Hope

Fr. Jason Emerson from Church of the Resurrection in Omaha put a post about hope on Facebook early this morning. Hope is something we Christians can bring to conversations about the environment; we know how to hope when others might despair. Thank you to Fr. Jason for being willing to share this on the Green Sprouts blog!

Hope has gotten a lot of press recently, from Pres. Barack Obama's book The Audacity of Hope to the ridicule of his understanding of hope by his opponents. Since the time of the Apostle Paul, Hope has been a Christian virtue, a characteristic that promotes our individual and joint well being. I believe hope is a characteristic that helps us love God with all our heart. For Christians, I believe, hope springs from knowing that the way things are, are not the way things will always be. Furthermore we are hopeful because we know we are not alone in our darkest nor our brightest hour.

We are hopeful that the world as it is will not always be as it is because we believe the resurrected Jesus Christ to be the first born of a new creation called the kingdom of God. We are all able through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus to be new creations as well. This new creation is not run on fear as our current world is; rather it is run on love, not on separation or individualism; rather on community. In the new creation we are in communion with God, communion with our neighbors, and in communion with nature. We are hopeful for this new creation because we know the great stories of the past and want to be a part of the great stories of now.

We are hopeful because we are not alone. This is one of the great messages of the cross. God incarnate, the divine one in human flesh, was willing to suffer and die. God is not separate from our suffering. God has experienced it too. To put it colloquially, God has been there and done that. Hope does not deny the suffering of the world. It is not Pollianna with rose colored glasses. If God incarnate wound up on a cross how we could we expect anything different. Hope is motivation to keep moving forward despite the pain and suffering common to life. Hope is knowing that God will be with us no matter what we do or what is done to us. Hope is a christian virtue.

Questions for today:
How would you define hope?
When do you and what makes you feel hopeful?
(First posted in 2009, revised 5 April 2011)

"An inescapable network of mutuality..."

Dr. Martin Luther King

This morning I read Dr. Martin Luther King’s last Sunday morning sermon, “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution”. Dr. King preached this at Washington National Cathedral on March 31, 1968, the Sunday before he was assassinated. His text, from Revelation 21: 4-5 was “Behold, I make all things new; former things are passed away."

Several parts of this sermon struck me by their timeliness for our world 43 years later. His main point, that God calls us to be aware of and responsive to the changes and needs of the world, is obviously relevant whenever there is significant change in the world. Even more, I noticed that several of Dr. King’s points about the civil rights movement, the war on poverty, and the Vietnam War could be applied to environmental advocacy.

The interrelatedness of all of creation is an important concept for religious environmental thought. The carbon emissions from our cars in Nebraska accumulate in the atmosphere with carbon emissions from all over the world, affecting the climate all over the world and acidifying the oceans. The effects of climate change and ocean acidification are experienced by other people and other species of living things. The fact that our actions have global consequences makes care of the environment part of loving our neighbors.

In this sermon, Dr. King talked about the need for people in his time to develop a global perspective. He said, “No individual can live alone, no nation can live alone, and anyone who feels that he can live alone is sleeping through a revolution.” He continued this point:

Through our scientific and technological genius, we have made of this world a neighborhood and yet we have not had the ethical commitment to make of it a brotherhood. But somehow, and in some way, we have got to do this. We must all learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish together as fools. We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.

Talking about the challenge of fighting poverty, Dr. King discussed the story of the rich man (Dives) and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31). “Jesus told a parable one day, and he reminded us that a man went to hell because he didn’t see the poor.” The problem, explained Dr. King, wasn’t that one man was rich and the other was poor; the problem was the rich man’s lack of awareness. Today we sometimes call such lack of awareness “willful ignorance”.

Dives didn’t go to hell because he was rich; Dives didn’t realize that his wealth was his opportunity. It was his opportunity to bridge the gulf that separated him from his brother Lazarus. Dives went to hell because he passed by Lazarus every day and he never really saw him. He went to hell because he allowed his brother to become invisible.

