Earth Day / Third Sunday of Easter

“They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate it in their presence.” (Luke 24: 42-43)

Today is Earth Day; Friday was the second anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Because the oil “spill” ended up being so much bigger than we realized it would be on Earth Day 2010, Earth Day probably will be shadowed by the anniversaries of the oil spill for many years to come.

Today is also the Third Sunday of Easter, and our Gospel lesson for today (Luke 24: 36-48) is about the resurrected Jesus appearing to the disciples. Jesus asks if they have anything to eat, and they give him a piece of broiled fish, which Jesus eats. Luke’s report of Jesus eating the fish helps us to see that Jesus was truly there, that this wasn’t an apparition. It’s striking to have this reading as we observe Earth Day this year.

Fish was a basic food for the disciples and Jesus, as it was and remains for many people in the world. Fish is a principal source of protein for many people, and fishing – the occupation of several of the disciples – is still the way many people make a living.

Two years after the Gulf oil spill, fish near the oil spill site are sick. (See Cain Burdeau’s article for the Associated Press.) Evidence connecting the ulcers, black streaks, and damaged fins to the oil spill is circumstantial; what is known is that something isn’t right in that part of the Gulf ecosystem.

According to a report in the May 7, 2012 edition of The Nation entitled “Two Years After: BP’s Toxic Legacy”, people who live along the Gulf Coast are also sick. Along with fighting poor health, people have had to fight to get access to proper medical care. The article gives details of some of the justice and fairness issues involved. Surely Jesus, who healed the sick, would have us be concerned about those suffering from exposure to toxins.

The Gulf of Mexico isn’t the only place where fishing doesn’t provide the sort of healthful protein and steady livelihood it used to. The health of our ocean ecosystems as well as many freshwater ecosystems is suffering from pollution by various toxins, plastic pollution, loss of habitat, ocean acidification caused by global warming, and other changes in ecosystems brought on by warming waters. Something so basic as catching a fish and grilling it, something so basic that Luke uses it to help us see the reality of the risen Christ, is now something we can’t take for granted.

“What would Jesus eat?” may be a more instructive guide to action than “What would Jesus do?”  What basic foods will remain sustainably available to people around the world who have traditionally relied on fish and seafood for daily protein? As Saturday’s forum about the intersection of poverty and the environment   made clear, issues of environmental sustainability, poverty, and human health are interconnected. The church has always served Christ through serving the poor and sick; in today’s world, we must extend that service to the earth’s ecosystems in order to truly serve our neighbors near and far.

Time and Hope

Third Sunday after Epiphany, Year B

It’s been a couple of weeks since the last Green Sprout’s post. A combination of family obligations, travel, and a painful shoulder that has made writing difficult is mostly to blame for so much time passing between posts, but it’s not the entire reason for the lack of posts.

While time has passed, I’ve been thinking about time in relation to global warming, struggling to process where we find ourselves in January of 2012 and how to begin to articulate a response. We know how urgent this crisis is, yet our actions and those of our leaders seldom reflect that urgency. We know that our present course leads in this century to mass extinctions of species, to mass migrations of people from areas of flood, drought, and famine, to increased risk of tropical diseases, to major cities dealing with rising oceans, and to island nations disappearing. We know that our present course eventually leads to the end of life as we have known it, bringing a sobering eschatological element into the discussion.

By the end of 2011, we knew we were running out of time on climate; we knew we were up against what some had begun calling a “climate emergency”. This blog’s December 20 post, How Can This Be? , summarized some of the factors that were causing us to realize that global warming was an even more pressing issue than we had known it was at the beginning of the year. Yet while climate experts continue to publish information pointing to the urgency of the situation and the need for the world’s leaders to address it in significant ways very, very soon, even those leaders who acknowledge the problem speak and act as if we had all the time in the world in which to act.

Earlier this month, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the hands of the symbolic Doomsday Clock one minute closer to midnight, putting us at five minutes until midnight. The move was made not only because of lack of progress on nuclear weapons reduction and proliferation, but also because of “inaction on climate change”.

