Jesus

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

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

“Look toward the heaven and count the stars”

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

 
 
 
 

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

 

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

Delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, Grace Church, Newton, MA  
Isaiah 55:1-5 John 1:35-42
 
 

Spiritual transformation

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

I haven’t even mentioned the other unsettling trends that might spring to mind, from deforestation to ocean overfishing. The point is that in the last decade or so it has become abundantly clear that we are looking at the approaching possibility of what one thinker, Duane Elgin, calls “an unprecedented whole-system crisis.” 3 The ground is shifting under our feet. We sense the approaching end of an old way of being and wonder what new way of being we can create in its place. Modern industrial society, with its sudden expansion of our capacity to extract and consume the planet’s abundance for the sake of short-term profit, is simply not sustainable. For the past 250 or 300 years, human beings have been extracting resources faster than they can be replenished, and dumping waste faster than the Earth can absorb it. Those who are rich live in a luxury once reserved for kings, while the billions who are impoverished struggle for clean water and a mouthful of food. Species are going extinct at a rate unprecedented since the death of the dinosaurs. The global climate with its delicate balance of gases turns out to be more fragile then we ever imagined.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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