B
Epiphany 2 BFC 2018
I Samuel
3:1-10
January
14, 2018
A little over a month ago, Julia
Olson, the Executive Director of Our Children’s Trust and co-counsel on behalf
of 21 youth and young adult plaintiffs argued before the Ninth Circuit Court of
Appeals in San Francisco that the Trump Administration should not be able to
evade a constitutional climate change trial.
She argued that these young plaintiffs should be able to go forward with
trial so that they might provide their historical and scientific evidence.[1]
This began
when these young people filed their constitutional climate lawsuit, called Juliana v. the United States, against
the U.S. government in the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon in
2015. Their complaint asserts that, through the government's affirmative
actions that cause climate change, it has violated the youngest generation's
constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property, as well as failed to
protect essential public trust resources.[2]
Before the youth entered the courthouse, Pennie Opal
Plant, of Yaqui, Choctaw, and Cherokee ancestry, led an indigenous prayer
ceremony to ground the youth and community in this sacred, holy, political
moment. Jaime Butler, 17 year-old
plaintiff from Flagstaff, Arizona, said at the press conference outside the
courthouse, “I hope that the court understands the urgency of the climate
crisis and allows our case to proceed to trial. This case will ultimately
determine the livelihood of my tribe, the Navajo Nation, and all native people
in this country.”[3]
The Ninth Circuit decided to let go through and now is
scheduled for trial the first week of February.
The lawsuit says that our children
and grandchildren have a clear legal right to a much better world than they are
going to get. If it is successful, the lawsuit will require profound changes in
United States policies about climate change.
This is not a frivolous lawsuit. The judge who will be hearing the case
refused the government's attempt to have it dismissed. She wrote, "Exercising
my 'reasoned judgment,' I have no doubt that the right to a climate system
capable of sustaining human life is fundamental to a free and ordered
society."[4]
As I
shared last week, the United Church of Christ Council for Climate Justice has
asked us to preach on climate justice during this month as a prelude to this
trial, in solidarity with these young people.
In our Biblical story today, the
prophet Samuel is the dream of his mother, Hannah. Hannah prays to God for a child, even though
her husband reminds her that he does not see her value in child-bearing. It is no matter. She prays continually. She pledges her child to work and live in the
temple at Shiloh. And in the birth of
Samuel, Hannah sings a song that is believed to be the model for New Testament
Mary and her song. Now the young boy
Samuel hears the voice of God calling to him as he sleeps.
The priest Eli could not provide boundaries for his
own children. They stole from the
portions allotted to them as the priest’s family and they sexually assaulted
the servant girls who attended just outside the Shiloh temple. Their hearts were not for the people of the
land but for how they could get their own needs and desire met regardless of
the cost. And God said to Eli that their
time was up, they would not be allowed to continue the priestly line merely because
they shared the same genetic code as Eli.
But this young boy, Samuel, not related to Eli, but
growing in stature and trustworthiness before the Living God, Eli was to mentor
Samuel and his service. For it was Eli
who helped Samuel discern that this was the Holy of Holies calling out his
name. In one of the most profound
speeches in Scripture, the now grown prophet Samuel, in keeping with the words
of his strong mother, in keeping with the mentorship of Eli, in keeping with
the story of the relationship of God with the people, tells the nation what
shall happen if they want a king rather than a leader to solve all their
problems. Breaking the central code of
the covenant, the king will take and will take and will take.
Campus Minister at the University of North Alabama,
Callie Plunket-Brewton, writes it this way,
The tendency of the powerful to take advantage of the
vulnerable is a chief concern of Samuel. When the people cry out for a king in
1 Samuel 8, Samuel warns them against kings, who seek after their own good more
than the collective good of their people. A king "will take the best"
from his people and use it for his own betterment (1 Samuel 8:11-18). The ideal
ruler of the people rules seeks only the good of the people and reflects the
concern of YHWH for the poor and powerless.[5]
As I hope you all know by now, my hope
and prayer and dream for this church is that we might become a strongly
intergenerational church. For I believe
each age offers something to us that is lost if a community does not find a way
to include them. It is much harder for
this to be so than it was in a former age because the children many of us
parented are now off on their own because they got the clear message that this
was for us or because they live in Seattle, Denver, or some far flung country
in West Africa. We will have to depend
on other people to mentor them and probably mentor our grandchildren. And we have before us children and
grandchildren who are not part of our genetic code. They so desperately need to hear us singing
Hannah and Mary’s song and finding a way to show them around the temple so that
they can rightfully take their place as prophets in our midst. What we are learning from these 21 young
people, is that the children and grandchildren who are not our own but require
our mentoring may very well be the ones who save us all. They bring an energy and idealism that is
contagious. How will that energy and
idealism be mentored into being by us?
