Sermon for the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 18B), September 9, 2018
Delivered by the Rev. Dr. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas
Trinity Parish, Seattle, WA
Healing Earth: When the eyes of the blind are opened
What a blessing to be with you this morning! Thank you, Jeff for welcoming my husband, Robert Jonas, and me. I serve as Missioner for Creation Care in the Episcopal Diocese of Western Massachusetts and in the United Church of Christ across Massachusetts. I travel from place to place, speaking about our call as followers of Jesus to protect God’s Creation and to re-weave the web of life. (If you want to know more about what I’m up to, you can visit my Website, RevivingCreation.org.) I know that here at Trinity Parish, you have a history of working to protect the living world that God entrusted to our care, and I am deeply thankful for that.
With the Rev Jeffrey Gill (Rector, Trinity Parish Episcopal Church, Seattle)Let’s start with a story. Jonas and I have an old farmhouse in the hills of western Massachusetts. We like to hike in the woods and walk beside the ponds as we soak up the sights and sounds of the natural world. One summer day, as I was eating lunch on the porch, a sparrow landed on a railing nearby. I held my spoon in mid-air and didn’t move a muscle. Sparrow and I looked each other over, taking each other in. I tried to imagine what it was like to be a sparrow. I could see how sensitive the sparrow was – how she noticed the moth zigzagging past, the gust of wind, the shadow of a passing cloud. Everything around the sparrow was alive and in motion. The small creature was alert, tuning herself to every shift, cocking her head, picking up the tiniest scent, sound, and movement, and making almost perceptible decisions in response. Should she eat the moth? Duck from danger? Linger a while longer?
When Sparrow saw that I wasn’t moving and evidently posed no threat, she relaxed on the railing. She puffed her feathers and turned her head away to preen, as if to say, “I know you are there but right now I feel safe.” It was a kind of subtle, non-verbal and mutual communication. My presence was affecting Bird and Bird’s presence was affecting me. The only way I could perceive the sparrow’s sensitivity was to become more sensitive myself, to pay closer attention. I wasn’t staring at the bird in some kind of fixed and rigid way. Instead I simply kept my gaze soft and receptive, and opened my senses to perceive everything I could. The simple act of gazing with interest and empathy filled me with wonder and a quiet joy, for it seemed that I was briefly connecting with a tiny creature whose consciousness was almost entirely foreign to mine, almost completely unknown. In those precious moments we were in relationship. Our worlds overlapped.
I think of that encounter when I come to today’s readings and hear Isaiah’s exuberant poem about the transforming power of God: “The eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped.” In the fullness of time, God will heal our eyes and ears and hearts, will make the lame “leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy” (Isaiah 35:4-7a). The psalm picks up the theme of healing and liberation – “The Lord sets the prisoners free; the Lord opens the eyes of the blind” (Psalm 146:7) – and then we get to the story in Mark’s Gospel about Jesus healing the deaf mute.
It is a very physical healing, isn’t it? Unlike most of the other healing stories, in this one Jesus doesn’t heal so much through the power of speech as through the power of touch. The story gives every detail. Jesus doesn’t just “lay his hands on” the man in some kind of vague, generic way. He actually puts his fingers in the man’s ears; he spits and then touches the man’s tongue. We can imagine the care with which he makes direct, even intimate contact with the man who has appealed to him for healing. We can imagine the tenderness in Jesus’ eyes, the clarity of his intention to set this person free. And then Jesus looks up to heaven – seeking and gathering in the power of God – and he sighs, as if releasing that power, breathing out the ruach, the Spirit, the breath of God. As he breathes out that power he says a single word, which the text gives in its original Aramaic, “Ephphatha” – that is, “Be opened” – and at once the man’s ears are opened, his tongue is released, and he speaks plainly.
Of course we can take this story literally and make it relevant only to people with limited sight and hearing, but on a deeper level don’t we all need to have our senses healed? Especially when it comes to humans finding our rightful place in the natural world, isn’t it time for the eyes of the blind to be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped?
The glory of treesFor we have been blind to so much! I know that I sure have. Growing up, I thought that homo sapiens was the only species that God cared about and that Jesus was interested only in people. Not incidentally, I also thought that humans were the only species that was smart. How wrong I was! It turns out that our fellow beings are more intelligent than I ever suspected, from chimpanzees to dogs, elephants, and birds, from dolphins and whales to even the lowly octopus. According to a book called The Soul of an Octopus, octopus display a range of personalities, solve problems, play jokes, and share affection with marine scientists by holding “hands” with them. And it’s not just our finned, feathered, four-legged and, yes, eight-legged fellow beings that are more intelligent than we knew – so, too, are plants. Books like The Hidden Life of Trees argue that trees are social beings that can count, learn, remember, and warn each other of impending danger. I just finished a wonderful new novel by Richard Powers, The Overstory, which explores the intelligence of trees. The author explains in an interview that generally we don’t pay much attention to trees and that most of us can’t tell one tree from another, because the human brain evolved, he says, “to be blind to things that don’t look like us.” But, he says, through “the miracle of awareness” we begin to see much more.
When our eyes are opened and our ears unstopped, we begin to see what scientists are showing us, what mystics the world over have long proclaimed, and what indigenous peoples have never forgotten: we inhabit a world full of mystery and intelligence, a sacred, living world full of marvel and intricacy in which everything is connected. As the Good Book says, when God contemplates the world God made, God finds it “very good” (Genesis 1:31). Today’s theologians are reminding us that God loves the whole creation, not just us, and that Jesus came to redeem and reconcile all beings, not just human beings (Ephesians 4:9-10; Colossians 1:17, 19-20).
When our senses are healed, we relate in new ways to our non-human kin. As we look more closely at the world around us, as we listen more patiently and pay more attention, we discover that we are created for relationship not only with our fellow human beings, but also with everything else – with sparrow and fir tree, with ground hog and sea gull, with cloud and wind, water and stone. It seems that we become fully human only in relationship to what is greater than ourselves, what is other than ourselves.
When God opens our eyes and ears, we perceive not only the beauty and the preciousness of creation – we also perceive the perilous state of our wounded planet. We hear the cry of the Earth, the cry of the poor and the unseen. We look around and see mounting evidence that burning fossils fuels is scorching the Earth and disrupting the global climate. My heart goes out to all of you here in Seattle who have been choking on smoke from wildfires that apparently is equivalent to breathing about seven cigarettes a day. I hear that this is the third summer in a row in which this city has been blanketed with air pollution from massive wildfires, and that this is the worst summer yet. As you know, some of the smoke is drifting up from California, which is undergoing a record-breaking season of wildfires. Climate change is raising temperatures, which makes heat waves more intense and more frequent, dries out trees and soil, and makes wildfires spread. As Jonas and I left New England, smoke from the fires raging in the Pacific Northwest was causing a visible haze across the sky.
What we’re experiencing here in Seattle connects with what’s happening all over the world. This summer, record-breaking temperatures gripped the globe from Japan to Algeria, from Canada to Greece. The global heat wave even set the Arctic Circle on fire. This year is on pace to be among the four hottest years on record. The other three were 2015, 2016, and 2017.
Even though I brace myself against the latest headlines, I am still shaken as climate news comes in: the ancient cedar trees of Lebanon are going down, ancient baobab trees are collapsing, and whole forests of trees in Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana have died. Coral reefs are bleaching and dying, and just about everything on Earth that is frozen – glaciers, the polar ice caps – is melting.
Yet despite these signs of accelerating distress, and with more scorching heat to come if we don’t change course fast, the powers-that-be relentlessly push forward with business as usual, drilling for more oil, expanding pipeline construction, cutting down forests, and generally acting as if the Earth were a private business and they were conducting a liquidation sale.
When God opens our blind eyes and unstops our deaf ears, we see and hear the world’s beauty. We see and feel its searing pain, and the injustice of the harm. Now comes the next miracle of healing: God opens the mouths of the mute and “the tongue of the speechless” (Isaiah 35:6). Jesus not only “makes the deaf to hear” – he also makes “the mute to speak” (Mark 7:37). And we are speaking – with our bodies and our words, with our voices and our votes, speaking up for clean air and clear water, speaking up for endangered orca and salmon, speaking up for the ancient forests and glaciers, speaking up for low-income and minority communities that have no voice at the table where decisions are made.
Yesterday people across the country and around the world, including Seattle, held rallies and marches for a global day of action called “Rise for Climate.” People of faith and spirit are rising up to confront the powers-that-be and to awaken corporate and elected leaders from the fantasy that we can continue with business as usual. Some of us carry out peaceful, disciplined acts of civil disobedience to stop construction of new fossil fuel infrastructure. Some of us lobby for policies that support clean renewable energy. Some of us push for carbon pricing. Those of us who went to college urge our alma mater to divest from fossil fuels. Those of us with means cut back sharply on our use of fossil fuels – maybe we fly less, drive less, and eat less meat. Those of us who are white and privileged listen to the voices of people of color, indigenous peoples, and the poor, knowing that they are God’s beloved and the ones hit first and hardest by climate change. Together we intend to build a world in which everyone can thrive.
Tomorrow I head to San Francisco, where leaders from around the world and all sectors of society will gather for a Global Climate Action Summit to launch new commitments to realize the historic Paris Agreement. Hundreds of affiliated events will be held in the Bay area, including a host of faith-based events. At Grace Cathedral I’ll be speaking on a panel about why religion matters to the movement for climate justice. Why does religion matter? Why do faith communities matter? Why do you and I matter? Because we serve the Lord of life! Because this very day, Jesus is carrying out miracles of healing, opening our eyes and ears and releasing our tongues, so that in our lips and in our lives we make it abundantly clear that life and not death will have the last word.
What new steps to protect God’s Creation do you feel led to take as individuals and as a community?
Thank you for keeping the faith.