 This week’s Scripture readings all address questions of time and eschatology in some way, with the Epistle and Gospel using the word kairos, “the appointed time” or the time when the kingdom of God draws near. Each of these lessons suggest something for Christians to consider as this new year in this still young century begins and we wonder about how to go about caring for God’s creation when so much seems to be working against us.

The reluctant prophet Jonah (Jonah 3:1-5, 10) warns the Ninevites that God will destroy the city in forty days. Much to his surprise, the Ninevites heed the warning and repent. Seeing their penitence, God spares them. The Ninevites might very well have either ignored Jonah and denied the truth of what he told them, or believed him but decided their doom was inevitable and so did nothing.  In our world, there are people in denial about global warming, people so deep in despair that they see no point in acting, and others who continue to work to address the issue even though we don’t know how effective our efforts will be. If we truly see what is happening, working to change things is a form of repentance. It’s the right thing to do.  (As Bill McKibben has said, “The only thing for a morally awake person to do when the worst thing that’s ever happened is happening is try to change those odds.”)

Psalm 62 reminds us that power belongs to God. “For God alone my soul in silence waits” because God is the only thing worthy of our complete trust. Working for a healthier planet while all the power and money of fossil fuel corporations seems to be working in the opposite direction is discouraging, but compared to God’s power, their power is nothing. “On the scales they are lighter than a breath, all of them together.”

Paul’s words in First Corinthians (I Corinthians 7:29-31) remind us to put first things first, to “deal with the world” as if we have no dealings with it, to put the urgent matter before business as usual. This is something to consider, given that so many of the arguments in our country against addressing global warming have to do with our inability to consider giving priority to anything over business as usual.

In our Gospel passage from Mark (Mark 1:14-20), Jesus says that “the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near”, then goes about ministry in a very concrete, straightforward way. He approaches ordinary men who are fishing or mending nets and invites them to follow him. They in turn will go out to invite others to join them in following Jesus. We in Nebraska learned this past year about the power of ordinary power doing ordinary things – speaking with neighbors, writing letters to elected officials and hometown newspapers, telling our stories and the story of our land and water – that resulted in something extraordinary: keeping the Keystone XL pipeline out of the Sandhills. When we realize that we are living in an extraordinary time, our best response might be to go about what needs to be done in a fairly ordinary and straightforward way, relying on ourselves and other ordinary people to do the work and to invite others to join us.

This week’s lessons point to this: The best way for Christians to live in a time like this is to live in hope with our eyes wide open. That means learning everything we can about what is happening, acknowledging the truth of the situation, and doing all we can to serve God, all of God’s children, and all of God’s creation.

Let Justice Roll Down Like Waters

Proper 27A

Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. (Amos 5:24)

Environmental issues become justice issues when people who have contributed little or nothing to environmental degradation end up suffering from its harmful effects. This Sunday’s reading from Amos (Amos 5:18-24 ) uses water images to talk about justice and righteousness. Given that many environmental justice issues have to do with water in some form – water pollution, too little water in droughts caused by climate change, too much water in floods caused by increasingly heavy rain- and snowfalls (also the result of climate change) – Amos’s words seem especially well suited for the 21^st century

The words “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream”  are an especially good fit for an article posted this week  by the Anglican Communion News Service about the situation in Tuvalu.  (See Loving Our Neighbors in 2011 , Part 2 of 3, from Oct 21.)  Tuvalu is experiencing a severe drought, and because sea-level rise is making the water in the island nation’s wells salty, there is a severe water shortage. The people of Tuvalu have contribute little to the accumulation of greenhouse gases that cause global warming and sea level rise, but are suffering terribly from the effects of what those of us in industrialized nations have done and continue to make worse through our failure to address climate change in any significant way.

The Anglican Communion News Service reports on Anglican Archbishop Winston Halapua’s visit to Tuvalu. Archbishop Halapua said, “What I have seen is the reality of the sea rising,” and that this “is the biggest possible issue”.  Along with making the well water undrinkable, sea level rise and the resulting increased salinization has poisoned the roots of banana, breadfruit, and coconut trees, dietary staples in Tuvalu and other Pacific island nations.

