuals can do – maybe we can fly less, drive less, drive electric, install solar panels, avoid the clothes dryer and hang our laundry out to dry, eat less meat and move to a plant-based diet – and so on. You know the drill. Making personal changes is important, but because of the scope and speed of the climate crisis, we need more than individual action – we also need systemic change. The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change states very clearly that we must transform our society and economy at a rate and scope that are historically unprecedented. To do that, we must join hands and work together for collective action. What are some possibilities? Here on Cape Cod, we can join Faith Communities Environmental Network, which inspires eco-justice on Cape Cod and the Islands and is part of the Cape Cod Climate Change Collaborative. Or we can join 350Mass, the grassroots, climate action group in Massachusetts that has a node right here on Cape Cod. If we have money or credit cards in one of the four biggest banks that fund fossil fuels – Citibank, Chase, Bank of America, or Wells Fargo – we can move our money out and join the campaign to pressure banks to stop financing fossil fuel expansion.³ If we’re over 60, we can join ThirdAct.org, the new group started by Bill McKibben just a year or two ago that has already attracted thousands of old people like me who want to do everything we can to slow climate change and protect democracy. Last but not least, in September the U.N. Secretary General will host a first-of-its-kind Climate Ambition Summit to demand that world leaders commit to stopping the expansion of fossil fuels that drive the climate emergency. I hope that you will join me and thousands of other people who will take to the streets of New York City on September 17 in the March to End Fossil Fuels, the largest climate march since the pandemic. There is so much we can do! Together we intend to build a world in which everyone can thrive. I’ve made a one-page handout of resources that you can pick up at the door to the church. Today we stand on the mountaintop, soaking up the light of Christ and letting ourselves be filled with his love. Even now, the glory that shone through Jesus Christ is shining in our hearts, longing to blaze up like fire and to melt away everything in us that is less than love. As we give ourselves to the great work of healing God’s creation, I trust that we, too, are shining. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________- 1.William Johnston, “Arise, My Love…”: Mysticism for a New Era, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2000, 115. 2. Johnston, “Arise,” 115. 3. For more information about this campaign, visit ThirdAct.org. For suggestions regarding climate-friendly credit cards, check this pdf produced by 350Mass: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1R8jbw3laMOcOrilbnOsQdVlM7MDkf1zP/view?pli=1

Sermon for the Third Sunday of Easter, April 23, 2023 Delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas at Sts. James and Andrew, Greenfield Luke 24:13-35

Walking our way to climate hope: Earth Sunday

May the grace of God enfold us, the love of Christ uphold us, and the Spirit of truth set us free. Amen.

Friends, what a blessing to be with you as we celebrate Earth Sunday. Thank you for inviting me to join you and thank you to everyone who contributed to creating this special service. As you know, I serve our diocese as your Missioner for Creation Care, and I travel around preaching, speaking, and leading retreats about our vocation as followers of Jesus to protect and heal God’s Creation. If you’d like to know more about what I’m up to, I hope you’ll visit my website, RevivingCreation.org.

I’m especially happy to be here because of your efforts to heal the living world entrusted to our care. Let’s give a shoutout to your Green Team for the monthly Environmental Sunday Series and to your Youth Group. I shouldn’t have been surprised a few days ago when I received a newsletter from the Anglican Communion Environmental Network – a newsletter, by the way, that goes out to Anglicans all around the world – and noticed that it included a story of this church hosting a panel of teenagers advocating for bold, collective action to address climate change. As your rector commented when I shared this news: Whoa! Thank you for the ways you bear witness to the Lord of life.