Saving Planet Earth: “Arise, my love, my fair one”
Friends, I feel blessed to be back in Vancouver, to see the mountains again and to ride a bike with my husband around Stanley Park. On our first day we took a boat trip out into the ocean, where we sighted humpback whales the size of a bus, lingering on the surface of the water, rolling, splashing and breaching in the waves. We also encountered a pod of transient orcas, which, as you know, are endangered. One of the orcas rose up out of the water to take a look at our boat, and, to our amazement, it and a second orca swam toward us very slowly and deliberately, right up to the side of the vessel. At the last moment they dove underneath, emerging a little distance behind us. It felt like a greeting, like a blessing, and some of us gasped with astonishment, some of us cheered and some of us were moved to tears. So before I do anything else I want to pass it on to you, that greeting and blessing from our orca kin, as we gather this morning to praise God.
Orca “spy-hopping” — rising up to take a look around. Photo credit: Robert A. JonasThe voice of God is speaking in our midst and in our depths, and it sings out clearly in our first reading, “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away” (Song of Solomon 2:10). I need to hear that voice. I need to dwell in its presence, for honestly, I came to this city with a heavy heart. Back in the United States, I serve as Missioner for Creation Care for the Episcopal Diocese of Western Massachusetts and for the United Church of Christ across the state. In this ecumenical role, I travel from place to place, preaching, speaking and leading retreats about the sacredness of God’s Creation and our call to protect the web of life entrusted to our care – especially the urgency of addressing climate change. (If you want to see what I’m up to, please visit my Website, RevivingCreation.org, for articles and blog posts.)
I love my job, but it’s tough these days to pay attention to what’s happening to Mother Earth and our fellow creatures, to our oceans, forests, and waterways, to the very air we breathe. My heart goes out to all of you who, a week or two ago, were choking on smoke from nearly 600 forest fires on the west coast, and facing an air quality advisory across most of the province that warned you not to breathe in the fine particulates. As I left Massachusetts, smoke from the fires raging here in the Pacific Northwest was causing a visible haze over New England.
What’s happening in Vancouver connects with what’s happening all over the world. Climate change caused by burning fossil fuels is raising temperatures, making heat waves more intense and more frequent, drying out soil and trees, and making wildfires spread. This summer, record-breaking temperatures gripped the globe from Japan to Algeria, from Canada to Greece. The global heat wave even set the Arctic Circle on fire. This year is on pace to be among the four hottest years on record, the other three being 2015, 2016, and 2017.
Orca swimming toward our boat. Photo credit: Robert A. JonasDespite these accelerating signs of distress, and with more scorching heat to come if we don’t change course fast, the powers-that-be relentlessly drive forward with business as usual, drilling for more oil, pushing to expand pipeline construction, cutting down forests, and generally acting as if the Earth were a private business and they were conducting a liquidation sale.
I don’t know about you, but I know what it’s like to feel alarm, anger, sorrow, and even despair. As a species we are hurtling willy-nilly down a suicidal path that risks bringing down not only our own civilization but also the web of life as it has evolved for millennia. That is why I am moved to hear those words from the Song of Solomon (also known as the “Song of Songs”), moved to hear God say to us: “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.” You probably recognize this passage as one that’s often read at weddings. The Song of Songs is a collection of sensual poems between two lovers who delight in each other and who long to consummate their desire, and it turns out that Christian mystics wrote about the Song of Songs more extensively than they did about any other book in the Bible, interpreting these poems as a passionate conversation between God and the soul.
In a precarious time – when many of us feel unsettled about the present and worried about the future, when many of us may feel anxious and alone, overwhelmed by challenges in our personal lives and doubtful that we can make a difference in the world around us – it is powerful to remember that God is a lover who is always reaching out to us, always speaking in our depths, always luring us to stay in relationship with each other and with God. For here is God, reaching out a hand to pull us into the dance of life. That’s one way of understanding the Holy Trinity: as a dance of love between the lover, the beloved, and the love that flows between (Augustine). “Come on in,” says God, “and join the dance!” “Arise, my love,” God says to our soul. “Arise, my fair one, and come away.”
The inner voice of love is quiet. We can hardly hear it amidst the roar and bustle of the world. We can hardly sense it when we’re gripped by depression, anxiety, or alarm. That’s why many of us reclaim a practice of prayer: we know we will hear the inner voice of love only if we practice stillness, only if we set aside some time in solitude each day to steady our minds and to listen in silence for the love that God is always pouring into our hearts (Romans 5:5).
Christ Church Cathedral, Vancouver As our minds grow quiet and as our stillness grows, a holy Someone – capital S – beckons to us in the silence: “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.” It’s the voice of Jesus, the voice of Spirit, the voice of God. “Arise, my love.” From what do you need to arise? Maybe the Spirit is saying: Arise from apathy, numbness, and fear. Arise from the agitation that holds you in its grip. Arise from hopelessness, for I will give you strength. Arise from loneliness,for I am with you, and I love you. You are my love, says the Spirit. You are my fair one. I see your beauty and you are precious in my sight. Arise and come away – away from the cult of death, away from the path of destruction, away from the lie that your efforts to protect life are useless. Come with me and join in the dance of life. I will help you find your place in the great struggle to protect life and to build a more just society.
“But,” we may protest, feeling helpless before the horrors of the world, helpless before its injustice and needless suffering. “Who am I? I have no power. I am so very small.”
Arise.
“What can I do? What can anyone do? It is too late to make a difference!”
Arise.
“I don’t have time. I don’t have energy. I’ve got other things to do.”
Arise.
The voice of love is like that, right? It may be gentle, but it is persistent. It may be subtle, but it will never die. The love that created the universe, the love that stirs in our depths, the love that is being poured into our hearts – that holy love will never let us go, and it sends us out into the world to become beacons of light, and warriors for truth, and protectors of life. I may have a thousand and one reasons to dodge love’s call, but then it comes again, that voice:
Arise. I love you. I need you. I am calling from the trees, from the wind, from the very stones beneath your feet. I am calling from the orcas and the salmon, from the black bear and the mountains, from the fig trees and the vines. I am calling from the strangers who are not really strangers, but brothers and sisters you don’t yet recognize, those who are suffering right now from a wounded Earth and a changing climate. I am calling from the future, from the men, women and children who will inhabit this planet long after you are gone and who depend on you to leave them a habitable world. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.A cathedral in nature: Horseshoe Bay, north of Vancouver. Photo credit: Robert A. Jonas When we stand in the holy presence of God we find fresh strength to renew the face of the Earth. And we arise, joining with indigenous leaders to protect the water and the land, joining with activists to stop new pipelines, joining with young and old to plant new forests. We cast our lot with people of faith and spirit who have been awakened – as we have been awakened – by a fierce longing to join the dance of life. What does it look like when we join God’s dance of life? Maybe we cut back strongly on our use of fossil fuels. Maybe we fly less, drive less, and eat less meat. Maybe we lobby for policies that support renewable energy and clean green jobs. Maybe we join the growing numbers of resolute and faith-filled people who carry out peaceful civil disobedience and put our bodies on the line. This Saturday, September 8, rallies and marches will be held worldwide in a global day of action called “Rise for Climate.” Several “Rise for Climate” events will be held right here in Vancouver, and I hope you will join one.
In whatever ways we step out to heal God’s creation and to join the dance of life, we will take risks we never imagined we would take. We will connect with people we never imagined we would meet. And we will make more of a difference than we will ever know. I give thanks for the ways that the Spirit is speaking in our hearts, and for the ways that you are already responding to its call: “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.”
Sermon for the Third Sunday of Easter, April 15, 2018
Delivered by the Rev. Dr. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas at Federated Church of Orleans, East Orleans, MA
Acts 3:12-191 John 3:17Luke 24:36b-48
“You are witnesses of these things”
Today we are deep into the Great Fifty Days of Easter, and I want to share a story told by an Episcopal bishop about leading worship one Easter morning. Bishop Mark Macdonald was preaching to a congregation in the middle of Navajo Nation. When the time came to read the Gospel account of Jesus’ resurrection, Bishop Macdonald stood up and began reading in Navajo: “It was early in the morning…” Almost before the words were out of his mouth, “the oldest person there, an elder who understood no English, said loudly (in Navajo), ‘Yes!’”
Margaret in front of Federated Church of Orleans, whose banner reads “Boldly Caring for Creation”
The bishop remarks that “it seemed a little early in the narrative for this much enthusiasm,” so he assumed he had made a mistake – maybe he had mispronounced the words in Navajo. So he tried again: “It was early in the morning…’” This time he heard an even louder and more enthusiastic Yes. After the service, the bishop went up to one of the lay leaders and asked if he had pronounced the words correctly. Oh, she said, looking surprised, of course. Well, asked the bishop, then why was the older woman so excited? Oh, he was told, “The early dawn is the most important part of the day to her. Father Sky and Mother Earth meet at that time and produce all that is necessary for life. It is the holiest time of the day. Jesus would pick that good time of day to be raised.”1
Bishop Macdonald realized that while the early dawn is certainly the best time for new life, he had never thought about the possibility that this “observation about the physical word could be theologically and spiritually revealing, that it suggested a communion between God, humanity, and creation that is fundamental to our… existence.” It took him a while to absorb this. He writes: “An elder with no formal schooling had repositioned the central narrative of my life firmly within the physical world and all its forces and interactions. It was,” he says, “an ecological reading of a story that, for me, had been trapped inside a flat virtual world misnamed ‘spiritual’.”
Today, on the Third Sunday of Easter, we celebrate Christ’s resurrection and the sacred power of the natural world. Like Bishop Macdonald, today we remember and re-claim what he calls “a primal, long-ignored layer of spiritual consciousness that [is] also an ecological consciousness.”2Horseshoe crab on tidal flats, Rock Harbor, Cape Cod
I don’t know about you, but I grew up thinking of “spirituality” as completely 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 wild diversity of buzzing, blooming, finned, and feathered creatures was essentially irrelevant and dispensable, just the backdrop to what was really important: human beings. Since the time of the Reformation, Christianity – at least in the West – has had 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 people of the land – to know that the Earth is holy. Its creatures are holy. The whole created world is lit up with the power and presence of God.
