Today was The Baptism of Our
Lord on our liturgical calendar, a day when we remember Jesus’s baptism in the Jordan River and reflect on
our own baptisms.
At Church of the Resurrection in Omaha this morning, one of our hymns
was Shall We Gather at the River. During
one of the choruses about the “the beautiful, the beautiful river” I thought of
the Elk River in West Virginia, a beautiful river that has become contaminated
by a coal-washing chemical. Reading about the situation in and around
Charleston before going to church made the singing of this hymn poignant. This
contamination has made the water supply in a nine-county area of West Virginia
unsuitable for anything other than flushing toilets. According to an article
by Joanna M. Foster for Think Progress,
the leak is much larger than what was originally reported:
As
over 300,000 people in West Virginia face a fourth day without water, state
environmental officials are now estimating that as much as 7,500 gallons of a
chemical used to process coal — Crude MGHM — may have spilled into the Elk
River. That number is a substantial increase from early estimates of 2,000 to
5,000 gallons.
Scientific American
tells about
Crude MGHM and how little we know about it, saying that its effects should
be much less than the effects of “exposure to the slurry of water and other
chemicals formed after coal is washed”, something to which many people have
been exposed in West Virginia and other coal-mining regions.
This morning we renewed our baptismal covenant as part of
the liturgy for The Baptism of Our Lord. We promised to seek and serve Christ
in all persons; we promised to strive for justice and peace among all people,
and to respect the dignity of every human being. It seems fitting in that
context to look at what is happening along the Elk River, one of the beautiful
rivers on our planet, and to the people who are caught in a system that allows
the coal industry to continue putting profits before the health and safety of people.
Which will we choose? Will we choose the beautiful river of
life “flowing by the throne of God”, or remain complacent and choose rivers
contaminated by chemicals that are harmful to living things?
