Joy: Second Day of Christmas

Joy to the world! The Lord is come: let earth receive her king;

Let every heart prepare him room, and heaven and nature sing.

With “Joy to the world” in our hearts and minds, I invite you to join me in looking each of these twelve days for instances of the joy that runs through all of creation, especially through experiencing the beauty and wonder of God’s world.

Holly is traditional for Christmas decorating, something we absorbed from older winter solstice traditions. The holly’s glossy green leaves are a welcome sight in the winter. Besides bringing some color to the winter landscape, the green holly reminds us of the coming spring, when places that are now white or brown will again be green.

When the temperature had finally climbed up to about 15 degrees today, I went out and found parts of our little cold hardy hollies poking through snow drifts that sparkled with ice crystals.

Seeing the holly brought to mind part of Psalm 96 from our Christmas Eve celebration:

Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad; let the sea thunder and all that is in it;

  let the field be joyful and all that is therein.

Then shall all the trees of the wood shout for joy before God, who will come,

  who will come to judge the earth.

And along with the perhaps better known carol, The Holly and the Ivy, it also brought to mind this traditional carol from Cornwall:

Joy to the world! The Savior reigns; let us our songs employ, while fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains, repeat the sounding joy.

Joy: First Day of Christmas

Joy to the world! The Lord is come: let earth receive her king;

Let every heart prepare him room, and heaven and nature sing.

With “Joy to the world” in our hearts and minds, I invite you to join me in looking each of these twelve days for instances of the joy that runs through all of creation, especially through experiencing the beauty and wonder of God’s world.

 When we started out to drive to Grand Island for the 10:00 Christmas morning service at St Stephen’s, the skies were gray. The world seemed very quiet, very calm, but also very gray and somber! But as we got out into more open country, a sliver of blue sky became visible in the northeast. Somewhere the sun was shining, and it might very well shine on us before the day was done.

Joy to the world! The Savior reigns; let us our songs employ, while fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains, repeat the sounding joy.

Christmas Joy

Joy to the world! The Lord is come: let earth receive her king;

Let every heart prepare him room, and heaven and nature sing.

(Hymn 100)

We celebrate the birth of Christ, God’s coming to live among us, during the darkest time of the year in the northern hemisphere. Our often glorious sunrises and sunsets this time of year, the stars on a cold, clear night, and the Christmas lights shining through the darkness in the open country all help us to understand John’s Gospel (John 1:5): “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”

We Episcopalians celebrate Christmas for twelve days. With “Joy to the world” in our hearts and minds, I invite you to join me in looking each of these twelve days for instances of the joy that runs through all of creation, especially through experiencing the beauty and wonder of God’s world.

Our Christmas Gospel from John (John 1:1-14) begins by articulating the connections among God’s creation of the world, Christ, life, and light:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.

The wonders of the world around us not only help us stay connected to joy; they also remind us that God is God, the creator and sustainer of all that is in the entire universe, and they help to strengthen our connection to God.

Joy to the world! The Savior reigns; let us our songs employ, while fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains, repeat the sounding joy.

Advent 4: Magnificat

He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. (Luke 1:51-53)

The 4^th Sunday of Advent we remember Mary’s visit to Elizabeth (Luke 1:39-55)  and the joyful Song of Mary, the Magnificat. Mary's song begins with praising God and talking about what God has done for her; the middle of the song describes God’s inversion of the economic and political order – casting down the mighty while lifting up the lowly, filling the hungry with good things while the rich are sent away empty -- and it ends with a reminder of God’s promise of mercy. It’s a song about God creating something that’s very new and yet grounded in God’s eternal care and love for God’s people.

The Magnificat has come to us through the centuries not only in Scripture but in beautiful choral settings. While an analysis of the song reveals these three parts, it has an integrity to it that suggests that we should be careful not to take one part of this passage without the others. We tend to focus on the relationship between Mary and God or on the fulfillment of the promise to Israel, but the inversion of the economic and political order will be omitted in the preaching or teaching in many churches tomorrow morning.

