creation care

Sacred mourning

We are keeping company today with Jesus as he moves through his betrayal, arrest, and trial, and as he gives his life on the cross. I want to thank the Cathedral Scholars for chanting the Gospel for us with such clarity and fervor. The passion story may be deeply familiar to us, but this afternoon we can’t help but hear it with fresh ears. No doubt you know that today Good Friday coincides with Earth Day. This is the first, last, and only time that these days will overlap in our lifetimes — unless, of course, we plan to be around 84 years from now, in 2095, which is the next time it will happen. Of course we can dismiss today’s overlap of dates as nothing more than coincidence. But if it is just a coincidence, then I rejoice in the God who provides such coincidences. For when we place Earth Day and Good Friday side by side, or, to put it another way, when we take Earth Day and our concern for the ongoing integrity and vitality of life on earth, and bring it to the cross of Christ, we receive power not only to face the precarious state of our ailing planet, but also “to comprehend … the breadth and length and height and depth” [bbllink]Ephesians 3:18[/bbllink] of the redeeming love of God.

It is often in nature that I perceive the divine and come face to face with the glory of God, so in recent years the destruction of our life-giving and God-given eco-systems has struck me more and more as a crucial dimension of Jesus’ crucifixion. The meaning of Good Friday has opened up for me: I see the earth itself being nailed to the cross.

Back on that first Earth Day in 1970, some twenty million Americans — that’s one out of every ten of us — rose up to proclaim their love for the natural world. They took part in rallies, protests, and teach-ins, and demanded that our government take action to restore the environment. And it worked. Soon afterward, Congress passed the Clean Water Act, strengthened the Clean Air Act, and created the Environmental Protection Agency.

But forty years later, the troubled relationship between human beings and the rest of creation is starker than ever. A quick scan of the past year makes it clear how much we need a national and international movement to protect God’s good earth. A year ago this week we watched, aghast, as the BP oilrig exploded, killing eleven rig workers and spilling five million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, the largest accidental oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry. This week we watch, aghast, the ongoing nuclear crisis in Japan, where radioactive particles have been released into the sea and air, and where workers are locked in a desperate struggle to prevent total meltdown.

Meanwhile, “since the Industrial Revolution, emissions from human activities of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide have driven the earth’s climate system dangerously outside of its normal range.” ¹ Of course there have always been natural cycles of warming and cooling, but for the first time in our planet’s history the cycle is now being driven by human activity. Heat-trapping gases released in the burning of fossil fuels are forcing the earth’s temperature to rise, and the earth’s temperature is not only rising, it is 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. 2010 brought us a heat wave in Russia, fires in Israel, flooding in Pakistan and Australia, landslides in China, record snowfall across the mid-Atlantic region of the United States, and 12 Atlantic Ocean hurricanes — the kind of extreme weather events that climate scientists consider characteristic of a hotter climate. “Unless global temperatures are stabilized, higher sea levels from melting ice sheets and mountain glaciers,” combined with the expansion of warmer ocean water, will displace “millions of people as low-lying coastlands and islands are inundated.” ² Heat waves and droughts will decimate harvests, and shrinking mountain glaciers will imperil the water supply of hundreds of millions of people.

Climate change epitomizes our assault on the natural world. Scientists tell us that modern industrial society, with its sudden expansion of our capacity to extract and consume the planet’s abundance for the sake of short-term profit, is simply not sustainable. For the past 250 or 300 years, human beings have been extracting goods faster than they can be replenished, and dumping waste faster than the earth can absorb it. Those who are rich live in a luxury once reserved for kings, while the billions who are impoverished struggle for clean water and a mouthful of food. Species are going extinct at a rate unprecedented since the death of the dinosaurs. ³ And the global climate with its delicate balance of gases turns out to be more fragile then we ever imagined.

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.” ⁴ Back in 1951, when I was born, there were 3 billion people on the planet; today there are close to seven billion.

Are you still with me? Have you tuned out yet? It is no easier to listen to even a quick sketch of the damage going on around us than to it is to face the agony of Jesus on the cross. It is painful and scary to acknowledge this devastation, this crucifixion, and if I were speaking at a climate rally, I would probably leap right now to saying what we can do about it and what actions we must take. God knows that there is a lot that we must do, and do fast. But holy wisdom tells us that first we must stop on Good Friday and reflect deeply on how we respond. What do we feel in the face of the crucifixion of this beautiful world that God entrusted to our care? Where do we feel the ache of what has already been lost, and what we are likely to lose? We cannot rush ahead to Easter if we want truly to understand where we now find ourselves, if we want to change course, and if we want to draw upon the self-giving love of God who pours out his life for us on the cross. If we don’t take time to pray through our emotional response, we may do one of two unhelpful things: either become paralyzed with anxiety and do nothing, or go rushing off to do something, anything, not because the action is particularly effective, but simply because we want to stay one step ahead of our feelings. When we don’t stop to feel our love and grief, then our actions are likely to be motivated only by anxiety, worry, and fear.

If we feel the love we will also feel the grief. But, oh, there are so many reasons to avoid our grief! For starters, who wants to feel pain? Not I. What’s more, we may not want to look morbid, or we may fear bringing other people down. Maybe we’re afraid of being considered weak or emotional or sentimental. Maybe we’re afraid that once we start feeling the grief, we will succumb to despair.

I remember going to a weekend climate conference on Thomson Island in the Boston Harbor about ten years ago, and listening to a cascade of facts about thinning polar ice caps, melting glaciers, and the projected rise of the average worldwide temperature in one hundred years. I took copious notes, trying valiantly to absorb the information and not to go numb. But by Saturday afternoon, as I listened to a presentation by a doctor from Harvard Medical School, I was feeling overwhelmed. Before bed I went outside and stood alone under the stars, trying to assimilate what I had heard. At breakfast the next morning I looked for the doctor, and carried my tray to his table. I told him how stunned I was by what he had told us.

“How do you bear it?” I asked him. “What do you do with your feelings?”

“I don’t get into my feelings,” he told me. “I focus on what I can do.”

I considered that comment as I ate my cereal. On one level, it made sense. In the midst of battle, we need to act. We need levelheaded leaders who can say, This is what we must do. Let’s go. When labor organizer Joe Hill was dying, he reportedly said to his followers, “Don’t mourn. Organize.” Maybe it’s a guy thing, too — who knows?

Yet for the long haul we also need to sort out what we feel. Is not grief a way of expressing our love? Is not anger a natural response to injustice? Is not allowing ourselves to express our guilt and regret, our sadness and rage, a way of drawing close to the God whom we meet at the cross? It is in kneeling at the cross that we discover how close God is to us in our terror and vulnerability and sense of loss. When we look at Jesus dying an agonizing death, we look squarely at everything that frightens us, and does us harm. We face our fear, our sadness, and our 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. There is nowhere we can go, nothing that we can experience, that God in Christ does not share with us. Even our sin, even our willfulness and greed, our impatience and envy, our laziness and despair – all of that, and more, is met on the cross by the outpouring love of God.

So I invite you to let yourself kneel in your mind’s eye at the foot of the cross and to notice the love you feel for the earth, and where you most feel its pain. Is it the mountains of Appalachia, whose tops are being blown off so that coal companies can extract the coal that generates most of the electricity in this country, perhaps in this very cathedral? Is it the millions of acres of pine trees that have been killed from New Mexico to British Columbia by the mountain pine beetles that no longer die off in winter because the winters are no longer sufficiently cold? Is it the diminishing songbird population, the dying coral reef or alpine meadow, the polar bear on the iceberg or the elephant in the forest? Is it the refugees on the move in sub-Saharan Africa because Lake Chad has dried up, or the islanders forced to leave their homes in the Pacific Ocean because the sea is rising? Is it the poor in this country who struggle to pay high heating bills and who need help to weatherize their houses, if they have one at all? Is it something more modest and closer to home, maybe a particular field once full of meadowlarks and clover in which you wandered as a child but which has since been “developed” into a mall? Or a sweet little city park you once knew that has fallen prey to drug dealers and neglect? Where do you most feel the pain of the earth? Where do you hear the groaning of God’s creation? What do you need to bring to the cross of Christ, where Christ takes up what we cannot bear ourselves, and whose every word to us is love?

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

2. Ibid.

3. For two recent articles on mass extinction, visit “Multitude of Species Face Climate Threat” and “Saving Endangered Species as the Climate Changes”

4. 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).

Claiming kin

“…Standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, here is your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’ And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home” (John 19:25b-27).

I want to tell you right up front that I find this gesture deeply moving. Jesus is suffering unimaginable pain; he is dying; and yet his dying words are completely consonant with the life that he lived: he wants to build relationship. Even as he dies, he reaches out to these two people that he loves so much, his mother and the beloved disciple, and he offers them to each other, inviting them into a fuller, more intimate, and more conscious connection. Jesus spent his whole life generating lively connections among everyone he met, challenging relationships that were built on domination, exclusion, and rejection, and creating ever-widening circles of love in which no one was left out.

We might interpret this scene at the cross simply within the context of personal relationships: here is Jesus showing us how much we need each other, how much we matter to each other. To quote the King James Bible: “Woman, behold thy son… Behold thy mother.” Behold, there is so much love that human beings can give each other! Give it, Jesus says to us. You belong to each other! Let your care for each other be expressed and cherished and known!

