Advent 3: Visions of Hope

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing. The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it, the majesty of Carmel and Sharon. They shall see the glory of the Lord, the majesty of our God. Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who are of a fearful heart, “Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God. He will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense. He will come and save you.” (Isaiah 35:1-4)

Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. (Matthew 11:4-5)

Each week seems to bring new information about climate change, its effects, and the pace at which those effects are unfolding. How hopeless is it?

This week’s climate news included a report of a research project by a US Navy scientist that predicts an ice-free Arctic Sea by fall of 2016 (plus or minus three years -- which means sometime between now and 2019). How hopeless is it?

We know we have passed the point where lowering our emissions of greenhouse gases can prevent global warming. The warming that has already taken place has set feedback loops in motion that will cause some level of warming to continue even if we suddenly do the politically improbable and manage to lower the level of greenhouse gas emissions by a significant amount. The aim now is mitigation: lessening global warming and its effects as much as possible given the physical and chemical reality of our situation. 

Sign on the way to church last Sunday

Our lesson from Isaiah (Isaiah 35:1-10) for the Third Sunday in Advent describes a beautiful time when all of nature is full of joy, when flowers bloom in the desert and God’s unmistakable presence fills the world. It describes not a picture of what is but a vision of God’s possibilities. The prophetic visions of Scripture came to men and women well aware of the realities of their times and places. There are words of warning as well as words of promise. The visions were not a denial of reality; instead, they were rooted in that reality, a reality that the prophets saw more clearly than those around them. The prophetic visions provided a dream of new possibilities and an ideal by which to measure the present reality. The prophetic visions were an opening up of a new reality that could begin to unfold if people radically changed their way of life and returned to true worship that would remove the internal and external barriers to the unfolding of the vision.

While visions of hope are hard to find in climate science reports that document an accelerating warming and predict catastrophic results if we remain on our current path of greenhouse gas emissions, there are signs of change. In Jesus’ time and place, there was plenty of sickness, poverty, and oppression even though Jesus was healing. John the Baptist asks whether Jesus is the one they've been waiting for or if there is another. Jesus says (Matthew 11:4), “Go and tell John what you hear and see”, and lists signs of hope. We can look at signs of something changing – e.g. several coal-fired power plants shut down various places including Massachusetts and Chicago, solar energy use on the increase worldwide, decreasing use of automobiles in younger Americans, the wind- and solar-powered barn built in the path of the Keystone XL pipeline here in Nebraska. These things alone aren't enough to prevent catastrophic warming, but they may be signs of bigger changes that are coming to be.

This Third Sunday of Advent there is hope. We don’t know what shape hope takes in our generation. Authentic hope is not naïve; hope doesn't say everything will be fine, and it certainly doesn't say that everything will be just the way it was before humankind spewed enough greenhouse gases into the atmosphere to warm the planet to the point where feedback loops accelerate the warming.

Our hope means that we know that God is with us and God is faithful. It means that there is a bigger picture we simply cannot see from our little corner of the universe and our tiny point in history. It means that there are visions of what might be that we might be able to see if we turn away from our accustomed way of living and open ourselves to something new. As we are reminded especially during Advent, hope means God is with us no matter what.

Elijah's Question and Floods in Colorado

Our Daily Office lectionary today included I Kings 18:20-40. This is the story of Elijah and the 450 prophets of Baal, with both Elijah and the prophets of Baal preparing a sacrifice and asking their respective deities to send down the fire to burn the sacrifice. Elijah sets up the reason for the test this way:

 Elijah then came near to all the people, and said, ‘How long will you go limping with two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.’ 

In other words, Elijah tells them to decide. It’s not possible to worship the Lord and to worship Baal. Elijah is calling for the people to be of one mind instead of two; he is calling them to wholeness, to integrity of word, thought, and action.

Even before I began this morning’s Daily Office reading the terrible flooding along the Front Range in our neighboring state of Colorado was on my mind, and it remained in my thoughts and prayers all day. Throughout the day, I followed stories of rescues and read information about where the flooding was the worst and which roads were closed. The more I heard and read, the more I realized how exceptional this event has been. (See Colorado Flash Flooding: How It Happened, How Unusual? from The Weather Channel for a report of some of its exceptional characteristics.) Not only was there an extraordinary amount of rain produced from an extraordinary amount of moisture in the atmosphere, but the scope of the flooding, the area covered and the number of places affected, distinguishes this from other major floods that have occurred in the region.

