Lent 3: The Woman at the Well
At Church of the Resurrection in Omaha today, Fr. Jason
Emerson based this morning’s children’s sermon on the story of Jesus and the
Samaritan woman at the well (John
4:5-42). After asking the children if anyone knew what a well was – “It’s
like a big fish!” “No, that’s a whale.
This was a well.” – Fr. Jason told
them that in this story Jesus asks the woman at the well a lot of questions,
but she also asks Jesus a lot of questions. He told the children that this was
a good thing, and they should ask lots of questions, too.
I love watching the children interact with Fr. Jason and
with one another, and when I can catch a little of the children’s sermon that takes
place right before the beginning of the Sunday morning service, it gives me
joy. But that joy was mixed with grave concern for these little ones this
morning because of a question in something I had read about climate change
before leaving for church, a new post on ClimateBites entitled Is it going to be bad or horrifically bad?
That’s the scientific debate.
The post links to this video featuring an interview with
climate scientist Justin Wood that encourages us to pay attention and become
better educated about climate change:
Justin
Wood: 97% of actual active climate scientists agree with that position that
climate change is real, it's happening right now, and humans are the
overwhelming cause in this century and have been for the last 100 years. 'Is it
going to be bad or is it going to be horrifically bad' this is what the
scientists debate around, not, you know, “it could be fine”. Nothing like that.
The
way we are going, if we continue with business as usual if get these rises of
temperature by the end of the century of 4, 6, 8, 10 degrees, then he (Professor Kevin Anderson, Professor of Energy and Climate at
University of Manchester, United Kingdom) believes that we would be lucky if 5,
maybe 10% of the human pollution survives the century. The planet would
essentially be uninhabitable for humans.
Is it going to be bad or
horrifically bad? Will human life by the end of this century simply be much
more difficult or impossible?
Here is a question for all of us:
What are we going to do about it? (As the video suggests, learning more about
it is a good first step.)
A major question for the church in
this century is: What is the church’s response to climate change? If our
response is to ignore it because it seems difficult to talk about it or think
about it, or because preachers are afraid of saying anything their
congregations might find offensive on a Sunday morning, then we will have failed
to be the Body of Christ to a hurting world.
In this morning’s Gospel, Jesus tells the Samaritan woman
that the time is coming when “the true worshipers will worship the Father in
spirit and in truth”. People who worship in truth are people who live in truth.
If we are lying to ourselves to escape the hard truths of our world and to avoid
the hardest moral issue of our time, how can we worship God in truth? If the
church can’t find the moral courage rooted in faith to ask the hard questions,
who can?
Questions are good. All of us, adults at least as much as children, need to ask lots of questions.
Nebraskans have a great opportunity to learn more about the
intersection of faith, climate change, and environmental stewardship in general
at a conference, Creation Care for
Congregations, on April 26 at Nebraska Wesleyan University co-hosted by
Nebraska Interfaith Power & Light and the Nebraska Energy Office. Rabbi
Lawrence Troster will give the keynote address “All in the Same Boat:
Confronting the Moral and Spiritual Challenge of Climate Change”.
The day’s schedule and more information is available at the Nebraska Interfaith Power and Light
website.