Archbishop Halapua asks for prayer and action: action in the form of relief aid for the people of Tuvalu and in the form of our becoming more aware of climate change “and its impact on marginalized people”, and prayer because the problems of climate change, sea level rise, and the effects on islands and coastal areas are something bigger than and different from anything we have ever faced before.

The church’s gift of prayer is a greater gift than many non-believers -- and perhaps even many nominal believers -- can guess. As we begin to understand the enormity of what we face this century and beyond, prayer gives us a way to sit with our fear, our awareness of the work to be done, and our grief; to hold these up before God; and to process all of this in a way that allows us to function well and do what we can to alleviate suffering and continue to live meaningful lives with some sort of hope. Prayer is not asking God to magically make a bad situation go away; it is a way to receive what we need to go forward and serve in the name of Christ.

And so along with our aid and our paying attention to climate change, Archbishop Halapua asks for our prayers:

We need to pray. We need to say very, very clearly to the church that we need to pray because this is something way beyond us. We need to pray that we will be empowered to speak clearly to our elected agents in government who make decisions about climate change.

Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

Hope and the Work at Hand

Proper 11A

Today’s lectionary readings include the passage from Romans (Romans 8:12-25) in which Paul talks about hope and how the whole of creation is waiting to be set free from its bondage to decay. One of last July’s posts, Hope,talked about this passage in light of two very different experiences: the peaceful experience of sitting outside on a summer morning for prayer, study, and contemplation, and the experience of feeling helpless and discouraged hearing news about pollution and climate change.

More recently, a post about Innate Optimism, Bad News, and Hope from the end of May talked about this passage in relation to even more discouraging news about the climate than we had a year ago. That post asked a couple of questions and offered a couple of general ideas about the particular contributions Christians might make as we face the realities of climate change:

One of the questions the church might be asking is what form our hope should take: What are our specific hopes in relationship to the realities of climate change? That we won’t face hardship? That our leaders will get it together at the last possible moment to avert the worst of the disasters that await us if we continue doing little or nothing? That we will simply find a way to live with dignity and meaning in the midst of all of this?

Other institutions are or will be working on other aspects -- economic, engineering, agricultural, military, political, etc. -- of adaptation to a warming world. Along with our traditional roles of disaster relief, perhaps the church should be thinking and praying about the deeper adaptation, the spiritual adaptation, to a world of increasing challenges and hardships. Christian love, our values of charity and kindness and care for our neighbors, will be an essential part of humankind’s adaptation to these new challenges. The sort of deep resilience that is rooted in faith is something else that might allow us to face our future with dignity and real hope.

This morning’s Gospel lesson (Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43) can give us some more insight into what our work might be at this time. The parable of the wheat and the weeds (formerly known as tares) makes it clear that it’s not our job to figure out who’s in and who’s out in God’s kingdom. Even if we could discern the wheat from the weeds, the web of interconnections that make up humankind and all of creation make it impossible to exclude others without ultimately excluding ourselves. But there is plenty of work for us to do; Jesus is clear about what our work is: the greatest commandment is the commandment to love. That love takes the form of serving one another: healing the sick, feeding the hungry, doing whatever we can to tend to “the least of these, the people in our world who are easily ignored or overlooked, the people who might look like weeds to us but might very well look like saints to God. The Gospel tells us that when our brothers and sisters are suffering because of environmental degradation, love calls us to do something to lessen that suffering and bring healing where there is brokenness.

Paul’s passage about hope seems to spring up in the Sunday lectionary or the Daily Office readings around the time there is some sort of especially discouraging news about the environment. This week was no exception.

Most obvious to Nebraskans would be the recent heat and humidity. This particular episode of heat and any one incredible dewpoint reading cannot be directly ascribed to climate change (this is the proviso we always need to make about any particular weather event), but it does fit the pattern of increasingly warm temperatures over time and also gives us a taste of what we can expect to be the norm in the years ahead. This heat wave has hit the entire central United States – e.g. as I write this the heat index in Bismarck, North Dakota is 112 degrees --and has spread east.