Yet I hear in these words much more than Jesus’ longing to connect one human being with another. I also hear his longing to connect human beings with the rest of the created world, his longing to heal the deep split between humanity and our brother and sister beings. The one we call Christ is the one through whom all things were made, in whom everything is knit together, and toward whom all things on heaven and earth converge. As we read in Colossians, “…In him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of the cross” (Colossians 1:19-20). As he hangs on the cross, Jesus not only reconciles human beings with each other; he reconciles everything in heaven and on earth, including humanity with the rest of the creation.

This is may be a deeply biblical insight, but it is a very different spirituality than the one with which many of us grew up. I grew up believing that “spirituality” was completely disembodied and ethereal. The God I grew up with had no body. Being a good Christian was all about distancing oneself from the body and transcending the body — both one’s own body and the “body” of the natural world. The natural world and its diversity of buzzing, blooming, finned, and feathered creatures was essentially irrelevant and dispensable, only the backdrop to what was really important: human beings. As a matter of fact, since the time of the Reformation, Western Christianity has had very little to say about the salvation of the natural world and the cosmos, as if only one species, Homo sapiens, is of any real interest to God.

So what a healing it is, what a restoration of the ancient biblical understanding — an understanding that has never been forgotten by the indigenous peoples of the land — to know that Christ on the cross is reconciling all things, restoring all things, and revealing again the deep truth that the earth is holy. Its creatures are holy. The whole created world is lit up with the power and presence of God. The created world is “very good,” as God proclaims in Genesis [bbllink]Genesis 1:31[/bbllink], and the first task of human beings is to tend and protect it.

We human beings are on a long journey back to understanding our God-given connection with the earth. That’s our greatest task and calling at this point in human history: to find our way to union with God and all God’s creation, to learn to reclaim our partnership not just with our human fellows but also with all living creatures. Heaven knows that we humans do not live in right relationship with our brother and sister beings who are four-legged, feathered, or finned, nor with the larger eco-systems of trees and soil and waters on which both they and we depend.

Our estrangement from the natural world is clear in the ecological crisis that is upon us, and when we set this crisis in the light of the cross, we understand it as a moment of judgment, a moment of reckoning. Our society’s way of living – what the bishops of the Episcopal Church decry in a recent pastoral letter as “unparalleled corporate greed and irresponsibility, predatory lending practices, and rampant consumerism” ¹– is a direct contradiction to the way of Jesus. We all know that we’re living in an unsustainable way. Depending on non-renewable energy and resources is by definition unsustainable. Consuming more resources than the planet can provide is by definition unsustainable. Producing a killing level of greenhouse gases is by definition unsustainable. Wiping out wilderness habitat and the myriad species upon which our species depends is by definition unsustainable. We are living beyond our ecological means.

Like it or not, we are the generation of the cusp, the generation that bridges the familiar and lovely old world of a stable climate, clean air, and temperate weather, of animals and birds that know when to migrate, where to nest, and what to eat, of farmers that know when and where to plant, of fishermen that find a catch — and this raw new world of sudden spikes in heat and cold, of wild winds and punishing droughts, of torrential rains and brutal heat.

As Bill McKibben writes in his latest book, global warming is “…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.” ² And there is no going back. Human beings have irrevocably altered the earth into which you and I were born. As McKibben puts it, “The world hasn’t ended, but the world as we know it has….” ³ Our task now is not to stop global warming, because that is impossible. Our task is to “keep it from getting any worse than it has to get,” ⁴ and to find ways to live more “lightly, carefully, and gracefully” ⁵ in this new world.

What is the way forward? To kneel at the cross in a spirit of profound repentance. To express not only our love and grief, but also our guilt. To confess the ways that we ourselves benefit from the destruction of the earth, and to admit our own patterns of consumption and waste. And to listen afresh to these words of love: “Woman, behold thy son… Behold thy mother.” Jesus is showing us how to move forward: connect with each other. Choose each other. Claim each other as kin. Turn with love not only to your fellow human beings, but also to the other creatures of the natural world.

On Tuesday The New York Times reported the story of a man who was snorkeling in the blue waters of the South Pacific, photographing a humpback whale and her calf swimming less than 50 yards away. “As [the man] waited for the right moment, the playful calf swam right up to him, so close that he had to lower his camera. That’s when he felt a gentle tap on his shoulder. Turning around, [Bryant Austin] found himself looking straight into the eye of the mother whale, her body bigger than a school bus. The tap had come from her pectoral fin, weighing more than a ton. To Mr. Austin, her gesture was an unmistakable warning that he had gotten too close to the calf. And yet, the mother whale had extended her fin with such precision and grace — to touch the photographer without hurting him –that Mr. Austin was in awe of her ‘delicate restraint.’ Looking into the whale’s eye, lit by sunlight through the water, Austin felt he was getting a glimpse of calmness and intelligence, of the animal’s consciousness. The moment changed Mr. Austin’s life.” He went on to devote himself to making life-size portraits of whales, so that other people might perceive the grandeur of these enormous creatures, and might sense what he saw when he looked into that mother whale’s eye. ⁶

What a marvel it is to break out of our usual state of alienation from the earth and its creatures, and to begin to perceive how connected we are with the other beings all around us. In our fear and despair, it is so easy to feel that we are alone, and that if human beings have irrevocably damaged the creation, then we might as well give up the struggle to create a more just and sustainable future. But then our consciousness breaks open. We meet the gaze of a robin, or a fox, or a frog, we gaze at a tree, we feel the wind on our cheek, and we hear Jesus speak within us, “Behold thy son… Behold thy mother.”

When our inward sight is restored, and our eyes are opened to behold Christ in all his redeeming work, the earth comes alive again and Christ shows up in every sound we hear, in every handful of dirt that we hold, in every bird that we see. The God who created all things also redeems all things and fills all things. Through the crucified and risen Christ, divine love has woven together the human and natural worlds into one inter-related whole. We participate in that mystery, whether we know it or not. Awaken to it, take our place within it, and maybe we will find the strength we need to live more lightly on the earth and to exercise the same delicate restraint regarding our fellow creatures that the mother whale showed to that awe-struck photographer. The only way forward is together.

What would change if we began each day in the way that St. Patrick began his, consciously arising “through the strength of heaven: light of sun, radiance of moon, splendor of fire, speed of lightning, swiftness of wind, depth of sea, stability of earth, firmness of rock”? What would become possible if we asked our brother-sister beings for support? Most of us have never tried it, and I wonder if this might be how the Holy Spirit is now calling us to pray.

So I invite us to take some time in silence and to let the breath bring us images of the living beings that surround us — maybe a red-tailed hawk or a magnolia tree, maybe a frog or prairie dog, a wolverine or walrus, bumblebee or bat. Let images of our brother-sister beings come to you, especially those that are threatened or in danger. Can you sense their support? How different these creatures are from us, how particular and strange, and yet how much they can help us as we take our place in the family of things.

If you prefer, I invite you simply to bring awareness to your body, which in itself is already linked to everything else. Breathe in, and oxygen released by plants and trees flows into our body. Breathe out, and we exhale carbon dioxide that plants in turn absorb. Most of our body’s weight comes from water, just as the surface of the planet is mostly made of water. The salinity of our blood matches the salinity of the sea, as if we carry an ocean inside. Not only that — the carbon and other elements that make up our bodies are the same elements that composed the dinosaurs who roamed the earth sixty-five million years ago, and that will compose whatever beings inhabit the earth sixty-five million years from now. Our body connects us to green-growing plants, to the earth and its creatures, to the oceans, and to every being that preceded us and every being that will follow. Our body even links us to the stars, for everything that makes up our body ultimately comes from stars. Our bodies can become radiant with Christ’s presence.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Rejoice. We are not alone.

Behold thy son. Behold thy mother.

1. “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.

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

3. McKibben, Eaarth, p. 2.

4. McKibben interview, op. cit.

5. McKibben, Eaarth, p. 151.

6. Yudhijit Bhattacharjee, “Whales’ Grandeur and Grace, Up Close,” The New York Times, April 18, 2011. For a fine article on whales, visit “Watching Whales Watching Us” (The New York Times, July 8, 2009).

Down to earth: The way of the cross

“Now there was a garden in the place where he was crucified, and in the garden there was a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid. And so, because it was the Jewish day of Preparation, and the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there” (John 19:41-42).

The passion narrative starts in a garden, where Judas betrays Jesus, and it ends in a garden, where our Lord is laid to rest: sin in the first garden, and death in the second; betrayal in the one, and burial in the other. John’s Gospel clearly wants to remind us of the garden that begins the story of human sin and death, the Garden of Eden. Of course, on Good Friday we haven’t yet reached the end of the story. On Easter morning, from out of that garden-turned-wasteland where sin and sorrow dwell and death reigns supreme, the risen Christ will burst from the tomb. The garden will be transformed: from a place of death it will become a place where new life rises again. According to John’s Gospel, Mary Magdalene will be the first person to meet the risen Christ, and she will mistake him for a gardener (John 20:15) — a wonderful insight, for the crucified and risen Christ is indeed a gardener who brings new life.

Living as we do in this time of the earth’s crucifixion, how do we follow Jesus on the way of the cross and the path that gives life? How do we stay true to the mind of Christ, keeping our hearts open and responding with boldness and generosity to his call to give ourselves to this great work of healing? 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. ¹ When we visit a hotel, we may feel entitled to use copious amounts of hot water, to throw towels on the floor, to use and discard everything in sight and then to head to the next hotel – in short, to exercise what she calls the “Kleenex perspective” of the world. But when we realize that in fact the earth is our home – that God created it and loves every inch of it and entrusts it to our care – then everything changes. We realize that we live here; we belong here; we can no longer tolerate a life-style that exhausts the planet’s resources and that treats land, sea, and sky alike as receptacles for waste.