Our Gospel story this morning is full of meanings, but surely one of them is that the Risen Christ is alive in the body, in our bodies, in the body of the Earth. While the disciples were talking about how they had seen Jesus risen from the dead, “Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’ They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost” (Luke 24:36-37). But Jesus doesn’t come as a ghost. He doesn’t come as a memory, as an idea, or as something from “a flat, virtual world misnamed ‘spiritual’.” He comes as a living body, a body made of flesh and bone that can touch and be touched, a body that can feel hunger and thirst and that wants to know, “Hey, isn’t there anything to eat around here?” Scripture tells us that the Messiah is born, lives, suffers, dies, and rises as a body, and that says something about how much God cherishes the body and wants to meet us in and through the body – through our bodily senses of sight and sound, through taste and touch and smell, in this very breath. Scripture tells us that for forty days the disciples met the living Christ through his risen body. And then, when he ascended into heaven, Jesus’ body withdrew from the disciples’ sight, so that his living presence could fill all things and so that all of us can touch and see him, if our eyes are opened.
Bird tracks on tidal flats, Rock Harbor, Cape Cod
What this means is that when you and I go out into nature, when we let our minds grow quiet and we simply gaze at the white pine, the first blooms of forsythia, the seashell on the shore – when we gaze with a quiet eye, not grasping for anything and not pushing anything away, we begin to perceive that a holy, living presence fills everything we see. Wherever we gaze, the Risen Christ is gazing back at us and his presence is flowing toward us. “Peace be with you,” he is saying to us through wind and tree, through cloud and stars. “Peace be with you. I am here in the needles of the pine tree beside you that flutter in the breeze, and in the bark overlaid with clumps of lichen, each one a tiny galaxy. I am here in the ocean waves that form and dissolve on the shore, in the sand under your bare feet, in the sea gull that is crying overhead. Peace be with you. I am here, and you are part of this with me, and you are witnesses of these things.”
This morning I brought with me an icon of the Risen Christ.3 The icon imagines Christ as a Native American figure whose body shines out from every habitat and every creature – from the sky above to the water below, from mountains, field and buffalo. 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.
When our inward sight is restored and our eyes are opened to behold Christ in all his redeeming work, the Earth comes alive and we perceive Christ in every sound we hear, in every handful of dirt that we hold and in every bird we see. We are witnesses of these things.
In our first reading this morning, Peter speaks about God’s power to heal and to bring forth new life, and he says, “To this we are witnesses” (Acts 3:15b). Our Gospel passage ends with the risen Christ speaking about God’s power to bring new life out of suffering and death, God’s power to reconcile and forgive and heal. Jesus says, “You are witnesses of these things” (Luke 24:48).
Storm erosion has been eating away about 12 feet of Nauset Beach every year. Last year’s Nor’easters decimated the beach.
Today more than ever we need witnesses to the love and power of God and to the divine love that fills the whole Creation, for God’s Creation is in the process of being recklessly assaulted by an economic system that is based on limitless expansion and dependent on the relentless burning of fossil fuels. Countries around the world agreed in the Paris Climate Accord that we must limit the rise of the global average temperature to no more than 2 degrees Celsius, and ideally to no more than 1.5 degrees. The national proposals of the Paris Accord help get us part of the way there, but only part of the way (3.3 C, or 6 F), so we must rein in dirty emissions even more boldly than that. If we stick to our present course and keep going with business as usual, global temperatures will skyrocket by the end of this century, raising temperatures an average of 4.2 degrees Celsius (or 7.6 Fahrenheit). Human beings simply can’t adapt to that level of heat. We would be living on a different planet.
Thank God, there is a lot that we, as individuals, can do. Maybe we can plant trees. Save trees. Recycle more. Drive less. Eat local, eat less meat, and move to a plant-based diet. Get our home insulated and get LED lighting. Support local farms and land trusts. Fly less – and, if we must fly, buy carbon offsets. Maybe we can afford solar panels and move toward a carbon-neutral home. I was thrilled to see the solar array behind the church. That’s the first time I’ve ever seen solar panels behind a nice white picket fence!
Individual changes make a difference, but because of the scope and speed of the climate crisis, we need more than individual action – we need systemic change. To do that, we’ll need to become politically engaged, to confront the powers-that-be, and to push our elected leaders to awaken from the fantasy that we can continue with business as usual. So some of us carry out peaceful, disciplined actions of civil disobedience to stop construction of new fossil fuel infrastructure and keep fossil fuels in the ground, where they belong. Some of us push for policies that support the development of clean renewable energy, since that is where our future lies, if we’re going to have one. Some of us join Citizens Climate Lobby and advocate for a national carbon tax, or support legislation right here in Massachusetts that would put a price on carbon. Those of us who are white and privileged listen to the voices of racial minorities, indigenous peoples, and the poor, knowing that they are God’s beloved and that they are the ones hit first and hardest by climate change. Together we intend to build a world in which everyone can thrive.
Here on Cape Cod you are fortunate to have a local node of 350Mass for a Better Future, the grassroots, climate action group that is working hard to build political will to stop new pipelines and move the Commonwealth to 100% clean energy. I hope you’ll sign up with 350Mass and check out a local meeting. Our state politicians may see what’s needed, but they are not moving fast enough to stop the damage.
Solar panels enclosed by white picket fence, Federated Church of Orleans
What motivates us to join the struggle to protect life as it has evolved on this planet? As followers of Jesus, we take action not only out of fear, although we do fear for the future of our children and our children’s children if we leave them a scorched and barren world beset by climate disruption. We take action not only because we’re angry, although we are angry, and refuse to allow political and corporate powers to dismantle the web of life for the sake of their own short-term profit and greed. We take action not only out of sorrow, although we do grieve for all the species we have already lost and will lose, grieve for the dying coral and vanishing bumblebees, grieve for the climate refugees, the vulnerable poor, and all the innocents who are already suffering and whose lives and livelihoods are being destroyed.
Fear, anger, and sorrow – all these feelings may galvanize us to act. But stirring beneath them all is love, love for each other, love for the Earth entrusted to our care, love for the God whose mercies cannot be numbered. We were made for communion with God and each other and God’s Creation, and we put our trust in the power of God to work through us to heal and reconcile and save. I don’t know if in the end we will be successful, but I do know this: we intend to be living witnesses to the power of a living God until the day we die.
1. Mark Macdonald, “Finding Communion with Creation,” in Holy Ground: A Gathering of Voices on Caring for Creation, edited by Lyndsay Moseley and the staff of Sierra Club Books, San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 2008, pp. 150-151. Macdonald is the former bishop of Alaska, and now serves as the National Indigenous Bishop of the Anglican Church of Canada.
2. Ibid, p. 151.
3.“Mystic Christ,” by Fr. John Giuliani, Bridge Building Images, Inc.
Homily for Greater Springfield Ecumenical Easter Vigil, March 31, 2018
Delivered by the Rev. Dr. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Longmeadow, MA
Mark 16:1-8
Easter power
I am blessed to be with you on this holy night as we immerse ourselves in the story of our salvation, the story of God’s love affair with the whole creation. In story after story, we have touched the great truth that we’ve been loved since the beginning of time, that God has led us safely through the Red Sea, guided us through the wilderness, walked with us into the darkness, shared our suffering and pain, and even now is shining a pure light within us and among us.
Christ is risen!
I need this story, this reality, more than ever. We live in a culture that worships violence and war, a culture in which political and economic forces are tearing us apart. We live in a culture in which the rich grow richer while the poor are swept aside, a culture that values wealth, privilege, and domination, and that treats Mother Earth with the same casual disregard with which it treats the vulnerable poor. Like some of you, I feel visceral anger and grief as I watch our government get to work desecrating every last inch of creation, pillaging every last natural resource, destroying every last habitat, and abandoning every last regulation, rule, and treaty that preserve clean air and water and maintain the stability of our global climate. This week I learned that climate denial is now the official policy of the Environmental Protection Agency.
Into this world of violence, deceit, upheaval and war walks a man of peace, a man so radiant with the all-embracing loving-kindness of God that to be in his presence is to be in the presence of God. He walks a path of non-violent love, teaching, healing, and blessing everyone he meets, challenging us to live out of our deepest identity and to understand that we, too, are children of God, born to express God’s love in everything we say and do, born to create communities of love in which no one is left out. When at last he confronts the imperial powers, he endures in his own body the brutalities of this world, conveying until his last breath a spirit of forgiveness and non-violence. And then, on Easter morning – ah! – something is unleashed into the world, an explosion of light, a release of energy. From out of the empty tomb, from out of our empty souls, the living Spirit of Christ springs forth, breaking open whatever is fearful, clenched, and small, unleashing a love that melts all barriers and encompasses all beings.
Deacon Eric Elley practices flying the butterfly before the service begins
If Christ is alive, then we are embraced by a sacred power that can roll away stones, restore the dead to life, and offer meaning and hope in the very places where meaning has fled, and hope has died.
If Christ is alive, then into our world a power has been released that is stronger than death, a source of love and energy and hope that nothing and no one can destroy.
If Christ is alive, then there is no suffering we can endure, no anguish we can bear, no loss or disappointment we can undergo that Christ himself does not suffer with us.
If Christ is alive, then each person is beloved and cherished by God, and we are drawn to create new forms of community that overturn the systems of rank, privilege, and domination that divide us from each other and that destroy God’s creation.
If Christ is alive, then we have no need to settle for a life that is overshadowed by the nagging fear of death, for eternal life does not begin after we die – it begins right here, in this very moment.
If Christ is alive, then we are free to be our largest, truest selves: a people free to be vulnerable, free to be generous, free to fall in love with life.
If Christ is alive, then there is nothing more real than love, nothing more true than love, nothing more enduring than love.
