10/21/18 “Reality, Grief, Hope: Three Urgent Prophetic Tasks to the Environmental Crisis” by Nancy Petty
Text: Job 38:1-11
In our kitchen, sitting on the chopping block beside the sink, sits an old white antique soup tureen that Karla purchased at a flea market. For a number of years now, this eight-inch by eleven-inch tureen, has kicked into overdrive my obsessive-compulsive tendencies. My need for neatness and order has been seriously challenged by this beautiful white piece of ceramic. Why, you ask. Well, it is our compost pot. And while it is beautiful on the outside, it holds some of the smell-est, yuck-est, gnat-attracting juice you can imagine. And for someone who needs neatness, that small pot is a grave challenge. However, as of late, this eight-inch by eleven-inch vessel has become a kind of icon for me; the thing that reminds me daily of what may be the biggest threat our planet and us humans face. I am speaking of the environmental crisis we are facing in our world. And that is the topic for this sermon.
So you are wondering, how in the world is this crazy woman going to preach a sermon from a text, from all places, the book of Job about the ecological devastation we face today. I know, I’m wondering that too! But not really; for when God finally speaks to Job in the 38th chapter of the book,–when things couldn’t get any worse for Job—God begins God’s speech in a series of questions that declares God’s handiwork in creating the world. In responding to Job’s devastation, God’s begins with creation.
Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements—surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy? Or who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb?—when I made the clouds its garment, and thick darkness its swaddling band… (Job 38:1-9)
Creation! I don’t know why, when God finally speaks in the book of Job addressing Job’s devastation, why God or the writer of whoever is telling this story begins at the beginning. But I do know that the beginning is a good place to start when speaking about the ecological devastation we are facing. The beginning, you see, gives us perspective.
In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. (Genesis 1:1-2)
And from that point on, God created. God created the light and the darkness; the sky and land and water; the vegetation—plants and fruit trees of every kind; all the living creatures God created—those that fly in the air and walk on land and swim in the waters; and then, and only then did God create humankind. And to all of this, God pronounced it all good, very good. And that was the beginning.
But here we are in 2018 and what God created and ordained as good, very good—what God created as beautiful and bountiful and for its inhabitants to enjoy and care for and tend and partner with—we have instead pilfered and plundered and pillaged creation to the point of a real environmental crisis. Instead of becoming co-creators with God and continuing to honor and respect and bless creation, we have ravaged and raped Mother Earth and now we stand on the brink of devastation. Our reality today is this: we have “sacrificed creation at the altar of material progress, our unchecked greed, our resistance to change, and our refusal to share.”
I say this not to lay a guilt trip on you. For God knows that I, of all people, have come to speak these words and recognized this truth far too late. I will confess that my moments of ecological conversion have been short lived. After watching March of the Penguins I starting cutting the plastic holders around my sodas into small pieces so the birds and fish and other small creatures couldn’t get caught in them. Now that I don’t drink sodas that practice has ended. When it’s convenient, I make an effort most days to recycle paper and plastic bags and containers. But in the grand scheme of things I must confess I am among those who have sacrificed creation at the altar of my own personal gain and comfort, and yes, even style. This is my reality and the only way that I can see to redeem my own actions is to be honest and name this disappointing truth. And so I offer this confession as an invitation for you to think about your reality and for us to think about our reality.
As of late, I have experienced some new ecological stirrings, conversions you might call them. Since Sunday in the Park and listening to Karen Delahunty talk about composting and what happens when our food ends up in the landfills I have looked upon that 8 by 11 inch white ceramic pot that sits in our kitchen with new eyes and a more open heart. I have not put any food scraps into the trash since that Sunday in September. Then last week, my moral conscience was pricked when I read the headline, “Babies Born This Year: Planet Nightmare By Age 22!” The opening paragraph of the article read:
Coastal cities inundated by rising seas. Drought, extreme weather and forests engulfed in flame. Food insecurity, species loss and the end of coral reefs as we know them. This is the crisis scientists say we can expect to face as early as 2040, should the world fail to take swift action to overhaul the global economy and rein in carbon emissions.
2040, some scientists have predicted earlier. In 2040, the 13 year-olds that we blessed this morning will be 35. What kind of world will they be living in and raising their children in? What will their reality be? The answer to that question may very well depend on how serious we take our reality when it comes to caring for creation in 2018 and 2019 and 2020. What we do or don’t do today will determine the kind of life our children will face.
