'And It Was Very Good'

MEMO for Those Who Preach

by

Sunday, March 24, Luke 13:1-9; Isaiah 55: 6-7

When dealing with God and Jesus, we are often encountering elements of urgency and potential consequences.  The writer of Isaiah says:  “Seek the LORD while he may be found.”  Luke warns: “Unless you repent, you will all perish.”  And the poor fig tree is given only a year to know its fate!  As we study the scriptures, we become aware that God and Jesus do not waste time.   Even though God rested and Jesus got away for a retreat, they are pretty task-oriented, or mission-driven.  That sense of urgency is our focus for this week, with attention to our “very good” world. 

Most of us realize that life as we know it on our planet is at risk.  Whole species are becoming extinct. Glacier National Park will have no glaciers in a couple of decades. The melting of the Arctic and Antarctica are causing sea levels to rise. Extreme weather patterns and events are becoming more extreme and frequent.   A few years ago, when she had lived 90 years, my mother, in discussing the increasingly intense weather events, said that she believed that God was trying to tell us something. When I asked her what God might be trying to tell us, she said that she was not sure, but knew that God had a message for us, and we needed to start paying attention.  

In the fifteen succeeding years, we have heard the results of many more “good science” studies that remind us that how we are doing life cannot continue indefinitely.  We are approaching or at a point of no return. Jeff Goodell’s The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World should shake us from our complacency. Three weeks ago, Bill Cotton talked about transfiguration as needed for our planet and relationships with one another. I would suggest that we adopt transfiguration as the goal of the Church in taking leadership in efforts to save our planet.  The Church has the capacity to mobilize great numbers of people in joining with God in the ever-evolving creation. 

Jim Antal is a United Church of Christ pastor and conference minister. He is the national spokesperson on climate change for the United Church of Christ. In his 2018 book, Climate Church, Climate World, he calls the church to attention and action in committing to an effort to at least slow and hopefully reverse the climate change to which we have contributed and that is threatening our future.  

Archbishop Desmond Tutu has described our current situation as a “Kairos moment”, an opportune time fraught with God-inspired possibility.  With governments immobilized by corporate and legislative climate deniers, placing every effort toward the goal of preserving the environment needs to be our primary and urgent mission. We have no time to waste on moralizing about who individuals might love, and how pastoral caregivers minister to their congregations and communities.   

Antal challenges us to consider other models for living cooperatively on Earth, rather than unthinkingly assume that economic growth and consumption can last forever. We can be stronger and more resilient working together. He reminds us that Christ calls us to “leave behind the modern myth of material progress.” “A technological and economic development which does not leave in its wake a better world and integrally higher quality of life cannot be considered progress.”  Antal challenges us to value wisdom over progress, and work toward a balance in our lives, as opposed to the addiction to fossil fuels that literally drives the lives we have created.  He urges church folks to develop a personal and congregational vision about how we want to live in relation to our Mother Earth.  Holding ourselves accountable for how we journey on our planet rather than acting out our hostility toward others through a disregard for the consequences of our actions may be more likely as we develop sensitivity through study groups and action plans in our churches and within our judicatories.   

We so easily act on the basis of fear of not having enough—scarcity-thinking—that we have become oblivious to Jesus’ message of self-giving love, a love that grows as we give it away. Back to the Isaiah scripture, we are reminded that God will abundantly pardon us; however, God has given us the freedom to really screw up beyond repair our “very good” world.

When witnessing the excitement about all of life that I see in my grandchildren, I become increasingly aware of how my attitude toward our natural world powerfully impacts the world into which they are living. I want Satchel, Gabriel, and Jackie, ages 9, 8, and 7, to know through experience that their world is good. I hope that they will forgive me for the ways I have not protected their current and future home.  

As mentioned earlier, the Church can mobilize many people to study and implement plans with the goal of slowing the heating of our planet.  Our young people might discover the Church to be relevant to their lives if we tapped into their growing anxiety that the world we are leaving for them is not as promising as the world we were born into.  Antal suggests we adopt the Golden Rule 2.0.  “…we must recognize that future generations are no less our neighbors than those who live next door today.”  Pastor Nan Smith, drawing upon her pre-ministerial naturalist profession keenly attunes to our natural environment: “I think of all creation as neighbor—that all parts of creation have intrinsic worth and value over and above how humanity values it.  We are a part of this great (although ever-shrinking) web of diversity—not above, not separate, but a part.  It is when we see ourselves as outside of that web that things start to fall apart, because then we fail to see how our actions impact the overall functioning of all.”

I am convinced that the world needs for the Church to envision civilization in its invitation to salvation—that includes a cherishing of all creatures from the Genesis stories, an understanding how our values shape the future of our planet, and an acting out of a sense of the urgency needed.  Back to Luke, if we do not repent, and change our ways, life as we know it is likely to continue deteriorating (warming, with less water for increasing numbers of people), moving incrementally in the direction of perishing.

* While Bill Cotton is recuperating from a recent hospital stay, he has asked wise colleagues to author the MEMO. The Rev. Ellery Duke, Ph.D. is a retired United Methodist Elder and the former Executive Director of the Des Moines Pastoral Counseling Center.