Through the power of resurrection, a great energy has been released into the world, and that power is already at work within us. It springs to new life when we gather to resist the forces of destruction, when we stand up for gun safety or engage in peaceful civil disobedience to stop new fracked gas pipelines. It springs to new life when we gather around the table to break bread in Jesus’ name. It springs to new life when we speak words that are truthful and kind, and when we treat ourselves and one another with compassion and respect. It springs to new life when we refuse to abandon and abuse Mother Earth and when we search for ways to re-weave the web of life.
It’s not enough just to gaze on Christ’s resurrection from afar. This is not only Jesus’ miracle – it is our miracle, too, a miracle that each of us is invited to experience more deeply every day of our lives.
Tonight, in silence, words, and song, in fear and wonder, we welcome into our lives and into our wounded and lovely world the Risen Christ and the power of resurrection.
Jesus Christ has risen to new life, and so have we.
Alleluia! Christ is Risen! The Lord is Risen, indeed! Alleluia!
What a blessing to be with you this morning! Thank you, Steve, for welcoming me back to this pulpit. I’m an Episcopal priest and long-time climate activist, and I have the world’s longest job title. I work as Missioner for Creation Care in the Episcopal Diocese of Western Massachusetts, and the United Church of Christ in Massachusetts. I am not a “missionary,” a word that’s often associated with trying to convert someone, but a “missioner,” which means someone who has been sent out on a mission, someone who has been sent out to serve God beyond the boundaries of a building. As Missioner for Creation Care, I travel in and beyond Massachusetts, preaching and speaking and leading retreats about the sacredness of God’s Creation and our call to become faithful stewards of God’s good Earth, particularly our call to address climate change. The God whom we meet so intimately in our depths is the same God who sends us out into the world to be healers and justice-seekers. My Website is RevivingCreation.org, where you can read articles and sign up for blog posts.
My sermon boils down to three words: Keep the faith. That’s the phrase I often find myself saying to friends as we prepare to go our separate ways: Keep the faith. Other people have other favorite go-to phrases when they say goodbye. I remember Walter Cronkite signing off at the end of every nightly newscast: “That’s the way it is.” Before him there was Edward R. Murrow, who ended his radio and TV broadcasts with the words, “Good night, and good luck.” And as long as we’re on the subject of television, let’s not forget Dr. Spock from Star Trek, with his farewell blessing, “Live long and prosper.”
I like all these expressions, but what I want to say, what I want to hear, is “Keep the faith.” We live in a precarious time, a time of turmoil when for all kinds of reasons many of us feel rattled and anxious, and brace ourselves for the next bit of bad news. So how glad I am that today, on the Second Sunday in Lent, we are invited to remember Abraham, our brother in the faith, our father in the faith, “the father of all of us,” as St. Paul puts it in his Letter to the Romans (Romans 4:16). When the story begins, Abraham is the archetype of someone stuck in a hopeless place, a place without faith. He is ninety-nine years old, for heaven’s sake, his body “already as good as dead,” according to St. Paul (Romans 4:19). He has no children by his wife, Sarah, who is no spring chicken, either. The data would suggest that he has reached a dead end. This man who wished for progeny for so long is all washed up; he’s at the end of his rope; his future is barren; the door has closed.
But then he has an encounter with God that changes everything. We don’t hear the details of that encounter in today’s reading, though in another passage from Genesis it seems that Abraham’s experience took place at night, in the desert, under the stars (Genesis 15:5). Abraham encounters a God of life, a creative God with the power to make all things new, a God, says St. Paul, “who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist” (Romans 4:17).
This wild and life-giving God, a God of justice and mercy, makes a covenant with Abraham, an unshakable bond, and promises him offspring, and a good land, and a future. None of those promises are visible yet, none of them has yet come to be, but Abraham’s faith awakens. It comes alive: he puts his faith in God. He trusts in God’s presence; he trusts in God’s power. He casts his lot with a God of infinite love and creativity, a God who has the power to restore and make whole. And in response to God’s call, Abraham sets out in faith.
I want to emphasize that last point: he sets out. He walks. Today’s first reading makes it clear that faith is active, not passive: faith is practiced and made manifest in action. What does God say to Abraham? “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless.” Walk – don’t stand still, don’t get passive, don’t stay stuck and hopeless. Don’t wait for someone else to do something. Get going. Get moving. Take action.
And don’t walk alone. “Walk before me,” says Yahweh, “and be blameless.” It is if God were an unseen presence and power that is always behind us, as if our job were to clear the way for divine love to move through us, freely and fully, like a river that flows through us and out into the world, so that all people and all beings can be blessed and healed and reconciled. Our task in the course of a day is to stay in conscious contact with God, so that as far as possible we are walking before God, not walking alone, not being driven by our ego or by our anxiety. Activists usually depend on people power, but spiritual activists – people who walk in faith – depend on God-power. It is God who energizes and emboldens us, God who gives us power to do more than we can ask or imagine.
We live in a time that cries out for the imagination, determination, and heart of people of faith. The web of life is unraveling before our eyes. Great populations of creatures – even entire species – are rapidly disappearing from Earth. Scientists tell us that a mass extinction event is now underway – what they’re calling a “biological annihilation.” In addition to species extinction, we also face a changing climate. Because of the relentless burning of fossil fuels, month after month our planet is breaking records for heat. As Bill McKibben wrote, “Our old familiar globe is suddenly melting, drying, acidifying, flooding, and burning in ways that no human has ever seen.” 1 To cite just one example of how burning fossil fuels is affecting our planet: a recent study examined all the major research on oxygen loss in the ocean and concluded that over the past fifty years the amount of water in the open ocean that is without oxygen has more than quadrupled. As one headline puts it, the ocean is losing its breath. To put it another way, the ocean is suffocating. Lest we imagine that land creatures will not be affected, one scientist points out that about half of the oxygen on Earth comes from the ocean. A professor of marine science who reviewed the study commented that the need for action was best summarized by the motto of the American Lung Association: “If you can’t breathe, nothing else matters.” I suppose that’s one reason I’m a climate activist: I like to breathe.
Climate change is not one of 26 different causes that we care about, but a cause that affects everything we cherish. If you care about the poor, you care about climate; if you care about immigration and refugees, you care about climate; if you care about public health, you care about climate; if you care about human rights, you care about climate; if you care about loving God and your neighbor, you care about climate. Climate justice is not an issue for a special interest group. If you like to breathe, if you like to eat, if you’d like to leave your children a world they can live in, you care about climate.
To heal God’s Creation, there is a great deal that we, as individuals, can do. Maybe we can plant a tree. Save a tree. Recycle more. Drive less. Eat local, eat organic, eat less meat and move to a plant-based diet. Maybe we can support local land trusts and non-profits focused on conservation. We can fly less – and, if we must fly, buy carbon offsets. Maybe we can afford solar panels and move toward a carbon-neutral home. If we have investments, we can divest from fossil fuels, and if we’re college graduates, we can urge our alma mater to divest.
Individual changes make a difference, but because of the scope and speed of the climate crisis, we need more than individual action – we need systemic change. To do that, we will have to confront the powers that be, especially when multinational corporations and members of our own government seem intent on desecrating every last inch of God’s Creation, pillaging every last natural resource, destroying every last habitat, and abandoning every last regulation, rule, and treaty that preserve clean air and water and maintain the stability of our global climate. Under the circumstances, I wonder at what point the practice of carrying out acts of civil disobedience will become as normative for faithful Christians as the practice of prayer.2
We will also have to confront versions of Christianity that contend that God has given us license to pillage and destroy the natural world, as if everything on God’s green Earth were placed here solely for the pleasure and benefit of a single species, Homo sapiens, or at least its privileged elite. Scott Pruitt, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, revealed this week, in an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network, that he believes that the Bible gives human beings the (quote-unquote) “responsibility” to “harvest” natural resources like coal and oil, although we know full well that burning these fuels is wrecking the planet entrusted to our care. As Mother Jones reports in its cover profile of Pruitt in its March/April issue, the EPA chief’s beliefs are rooted in a version of Christianity that is the “polar opposite from that of other religious leaders, including Pope Francis, who interpret stewardship as the responsibility humans have to protect God’s creation.”
When corporate and political powers set us on a path of disaster – when they remain hell-bent on locating, extracting, and burning as much coal, gas and oil as they possibly can, never mind the potentially catastrophic effects of what they’re doing – the time has come for us to unleash our faith, to make it visible and make it bold.
I give thanks for the story of God’s covenant with Abraham, our father in the faith. It reminds me that in perilous times, God calls forth a people who put their trust in a power greater than themselves; a people who start walking even if they have no map and must create the map as they go; a people with the God-given imagination to envision a future in which the land will prosper and our offspring will thrive; a people who trust in the creative, liberating power of the God who is within them and among them, beyond them and behind them, making a way where there is no way, giving life to the dead, and calling into existence the things that do not exist.
Thank you for whatever you are doing – or will do – to re-weave the web of life and to love God and all our neighbors, human and other-than-human. You know, we are all missioners for Creation care. Every who shares the faith of Abraham and Sarah, everyone who follows Jesus – every one of us here is a missioner for Creation care. Thank you for being on the journey with me.
Keep the faith.
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. I credit the Rev. Dr. Jim Antal with issuing this challenge, which he explores in his new book, Climate Church, Climate World (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018).
Sermon for the First Sunday After the Epiphany: The Baptism of Our Lord, January 7, 2018
Delivered by the Rev. Dr. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas at First Congregational Church, Great Barrington, MA
Psalm 29Acts 19:1-7Mark 1:4-11
Baptism and the call to protect Earth
Our Gospel text this morning tells one of the foundational stories of Christian faith, the story of Jesus’ baptism by John in the River Jordan. Before I say one word more, I invite you to take your thumb and to trace the sign of the cross on your forehead. Are you with me? Let’s do it together, once or twice. Let’s make it a prayer, for with grateful hearts we recognize that this simple gesture recalls the fact that our forehead has been indelibly marked with the sign of the cross and that we were baptized in the name of the Holy Trinity – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Whether that once-in-a-lifetime event took place many years ago, before conscious memory, when we were babies, or whether it took place more recently, in a ceremony that we remember – through our baptism we have been drawn into the divine life of God and marked as Christ’s own forever.
