Praying the Earth's News: Pentecost Edition

June 4, 2017

Today against a backdrop of another week of alarming climate news, we celebrate that long ago Pentecost described in Acts (Acts 2:1-21). The Holy Spirit descended on Jesus’s followers with “a sound like the rush of a violent wind” and the sight of “divided tongues, as of fire”, and then Jesus’s followers were speaking in languages they had not known before so that they could go to the whole world and tell the Good News. 

Just as those early Christians were empowered to leave their small community of believers and go out into the world, we pray that we may be empowered to go out from our churches today and find ourselves with the words and power we need to tell the world about Jesus’s way of living. 

“O Lord, how manifold are your works!” Psalm 104, the Psalm designated for today, reminds us of the wonders of creation and that God, the Creator of everything, rejoices in all of creation. An important part of the story we share with the world — and a part that is essential for the survival of civilization — is the story of God’s love for the world and our duty to take good care of what God has made. 

We have a lot of work ahead of us. There is no time for discouragement. Pray for the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

Almighty God, in giving us dominion over things on earth you made us fellow workers in your creation: Give us wisdom and reverence so to use the resources of nature, that no one may suffer from our abuse of them, and that generations yet to come may continue to praise you for your bounty; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Collect For the Conservation of Natural Resources (The Book of Common Prayer, p. 827)

Please pray for:

The Larsen C ice shelf in Antarctica and our response to its effects on the rest of the world. The crack in the Larsen C ice shelf has grown rapidly in recent weeks, and an iceberg the size of the state of Delaware is expected to break off very soon. According to weather.com: 

Though the changes are happening in the most remote part of the planet, they’re being felt thousands of miles away as ice turns to water and starts to lap against increasingly beleaguered coastal communities around the world. And the impacts will only grow more severe unless carbon pollution is reined in.

Our planet as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels in May reached an all-time monthly high. May is always the peak month for atmospheric carbon dioxide levels records at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawai’i. Brian Kahn of Climate Central reports that this year’s average reading for May was 409.65 ppm. (The goal for climate stability is 350 ppm.) Kahn writes: 

The reading from May is well above the 407.7 ppm reading from May 2016. And it’s far above the 317.5 ppm on record for May 1958, the first May measurement on record for Mauna Loa, the gold standard for carbon dioxide measurements. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, carbon dioxide stood at roughly 280 ppm.

Lord, have mercy.

The world’s ability to mitigate the effects of climate change despite the President’s attempts to remove the United States from the Paris climate accord. Leaders of other nations, several states and major cities in the United States, and leaders of industry have vowed to work around the proposed U.S. federal withdrawal from the climate accord. Pray for courage, wisdom, and creativity for those leaders who have the vision and will to lead us in making the changes necessary for our survival. 

O God our heavenly Father, you have blessed us and given us dominion over all the earth: Increase our reverence before the mystery of life; and give us new insight into your purposes for the human race, and new wisdom and determination in making provision for its future in accordance with your will; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 

Prayer for the Future of the Human Race (The Book of Common Prayer, p. 828)

As we pray for others, we might also pray for our own hearts to be broken open so we can see the needs in the world around us and gladly respond to those needs:

O heavenly Father, who has filled the world with beauty; Open our eyes to behold your gracious hand in all your works; that, rejoicing in your whole creation, we may learn to serve you with gladness; for the sake of him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Prayer for Joy in God’s Creation (The Book of Common Prayer, p. 814)

Hope at Pentecost

This Pentecost morning I preached at Grace Episcopal Church in Columbus, Nebraska, and included some thoughts about what hope might look like in the face of global warming. Here’s an excerpt:

Jesus said, “[God] will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth…Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” (John 14: 16,17, 27)

In this morning’s lesson from Romans (Romans 8:12-25), St. Paul says that “hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen?” In other words, if we know that something we desire will happen, we don’t call that knowledge hope. Hope is being mindful of the possibility of something good; it's not the knowledge that something that is definitely going to happen is going to happen. If I know that today is Pentecost, if I see it right there on the church calendar, then it would seem odd to say that I hope that today is Pentecost. I might hope that the weather will be nice on Pentecost or hope that people come to church on Pentecost, but I don’t hope that it’s Pentecost because I know that no matter what the weather or the attendance, today simply is Pentecost.

We might wonder what hope looks like in this century, especially in light of the environmental challenges before us. Last week, the level of carbon dioxide measured in the atmosphere at the Mauna Loa observatory hit 400 parts per million for the first time in human history. Scientists tell us that to prevent catastrophic warming, that level needs to be no higher than 350 parts per million. We are already seeing an increase in extreme weather – drought, storms, floods, extreme temperatures, already seeing a dramatic decrease in the volume of Arctic ice, and already seeing the effects of these things on humans and other living things. I read this week (Geoffrey Lean, The Telegraph) about two villages in Fiji that are moving uphill and inland to escape rising sea levels, leaving behind, as one official put it, the place where “they have stored their history, their genealogy and their very being”.   On the other side of the Pacific from Fiji, the villagers of Newtok, Alaska, are also preparing to move. Newtok is built on permafrost which is no longer permanent; the melting ground is now too unstable to support buildings and roads. There will in future years be fewer and fewer livable places to which we can move. We know that the changes we are already seeing will be with us long-term no matter what we do now; the challenge is to avoid the worst.