When we fail to pay attention to impacts of pollution and climate change on some of the poorest people in the world, we allow our brothers and sisters to become invisible. Because it’s difficult for us to think about these things, we put the environmental problems and the people they affect first and worst out of mind. We never really see them.

The Millennium Development Goals include the goal of environmental stability as one of the essential ingredients of ending extreme poverty. Environmentalism in general, and especially religious environmentalism, requires an ongoing awareness of the relationship between a clean, sustainable environment and our ability to meet the basic needs of all of us who share this planet.

Something that separates environmental issues, especially issues of pollution and climate change, from other sorts of issues is that we do not have the luxury of time. Traditional political approaches that involve years of careful compromise and satisfaction with small successes and slow but steady progress are inadequate when feedback loops have already been established and tipping points loom on the immediate horizon.

Dr. King had heard people say that he and other civil rights advocates needed to slow down and quit pushing so hard. If they would “just be nice and patient and continue to pray”, then somewhere down the road things would eventually work out. Dr. King’s response was this, and it applies just as well to environmental advocacy today as it did to civil rights advocacy in the 1960’s:

There is an answer to that myth. It is that time is neutral. It can be used either constructively or destructively. And I am sorry to say this morning that I am absolutely convinced that the forces of ill will in our nation, the extreme rightists of our nation—the people on the wrong side—have used time much more effectively than the forces of goodwill. And it may well be that we will have to repent in this generation. Not merely for the vitriolic words and the violent actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence and indifference of the good people who sit around and say, "Wait on time."

Somewhere we must come to see that human progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and the persistent work of dedicated individuals who are willing to be co-workers with God. And without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the primitive forces of social stagnation. So we must help time and realize that the time is always ripe to do right.

Dr. King ended the sermon talking about living in hope and not yielding to “a politic of despair”.

“We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

Speaking of Ice...

...as we were recently...

Warmer temperatures are finally here for the weekend, but the sort of weather we associate with springtime in Nebraska has been slow in coming. In central Nebraska earlier this week, we were coping with a combination of rain (some of it freezing), sleet, and snow. Most of us were wishing the ice would simply go away!

Springtime is beginning in the Arctic as well. According to the University of Colorado-Boulder’s National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) , the Arctic sea ice probably reached its greatest extent for this year on March 7. Before the melting began, the maximum extent of this year’s Arctic sea ice was tied for the smallest extent of ice since record-keeping began in 1979. The final analysis of the 2010-2011 winter season for Arctic sea ice will be published later this month.

This year’s maximum sea ice extent was 463,000 square miles below the 1979-2000 average. The UPI story Study: 2011 arctic ice extent is down quotes a CU-Boulder release that gives a useful picture of how big an area this is: an area slightly larger than the states of California and Texas combined.

The extent of ice coverage at the end of the summer will be watched closely. This video from the NSIDC shows the changes in Arctic sea ice coverage in September for the thirty years between 1979 and 2009.

The effects of climate change on the Arctic are huge. A team of climatologists from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and South Korea has predicted some of the impacts of climate change on the Arctic by 2099.

Many polar and subpolar regions may well be replaced by temperate regions by the end of this century. While the endangered polar bear has become the iconic representative of the expected changes, the effects of climate change on human economy, on local cultures, is of great concern. Plant and animal species and cultures are all in danger of extinction. That scientists from Nebraska and Colorado are studying the Arctic ice suggests that what is happening there has some importance to us in Nebraska.

Knowing something about what is happening in the Arctic can make us wonder how to respond to something so big and far away. The most important response we can give as Christians is to pay attention to what is happening. While it is very important for us to exercise good stewardship of our resources so that we reduce our own contributions to the carbon emissions driving global warming, it is also important for us do something less concrete: to be prayerful witnesses to what is happening. To acknowledge it, to see it, to be truth-tellers is part of our work as Christians. To remember it when we pray, when we make decisions about our own use of resources, and when we speak with other people and participate in the political process are all ways to serve as Christ’s body in the world.