Also close to home for those of us on the Great Plains are tornado statistics for the year. The Weather Channel has a concise chart comparing the number and severity of this year’s tornadoes to those in an average year. So far this year, 537 people in the United States have been killed by tornadoes; the average number of deaths for an entire year is 56.

But perhaps the most discouraging news of the week has not been noticed much in this part of the country. Even though its effects on our climate will be huge, the accelerated melting of the Arctic ice seems too remote to be of much concern to many folks here. Melting at the Arctic – taking into consideration both the extent of sea ice and its thickness – is happening faster than predicted. (If you follow such things, you know this isn’t the first time that acceleration has been noted.) Joe Romm, who reports on some of the most recent findings in a July 16 post, says that he and some other scientists believe that the Arctic will have “virtually ice-free summers within a decade”. The loss of Arctic ice will accelerate warming for the rest of the planet. To learn about its immediate effects on the land and people near the Arctic coast, read this Icelights report from the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder.

The parable of the wheat and weeds acknowledges the existence of evil in the world. Part of the point of the parable is that ultimately, evil doesn’t threaten the reign of God. Paul reminds us that even when things seem most desperate, Christians live in hope. We don’t hope because we can see good things happening; we hope for what we can’t yet see. God is in charge. We don’t need to see everything; we don’t even need to know everything. What we do need to do is the work Christ has given us to do: lessen the suffering, bring healing, and have care and compassion for our brothers and sisters and for our planet that sustains life and whose wonders can give us so much joy.

Sowing the Seeds

Proper 10A

Some gardeners carefully space seeds out in straight rows in their vegetable gardens. That had long been my method, but this year I got interested in the idea of polyculture (see Hope: Planting and Prayer 4/11/11) which involves a method of sowing that is closer to that described in the Gospel lesson for this Sunday (Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23). While scattering seeds instead of placing them took some adjustment on my part, it was worth it; the garden has done well so far this summer. I have lost fewer plants than usual to bunnies, there are fewer weeds to pull, and there’s an abundance of produce in my small garden space.

This Sunday’s Gospel lesson touches on the work of environmental stewardship in a couple of ways. The passage begins with Jesus leaving the house where he had been and sitting beside the sea; when he speaks, he tells a story about seeds and thorns and different types of soil. In our theological wanderings, we may sometimes drift into the sort of dualistic thinking that divides spiritual things from physical things (and then almost always goes on to state that the spiritual things are superior to the physical things). Jesus comes along, though, goes outside and walks down to the sea, and speaks about seeds and soil, or fig trees, or birds and lilies. It’s hard to be convinced of this sort of dualism when Jesus goes down to the sea or up a mountain or into a garden, and when Jesus speaks so frequently about the created physical world, the world that God so loves.

Then we have the example of the sower. The sower sows generously, flinging seed around so profligately that some of it lands in places where it can’t grow. This method assures, however, that any place where there is deep, fertile soil will have a seed planted. The sower in the parable isn’t concerned with holding onto the seed (which will have a lower germination rate anyway if it’s saved for another growing season) but with growing as much as possible. If the sower focused on the seed that doesn’t grow, discouragement might set in; there would be a temptation to quit sowing so much seed, maybe to give up the whole task.

Our efforts as individuals and parishes to conserve energy and water, to reduce waste and recycle the waste we do produce, to advocate for the environment can begin to seem insignificant and futile when we look at the enormity of the task of restoring a healthy, sustainable environment and at the weak response from most governments. In a week in which oil spilled into the Yellowstone River, an unusually big dust storm swallowed up Phoenix, a report came out about the amount of plastic debris found in fish in the North Pacific, and the implications of the State of the Climate report continued to be realized (e.g. every month since 1985 has been warmer than the twentieth century average for that month), it’s difficult to see how or whether our efforts will make any difference.

But each effort we make is like planting a seed. Some efforts may not make a difference and some may. We usually won’t know one from the other. That doesn’t mean that our efforts are futile, though; it simply means that our job is similar to the sower’s job. God calls us to be faithful, to keep making the effort, as generous and extravagant an effort as we possibly can. Not every effort will take root and make a huge difference, but this method does ensure that a variety of efforts will be made in a variety of ways. If anything is going to take root and give results in the long run, the faithful efforts of God’s people to care for creation can plant the seeds, make the initial efforts, for the sorts of initiatives that take hold and help heal and sustain our environment.

