This past week the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a report on global climate change. While not surprising for people who have paid attention to previous reports from the IPCC, this report brought with it a much more dire look at our future that has made more people pay attention to the report and understand the urgent need for big changes in the ways we produce and use energy. The prognosis is grim even if we do our best, but our future with dramatic and large-scale changes that mitigate the amount of global warming is a much better future than what we face if we continue with business as usual. According to the report, we have about ten years to turn things around.
This week we also watched Hurricane Michael rapidly grow in intensity over abnormally warm water and bring terrible destruction to the Florida panhandle before continuing into the Carolinas and Virginia with more destructive winds and heavy rains. In case we lacked the imagination to understand the sorts of consequences we face if we fail to mitigate global warming, we had an immediate example with Hurricane Michael.
In the Church, our Gospel lesson today was the story of the rich man asking Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life. (Mark 10: 17-31) This man had scrupulously observed the religious law. He had done everything just right to ensure both spiritual and financial well-being. However, he evidently sensed that something was missing, and so he sought out Jesus and humbly asked him if there was something else he needed to do. Jesus told him he lacked one thing. Jesus told this man who was so focused on his own welfare that he needed to sell his possessions, give the money to the poor, and then follow Jesus. Instead of being preoccupied with his own welfare and comfort, he needed to see and serve his neighbors and then follow Jesus.
In preaching at Church of the Resurrection in Omaha today, I mentioned the IPCC report and talked about the extraordinary times we are living in, suggesting that this story from Mark’s Gospel can help us figure out what to do in the 21st century just as it spoke to the people of Jesus’s time. The contrast between the culture in which we live and the kingdom of God is at least as glaring for us as it was for the people in Jesus’s time.
The point isn’t that all of us need to sell everything we have, but that we need to put our focus elsewhere. Jesus calls us to look up and out from our own lives so we can see our neighbors and the needs of others, and Jesus calls us to follow him. In today’s world, seeing our neighbors near and far will make it readily apparent that we can’t go on living the way we are living, that we all will have to support changes in business as usual in order for more of us to make it through this century with enough of the basics like food, water, shelter, and basic infrastructure to live good lives.
We don’t know where Jesus will lead us in the years to come as our culture either changes and adapts or falls apart, but we do know that there are many, many people in the Church who are studying Scripture and listening in prayer and speaking with our wisest teachers and trying to figure out together what it looks like to follow Jesus in these challenging times.
We live in a consumer culture that isn’t working well for us either spiritually or materially. The planet simply cannot sustain the drive to economic growth dependent on us buying more and more stuff, and our souls suffer as well until we ground our priorities in Jesus’s teachings rather than the teachings of our consumer culture. The culture tells us that money can buy happiness — or at least numbness to the pain — while Jesus tells us that the happiness of material success is nothing compared to the joy of following him and giving to others.
While I know some other preachers today talked about the IPCC report and the climate crisis, I also suspect that it went unmentioned in more pulpits. If we are following Jesus and focused on our neighbors near and far, we have to pay attention to these global changes and the effects they are having and will continue to have on people.
Mark writes that when Jesus told the rich man what he needed to do, the man went away grieving “for he had many possessions”. As a parishioner pointed out today, we don’t know if he went away sad and then kept living as he had lived, or if he went away sad about the big change in his life he was about to make.
If we look away from the climate crisis and fail to advocate for the systemic changes needed to create a more livable world for all of us, we will be like the rich man in the parable if he chose his old way of life over eternal life. If, though, we acknowledge how hard the task ahead is but then go ahead and work at doing it, we will assure our own joy in following Jesus starting now and help assure a greater chance at a sustainable life for all living things on our planet in the future.
In Holy Week this year, our Daily Office lessons
include readings from Lamentations. These laments were written in response to
the destruction and desolation of Jerusalem. We include them during Holy Week
because lamentation is a sort of universal language – the words written to
grieve one tragedy can help us express our feelings of grief as we remember
Jesus’ suffering and crucifixion.