*Altar, Sts. James & Andrew, Greenfield, MA*

We have a wonderful Gospel text to consider this morning, the third Sunday of Easter. It’s a story that’s familiar to most of us: two confused and grief-stricken disciples walk the road to Emmaus and unexpectedly encounter the risen Christ. I can’t imagine a better story to work with on Earth Sunday, for it expresses in a nutshell how those of us engaged in the battle to save life as it has evolved on Earth can draw strength and sustenance from the wellsprings of our faith. That’s the gift that Christianity can bring to a frightened, troubled world: the gift of spiritual teachings and practices that empower us to move from passive despair to active hope, from confusion to clarity. So, let’s join the disciples on their walk and see if we can find our place in the story. It’s late in the afternoon of the day of the resurrection. We don’t know exactly who the two disciples are, but since they share a home, it’s likely that they are husband and wife. One of them is named Cleopas, and if this is the Clopas referred to in John’s Gospel (John 19:25), then his wife, Mary, was among the group of women who stayed with Jesus at the cross. As the two of them head down the dusty road, late in the afternoon of the first Easter, they are struggling to speak about Jesus’ crucifixion. Surely, they are traumatized: they’ve just witnessed an act of unspeakable brutality and violence inflicted on someone they dearly loved. Not only that – the cruelty and suffering they’ve witnessed has triggered a crisis of meaning: what can they trust, what can they believe in, what kind of future is possible now that the one whom they hoped would save them has been killed? To make matters even more bewildering, they’ve heard a rumor of hope – reports that Jesus has risen from the dead. None of this makes sense. They’ve got things to talk about. We’ve got things to talk about, too. What would you bring to a conversation about the crucifixion of Mother Earth? Maybe you’d confess your heartache about dying coral, melting glaciers, and thawing tundra, or your anxiety about sea-level rise, massive droughts, and severe weather. Maybe you’d speak about your grief for the species that are vanishing and for those that are struggling to hold on, as their habitat is swallowed up by palm oil plantations and cattle ranches, by freeways and malls. Maybe you’d express outrage that so many corporate and political powers are determined to perpetuate and even expand the extraction of coal, gas, and oil, despite the fact that burning fossil fuels is causing a dramatic rise in global temperatures, and every living system of the world is affected and in decline. We are living at a decisive moment in history, for climate science has made it clear that we won’t be able to leave our children and our children’s children a habitable world unless we change course fast. We need to talk, just as Cleopas and his unnamed companion needed to talk. We may not think that other people are frightened or concerned, but in fact they are. A recent survey¹ of 10,000 children and young people in ten countries around the world found that 59% were very or extremely worried about climate change; more than half reported each of the following emotions – sad, anxious, angry, powerless, helpless, and guilty; almost half of these young people said their feelings about climate change negatively affected their daily life and functioning; and fully three-quarters said that they think the future is frightening. Is this a good time to talk, to name our fears and share our concerns? You bet it is. Talking about climate change with friends, family, and co-workers – and with our elected leaders – is an essential step to building momentum for change. When we end what’s been called “climate silence” and start talking with each other, start walking the road of life together and speaking about our deepest fears and naming our possibly very faint traces of hope, today’s Gospel story assures us that even though we may know nothing about it, Jesus is walking beside us. That’s what the two sad disciples discovered, to their great surprise. It seems they traveled miles with an apparent stranger and talked with him at length without recognizing that the one they longed for was walking right beside them. It’s a poignant scene, for how often we, too, get lost in our sorrows and fears and have no idea that the risen Christ is walking with us. Maybe it’s a frustrating scene, too, for Jesus sounds impatient when he bursts out, “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe!” I think it’s a funny scene, too, for the person whom the disciples are lecturing about recent events in Jerusalem is the very person who knows more about those events and their meaning than anyone else on Earth. As Frederick Buechner once put it, “Blessed are they who get the joke.” Our Gospel story invites us to acknowledge and name our climate grief and anxiety and to give thanks for the assurance that God’s love is walking with us, sustaining us, and mysteriously present with us, even though, like the two disciples, for a while we may know nothing about it. That’s the deep truth of Christian faith, a truth that I pray the whole world will come to see and know in this perilous time, for God’s abiding love alone can guide us forward and help us forge a new path, a new, more excellent way of walking on the Earth. What happens next in today’s story? When the disciples fail to recognize Jesus, he patiently interprets all of Scripture to them until they begin to perceive and understand. Jesus is gentle and deeply respectful: he doesn’t force himself upon the two disciples as they approach the village, but instead he walks ahead, as if he were going on. He waits for the two disciples to invite him to stay with them, and only then does he enter their home. And it’s there, around the table, when he takes bread, blesses, and breaks it, that their eyes are opened, and they recognize who he is. Our story not only conveys the deep truth of Christ’s abiding presence with us – it also provides two practices for experiencing the risen Christ: reading and reflecting on Scripture, and the blessing and breaking of bread. When it comes to Scripture, the eyes of our faith are being opened to perceive the deep ecological wisdom in the Bible. Like many of us, I grew up believing that the Bible cared only about human beings and God, as if for some reason only one species, Homo sapiens, was worthy of God’s attention. It turns out that this interpretation of the Bible is far too small, for in fact, from the first words of Genesis, when God created all that is and pronounced it “very good” (Gen. 1:30) to the last pages of the Book of Revelation, which speak of “a new heaven and a new earth” (Rev. 21:1), the sweep of our salvation history embraces the whole creation. The New Testament tells us that Christ lived, died, and rose not only to heal the human soul and the human community, but also to heal the Earth community, to reconcile all things on earth and in heaven, “making peace through the blood of his cross” (Colossians 1:19-20). As Archbishop Desmond Tutu once put it, the “supreme work”² of Jesus Christ is to reconcile us to God, to one another, and to God’s whole creation. This means that caring about the health of the Earth, and the fate of the Earth, isn’t some extra, new-fangled add-on to Christian faith, one more “issue” to add to our many other concerns. No, protecting, healing, and loving the Earth is core to Christian faith, and once our eyes are opened to it, we find this message running throughout the Bible.