Doing Justice

Epiphany 4A

“What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8)

Sun Come Up is one of this year’s Oscar nominees in short documentary films. It’s a story from Papua New Guinea in the South Pacific about the Carteret Islanders relocating to a new home on Bougainville, fifty miles across the open water. The Carteret Islanders are among the growing number of climate refugees in our world, people who must leave their home because the effects of climate change are making it uninhabitable. These people have a language and culture unique to their islands, but must now go live in a different place because their islands are disappearing due to rising sea levels and erosion. This film tells the story of these people and the people of Bougainville who, despite their own hardships after ten years of civil strife, welcome these refugees. Here’s the trailer of the film:

Sun Come Up Trailer from Sun Come Up on Vimeo.

Tomorrow’s lectionary includes Micah 6:1-8. Micah’s message from God tells us that God wants us to do justice. A big piece of doing justice in today’s world is paying attention to people like the Carteret Islanders who are losing their homes. Doing justice also involves working not only to ensure there are welcoming places for them to resettle, but working to bring the levels of carbon and other greenhouse gases down to a point where the effects of climate change can be kept to a minimum. The longer we live with carbon levels above 350 ppm, the more severe will be the effects of climate change. (The December 2010 reading from the Mauna Loa observatory was 389.69)

The kindness of the Bougainville Islanders is extraordinary. As the synopsis of the story on the Sun Come Up website explains:

Many Bougainvilleans remain traumatized by the “Crisis” as the civil war is known locally. Yet, Sun Come Up isn’t a familiar third world narrative. Out of this tragedy comes a story of hope, strength, and profound generosity.

Verse 5 of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:1-12), tomorrow’s Gospel lesson, is “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” The Tulele Peisa website (‘Tulele Peisa’ means ‘sailing the waves on our own’) includes some background information about the situation on the Carteret Islands . As on other Pacific Islands, their staple food has been taro. When the groundwater on islands becomes too saline due to sea level rise and rising storm tides, the taro crops fail. The conditions on the islands have certainly made the people humble, and no doubt much of the world would prefer that climate refugees be meek in all possible nuances of the word – submissive, not creating a stir, nonassertive.

In the film trailer, one of the people with whom they are negotiating on Bougainville says, “I’ve heard about you Carterets, you are easy-going people.” But while easy-going, they are not passive. They have carefully thought through their circumstances and their options, and are relocating in a way that will help their family units and some of their culture to survive and in a way that allows them to be productive people in their new home. They are gentle people, but they are not allowing circumstances to push them around completely. Without such planning, they know they would become, as some already have, “the new marginalised fringe dwellers with serious social problems and stigma” living in slums on the Papua New Guinea mainland.

Perhaps some meekness is called for on our part, in a willingness for those of us living in places that are habitable to step aside and, following the example of the Bougainville Islanders, make space for this new kind of refugee. Meekness would call for us to set aside our desire for everything to continue to grow bigger so that others can be ensured the essentials in life. Surely that is part of doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with our God. If we do these things, we might stand a chance for all of us to inherit the earth.

Prophetic Voices for Environmental Justice

Advent 3A

According to yesterday’s Episcopal News Service release  about the Episcopal Climate Justice Gathering in the Dominican Republic this week (see Climate Conferences and the Church), the participants in the gathering came to a consensus that “now is the time for the church to reclaim and fortify its prophetic voice.” 

The voices of the prophets are a constant voice in our lectionary readings during Advent. In this Sunday’s reading (Isaiah 35:1-10), Isaiah connects justice and healing for the people with renewal and healing of the land. While the desert blooms and springs of water appear where there was parched land, the lame “leap like deer” and the “ransomed of the Lord” return to Zion.

Renewal of the land and renewal of the people are linked throughout Isaiah and many of the prophets. Care for the environment is not an isolated concern for the church; it is linked both in our tradition and in very real ways in our world with justice and well-being for people.