In light of the recent IPCC
report on the impacts of climate change [see the National Geographic
article New
Climate Change Report Warns of Dire Consequences for a short summary of some
of the key points and explanation of the report], sections of Lamentations can
help us understand and articulate some of the grief most of us feel when we
allow ourselves to hear what climate scientists are telling us.
The Book of Lamentations begins with the words “How lonely
sits the city that once was full of people!”, a lament that might very well
apply by mid-century to some now populous cities along coasts or in hot, arid
regions. We might even expand that lamen: How lonely sits the city that once
was full of people and trees and birds! How lonely sits the ocean that was once
full of living things!
Perhaps more heart-breaking, when read with the knowledge
that the IPCC report predicts a future in which food production decreases to
the point where there is not enough food produced to feed everyone on the earth,
are these words from today’s lesson describing children dying of hunger:
My
eyes are spent with weeping; my stomach churns; my bile is poured out on the
ground because of the destruction of my people, because infants and babes faint
in the streets of the city. They cry to their mothers, “Where is bread and
wine?” as they faint like the wounded in the streets of the city, as their life
is poured out on their mothers’ bosom. (Lamentations 2:11-12)
This evening as we observe Maundy Thursday, we will read the
account from John 13 of
Jesus washing the disciples’ feet. When he has finished washing their feet, he
asks, “Do you know what I have done to you?” He explains that even though he is
indeed their Teacher and Lord, he has done the servant’s work of washing their
feet. Jesus has not so much turned the hierarchy on its head as he has
destroyed our ideas of privilege that we attaching to hierarchy, and he makes
it clear when Peter protests having Jesus wash his feet that unless the
disciples can accept this new paradigm, they have “no share” with him. Along
with all of this, Jesus gives a new commandment that reflects this way of life:
“Love one another.”
It’s clear that Christ would have those of us who now enjoy
economic privileges make some hard choices about our way of life. What needs to
change in our economy, in our ways of producing and consuming energy and food,
and in the way we organize our communities, transportation, and all the other
pieces that make up our daily lives so that we can serve others? Are we prepared to deal with loss of species
in our ecosystems and loss of agricultural productivity? How do we need to
change so that all of God’s beloved children have a chance at life?
****
The song “Before My Time” and the stark images accompanying it
during the closing credits of the film Chasing
Ice provide a sort of lament for what is happening already; the break-up
of the Arctic Ice is a huge loss. Our witness to photographer James Balog’s
courage in gathering and sharing evidence of what is happening gives some hope
and human meaning amid the desolation.
Is it any wonder
All this empty air
I'm drowning in the laughter
Way before my time has come
When Jesus saw [Mary]
weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed
in spirit and deeply moved. He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said
to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus began to weep. (John 11:33-35)
Thinking about the Sunday Gospel in the light of recent news
about climate change suggests that one big gift the church could provide at this time
is to lead us and support us in grieving.
The Gospel in this week’s lectionary is the story about
Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. Even though Jesus delayed his travel to
Bethany two days after receiving the news of his friend’s illness so that “the
Son of God may be glorified through it”, and even though he knows when he
arrives in Bethany that Lazarus is dead and he will bring him back to life, he
weeps at his friend’s death and at the shared grief of Lazarus’s family and
friends. The way John includes this detail of Jesus’ grief indicates that it is
an essential part of the story. Can we appreciate the joy of resurrection
without fully experiencing grief over a death? Jesus’ delay in arriving allows
everyone, including himself, to truly acknowledge the death of someone they
loved and to experience grief.
On Monday of this week, the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change) released their most recent report on the impacts of climate
change. Because their work involves a consensus process, the IPCC reports are
fairly conservative; the most dire predictions of climate scientists do not
make it into these reports. But the report was disturbing enough to be
spotlighted by news organizations that have up to now given little emphasis to
the impacts of climate change.
Given a continuation of our failure to make necessary
changes and adaptations, the world as we have known it will be ending. There is
a lot of anticipated loss to grieve in this, including the loss of arts and
institutions that began and thrived in the civilizations that sprang up from
successful agricultural societies and the loss of plants and animals with which
we have shared our world.