Creating a life-giving society will not be easy. Global market capitalism, the economic system that most of us take for granted, is based on gobbling up the natural resources of the world. As Sallie McFague points out, Christians have an obligation to advocate instead for economic systems that are just and sustainable. We need “to become informed about the global injustices of market economies” and to work “to change the policies and practices of so-called free trade that result in impoverishment and unsustainability.” We have a battle on our hands, for the powers-that-be make hefty profits from the status quo. Oil companies continue to make record profits and to push lawmakers to drill even more widely in our waters and lands. The Clean Air Act is under assault, as is the regulatory power of the EPA. And the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which boasts that it is the biggest lobby in Washington, is pumping tens of millions of dollars into the effort to deny the science of climate change and to block our country from making a transition to clean, safe, renewable energy anytime soon. ²

There is a political battle going on in which we must engage, so that what is scientifically necessary can become politically possible. We have our own personal battles to carry out, too, as we struggle to simplify our lives, to use less of the earth’s resources, and to acknowledge the tight connection between global warming and consumerism, since unlimited consumption is a major contributor to greenhouse gases. ³ Can we learn to live more lightly on the earth? Can we learn to share rather than to hoard? Can we hear the cries of the poor and the cries of the groaning earth rather than just our own insatiable appetite for more, more, more?

The personal and social transformation that this period in history requires is so profound, it can only be described in the language of religion. As one economist puts it: “Sustainable development will require a change of heart, a renewal of the mind, and a healthy dose of repentance. These are all,” he says, “religious terms, and that is no coincidence, because a change in the fundamental principles we live by is a change so deep that it is essentially religious whether we call it that or not.” ⁴

The transformation that we seek is symbolized by the cross. The old has died. Behold, the new has come. That is the language that speaks to me now, the biblical language of transformation. There is so much that needs to die, beginning with the small ego-self, that sinful, separated self that lives over and against all other beings and that claims no one but itself (and maybe its immediate tribe) as kin. A whole way of life needs to die, as well, if that way of life is driven by selfishness and greed, if it results in an ever-widening gap between the wealthy few and the impoverished multitude, and if it tears apart the very fabric of life upon which human beings and all other creatures depend.

Endings are real, disruptive, and scary, whether they are the end of oil, the end of empire, the end of a stable climate, or the end of our lives. But Christians, like people of other religious traditions, always live in sight of endings. And we dare to believe that by following the way of the cross, we can do what Jesus did: we can make way for new life to be born within us and among us. We can help turn the wastelands of the earth into gardens, into places where love and life can flourish.

Jesus provoked the powerful, and he endured suffering and death. Yet his consistent message was one of hope, not fear. Why? Because he was rooted in the love of God. Because he knew that nothing could separate him from the love of God. Because he had a vision of how human beings could live well on the earth in obedience to God, a vision of a beloved community of brothers and sisters living together in justice and peace. “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 self-giving generosity and kindness, committed to the truth of love, and dedicated to a life of praising and serving God, whatever the cost might be.

At the cross of Christ we refuse to settle for a status quo in which the poor go hungry, landfills overflow, lakes die, entire species disappear, gas-guzzlers foul the air, and the global climate is scorched. For here is our brother and savior Jesus, living for us, dying for us, rising for us, standing with us and calling us out to a life that is devoted to God’s shalom and to the healing and wellbeing of all, even when living such a life disrupts the powers-that-be.

In the light of the cross, 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 check out a farmer’s market, or to start a small garden at your home or church. If you have some money to invest, you might invest in socially responsible funds or in local, green businesses. You might get an energy audit, or invite the neighbor you’ve never met before 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 life enhancing, 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. And together we will need to create the most diverse, bold, 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 little while we will venerate the cross on which he gave his life, and then 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, 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.

I invite us to take some time in silence as we consider the way of the cross. What in your life needs to die? What needs to be transformed? What small action step do you feel led to take that expresses your desire to follow Jesus and to live in a way that helps God’s creation flourish?

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

2. Bill McKibben: Money Pollution — The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Darkens the Skies

3. McFague, op cit., p. 96.

4. Herman E. Daly, Beyond Growth: Economics of Sustainable Development, Boston: Beacon Press, 1996, p. 201.

The journey of the wise men

Happy are the people whose strength is in you! whose hearts are set on the pilgrims’ way. – Psalm 84:4

When I think about the three kings, what leaps first to mind are the crèches that I unpack every year a couple of weeks before Christmas. On the piano in the living room I put the tall, earthenware figures of Mary, Joseph, and the baby, of shepherds and sheep, and — yes — of the three kings and their camels. On the mantelpiece goes a miniature nativity set in which each teeny-tiny figure is made of clay, delicately painted, and no more than one inch high. On the coffee table I put the plastic figures and the cheap wooden stable that children can play with to their heart’s content without making their grandmother worry that something is going to break. No crèche is complete without its three kings, and when the Twelve Days of Christmas are over, back go the various kings and camels into their boxes, where they spend the rest of the year stored in the basement.

As I pondered today’s Gospel, I got to thinking: what would happen if the wise men walked out of those crèches and into our lives? What would happen if these figures — so easy to trivialize as nothing more than decorative props for a mid-winter festival that we pack away when the festival is done — what if the wise men actually came to life for us? What if their journey informed and deepened our own spiritual search, and propelled it forward? What if their experience of seeking and finding the Christ child was an archetypal journey, one that could lead us into a move vivid and lively relationship with Christ? So I began to read the story for its spiritual significance, as a sacred story about how to grow in intimacy with God.

Four parts of the story stood out for me.

The first, of course, is the star, that mysterious, shining presence that startles the wise men and sends them out on a search. Ancient tradition held that an unusual star could appear in the skies to mark the birth of someone special, such as a king. That is how the wise men interpret what they see: something out of the ordinary is taking place, something truly significant is afoot, and out the door they go, leaving their ordinary lives behind as they follow the light wherever it leads.

I think it is worth pointing out that although every painting, movie, and Christmas card that depicts the journey of the wise men shows a dazzling star above their heads, we don’t actually know from the biblical story whether anyone but the wise men can see that star. King Herod, the chief priests and scribes, don’t seem to know anything about the star until the wise men arrive in Jerusalem and tell them about its rising. So the star may be visible to the eye or it may be perceptible only to one’s inward sight; it may be seen or it may be unseen. Either way, it is significant, for it signals the birth of something new in the world. It heralds a presence and power that is just now being born. The wise men are wise, indeed, for they spot that star and they set everything aside to follow where it leads.

Probably every spiritual journey begins with a star. At some point we get a sense — perhaps a very vague one — that there is something more to life than the ordinary round of tasks and responsibilities, something above and beyond, or perhaps within, material reality that can give a larger meaning and purpose to our days, something that is beautiful and shining and that lights up the world. So we set out on a quest to follow that star and to see where it leads. We may name the quest in different ways — maybe we call it a search for meaning or wholeness, a search for happiness or peace. Maybe we seek to know that we are loved, or to draw closer to the divine Source of love. Maybe, as some Greeks say to Philip in the Gospel of John, we express our desire in a simple, straightforward way: “We wish to see Jesus” John 12:21.

However we name that desire, deep down we want to know God. And so, like the wise men, we set out, and what beckons us forward is a star, a subtle, shining presence that keeps company with us, and that we follow as best we can. For most of us, most of the time, following the leadings of God is not like having a GPS fastened to the dashboard of our car, delivering clear-cut instructions: “Turn left in .2 miles; take the freeway; turn right in 4.3 miles.” Like it or not, the star of Bethlehem is more elusive than that, so we have to develop an attitude of careful listening, a stance of open inquiry, and a practice of prayer that develops our sensitivity to the glimmers of the holy. It takes practice to stay attentive to the star, for, as Boris Pasternak once wrote, “When a great moment knocks on the door of your life, it is often no louder than the beating of your heart, and it is very easy to miss it.”

The star is the first thing that catches my attention in this story, and the second is Jerusalem. Where does the star lead the wise men? Straight to Jerusalem, straight into the center of political and economic power, where King Herod the Great, a client king appointed by Rome, rules with the same ferocity that Stalin wielded over his own country in the 1930’s. We might wish that following a spiritual path were purely an individual and internal enterprise — that following the star meant nothing more than developing a personal practice of prayer or going away on periodic retreats. There are plenty of contemporary books and speakers out there that define spirituality in a very individualistic way as being mindful of your own mind and cultivating your own soul — and of course that is part of the journey. But right from the beginning, from the very moment that Christ is born, it is clear that following his star also means coming to grips with the social and political realities of one’s time. Being “spiritual,” for Christians, is not just an interior, individual project of “saving ones soul” — it also has a civic dimension, a political dimension, and as the wise men faithfully follow the star, they are drawn straight into the darkness and turmoil of the world, where systemic power can be used to dominate and terrify. Without intending it or knowing it, the wise men even contribute to Herod’s program of terror, for Herod takes the information that they give him and uses it to order the slaughter of all the children under the age of two who live in Bethlehem.