Climate scientists had predicted just this sort of scenario as global warming increases:

prolonged periods of heat and drought alternating with heavy precipitation events. Warmer winters have allowed bark beetles to thrive and kill pine trees. With large areas of dead trees coupled with drought and high temperatures, wildfires have left mountainsides bare in several places. Then when record-breaking rainfalls come along, the flooding and its damage are exacerbated by the lack of vegetation.

A post from Subhankar Banerjee (author of Arctic Voices) recalls an outdoor art installation in Boulder six years ago called "Connect the Dots: Mapping the Highwater Hazards and History of Boulder Creek." The installation used blue discs to mark the level of a 500-year flood, and it was part of an art exhibition called “Weather Report: Art and Climate Change”. The intention of the blue dots was to make the warning about future floods less abstract, to take the warning of future levels of flooding outside of people’s previous experience and make the warning more real.

People reading along with the Diocese of Nebraska’s 2013 Bible Challenge are reading Jeremiah right now. The idea of the Connect the Dots exhibit is similar to the sorts of concrete – and often dramatic – actions that God asked Jeremiah and other prophets to do in order to make their prophetic words more concrete and less abstract. (In Jeremiah 19, for example, God has Jeremiah break an earthenware jug to illustrate how God would break the people and the city.)

When the predicted effects of continuing climate change are too abstract, many people find it easy to be of two minds. It’s easy to recognize on a purely intellectual, abstract level what scientists predict as the Earth continues to warm and yet to live our daily lives as if nothing at all has changed. The more real those effects get, though, the more easily we should be able to respond in ways consistent with what we already know. Right now, it seems that most Americans know that global warming is happening, and yet we don’t seem to know this in a way that makes any difference. In most of our personal and political conversations, in our planning for the future, and in the ways we choose to live, we act and talk as if we live on a planet with a stable climate. We know and yet we don’t know.

Along with Elijah’s question, “How long will you go limping with two different opinions?” our Daily Office lectionary brought us John the Baptist (Matthew 3:1-12) exhorting the people to “Bear fruit worthy of repentance”, to act in ways that reflect who they say they are and what they say they believe. Like Elijah, John the Baptist is concerned with what we say we believe and who we say we are being consistent with who we show ourselves to be in our choices and actions.

At the end of his post, Subhankar Banerjee writes:

The Weather Report: Art and Climate Change exhibition, which happened in 2007, visually gave warnings about a deadly flood in the Boulder Creek. Six years have passed. America is yet to take any meaningful action on climate change. Will the death and devastation from this week's flood in Colorado simply pass us by as a mere spectacle?

How long will we go limping with two different opinions?

We pray for all those dealing with the flooding in Colorado. We pray for those who mourn loved ones who have died and for those who have suffered losses of property. We pray for protection and strength for those who are risking their own safety to help others, and for those who are most vulnerable.

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)

Advent 3: Despair and Hope

The decisions made in the next couple of days at the climate talks in Copenhagen will be of great importance to all of us, but their effects will initially be felt most keenly by people from places like island nations and Bangladesh who came to Copenhagen with hope for an agreement that might save their homes. At this point, it's difficult for some people to stay hopeful, as the probability of reaching a significant agreement appears to be lessening.

How do we remain hopeful given the possibility that the world’s response to climate change will be too little and too late? What is the Christian response as we face the historically unique possibility of witnessing the social, economic, cultural, and spiritual consequences of inaction, the unraveling of our ways of life on a worldwide scale?

Archbishop Desmond Tutu is in Copenhagen. Archbishop Tutu’s experience in the fight against apartheid in South Africa has helped him develop wisdom about being hopeful in situations that appear to be hopeless. The Hopenhagen blog for December 15 provides video clips of Archbishop Tutu talking about what gives him hope this week.