Along with that big report this week, we had disturbing news
from the daily reports of atmospheric carbon
dioxide measurements from the Mauna Loa observatory. Daily averages the
past week have been above 400 ppm, a level we first reached last May. (Carbon
dioxide is one of the greenhouse gases; CO2 levels need to be at or below 350
ppm to continue to sustain life as we have known it.)
While there did seem to be some fresh concern about climate
change after release of the IPCC report this week, it doesn’t seem to be a
major concern for most people and certainly isn’t a cause of grief for most.
Even among people who accept the scientific evidence and express some degree of
concern, there is a sort of existential denial of the situation. We continue to
plan and live as if nothing will happen in our lifetimes or even in our
children’s lifetimes. We continue to give priority to the same personal and
political issues we would give priority if we could plan on climate stability.
And we certainly aren’t grieving the great losses we know (or that we at least
know on some level) we face.
In his new book Reality,
Grief, Hope: Three Urgent Prophetic Tasks, Walter Brueggemann writes
(p. 79): The prophetic task, amid a
culture of denial, is to embrace, model, and practice grief, in order that the
real losses in our lives can be acknowledged.
Was Lazarus really dead? Jesus’ grief cuts through any
denial of the death; it was real. The resurrection of Lazarus is meaningful –
and possible -- because he was really dead. Brueggemann says (p. 83) that grief
“turns loss to energy for newness”.
Might grief for the losses we face and the losses people in
other places are already experiencing allow us to see something new that our
denial keeps us from seeing? If the only hope we have is hope that nothing will
change, our hope is empty. We can’t see whatever new and unfamiliar sort of
hope we might find until we do the work of grieving. In a time and place where denial of death and loss is widespread, the church can lead us in grieving what we are losing so we can see our new reality more clearly.
Both locally and
globally, the church’s work and welfare is bound up with environmental
stability. As part of my work in the area of environmental stewardship, I send periodic
summaries or updates to Bishop Barker to help him stay informed about what is
happening with the environment, and particularly what is unfolding in the world
of climate science. We are sharing this summary more widely as there has been
lots of new information recently that will continue to have big impacts on
things such as food production, health, the world economy, and the spiritual needs
of people in the 21st century.
The original document
from October 28, which begins below, includes information from the first part
of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report around the physical basis for climate
change. Since then, information from the upcoming second part of the report
about the predicted impacts of climate change was leaked and shared in a
November 1 New York Times article with the headline Climate
Change Seen Posing Risk to Food Supplies. The article says that the second
part of the report will tell us that food supplies are expected to decrease by
2% each remaining decade of this century. Elizabeth Kolbert posted Is
It Too Late to Prepare for Climate Change? in response to the leaked
information, writing: “The force of the report comes simply from assembling all the data in one place; the summary reads like a laundry list of the apocalypse—flood, drought, disease, starvation.” She goes on to talk about the even more dire impacts for non-human species of animals and plants. (Our lives are of course inextricably bound up with theirs, so these are indirectly dire impacts for humankind as well.) Then Typhoon Haiyan came along and devastated the Philippines. Its wind speed at landfall was 195 mph, the strongest winds at landfall ever recorded. We can’t say what influence global warming does
or does not have on any particular storm, but we do know that the overall
pattern of severe weather is changing and that global warming provides the
conditions in the oceans and the atmosphere that are known to amplify severe
storms. At the UN climate conference now meeting in Warsaw, Philippine
representative Yeb Sano gave an emotional plea to “stop the madness”. Knowing
that people at home had no food after the storm, he vowed to fast during the
climate talks until significant progress is made to help the nations most
immediately vulnerable to the effects of climate change.
October 28 summary
September was the 343rd consecutive month with
global temperatures warmer than the twentieth century average.
Two reports in recent weeks have given us updated
information about climate change and predictions for the future.
IPCC Fifth Assessment
Report
The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) 5th
Assessment Report for the group of scientists looking at the physical
science basis for climate change got a lot of popular press for saying that
there is a very high probability (approaching certainty) that climate change is
for the most part the result of human activity. The version of the report
published for policymakers is found
here.