It’s clear that Jesus’ baptism was a decisive experience, a pivotal event that launched him into his public ministry. The story is told in all four Gospels, and it’s the very first story about Jesus that we hear in the earliest Gospel, the Gospel of Mark. In his baptism, Jesus consciously received the identity that had been his since before the beginning of time: he was, and had always been, the child of God, the beloved of God, and nothing and no one could take that love away. That’s what happens in our baptism, too: like Jesus, we, too, are forever claimed as God’s own. From that moment and for the rest of our lives, we are drawn into the life of God, caught up in an unbreakable relationship of love. Do you ever wonder who you are, who you really are, deep down? Today’s Gospel story gives the answer. Without doing a thing to deserve it or to earn it, you are the son, you are the daughter, you are the beloved of God – you are the one with whom God is well pleased. Wherever you go, whatever you do, wherever the Spirit sends you, the divine life is flowing through you, as close as your breath, as close as your heartbeat. You and I belong to Christ forever, and we are loved to the core.
I don’t know about you, but I find this a deeply consoling truth to hold on to right now, when so many people feel stressed and scattered, anxious or depressed. We live in a turbulent time, and the world is rapidly changing. Sometimes it seems that everything is falling apart, so it’s easy to feel unmoored, ungrounded, and afraid. What a perfect moment to remind ourselves of our baptism and to touch in again to the deep truth that we are God’s beloved daughter or son, and that nothing can separate us from the love of God (Roman 8:35-39)!
Here’s the thing: the love that embraced us in our baptism, the love that flows through us with our every breath – that love extends not only to individuals, not only to the baptized, and not only to human beings. The love of God embraces the whole Creation. Scripture tells us so (e.g. Gen. 1:31; Gen. 9:8-10, 15; Psalm 19:1; Psalm 24:1; John 3:16; Romans 1:20; Ephesians 1:10, Ephesians 4:9-10, Col. 1:19-20), and we glimpse this truth in our own experience. Anyone who has ever been amazed by the beauty of the world – anyone who has ever spent time studying the details of a single leaf, or gazing at a mountain, or looking at the stars on a frosty night knows what it’s like to feel a wave of wonder, humility, gratefulness and awe. The Creator of all-that-is is always disclosing God’s self to us in the natural world, always inviting us to slow down, look carefully, and greet our other-than-human kin.
Juniper berries encased in ice. Photo credit: Robert A. Jonas
That’s what Jesus did, I think: he lived close to the Earth, and in the Gospels we often find him outdoors, praying in the desert, walking along a seashore, or climbing a mountain. Here he is in today’s story, plunging into a river! His parables and stories are rich with images of nature: sheep and seeds, lilies and sparrows, weeds and rocks. As I consider Jesus, it seems to me that he encountered every person and creature he met with eyes of discerning love. He saw the inherent sacredness of the created world because he saw with his sacred eyes. He knew that we belong to a living, sacred whole and that everything is lit up with God, because he himself was lit up with God. Jesus knew what poet Gerard Manley Hopkins proclaims: “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.”
So when we see that living world being desecrated – when we see God’s good Earth being poisoned by toxins and pollutants, and laid waste by corporate greed – when we realize that the web of life is unraveling before our eyes and learn from scientists that a mass extinction event is now underway, a “biological annihilation”– when we understand that burning coal, gas, and oil is pushing the planet to break new records for heat, causing droughts, floods, and monster hurricanes, drowning cities, and accelerating wildfires – when we realize that, unless we change course fast, we will not leave our children and our children’s children a habitable world – then we are moved to take action. For we want to bear witness to the love of Jesus; we want to honor the glory of God’s Creation and to protect it from further harm.
Mourning doves. Photo credit: Robert A. Jonas
I wish I could tell you, as some highly placed but misinformed politicians have recently claimed, that the bitter cold that has gripped North America and the hurricane-force winds that just blasted the East Coast are a sign that global warming is not real. In fact, researchers point out that climate change may well be related to these frigid temperatures: the Arctic is warming rapidly, and the jet stream that once functioned like a strong fence or lasso that held cold air firmly around the pole now seems to be giving way and growing weak. Some scientists compare it “to leaving a refrigerator door open, with cold air flooding the kitchen even as warm air enters the refrigerator.” In any case, except for Canada and the northern United States, just about every other part of the world is warmer than normal. Last year was the second hottest on record for our planet as a whole, just behind a sweltering 2016, which crushed the record set the year before, which in turn crushed the record set the year before that. Sixteen of the seventeen hottest years have all been in this century.
Thank God, there is a lot that we, as individuals, can do. Maybe we can plant a tree. Save a tree. Recycle more. Drive less. Eat local, and move to a plant-based diet. Get our home insulated and get LED lighting. Support local farms and land trusts. Fly less – and, if we must fly, buy carbon offsets. Maybe we can afford solar panels and move toward a carbon-neutral home. You know the drill!
Individual changes make a difference, but because of the scope and speed of the climate crisis, we need more than individual action – we need systemic change. To do that, we’ll need to become politically engaged, to confront the powers-that-be, and to push our elected leaders to awaken from the fantasy that we can continue with business as usual. So some of us carry out peaceful, disciplined actions of civil disobedience to stop construction of new fossil fuel infrastructure and keep fossil fuels in the ground, where they belong. Some of us join Citizens Climate Lobby and push for a national carbon tax, or support legislation right here in Massachusetts that would put a price on carbon. Those of us who are white and privileged listen to the voices of racial minorities, indigenous peoples, and the poor, knowing that they are God’s beloved and that they are the ones hit first and hardest by climate change. Together we intend to build a world in which everyone can thrive.
350Mass for a Better Future march against new pipelines
Here in the Berkshires you are fortunate to have a local node of 350Mass for a Better Future, the grassroots, climate action group that is working hard to build political will to stop new pipelines and move the Commonwealth to 100% clean energy. I hope you’ll sign up with 350Mass and check out a local meeting. Our state politicians see what’s needed, but they are not moving fast enough to stop the damage.
We who have been baptized into the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ intend to bear witness to our God-given faith that life and not death will have the last word. We intend to become the people that God meant us to be: people who are faithful stewards of God’s Creation, people who are a blessing to Earth and all her communities. Jesus took risks to oppose the unjust authorities of his time, and we must do the same.
Here on the first Sunday of the Epiphany we have a chance to make a radical new start. We have a chance to reclaim a covenant more powerful than any stack of New Year’s Resolutions. This morning we celebrate the baptism of Jesus and we affirm the power of our own baptism in His name. We are loved beyond measure by a divine love that will never let us go. Day by day, as long as we live, we have countless opportunities to bear witness to that love. Who knows what compassion will rise up from our renewed commitment, what new cherishing of our selves and each other, what fresh energy for justice seeking and peacemaking in this precious world entrusted to our care?
NOTE: On January 12, 2018, ClimateNexus posted an updated analysis of the relationship between the cold snap and climate change that does not mention changes in the jet stream:
Strange Times for Chilly Temps: The type of extreme cold North Americans experienced in early January has become increasingly rare as the planet warms, a new analysis shows. An initial breakdown of January’s cold snap from World Weather Attribution finds such frosty temperatures are now 15 times rarer than they were a century ago, when cold waves were an average of 4 degrees F chillier. This winter’s extreme cold “wouldn’t have been that strange” 100 years ago, study co-author Gabriel Vecchi told the AP. “Things like this are becoming stranger.” (New York Times $, AP, Washington Post $, Earther, Mashable)
Homily for Richard Purdy Wilbur’s Memorial Service, November 13, 2017
Delivered by the Rev. Dr. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas at Village Congregational Church, Cummington, MA
Isaiah 61:1-3Psalm 23John 14:1-6
Richard Wilbur
(March 1, 1921 – October 14, 2017)
There is a custom in Episcopal churches, and maybe in congregations of every denomination, to maintain a register that keeps track of funerals. Usually we record the specific illness that led to death, but when someone very old passes away, we often write, very simply: “full of years.” I like that gentle phrase: “full of years.” I give thanks that Richard died peacefully at the age of 96, full of years.
We knew Richard in many different ways, and each of you brings your own memories. He was your beloved father, grandfather, or great-grandfather. He was your father-in-law, your editor, teacher, mentor, or colleague, your neighbor, your friend. Of course Richard also had a public identity as an acclaimed writer whose brilliant poems and translations, children’s books and critical essays on poetry dazzled his readers. So all sorts of memories fill this room, along with deep affection, for what people treasured in Richard was not that he lived to a ripe old age, but that he lived with such creative verve, with such openhearted generosity and vitality. Richard was not just full of years – he was full of life, full of spirit.
“Love Calls Us to the Things of This World” – the title of that poem says it all. Richard was a deeply religious, deeply spiritual man, a lifelong Christian who was drawn to God and whose spirit yearned for what was holy, clean, and pure. He could write of the soul’s desire to see “the morning air…all awash with angels… rising together in calm swells/Of halcyon feeling.” He understood the soul’s yearning for perfection and fullness, our longing for an infinite love that nothing on earth can satisfy. Yet he also knew that the God he loved did not float above the material world. Richard never settled for a bodiless spirituality, for that distorted brand of Christianity that disdains our actual existence and imagines that the divine is only up and away, far off somewhere in a distant heaven.
No – it seems to me that in his poems and in his life, what interested Richard was exploring what Christians call the Incarnation: the invitation to experience our embodied selves as the meeting place of heaven and earth, the very place where God chooses to dwell. Richard was interested in loving the actual world, not our fantasies about the world, not our ideas about the world, not our judgments and opinions of the world, but the actual world. He was intent on finding, naming, and sharing love right here – here in life’s messiness and pain, here in the beauty of the passing moment, here among the very particular people and plants and things that grace our time on earth. I treasure Richard’s poems for calling us back from what he called “pure mirage” to the sacred glories of our everyday lives, for urging us to notice the radiance of starlight over the barn, to value “Lampshine blurred in the steam of beasts, the spirit’s right/Oasis, light incarnate” (“A World Without Objects is a Sensible Emptiness”).
