Deep Faith and Candlemas Light

This snowy February 2 in Nebraska, I offer a repost from a year ago, with this update:

The darkness is definitely there. This is the year we found out that major oil companies knew about the relationship between greenhouse gases and global warming back in the 1980's but hid that knowledge and continued to promote the use of fossil fuels. They lied one of the biggest lies in all of history.

In our long campaign for the 2016 Presidency, climate change is a marginalized issue even though the current administration is finally talking about it. Many voters ignore it, either giving up on the possibility of anything significant being done to mitigate it or prepare for it, or else living in a sort of denial that involves telling ourselves that it won't be all that bad or that somebody will figure out some brilliant technological save at the nth minute. This gives major candidates permission to ignore it -- or even outright deny the reality of climate change -- or make broad, insubstantial statements about climate change as a sort of after thought to the issues we are being told are the important ones.

We have had some rays of light this past year -- the Paris climate talks brought the issue of climate change to the world's attention, and the General Convention of our own Episcopal Church voted to divest major funds from fossil fuel investments. Even as the weeks and months go by with whole-hearted follow up to these pledges unclear, we can point to the solid success of the grassroots campaign to stop the Keystone XL pipeline as an example of what can happen when we step out in faith even when the deck seems stacked against success.

Last year, 2015, was the warmest year on record. The effects of climate change caused by global warming are getting harder for the powers that be to ignore. Perhaps the fact that the dark side of global warming is getting too big to ignore is cause for hope, as the first step in addressing climate change is to see it for what it is.

Deep Faith and Candlemas Light

Call it Candlemas or the Presentation of Our Lord in the Temple or even, as most people in the United States do, Groundhog Day, this day midway between winter and spring marks a subtle turning of the seasons. Even this year, when Candlemas finds most of Nebraska snow-covered and frigid, there is a noticeable difference in the slant of the sunlight and the length of days that helps us know in our bones that spring is on its way.

This day on the church calendar offers rich stories and prayers for reflection. And even though the church’s texts for the day have no immediate connection to concerns for caring for the planet or its people and other creatures, a subtle connection is there. [See Candlemas Light from 2011 about hope, or Mother Nature and Her Groundhogs from 2012 about embracing truth.] I wonder whether these texts connect in a nearly hidden way to caring for the earth because some old European calendars considered this the beginning of spring, but it's more likely that it is another instance where the Gospel message heard in our world points us to caring for all living things.

Today’s Eucharistic reading for the Presentation of Our Lord (Luke 2:22-40) tells the story of Mary and Joseph taking the infant Jesus to the temple. Simeon recognizes Jesus as “a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel” and blesses him, and Anna begins to praise God and talk about the child.

This year Daily Prayer for All Seasons  from the Episcopal Church’s Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music has introduced me to a Denise Levertov poem called Candlemas. (Read the poem here.) Speaking of Simeon, Denise Levertov wrote:

What depth
of faith he drew on,
turning illumined
towards deep night.

Deep faith like Simeon’s offers a place to ground ourselves as we face the effects of climate change, which are both unfolding around us in our time and yet nearly beyond our imagination. Awareness of what is happening as our world warms can result in hopelessness as we are already past the point of no return even if we continue to work to mitigate warming and its effects. This hopelessness slides easily into cynicism, a feeling that there is nothing to be done and, hence, no reason to do anything significant to try to change things. On the other hand, some people handle the situation by embracing false hope, either denying in thought and/or actions that anything is happening at all or supposing that a few changes here and there — but nothing that changes our way of life very much — will be sufficient to keep everything much as it is now. (False hope is the coinage of greenwashing and of political crumbs thrown to environmentalists.)

Deep faith offers an alternative to both cynicism and false hope. Deep faith turns to the darkness, the “deep night”; deep faith sees the darkness and acknowledges it. But instead of turning away from the darkness or being swallowed by it, deep faith makes us able us to stare into the darkness and yet be illumined. It makes it possible for us to shed some of that light into the darkness around us.

Deep faith tells us that our prayers and our actions have some profound meaning, that our efforts are worth something even if we don’t get the results for which we fervently pray. Deep faith assures us that God is good and all will be well even when we can’t envision what “all will be well” could mean in a rapidly warming world.

Deep faith sustained Mary after Simeon told her, “a sword will pierce your own soul too.” It can be our sustenance in 2015 and in the years ahead. Tending to our souls, to growing our faith deeper, is essential to the church’s response to environmental degradation.

