creation care

On being set free

Starting today, for six weeks our lectionary includes passages from Paul’s letter to the churches of Galatia.  Over these six weeks, we’ll have a chance to immerse ourselves in Galatians, to ponder the epistle almost in its entirety.  I am delighted, because this letter includes one of my all-time favorite lines in the whole Bible: “For freedom Christ has set us free.  Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1). We won’t hear those particular lines for several weeks, but already in this morning’s reading Paul is sounding the great theme of his letter to the Galatians: freedom.  He makes an opening salutation, one that Randy often uses when he begins his sermons – “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” – and then Paul jumps right in to describing what Christ has done for us: he “gave himself for our sins to set us free from the present evil age” (Galatians 1:3-4).  He gave himself… to set us free. 

Galatians has been called “the Magna Charta of Christian liberty,”¹ for in this letter Paul makes a spirited defense – in the words of one scholar, a “bitterly polemical”² defense – against those who would try to limit the freedom that is ours in Christ. Scholars don’t seem to agree on the location of the churches to which Paul was writing, nor on when this letter was composed, but, as one scholar puts it, it is clear that this letter “reflects a critical moment in the early Christian movement’s struggle to define its mission and identity.”³

What was at stake? The issue in Paul’s time was whether or not a Gentile had to become a Jew before becoming a Christian – whether or not a man had to get circumcised and to follow other elements of Jewish law and ritual in order to become right with God.  The struggle, in other words, was whether we are made right with God by doing certain things, by performing certain rituals, by carrying out certain good works that earn us our salvation, or whether Christ’s dying and rising is the decisive event that sets us free. Paul was convinced that the Christ event had set us free and that we shouldn’t go crawling back into the various traps that keep us restricted and small. The trap that he identified in his own day was the trap of believing that we must purify ourselves in certain ways, must follow certain rules, and must carry out certain obligations, before God in Christ will love us and save us and accept us. Of course there’s nothing wrong with doing good works or performing rituals, but they are not what saves us. Paul couldn’t be more vehement in defending our freedom in Christ, and twice he pronounces “accursed” anyone who proclaims “a different gospel” (Galatians 1:8-9; 1:6).

So what does it mean to know freedom in Christ?  Surely being free in Christ does not mean acting like the proverbial college freshman who arrives on campus and feels delightfully entitled to express every impulse, indulge every whim, and try every illegal substance because somehow the rules no longer apply. As any addict will tell you, in the end there is nothing more confining or death-dealing than to give free rein to our cravings and impulses – we end up trapped. 

Freedom in Christ is not self-indulgence or anarchy, but the deep ordering of our desires. When we know what we love most, we are set free. When we know what we long for more than anything else, when we find something big enough to die for, something big enough to live for, then we are set free. When we become aware of something so beautiful and so true that we want to give ourselves to it totally, with nothing held back, then we are set free. We know what to hold on to, and what to ignore or let go.  We have found our compass, found our North Star.  Whatever the circumstances of our lives may be, we know what we want to bear witness to, what we want to embody. We are free.

People who have discovered their freedom in Christ know that we don’t have to earn our salvation. We don’t have to impress anybody or prove ourselves to anybody. We can finally quit the ego’s desperate, insatiable quest for other people’s approval, for other people’s sympathy and admiration, because people who are free in Christ are people who know that we are loved.  Nothing and nobody can take that love away, and we don’t have to do a thing to earn it. We are loved for no reason – not because of anything that we have done or for anything that we will do, but simply because we are.  God loves us not because we’re lovable, but because God’s nature is to love. That is what we see when we gaze at the cross: a God who loves us completely.

So it’s worth paying attention to the many ways in which we limit our freedom and trap ourselves in a small place. For instance, we can take at look at our inner self-talk. Do we have a habit of thinking harsh things about ourselves?  Do we belittle ourselves and put ourselves down?  It’s also worth paying attention to the ways in which we do or do not encourage other people to step into their freedom.  Do we give other people our full attention, without expecting or demanding that they be a certain way?  Do we approach other people without preconceived expectations of who they are and what they need and what we intend to (quote-unquote) ‘get out’ of the conversation?  Are we basically trying to promote and prove ourselves, or are we giving ourselves in love?  Alan Jones contends that “‘We either contemplate or we exploit.’ We either see things and persons with reverence and awe, and therefore treat them as genuinely other than ourselves; or we appropriate them, and manipulate them for our own purposes.”⁴ 

It’s all about growing in freedom, and about setting others free.  Every time we receive the Eucharist, it’s as if Christ were saying to us: “I love you, and I want to set you free.”  As Paul says, “For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1).

I’d like to close with a story about how I glimpsed my freedom in Christ in the most unlikely of places.⁵ It’s a story about the first (and, so far, the only) time that I was arrested.  Back in 2001, when the administration was pushing an energy policy that involved new drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, I headed down to Washington, D.C. and joined a small group of interfaith activists.  After holding a worship service in front of the Department of Energy, twenty-two of us knelt down in front of the doors to protest our country’s relentless use of fossil fuels. We sang, we prayed for God’s Creation, and, when the police told us to move or be subject to arrest, we refused to move.  Before long I was in handcuffs and locked in a police wagon.  Over the course of a very long afternoon and into the night, we were transferred from one jail to another, each one more apparently God-forsaken than the last, as if we were making our own small descent through Dante’s circles of hell.  By nightfall our group was locked into a row of cells that ran along a corridor, and I found myself confined with fellow priest and environmental activist Sally Bingham in a small, dark space supplied with a dirty toilet and two bare, metal bunks painted olive green and etched with graffiti.  We were anxious, tired, and unsure how much longer we would be detained.  Our nerves were frayed.

We had had nothing to eat or drink all day, so when a guard appeared with a pile of bologna sandwiches, stacks of donuts wrapped in cellophane, and cups of Kool-Aid, I took notice.  I was hungry, but I don’t eat meat and I can’t eat sugar, so I wasn’t sure what to do. Finally I accepted a couple of bologna sandwiches and asked for a glass of water. I peeled off the bologna and gloomily studied the meal in my hands: bread and water.  Basic jail food. 

Just then someone called from an adjoining cell, “Watch out.  The bread’s moldy.”