But there are other things worth the attention of
non-scientists. One is the mention for the first time of geoengineering as a
possible way to prevent catastrophic warming now that certain tipping points
have either been reached or are soon to be reached. Along with the unknowns
about the long-term effects of geoengineering – either finding a way to remove
significant amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and sequester it or
“solar radiation management” (constructing ways of reflecting enough sunlight
away from the earth to cool the planet) -- this addition is noteworthy because
it signals something about the critical nature of climate change at this point.
Enough feedback loops are in play that even if governments and industries were
inclined to make huge cutbacks in greenhouse gas emissions, there would still
be some degree of temperature rise. And the political reality is that those
cutbacks in emissions to any truly significant degree are not in the works.
Some other key findings were summarized well in Mother Jones
magazine in an earlier article entitled 5 Terrifying Statements in the Leaked
Climate Report. The five, which the
article discusses in some detail, are these:
·We're on course to change the planet in a way
"unprecedented in hundreds to thousands of years.
·Ocean acidification is "virtually
certain" to increase.
·Long-term, sea level rise could be 5 to 10
meters.
·This also implies a substantial melting of the
Greenland ice sheet.
·Much of the carbon we've emitted will stay in
the atmosphere for a millennium…even after we've stopped emitting it.
One more thing to note about the IPCC report is that their
findings are very conservative as the work is done by reaching consensus among
scientists. Many individual scientists see things deteriorating more rapidly
and more severely than the IPCC report indicates.
“The projected timing
of climate departure from recent variability”:
Within a generation, sooner for the tropics
Camilo Mora and others from the University of Hawai’i
published a report in the October 10 issue of Naturethat predicts when various locations in the world will reach the
point of climate departure from recent variability – i.e. when the average
temperature of that location’s coolest year will be greater than the average
temperature of its hottest year for the period from 1860 to 2005. In the University
of Hawai’i press release about the report, Camilo Mora says: “The results
shocked us. Regardless of the scenario, changes will be coming soon. Within my
generation, whatever climate we were used to will be a thing of the past.”
This graphic from
The Washington Post shows expected dates of this big change for several
cities. If little changes, the average year for climate departure overall will
be 2047 (yes, only 34 years from now); if greenhouse gas emissions were to be
stabilized, the average year becomes 2069. Of particular concern to us in the
Diocese of Nebraska given our companion dioceses in the Dominican Republic and
South Sudan, tropical areas are expected to experience this change within the next decade. Chicago has a
date of 2052 without mitigation and 2081 with stabilization of emissions.
There is debate among environmentalists about exactly
how dire all of this is: do we face a very changed world that still supports
human life, or are we looking at total human extinction? (Guy McPherson is a
scientist who thinks the most recent evidence points to the latter. While I’m
not yet convinced, his moving reflection on how we live that is the second half
of this
short video (starting around 2:17) can really speak to either option.)
That
we are even asking the question, though, is certainly cause for theological
reflection that may help the church be an effective pastoral presence as the
reality of climate change breaks through to increasing numbers of people.
Effects on people
living in poverty
The Yale
Environment 360 Digest reports on a study by the U.K.’s Overseas
Development Institute that says that increased extreme weather events will make
poverty worse in parts of the world that already are among the poorest. The
study suggests that aid money should be spent on reducing the risks to people
from extreme weather events instead of only on humanitarian relief after a
disaster.
As the church looks at ways to respond to the challenges
of climate change, this sort of study should be useful.
And lest we think the phenomena of climate refuges and of
climate change affecting the poorest people first and worst are things that
happen only in other countries, the Huffington Post ranLife on the Edge of Climate Change
this week. The author, Babs Roaming Buffalo Bagwell, is the senior public
relations and media liaison for The Isle de Jean Charles Band of
Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Indians. She describes how climate change affects her
community every day, writing: Some may be
ignoring this reality, but we don't have that luxury. When the water's edge is
at your doorstep, sea level rise and extreme rainstorms aren't political,
they're personal.
What do we have for
this? And what/how do we teach our children?
