New Questions for a New Time

Loaves and Fishes Revisited

As greenhouse gas emissions and global warming increase exponentially, it becomes more obvious each day that treating this challenge as just another social or political issue is not only ineffective, but dangerously distracting. We know we can’t continue business as usual in many areas of our lives if we are to mitigate global warming; why would we think that the usual paradigms to effect change would be appropriate in this case?

In particular, what should the church do to respond to global warming and other forms of environmental degradation? Should we do a religiously informed version of what other environmental activists do to advocate for climate stability and cleaner air and water, or are we called to do something different?

This week’s Sunday Gospel passage has brought me back to a persistent feeling I have that the church’s call in the face of pressing environmental concerns needs to be very different in kind from what other environmentalists are doing. Perhaps we need to look beyond dressing up the talking points or action steps of other groups with theological language and do something unique that might better match the uniqueness of this moment in human history and the uniqueness of the church as the Body of Christ.

This Sunday’s Gospel lesson is Matthew’s version of the story of the loaves and the fishes (Matthew 14:13-21) At the end of January, I posted a reflection on John’s version of the story. In John’s version, Jesus asks the disciples where they will find something for the crowd to eat, and while the disciples have a conversation about all the reasons it can’t be done, a boy offers the five barley loaves and two fish that he has. That post suggested that offering whatever we have in faith can have surprising results. The many grassroots efforts to address climate change may not look like much compared to the influence of the fossil fuel industry, and we can give lots of reasons to think they are not sufficient to make a significant difference, but when we offer these efforts in faith, they can do more than we can imagine they can do.

But Matthew’s version is different; it adds a different twist that makes it about more than having faith that even our small efforts can make a difference. This version starts with the disciples being proactive about feeding the crowd. They realize that people will start getting hungry soon, and they very sensibly suggest to Jesus that he send the crowd away so people can go into the villages and buy some food. They aren’t stumped about how to make sure no one goes hungry: Jesus simply needs to break up the gathering so people can go off and buy some food. But Jesus says they don’t have to go away. The way this situation would usually be handled is not necessarily the best approach. After all, this is not just any gathering with just any teacher; this is a gathering of people wanting to be with Jesus. So Jesus says, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.”

It’s as if Jesus says, “Don’t send them away. Think outside of the box; come up with a new solution for a new kind of situation.” And when the disciples can’t think of a different solution, Jesus asks for what they have and shows them something very new: the blessing, breaking, and distribution of the bread to feed a crowd of people who came hungry for something only Jesus could give them.

What people outside of faith communities are doing to address climate change and pollution are often very sensible projects bent on changing government policies or encouraging conservation or advocating for environmental justice. They are sensible and proactive approaches, often the same approaches that activists have found successful to effect change in other areas. But global warming in particular is a new problem unlike any other we have ever faced. And the church is different in kind from any other type of institution. Put those two things together, and it seems to resonate with Jesus saying, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.” It sounds like, “You don’t need to rely on old paradigms to effect change; figure out something different.” Perhaps we are called to figure out something that looks like Jesus blessing, breaking, and distributing something we already have.

These are the questions for prayer, reflection, and discussion that have risen up for me in light of this Gospel text: What do we as the church have to offer? How do we offer it to Christ so that people can be fed what we need here and now, in this world where we face a very real threat to life on this planet unlike any other humankind has ever faced? How do we offer the church’s unique gifts so Christ can use them to meet the unique needs of this point in human history?

I invite others to sit with these questions with me. Sitting prayerfully and openly with these difficult questions in this nearly unthinkable situation may be the first step of doing what God calls us to do in this time.

Grief

Lent 5A

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.