With growing despair I examined my slice of bread.  I couldn’t see anything green, but it was too dark to get a good look.  All in all the bread looked fairly loathsome.  I took a quick bite, figuring that if I gulped it fast, maybe I wouldn’t notice my disgust.  But as the bread touched my tongue, I remembered the Eucharist.  I remembered how Jesus gives himself to us in the bread and the wine. My disgust vanished, along with my sense of deprivation.  I took a second, slow bite of the bread and ate it with reverence.  I took a sip of water.  To my surprise, I suddenly saw that I had everything I needed.  My anxiety slipped away.  I was filled with gratitude and completely at peace.  I knew that I was free.  It didn’t matter that I was still in jail.  It didn’t matter that I had no idea when I would get out.  None of that mattered.  I was being fed from within, as if a river of joy were secretly flowing through me.

I looked around my cell in disbelief.  No, I wasn’t hallucinating.  I could see that everything was exactly as it had been: the same bleak walls, the same metal bunk, the same rows of bars.  Nothing had budged.  But everything had changed.  It was as if my outward circumstances had suddenly fallen away, or as if they were filled with a hidden radiance.  Everything material seemed to open beyond itself, to be secretly as spacious as the wild Arctic wilderness.  The powers-that-be thought they had imprisoned me, but actually I was free.  I almost burst out laughing.

May freedom be ours today, and every day, as we welcome and ponder the mystery of Christ within us and among us. How is Christ inviting you to be set free?

1. Introduction to “The Letter of Paul to the Galatians,” The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha, RSV, New York: Oxford University Press, 1973, p. 1410.

2. Richard B. Hays, Introduction to “The Letter of Paul to the Galatians,” The HarperCollins Study Bible (Fully Revised and Updated), NRSV, HarperCollins Publishers, 2006, p. 1972.

3. Ibid.

4. Alan Jones, Soul-Making: The Desert Way of Spirituality, p. 29, quoted by Belden C. Lane, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 202.

5. For a longer essay that includes this story: Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, “When Heaven Happens,” in Heaven, edited by Roger Ferlo, NY: Seabury, 2007.

You have kept the good wine until now

“When the steward tasted the water that had become wine… the steward called the bridegroom and said to him, “…You have kept the good wine until now.” (John 2:9-10)

A few weeks ago I came across an essay on the editorial pages of the New York Times in which – as I remember it – the author described the personal and professional hardships of turning 40.  He listed all the reasons why the decade of your 40’s is particularly difficult, but it turns out that he wasn’t looking back nostalgically at a happier time in his youth – he had found every decade of his life unsatisfying.  His essay laid out the reasons why being in your 30’s was pretty awful, too; why it was a burden to be in your 20’s; and why it was so tough to be a teenager.  The essay did not go unanswered.  Before long a letter showed up, in which a reader was keen to carry on the line of reasoning and to inventory all the difficulties we face in our 50’s and 60’s.  I am waiting for a letter that comments on the decades after that. 

Now I don’t have a problem with being clear about the challenges of life, but isn’t it true that something in us hungers for more than a life filled with complaints and regret?  Isn’t it true that we want more out of life – and to give more to life – than to find ourselves perpetually hemmed in by frustration and disappointment?  It is so easy to settle for being only half here, to be caught up in anxiety about the future or weighed down by bitterness about the past.  We can look as if we’re alive – we can go through the motions: we can walk, talk, drive to work, deal with the kids and the grandkids, run the errands – but inside we can be irritable, depressed, worried, and only barely present.  Deep down, isn’t it true that we long for so much more?  The truth is that we’d like our days to be brimming with wonder, not with worry.  We want to be able to rise to the challenge of whatever life brings, to find a way to live with zest and creativity, with curiosity and compassion, no matter what the circumstances of our lives may be.  We don’t want to succumb to cynicism or despair.  We want to be fully alive, not partially alive. 

I can’t help but turn to a poem by Mary Oliver that expresses the determination not to settle for anything less than fullness of life.  It’s called “When Death Comes,”¹ and the poet writes, at the end:

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. 

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real. 
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument. 

I don’t want to end up simply having visited the world.

Jesus would understand a declaration like that.  Jesus came to show us a path to fullness of life.  “I have come that you may have life,” he tells us in what sounds to me like a mission statement, “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 so his first miracle – the first of the seven so-called “signs” in the Gospel of John that disclose Jesus’ true nature and reveal his glory – is to turn water into wine.  You know the story: during a wedding at Cana, while the festivities are in full swing, the wine runs out.  Jesus points out six large stone jars, all of them empty, and has them filled with water; then he turns their contents into the finest, most delicious wine that anyone has ever tasted.  Jesus is an agent of change, a transformer.  By his words, at his touch, in his presence, what is ordinary and lackluster, “same old same old,” becomes vital and sparkling, as delicious and joy-inducing as the very best – well, choose whatever most pleases you – cabernet sauvignon, merlot, champagne… 

What the story suggests is that there is a river of divine creativity at the very center of things, ready to pour into the most ordinary moments of our lives so that we are filled again with reverence and wonder, with a sense of courage and fresh possibility.  Jesus turns water into wine, not only once, at a long ago wedding in a far away place, but whenever we find ourselves caught up in that mysterious transformation of despair into hope, of fear into gratefulness, of sorrow into joy.  I know what it’s like – you know what it’s like – we all know what it’s like – to find ourselves standing motionless like those empty stone jars, stuck in our old habits and fixed ways of thinking, hopelessly repeating our endless stories of worry, argument, and lament – and then along comes Jesus to wake us up and to fill us with his wine.  Carl Jung once suggested that an alcoholic’s addiction to spirits might be a misplaced search for the Holy Spirit, that intoxicating presence that gladdens our hearts and draws us out of ourselves and gathers us up in love. 

Speaking of love, it’s no accident that the story of Jesus turning water into wine takes place in the context of a wedding.  One commentary² I read on this Gospel passage argues that it’s strictly incidental that the setting of this miracle story is a wedding, but personally I think that the wedding imagery is crucial.  The wedding is an image of erotic love, of passionate commitment and fidelity.  The poet’s words echo again in my ears:

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. 