Deep Faith and Candlemas Light

Call it Candlemas or the Presentation of Our Lord in the Temple or even, as most people in the United States do, Groundhog Day, this day midway between winter and spring marks a subtle turning of the seasons. Even this year, when Candlemas finds most of Nebraska snow-covered and frigid, there is a noticeable difference in the slant of the sunlight and the length of days that helps us know in our bones that spring is on its way. 

This day on the church calendar offers rich stories and prayers for reflection. And even though the church’s texts for the day have no immediate connection to concerns for caring for the planet or its people and other creatures, a subtle connection is there. [See Candlemas Light from 2011 about hope, or Mother Nature and Her Groundhogs from 2013 about embracing truth.] I wonder whether these texts connect in a nearly hidden way to caring for the earth because some old European calendars considered this the beginning of spring, but it's more likely that it is another instance where the Gospel message heard in our world points us to caring for all living things.

Today’s Eucharistic reading for the Presentation of Our Lord (Luke 2:22-40) tells the story of Mary and Joseph taking the infant Jesus to the temple. Simeon recognizes Jesus as “a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel” and blesses him, and Anna begins to praise God and talk about the child.

This year Daily Prayer for All Seasons  from the Episcopal Church’s Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music has introduced me to a Denise Levertov poem called Candlemas. (Read the poem here.) Speaking of Simeon, Denise Levertov wrote:

What depth
of faith he drew on,
turning illumined
towards deep night.

Deep faith like Simeon’s offers a place to ground ourselves as we face the effects of climate change, which are both unfolding around us in our time and yet nearly beyond our imagination. Awareness of what is happening as our world warms can result in hopelessness as we are already past the point of no return even if we continue to work to mitigate warming and its effects. This hopelessness slides easily into cynicism, a feeling that there is nothing to be done and, hence, no reason to do anything significant to try to change things. On the other hand, some people handle the situation by embracing false hope, either denying in thought and/or actions that anything is happening at all or supposing that a few changes here and there — but nothing that changes our way of life very much — will be sufficient to keep everything much as it is now. (False hope is the coinage of greenwashing and of political crumbs thrown to environmentalists.)

Deep faith offers an alternative to both cynicism and false hope. Deep faith turns to the darkness, the “deep night”; deep faith sees the darkness and acknowledges it. But instead of turning away from the darkness or being swallowed by it, deep faith makes us able us to stare into the darkness and yet be illumined. It makes it possible for us to shed some of that light into the darkness around us. 

Deep faith tells us that our prayers and our actions have some profound meaning, that our efforts are worth something even if we don’t get the results for which we fervently pray. Deep faith assures us that God is good and all will be well even when we can’t envision what “all will be well” could mean in a rapidly warming world. 

Deep faith sustained Mary after Simeon told her, “a sword will pierce your own soul too.” It can be our sustenance in 2015 and in the years ahead. Tending to our souls, to growing our faith deeper, is essential to the church’s response to environmental degradation. 

Loaves and Fishes and Environmental Impact Statements

Today’s Daily Office Gospel reading (John 6:1-15) was John’s version of the familiar story of the feeding of the five thousand. John writes that when a huge crowd of people was approaching, Jesus asked Philip “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” Jesus knew what he would do to feed the crowd, but he wanted to see what sort of an answer he got. Philip’s answer is a non-answer, understandable under the circumstances. He points out that even if they had the equivalent of six months’ wages to spend, it would barely give everyone in the crowd a little bit to eat. The unspoken assertion is that they do not have money like that to spend anyway. Then Andrew says, ‘There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?”

We know the rest of the story: Jesus blesses the loaves and fishes and the disciples distribute them. Everyone eats, and at the end they fill twelve baskets with leftovers.

People puzzle over this miracle story or simply marvel at it. What struck me reading it early this morning, though, was the contribution of the unnamed boy. I imagined Jesus talking to the disciples, having this adult conversation about how to do something that looked difficult to impossible to do, and a little boy standing there listening. A child knows little about the marketplace and probably has an even harder time comprehending the size of the crowd than do the disciples. But a child with five loaves of bread and two fish probably thinks he has a good amount of food! He doesn't know it isn't enough; he knows that he can help to feed the crowd, and he offers what he has.

The story from this point of view is less about the miracle or the lack of faith of the disciples than it is about the faith and generosity of a child who isn’t afraid to try to solve the problem. The disciples see what won’t work with the solution of buying food or of using what is at hand; they see failure as the only possibility because the chances of feeding that big a crowd with that amount of food are slim to none. I imagine the child, in contrast, brightening with the hope of being able to solve the problem.