The effects of climate change are especially harsh for people in less wealthy developing countries. Perhaps tellingly as we speak reverently of Mary the mother, some studies say that climate change impacts differ by gender as well as by location; women in developing countries are especially vulnerable to these impacts. (See Impacts on Vulnerable Populations on the EPA webpage about international impacts and adaptation in reference to climate change.)

In Mary’s song, we hear her joyful faith in God’s mercy and in God’s love for those lacking power and privilege. People in developing countries suffer from climate change that results from greenhouse gas emissions from industrialized countries.  Where is our merciful and loving God when the needs of some of the poorest people in the world are sacrificed to the agendas of the rich and powerful? God’s promises endure; God calls us back again and again to live in harmony with God’s intentions for our world. There are people working hard to end this injustice and mitigate climate change to ensure a better future for all of us who share this planet. Activists are pushing for institutions to divest from the fossil fuel industry; others are working to stop the mining of tar sands and to prevent the completion of the Keystone XL pipeline that would carry tar sands from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico; others continue to press our politicians to pass legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  God is working through these people and through all of us whose words and actions bring the needs of all people – and all species – to the attention of the rest of the world.

The November State of the Climate Report from NOAA is not encouraging. Among other things, there was this:

The 10 coolest Novembers on record all occurred prior to 1920. November 2012 also marks the 36^th consecutive November and 333rd consecutive month with global temperature higher than the long-term average. The last month with a below average temperature was February 1985, nearly 28 years ago.

 And even though it’s hard to imagine on this chilly weekend in Nebraska, 2012 is expected to end up as the warmest year ever recorded for the United States. 

None of this makes our efforts so far look successful, but then Mary’s baby in the manger didn't look like a king. God works with and through whatever is available. What is available to God are people – scientists, activists, people of faith – who are willing to look at the science of climate change, look at the people who are affected first and worst by climate change, and then do what we can to change things. Mary had no power or influence, and yet because of her faith, God was able to use Mary to change everything for all of us.

While this week’s blizzard made travel difficult and caused some hardship, the moisture is welcome and the beauty of snow-covered fields, especially in the sunny days since the blizzard, has given us an opportunity to renew our joy in God’s creation. Our souls might well magnify the Lord out of sheer joy!

This is the time for people of faith who find joy in God’s creation and comfort in God’s promises to listen carefully, watch carefully, and see where God is calling each of us to speak and act.

Advent 3: Prayer and action

The Third Sunday of Advent this year brings John the Baptist exhorting the crowd to “bear fruits worthy of repentance”. (Luke 3:7-18) and the crowds asking him in return, “What then should we do?”

John talks about the changed hearts of repentant people and their actions – those “fruits worthy of repentance” – being of one piece. Virtue ethicists going back to Aristotle have said we can acquire various human virtues by making a habit of doing virtuous actions. Today we talking about “acting as if” or tell people to “fake it until you make it”; it’s the same principle. So if I want to be the sort of repentantly generous person John describes when he says, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise”, I begin by giving away a coat or some food even if I don’t feel as if my heart is in this. When I get in the habit of doing such things, I will find that I have acquired the virtue of generosity along the way. On the other hand, John describes these actions as the fruits or results of a change in heart, and such actions should follow naturally from a deeply changed heart. The inner state of a changed heart and the outer state of changed actions are bound together.

John exhorted the crowd to have a profound change of heart and to act in a way that reflected the interior change.  Environmental activists exhort us to action, but sometimes fail to encourage us to do the inner work that helps us to sustain the outer work of advocating for a healthy environment.

On his Inside Passages blog , Kurt Hoelting recently posted on Embracing our inner tipping points on climate. When I went through the GreenFaith Fellowship Program, Kurt was on the faculty for our retreat focused on spirit; he led us in meditation and Qi Gong, and talked to us about how important this inner work is to our external work. In the blog post, he writes that meditation practice is often assumed to be a sort of “self-improvement project, a mere tool to reduce our stress and return some sense of balance, while making no demands on us.” He asks then if there isn’t “a deeper purpose that has to do with clear seeing, with the hard work of burning off the fog of our ego-driven perceptions”.