What transforms the water of our lives into wine?  Discovering that we are deeply loved, discovering that there is an unshakable, eternal Something at the heart of reality that is always giving itself to us in love and always inviting our passionate response.  God is looking for us and longing for us with the ardor and tenderness of a bridegroom looking for his bride.  How else are we transformed except by love?  We can’t turn the water of our life into wine by ourselves.  We can’t force ourselves to change.  Brute willpower can never accomplish deep and lasting transformation of our hearts and minds.  What changes us – what transforms the water of our lives into wine – is the experience of being deeply loved.  So if we want our lives to be transformed, and if we, too, like Jesus, want to be healers and transformers, people who are themselves fully alive and who bring life to others, then we can do what Jesus did: we can listen patiently and faithfully to the inner voice of love.  We can make ourselves vulnerable to the divine touch of God.
You could do worse than to sit down this week and to read through today’s first reading very slowly, receiving the words as if they were personally directed to you – not only to Zion, not only to Jerusalem, but also to you.  “You shall be called by a new name that the mouth of the LORD will give.  You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the LORD, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God.  You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land” – that is, the living, natural world around you – “shall no more be termed Desolate; but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her, and your land Married; for the LORD delights in you, and your land shall be married.”  Now here’s the finish: “For as a young man marries a young woman, so shall your builder” – that is, God – “marry you, and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you” (Isaiah 62:2b-5).
Can you take this in?  It doesn’t matter how old you are or how young you are.  It doesn’t matter if you’re in your teens, your 30’s, 40’s, or 90’s.  It doesn’t matter if you’re single or divorced, partnered, married, dating or widowed.  None of that matters.  God is longing to take you, and us, and all God’s creation, into God’s heart.  God wants to give you, and us, and all Creation, a new name, a new identity.  We are no longer to be called Forsaken, but rather My Delight Is In You; we are no longer to be called Desolate, but rather Married.  Whenever we glimpse that union between the soul and God, whenever we taste that marriage between heaven and earth, whenever we discover again how precious we are, and how precious the whole of God’s Creation is, what can we do but come to life?  

Now is the perfect moment to come to 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 whether or not we are awake.  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 some way to become healers and transformers in a troubled world.  Howard Thurman, the spiritual mentor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., used to say, “Don’t ask what the world needs.  Ask what makes you come alive and go out and do it.  Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

We may say to ourselves, “Oh, it’s too late for me and for the world; I’m too set in my ways, and the world is too far gone.  After all, the Arctic is melting, there is a mega-drought in the Amazon, and some scientists say that we’re past the point where the world’s warming can be limited to 2 degrees.”  Yet here comes the steward, reaching out to take a sip of Jesus’ wine, and saying with astonishment, “You have kept the good wine until now!” (John 2:10b).  What if we are on the brink of – and are in fact already caught up in – a process of radical transformation, in which hate is already being turned to love, despair to hope, and water into wine?  Are we willing to become a bride married to amazement, a bridegroom who takes the world into his arms?

I’ll end with some lines by Adrienne Rich from the last section of her poem, “Dreams Before Waking” (1983):

What would it mean to live
in a city whose people were changing
each other’s despair into hope? —
You yourself must change it. —
what would it feel like to know
your country was changing? —
You yourself must change it. —
Though your life felt arduous
new and unmapped and strange
what would it mean to stand on the first
page of the end of despair?

1. Mary Oliver, “When Death Comes,” New and Selected Poems, Boston: Beacon Press, 1992.

2. Reginald H. Fuller, Preaching the Lectionary, revised edition, Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1984, p. 450.

Being willing to die and bear fruit

“Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”
–John 12:24

The last time I stood in this pulpit was eight years ago, and what a joy it is to return to this beautiful space, to look out at so many familiar faces, and to enjoy the company of those who discovered All Saints sometime after my family and I headed out to western Massachusetts. I bring greetings from Grace Church in Amherst, and I want to thank your rector, my friend and colleague David Killian, as well as Marianne Evett and the Adult Education Committee, for asking me to come this weekend.

Our Lenten season of prayer and self-examination invites us to bring before God our deepening concern about the health of God’s precious, unrepeatable, fragile Creation. We just experienced what’s being called “the winter that never was.” ¹ You noticed that, right? Winter 2012 will go down as the fourth warmest winter on record for the contiguous United States, according to the National Climatic Center. ² And now, with a mixture of pleasure and uneasiness, we’re experiencing a spring that seems ready to catapult us into a very early summer. The decade from 2000 to 2010 was the warmest on record, and 2005 and 2010 tied for the hottest years ever recorded. ³ We know that heat-trapping gases are accumulating in the atmosphere, mostly because of the burning of fossil fuels, and those gases are driving the Earth’s climate beyond the relatively stable range within which human civilization developed over the past 10,000 years. On average, the Earth has already warmed about one degree worldwide, and the Earth’s temperature is not only rising — it’s rising increasingly fast. Already we are starting to experience the extreme weather events — droughts, floods, and storms — that are associated with an unstable climate. A new study shows that since 2006, four out of five Americans have been affected by weather-related disasters. ⁴ Immediately I think of the unprecedented heat and downpours that New England endured last year, the tornadoes that took down areas in towns near my house, the hurricane that blew through with its drenching rains, and the weird and massive snowstorm in late October that leveled trees and knocked out our heat and electricity for five days.

I mean — come on! I’ve been thinking about climate change for years, but now it’s starting to get personal. I’m noticing its effects not as a distant possibility in a far off place in the far off future, but as something that is affecting me, and the people I love, right here, right now. Author and environmentalist Bill McKibben puts it like this in his recent book, Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet: global warming is not just a future threat. It is, he writes, “no longer a threat at all. It’s our reality. We’ve changed the planet, changed it in large and fundamental ways… Our old familiar globe is suddenly melting, drying, acidifying, flooding, and burning in ways that no human has ever seen.” ⁵

Am I the only one who experiences a certain disquiet as we contemplate this new reality? I don’t think so. When it comes to the climate crisis, many of us feel a sense of urgency. As Christians, we long to know how to face the peril of this moment with all the wisdom, courage, and resilience that a loving God can give us. We want to find a way of life and a way of being that enable us not only to live skillfully in the present, but also to look ahead to the future with confidence and hope. Like the unnamed Greeks in today’s Gospel story from John, “we wish to see Jesus” (John 12:21). We want to move out of our inertia, denial, and fear. We want to offer the world — and our children, and our children’s children — more than a shrug of hopelessness or a sigh of resignation. We want to see with the eyes of Christ, to feel with the heart of Christ, to serve with the hands of Christ, and to share with God in the great work of restoring all people and all creation to unity with God and each other in Christ. ⁶

How do we do that? Today’s Gospel gives us a place to begin. “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:24). This saying of Jesus was so basic to his mission that it shows up in all four Gospels, and twice in Luke (Matthew 10:39, Mark 8:35, Luke 9:23-24, Luke 17:33). There is a death we have to die, if we want to save our life — a life we have to lose, if we want to be truly alive.