For some reason I paid attention this morning when this aspect of the story surfaced.

When I sat down to check the day’s news, I saw that the State Department’s Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement for the Keystone XL Project was expected to be released today, and later in the day it was indeed released. The report finds that the impact on climate change is not significant; at the same time the report does say that there are greater emissions of greenhouse gases from the cumulative “well-to-wheels” effects of tar sands crude as compared to crude oil from other sources. (Executive Summary, Section 4.1.1) There is an underlying assumption that the tar sands will be mined with or without the pipeline.[i]

Environmentalists opposed to the Keystone XL project for a variety of reasons had hoped the report might clearly report that approval of the project would result in a significant and harmful increase in greenhouse gas emissions. President Obama had said that the effect on greenhouse gas emissions and climate change was a critical piece of his decision-making on the pipeline. Many news sources say that this report opens the way for President Obama to approve the pipeline.

There are, of course, many reasons to oppose this pipeline, and people who are concerned about the environment we are leaving as our legacy are not convinced that this is a harmless project. (See, for example, this statement from the Sierra Club, this by climate scientist Michael Mann, or these responses from Nebraska leaders in the movement to stop the pipeline.) While leaders have talked about the need to keep fighting, there has been some despair from the environmental community and concerned citizens in general today because it looks as if the oil industry with its huge amounts of money and the power and political influence that seems to be able to buy has the less moneyed, less powerful environmentalists in a corner. There has been an adult conversation today about how to do something – stop the Keystone XL pipeline -- that looks difficult to impossible to do.

But I heard Andrew say, “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish.” And I began seeing what we have. Look over here -- there is a solar and wind powered energy barn - that has been built in the path of the pipeline. And over there are First Nations people in Canada who know the effects of the pollution from tar sands mining, and people on Indian reservations in the United States in the path of the pipeline who stand in solidarity against it. There are men and women who write regularly to elected officials and call the White House and talk to their neighbors about what is happening. There are grandmothers in Lincoln who bake apple pies to give to officials who do the right thing, and who encourage others to act in positive ways to counter despair. There are farmers and ranchers over there ready to stand their ground. And right here are people of faith who pray and preach and teach because we are people of hope and faith who know the outcome of the David and Goliath story and the Easter story.

We don’t know how all of this will work out, but we do know that when we offer what we have and put our eagerness to help ahead of our worries about our chances for success, God can find a way where we see little chance of one. When I pray about the pipeline in days ahead, I will keep in front of me the image of the little boy offering his loaves and fish to feed the crowd.

---

[i] In Section 4.1.3, the report includes this chillingly factual account of climate change impacts that can be expected once the pipeline is built:

However, during the subsequent operational time period, the following climate changes are anticipated to occur regardless of any potential effects from the proposed Project:

                        Warmer winter temperatures;

                        A shorter cool season;

                        A longer duration of frost-free periods;

                        More freeze-thaw cycles per year (which could lead to an increased number of episodes of soil contraction and expansion);

                        Warmer summer temperatures;

                        Increased number of hot days and consecutive hot days; and

                        Longer summers (which could lead to impacts associated with heat stress and wildfire risks).

                         

The report concludes that the risk of spills from any of these climate impacts is less than the risks of spills from other causes.

Breaking Our Silence

Proper 23C: Luke 17:11-19

On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, they called out, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” When he saw them, he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were made clean.Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus asked, “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” Then he said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”

Jesus healed ten lepers in a sort of border region between Samaria and Galilee. Only a “foreigner”, only the one outside Jesus’ faith community, returned to thank Jesus. As he returned to thank Jesus, he praised God “with a loud voice”, keeping neither his praise nor his gratitude to himself. The other nine were silent.

Did the ritual of showing themselves to the priest in order to have the healing verified somehow take the place of praise and gratitude for the other nine? We have no way of knowing what was in their hearts. They may have been praising God and feeling grateful in their hearts, but outwardly they were silent.

Does it surprise us that the outsider, the foreigner, is the only one who grasps what has happened to him and responds appropriately? Perhaps not if we consider the situation in many churches today, where rituals are observed well but there is silence around the reality of the world around us and our lives outside the church walls. This passage reminded me of something I’ve observed in several Episcopal parishes in recent years.