So I have asked myself this week, “What must people of faith do as we face global ecological devastation?” What must we do, as people of faith, to work for change when it comes to caring for creation? I want to suggest this morning that in addition to composting and recycling and cutting up those plastic rings that hold our six pack of sodas together and buying cars that use less fossil fuel, as people of faith we must, as Walter Brueggemann suggests, take on the “vocation of the prophet to keep alive the ministry of the imagination and keep on conjuring and proposing futures alternative to the single one the king [the empire] wants to urge as the only thinkable one.” To take on this vocation, the church must rethink its basic tenets of the Christian faith.
We must grieve that our faith, the Christian faith, is, in part, responsible for the ecological crisis we face. In focusing on personal salvation as the central tenet of our faith, we have failed to teach of a communal, dare I say cosmic salvation that was at the heart of Jesus’ mission and message. And in so doing, we have valued personal gain and comfort and prosperity over a common and shared prosperity for all creation that Jesus demonstrated. But the grieving doesn’t stop there. We must also grieve that our faith, the Christian faith, has also insisted on a kind of atonement theology that teaches that Jesus died to save us from all our sins, and thus we have used Jesus as a scapegoat for our wrongdoings instead of taking responsibility for our actions and working out our own salvation with fear and trembling. We must acknowledge and grieve these misinterpretations and false teachings of our faith. Jesus died that ALL may have life and have it abundantly—not just those who could afford it. Jesus died for a teaching that says we are to share what we have with those who don’t have. Jesus died challenging an economy of extraction—an economy that takes from the poor and gives to the rich. Jesus died so that no one would have to face food insecurity, or live where the soil is contaminated by hog waste, or drink lead contaminated water. Jesus died so that natives to the land wouldn’t see their spiritual ancestral burial grounds disturbed or their water contaminated by a pipeline that benefits the wealthy.
Our theological failure has made a significant contribution to the ecological devastation we face today. This we must grieve; for our grief expressed may be an antidote to our denial; our denial that indeed we are faced with a moral and spiritual crisis when it comes to caring for creation. We must grieve that, as Jim Jarrard said in lectionary group this week, “we have treated our God-given resources as infinite. Our resources are not infinite. We must grieve that not only do we think things are infinite. We must grieve that we think things are ours.” We need to weep over the pain that our planet is experiencing; for our weeping makes real the pain.
The Psalmist writes: “Weeping may linger for the night, but joy [and hope] comes with the morning.” As we name our reality and express our grief, dare we also speak a word of hope as people of faith? Dare we be a people of hope who work for change to save our planet? To change that headline to say, “For Babies Born This Year: A Healthy Planet At Age 22!” A hope that imagines a communal cosmic salvation at the center of the Christian faith and an atonement theology that is redeemed when people of faith see themselves as the new incarnation of God’s love and justice for all created things.
Dare we speak a word of hope in the midst of the ecological devastation that we find ourselves in? Saint Augustine of Hippo said, “Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are Anger and Courage. Anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the same.” Hope is turning our anger into action. Hope is having the courage to act. The church, and we as people of faith must stop romanticizing hope as a feeling. We must dare to not only speak of a hope for our planet but be the radical presence and the new incarnation that hope demands. Such hope demands a cosmic salvation and an atonement theology that stops using Jesus as a scapegoat to save us; and instead we start working out our own ecological salvation with fear and trembling.
Two in three Americans (67 percent) think global warming is happening—yet most Americans (65%) rarely or never discuss it. I have been one of those Americans who believes but rarely discusses. It is my desire to change that. How will I start? I will begin each day by looking at that sacred icon that sits in my kitchen by the sink on the chopping block. And I will use that 8-inch by 11- inch antique soup tureen icon to remind me that caring for creation is a daily act that is my moral and spiritual responsibility. And thus, with new awareness seek to more faithfully live my faith.
At the beginning of this sermon I said I don’t know why, when God finally speaks to Job, God begins with the creation of the world. As I have worked my way through this sermon, I am wondering if God uses Job as an archetype to teach us something about when devastation fall on the innocent. Our planet, like Job, is innocent and blameless. And we, humans, have become the devastation that has fallen on the earth—the sores that ooze from earth’s skin. Our earth, NOW, needs for us to be the healing balm, the soothing suave that tends to those wounds and sores.
And so I ask: What will you choose as your icon to remind you to be a person of hope who works for change to save our planet? May each of us possess enough anger and courage to be called the daughters and sons of hope! Our planet, our God, is asking, begging us, to work for change so that in 2040 our children will be living on a healthy planet.