Richard and his beloved Charlotte lived here in this village for a full forty years; for another ten years, he lived here on his own. Immersion in his Cummington home filled Richard’s poems with sugar maple and beech, with fern-beds and blackberries. He loved to stand on the deck, gazing up at the night sky or out into the distance, savoring the splendid view. He loved to wander the acres of woods and fields, noticing with the delight of a naturalist every detail of bird and bush, and sharing his contagious excitement with anyone nearby. Chris describes his father as someone who “took delight in the adventures-of-learning that one can have in the country.” Richard cherished learning from the long-time residents of Cummington, from you who know so intimately the rhythms and patterns of the natural world. He delighted in your knowledge and in your friendship.
And he was an avid gardener who pored over seed catalogues in the winter and spent the growing season with his hands in the dirt, raising corn and tomatoes, lettuces and herbs, and plying his family with vegetables and with sorrel soup. I’ve heard that a Native American tribe urges living so that a piece of earth mourns you when you die, and if ever there were a piece of earth that was loved and blessed by human beings and that might mourn them when they die, surely it would be that patch of earth in Cummington where Richard and Charlotte spent so many happy years.
Of course I never Richard, much less talked to him about his faith, but his stance toward life reminds me of the way that Jesus lived: close to the Earth. In the Gospels we often find Jesus outdoors, praying in the desert, walking by a seashore, climbing a mountain. His parables and stories are rich in images of nature: sheep and seeds, lilies and sparrows, weeds, vines, and rocks. It seems that every creature Jesus saw, every person he encountered, he met with eyes of discerning love. He saw the inherent sacredness of the created world. He knew that we belong to a living, sacred whole and that everything is lit up with God’s glory.
I see that stance in Richard’s life, too. He didn’t care about social differences; he was genuinely interested in everybody and he was resolutely himself, the same person with everyone he met: confident, courtly, kind, playful with words, generous with his attention and time. I’m told that if a kid contacted him because of a homework assignment, he was perfectly likely to write back a handwritten response.
Richard’s enduring love of the world and its precious web of life is perhaps nowhere more passionately expressed than in his poem, “Advice to a Prophet.” I cherish that poem, given my work as Missioner for Creation Care and my ardent effort to re-awaken our awareness of the sacredness of the natural world and the need to protect that world from further harm. “Advice to a Prophet” is shot through with a felt sense of the radical interdependence of human beings with the rest of God’s Creation, and it invites us to grieve the imagined loss of “The dolphin’s arc, the dove’s return” – a loss that has become all too real in the years since that poem was written. In the face of species extinction and climate change, Richard’s poem gives us words that can help us clarify our feelings, help us see more clearly, and help us, perhaps, to find the moral courage to protect and heal the world that we so love and need, and that God entrusted to our care.
Love calls us to the things of this world, and at the end of our lives, the same Love calls us home. So it was for Richard, who – “full of years” – passed at last into the arms of the Creator who loved him into being, sustained him his whole life through, and welcomed him home at his journey’s end. We hear about that homecoming in today’s Gospel reading, when Jesus says, “Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also” (John 14:1-3). Jesus prepared a place for Richard and for all of us in the heart of God, a place in that spacious home of many mansions where we will find rest, and where the love that we have known in part in this life will be fully known at last.
Richard loved the things of this world. He loved God. He loved you. And now, like the starling in one of his poems (The Writer) that was trapped for a time inside a room, he has found the open window. He has “[cleared] the sill of the world.” He has found his way home.
Let us pray.
“O Lord, support us all the day long of this troublous life, until the shadows lengthen, and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done. Then in thy mercy grant us a safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at the last.”[1]
Richard, your work is done. You have found your safe lodging, your home in God’s heart. You have received a holy rest, and peace at last. Rest in God’s heart, Richard, and pray for us as we pray for you.
The Book of Common Prayer, “In the Evening,” p. 833.
What a blessing to be back at St. Mark’s Cathedral! Thank you, Steve, for inviting me to preach. I bring greetings from Massachusetts, where I serve both the Episcopal Diocese of Western Massachusetts and the United Church of Christ as Missioner for Creation Care. In this ecumenical role I travel from place to place, church to church, preaching the Gospel and speaking about our call as Christians to love and protect the Earth that God entrusted to our care. It is a joy to return to Seattle, where my father was born, and to see again your magnificent forests, lakes, seas, and mountains.
My husband Robert Jonas is with me, and we’ve spent the past week in the Pacific Northwest, speaking and leading retreats about spiritual resilience. I am drawn to the topic of spiritual resilience because it seems that most of us could use some resilience right about now. Many people tell me that they’re feeling bone tired. Partly it’s the demands of family life and work life, the hectic effort to keep so many balls in the air. And partly we’re tired because of the stress of knowing that as a nation we’re facing so many difficult issues all at the same time. Day by day, as we read the headlines or hear about the latest developments, many of us are gripped by outrage and alarm. We are living in turbulent times when upheaval seems to be the new normal and we brace ourselves for the next scary bit of bad news.
As Missioner for Creation Care, what most concerns me is the fact that the web of life is unraveling before our eyes. Great populations of creatures – even entire species – are rapidly disappearing from Earth. You may have noticed the report in Friday’s Seattle Times that Orcas may be extinct by the end of the century because of dwindling numbers of salmon, human pollutants, and underwater noise. Scientists tell us that a mass extinction event is now underway – what they’re calling a “biological annihilation.” In addition to species extinction, we also face a changing climate. Because of the relentless burning of fossil fuels, month after month our planet is breaking records for heat. Last year was the hottest year on record, crushing the record set the year before, which in turn crushed the record set the year before that. Sea ice is melting. Land ice is melting. Tundra is thawing. The deep oceans are heating up and growing more acidic. Hurricanes – like those that ravaged Puerto Rico and the southeastern U.S. – are growing more intense. Soon after that succession of hurricanes, catastrophic wildfires began roaring up the California coast, accelerated by high winds, extreme heat, and bone-dry landscapes. Climate change didn’t cause these monster storms and fires, but it certainly made them worse. These so-called “natural” disasters are not entirely natural – they are driven by dirty energy like coal, gas, and oil, which dump carbon and other heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere and disrupt the climate.
Orcas hunting in Salish Sea, an area between Vancouver and Vancouver Island, B.C. Photo credit: Robert A. JonasIn a precarious time, when many of us, for good reason, are stressed or tired or scared, we need once again to sink our roots deep into the love of God, to remember how loved we are, how cherished we are in God’s sight, how nourished we are by a love that will give us strength for the journey ahead and will never let us go. So thank God for St. Mark’s Cathedral! Thank God for every congregation where people draw together to pray, to listen to the wisdom of Scripture, to draw close to Jesus, and to be strengthened by the Holy Spirit.
Today’s readings give us a beautiful image for spiritual resilience. In Psalm 1 we read that those who trust in God are “like trees planted by streams of water, bearing fruit in due season, with leaves that do not wither” (Psalm 1:3). Imagine being such a tree! Your roots go deep into the love of God, which runs like a river beside you. No matter what is happening in the world around you, even if what’s going on feels dangerous or chaotic, even in times of storm or drought, your roots reach deep into the ground and you stand beside a divine river that is endlessly flowing. As another psalm puts it, “the river of God is full of water” (Psalm 65:9). Like trees planted beside a stream of living water (John 7:37-38), we are “rooted and grounded in love” (Ephesians 3:17). We know that God is with us. We feel God’s power and we feel God’s strength. Drawing from those deep roots we rise up like trees, bearing fruit in due season, with leaves that do not wither. We drink deep of abundance, absorb it into every cell of our bodies, and then share that abundance with the world – freely, generously, without holding back, because there is plenty more where that came from!
The same image of spiritual resilience and aliveness plays out in a passage from the prophet Jeremiah (Jeremiah 17:7-8):
7 Blessed are those who trust in the Lord,
whose trust is the Lord.
8 They shall be like a tree planted by water,
sending out its roots by the stream.
It shall not fear when heat comes,
and its leaves shall stay green;
in the year of drought it is not anxious,
and it does not cease to bear fruit.
Trees beside the water of Loon Lake, British ColumbiaI find this image so compelling that when my husband and I traveled to Seattle to lead a series of events on spiritual resilience, we named the whole thing “Rooted and Rising.” I’m not a botanist, but I’m learning that trees are more intelligent than we thought. Books like The Hidden Life of Trees tell us that the root systems of trees and fungi communicate with each other, and that trees develop social networks and share resources. There is a whole lot of underground life going on beneath our feet! And so it is with us: when we sink our own roots deep into the love of God, we, too, discover that everyone and everything is connected. On the surface, we may see only our differences, what divides us from each other, but from below, on the level of roots, we discover what Martin Luther King, Jr., called the Beloved Community: here, where God’s love is always being poured into our hearts, we realize that everyone, and the whole Creation, is loved and that we belong together. Beneath all our differences of race, class, gender, and political party, we belong to one living, sacred whole.
Every time we tap into the deep-down truth of our essential belovedness, we discover fresh energy for life. And so – up we rise, like a mighty tree, offering our gifts to each other and to the world: our fruits and leaves; our time, talent, and treasure; a kind word, a healing gesture.
When it comes to tackling climate change, there is so much that we as individuals can do. Maybe we can plant a tree. Save a tree. Recycle more. Drive less. Eat local, eat organic, eat less meat and move to a plant-based diet. Maybe we can support local farms and land trusts. We can fly less – and, if we must fly, buy carbon offsets. Maybe we can afford solar panels and move toward a carbon-neutral home. If we have investments, we can divest from fossil fuels, and if we’re college graduates, we can urge our alma mater to divest.