We meet the living Christ in the pages of Scripture, and we also meet the living Christ in the natural world. You know what that’s like – the joy and wonder that may come upon us when we lift our eyes to gaze at the Holyoke Range, when we look down and see the fern unfolding its tiny green fist, when we listen to the call of cardinals, and when we feel the wind or the rain on our face. The crucified and risen Christ is giving himself to us in and as the living world around us. As Martin Luther once said, “God writes the Gospel, not in the Bible alone, but also on trees, and the flowers and the clouds and stars.” The living Christ meets us again and again in the book of the Bible and, also, in the book of Nature. And Christ meets us here as we share the bread and wine of Holy Communion. When the celebrant at the altar lifts up the bread and wine, all of Creation is lifted up. When the celebrant blesses the bread and wine, all of Creation is blessed. The bread that is placed in our hands is made of wheat, earth, and sun, of rainwater and clouds, of farmers’ hands and human labor. Christ dwells in the bread and wine, and God gives God’s self to us, once again, through the natural world. When we stretch out our hands to receive the bread, we take in what is natural and we take in Christ.³ You and I have practices to sustain us in the days ahead, practices that strengthen our resilience and resolve to take bold climate action and to join in healing God’s Creation. As with the two disciples, the risen Christ will meet us in our honest conversation and lament, in our reflection on Scripture, and in our breaking of the bread. When our eyes are opened, we, too, will understand that the risen Christ was with us all along. And then, as in today’s story, he will likely vanish from our sight. Why? Maybe because he has other places to go, other people to strengthen and inspire. Or maybe because his living presence is now fully within us, so that we can embody his love in fresh and creative ways. The two disciples of our story have had a long, traumatic day and have walked many a mile, but now, with their hearts burning within them, they find the energy to leap up and travel the seven miles back to Jerusalem to bring their joyful news to their community. At the beginning of today’s story, hope is only a rumor. By the end, the disciples themselves embody hope: they will give their lives to the possibility that God’s love will be fully expressed in the world. Rather than quietly accepting a killing status quo, they will join God’s mission to reconcile and heal, and they will bear witness to a love that nothing can destroy. On this Earth Sunday, we celebrate the risen Christ who is in our midst, calling us to be healers and justice-seekers. How is God calling you to step forward? _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 1. Caroline Hickman et al, “Climate anxiety in children and young people and their beliefs about government responses to climate change: a global survey,” The Lancet, December 2021, https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(21)00278-3/fulltext# 2. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, “Foreword,” The Green Bible (New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers (HarperOne), 2008, I-14. 3. This paragraph is adapted from Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, Joy of Heaven, to Earth Come Down (Forward Movement, 2012,2013), 35.