Those of us who know our fellow worshipers know that many people who come to church care deeply about what is happening in the world, but a stranger might never guess it if they visit on a Sunday morning, where there may be a full hour with no mention of anything outside of the church and its members. And it’s not that nothing has been happening in the world worthy of being mentioned. In the world of weather and climate alone there is plenty to get our attention.

In the past month we saw terrible floods in Colorado, a record-breaking snowstorm in South Dakota that killed many cattle, and tornadoes in Nebraska. The IPCC 5^th Assessment Report came out, full of sobering information about the state of climate change on our planet its implications for the years ahead.

A new study was in the news this week. Led by Camilo Mora from the University of Hawaii, this study predicts the years of “climate departure” for several places around the world assuming “business as usual”, i.e. no significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. (See a map and list of cities here. Chicago’s predicted year for climate departure is around 2052, 39 years from now. Phoenix is 2043, only 30 years down the road.) “Climate departure” refers to the point when the coldest years are warmer than the warmest years from 1860 to 2005. So after 2052, the coldest years in Chicago should be warmer than any of the warmest years recorded up to 2005. Places in the tropics will reach this point first. For example, Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic is predicted to reach climate departure very soon, around 2026. As we have known for a long time, the places that will be impacted first are the ones least responsible for climate change and often places with less means to respond to climate change than wealthier nations.

It’s quite possible that people staying home on Sunday morning and reading the newspaper or watching the Sunday morning news shows may have more of an idea of what is happening and, as a result, more concern for those suffering, than those who have been to church on Sunday morning. But we have several opportunities to connect what we do in church with the urgent needs of the world. Victims of the storms in Colorado, South Dakota, and Nebraska – or this week, those who live in the path of Cyclone Phailin, a huge cyclone that has made landfall in India – might be remembered in our prayers. A spoken or written announcement can suggest ways to contribute to relief organizations such as Episcopal Relief and Development or help in some other way. Preachers can acknowledge what is happening in the world and help us see the connections to what we learn from Scripture.

But sometimes we get to the end of an hour of worship and even the coffee hour conversations and realize on reflection that nothing was said that couldn’t have been said ten years ago. This may be comforting on some level – nothing ever changes – but also suggests that like the nine who kept silent, we churchgoers can become so accustomed to our changeless rituals that we become less able to connect with Christ and bring Christ into our lives than are those outside our walls.

I wonder how authentic our praise of God is if we can’t acknowledge the needs of the world in our worship. I wonder how deeply we trust God if we don’t express our greatest fears out loud in our churches. Do we trust God with a global crisis that seems too big for us to understand? And I wonder if we are really praising God, the Creator and Sustainer of the universe, if we choose to ignore what is happening to God’s creation.

Breaking our silence so that our praise is heard in the world and the needs of the world are heard in our churches puts us in the blessed company of the “foreigner” who turned to Christ and responded appropriately.

Grief

Good Friday / Earth Day

For Christians walking through Holy Week, Good Friday is a day that stirs deep emotions. There is an emptiness in churches where the altars have been stripped. Our Good Friday liturgy begins in silence. We read John’s account of Jesus’ last hours (John 18:1 – 19:37), from the betrayal and arrest of Jesus through his death on the cross and the piercing of his side. The remembrance of Jesus’ pain – physical, emotional, and spiritual -- calls up deep sorrow and grief from us.

This year, Good Friday falls on the same date as Earth Day. Grief for the ways we have harmed the earth provides a common element between the two observances. Just as we go through our Good Friday grief and come out on the other side with Easter joy, the grief we experience when we witness environmental degradation and contemplate the future can show us some direction to find our way out to a place of meaning and Christian hope.

The average amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for March 2011 measured at the Mauna Loa observatory was 392.40 ppm; 350 ppm is generally considered to be the upper limit of the amount of CO2 that is safe for human beings and the other living things that sustain human life. (The last March reading below 350 ppm was in 1987. I recommend a look at the graph on the CO2 Now website) Rising CO2 levels result in ocean warming and acidification which are damaging shellfish and corals, and of course in rising world temperatures which melt ice, make oceans rise, and do much more. As the atmosphere warms, severe weather events become more frequent. Yesterday morning, The Weather Channel posted an update of severe weather in the United States in April. With the month not yet over, TWC says we have set a “tentative” record for the number of tornadoes in April. They also report this:

There have been over 5200 severe weather reports (tornadoes, hail, and high winds/wind damage) so far in April. On average, only about 3300 severe weather reports are tallied in an entire April nationwide.

There is grief in many communities where people have lost loved ones, homes, and businesses to tornadoes and other severe weather this spring.