Individual changes make a difference, but because of the scope and speed of the climate crisis, we need more than individual action – we need systemic change. To do that, we may have to confront the powers that be, especially in a time when multinational corporations and members of our own government seem intent on desecrating every last inch of God’s Creation, pillaging every last natural resource, destroying every last habitat, and abandoning every last regulation, rule, and treaty that preserve clean air and water and maintain the stability of our global climate.
I can’t help thinking of the African-American spiritual that became an anthem of the Civil Rights Movement, a protest song and a union song, “We Shall Not Be Moved.” Even now, I can hear Pete Seeger singing, “We shall not, we shall not be moved; we shall not, we shall not be moved, just like a tree that’s planted by the water, we shall not be moved.” He goes on: “Young and old together, we shall not be moved… women and men together, we shall not be moved… city and country together, we shall not be moved… black and white together, we shall not be moved… just like a tree that’s planted by the water, we shall not be moved.”
Rooted in love and rising up in action, Christians and other people of faith will not be moved. We intend to bear witness to our God-given faith that life and not death will have the last word. We intend to become the people that God meant us to be: people who are good stewards of God’s Creation, people who are a blessing to Earth and all its communities. So some of us carry out peaceful, disciplined actions of civil disobedience to stop construction of new fossil fuel infrastructure and keep fossil fuels in the ground, where they belong; some of us join Citizens Climate Lobby and push for a carbon tax; those of us who are white and privileged listen to the voices of racial minorities, indigenous peoples, and the poor, knowing that they are God’s beloved and that they are the ones hit first and hardest by climate change. Together we intend to build a world in which everyone can thrive. There is so much that we can do – so many ways to bear fruit!
On this day of stewardship ingathering I give thanks for the ways that this community continues to root itself in the love of God and neighbor and to offer its gifts to a hungry, thirsty world. You are “like trees planted by streams of water, bearing fruit in due season, with leaves that do not wither” (Psalm 1:3). I trust that everything you do in Jesus’ name will prosper.
Homily delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas during The Bishop’s Annual Clergy Retreat for the Diocese of New Westminster, “Contemplative Ecology: Landscapes of the Soul,” held at Loon Lake Lodge, Maple Ridge, British Columbia, Canada, on October 25, 2017
Romans 6:12-18Psalm 124Luke 12:39-48
Now is the unexpected hour
The Gospel reading assigned for today is a classic text for reflecting on stewardship: the parable of the faithful and unfaithful slave, of the wise and unwise steward.
The clergy retreat was held in a stunning setting: Loon Lake Lodge, Maple Ridge, British Columbia
Let’s says the master leaves his house in the care of a “faithful and prudent” manager who works hard and takes good care of the estate – when that happens, says Jesus, “blessed is that slave who his master will find at work when he arrives.”
But let’s say the master leaves his house in the care of an unfaithful steward, someone who says to himself: “My master is delayed in coming. I can do whatever I please; I can beat the other slaves; I can eat, drink, get drunk.” Jesus warns that in such a case, the consequences will be terrible: The master will come on a day when [the steward] does not expect him and at an hour that he does not know, and will cut him in pieces.” The steward who knew what his master wanted, but did not do it, will receive a severe beating; the steward who did wrong but did not know what his master wanted will also receive a beating, though only a light one.
The point, it seems, is that there comes a time of reckoning. As the stewards of God’s Creation, we may revel for a while in an initial sense of freedom and entitlement. Hey, we may say to ourselves, the master is delayed; we can get away with doing whatever we want! We can mistreat each other and mistreat the Earth entrusted to our care. We don’t belong to each other. We don’t need to take care of each other. We have no obligation to anyone but ourselves, as individuals and as a species. If it maximizes my short-term profit, that’s all I need to know: it’s good. If it makes my life and my family’s life more comfortable, that’s all I need to know: it’s good. If it benefits my company’s shareholders, that’s all I need to know: it’s good. So go ahead – let’s pillage and plunder all we like, and pour dirty greenhouse gases into the sky as if it were an open sewer. Let’s drill, mine, extract, consume, and discard to our heart’s content – this is who we are, this is what we do. And how what we’re doing affects other beings – such as our non-human kin, and the poor, and indigenous people, and future generations – is not our concern.
Well, says Jesus, there does come a time of reckoning. The master comes home at an unexpected hour and finds that his estate – its peoples, its creatures, and its shining web of life – has been trashed. What does he do? He cuts the unfaithful steward in pieces and gives him a beating – an especially severe beating if the steward knew that what he was doing was wrong, but went ahead and did it anyway.
I interpret that harsh sentence as an expression of the master’s anger and grief: how much the master loved that piece of land and all that lived on it! How much he hoped that the people to whom he entrusted his estate would live gently and justly together, so that everyone and everything could thrive! Yet the unfaithful and unwise stewards made a mess of things. The moment of reckoning is terrible, for if it’s wrong to wreck the world, it’s especially wrong to wreck the world when you know what you’re doing and you keep doing it, anyway.
I hear a poignant echo of this parable in a book by Kathleen Dean Moore called Great Tide Rising, which is subtitled: “Towards Clarity and Moral Courage in a Time of Planetary Change.”Great Tide Rising considers the perilous situation in which we find ourselves because of “our dead-end culture”1 – the rising seas and extreme storms of a changing climate, the cascade of extinctions, the cry of the Earth, the cry of the poor. We are wrecking the world, she says, “maybe not intentionally, but knowingly.” And then she imagines the moment of reckoning:
Caption on the framed photo: Loggers with felled trees, location unknown — 1920
“What will I say when my granddaughter comes to me with her own baby in her arms and real pain in her voice and asks me, ‘What did you do to protect the Earth from this devastation?’ I cringe when I imagine what she might say:
Don’t tell me you didn’t know. You knew.
Don’t tell me you thought there was enough time. You know there wasn’t.
Don’t tell me you didn’t know what to do. Anything would have been better than nothing.
Don’t tell me the forces against you were too great! Nothing is greater than the forces against us now. And now, what would you have me do?”2
Because we are Christians we dare to face hard truths. The hard truth is that as a society we are putting the planet’s living systems in peril, and the time of reckoning is now. Now is the time to reclaim our God-given connection with the earth and our responsibility to the living, sacred web of life. Now is the time to renew our union with God and all God’s creation – which includes not just our human fellows but also all living creatures and the larger eco-systems on which all of life depend. Now is the time to change course as a society, because our present way of life is unsustainable.
Depending on non-renewable energy and resources is by definition unsustainable. Consuming more resources than the planet can provide is by definition unsustainable. Wiping out wilderness habitat and the innumerable species upon which our species depends is by definition unsustainable. Producing a killing level of greenhouse gases is by definition unsustainable. We are living beyond our ecological means.
If ever there were a time to bear witness to our faith, now would be the time. If ever there were a moment to hold fast to our vision of a world in which human beings live in right relationship with each other and with our fellow creatures, now would be the time.
There is a lot that we can do as individuals. Maybe we can plant a tree. Save a tree. Recycle more. Drive less. Eat local, eat organic, and move to a plant-based diet. I invite you to think of one way you can listen more deeply to the land. If we have money to invest, we can invest in socially responsible funds or in local, green businesses, and divest from fossil fuels. We can support our local land trust and protect the wild areas and local farms we still have. We can do simple things like invite the neighbor we’ve never met to come over for a cup of tea, for we need to build up local communities and live in ways that are closer to the earth, more about sharing than about consuming, more about self-restraint than about self-aggrandizement, more about generosity than about self-centered and fearful survivalism, so that we can take care of each other when the hard times come. There is joy in living like this – a joy that springs simply from being true to the basic goodness that God has planted in us.
Prayers for God’s Creation, expressed in images and words
But because individual actions are necessary but not sufficient to the challenge that confronts us, together we need to create the boldest, most visionary, wide-ranging, powerful, hope-filled, hands-on, feet-on-the-ground, shoulder-to-the-wheel political and social movement that humanity has ever seen. I know that Christians have traditionally called ourselves “stewards” of God’s Creation, but given the situation in which the world now finds itself, I think we need a more robust term, something like “sacred warriors” or “eco-warriors.” The word “steward” can sound too polite and passive, when in fact what we need are bold witnesses to the risen Christ and to the sacredness of the Earth entrusted by God to our care.
In a few moments we will share the bread and wine of the Eucharist, given to us by God in Christ with such tenderness and at such great cost. We will gather at that holy table, as we always do, so that everything in us and around us can be lifted up and blessed – not only the bread and the wine, but also we ourselves, and the whole of creation, every leaf and every speck of sand. Sharing the Eucharist helps us to perceive not only our own belovedness, our own blessedness in God, but also the fact that everyone is beloved, all beings are blessed. Everyone and everything is part of a sacred whole, and all living things are kin. In the strength of the blessed and broken bread, and of the blessed and poured-out wine, we dare to hope that human beings will respond with grateful hearts and come to treat the world not as an object to exploit, but as a gift to receive, something perishable and precious. We dare to hope that we will become at last who we were made to be, a blessing on the earth.
1. Kathleen Dean Moore, Great Tide Rising: Towards Clarity and Moral Courage in a Time of Planetary Change(Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2016), p. 42.
2. Ibid.
It is a blessing to be with you this morning! Thank you, Peter, for inviting me to preach. I bring greetings from Massachusetts, where I serve both the Episcopal Diocese of Western Massachusetts and the United Church of Christ as Missioner for Creation Care. In this ecumenical role I travel from place to place, church to church, preaching the Gospel and speaking about our call as Christians to love and protect the Earth that God entrusted to our care. It is a joy to return to the Pacific Northwest and to see again the magnificent skies and sea and mountains of Vancouver and the glory that God reveals in this particular corner of God’s Creation – even if does seem to rain a lot!
Christ Church Cathedral, Vancouver, B.C.