Rev. Margaret gave this opening presentation for “Preaching for God’s World,” a webinar on April 20, 2023, hosted by Church of England Environment Programme, which featured an international panel of speakers. Her presentation is posted on YouTube.

Why do we need to preach on creation care? Two reasons: Jesus commands it, and the world needs it. Let’s take these one by one.

At the end of Mark’s Gospel, Jesus commands, “Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation” (Mark 16:15). The good news of God in Christ is to be proclaimed in word and deed to the whole creation – not only to human beings, but to all our fellow creatures and indeed to the whole web of life. From the first words of Genesis, when God created all that is and pronounced it “very good” (Gen. 1:30) to the last pages of the Book of Revelation, which speak of “a new heaven and a new earth” (Rev. 21:1), the sweep of our salvation history embraces the whole creation. What do we preach? We preach Christ crucified (1 Cor. 1:23). And Christ’s life, death, and resurrection touches every corner of the world. As St. Paul tells us, in Christ “all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross” (Col. 1:19-20). Christ came to reconcile all things – which means that when we preach, we hold in mind God’s desire to restore our connections to each other and to the land, God’s longing to heal our estrangement both from our fellow humans and from the rest of the natural world. When we preach, we hold in mind God’s heartbreak when we trample our brother-sister beings and when we contaminate the soil, water, and air upon which all life depends. With the psalmist, we proclaim, The Earth is the Lord’s, and all that is in it (Psalm 24:1), and thus we preach to restore reverence for God’s creation and to dismantle the fossil-fuel mindset that considers the natural world nothing more than inert material, just an object for us to exploit.

*Ashfield pond and hillside. Photo credit: Robert A. Jonas*

Not to preach about the climate crisis, not to preach about environmental degradation, not to preach about our calling to repair and restore the world that God entrusted to our care is to preach a Gospel that is far too small. It’s high time to quit preaching a narrowly anthropocentric Gospel and to remember that in the very first book of the Bible, God forged an “everlasting covenant” not only with human beings but also with “every living creature” (Gen. 9:8-17). Preaching about Earth care is central to proclaiming Christian faith. As the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu put it, the “supreme work”¹ of Jesus Christ is to reconcile us to God, to one another, and to God’s whole creation.

That’s reason #1. The second reason to preach about creation care is that the world needs it. The world needs our preaching for pastoral reasons. Amid the accelerating trauma and losses caused by climate change, including droughts, floods, wildfires, and heat, our congregations need to hear about a God who honors and shares our climate grief, a God who weeps with us and who understands our outrage, fear, and sorrow as the living world around us is destroyed. This is a pastoral issue!

The world needs our preaching for prophetic reasons, too. Scientists tell us that we live at a decisive moment in human history: the only way to avert climate chaos and to protect life as it has evolved on Earth is to carry out a top-to-bottom transformation of society at a speed and scope that are historically unprecedented. So, we need sermons about our moral obligation to create a more just and habitable world. We need sermons about a God who gives high-consuming people the power to amend our lives, and sermons about a God who stands with those hurt first and hardest by a changing climate, which are usually low-income, low-wealth communities and communities of color. We need sermons about a God who calls us not to the quiet acceptance of a killing status quo but rather to active resistance, a God who gives us strength to bear witness to a love that nothing can destroy. The early Christians were so fired up by the love that transcends death and so willing to transform their society that they were accused of turning the world “upside down” (Act. 17:6), of acting “contrary to the decrees of the emperor” (Act. 17:7), and of obeying God rather than any human authority (Act. 5:29).

So, let’s hear some big, bold sermons that push back against climate “doomism” and hopelessness and that mobilize action for systemic change. Let’s take up our pastoral and prophetic vocation to preach Gospel hope in a time of human and planetary emergency.

Jesus calls us to preach good news to the whole creation, and the world needs that message as never before. Let’s do it. Let’s preach the whole Gospel, the whole good news.

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Archbishop Desmond Tutu, “Foreword,” The Green Bible (New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers (HarperOne), 2008, I-14.