The environmental damage linked to carbon emissions is only part of the damage that causes us grief this Earth Day. Japan has an ongoing nuclear crisis. Species extinction continues at an accelerated rate. Plastic pollution is everywhere. In a Huffington Post piece called Crucified Creation and the Hope of Eco-nomics Doug Demeo, a friend and GreenFaith Fellow, says that when he looks around the earth today “the weight of creation crucified seems too much to bear”. Doug talks about mountain top removal and hydro-fracking among other “environmental woes”.

Our Good Friday liturgy does something in the midst of our grief. After the story of Jesus’ final hours has been read, and perhaps a homily preached or a hymn sung that provides more reflection on the reading, we pray the Solemn Collects. Rather than staying stuck under the dead weight of grief, we open our hearts to the concerns of the Church and the world. With our hearts already broken open, these tend to be profound prayers.

It can be difficult to know where to begin doing something with our grief for the earth. With no significant national or international effort to address climate change or prevent future oil spills or stop covering the planet with plastic, we know our efforts are valiant but probably not enough. Yet just as our hearts are touched by Good Friday, our hearts are broken open by this grief, too. Prayers for the earth and her people are a good place to begin. We might pray for the Church and all people, praying that we continue to find meaning and hope in our lives even as the chances of sustaining life as we have known it on our planet get increasingly smaller. We might pray for open eyes, ears, minds, and hearts, for the ability to understand what we are facing and the will to do something about it.

The third of the Solemn Collects asks for the cry of those in misery and need to come to God; it also prays for God to “give us…the strength to serve them for the sake of him who suffered for us.” Gathering our strength and doing whatever we can to prevent and alleviate the human misery that results from environmental degradation is the only choice we have as followers of Christ. Environmentalist Bill McKibben said it in a different way in his speech at the Power Shift gathering in Washington, D.C. last weekend: “The only thing that a morally awake person can do when the worst thing that’s ever happened is happening is try to change those odds.”

When we choose to acknowledge the problems we face and to work to address them with so little evidence that we can succeed is when we draw on our faith and our hope; when we make that choice, we get out from under our grief and, drawing on our faith for strength, gather energy for the work ahead.

For the Children

The Daily Office Gospel reading for Wednesday (Mark 10:1-16) includes the story of Jesus blessing the children. Jesus made it plain that even if the children didn’t have much importance to others, they were important to him. By his example of not allowing the disciples to keep the children at arm’s length from him, Jesus teaches us the importance of seeing children as individuals in need of love and protection, not as abstractions.

I’ve just begun reading a new book by Mark Hertsgaard, Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth. While many books have been written about dealing with climate change, this one has a depth to it that is helpful to those of us looking at the environment through a spiritual lens. I’ve been thinking the past year about our culture’s denial of the realities of climate change and our seeming inability to begin looking at what is happening and how we might best deal with it. This book articulates very well some of the issues involved in all of this.

Hot brings home the reality of our warming climate through a father’s passion for his own daughter’s future. Mark Hertsgaard had reported on the plight of children in other countries before his own daughter’s birth, but realized after she was born that he had been able to keep an emotional distance from the stories of these children that parents don’t have.

Reviewing Hot in the New York Times, Wen Stephenson writes that this book “raises the emotional stakes while keeping a clear head.” Stephenson then says: “This was the first book on climate change that not only frightened me — plenty have done that — but also broke my heart.” Perhaps our hearts need to be broken before we can bring ourselves out of denial and get to the place where we can help one another cope with this changing world.

In the Prologue to the book (which is available here through Google books), Mark Hertsgaard talks about the moment when his view of the world changed, when the issues of climate change became so real to him that he knew he had to find out all he could and work on figuring out how people can live through the period of climate change we have now entered. The shift came in 2005 when Hertsgaard was a new father of a baby girl. He interviewed David King, a prominent British climate scientist, who talked about climate change not as something in the future that we might possibly yet avoid, but as something that had already begun unfolding. Even if our greenhouse gas emissions were cut drastically and immediately, there would still be global warming for many years as a result of the processes that had already begun. After the interview, Hertsgaard realized that the time period they had been discussing was his daughter’s lifetime, that this warmer, more difficult world was the world in which his little girl would grow up and live her life.

Hot not only takes a realistic look at where we are now, but looks with hope at things we can do – and that some people and governments are already doing – to make the best of the future. Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth is not a religious environmental book, but its compassion for our children and its elements of hope speak to people of faith.