Sandhill Crane Sunday

St. Stephen’s, Grand Island, incorporated the sandhill crane migration into our liturgy on Sunday, the third year of celebrating Crane Sunday. Because the crane migration peaks in mid- to late March, this Sunday falls during Lent. While it may at first seem a little unusual to have any sort of special celebration during Lent, the juxtaposition of our Lenten journey with the arrival of the cranes on their annual journey says something about the way Christians live in the world and about our incarnational theology.

Highlighting the connections between the salvation story and what is happening in this particular place at this particular time helps us pin Lent down to our lives and our world. The salvation story is easy to ignore once we leave church if it does no more than float somewhere up above our lives. When we see the ways in which it connects to our lives and our world, the Word remains enfleshed, incarnate, for us. Seeing the connection helps us understand what it means for God to come and dwell among us.

This Crane Sunday our weather in central Nebraska was still wintry. I drove to Grand Island partway in freezing rain and partway in snow, past dances of cranes that were well camouflaged with their gray plumage in the foggy fields. The origami cranes decorating the church took on extra meaning this year as we keep the people of Japan in our prayers. Our Christian education classes had made “bejeweled birds” on which the children had written their sometimes poignant hopes for renewal or new life at Easter. The reality of the salvation story for our own lives becomes more vivid with a range of particular concerns in mind, from the Japanese people on the other side of our planet to the children in our own parish, and with our gratitude for the abundance of God’s creation that we see with thousands of birds flying through the Central Flyway.

Our lessons Sunday morning included Exodus 17:1-7 and John 4:5-42, both reminding us of the importance of water, with Jesus talking about living water in the story of the Samaritan woman at the well. Sunday’s sermon on these texts can be read here.

In Sunday’s Psalm (Psalm 95), God says, “Harden not your hearts as your forebears did in the wilderness.” One way to soften our hearts so that we can receive the living water that Christ offers in abundance is to go outside and give thanks for the wonders we find there, for the cranes, the other spring birds, the sky and the rivers and even the snowflakes, sleet, and rain.

Eco-Palms for Episcopalians

With Palm Sunday only four weeks away, Eco-Palms are in the news again. Episcopal News Service published a piece Wave sacramental eco-palms this Palm Sunday by Michael Schut, the environmental and economic affairs officer for the Episcopal Church.

The February 20 Green Sprouts post about Eco-Palms talked about the benefits of using Eco-Palms for Palm Sunday instead of palms harvested in other ways. The way they are harvested is not only environmentally sustainable, but it results in better pay for the workers. And as that post reported, we found last year at St. Stephen’s that these palms enhanced our liturgy.

In today’s ENS piece , Michael Schut writes:

And know that there are real people, real forests behind those fronds. Know that there are real communities benefiting from your purchase of Eco-Palms. Kattie Sumerfeld works for Lutheran World Relief and recently visited some of those communities. She wrote when she returned of Eliasin Visente Gonzales who told her that "Eco-Palms allow him to buy shoes and clothes for his seven children;" and she described hearing from the town council that "their kids actually stay in the communities instead of migrating to the U.S. for work."

Our choice of palms for Palm Sunday is one more place where the best choice for the environment is also the best choice for economic justice and stability for communities.

Reading Paul in Early Spring

An Observation

Today’s warmer temperatures in central Nebraska made it possible to sit outside on our porch this morning to read the Daily Office lessons. The warm and humid air smelled and felt like spring, and songs from a variety of birds sounded like spring.

It was a good setting for today’s Epistle lesson, Romans 1:16-24. In this letter to the Romans, Paul states that knowledge about God is available to everyone: “Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made.” (Romans 1:20) God isn’t visible to us, but the world is there for us to see and experience. Paul is saying that thinking about the order and wonder of the world that we can experience through our senses can help us understand something about God’s divine nature and power; we can reason from what we can know through sense experience to some knowledge of God.