The news about our climate in recent weeks has not been easy to process or contemplate. As 2012 nears its end, we are on track for it to be the warmest year in U.S. history. Climate change is becoming more real to us in our weather records, our drought on the Great Plains, and the huge reality check of superstorm Sandy. With our political leadership still enthralled by the fossil fuel industry and the power it exerts, and with so much at stake, the work ahead of us is difficult. Even thinking about the magnitude and implications of the problem – a necessity if we are to advocate for significant changes – is emotionally and spiritually challenging.

Kurt Hoelting asks us to look at our own “inner tipping points”. What will move us from concern to action? He asks, “What more needs to happen before we decide to take it personally? And what does taking it personally look like for each of us?”

This evening we mourn the deaths of innocent schoolchildren and some of the school staff in Newtown, Connecticut.  The senseless death of so many children is difficult for us to look at and process. Even though we didn’t know these children, we care about what happened to them and are heartbroken by it. President Obama said this afternoon that “we're going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.” Many people are echoing this thought, saying that the time has come to quit being timid about changing things so that this sort of violence will be less common.

If we look down the road, many children will suffer and die senseless deaths from lack of food, disease, or trauma from violent storms and floods if we don’t work hard to make this a better world with a sustainable climate.  The reality of our warming world is difficult to contemplate and won’t be easy to change, but our inner work of prayer can support and sustain us as do the hard work of advocating for changes that will result in less global warming.

In the Epistle reading for the Third Sunday of Advent (Philippians 4:4-7) Paul exhorts the Philippians to pray rather than worry. When we cut through the anxiety and choose prayer, says Paul, “the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” When we do the inner spiritual work, effective work in the world becomes possible. 

What then should we do? Ground ourselves in prayer and commit ourselves to effective actions.

Advent 2: Listening to what counts

“In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius…” is the phrase that begins the Gospel passage (Luke 3:1-6) for the Second Sunday in Advent. Luke refers to various political and religious leaders in order to set the events he is describing in history, to pin down the year when John began preaching. Yet we pay much more attention today to the words of John than we do to anything the people considered “historical figures” said or did. What endures today isn’t so much what the rulers thought or did; what is important to us is what John was proclaiming out in the wilderness.

A big piece of environmental news this week was the publication of NOAA’s seventh annual Arctic Report Card. As you can hear in this video summary of the report, there are big changes in the Arctic; the Arctic “is entering a new state”, and these changes are taking place faster than had been anticipated.

The leaders of the world’s large nations are neither decreasing greenhouse gas emissions enough to significantly mitigate climate change nor to preparing adequately to adapt to our rapidly warming world. The political leaders – presidents and prime ministers -- whose names might very well be those that will serve as historical markers in the future – are not the ones doing the important work. It’s clear that we need to find ways to effect big changes fairly quickly without waiting for the world’s leaders to take charge of the situation. The people whose names are in the news most days may not be the ones carrying a message for us this Advent; we need to look around to find out what’s worth our attention.

This Advent, important messages are coming from scientists, like those whose research contributed to the Arctic Report Card. Other living things bring us messages if we will listen and look. Many of the biggest and oldest trees in the world are dying [see Mighty Old Trees Are Perishing Fast,Study Warns; the reasons for their dying and the way their loss will impact other living things deserve our attention. This Advent, important messages are coming from climate activists, some fairly well-known and others less noticed. Bill McKibben has just finished the Do the Math tour advocating for institutional divestment from the fossil fuel industry to effect the sorts of changes we need without waiting for the world’s official leaders. People dealing with the effects of Superstorm Sandy in the U.S. and the Caribbean have important things to tell us that can help us get a sense of how climate change impacts people now, and a taste of what we can expect on a greater scale in the future. And people around the world who are feeling the effects of droughts, floods, fires, sea level rise, or melting permafrost have much to tell us about the human implications of climate change.