The focus of this week’s gathering in the Dominican Republic is climate justice, looking at the intersection between poverty and climate change. This blog and many others have highlighted the ways in which climate change, while eventually having huge effects on everyone on this planet, generally impacts the poorest people in the world first and worst. Rising sea levels, disappearing glaciers that served as water sources, and changes in conditions for agriculture and fishing all affect people who live along the margins both physically and economically in our global economy, people who live in the vulnerable low-lying areas where rich people don’t build their houses, people whose livelihoods depend on subsistence farming or fishing.

Environmental justice is at the heart of creation care; it connects directly to the promises of our baptismal covenant and to Jesus’ command to love our neighbors. Humans don’t live in isolation from other living things; wherever humans have caused harm to the rest of creation, the effects of that harm will eventually be experienced by humans. And sometimes issues that seem to be local and separate from justice issues for poor or marginalized people have a fairly direct connection.

In Nebraska, there has been much concern about the long-term effects of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline on the fragile Sandhills ecosystem and the Ogallala aquifer. If the pipeline is built and if there is a break in the line, people in Nebraska will be affected, and that is a very important concern. But right now, native peoples in Canada are feeling the effects of the extraction of oil from the land. At a press conference today the results of a new research report documenting the impact of contaminants and reduced water flow on the Athabasca River will be discussed; the changes in the river impact the rights by treaty of native people along the river to hunt, fish, and trap.

In this Sunday’s Gospel lesson (Matthew 11:2-11) Jesus asks “What did you come out into the wilderness to look at?..A reed shaken by the wind?...Someone dressed in soft robes?”, then answers that they came to see a prophet “and more than a prophet”. The one coming is more than a prophet, but speaks with a prophet’s voice for all people. Those who choose to follow Jesus choose to stand in the tradition of the prophets. We should expect to hear the church's prophetic voice whenever and wherever there is damage to the earth and harm done to God’s children.

"As in those days before the flood..."

Advent 1A

Friday morning there was an interesting juxtaposition of news headlines with a small bit of the Gospel lesson for the First Sunday in Advent. The lesson is Matthew 24: 36-44. As Jesus talks about the need to be ready at all times for the return of the Son of Man, he compares the time when the Son of Man returns to the days of Noah: “For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man.” 

While Noah built the ark and made the other preparations God told him to make, other people went about their business as if nothing unusual were about to happen. Jesus says they were oblivious to the situation until it was too late, until the flood had come and swept them away.

Friday morning’s New York Times had a front-page story about residents of Norfolk, Virginia, trying to deal with rising seas. Even as residents try to address the specific problems with rising water in their own neighborhoods, many of them also realize that their needs are only a small piece of much bigger problems as the world gets warmer and sea levels rise.

Other recent news stories reported similar concerns in a variety of location: southern Florida, Alexandria, Egypt and the Nile Delta , the Galveston Bay region,  and the Bahamas.  Nebraska’s lack of coastlines doesn’t insulate us from the effects of sea level rise, as the economic consequences and population shifts will be felt everywhere. And the climate changes that are causing the rise in sea levels will have other, more direct effects on Nebraska.

On some level, all of these stories indicate that there seems to be some increase in awareness of what we are facing. But on another, deeper, level, there seems to be as little awareness as Jesus says there was when Noah was building the ark. This week's "Black Friday" shopping glut seemed to contrast the headlines. We will know that we are really beginning to understand what is happening when we act like people who are awake and prepared, when we begin to make significant changes to mitigate climate change and consciously adapt to the changes that are unstoppable.

The King of All Creation

Archbishop William Temple was quoted in yesterday’s reflection in Forward Day by Day, a reflection from 1936 about the involvement of the church in what today we call social justice ministry:

The Christian’s duty in regard to slums is not merely to tell the inhabitants that their squalor is of small consequence because soon they will pass to the house of many mansions.

It’s easy to imagine that if Archbishop Temple were here today, he would tell us that our duty with regard to climate change isn’t merely to say that the effects of climate change on our planet won’t matter because our home is in heaven. 