At
our Annual Council Eucharist, Bishop Barker brought our environmental reality
into the homily: “We are
in fact living in a moment of unprecedented challenge and change for
humankind. We are hastening towards global environmental disaster.
In the lifetime of the youngest people now dwelling on earth, everything
changes.” Bishop Barker’s question from the show The Book of Mormon – “What do
you have for this?” – is a question that we might ask repeatedly as we learn
about climate change and reflect on the church’s response to this most urgent
and global issue.
As I was writing this summary, Wendy Bell, a Unitarian
minister I met at the Climate Reality Leadership Training this summer, posted
on Facebook that she had just read the most pessimistic climate report she had
yet seen. A little later, she posted this question:
Ministers: If you had been a
chaplain on the Titanic, how might you have understood your role? DRE's
[Directors of Religious Education]: What would you have taught the children?
What are our roles as ministers – lay or ordained – in the
Episcopal Church? How do we best live as the Body of Christ in a world that is
in big trouble that is so seldom acknowledged? To use Walter Brueggemann’s
term, how do we break through the numbness? And what do we do then?
And in light of what we know we can expect in their
lifetimes, what do we teach the children? The latter is a huge question for the
church that is seldom if ever discussed. What can we teach them about God and
the world and their relationship with Christ and with one another that can
prepare them for today’s world and for whatever the remainder of this century
brings? How do we best model and teach the classic Christian disciplines of
prayer, study, and love for God and one another so that our children are
well-equipped spiritually to be the Body of Christ in a changed and changing
world?
In many ways, it’s no different from what we’ve always done,
preparing our children for whatever life might bring them. At this point of
human history, though, when we know how fragile the future is for everyone (and
when the adults in leadership positions are doing so little to ensure their
future), it seems to be especially important to equip our children with the
spiritual practices, traditions, and knowledge that will help them develop spiritually
resilience that can last throughout their lifetimes.
Praised be You, my Lord, through Brother Wind,
and through the air, cloudy and serene,
and every kind of weather through which
You give sustenance to Your creatures.
As we remember St. Francis today in Nebraska, Brother Wind
is very much in evidence, from the winter storm winds in the northwest to the
aftermath of last night’s tornadoes in the southeast and everywhere in between.
Meteorologists tell us that we have had an unusual weather pattern for early
October, and as I sit on my porch in south central Nebraska writing this, it
feels more like early September than early October. I know this warmth will be
short-lived, though, as those cold winds out of the northwest will get here
soon. I also know that unusual weather patterns with more severe storms dumping
heavy precipitation are what climate scientists have predicted as global
temperatures warm, the Arctic ice melts, and the Earth changes in very
significant ways. Yesterday our area got a record amount of rainfall for a day
in October. The Platte River was already bank full with water from the
September rains in Colorado, resulting in the countryside looked in many ways more like it
does during a spring thaw than in a more typical October.
Skiers are excited about the early and plentiful snows in
parts of the Rockies. Farmers always welcome moisture for the soil, but would
prefer dry conditions as the harvest season progresses. Some football fans will
welcome cooler temperatures in Lincoln tomorrow, while others will be unhappy
if the wind makes tailgating difficult or a cold wind brings discomfort. From
what we know of St. Francis, I suspect he would rejoice in the snow, the
storms, the wind, the rain, and whatever else he experienced in God’s creation.
We celebrate his compassion for animals, bringing pets and farm animals to
churches for a blessing on this day, but of course his compassion extended much
farther than the animal kingdom.
Most notably, Francis had compassion for poor people. Born
into comfortable circumstances, he left all of that to live as poor people
lived. Today we might say he stood in solidarity with the poor. His compassion
extended to all living things: people, plants, water, the wind, the sun, moon,
and stars. His compassion even extended to death itself, part of the great web
and cycles of life.
His compassion which flowed out of his love for Christ was
evident in his loving restoration of ruined churches and in his creation of the
first crèche to make the story of the Nativity more accessible to people. He
did not neglect worship, and his attention to the words of Christ in the Gospel
guided his heart and his mind. But he also did not neglect action in the world.