Candlemas Light

In seven weeks spring will officially be here. This is hard to imagine right now as we emerge from another winter storm, this one with especially cold temperatures and wind chills. Despite the biting cold and recent snow, though, on sunny days the sunshine feels warmer than it did in early January. The days are getting longer, and once we pass Candlemas, which is today, the increasing light will become more obvious.

In the Church, February 2 is the Presentation of our Lord, when we remember Mary and Joseph presenting the baby Jesus at the temple forty days after his birth. Luke’s account of this event tells about Simeon and Anna recognizing the baby as the Savior, the Messiah. Simeon says this child is “a light for revelation to the Gentiles”. This day is also known as Candlemas and as the Purification of Saint Mary the Virgin. Some churches still bless new candles on this day or have a special candlelight procession.

This point forty days after the Nativity is nearly midway between the dates we use now for the beginning of winter and the beginning of spring. Some old calendars considered this to be the beginning of spring, and in places with milder winters, early February in a normal year can seem like the beginning of spring. Sometimes even here in Nebraska we can sense spring coming on this date.

Luke tells us that Simeon looked forward to “the consolation of Israel”. Despite the darkness of many things in his world, Simeon had faith that he would see the Messiah before he died. When he saw the infant Jesus, he knew that this was the light for which he had waited. Until the Holy Spirit guided him to the temple that day, Simeon didn’t know where or when or how he would see the Messiah, only that this would happen before he died.

In this week of extreme weather here in the United States and in other places, most notably Queensland, where a huge cyclone named Yasi threatens an area already devastated by floods, it’s sometimes hard to find faith that we will see the light. There is some expectation that Cyclone Yasi may be the biggest cyclone ever to hit Australia. Given that these sorts of mega-storms are exactly what climate scientists predicted would happen as global temperatures rise, what we are experiencing in our northern hemisphere winter and in the southern summer may well be the new normal. It’s sometimes very hard to find hope that we will find our way out of the dark future we would face if global warming is generally ignored and allowed to continue to accelerate.

For people of faith, though, there is always a light of hope even if we can’t imagine how or when we will see the changes for which we are waiting and for which many of us are working. Just as most of the people in the temple that day didn’t recognize that Mary’s baby was different from any other baby brought to the temple forty days after being born, it may be that most of us won’t recognize it when things begin to change for the better. But we continue to pray that there will some shift in political will or in the consciousness of enough of the world’s people that we can learn to live together on this planet with clean air and water, oceans that can support living things, and a global climate that is stable enough to sustain civilized human life.

Meanwhile, while we wait and pray and work this month in the northern hemisphere, we will see more light with longer days and the sun a bit higher in the sky. May this be a sign of hope for us and give us faith to do the joyful work of caring for our world!

Persistent Faith, Persistent Hope

Luke 18:1-8

Tomorrow’s Gospel lesson (Luke 18:1-8) is about persistence. Jesus tells the story of a judge who respected neither God nor other people, and of the widow who repeatedly goes to this “unjust judge” to ask for justice against her opponent. Her persistence wears him down, and he gives her justice just so she will stay away. Jesus says that if an unjust judge eventually does the right thing, God will much more quickly bring justice to God’s children who cry out day and night.

Then Jesus asks this question: “And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” How much faith in a God who hears our cries for justice do we have?

This week again there was discouraging news. Climate Progress yesterday reported NASA reports the hottest January to September on record .  I read this week an interview by David Helvarg with the President of the Pacific island nation of Kiribati, telling of the unimaginable task Kiribati faces of trying to get wealthier nations to act on climate change soon enough and strongly enough to give his nation some hope of staying above water (yes, literally) while also figuring out what happens to the nation and its people if climate change continues on its present course. Already they have erosion and flooding at high tides, and salt water intruding on their cropland.

The response of the wealthier nations has not been positive, but President Anote Tong of Kiribati, like the President of the Maldives and others, is persistent in pursuing justice. If we are faithful to our baptismal covenant to seek and serve Christ in all persons, to strive for justice and peace, and to respect the dignity of every human being, we will join our voices with theirs. 

Being persistently faithful is inseparable from being persistently hopeful. Even in the face of a daunting task, we continue to act to bring about a healthier planet for all. Our hope is that our faithful persistence will eventually wear down the powerful political and economic interests that respect neither God’s creation nor other human beings. Our hope is that our cries for justice and our acting as people who know justice is on its way will bring about the changes we need sooner rather than later.