What needs to die, in order for us to be fully alive? What do we need to relinquish and let go — to drop, to renounce, to stop doing — if we want to create a sustainable human presence on the earth and to become fruitful again? Well, we might start by critiquing our economic system and what the bishops of the Episcopal Church denounce as “unparalleled corporate greed” and “rampant consumerism.” ⁷ An economy that is sustainable over time is one that honors the gift of Creation and its intricate web of life; it is one that would be sustainable well beyond the lives of our grandchildren. But depending on non-renewable energy and non-renewable resources is by definition unsustainable. Gobbling up resources faster than the planet can replenish them is by definition unsustainable. Producing a killing level of greenhouse gases is by definition unsustainable.

We hear a lot of talk these days about the value of energy independence, ⁸ but the big problem is not just our country’s reliance on foreign oil, but its reliance on oil, period. The planet’s atmosphere doesn’t care about the source of the oil that we burn. As far as the atmosphere is concerned, it doesn’t matter if the oil we extract comes from the deserts of Saudi Arabia, the tar sands of Canada, or from the bottom of the deep blue sea. What matters is whether or not it gets extracted and burned, for once burned, it releases greenhouse gases that heat up the atmosphere and destabilize the climate. Surely dependence on fossil fuels is one thing that needs to die if we want to create a life-giving society. Like Jesus’ grain of wheat that needs to fall into the earth in order to give life, fossil fuels need very literally to stay in the ground. As Christians we should be advocating for clean, safe, renewable energy, and for economic systems that are sustainable and just, and that don’t tear apart the very fabric of life upon which human beings and all other creatures depend.

So we can hear Jesus’ words as a challenge to social and economic structures that need to be transformed. “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

We can hear these words on a personal level, too. Are we anything like that isolated grain of wheat that refuses to let itself fall into the earth and die? Maybe we’ve developed a hard shell that keeps us isolated and apart, so that we stand in our own little kingdom and are estranged from the people around us. Maybe our lives are closed in on our small ego-self and its insistent ambitions and needs. Maybe we race through the day clenched by anxiety or stress, fearful and holding tight, too busy to see what we’re doing and to let go in love. Maybe we simply feel small — that our lives can’t possibly make a difference, and that essentially we’re on our own. All kinds of things can close us in on ourselves – pride or fear, arrogance or shame. Many of us suffer from the illusion that we are completely separate from each other and that our identity stops with our own skin.

Well, here comes Jesus, telling us not to live like that isolated grain of wheat but to go ahead and die – die to yourself, die to your worries, die to your fear, your judgments, and your shame, and give yourself away in love. Even die to who you think you are. You’re not who you think. God has a larger identity in store for you. And it is waiting for you, right here, right now! Let God break open that hard shell of yours! Step out of your smaller self and into your true, free self in God! We might have to cry when that happens, for it can hurt when we open ourselves in love; and we might have to laugh when that happens, for it brings joy when we give ourselves fully to each moment, with nothing held back. We might have to dance when that happens, and we might have to co-create new ways of living with other people and with nature and with all other creatures.

When our hardened hearts break open – when we die to the habit of self-absorption and self-promotion, and live no longer for ourselves – we begin to perceive and to care about the needs of the world around us. It can start with small things – starting a compost pile or a community garden, buying from local stores, getting an energy audit, or renewing a commitment to recycling more and driving less. This church has led the way in modeling how parish buildings can be made energy-efficient, and maybe there are similar changes we can make in the buildings where we live and work. But there is larger battle on our hands as we struggle to turn back the forces that are driving climate change. Now is the time to throw ourselves into building a diverse, grassroots, bold, visionary, hope-filled, hands-on, feet-on-the-ground, shoulder-to-the-wheel political and social movement that can transform the society in which we live. I am happy to say that Bill McKibben will come to Cambridge one month from now for a “Healing Earth” vigil, dinner, and talk sponsored by Cooperative Metropolitan Ministries, ⁹ an event linked with Earth Day. and I hope you’ll be there.

There are so many ways that our lives can bear fruit! As we move through this last week of Lent and head with Jesus toward the cross, we look for what needs to die in the social systems around us and what in our own lives needs to die, so that new life can spring up among us and within us.

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

1. David A. Gabel, “Reflecting on the Winter that Never Was,” www.enn.com

2. Heidi Cullen, “Spring Gets Ahead of Itself,” www.nytimes.com/2012/03/20/opinion/spring-gets-ahead-of-itself.html

3. 4. http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/02/25/431891/americans-affected-by-weather-related-disasters

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

6. Bishop Ian T. Douglas gave me this re-statement of the Church’s mission, which improves on the one found in The Book of Common Prayer (p. 855, online at http://www.bcponline.org/Misc/catechism.htm#AutoNumber20).

7. “A Pastoral Letter from the Bishops of the Episcopal Church” meeting in Hendersonville, North Carolina, March 13-18, 2009 to the Church and our partners in mission throughout the world. [http://www.episcopalchurch.org/79901_106036_ENG_HTM.htm]

8. Clifford Kraus and Eric Lipton, “U.S. Inches Toward Goal of Energy Independence,” New York Times, March 22, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/23/business/energy-environment/inching-toward-energy-independence-in-america.html

9. For information, visit www.coopmet.org. To learn about Bill McKibben’s climate advocacy and to participate in the next global event, visit www.350.org.