Following the star evidently means being willing to become conscious of the darkness of the world, and even to perceive how we ourselves are implicated in that darkness. With my taxes, I am paying for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; with every turn of the ignition key, I burn fossil fuels that add to global warming. Until I recognize how I am caught up in and how I contribute to the contradictions and injustices of our political and economic system, I am not following the star and accompanying the wise men into Jerusalem.

We notice, too, that King Herod trembles at the news of the star — in fact, its rising frightens him. The powers that be are terrified whenever God in Christ draws near, for God’s love is always a threat to those powers; it opposes everything in us and around us that is selfish, greedy, and motivated by the urge to dominate, control, and possess. As I read it, the wise men needed to come to know those powers, both within themselves and in the world around them, if they were going to find and follow Christ.

So they entered Jerusalem, and they saw what they saw; they learned what they learned. Then, keeping their eyes on the star, they kept going, “until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy” Matthew 2:9b-10. This is the third part of the story: the encounter with Christ. What a beautiful line that is — “when they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy.” The long, long journey with all its uncertainties and privations, its cold nights and its restless, ardent searching, has reached its fulfillment. The star has stopped, and the wise men can be at peace at last, they have arrived at last, they have found what they were looking for, at last! They enter the house, they see Mary and the child, and they fall to their knees in a gesture of deep reverence and humility.

Do we know what that’s like? Of course we do. We glimpse such moments whenever time seems to stop, when, for instance, our minds grow very quiet in prayer, we surrender our thoughts, and we seem to be filling with light. Or maybe it happens when we gaze at something that captures our complete attention — maybe a stretch of mountains or the sea, or when we take a long, loving look into a child’s sleeping face, or when we are completely absorbed in a piece of music. In moments like these, it can feel as if we are gazing through the object on which we gaze, and seeing into the heart of life itself. Love is pouring through us and into us, and all we can do is throw up our hands, fall inwardly to our knees, and offer as a gift everything that is in us, just as the wise men open their treasure chests and offer everything that is in them. Worship is what happens when we come into the presence of what is really real. When we come to the altar rail at the Eucharist, whether we choose to stand or whether we kneel as the wise men did, like them we stretch out our hands to offer everything that is in us, and like them we receive — we take in — the living presence of Christ.

Finally, the fourth element of the story is its last line: “… having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road” Matthew 2:12. In other words, the wise men refused to cooperate with Herod. They deceived him. They resisted him. The wise men have been called the first conscientious objectors in the name of Christ. They are the first in a long line of witnesses to Christ who from generation to generation have carried out acts of non-violent civil disobedience in Jesus’ name. The journey of the wise men is our journey, too, for, as Gregory the Great reportedly remarked in a homily back in the 7th century: “Having come to know Jesus, we are forbidden to return by the way we came.”

So, as we set out together into a new year, I hope that you will join me in keeping the wise men at our side, rather than packing them away in a box somewhere.

Like them, we can attune ourselves to the guiding of the star, and renew our commitment to prayer and inward listening.

Like them, we can enter Jerusalem and all the dark places of our world and soul, following wherever God leads, and trusting that God’s light will shine in the darkness.

Like them, we can make our way to Christ, and kneel in gratitude.

And like them, we, too, can rise to our feet with a new-fired passion to be agents of justice and healing, and a renewed desire to give ourselves to God, for “happy are the people whose strength is in [God, and] whose hearts are set on the pilgrims’ way.”

I put my trust in you

What does the future hold? What is the world coming to? Where are we headed? These are Advent questions, and they are also the questions that beset me as I study climate change. Will human beings learn at last to live in a peaceful, creative way on our planetary home? These are not abstract, neutral questions, but urgent questions, the kind that wake me up in the middle of the night.

I want to tell an Advent story that took place five years ago. In the fall of 2005, Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita – strengthened by the unusually warm waters of the Gulf – plowed into Louisiana and Mississippi. Millions of Americans were evacuated. Within a matter of hours, most of an American city lay in ruins.

Soon afterwards, a small group from my parish, Grace Church in Amherst, began organizing a service trip to Mississippi. In late November we would drive down a truck full of supplies, sleep in a makeshift camp, and do whatever was needed – haul debris, dig mud, offer a shoulder to cry on, or just listen and pray. I was eager to go, but then I received an invitation to join a delegation of interfaith religious leaders who would attend the upcoming United Nations climate change conference in Montreal. It was the first international summit since the Kyoto Protocol came into force, a gathering to discuss the future of the fight against global warming — the same group that is meeting this week in Cancun, Mexico.

The two trips overlapped, and I could not take them both. How should I lend a hand in the fight against climate change – head down to Mississippi or up to Montreal? Stand in the mud with my brothers and sisters, or try in some small way to influence world leaders? Both efforts were worthy. I debated what to do. Finally a friend reminded me that if you are watching dead or wounded people floating down a river, it is important that someone rescue them and tend to them. But it is also important that someone head upstream and stop the war.

I decided to go to Montreal.

In late November, I flew to Canada as part of the U.S. Climate Action delegation, which included representatives of Interfaith Power & Light. For several days I mingled with delegates sent by the World Council of Churches, attended climate workshops, listened to speeches, and wrote editorials. Best of all, on a cold Saturday afternoon I marched through the streets of Montreal. I had never stood shoulder to shoulder with so many climate activists. Seven thousand protesters walked through the city, a throng of all sorts of people — parents pushing strollers, the sturdy middle-aged, the valiant elderly, and a large contingent of young adults fairly bouncing with glee. I, too, was buoyed by joy. Here was the most vigorous celebration of Advent that I could imagine. The placards and banners rang out the season’s urgent themes: Now is the time to wake from sleep, to clean up our act, to sort out our lives, to cast away the works of darkness and to put on the armor of light.

“The time is high,” read one sign.

“People in power: wake up!” read another.

One sign declared in big black letters: La terre n’est pas une guimauve. I understood the first part: The earth is not…, but the meaning of the last word escaped me. I pushed through the crowd to view the placard’s other side: a sketch of a round earth skewered like a marshmallow on a stick, suspended over flames.

No, the earth is not a marshmallow, although we are treating it like one.

One group of protesters streamed in from the east, and another from the west, everyone cheering, waving signs, or playing drums. When the two crowds met, we marched together down the road that led to the building where the pale blue U.N. flag was whipping in the wind. There we held a rally, and we were not alone. Companion marches were being held simultaneously in 29 countries around the world.

That ebullient march was one of the gifts I received on the trip to Montreal, a glimpse of the burgeoning worldwide movement that draws upon humanity’s deepest reserves of hope, and calls upon the world’s political and corporate leaders to protect life as we know it on this planet.

The other gift came as a surprise, when I was alone one morning in the hotel. By then I had been in Montreal for several days, and I was steeped in the stark reality of climate change. I had studied the aerial photographs of Mount Kilimanjaro, newly naked, bereft of snow, and had listened to reports of “climate witnesses” from Argentina and the Arctic. I had learned about the many ways that climate change puts stress on organisms and eco-systems, and had heard survivors of Katrina speak about the particular vulnerability of the poor and dispossessed. I had listened as the delegates debated, and had read about our government’s intransigence, its complete refusal to take the issue seriously.

After a restless night, I woke up gasping with anger and sorrow, needing badly to pray. Death was prowling nearby and I was ardent for life. I sat in the hotel room and let my anguish spill out before God – grief for what we have lost and the harm that has been done, rage at the inertia and indifference that kill with such abandon. I felt utterly helpless. Dear Lord, what can I do? What can any of us do?

Then, as if to one side, I heard a quiet message.

I put my trust in you.

Startled, I opened my eyes and looked around. Who said that? I had heard the sentence as clearly as if someone were standing in the room. I had often said those very words to God, but now the message was addressed to me. How bizarre. Was there some mistake? Who was speaking? How could God trust me?

I saw that I had a choice: to accept the message or to reject it, to believe it or to blow it off. The message was as improbable as the message that the angel Gabriel delivered to Mary so many years ago: you are a virgin, you will conceive a son, and he will be the savior of the world.

Yeah, right is surely a sensible response.

Yet God’s hope for the future hung on Mary’s willingness to trust and her decision to say yes. Perhaps it hangs on our own willingness and our decisions, too. Who knows how many such messages are delivered every day to the countless faithful of every religious tradition around the world? Trust the good, wherever you find it. Trust love. Trust the truth. Trust yourself. Who knows how much energy for life would be released into the world if we dared to believe in those intimate, hidden encounters when, at a deep level of our being, we are offered a divine word of love, an assurance of forgiveness, an expression of trust?

Musing in my hotel room, I considered the words: I put my trust in you. What I heard in those words was the quiet assurance that I was exactly where I was meant to be, and that I was not alone. I was trusted. I was loved. My task was simply to keep listening to the deepest truth within me, and to follow where it led.

I decided to accept the message that I had received. Maybe I was a fool to do so — I will never know, at least not on this side of the grave. But I learned again that there is a fountain within us that is not contingent on outward circumstance, an upwelling of love that comes from nowhere. Maybe that is what gives us hope even in the midst of loss, terror, or failure.

I touch that hope in every service of Holy Communion. During this retreat we have been considering the resources that Christian theology and practice can offer us in the face of the environmental crisis now unfolding in our midst. My short list of essential Christian resources would have to include the sacrament of Holy Communion.

It is here at this table that we receive the simple elements of bread and wine, and realize that these apparently ordinary things – like Nature herself – are actually filled with God.

It is here at this table that we learn to eat mindfully, to take God’s creatures of bread and wine into our hands with reverence and a grateful heart.