We don’t think about all of this much; we at least don’t hear as much about this in the news as we do lesser things, even trivial things.  We aren’t used to having to think about such things, and we don’t know how to think about them. Christians, though, know how to think about hope, and that makes it possible for us to hold all of this and look at it and think about it. What does hope look like now?

Hope is indeed as Paul describes it, even as the whole creation groans in suffering. Hope is what helps us have the will and the energy to do what we can; and we in turn find new hope when we work with others to turn this around, to advocate for cleaner energy sources, to break the silence from our leaders and the media that keeps us from doing what needs to be done. Hope is in the end trust in God’s goodness; it is believing that even if we cannot imagine or envision a good end to the story, God is good. We are Easter people who know that God brings life where we can see only death; we are also Pentecost people who at our best are open to receiving the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth, and to acting faithfully in response to the Spirit.

Today is the birthday of the church and a day we gather in joy in the name of God: the Source of All Being, Incarnate Word, and Holy Spirit. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. Amen.

On the road to Columbus this morning

Month's End: Pentecost and Praying the News

The last Sunday in May was Pentecost this year. Pentecost is a fitting time not only to look back at the gift of the Holy Spirit at the Pentecost described in Acts 2:1-21, but also to consider how the Spirit calls and empowers the church today to share the Gospel.

Our Psalm on Pentecost Sunday (Psalm 104:25-35, 37b) praises God for the earth and for the great variety of creatures  – “O Lord, how manifold are your works” – and for God’s provision for creation. It’s a picture of the abundance and biodiversity we would expect to find in the unspoiled creation of a gracious and loving God.

The Epistle lesson from Romans 8:22-27 describes human beings and all of creation waiting together for redemption. Paul talks about hoping for things we cannot yet see, because “hope that is seen is not hope”.

Surely the Spirit calls us in the church to be part of God’s redeeming work for the earth as well as humankind. The world described in Psalm 104 is a picture of the Reign of God, where even the Leviathan, the serpent of the sea, is something good and playful. One way to tell whether a push or pull toward action is of the Spirit is to look at whether it works for or against the restoration of God’s creation. Even when hope seems slim, we are called to trust in God’s power and do the redemptive work of the Gospel.

Some of the news stories from this past month were so devastating that we might very well find it difficult to pray in response to them. Where do we begin? Our spoken prayers can seem inadequate. St. Paul says (Romans 8:26): “We do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.” I ask your prayers for some of the situations that leave us at the point of placing much hope in the deep prayer of the Spirit

Acceptance our repentance, Lord for the wrongs we have done: for our waste and pollution of your creation, and our lack of concern for those who come after us, Accept our repentance, Lord.

From the Litany of Penitence (The Book of Common Prayer, p. 268)

Please pray for:

The future of life on the earth as greenhouse gas levels rise.  Many scientists consider 350 ppm of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to be the upper limit of safe levels of the gas for life as we know it. Today there were reports  that monitoring stations this spring across the Arctic are measuring more than 400 ppm. Worldwide, levels average around 397ppm. May also brought a report from the International Energy Agency(IEA) that CO2 emissions reached a record high of 31.6 gigatonnes (Gt) in 2011. This is a 1.0 Gt increase over 2010 levels.

Wisdom to find just and compassionate ways to address the economic consequences of climate change. We are beginning to understand more about the way climate change will affect us economically. Some are beginning to talk about what scientist and climate writer Joe Romm calls “Dust-Bowlification”, the expectation that the sort of aridity associated with Dust Bowl may spread from Kansas to California by mid-century, endangering agriculture and food security. CBS News ran a piece on assessing the risk of climate change that explored some of the economic effects we have already seen.

People exposed to toxic chemicals. Discussion of the proposed Safe Chemicals Act  has brought our attention to our exposure to toxic chemicals. For example, an article today reports  that chemicals like fire retardants are being detected in common foods. Young children are especially vulnerable to the effects of these chemicals.

Grateful hearts.  Along with some record-breaking heat and severe weather, May has also brought some beautiful days to be outdoors in Nebraska. May we continue to find joy and meaning in God’s creation and give God thanks for the goodness of God’s creation.

We might also pray for our own hearts to be open so we can see the needs in the world around us and gladly respond to those needs:

O heavenly Father, who has filled the world with beauty; Open our eyes to behold your gracious hand in all your works; that, rejoicing in your whole creation, we may learn to serve you with gladness; for the sake of him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Prayer for Joy in God’s Creation (The Book of Common Prayer, p. 814)

Wind of Pentecost

Feeling the Spirit outdoors

“When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.” (Acts 2:1-2)

According to Acts, Jesus’ followers were inside on the day of Pentecost. The congregation of St. Stephen’s, however, gathered outdoors this year at L.E. Ray Park in Grand Island. We baptized a teen-ager and three babies in the lake, celebrated the Eucharist using a picnic table as the altar, and had a picnic afterwards instead of the usual coffee hour. The weather forecast when we went to bed Saturday night was terrible for the next morning – an 80% chance of thunderstorms, possibly severe – but by Sunday morning a good breeze (as opposed to a violent wind) pushed the clouds to the south and east, the sun came out, and it was a lovely morning for an outdoor worship service.