Listening to these messages – today’s wilderness voices -- with our hearts as well as our ears can bring us to repentance and renewal just as John and the ancient prophets did for the people of their times.  

Advent 1: Doing the math in hope

Our Advent Scripture readings, hymns, and prayers emphasize the themes of expectation, hope, and repentance.

Today’s reading from Jeremiah (Jeremiah 33:14-16) is a prophetic voice of hope in a situation that looked hopeless. People of faith are people of hope. A gift people of faith can bring to conversations about the environment – and especially about the climate crisis – is hope.

The Do the Math tour presented by Bill McKibben and 350.org was in Omaha last night. The Do the Math website summarizes Bill McKibben’s primary message:

It’s simple math: we can burn less than 565 more gigatons of carbon dioxide and stay below 2°C of warming — anything more than that risks catastrophe for life on earth. The only problem? Fossil fuel corporations now have 2,795 gigatons in their reserves, five times the safe amount. And they’re planning to burn it all — unless we rise up to stop them.

An article published today by Seth Borenstein of the Associated Press drawing on new international calculations on global emissions published Sunday in the journal Nature Climate Change says that rather than decreasing the amount of greenhouse gases, in the past year the amount increased by 3 per cent. The study’s lead author, Glen Peters at the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo, Norway, says that the only possible way to stay within the goal of two degrees of temperature rise is to start reducing these emissions now and “throw everything we have at the problem.” Given how little we have thrown at the problem up to now, it seems unlikely to happen now.

With 0.8 °C degree of warming, we have seen all sorts of extreme weather in 2012, including Superstorm Sandy, the drought in the Midwest, and wildfires such as the one that forced evacuations around Estes Park, Colorado, this weekend. Imagine what two degrees would bring! Some scientists have said that reaching even the two degree limit would be disastrous , but it’s clear that our earlier failure to notice the signs and turn things around makes it nearly inevitable. Anything beyond two degrees changes our world in even more extreme ways, ways that are nearly unimaginable.

In today’s Gospel lesson (Luke 21: 25-36) , Jesus talks about paying attention to signs that are right in front of us, signs that people tend to deny or ignore. He describes distressing, fearful times and then says (Luke 21:28): “Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” 

In Omaha last night, Bill McKibben said that even though the information he was presenting was very discouraging, he found it exciting in a way because we are getting “nearer to the heart of things”. And we are indeed down to what is essential to survival; we are down to questions of meaning and questions about our priorities; we are down to questions about where our hearts lie when we face the finitude not only of our own lives but of our biosphere, our planet, and the way of life it has supported. Our search for hope in this seemingly hopeless situation leads us to a place of repentance and conversion: Are we willing to do what it takes to make hope possible?

The Do the Math campaign is taking a page from the anti-apartheid campaign and asking institutions – including religious institutions – to freeze new investments in the fossil fuel industry and then to fully divest themselves of all fossil fuel investment within five years unless those companies change their way of doing business. When energy companies are willing to leave most of their current reserves underground, to stop exploring for new hydrocarbons, and to stop lobbying for special breaks and for the defeat of legislation that would promote a switch to other forms of energy, in short, when the fossil fuel industry puts life ahead of profits, then divestment will become unnecessary.

Bill McKibben said that people tell him this sort of campaign is impossible, that it’s a “David and Goliath” situation. He said these words were discouraging until he though, “Wait a minute! I’m a Methodist Sunday School teacher; I know how the David and Goliath story ends!” We know not only how that story ends, but how the entire salvation story ends, and that is why we hope when all seems hopeless.

The questions we must answer are Advent questions; the journey of the heart we take to repent and turn ourselves and the world around is an Advent journey. Where do our hearts lie? How do we hope when everything seems dark? Can we set aside lesser priorities of personal convenience and comfort in order to do what needs to be done for the greater common good both close to home and in corners of the globe about which we know very little?

Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility…(From the Collect for the First Sunday of Advent)