It is here at this table that we share the one loaf and one cup and discover that a bit of bread can fill us and a sip of wine can quench our thirst. We don’t have to grab for more; we don’t have to be greedy “consumers” who must constantly replenish ourselves with material things in order to reassure ourselves that we matter or that we exist. At this table we discover that in sharing what we have, our hearts are satisfied at last.

It is here at this table that God gives God’s self to us, and we in turn give ourselves to God. It’s here at this table that our bonds with God in Christ, with each other, and with the whole Creation are restored and renewed. I wish that this last point was made explicit in our Eucharistic prayers, so I have taken the liberty of changing the wording of the post-Communion prayer. ¹

1. A line in the Enriching Our Worship post-Communion prayer was changed from “you have united us with Christ and one another; and you have made us one with all your people in heaven and on earth” to “you have united us with Christ and one another; and you have made us one with all your people in heaven and on earth, and with all creation.”

When a leaf needs to speak

As I prayed about this sermon, I knew that I wanted to give you something, but what kept coming to mind were not ideas, or even words, but images of a leaf. I kept imagining myself standing here and holding up a leaf. I decided to trust what was coming to me in prayer, so I wandered about, looking at trees, and came back with this [holding up a leaf].

As I imagined holding this very leaf before you, I asked, “OK, Leaf, what do you have to say to these good people?” And the leaf gave me three messages.

The first one: Here is the world in all its beauty. This leaf is unlike every other leaf. If you spent just five minutes examining its stem and veins and color and shape, you would see that this leaf is a very particular leaf, one that has its own contribution to make to the world, just as each of us has our own particular part to play in the whole web of life. This particular, irreplaceable leaf emerged in connection to the rest of the tree: its stem connected to a branch, the branch to the trunk, and the trunk to the roots. From below, the roots absorbed water and nutrients that were drawn up the tree-trunk and passed along to the leaf. And from above, sunlight shone down and made the leaf grow. So this leaf is intimately connected to sunshine and water, to dirt and cloud, worms and sky. And this leaf is connected to us, and to every creature that shares what the Book of Genesis calls “the breath of life” (Genesis 1:30). When we breathe in, we take in oxygen that the leaves have released, and when we breathe out, we exhale carbon dioxide that the leaves in turn take in as food. With every breath we exchange the elements of life with plants.

What a beautiful world we live in — one that is so very particular, so full of such unique and exquisitely designed creatures as a leaf, a tree, a person. And everything is so interconnected. Here is the world in all its beauty — that is the cry of mystics from every religious tradition, and the deep perception of things that animates the Bible, when in the Creation story God takes a look at the world that God has made, and pronounces it “very good” (Genesis 1:31). Everything is particular; everything is connected. Study this leaf with a quiet eye, and you will glimpse the imperishable, shining through what perishes. You will see the invisible, illuminating what can be seen.

Here is the world in all its beauty, the leaf says. And it says a second thing, too: Here is the world in all its fragility. This leaf is soft and easily torn, and it has been separated from its tree. It speaks about the vulnerability of the world, about its mortality and pain. Week after week last summer, we were riveted to the terrible sight of oil and gas gushing up from the floor of the sea, a mile down deep in the Gulf of Mexico. The BP oil spill is one of the most violent assaults on the natural world that any of us have ever seen. And yet, as Bill McKibben points out, if everything had gone smoothly, if the oil had made its way “up through the drilling pipe, onto the platform, off the gulf into some refinery and thence into the gas tank of a car,”¹ the damage it would have created would have been even more extreme. The relentless burning of dirty energy is changing the planet in “large and fundamental ways,” and, as McKibben points out, global warming is not just a future threat. It is, he writes, “no longer a threat at all. It’s our reality? Our old familiar globe is suddenly melting, drying, acidifying, flooding, and burning in ways that no human has ever seen.”² “We’ve undermined the basic physical stability of this planet,” he says.³ Of course, different places can have a string of cool or warm days, but the average planetary temperature is going in only one direction. NASA reports that the first half of 2010 set a record for global temperature.

Fragile, afflicted, under assault — that is a truth about the world in which we live. When we acknowledge that, we pierce the illusion that human beings can treat the earth with impunity, drilling, mining, dumping at will, burning fossil fuels without care for the consequences, buying the next new thing, and the next, and the next — as if nature were at our beck and call, a supposedly endless supply of “resources” for the use of a single species, as if the natural world were a business, and we were holding a liquidation sale.

When we see the world’s fragility, we allow ourselves to grieve what human beings have done. We break through our numbness and denial, and feel the anger and sorrow that spring from love. We find the courage to acknowledge our uneasiness and fear, and the moral clarity to admit that we need to change course.

This is where a third message speaks from the leaf: Here is the world in its need and longing to be healed. The world is beckoning us, inviting us, even crying out to us: Stand with me! Protect me! Set me free! If we perceive the beauty of the world, if we perceive its fragility, then we can’t help but hear its call to each of us to become a — what shall I say? The traditional word is “steward,” but I am looking for a word that is more robust and urgent than that. How about “a healer,” “a liberator,” “a guardian,” “a protector”? We need, as McKibben says, to find ways to live more “lightly, carefully, and gracefully”⁴ in the world. We need to join the search that so many others have begun, the search to bring forth a human presence on the planet that is “environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling, and socially just.”⁵ We don’t have much time to accomplish this, so it is a precarious and very precious time to be alive. We have a chance to take part ? if we choose ? in a great work of healing.

What does that look like in our own lives? We take the steps that individuals can take. Maybe we recycle, drive less, and quit using bottled water. Maybe we eat local, organic foods and support our local farms. Maybe we install insulation, put up solar panels, turn down the heat, use AC in moderation — hey, you know the drill.

Working to stabilize the climate begins at home, but it cannot end there. The scope and speed of the climate crisis require action on a much broader scale. We need to push our political leaders to get this country and other countries on track to bring down the level of CO2 in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million, the uppermost level that many scientists say is safe for life as we know it to continue on this planet. What is the level today? 390 — and climbing. There is work to be done.

The good news is that we have an opportunity every day to bear witness to the God who loved us, and all Creation, into being. The face of the Risen Christ shines out in every leaf and blossom, in every chickadee and butterfly, in every worm and wren. When we take action to mend the fabric of life that seems so swiftly to be unraveling, we express our reverence for God. Although it was a struggle to stop the deathly flow of oil that erupted at the bottom of the sea, nothing can stop the love of God that is being “poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Romans 5:5). That love will guide and sustain us in the work that lies ahead.

Here is the world in all its beauty? its fragility? and its need and longing to be healed.

If I could, I would place this leaf in your hand, and yours, and yours, and yours. We need people who live with grateful awareness of life’s beauty and fragility — people who are willing to take the risk, and bear the cost, and carry the joy of standing up for life.

This sermon is based on my Baccalaureate Sermon delivered at St. Timothy’s School, Stevenson, MD, on June 5, 2010.

1. Bill McKibben, “It’s about the carbon: What’s worse than the gulf oil leak?” The Christian Century Magazine, June 1, 2010, http://www.christiancentury.org/article.lasso?id=8460

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

3. Bill McKibben interview, Democracy Now!, April 15, 2010 < http://www.democracynow.org/2010/4/15/mckibben >

4. McKibben, Eaarth, p. 151.

5. “Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream,” a symposium sponsored by the Pachamama Alliance ? < http://www.awakeningthedreamer.org >

As you set out into the world

Blessed be the God who has brought us to this day.
Blessed be the God of all our days. Amen. ¹

I am grateful to Randy Stevens for inviting me to speak. Thank you. It is a pleasure to be back at my alma mater and to see that it is thriving, although it is startling to realize that a full forty-one years have passed since I sat where you Sixes are sitting today, preparing to set out into the world. This is a big moment in your lives, and in the lives of your family-members, as well. My son graduated from high school two years ago, and I know how proud you parents and grandparents are feeling right now, how sweet and joyful this transition is, and yet how poignant, too, for it is a tender moment when young ones grow up and head out into the world as young adults.

As I prayed about what to say, I knew that I wanted to give you Sixes something, and what kept coming to my mind was not ideas, or even words, but the image of a leaf. I kept imagining myself standing here and holding up a leaf. As it happens, I am finishing a book, a spiritual memoir about becoming a climate activist, and its working title is Love Every Leaf. I decided to trust what was coming to me in prayer, so I went outside after lunch and wandered about. I found a maple tree by the chapel, and I came away with this [holds up maple leaf] .

As I imagined holding this very leaf before you, I asked it: OK, Leaf, what do you have to say to these good people who are graduating from St. Tim’s? And the leaf gave me three messages.

The first one: Here is the world in all its beauty. This leaf is unlike every other leaf. If you spent just five minutes examining its stem and veins and color and shape, you would see that this leaf is a very particular leaf, one that has its own contribution to make to the world, just as each of us has our own particular part to play in the whole web of life. This particular, irreplaceable leaf emerged in connection to the rest of the tree: its stem connected to a branch, the branch to the trunk, and the trunk to the roots. From below, the roots absorbed water and nutrients that were drawn up the tree-trunk and passed along to the leaf. And from above, sunlight shone down and made the leaf grow. So this leaf is intimately connected to sunshine and water, to dirt and cloud, worms and sky. And this leaf is connected to us, and to every creature that shares what the Book of Genesis calls “the breath of life” (Genesis 1:30). When we breathe in, we take in oxygen that leaves have released, and when we breathe out, we exhale carbon dioxide that the leaves in turn take in as food. With every breath we exchange the elements of life with plants.