Glory is our theme this morning – the glory of God, the glory of God’s Creation. In the passage from Exodus that we just heard, Moses engages in a long conversation with God. Eventually Moses asks, “Show me your glory” (Exodus 33:18).
Before we go any further, allow me to suggest that when we think about Moses, we probably think first about what he did in public. Who is Moses? He is the leader of the Hebrew people. He is the prophet who confronted the Pharaoh, the liberator who set his people free and led them out of bondage in Egypt, the lawgiver who formed Israel as a nation. Moses is a public leader – yes – but in today’s reading we see a much more intimate side of Moses – we see his inner life. We listen in on his intimate conversation with the God who dwells within him, just as God dwells within each one of us while also being distinct from us, infinitely beyond us.
“Show me your glory,” Moses prays – a plea that we might render as: “God, show me your beauty, your goodness, your truth. Show me your ways. Show me your face.” It’s an ardent prayer, the prayer of a lover to his beloved or of one close friend to another (Exodus 33:11), the prayer of someone who has wrestled with and argued with and trusted in and cast his lot with a divine Presence who will never let him go. It is the prayer of someone who wants to draw close to love and to the Source of love. “Show me your glory.”
And God responds, yes, I will show you my glory, “I will make all my goodness pass before you” (Exodus 33:19), but “you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live” (Exodus 33:20). And so God shelters Moses in a cleft of the rock, God tenderly cups a hand over him until God has passed by, and then God removes the hand, so that Moses can see God’s “back” (Exodus 33:23).
Preaching at Christ Church Cathedral, Vancouver, B.C. Photo credit: Robert A. Jonas
Anyone who has ever been overcome by the beauty of the world – anyone who, in contemplating the world, has ever experienced a wave of wonder and gratefulness and awe – anyone who has ever spent time studying the details of a single leaf or gazing at an ancient forest or watching waves dancing on the shore knows what it’s like to see God’s “back.” Like Moses, we cannot see the glory of God directly, in all fullness, for that radiance would be too much for mortal eyes to bear, but by the grace of God we sometimes see God’s “back” – we catch glimpses of God’s glory, we see traces, as when Moses saw the burning bush that was on fire and yet was not consumed. It may have been just an ordinary bush, but at that moment Moses could see that even this lowly bush was on fire with the love and glory of God. He took off his shoes, for he knew that he was standing on holy ground.
Sometimes we are surprised by such moments of awakening to glory: maybe we are startled by the cry of wild geese flying overhead or by the sight of an Orca rising and falling in the ocean; we are seized with wonder and our restless worries fall away. Sometimes we prepare for these moments of awakening: maybe we have a particular sacred place in nature that we return to again and again, knowing that if we stop and gaze and wait and pray, we are likely to sense that God is present, God is passing by. The Creator of all that is is always disclosing God’s self to us in the natural world, always inviting us to slow down, look carefully, be curious, and greet our other-than-human kin.
I think that that’s what Jesus did: he lived close to the Earth, and in the Gospels we often find him outdoors, praying in the desert, walking along a seashore, or climbing a mountain. His parables and stories are rich in images of nature: sheep and seeds, lilies and sparrows, weeds and rocks. As I meet Jesus in Scripture and in prayer, it seems to me that every creature he saw, every person he encountered he met with eyes of discerning love. He saw the inherent sacredness of the created world because he saw with his sacred eyes. He knew that we belong to a living, sacred whole and that everything is lit up with God’s glory, because he himself was lit up from the inside with God’s love. The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins echoes what Moses saw and what Jesus saw when he writes: “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.”
I wonder what it would be like if Christians around the world recovered a felt sense of the glory of God in Creation. What would happen to us, how would we change, what power would we receive, if we immersed ourselves more often in prayer outdoors in God’s Creation, and if, when indoors, we never forgot our connection with the living world outside? However alienated we may feel from nature, however enmeshed and trapped we may get in virtual reality and the hectic world of screens, emails, and tweets, however isolated we may feel as we hurtle down highways in our cars, the truth is that we live in a sacramental universe – a living, vibrant world that discloses and conveys the presence of God as surely as do the sacraments of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion.
Preaching in the beautiful, newly renovated sanctuary. Photo credit: Robert A. Jonas
So when we see that living world being desecrated – when we see God’s good Earth being poisoned by toxins and pollutants, and laid waste by corporate greed – when we realize that the web of life is unraveling before our eyes and learn from scientists that a mass extinction event is now underway, a “biological annihilation”– when we recognize that burning coal, gas, and oil is pushing the planet to break new records for heat, causing droughts, floods, and monster hurricanes, drowning cities, and accelerating wildfires – when we understand that the people hurt first and hardest by the effects of a changing climate are the poor – when we realize that, unless we change course fast, we will not leave our children and our children’s children a habitable world – then we are moved to take action. For we want to bear witness to the love of Jesus; we want to honor the glory of God’s Creation and to protect it from further harm.
As individuals, there is a lot we can do. Maybe we can plant a tree. Save a tree. Recycle more. Drive less. Eat local, and move to a plant-based diet. Support local farms and land trusts. Fly less – and, if we must fly, buy carbon offsets. Maybe we can afford solar panels and move toward a carbon-neutral home. You know the drill!
Individual changes make a difference, but because of the scope and speed of the climate crisis, we need more than individual action – we need systemic change. To do that, we may have to confront the powers that be. That’s what Moses discovered after he saw God’s glory: after he saw the burning bush and the living radiance of God’s Creation, from within the burning bush he heard God call him to do a brave thing: to step out into the public realm to confront the Pharaoh and to set his people free.
“Reconciliation, in all its forms, requires patience, openness, and courage. –Chief Dr. Robert Joseph.” Sign outside Christ Church Cathedral, Vancouver, B.C. Photo credit: Robert A. Jonas
I hear the same call in Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel passage: “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperors, and to God the things that are God’s” (Matthew 22:21). That enigmatic line has been interpreted in all kinds of ways, but here is how I hear it today: when we’re faithful to God, we give to the emperor – or, we might say, to the state – the things that are the state’s; we respect the legitimate and limited functions of the state. But when the state puts itself in place of God – when it violates the vision and values that are basic to Christian faith – when it abandons the Earth entrusted to our care and rides roughshod over the needs of the poor – then as Christians we are called to protest, to resist the state, and to change our ways of doing business, because our ultimate commitment is to God.
Back where I come from, in the United States, that’s where many Christians now find ourselves: appalled by the actions of a government and of multinational corporations that seem intent on desecrating every last inch of Creation, pillaging every last natural resource, destroying every last habitat, and abandoning every last regulation, rule, and treaty that preserve clean air and water and maintain the stability of our global climate. Impelled by our faith in the living God, the risen Christ, and the Holy Spirit, we are praying and protesting, resisting and organizing.
I can’t speak to the struggles that you face here in Canada, but I can say this: whatever obstacles you and I face as we try in the name of God to build a more just and sustainable future, however daunted we may feel, however challenging the battles that lie ahead of us, we trust that the glory of God is with us. In this Eucharist, as in every Eucharist, we will soon turn to God and say, “Heaven and earth are full of your glory.” We will pray as Jesus taught us, “Our Father in heaven… the kingdom and the power and the glory are yours.” And we will stretch out our hands – as if to say, like Moses, “Show me your glory” – and we will be given the consecrated bread and wine, the Body and Blood of Jesus, these simple elements of nature, filled with glory, giving us strength for the days ahead.
Through the power of resurrection, a great energy has been released into the world, and that power is already at work within us. It springs to new life when we gather to resist the forces of destruction, when we stand up for gun safety or engage in peaceful civil disobedience to stop new fracked gas pipelines. It springs to new life when we gather around the table to break bread in Jesus’ name. It springs to new life when we speak words that are truthful and kind, and when we treat ourselves and one another with compassion and respect. It springs to new life when we refuse to abandon and abuse Mother Earth and when we search for ways to re-weave the web of life.
It’s not enough just to gaze on Christ’s resurrection from afar. This is not only Jesus’ miracle – it is our miracle, too, a miracle that each of us is invited to experience more deeply every day of our lives.
Tonight, in silence, words, and song, in fear and wonder, we welcome into our lives and into our wounded and lovely world the Risen Christ and the power of resurrection.
Jesus Christ has risen to new life, and so have we.
Alleluia! Christ is Risen! The Lord is Risen, indeed! Alleluia!
I like all these expressions, but what I want to say, what I want to hear, is “Keep the faith.” We live in a precarious time, a time of turmoil when for all kinds of reasons many of us feel rattled and anxious, and brace ourselves for the next bit of bad news. So how glad I am that today, on the Second Sunday in Lent, we are invited to remember Abraham, our brother in the faith, our father in the faith, “the father of all of us,” as St. Paul puts it in his Letter to the Romans (
I want to emphasize that last point: he sets out. He walks. Today’s first reading makes it clear that faith is active, not passive: faith is practiced and made manifest in action. What does God say to Abraham? “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless.” Walk – don’t stand still, don’t get passive, don’t stay stuck and hopeless. Don’t wait for someone else to do something. Get going. Get moving. Take action.
And don’t walk alone. “Walk before me,” says Yahweh, “and be blameless.” It is if God were an unseen presence and power that is always behind us, as if our job were to clear the way for divine love to move through us, freely and fully, like a river that flows through us and out into the world, so that all people and all beings can be blessed and healed and reconciled. Our task in the course of a day is to stay in conscious contact with God, so that as far as possible we are walking before God, not walking alone, not being driven by our ego or by our anxiety. Activists usually depend on people power, but spiritual activists – people who walk in faith – depend on God-power. It is God who energizes and emboldens us, God who gives us power to do more than we can ask or imagine.
We live in a time that cries out for the imagination, determination, and heart of people of faith. The web of life is unraveling before our eyes. Great populations of creatures – even entire species – are rapidly disappearing from Earth. Scientists tell us that a mass extinction event is now underway – what they’re calling a “