Our lessons for the Third Sunday of Advent have been good companions while following the climate talks. The short passage from Paul’s letter to the Philippians (Philippians 4:4-7) tells us to rejoice and not worry about anything; Paul says “in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God”. There is part of the answer to these difficult questions: pray. Pray for the people participating in the climate conference, for the heads of state who will make the final decisions, for the people with little power who will feel the effects of climate change first and worst, and for a change of heart – repentance – when we are tempted to put our own comfort ahead of the basic needs of others.

In our Gospel lesson (Luke 3:7-18) John the Baptist talked about repentance. In my sermon this Sunday, I was not speaking directly about the climate talks, but it was in the back of my mind as I wrote about hope and despair. No matter what the issue, our call as Christians seems to be to a call to witness, to really look at, the places where there is darkness or despair. As we walk through the darkness, we are supported by our faith that the darkness cannot overcome the light of Christ. I believe our call at this time is to proclaim both the truth about what is at stake as the nations decide on a response to the climate crisis and the message of hope grounded in our faith.

Advent 3C: In the Bleak Midwinter
Zephaniah 3:14-20; Canticle 9 (Isaiah 12:2-6); Luke 3:7-18 (and the Godly Play version of the angel’s visit to the shepherds)
Preached at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, Grand Island, Nebraska, December 13, 2009

It’s good to see so many folks dug out from this week’s snowstorm and able to get here this morning. Little did we know last Sunday that our Tuesday and Wednesday evening church activities would be cancelled this week, children would be home from school, and many other plans changed. I was relieved early Tuesday evening to find out that the earliest morning classes at Hastings College had been cancelled already, as I was wondering how I would get from our house to campus for my 9:00 class. If I’d had to, I could have gotten there on foot if no other way, but it would have been a very difficult and very cold walk, and I was more than happy not to attempt it.

Looking out Wednesday morning after more snow had fallen and it had all been blown around by strong winds, one of my favorite Christmas hymns came to mind, Hymn #112, ‘In the bleak midwinter..’, that beautiful combination of Christina Rossetti’s words and Gustav Holst’s music. “In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan, earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone; snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow, in the bleak midwinter, long ago.”
This morning, though, we are singing Advent hymns and thinking about John the Baptist: “On Jordan’s bank the Baptist’s cry announces that the Lord is nigh…” Our Gospel lesson is John the Baptist at his most prophetic, referring to the crowds who have shown up to be baptized as a “brood of vipers” – the children of snakes – and calling everyone to repentance, to a radical change of heart that will become evident in their everyday choices and actions. John says that the one coming after him will baptize not with water but with the Holy Spirit and fire, and follows this with a very intimidating exhortation about Christ separating the metaphorical wheat from the chaff, in which it becomes very clear that we do not want to part of the chaff. After all of this, which does not at first hearing sound like “tidings of comfort and joy”, Luke writes: “So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.”

We heard another part of Luke’s Gospel today from our children as they told us about the angel coming to the shepherds. Most of us are more familiar with this story, and it sounds more like Good News to us. We’re more comfortable with angels and shepherds, but part of that comfort might be that familiarity has lessened the impact of the prophetic element of this story. The announcement of Christ’s birth came to the shepherds first, not to kings or high priests or the people who lived in comparative comfort in town. Shepherds were poor people who lived outside the walls of the town with the sheep, and sheep are some of the smelliest creatures on God’s green Earth.

It must have been surprising at the least, and perhaps even scandalous, that the shepherds would be the first ones told about the birth of the Messiah. But people who knew and understood Scripture would not have been surprised, because the Hebrew prophets repeatedly talk about God’s care for the outcast, for the people who inhabit the margins of society because that’s where people with more power and wealth have pushed them. In our passage from Zephaniah this morning, the prophet announces God’s message of hope: “I will deal with all your oppressors at that time. And I will save the lame and gather the outcast, and I will change their shame into praise and renown in all the earth.” So this morning we have an angel telling the shepherds about the birth of God’s son, and we have John the Baptist saying that people who have clothing and food must share with those who have nothing, and those with some degree of power – tax collectors and soldiers, for example – must not abuse that power.