What a beautiful world we live in — one that is so very particular, so full of such unique and exquisitely designed creatures as a leaf, a tree, a person. And everything is so interconnected. Here is the world in all its beauty — that is the cry of mystics from every religious tradition, and the deep perception of things that animates the Bible, when in the Creation story God takes a look at the world that God has made, and God pronounces it “very good” (Genesis 1:31). Everything is particular; everything is connected.

What would it be like to look at the world with eyes that see its beauty, its hidden radiance? It is easy to turn away from the actual world and to focus instead on the virtual world of screens and electronic devices, or on our own worried or self-absorbed thoughts. Many of us are alienated from the living body of the earth, and have forgotten its beauty. For many years I lived with a food addiction, and during that time I felt completely out of touch with the first bit of nature with which I have been entrusted — my body. For me, re-connecting with the earth began with learning to inhabit my own flesh, to listen to it, and treat it kindly and with respect.

So what a discovery it was for me, as it is for many of us, to fall in love with the beauty of God’s Creation, to look at the world around us with gratefulness, wonder, and awe, and to begin to experience how deeply God loves us not only in ourselves, but also as an integral part of this blooming, buzzing, bellowing, flapping, whirling life that surrounds us on every side. Our great Protestant forebear, 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.” And our great Roman Catholic forebear, Thomas Aquinas, once said, “Revelation comes in two volumes – the Bible and nature.” Study this leaf with a quiet eye, and you will glimpse the imperishable shining through what perishes. You will see the invisible illuminating what is visible.

As you set out into the world, I hope that you will keep your eyes open to its beauty, and let your spirit be renewed. I hope that you will walk with gratefulness, for a grateful heart is sensitive to God. I hope that you will breathe with awareness, for every breath connects you to the living world around, and to the Holy Spirit — the divine Breath of God — that, moment to moment, is giving us life.

Here is the world in all its beauty, the leaf says. And it says a second thing, too: Here is the world in all its fragility. This leaf is soft and easily torn, and it has been separated from its tree. It speaks to me about the vulnerability of the world, about its mortality and pain. For weeks, many of us have been riveted to the terrible sight of oil and gas gushing up from the floor of the sea, a mile down deep in the Gulf of Mexico. The BP oil spill is one of the most violent assaults on the natural world that any of us have ever seen. And yet, as environmentalist Bill McKibben points out, if everything had gone smoothly, if the oil had made its way “up through the drilling pipe, onto the platform, off the gulf into some refinery and thence into the gas tank of a car,” ² the damage it would have created would have been even more severe. The relentless burning of dirty energy is changing the planet in “large and fundamental ways,” and, as McKibben points out, global warming is not just a future threat. It is, he writes, “no longer a threat at all. It’s our reality… Our old familiar globe is suddenly melting, drying, acidifying, flooding, and burning in ways that no human has ever seen.” ³ “We’ve undermined the basic physical stability of this planet,” he says. Of course, different places might have a string of cool or warm days, but the average planetary temperature is going in only one direction. “NASA [recently reported] that we’ve come through the warmest January, February, March on record, [and] that 2010 is going to be the warmest year that we’ve ever seen.” ⁴ The global climate with its delicate balance of gases turns out to be more fragile then we ever imagined.

Fragile, afflicted, under assault — that is a truth about the world in which we live. The life systems of the earth are in decline. Since I was a student at St. Tim’s, the human population has doubled worldwide, a heavy burden on the planet. Species are going extinct at a rate unprecedented since the death of the dinosaurs. “The whole creation [is] groaning,” wrote St. Paul (Romans 8:22), and we sense that, too, more acutely than ever.

When we see the world’s fragility, we pierce the illusion that human beings can treat the earth with impunity, drilling, mining, dumping at will, burning fossil fuels without care for the consequences, buying the next new thing, and the next, and the next — as if nature were at our beck and call, a supposedly endless supply of “resources” for the use of a single species, as if the natural world were a business, and we were holding a liquidation sale.

When we see the world’s fragility, we allow ourselves to grieve what human beings have done. We break through our numbness and denial, and feel the anger and sorrow that spring from love. We find the courage to acknowledge our uneasiness and fear, and the moral clarity to admit that we need to change course.

This is where a third message speaks from the leaf: Here is the world in its need and longing to be healed. The world is beckoning us, inviting us, even crying out to us: Stand with me! Protect me! Set me free! If we perceive the beauty of the world, if we perceive its fragility, then we can’t help but hear its call to each of us to become a — what shall I say? The traditional word is “steward,” but I am looking for a word that is more robust and urgent than that. How about “a healer,” “a liberator,” “a guardian,” “a protector”? We need, as McKibben says, to find ways to live more “lightly, carefully, and gracefully” ⁵ in the world. We need to join the search that so many others have begun, the search to bring forth a human presence on the planet that is “environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling, and socially just.” ⁶ We don’t have much time to accomplish this, so it is a precarious and very precious time to be alive. We have a chance to take part – if we choose – in a great work of healing.

What does that look like in our own lives? We take the steps that individuals can take. Maybe we recycle, drive less, and quit using bottled water. Maybe we choose a hybrid over a Hummer, a bicycle over a hybrid, a pair of walking shoes over a bicycle. Maybe we eat local, organic foods, start a community garden, and support our local farmers. Maybe we install insulation, put up solar panels, switch to energy-efficient light bulbs, turn down the heat, use AC in moderation — hey, you know the drill.

Working to stabilize the climate begins at home, but it cannot end there. The scope and speed of the climate crisis require action on a much broader scale. As I see it, we need to push the Senate to pass the strongest possible energy and climate bill. We need to get this country and other countries on track to bring down the level of CO2 in the atmosphere to no more than 350 parts per million, the uppermost level that many scientists say is safe for life as we know it to continue on this planet. I am happy to mention that our beloved brother in Christ, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, is supporting the international campaign to reduce atmospheric levels of CO2 to 350 parts per million. What is the level today? 389 — and climbing. There is work to be done.

The good news is that we have an opportunity every day to bear witness to the God who loved us, and all Creation, into being. If God created us to love God, our neighbors and ourselves — if deep in our guts, our bones, our genes, is a God-given affection for the rest of the created world — then our rising up to protect that world is an act of love, an act of faithfulness to God. To use images from my own religious tradition, the face of the Good Shepherd, the face of the Risen Christ, shines out in every leaf and blossom, in every chickadee and butterfly, in every worm and wren. Taking action to protect God’s Creation and to mend the fabric of life that seems so swiftly to be unraveling is an act of reverence to our Creator. We may be struggling to stop the deathly flow of oil that is erupting at the bottom of the sea, but nothing can stop the love of God that is being “poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Romans 5:5). That love will guide and sustain us in the struggle ahead.

Here is the world in all its beauty… its fragility… and its need and longing to be healed.

If I could, I would place this leaf in your hands, and yours, and yours, and yours. We need people who live with grateful awareness of life’s beauty and fragility, people willing to take the risk, and bear the cost, and carry the joy of standing up for life.

“You are the light of the world,” Jesus says to you (Matthew 5:14). Let your light shine.

Blessed be the God who has brought us to this day.
Blessed be the God of all our days. Amen.

1. Prayer from Changes: Prayers and Services Honoring Rites of Passage, New York, NY: Church Publishing, 2007, p. 31.

2. Bill McKibben, “It’s about the carbon: What’s worse than the gulf oil leak?” The Christian Century Magazine, June 1, 2010, http://www.christiancentury.org/article.lasso?id=8460

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

4. Bill McKibben interview, Democracy Now!, April 15, 2010 http://www.democracynow.org/2010/4/15/mckibben

5. McKibben, Eaarth, p. 151.

6. “Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream,” a symposium sponsored by the Pachamama Alliance – http://www.awakeningthedreamer.org

Good shepherd, good earth

What a spectacular week this has been in New England! The oaks are in bloom, the maples have leafed out, the first warblers have returned, and the lilacs have begun to flower, which means that soon the first hummingbirds will arrive. Whether we’ve had the privilege of spending hours with our hands in the garden, or have only had a chance to look up once or twice to feel the breeze on our face or to glimpse the soft green colors of the Holyoke Range, all of us have been blessed this week by the gentleness of spring. On days like these we feel what St. Thomas Aquinas calls the “allure” of the natural world, and what biologist E.O. Wilson calls “biophilia” — that instinctive love that human beings feel for the creatures and living systems that surround us and of which we are a part.

Today is Good Shepherd Sunday. On the Fourth Sunday of Easter our Gospel reading is always taken from chapter ten of John’s Gospel, where Jesus speaks of himself as the Good Shepherd. Today is also Creation Sunday, the Sunday closest to Earth Day, whose fortieth anniversary we celebrated last Thursday. So it is a good morning to reflect on our call to care for Creation, a good morning to see if we can listen more deeply to the Good Shepherd’s voice.

Back on that first Earth Day in 1970, some twenty million Americans rose up to proclaim their love for the natural world. They took part in rallies, protests, and teach-ins, and demanded that our government take action to restore the environment. And it worked. Soon afterwards, Congress passed the Clean Water Act, strengthened the Clean Air Act, and created the Environmental Protection Agency.