The people who came said we should do this more often; there was something very special about our worship that morning. As I’ve shared our experience with others this week, it’s obvious that lots of people find something in worshiping together outdoors that is missing when we worship inside a building. People remarked on how peaceful it was; the sounds of the birds and lapping of the water, and the sights of the water sparkling in the sunlight and the trees moving in the wind contributed to that feeling of peace. People also seemed more joyful (not that we are lacking in joy when we are indoors); being outdoors and trying some new things was simply fun!

There are advantages, of course, to our usual space: we are sheltered from extremes in temperatures and from precipitation, the acoustics are better, and we don’t have to hold down the fair linen and the pages of the altar book with rocks to keep them from blowing around. But indoors we also can’t feel the sun beginning to warm the morning air, we don’t hear the birds sing, and, most notably on a day like Pentecost, we can’t feel the wind blow.

The Greek word for the wind (not a violent wind, but the sort of breeze we felt on Sunday) is pneuma; like the Hebrew word ruah this means wind and spirit and breath. As Jesus explained to Nicodemus (John 3: 7-8), the Spirit/wind is a moving thing. We experience it, but we don’t control it. We feel it, but we don’t know where it comes from or where it is going. We Nebraskans know about the untamed nature of the wind perhaps better than some other people would!

When the wind blows strongly, and especially when the wind turns very cold or very hot, it’s almost instinctive to shelter ourselves from it, but if we always avoid being out in the wind, we miss an opportunity to more fully understand the meaning of what Scripture tells us about the Spirit. Remembering the connections between wind and Spirit might help us see whether we are also trying to shelter or hide from the Spirit. We know that’s ultimately impossible to do – the Spirit rushed right into the house where Jesus’ followers were gathered – so on one level our attempts to hide don’t matter, but an openness to the Spirit can give us peace that evades us when we are trying to evade the Spirit.

A well-designed indoor space can provide sights and sounds that enhance our worship, but it’s good to occasionally leave those spaces and experience sights and sounds that we don’t control. During the homily Sunday morning, I watched a goose walk through the lawn chairs where the congregation was seated and on into the lake, where it swam out into the lake and then came back closer to the shore behind our temporary altar. It was so good not to have a wall separating us from that sight! It was a reminder that as much as we try to do everything in what we consider to be “good order”, God’s ideas of good order might be different from ours.

In The Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis makes it clear that while Aslan is good, Aslan is not a tame lion. God is not a tame god and doesn’t always fit into the spaces – physical, intellectual, and spiritual – that we design. The wind blows where it will; the Spirit blows where it will. I’m thankful for our outdoor worship reminding us that the Spirit that brings us peace is also an untamed Spirit, a Spirit that blows where it will, leads us where it will, and fills us with the sort of power we experience when we pay attention to God’s creation.

EPPN Alert / Pentecost Discipline

We Episcopalians know how take on Lenten disciplines. I know several people who say their favorite season of the liturgical year is Lent. Despite Easter and Christmas being thought of as the more joyous seasons, these folks find a deeper sort of happiness in the disciplines of Lent. We don’t associate Pentecost with any special sort of discipline, but maybe we could more fully understand the meaning of this important day in the liturgical cycle if we had a Pentecost discipline of some sort. This week’s EPPN action alert  led me to speculate on advocacy as a Pentecost discipline.

In today’s Gospel for Pentecost Sunday Jesus says that God will send another Advocate to be with Jesus’ followers. This Advocate is “the Spirit of truth”. This suggests that if we are empowered by the Spirit, we must be empowered to be truth-tellers. Furthermore, if the Spirit is an Advocate as Christ has been an Advocate for us, then advocacy on behalf of others would seem to be one piece of what it means to follow Christ and live in the Spirit.

Both of these closely-related aspects of discipleship -- truth-telling and advocacy -- were reflected in a resolution passed at General Convention last summer. Resolution D014  directs diocesan environmental commissions or committees to “educate congregations about public environmental decisions that adversely affect the lives and health of the most vulnerable in our society”. Since climate change tends to affect the poorest people in the world first and worst, public decisions that will have an effect on carbon emissions would be part of this. Education about environmental issues like climate change and pollution involves truth-telling; sometimes those truths are not easily heard and so not easily told, but we are empowered by the Spirit of truth. 

SR 26 would prevent the EPA from using its authority under the Clean Air Act to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. The Episcopal Public Policy Network  has issued an alert asking us to contact our senators to “Tell Congress – Let the EPA do its job!”  The Episcopal News Service story about this alert cites Resolution D014 in its explanation of the action alert and explains more of the rationale for this call to action. Click here to go directly to the action alert page and find out how to advocate on behalf of the vulnerable people in our world and, in the end, on behalf of all of us as we address the issues involved with climate change and pollution.

Take on a Pentecost discipline; go into the world and be an advocate!