On a fine spring morning, I’m inclined to agree with Paul.

Celebrate! (Into the Wilderness of Lent)

Quakes, Tsunami, and Spring Migration

Here in the Platte River valley the first week of Lent, the annual spring migration of the sandhill cranes has reached its peak. During the day, the fields are full of cranes feeding and dancing and making the sound that in this part of the world means the beginning of spring. At night, the cranes gather in the river for protection from predators. People fill blinds along the river and stand along bridges to see and hear the arrival of the cranes at sunset and to watch them take off again at sunrise. The Rowe Sanctuary offers a Cranecam that shows some of the wonder of this. (Sunrise and sunset are both around 7:40 now.)

Of course, the first week of Lent has also brought news of the 9.0 earthquake in Japan and the tsunami, aftershocks, and dangers from damaged nuclear power plants that have followed. The news, photos, and videos coming out of Japan have helped us see some pieces of this disaster that is too big for us to truly comprehend. It’s so big that its impact is felt here; we talk with one another about the latest news reports, we pray for the people of Japan, and we look for ways to help.

When we drove from Hastings to Grand Island for church on Sunday – a gray day with a “wintry mix” of showers, sleet, and snow – the fields were full of cranes. Nearly as dramatic were the fields of snow geese. Later that day I returned to Grand Island after checking the news and seeing updates about the extent of the damage in Japan and estimates of the loss of life. The day was still gray, and the mood of the weather seemed to match the news.

And then, on my way home, having brought communion and Ash Wednesday ashes to some of our older parishioners who can’t come to church any more and thinking about Lent and Japan and hoping the road wouldn't turn icy before I got home, I saw some movement in the gray fields. Some of the cranes were dancing. When cranes dance, they leap into the air and flap their wings. Some of the cranes are dancing in this video shot near the Platte:

On a sunny spring day, this dance fits right in with the mood of the day, and we humans think the birds must be sharing our joy. On this still wintry Sunday with such weighty news in the world, I was surprised to experience the same level of joy when the cranes began to dance.


The Omaha World Herald reported yesterday on Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s visit to the Rowe Sanctuary on Monday. Secretary Salazar, says the article, stood “silent and transfixed by the spectacle” before saying, “It’s inspirational.” His reaction is typical of people who come from other places and see the cranes for the first time. It’s a spiritual experience.

On Sunday, March 27, St. Stephen’s in Grand Island will have a special Crane Sunday to celebrate the migration, reflect on its spiritual elements, and talk about the connection between that sort of experience and what we typically talk about on Sunday mornings in the church. Because the cranes come in March, our Crane Sunday always ends up being a Sunday in Lent. Far from detracting from a proper observance of Lent, we have found that celebrating something that is so much a part of our lives during Lent deepens our Lenten journey. We don’t forget the wilderness of Lent; the wilderness of Lent helps us to appreciate the joy of the crane migration and the other signs of spring.

In our part of the world, the annual visit of the sandhill cranes is commonplace; some Nebraskans wonder what all the fuss is and can’t understand why people from faraway places come to see the spring migration in the Platte Valley. Why would we celebrate something so ordinary, and especially during Lent?

A friend who lives in Tokyo sent me a message early today. Kirk describes what it is like in Tokyo right now -- empty grocery shelves, lines at gas stations, unpredictable train service and power supply, and aftershocks from the earthquake – and says everyone looks forward to a return to normalcy whenever that may happen. He knows it is much worse to the north, and that the return to normalcy there will be years in coming. He ends his message with this: “Celebrate your normal, everyday lives.”

Everyone is invited to join us at St. Stephen’s at 9:30 on March 27 to celebrate our normal, everyday lives in central Nebraska and to focus on the wonder and joy that is ours for the noticing.