The “Oh, sh*t” moment we all must have

“A leper came to him, begging him, and kneeling he said to him, ‘If you choose, you can make me clean.’”
 (Mark 1:40)

Today Grace Church is taking part in the National Preach-In on Global Warming. We’re joining more than one thousand congregations of varying faith traditions across the country who are focusing their attention this morning on the urgent reality of climate disruption. I’ve preached on this topic many times, and I’m not going to say much about the facts on the ground. You already know the science. Rapidly increasing greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of coal, gas, and oil are destabilizing “the only climate under which human civilization has flourished.” ¹ Sea levels are rising; oceans are becoming warmer and more acidic; weather events are becoming more severe; species are going extinct; ecosystems are shifting; refugees are already on the move. According to NASA scientists, last year was the ninth-warmest year on record, and nine of the ten warmest years in the modern meteorological record have occurred since the year 2000. ²

Now I want to ask — what happens inside you when you hear facts like these? How does your body respond? If you’re like me, you feel something constrict or tighten up. When I think about global warming, I sometimes feel my belly squeeze and my breathing get shallow. I want to push the news away. I don’t want to think about it. Why? Because it can make me feel anxious and helpless, maybe full of despair. I’d much rather turn my attention to something pleasant, or at least something that seems more immediate and closer to home — like: time to make supper.

However, as Australian ethicist Clive Hamilton writes, “At some point — finally — the full truth of what the climate scientists are saying breaks through all of our defences. We can no longer pretend the impacts of warming are too far off to worry about, or that the scientists must be exaggerating. We realise that our apathy is rooted in fear…” He goes on to say, “For some, the realisation creeps up as the true meaning of warming leaks into consciousness. For others, the breakthrough is sudden and overwhelming.” ³ In other words, there comes a point when we finally get it, we finally grasp the enormity of the climate challenge. One journalist calls it the “Oh shoot” moment, though actually he uses a more basic expletive than that. ⁴ The “Oh shoot” moment is the instant when our denial breaks open and we realize that the people we’d like to ridicule as “alarmists” are bringing us news that is essential for us to hear.

I remember exactly where I was when I hit my “Oh shoot” moment. In the summer of 2001 I was on Thompson Island in Boston Harbor for an intensive weekend conference about the science and politics of climate change. After a long day of taking copious notes and trying valiantly not to go numb under the barrage of bad news, I went outside before bed and stood alone — reeling — under the stars, trying to assimilate what I’d heard, trying to find my balance again, trying to pray, trying to find my way back to God.

When we reach the “Oh shoot” moment that we all must have, we may feel as lost as the leper in today’s Gospel story, as desperate as he was, as distressed and alone, as needy for help. Anxiety is even more contagious than leprosy, and out of anxiety we may isolate ourselves and chew on our worries alone, or we may deliberately or unwittingly spread our anxiety around like an infection, making other people catch it or making them keep a safe distance when they see us coming.

What do we do with our feelings of helplessness and despair? How do we face the unraveling of life as we know it without panicking or giving up? Where do we find energy and hope to keep working toward solutions, and what spiritual practices can sustain for the long struggle ahead?

I’ve been pondering these questions for the past ten years in my efforts as a climate activist, and I’d like to offer three words, three spiritual practices, that can guide us when the world as we know it is falling apart. The words are “creation,” “crucifixion,” and “resurrection.”

“Creation” is when we root ourselves again in the love of God. If we’re reeling with anxiety, fear, anger or sorrow, we need to ground ourselves again in the basic fact of our belovedness in God. In today’s story, the leper comes to Jesus and kneels before him, begging to be healed. “If you choose,” he says, “you can make me clean” (Mark 1:40 ). And how does Jesus respond? In one of the rare moments when the Gospel writer tells us what Jesus is feeling, the text says, “moved with pity” — or, as some translations put it, “moved with compassion” — Jesus stretches out his hand to heal the suffering man. The God we know in Christ is a compassionate God, a God moved with pity who reaches out to all who suffer, to all who feel lost, afflicted, helpless, or estranged. When the news of climate change — or of any other trauma — threatens to undo us, we can remember what I call the “creation” practice: we recall our belovedness in God. God created us in love and for love, and God will never let us go, even if we die.

What helps us to stay grounded in love? Maybe we bring awareness to our breathing for a while, and consciously breathe in the love of God. Maybe we turn our attention to something beautiful that’s right beside us, maybe notice the stillness of the trees or the way the sun is shining just now against that cloud. Bringing awareness to the present moment is one way to reconnect with the love of God, for God is always and only found right now, right here. Or maybe we dip into Scripture and turn to the God who says, “I have called you by name; you are mine. You are my beloved; on you my favor rests. You abide in me, as I abide in you. I am the vine, and you are the branches. Nothing can separate you from my love.” There are many ways to come home to God’s love, and that is the first practice we need to cultivate when times are tough and everything in us wants to close down or flee.

A second spiritual practice is “crucifixion,” the willingness to stand or kneel at the cross and to let our hearts break. In today’s story, we see Jesus’ vulnerability: he stretches out his hand to touch the leper, whom society considered untouchable and ritually unclean. From this little scene at the beginning of Mark’s Gospel, it’s already evident that for the sake of giving us healing and wholeness, Jesus will move toward us and share in our pain. Jesus’ solidarity with human vulnerability reaches its fullest expression on the cross. When we pray at the foot of the cross, we discover how close God is to us in our terror and vulnerability and loss. When we look at Jesus dying an agonizing death, we gaze squarely at everything that frightens us and does us harm. We face our fear and anxiety, our sadness, anger, and guilt. And we see that all of it — all of it — has been taken up by Jesus, that all of it has been embraced by God. Even our sin, even our willfulness and greed, our apathy and despair – all of that, and more, is met on the cross by the outpouring love of God. There is nowhere we can go, nothing that we can experience, that God in Christ does not share in and redeem.

So when the latest bad news about climate change — or anything else — grips my heart, I go to the cross in prayer and let myself grieve. I let myself howl, if I need to, for we must let our hearts be broken by the things that break God’s heart. That is how we share consciously in Christ’s suffering, and how we know that he shares in ours. That is how we discover how intimately he loves us, and where we receive the resilience and zest to renew our efforts in the world with fresh energy and zeal.

And so God draws us into the third spiritual practice, “resurrection.” Through conscious sharing in Christ’s crucifixion, we are drawn by God’s grace into resurrected living. Filled with the Spirit, we share in God’s mission to restore all people and all creation to unity with God and each other in Christ. Resurrection as a spiritual practice is doing our part to heal what is broken, to resist evil with love, to be agents of justice and compassion. Like the healed leper in today’s story who can’t contain his joy, we want to proclaim the reality of hope and healing through the power of God.