Forty years later, a new passion for the earth is sweeping — and needs to sweep — this country as Americans begin to understand the reality of climate change. I have just started reading Bill McKibben’s new book, Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet, and McKibben makes it clear that 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.”¹ “We’ve undermined the basic physical stability of this planet,” he says. “The atmosphere holds about five percent more water vapor than it did forty years ago…[which] explains all those deluges and downpours. The ocean is 30 percent more acidic, as it absorbs all that carbon from the atmosphere. NASA [reported last week] that we’ve come through the warmest January, February, March on record, [and] that 2010 is going to be the warmest year that we’ve ever seen.”²

And there is no going back. Human beings have irrevocably altered the earth into which you and I were born. As Bill McKibben puts it, “The world hasn’t ended, but the world as we know it has….”³ Our task now is not to stop global warming, because that is impossible. Our task is to “keep it from getting any worse than it has to get,”⁴ and to find ways to live more “lightly, carefully, and gracefully”⁵ in this new world.

Last weekend a small group from Grace Church — Lucy Robinson, DeAnne Riddle, Chris Riddle, and I — took a train down to Washington, D.C., and I want to thank you for your prayers last Sunday. On Monday we met with staff-members of Senator Brown and Senator Kerry, and with staff-members of Representatives John Olver and Richard Neal. We urged them to pass the strongest possible climate legislation. We fervently hope that in the weeks ahead, the Senate will decide to get this country’s emissions down, and to do it fast — and to help the rest of the world to do the same thing.

Our little group wanted to underscore the science of climate change, for, as McKibben explains, global warming is basically not a debate between China and the U.S., or between Democrats and Republicans. Basically “it’s a debate between human beings and physics and chemistry.”⁶ Physics and chemistry are not going to back down.

But climate change is not just a scientific issue — it is a spiritual and ethical issue, as well. Hence our group gave each legislator a sheaf of statements from the leaders of a range of religious groups — Episcopal and Evangelical, Roman Catholic and Jewish, Greek Orthodox and Southern Baptist — that agree on the moral imperative to stabilize the climate and to protect the poor, who are the people least responsible for global warming and yet most vulnerable to its effects. Science and religion are united, we told our legislators. They speak to this issue with a single voice.

I took the train home on Tuesday and I found myself unaccountably happy. Partly it was sheer relief — we had finished a stretch of hard work. But it was more than: it was the joy of having done what love called us to do. If God created us for biophilia — if deep in our guts, our bones, our genes, is a God-given affection for the rest of the created world, then rising up to protect that world is an act of love, an act of faithfulness to God. The face of the Good Shepherd, the face of the Risen Christ, shines out in every leaf and blossom, in every chickadee and butterfly, in every worm and wren. The actions we take to protect God’s Creation and to bind up in some small way the fabric of life that seems so swiftly to be unraveling — these actions are an act of reverence to the Creator.

The love of the Good Shepherd is also a balm to my anxious and guilty heart. It seems to me that when it comes to the very first task that God gave human beings — the responsibility to care for the earth, to be good stewards of its bio-diversity and bounty — right now we are doing a pretty poor job of it. The fossil fuels that we have burned cannot be unburned. The carbon emissions that we have poured into the sky cannot be un-poured. What we have done, we have done; we have changed the earth forever. And my response, and perhaps yours, too, is one of deep sorrow, guilt, anger, and regret.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, the Nobel Peace Prize-winner who has witnessed at close hand what he calls “the cruelties, hurts, and hatreds”⁷ of the world, and who spoke this week in Springfield, writes about guilt and failure in his latest book, Made for Goodness:

“The pain cannot be unmade,” he writes,
“The life cannot be un-lived,
The time will not run backward,
You cannot un-choose your choice.”
And yet, Bishop Tutu goes on, “…the pain can be healed,
Your choices can be redeemed,
Your life can be blessed,
And love can bring you home.”⁸

We come home whenever we listen again to the Good Shepherd, whose voice is always speaking in our heart. We come home whenever we face the fact, as Isaiah says, that: “all we like sheep have gone astray” Isaiah 53:6. We come home when we turn again to the divine love that always dwells within us and in whose image we are made, the divine love that longs to guide us “to springs of the water of life, and … [to] wipe away every tear from [our] eyes” Revelation 7: 17.

In an unsettled and unsettling time, prayer is the staff on which we lean when we need the guidance and loving care of the Good Shepherd. Bishop Tutu calls prayer “the staff that supported me during the darkest periods of our history,”⁹ and his words echo the 23rd Psalm, “Your rod and your staff, they comfort me” Psalm 23:4. Jesus assures us in today’s Gospel, “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me” John 10: 27. So we trust that in prayer we can listen deeply to the inner voice of divine love, and attune ourselves again to its call.

We also trust that God’s love can move through us — through our words and hands, our thoughts and decisions. We trust that the Good Shepherd will guide us to take actions that can heal and set free. In every moment, we can make a choice for love. In every moment, we can make a choice to reach beyond narrow self-interest, and to encounter and embrace those most in need of care. We may not perceive ourselves as having the miraculous power of St. Peter, who apparently raised the disciple Tabitha from the dead Acts 9:36-43. But we dare to claim that the power of God can flow through us, and accomplish infinitely more than we can ask or imagine Ephesians 3:20 — although we may know nothing about it.

I invite you, after the service, to sign postcards to our Senators, asking them to pass a strong climate bill during this session. I invite you also to think of one way you can listen more deeply to the land and to learn from it. Maybe you want to start up a compost pile or to check out a farmer’s market; maybe you want to send a little money to a local land trust, or to invite the neighbor you’ve never met before 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 life enhancing, 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 has nothing to do with proving anything or deserving anything, but which springs up simply from being true to the basic goodness that God has planted in us. The Good Shepherd is calling us by name. Will we listen to his voice?

1. 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.

2. Bill McKibben interview, Democracy Now!, April 15, 2010 www.democracynow.org

3. McKibben, Eaarth, p. 2.

4. McKibben interview, op. cit.

5. McKibben, Eaarth, p. 151.

6. McKibben, interview, op. cit.

7. Ibid, p. 4.

8. Ibid., p. 137.

9. Ibid., p. 77.

Love at the core

Tonight’s service brought to mind a movie that came out a good many years ago. I have only seen the trailer for the movie, not the movie itself, which received some almost comically awful reviews. The movie was named “The Core,” and according to that ever-ready source of information, Wikipedia, in a poll of hundreds of scientists about bad science fiction films, “The Core” was voted the worst. ¹ It may have been an impressively bad movie, but in the context of Holy Week I find the premise of the movie quite interesting. The idea behind the film is that the hot liquid center of the earth has stopped spinning, and the only way to save the planet from total destruction is for someone to go down there and jumpstart the core by exploding some nuclear bombs. The science may be out to lunch, but isn’t that premise interesting? Here’s what it’s saying: there is a problem at the center of things and the only way to solve it is to bring in massive weapons and blow something up. It’s a pretty satisfying fantasy. If something deep down is wrong, we will grab some weapons, unleash a few bombs, and wham-o! Problem solved. We will have saved the day, saved the world.

Generally I like action movies, but this Hollywood flick is delivering more than entertainment. It is delivering a basic worldview, one that is familiar to everyone in this room. According to this paradigm, our deepest problems can be solved by force. Whatever is ailing us, or the world, can only be fixed by violence. Domination, intimidation, fear – these are the weapons we must use on a daily basis if we want any kind of lasting security or peace. And when push comes to shove, we’re gonna haul out our arsenal of weapons and let ’em fly.

This paradigm is a temptation for everyone holding power and everyone seeking power, whether they are Iraqi or American, Russian or Chinese. What can be played out on a large scale by nation-states and terrorist groups, by militias and tribal armies, can also be played out by individuals. I know for myself what it is like to jockey for position and to look out for number one. There are so many ways to explode our own little bombs – by name-dropping, bullying, or boasting, by spreading gossip or by speaking harsh words of judgment and contempt. It’s a dog-eat-dog world, right? That’s the worldview we learn to call “realistic,” and it is reinforced every day. In a competitive marketplace, we are taught that the bottom line is money, power, fame, and individual success. We learn to look at each other with wary eyes. What can I get from you? How can you be useful to me? In the words of Jewish theologian Abraham Heschel, we learn to suspect our neighbors as ourselves. ²

Into this anxious and belligerent world comes the one who says, “I am among you as one who serves. My only weapon is love and my only desire is to set you free.” In Jesus, God comes among us as one who renounces worldly power and rejects the grasp for domination and control. Jesus offers a new paradigm and a new worldview: the only way to peace and security is to serve one another, to listen to each other, to make room for the stranger, and to reach out to the lost. The core of the world cannot be mended by violence. Force and fear will never save the world, much less save our souls. Only love can do that. Only love.

Now, more than ever, we must consider this second worldview and explore its possibilities, for none of the big problems we face today – from global warming to racism and poverty – none of them can be stopped by B-52s. Not even terrorism can be stopped by war, for terrorism is itself a method of warfare used by those with no other recourse. Some analysts even say that terrorists want to evoke a violent response. And the more violent we become, the more frightened we feel. As the Sufi poet Hafiz puts it, “Fear is the cheapest room in the house. I’d like to see you in better living conditions.”

Jesus comes to show us the way out of fear, to give us a path to fullness of life. What does he do? “During supper, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him” John 13:2b-5. It is a gesture of profound humility, the gesture of someone who seeks not to dominate but to serve, not to hoard power but to offer everything he has for the sake of others. Jesus refuses to react to our fearful situation with fear and force. Instead he offers a paradigm of cooperation and mutual service, and releases among us the unconditional love of God.

