Preach-In on climate change

On February 10, I participated in the National Preach-In on global warming. You can read my sermon below, or watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNF4g5u9otg

Transfiguration Sunday- February 10, 2013

Gracious Lord, bless the hearing and bless the speaking, that your Word may take root in our hearts and bear fruit in our lives, for the healing of the world you so loved and to the glory of your holy name. Amen.

Well, it’s already the last Sunday before the season of Lent, known as Transfiguration Sunday. Each year in the church, we hear the story of Jesus journey to the mountaintop with his disciples: as he prays, his skin begins to glow and his clothes dazzle. Moses and Elijah are there, talking with Jesus, and Peter says, hey, this is awesome, let’s stay here forever! And in that very moment a cloud overshadows them and a voice from heaven confirms that Jesus is God’s Son. I usually remember that Jesus glows white and that God’s voice comes from above, but in the Gospel of Luke, we have an interesting description I usually forget about: “a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were terrified as they entered the cloud.” And God’s voice comes to them from within that cloud, “This is my Son, the Chosen. Listen to him.” When we think about God showing up, I usually think about God coming in the brightness of Jesus’ face and clothing. But here, God shows up in a disorienting cloud, a cloud that terrifies the disciples, and it is from this place of profound disorientation that God’s word is revealed to them.

I want to speak today about a cloud that descended into my life when I was a college student. I remember very well where I was sitting in the computer lab when I had this horrible realization, an “epiphany,” if you will. You see, I was reading a report about climate change, something that I had heard about but didn’t really know much about. I spent all my time in college in the humanities building, not over studying the sciences. But you know, when I was a kid, I remember learning about this in school as “the run-away greenhouse effect.” As an elementary schooler, I was told that the warming of the planet by human activity was a mere possibility, that if it happened it would happen hundreds of years down the road, and we didn’t need to worry about it. Later, as a teenager, I remember hearing about global warming on the news, but it was always pretty ambivalent. As good journalists do, they always tried to offer two sides to the story, one that claimed that global warming was a real phenomenon, and another side that didn’t “believe” in it.

So, for whatever reason, on that day in the computer lab in college, I happened upon this press release from the intergovernmental panel on climate change or the IPCC. The report stated that the likelihood that climate change was caused by humans was over 90%. The likelihood that climate change was a result of the natural warming of the earth’s system was less than 5%. Then I kept reading. Not only was climate change definitely human-induced, but it was very likely that the ever-increasing burning of fossil fuels would make the seas rise, cause larger storms, and weather extremes would cause more frequent droughts and heat waves. At the end of the document, I saw the signatures of thousands of scientists who had peer-reviewed these studies and written the report. And I realized, scientists aren’t in doubt about whether or not human beings are contributing to the warming of the earth’s atmosphere. They know. It’s certain. Climate change is real, as real as the breath that sustains my life. :Sigh: It’s hard to describe the shock and fear that then began to sink in when I read that report. Because it wasn’t a temporary shock; it entered me into a cloud, a great cloud of fear and place of hopelessness. A cloud had enveloped me with this new reality that our entire planet was in a state of imbalance, and I was afraid. Or I should say, like the disciples, I was terrified.

For the next years, I struggled with accepting the reality of climate change and also not allowing it to sweep me away into despair. When it rained over Christmas break in Michigan, where six months of sustained snow cover were normal for my grandparents’ and parents’ generations, it triggered sadness in me. Grief. I tried not to be overwhelmed by the constant reports in the news of freak storms, droughts, floods, nationally and the world over. But the reality kept swirling back: something was changing over our entire planet, putting the basic balance of life at risk. What was happening? What did this mean for us? What did this mean for life on earth?

       In this cloud of despair, as I struggled with the implications of a warming world for our future, it was at this time, that the Bible, the word of God, came alive for me. I read the passages from the prophets that reflected my sadness about our ecological sin, like this passage from Isaiah: “the earth languishes and withers; the earth lies polluted under its inhabitants.” I lamented with them. In Deuteronomy, I read God’s word through Moses, “I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses.” And I knew then that we had set before us the choice of a world with increasing fossil fuel use, that would mean continued curses, or a world that could sustain life for future generations. …And the continued, “choose life, so that you and your descendants may live.” God didn’t want us all to perish; God wants us to live.

I read the Gospels and realized that Jesus himself thought the world was going to end, too, and he told his followers, when scary and terrifying things were happening, “To stand up and lift your heads, for your redemption is drawing near.” These times were not for fear, but for courage; for certainty that Christ would come and be with us.                             And I read about God giving flesh and breath to the valley of the dry bones, about Jesus calling Lazarus out of the tomb, and all of a sudden the resurrection, God’s ability to bring life out of death, began to have a heartbeat; it became a source of real hope. In the cloud, I heard God in a new way, inviting me to listen to Jesus, and to follow.

        I bet almost everyone in this room knows John 3:16, one of the most often cited Bible verses. Anybody? For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that all who may believe in him may not perish, but have eternal life. There are some people who use this verse to talk about their individual salvation, but this isn’t just about single souls being redeemed. Listen again: For God so loved the world.  The Greek word for world here is cosmos, in other words the universe. For God so loved the cosmos, all that there is, all creatures great and small, the entirety of life as we know it. God so loved this creation that God chose to become flesh and blood in Jesus, God chose to stand with creation, not to judge but to redeem. God loves creation. And the promise of God in the Bible is that God is reconciling all things in Christ. The final vision in the book of Revelation is not that some believers are taken up away to heaven while the earth burns, but that God comes down to dwell among us, and the whole earth is restored: the waters are clean again, the tree of life produces enough fruit so that people don’t hunger, and people from all nations live together in harmony. In the age that is to come, the world is reconciled to God, made whole again.

That world is God’s vision for the future, and the call of the body of Christ, of you and of me, is to work toward that reality. This Sunday is the national Preach-In on global warming, where people of all faith traditions are invited to speak out and witness that God loves creation and God’s people are called to protect it. After the service, you are invited to sign your name to a postcard in the narthex that we will send to President Obama, asking him to uphold his commitment to tackle climate change for the sake of our children. There is more information on the table about how people of faith can honor our own sacred calling to care for the world God so loves. Because

While we live in this meantime, the church is called to act courageously. In our second lesson, the apostle Paul writes, “Since, then, we have such hope, we act in great boldness.” Since we have a vision of the abundant life God desires for the whole world, but live in a reality that does not reflect it, the church is called to act in great boldness to serve and keep the creation God so loved. The church will act in great boldness to defend and assist those who are already suffering because of destabilized weather patterns, through ELCA Disaster Response. The church will act in great boldness to feed those who lose their crops due to drought linked to climate change, as you did when the youth sent money to East Africa through ELCA World Hunger. The church will act in great boldness not to veil its face to the reality of climate change, but will speak out against the forces that corrupt the sacred creation of God, as our Bishops testify in Washington DC. The church will continue to house refugees who have lost their homes due to climate change as we support Compass Housing Alliance and Lutheran Community Services Northwest. The church will continue to affirm that God has chosen to love this creation as we sing every week in the communion liturgy, “heaven and earth are full, full of your glory.” The church will continue to trust in the God who led the people into freedom through a pillar of fire by night and a pillar of disorienting, terrifying, sacred cloud by day. And the church will continue to listen to Jesus, the Chosen One of God, our Lord and Savior, who will be our guiding light and lead us into a renewed heaven and a renewed earth.

May it be so, for the sake of the creation God so loves, into the ages, now and forever. Amen.