Of course, what we feel sent out to do in our newly resurrected lives may take many forms. The world needs healing at every level, so wherever we feel led to begin is a good place to start. Commitment to care for the Earth will affect what we buy and what we refuse to buy, what we drive and what we refuse to drive, how we heat our homes, how much we re-use and re-cycle.

The season of Lent begins in ten days, and I hope you will participate in this year’s Ecumenical Lenten Climate Fast ⁵ — look for details in the written announcements. I hope you will join me during coffee hour to send Senator Scott Brown a Valentine’s Day postcard that invites him to love the Earth by opposing efforts to weaken or delay enforcement of the Clean Air Act. I hope you will read and sign The Clean Air Promise, which I will then return to Interfaith Power & Light. ⁶ Finally, I hope that some of you will consider joining me at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on Earth Day, April 22, when tens of thousands of people from all walks of life and from all across the country will gather for a rally to galvanize this country’s environmental movement.

God has so much love to give us, so much vulnerability to share with us, so much energy to give us in the mission to heal and restore life. Creation — when we ground ourselves in the love of God; crucifixion — when we open our hearts and minds to the dangers we face; and resurrection — when we pass beyond anxiety and fear to take action that makes a difference: these three practices can give us the wisdom and courage to move through that “Oh shoot” moment and to relish many moments of creativity, generosity, and joy.

1. Byron Smith, “Doom, Gloom and Empty Tombs: Climate Change and Fear,” Studies in Christian Ethics, 2011, 24:77 DOI: 10.1177/0953946810389120, p. 78 (online version: http://sce.sagepub.com/content/24/1/77).

2. “NASA Finds 2011 Ninth-Warmest Year on Record,” January 19, 2012 (http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/2011-temps.html)

3. Clive Hamilton, “The ‘Oh shit’ moment we all must have,” April 27, 2010, http://www.earthscan.co.uk/blog/post/The-e2809cOh-shite2809d-moment-we-all-must-have.aspx, cited by Byron Smith, op. cit., p. 78.

4. Clive Hamilton, op. cit, p. 79, citing journalist Mark Hertsgaard.

5. Sign up on Facebook, or visit this site: http://www.macucc.org/pages/detail/2410, to receive a daily email with suggestions for reducing your carbon footprint.

6. The mission of Interfaith Power & Light, the organizer of the National Preach-In on Global Warming, is “to be faithful stewards of Creation by responding to global warming through the promotion of energy conservation, energy efficiency, and renewable energy.” (http://interfaithpowerandlight.org/)

Grumbling in the vineyard

The LORD is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger and of great kindness. (Psalm 145:8)

Here’s a question. How do we bear witness to God in a society that is increasingly secular and pluralistic? That’s the question we’re invited to discuss with Rob Hirschfeld after today’s service, in our first Sunday Forum of the season. It’s a great question, and in some ways a perennial one, too. How do we bear witness to the sacred in a society that is so driven by other values, and in which speaking about quote-unquote “God” can seem like so much empty chatter? Jesus faced this question, too, and it’s interesting to notice that he often spoke about God, and the kingdom of God, not in direct terms, as if he were giving a linear, logical lecture, but sideways — in parables and stories that are full of paradox and surprise, in periods of silence, in embodied acts and gestures — as if the reality and mystery of the divine can never be captured directly in ordinary speech, but only conveyed indirectly, maybe in a story that catches us off-guard or in a question or an action that suddenly pierces our heart.

Take today’s Gospel, for example. “The kingdom of heaven is like…” Jesus begins, and off he goes into a story that looks perfectly ordinary. A landowner goes out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard, agrees with the laborers to pay them the usual daily wage, and sends them out into his vineyard to work. The day goes by, and at different intervals — at around 9 o’clock and noon, at about 3 o’clock and 5, the owner goes back to the marketplace and hires more workers, promising to pay what is fair. So far, so good — and I must say that we who listen to this story, we who have been experiencing in this country a soaring rate of unemployment and underemployment, and a growing disparity between the wealthy and the poor — we probably find it satisfying to hear a story about an employer who can hire so many workers, and who can relieve so much anxiety and give so many people and their families the promise at the end of the day of a nourishing meal and a good night’s sleep.

But then the story takes an unexpected twist: the landowner pays the fellows who were hired at the eleventh hour a full day’s pay. He gives a full day’s pay to the folks who worked for one hour and for three hours, for six hours and for nine. Everyone gets a full day’s pay. No exceptions. And the laborers who worked the longest hours start to grumble. “Hey,” they object. “That’s not fair! We’re entitled to more! If you give those who worked only a short time a full day’s pay, then you should give us — I don’t know — two day’s pay!” Actually, if you look closely at the text, you’ll notice that it’s not only, or maybe even mainly, the equality in pay that most irks the laborers who complain — it’s the equality in value that the landowner seems to be assigning to the workers themselves. “You have made them equal to us” (Matthew 20:12), object the angry workers, as if to say, “We’re better than they are, can’t you understand that?”

I don’t know about you, but I can identify with that voice of envy and entitlement. Any child who has vied with a sibling for their mother’s love and attention can understand the anxious and sometimes petulant concern that everything be divvied up fairly. If Tommy got to have two cookies, then I should get two cookies, too. If I raked the lawn for three hours, and Tommy raked for one — plus half the time he was horsing around — well, I should get paid a whole lot more than he does!

That is how our usual transactions work: we invest such-and-such an amount of time and effort, and we expect to be paid accordingly. The resources of love and money are limited, and we’ve got to hustle to get what we want. We’ve got to earn it and compete for it, and if necessary to push our neighbor out of the way, so that — bring it on! — we can finally receive our just desserts.