In a moment we will re-enact his gesture, as we come forward, take off our shoes, and bend over to wash each other’s feet. It will be for many of us a vulnerable moment, a moment, perhaps, of feeling uncomfortably exposed. Perhaps Peter speaks for us all when he flinches and draws back. “Lord, are you going to wash my feet? You will never wash my feet.” It is hard to be vulnerable, even with people who love us. It is especially hard to be vulnerable in a power-hungry world where people elbow each other out of the way in their rush for domination and control. We long for unconditional love, but so often we draw back in shock, embarrassment, or suspicion when it is freely offered to us. How much safer to keep other people at a polite distance, to do our best not to need anyone and to go it alone! But that is what love is about: the willingness to lay aside our weapons and our shields, the willingness to disclose who we really are and to encounter each other with kindness and respect, the willingness to find a way to serve.

In a world so bewitched by the drug of force, so addicted to the thrill of domination, we stand tonight, as we do in every Eucharist, inside a different paradigm. Tonight we lift up the power of community, the power of service, the power of belonging to one another. Tonight we dare to say: this is what God is like. This is the power at the center of reality and at the center of our being: the power of love. Fear is not the only force at work in the world today, ³ nor will fear have the last word.

Jesus gives himself to us tonight as we wash each other’s feet, and as we share in the bread and wine. Tomorrow he will give himself to us in his outpouring of love on the cross. “Take me,” says Jesus. “I am holding nothing back.” Will we accept his love? Will we follow where he leads? Which path, which paradigm, will we choose?

Here is another poem, this one by Michael Leunig: ⁴

 

There are only two feelings. Love and fear.
There are only two languages. Love and fear.
There are only two activities. Love and fear.
There are only two motives, two procedures,
two frameworks, two results.
Love and fear.
Love and fear.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Core

2. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, quoted by Rabbi Michael Lerner, “Spiritual Politics and the Post-Iraq Realities of Global Discourse,” from a talk given on 3/31/03 and excerpted in an email from the Tikkun Community.

3. Slogan spotted several years ago on a United Methodist Church poster at the Amtrak train station in Stamford, Conn.

4. Michael Leunig, A Common Prayer

A voice in the wilderness

A voice cries out in the wilderness: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low” (Luke 3:4). One morning this week I woke up wondering — What is the voice that cries out in the wilderness? What did Isaiah hear, what did John the Baptist hear, as they wandered in wild places, listening to wind and scrambling over rocks? Is the voice that they heard in the wilderness still speaking, and can we hear it, too? I decided that I needed to go find myself a few mountains and valleys, and a good place in which to listen.

Around here we don’t have to search hard for such places. I grabbed a cup of coffee and drove straight to Skinner State Park. I left my car in the lot near the base of the mountain and began walking up the road. It was a warm day, and a gusty wind was roaring about, tossing the branches of the oak and hickory trees in the woods around me. A flock of geese passed overhead, beating their wings hard in the roiling air and almost tumbling against each other as they fought to keep their balance. I heard them make their fierce cries, until at last their calls vanished in the wind. I turned to take the short, steep trail that leads straight to the summit, and listened to the sound of my labored breathing and the squelch of my sneakers as they slipped on rocks and patches of mud. As I climbed, the far-off hum of traffic grew more faint, and by the time I reached the top of the mountain, all I could hear was my panting and the steady howl of the wind.

I stood on the balcony of Summit House, that former hotel that is still a magnet for people in search of open spaces and distant views, and I looked out at the landscape far below. It was hardly the desert wilderness that Isaiah and John the Baptist knew. I could see plenty of civilization — the 18-wheeler crossing Coolidge Bridge, the clusters of rooftops and spires jutting up through the trees, the airport runway. Yet I could also see the river curling peacefully in the distance, the great stretches of fields and forest, the shadows of clouds as they moved silently over the rises and hollows of the land.

I’m told that the Holyoke Range was formed 200 million years ago “as lava welled up into the valleys, and sediments were washed in from nearby mountains.” ¹ For thousands of years before European settlers arrived, Native Americans considered the larger peaks of these mountains to be sacred sites. Thanks to the vision and generosity of local citizens some years ago here in the Pioneer Valley, most areas of these mountains are now protected from development. I am grateful that some of you here in this congregation are active in similar efforts today.

We all know what can happen to our souls when we spend time in a natural setting. Something in us relaxes, enlarges, and lets go. The immediate, urgent concerns that keep such a tight grip on us — an escalating war, financial uncertainty, health issues, relationship issues, all the worries, regrets, and fears that plague us and pursue us and hem us in — somehow they drop away for a time out of time when we walk in the wilderness, listening.

This week I was interested to learn that a recent issue of Scientific American reports on a new study from the University of Rochester that shows that spending time in nature can change our values, making us less focused on ourselves and more focused on others, less concerned with personal gain and more concerned with generosity to the larger community. ² The study distinguished between what it called “extrinsic life aspirations,” such as being financially successful or being admired by a lot of people, and “intrinsic life aspirations,” such as creating meaningful and enduring relationships or working to build a better society. The results showed that people who watched images of nature, or who spent time in nature, “scored significantly lower on extrinsic life aspirations, and significantly higher on intrinsic life aspirations.” Experiencing only built environments led to life aspirations that were more focused on the self. It’s enough to make one wonder whether our country’s growing absorption in the world of screens and virtual reality, of the Internet, social networking, computer games, and everything else that keeps us firmly indoors is somehow related to the apparent increase in our aspirations for celebrity, wealth, power, achievement, and all those other values that enhance the self. ³

Yet something in our souls calls us back into nature. Something lures us out to find again a space of open sky or a stretch of wild water, a spot deeply hidden among trees or a bluff from which we can look out to the furthest horizon. Something in us wants to be immersed in wildness, to find ourselves related to something large and living and free. Our soul expands to fit this large and wild space, because our soul — it turns out — is just that large, and just that wild. Deep within us a voice cries out, and we can hear it cry. It is a cry of recognition and rejoicing. I am home now! I have found my place! And it is a cry of repentance, too. My life has been too small!

“The word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness” (Luke 3:2), and the word of God comes to us in the wilderness, too. It is a voice that greets us tenderly, as if putting a sheltering hand over our sad, sorry selves, welcoming us in and carrying us home. And it is a voice that challenges and confronts us, that uproots and unsettles and shatters and breaks and burns. Our small, tight, ego-centered self, the self that is so focused on its own appearance and survival, on looking good, and winning, and being liked, and being right — that self is crucified when the God of love comes near. The mountains of that ego-self are laid low. Its self-serving stubbornness is toppled. Its pride crumbles. Its hard-hearted insistence on triumphing at all costs collapses and falls away. Down it all goes! And our valleys are raised up. We are lifted up out of shame and fear, pulled up from despair. Our hollows — those aching places of loss and grief and self-doubt — those hollows are filled.

Advent is full of the imagery of transformation, of preparing a way for God, of leveling mountains and filling up valleys. Of course we don’t take this literally — we know that this is not a call to fire up the bulldozers, blow off mountaintops for coal, or fill up valleys with sludge. But often we think that leveling those mountains and raising those valleys is a job that is up to us to do. After all, Advent is a busy time — for example, a good many of you just finished organizing a flat-out, hats-off, hands-down, over-the-top fantastic St. Nicholas bazaar. (Thank you, everybody!) Many of us are on the go in these weeks before Christmas. Some push hard to finish exams; others clean house before the return of far-flung family members for the holidays; many buy gifts, send cards, host parties. There is a lot to do, and if we’re lucky, we love every minute of it.

But of course, Advent has another dimension, too. You might say that Advent has a contemplative heart. It’s not about us, but God — not about our own activity, but God’s. In this darkest month of the year, when the days grow short and the wind now blows cold, our forbears in faith invite us to seek an open space in which to listen carefully for the inner voice of love. We are invited to do what Isaiah and John the Baptist did — to go out to a place in nature, or to set aside time at home to pray in silence as we await the Sacred Mystery that is larger than our own small selves. Preparing the way of the Lord is not another project of the ego, not another busy, bustling effort to assert our will. It’s about allowing our selves to be seized and silenced by the living God, and to let God do the work within us and among us that only God can do.

In a few minutes, as we sing the offertory hymn, we will have a chance to come forward with our pledge cards and to make a financial commitment to the work of God as it is expressed in this particular community of faith. We offer our pledges because we are confident — as Paul says in his Letter to the Philippians — that “the one who began a good work among [us] will bring it to completion” (Philippians 1:6). We offer our pledges as a sign of God’s self-giving to us, in the gift of Christ’s birth. We pledge money, time, support, creativity — whatever we have — to each other as a way to share in God’s self-giving. The more we participate with each other in God’s self-giving love, the more we embody the life of the Trinity in whose image we are created. Our true selves are ignited in these precious moments of opening our hearts — and, yes, our pocketbooks — and we give thanks for “the tender compassion of our God… [whose] dawn from on high shall break upon us, to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace” (Luke 1: 68-79, Luke 1:78-79).

1. From a sign posted at the entrance to Summit State Park.

2. P. Wesley Schultz, “The Moral Call of the Wild: New study suggests that spending time in nature changes our values,” http://www.scientificamerican.com.

3. A similar point is made in the article cited above.