The angel says something else, though: “Do not be afraid. Be joyful.” Again we hear an echo of the prophetic voice; Zephaniah says, “The king of Israel is in your midst…Do not fear,” and in our Canticle Isaiah says “Surely, it is God who saves me; I will trust in him and not be afraid.” These prophetic messages bring hope, but that hope often comes intertwined with information or commands that can make us fearful. John’s message, while meant to literally put the fear of God into us, is ultimately hopeful: We can’t do anything about our ancestors or even who we ourselves have been in the past, but what’s important, says John, isn’t the past but what we do now and in the future. We’re invited to repent and live lives that bear good fruit, lives that show we are wheat to be gathered into God’s granary, people living into the Reign of God.

The prophet’s message is always a message of hope because it’s ultimately a message of God’s faithfulness. We not only have nothing to fear when God is with us, but acting out of fear prevents us from responding to God’s faithfulness in a way that moves us from despair to hope, from darkness to light. The prophet’s message is a message of hope, but it’s also a message that calls for a response from us, a call to deep faith that results in good fruits. The prophet’s message in whatever point in history tells it like it is; it doesn’t sugarcoat or deny the reality of the way things are right now. Looking at the reality of our lives and the effects our choices have on Christ’s beloved poor around the world requires us to be open to experiencing uncomfortable emotions like grief and despair. We might grieve the loss of familiar and comfortable ways that we must give up so that others might live; like Ebenezer Scrooge, we might despair when we look outside of our own small worlds and let ourselves see the reality of other people’s lives, and, in our point in history, when we learn about the effects of our lives on the oceans, the air, and other species.

But we have to be willing to walk through the discomfort and darkness of despair to get to hope; a hope based on burying our heads in the sand isn’t hope at all but denial. Just as I was happy to avoid the discomfort of walking through the snow and bitter cold to get to campus, we are understandably reluctant to experience the discomfort of walking through despair to get to hope.

Advent is a time when we hear the prophetic message in our Sunday readings and in our Daily Office lectionary. The Daily Office this week included readings from Amos and Haggai, difficult messages for people of their time to hear, but messages that were ultimately full of hope, full of the promise of God’s faithfulness to a repentant people. Haggai (Haggai 1:5-6) starts out with this: “Thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider how you have fared. You have sown much, and harvested little; you eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill; you clothe yourselves, but no one is warm; and you that earn wages earn wages to put them into a bag with holes.” Yet Haggai moves from this portrait of [in Thoreau’s words] “lives of quiet desperation” to a promise of blessing to a newly obedient people.

The Church calls us to hear the prophet’s message today as well, to hear the words that God is speaking to us in our time. In Advent, the Church calls us to step back a bit and set aside time to enter the silence so we can hear the still, small voice; the Church calls us to enter the darkness so that we can more clearly see the Light of Christ. Advent is about listening to the prophetic call, about hearing the message of hope as we anticipate Christ’s birth and his coming again, and it’s also about choosing our response to a faithful and loving God. But that’s what Christmas is about also: our response to God becoming Incarnate and saying, “Follow me”.

The repentance to which John the Baptist calls us is not simply a matter of adding a few charitable acts to our to-do lists, good though it is to do that. This call is to something deeper, something internal, a profound change of heart. It’s a call to genuine generosity, kindness, compassion, and love. It’s a call to give our fears a nod and then joyfully go ahead and go where Christ calls us to serve as his body in the world – to see with the eyes of Christ, to hear with the ears of Christ, to think with the mind of Christ, to speak with the voice of Christ, and to serve with the hands of Christ.

The last verse of ‘In the bleak midwinter’ talks about how we can respond to our twofold awareness of our spiritual poverty that points to our need for repentance, along with the joy in our hearts when we hear the Good News of God’s promises and Christ’s birth: “What can I give him, poor as I am? If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb; if I were a wiseman, I would do my part; yet what I can I give him – give my heart.”
Don’t be afraid; be joyful! God’s promises assure us that when we choose to walk into and look at the dark places where we are called to bring the light of the Gospel, our faithful and loving God will be with us, and Christ will light the way. Amen.