But along comes this generous landowner, and our notions of merit and entitlement are thrown out the window. In God’s economy, everyone receives the full love of God. God’s love isn’t parceled out in dribs and drabs, so that a person over here receives this much, and a person over there receives that much. No, God’s love and grace are given entirely and fully to each and every person without regard for merit or achievement. God doesn’t care about merit — God loves you completely. God doesn’t care about achievement — God loves you completely. God doesn’t even care about time. You may have spent a lifetime in the earnest search for God and to do God’s will. Or until this moment you may have spent your whole life running away from God, frittering away your days on trivia and distractions, wasting yourself on selfish or malicious pursuits. In a way, it doesn’t matter. God’s love is always available now, in each present moment. Right here, on this very spot, right now, in this very breath, here is God’s love, reaching out to embrace us and to call us home, welling up within us to fill every aching, empty, and desolate place.

That is the love we want to experience and to which we want to bear witness in the world: a divine love that cannot be earned or achieved, but only received, a love that from moment to moment is always circulating within us, and to which we can always return whenever we get lost or forget who we are. Tap into that stream of love, and we can relinquish our compulsive drive to prove ourselves and promote ourselves. We don’t have to any more: we are complete. We have everything we need. We breathe in God’s love, taking it into our depths, and we breathe it out, so that it can be fully expressed in the world.

Knowing that we are completely loved by God can give us a deep serenity, but it’s not going to make us lie down and eat grapes. No, it’s going to send us out to do the work that God has given us to do: to love and serve God with gladness and singleness of heart.

As I look at next weekend, I see that we have plenty of opportunities for expressing that love, for bringing it more fully into the world. Some of you will be coming to Grace Church on Saturday morning to offer several hours of much-needed clean-up work. On Saturday afternoon some of you will gather at 4 o’clock for a fundraiser and book event to benefit the little school in Haiti, St. Mathieu de Bayonnais, whose students and families and faculty we’ve taken under our wing, and who in turn are giving us the gift of their hope and faith. Some of you will have personal things to attend to that I know nothing about.

And next Saturday some of you — I hope many of you — will carpool with me to join a climate rally at a park on the Boston waterfront. It turns out that September has been a rousing month for the climate movement. September began with the so-called Tar Sands Action in Washington, D.C., in which more than 1200 people, including our own Lucy Robinson, were arrested for an act of peaceful civil disobedience at the White House to protest the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry dirty tar sand oil from Canada down to Texas at a potentially disastrous environmental cost.

Next Saturday, the last weekend of the month, thousands of climate rallies will be held around the world as part of what’s being called Moving Planet day (), a day to get us moving beyond fossil fuels. For people living in New England the most important rally to attend is the one in Boston, one of five cities nationwide that climate organizers have targeted as the best site for a massive demonstration (

I have been asked to give an interfaith prayer both at the rally in Boston on Saturday and at the rally in Northampton on Sunday. And I’ve been wondering what to say. When I look out at the crowds, how can I convey the love of God? How can I let them know that within them and among them is a source of energy that is always clean and always renewed? How can I let them know that their struggle to create a sustainable world will be strengthened and renewed if it is guided by the divine love that sustains all things? As far as I know, I could be the only person in the line-up of speakers who communicates a religious perspective, and I know that I will be addressing a crowd of folks from a range of faiths, and no faith at all — “spiritual but not religious”; “post-Christian.” I can’t use the language of our tradition, for traditional Christian words only shut some people down and drive them away. I can’t mention Jesus, or the power of the cross and the resurrection, or the gift of the Eucharist. I can’t say much about the power of meditation and prayer, much less refer to the story of the laborers in the vineyard. But, God willing, the love of God in Christ will still inform what I do, and will still give me words to speak. Whether we acknowledge it or not, and whether we perceive it or not, God’s love is always being poured out to us, right here, right now, in full abundance, with nothing held back.

Maybe it will be enough to ask everyone to feel their feet on the ground, and to make conscious contact with the earth. Maybe it will be enough to ask everyone to stretch out their hands, and to sense the hands of everyone the world over who is fighting with us for a better world. Maybe it will be enough to ask everyone to take a deep breath, and to remember that with every breath we are exchanging the elements of life with all green-growing things. How good it is to wake up to the present moment, and to sense our connection with the earth and all its creatures! How good it is to marvel for a moment at the sheer gift of being alive!

I won’t be saying this out loud at the rally, but secretly I’ll be giving thanks for the kingdom of God. Secretly I’ll be giving thanks for God’s absurd generosity, for being like an extravagant employer who gives everyone a full day’s wages, no matter how much or how little each person has worked. Secretly I’ll be praising the LORD who “is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger and of great kindness” (Psalm 145:8).

The Way, the Truth, and the Life

I would like to thank my long-time friend and colleague Martin Smith for inviting me to preach here this morning, and to thank your Environmental Committee, which, as far as I can tell — given what it has been up to in just the last few months: planting trees, hosting a film festival, organizing a nature walk — is an unusually dedicated and talented group.

I want to speak about reclaiming the sacredness of God’s creation, but right off the bat I have to admit that at first glance the phrase may sound absurdly naïve or sentimental. The sacredness of creation? As soon as I say these words, I imagine someone wincing and I hear the wry, even cynical voices of people who say dismissive things like — tree hugger, whacko New Age devotee, pagan. I think of Oscar Wilde, who observed: “Nature is a damp place over which large numbers of ducks fly, uncooked.” Or of someone else’s remark that “Animals may be our friends, but they won’t pick you up at the airport.”

Fair enough. I’m not going to go all gushy on you.

But actually, when it comes to the natural world, many of us don’t feel sentimental or cynical. We feel uneasy, even anxious. There are times when I wake up at night thinking about what the future will hold. We have already burned enough coal and gas and oil to raise the planet’s average temperature by more than one degree, and if we keep 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. 2010 tied 2005 as the hottest year in 131 years of recordkeeping. Do you know how many countries endured unprecedented heat last year? Nineteen. Temperatures in Burma reached 117 degrees Fahrenheit, setting a record for Southeast Asia, while the ancient city of Mohenjo-daro in Pakistan hit 128.3 degrees Fahrenheit — a record not only for the country but for all of Asia. ¹

How serious is the threat to God’s creation? Here is what one mainstream environmental lawyer, Gus Speth, has to say: “…all we have to do to destroy the planet’s climate and [organisms] and leave a ruined world to our children and grandchildren is to keep doing exactly what we are doing today, with no growth in the human population or the world economy. Just continue to release greenhouse gases at current rates, just continue to impoverish ecosystems and release toxic chemicals at current rates, and the world in the latter part of this century won’t be fit to live in. But, of course, human activities are not holding at current levels — they are accelerating, dramatically.” ²

In a situation that speaks so much of death, of fear and hopelessness, it is astonishing — maybe even shocking — to hear Jesus say, “Do not let your hearts be troubled” (John 14:1). For of course they are troubled! We fear for our children and our children’s children. We know only too well that if we just keep doing what we’re doing, keep carrying out our usual daily activities in our usual way, then within two, three, four generations we will bring an end to creation as we know it.