In the great circle of the liturgical year, we come this Sunday to the Reign of Christ or Christ the King. The collect for Christ the King talks about all the peoples of the earth being brought together under Christ’s rule.  The kingdom is both the end of the story that we tell each liturgical year and the beginning, as the following Sunday we begin our preparations for the birth of the King in a stable.

Whatever other interpretations we might place on the Scriptural passages about the kingdom of God and the rule of Christ, it’s evident that when we truly believe that Christ is everything described in Colossians 1:11-20, we experience an inner transformation that re-orients us radically. In the words of this passage, such an encounter with the reality of Christ transfers us to Christ’s kingdom. This radical shift makes it possible for us to live into our identities as citizens of Christ’s kingdom even while we are living in Nebraska in 2010.

This passage from Colossians emphasizes that Christ is the king of all things, both on earth and in heaven. This Sunday we celebrate Christ as the “firstborn of all creation”; next Sunday we are preparing for the birth of Christ, for the Incarnation, where God’s love for creation brings God to be born as a human being, living as one of us on earth. 

Christ is not only the king of heaven, but also the king of all creation, both heaven and earth. How we treat one another and the environment that sustains life becomes doubly significant when we remember that the kingdom is both eternal and now, both infinite and right here. Paul tells us that Christ himself “is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”

Honoring Christ and his kingdom as we do this Sunday entails honoring all of creation. Looking toward a time when all the peoples of the earth are brought together under Christ’s reign entails caring for our brothers and sisters in all parts of our world. We honor Christ as our King when we tend carefully to our connections through Christ to one another and to all of creation.

The Pharisee and the Tax Collector

(Luke 18:9-14)

How intentional would we be about environmental stewardship if we considered the needs of others as much as we consider our own comparatively short-term self interest? This question came to me as I thought about yesterday’s reflection in Forward Day By Day.

The reflection was on the story of the Good Samaritan, but the author of the reflection (written in 1967 and republished as part of Forward’s 75^th anniversary retrospective) brought in the parable of the Pharisee and tax collector to make a point. This latter parable (Luke 18:9-14) is the Gospel lesson for this Sunday. The author’s point in the comparison was this: in both parables, Jesus says that someone who was scrupulously observant of the Law is not acting rightly because he is either ignoring or despising others. The Pharisee in Sunday’s parable actually stands in the temple giving thanks to God that he isn’t like other people, those less pure people like the tax collector standing near him.

The author of this 1967 reflection wrote: “[W]hat wonders would take place if we demanded of our elected representatives that human need, rather than self-interest, be the only criterion in politics, in social welfare, and in international relations!”  We can ask the same question of ourselves as we look at pollution and climate change and consider – all too slowly – how and whether to make changes that would give us a chance at long-term sustainability.  

Coal train in Nebraska

Does it matter whether we switch to a greener economy because we become convinced that it’s in our own short-term best interest, that’s there’s money to be made in wind or solar energy; or because we look ahead and realize our current economy isn’t sustainable and so it’s in our long-term best interest to make some changes; or because we love the Creator, and so love the creation and the connection to God we experience through it; or because we hear the cries of God’s children in other places who are already suffering the effects of climate change and pollution?  Does it matter whether we do it for our own self-interest or out of love? Secular environmentalists and some religious environmentalists think that the reason doesn’t matter; what matters is that we make the change before it’s too late. That’s tempting, but Jesus taught that what’s in our hearts matters.

Knowing the benefits to ourselves of being greener helps make the changes easier, but if self-interest is our only reason for action, it’s not what Christ asks of his followers. Moreover, at any point where the going gets tough, I might decide that my self-interest lies elsewhere and decide to go back to the old ways.

But maybe the distinction between selfishness and love collapses with the last sentence of this Sunday’s lesson: “[A]ll who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.” From Christ’s perspective, choosing to put ourselves first is always a short-term choice. Healthy love for ourselves is intertwined with love for God and love our neighbor. Self-love that is divorced from love for others eventually shows itself to be something else, something other than love.

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Take time to smell the mums!