Francis was never ordained as a priest, but served the
Church as a deacon. Our understanding of deacons today is that our attention to the Gospel and our
love of Christ result at least as much in service in the wider world as in service within the institution of the Church. As Francis understood,
when the Gospel works long enough on someone’s heart and mind, the natural
result is compassion that extends in an ever-widening circle.
The great work for Christians today is to extend that circle
of compassion not only in wider and wider circles in our present world, and
also to extend that circle to future generations. The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change)Fifth
Assessment Report , released at the end of September, is clear about the significant negative consequences of unmitigated global warming on today's children and those who come
after them, and it is also clear that we can indeed mitigate the consequences
if we care enough to make the necessary changes now. Compassion says that if we
see a big problem for future generations and can do something ourselves right
now to prevent suffering 20, 50, 100, or 200 years from now, we should do it.
Poet Drew Dellinger recites an excerpt from his poem Hieroglyphic
Stairway that is a good place to begin prayerful reflection on this St. Francis
Day:
If people fifty years from now asked, how would we answer the question "What did you do once you knew?"
The First Sunday of Lent, our Gospel reading is about Jesus going into the wilderness for forty days. This Gospel wilderness is something different from the notion of wilderness some of us have; the Gospel wilderness is an empty, desolate place, not the pristine forests, meadows, and waterways some of us picture when we think about how good it would be to get away to a wilderness area for a few days.
If the Gospel wilderness is a place of desolation, what counts as a Lenten wilderness for us today? Where do we encounter desolation that calls us to follow Jesus’ example of faithfulness on a journey through the wilderness? We don’t have to look far to find situations in our lives, both personal and communal, that can set us on metaphorical journeys through desolate territory.
People sometimes ask me how I can bear thinking about the things environmental activists need to think about. Last month, when Dr. Chris Field from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) both contributed to an update on global warming science to the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, and also spoke at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Chicago, he suggested that earlier predictions about climate change might have underestimated the severity of global warming in coming years. Earlier estimates didn’t account for things like the amount of carbon dioxide stored in the permafrost of the Arctic tundra that would be released into the atmosphere as the permafrost thaws.
This has been on my mind, and I know it has been in the news. Yet several people to whom I mentioned these reports said they didn’t know how I could think about it; they knew this was important, but couldn’t let themselves really listen to it or think about the possibility that these latest predictions might be sound. And a couple of people asked me point blank how we can think about such things without falling into despair.
Dealing honestly and openly with these issues, looking at them instead of running away from them, gives us an opportunity to follow Jesus’ example of how to walk through a desolate wilderness. This sort of journey calls for faithfulness; it calls us to do the hard work of wrestling with these issues while remaining hopeful. As followers of Jesus, we know how to say no to the temptation of despair; we know how to keep going when it would be tempting to give up and pretend everything is fine. We know how to keep focused on the light, and we know the darkness will not overcome it. Living in hope doesn’t mean ignoring problems; it means trekking through the desolate places with grateful hearts, trusting that our faithfulness will get us through.
March began here on Sunday with frigid temperatures and snow on the ground, but there are signs of spring there for the seeing. The sun had enough warmth to have melted the snow in some places, while in other places the sun’s warmth on icy ponds made water vapor visible in the cold air. There are shoots of early spring flowers coming up through the snow, and flocks of birds responding to the lengthening days. Yesterday a flock of robins arrived in our yard, and some of them were singing as if it were a warm day in April.
The month of March, when winter ends and spring begins, is a time of contrasts. ‘Lent’ comes from the Old English word for spring, for the lengthening days. Lent, too, is a time of contrasts; a time of desolation mixed with hope and joy. It’s a time to experience a wilderness walk with Jesus, relying on Christ to help us get past the temptations that would make us turn around and quit walking, and learning the faithfulness that brings hope into the most desolate of situations.
Scientists, economists, and other experts contribute analysis of data to help us understand what is happening in our world. People of faith have something else to contribute to the conversation, a voice of hope that helps us make hard choices and do the work that lies ahead of us.
