Advent 2
For the Second Week of Advent, two very different but
related texts can help us be better prepared to celebrate the birth of Jesus
and to receive Christ in our hearts at Christmas.
The first text is this week’s Gospel lesson from Matthew 3:1-12 about John the
Baptist appearing in the wilderness and proclaiming, “Repent, for the kingdom
of heaven has come near.”
The second text is a new report from eighteen of the world’s
top climate scientists entitled Assessing
‘‘Dangerous Climate Change’’: Required Reduction of Carbon Emissions to Protect
Young People, Future Generations and Nature. This report is well worth
reading in its entirety, but there is also a
summary available. The summary
explains that the paper “was initiated to provide the scientific basis for
legal actions against national and state governments for not doing their job of
protecting the rights of young people and future generations.” In doing so, it
also helps lay the groundwork for a moral argument against our complacency as
some of the wealthier people on the planet in the early part of the 21st
century.
The paper argues that the 2° C warming that world climate
forums have talked about as a limit that would prevent catastrophic climate
change is too high a limit. (It should also be noted that several scientists
think we are already on track to surpass that limit because of amplifying
feedbacks.) This paper argues that 2° C warming creates instability that makes
it impossible to stay at the two degree limit; two degrees of warming creates “slow
feedbacks” that eventually lead to 3-4° C of warming. A simple example of
feedback is the melting of the Arctic sea ice. Ice and snow reflect fairly
large amounts of sunlight. When the ice melts, there is more open water and
less ice, which means more sunlight is absorbed, which leads to more warming.
This of course leads to further melting, which leads to further warming, and so
forth. They argue that reducing global carbon emissions to 350 ppm by the end
of the century can keep us within a warming limit that prevents catastrophe.
And they note that “there is still opportunity for humanity to exercise free
will”.
I love the beauty of our worship at Christmas, and I love
the beauty and wonder of the Advent season that leads up to our great celebration
of the Feast of the Incarnation. But my heart hurts when I realize how far from
the mark of following Christ we can be when we focus more on the form and
aesthetics of our worship than we do on our call to follow Christ. In this
Sunday’s Gospel, John the Baptist says that it doesn’t matter if people are
good religious folks – children of Abraham – if their lives don’t show it. “Bear
fruit worthy of repentance” says John.
I hope that as we gather in churches on Christmas Eve that
somewhere in a homily or in the prayers we name the reality and urgency of
climate change. I hope that when we think about and speak about the Incarnation
that we appreciate the depth of that mystery by looking at the reality of our
world where God has chosen to come and dwell with us. I hope that as we prepare
for the birth of the Holy Child and then celebrate the birth, and as we prepare
to enjoy and delight the children we know and love, that we care enough about
both the Christ-child and our own children to bear fruit worthy of repentance
and work as hard as we can to stop the burning of fossil fuels and be willing
to change the way we do things so that future generations might live.