And yet Jesus tells us, “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” It’s a message that runs through Scripture — do not fear; be not afraid. What I like so much about this way of putting it — “do not let your hearts be troubled” — is that it reminds me that to some degree I have power over whether or not I am beset with fear. You and I have the power to guard our hearts, the power to exercise what we might call “spiritual warriorship,” so that rather than be mesmerized by the forces of death and swallowed up by the latest terrifying statistics, we can tune our awareness again and again to the love of God that is always being poured into our hearts by the power of the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5). As spiritual warriors, we don’t turn away from the problems we face; we turn toward them and we engage with them, while consciously breathing in God’s love.

Jesus was hardly in denial about the fact of evil, suffering, and death. In today’s Gospel passage, he knew full well that he was on the brink of being arrested, tortured, and killed. And yet he could say to his friends, “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” How was he able to say this? Because he knew that he was rooted in the love of God. Because he knew that nothing could separate him — or us — from the love of God. Because he knew that we, too, have been drawn, as he was drawn, into the divine life that circulates at the center of everything and that can never be destroyed.

That is the great promise of today’s Gospel passage: at the deepest level of our being we belong to God; we abide in God and God abides in us. As we read in the First Letter of John, “…All who abide in love, abide in God, and God in them” (1 John 4:16). And the love of God extends not only to us, not only to human beings — it extends to the whole created world and to its diversity of buzzing, blooming, finned, and feathered creatures. In Jesus, God took on flesh, and the incarnation tells us that God comes to us in and through our bodies and through the “body” of the earth. So maybe it’s no wonder that the risen Jesus came back for a time in a body. After he died and rose again, he didn’t just vanish into thin air, into some ethereal, disembodied realm of light. He came back first in the flesh, as if to say: look for me here, in the body of this world. Look for me in the sights, sounds, and smells, the tastes and touch of the world. Here is where you will find me, for I am everywhere present. The created world is good — so says Scripture all the way back to Genesis. What is holy and what is natural, what is divine and what is physical — these apparent opposites are embraced and interwoven in the incarnation of Christ, and all of it shines with God’s glory.

That is the vision that animates us as we rise up to protect God’s creation. We have touched the deep truth that we are God’s beloved; we have breathed in again the love and presence of the divine Mystery that dwells within us and around us, who shines out in the waves of the Potomac, in the breeze on our faces, in the touch of a child’s hand. Fired by that love, we are set free to love as generously and boldly as Jesus did, and to live through a time of turmoil with creativity and even joy.

“I am the way,” Jesus said to his friends. “I am the truth and the life.” And from his words and actions, from his passion, death, and resurrection, a movement sprang up – a movement of passionate men and women who were convinced of the way of generosity and kindness, committed to the truth of love, and dedicated to a life of praising and serving God, whatever the cost might be.

In a time when the planet’s living systems are in peril, now is the time to reclaim our God-given connection with the earth. Now is the time to renew our union with God and all God’s creation — which includes not just our human fellows but all living creatures and the larger eco-systems on which all of us depend. As a society we have to change course, for our present way of life is unsustainable. Depending on non-renewable energy and resources is by definition unsustainable. Consuming more resources than the planet can provide is by definition unsustainable. Wiping out wilderness habitat and the innumerable species upon which our species depends is by definition unsustainable. Producing a killing level of greenhouse gases is by definition unsustainable. We are living beyond our ecological means.

If ever there were a time to bear witness to our faith, now would be the time. If ever there were a moment to hold fast to our vision of a world in which human beings live in right relationship with each other and with our fellow creatures, now would be the time. Now is the time, as theologian Sallie McFague would say, to recognize that the world is not a hotel, but our home. ³ When we visit a hotel, we may feel entitled to use copious amount of hot water, to throw towels on the floor, to use and discard everything in sight and then to head to the next hotel – in short, to exercise what she calls the “Kleenex perspective” of the world. But when we realize that in fact the earth is our home – that God created it and loves every inch of it and entrusts it to our care – then everything changes. We realize that we live here; we belong here; we can no longer tolerate a life-style that exhausts the planet’s resources and that treats land, sea, and sky alike as receptacles for waste.

What can we do to simplify our lives? I invite you to think of one way you can listen more deeply to the land and to learn from it. Maybe you want to start a compost pile, to plant a garden, or to check out a farmer’s market. If you have some money to invest, you might invest in socially responsible funds or in local, green businesses. You might invest in your local land trust, seeking ways to protect some of the few remaining wild areas and local farms that we still have. You might get an energy audit, or invite the neighbor you’ve never met to come over for a cup of tea. We need to build up our local communities, to live in ways that are closer to the earth, more about sharing than about consuming, more about self-restraint than about self-aggrandizement, more about generosity than about fearful survivalism, so that we can take care of each other when the hard times come. There is joy that comes in living like this — a joy that springs up simply from being true to the basic goodness that God has planted in us. And because individual actions are necessary but not sufficient to the challenge that confronts us, together we need to create the boldest, most visionary, wide-ranging, powerful, hope-filled, hands-on, feet-on-the-ground, shoulder-to-the-wheel political and social movement that humanity has ever seen.

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

The risen Christ is among us and beside us and within us.

Do not let your hearts be troubled.

1. Facts in this paragraph are from research posted by Lester R. Brown’s Earth Policy Institute, www.earth-policy.org.

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

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

Hands-on faith

“[Jesus] said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.’”
— John 20:27.

“Glory,” I kept murmuring the other day as I jogged down the hill behind Smith College. Trees were bursting into leaf; magnolia and forsythia were in full bloom; birdsong filled my ears; and I was inhaling the season’s first scent of cut grass. The sky was blue, the winter was over, and all I could say was “Glory, glory, glory.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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