Right now our church seems to be
engaged in a friendly financial tug of war with Columbus Congregational
Community Church in a new era of hope for Camp Mimanagish. I proudly reported to Tracy that we had
raised about $8500 as of last week. She
smiled, patted me on the hand, and shared that Columbus had raised $9000. Drat!
This is fantastic for Camp Mimanagish.
What a wonderful thing we are doing, as we have always done, for our
historical legacy in the Montana-Northern Wyoming Conference.
But here’s the thing. Way before I arrived here I heard of Camp
Mimanagish as a special, spiritual, holy place.
We talk about it as “our church camp” as a means to an end but not an
end in and of itself. For many of you
have heard me say that when I did some research for the Senior High Camp this
past summer, I learned that the lower Boulder waters around Camp Mimanagish are
considered polluted by the EPA because of the abandoned mines that feed into
it. So what do we know of the air
quality surrounding the camp from the forest fires that have ravaged the
West? Or the soil quality connected to
those waters? Is Camp Mimanagish holy
because it is ours or because God has made it so?
Just a couple years ago, our youth returned from a
Blue Theology delegation to California where they learned about caring for
their environment and climate change.
How have we mentored them into extending that to the special, spiritual,
holy place which is Camp Mimanagish? Or
when? How have we mentored into words
and action of prophetic justice in Billings or the Yellowstone River?
Kiran and Melanie Oommen were an early inspiration for many
people of faith in supporting the youth plaintiffs. Kiran is one of the 21
youth bringing the lawsuit, and he is the son of Melanie, an ordained minister
in the United Church of Christ. Rev. Oommen asks, “What does it look like to
live hope when the very fate of our planet is at stake?”[6]
Carl Zimring, in his book, Clean and White: A History of
Environmental Racism in the United States, devotes an entire chapter to
show that Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., even though he would not have known
a term as environmental racism way back in 1968, helped plant the seeds for its
understanding. Zimring notes that it was
the African-American sanitation workers that King came to support just before
his assassination who were given the most environmentally dangerous tasks that
could poison or injure them. And then it
was the United Church of Christ, under the leadership of Rev. Leon White, Rev.
Benjamin Chavis, and Rev. Bernice Powell-Jackson and the United Church of
Christ Commission for Racial Justice who led the way toward calling out
environmental racism and how the most toxic and poisonous and now
climate-vulnerable are found among those who are most marginalized and kept
from political power.[7] That might be a good history lesson to learn
for our current president and how Western imperialism has destroyed the
livelihoods of certain nations over centuries and made climate disasters in
their countries even greater tragedies.
I still stew over the fact that Bill Clinton systematically destroyed
Haiti’s indigenous food supply which made earthquake and hurricane disasters
exponentially worse. My prayer is that
our children and youth will not only learn Dr. King’s legacy in speaking truth
to power in situations like this but also how our beloved United Church of
Christ prophetically called forward a movement against environmental
racism. On this Sunday, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King,
Jr. Sunday, how do we mentor them into this knowledge, wisdom, and courage?
Scripture shares in a poetic way of what is to
befall the young Samuel. He continues to
show that his word is trusted, that he will speak truth to power in courage and
righteousness. And it is written of him,
that God did not allow any of his words to fall to the ground.
So it is that these 21 young people now come before
our nation with trustworthy words. Not
only must we join them, but we must mentor the children and young people from
our church from a time when the word of the Living God is rare into a time when
their love of God’s good earth and their love of justice is spoken freely and
rightly from their lips. We have spent
too long pretending that this is “our” community and “our” land and “our”
church, not recognizing that we have been given a trust meant for all.
Sixteen-year-old plaintiff Victoria Barrett said,
“People label our generation as dreamers, but hope is not the only tool we
have. If anything, I’m going to use my positive energy to show my government
that I won’t let my world stop for them. WE won’t let our world stop for them.
Our generation will continue to be a force for the world.”[8] May we mentor our young people into being,
let the Samuels of the world speak, so that none of their words fall to the
ground. Amen.
[1]
“Groundbreaking Constitutional Climate Lawsuit Heard Today by Ninth Circuit
Court of Appeals,” Press Release from Our
Children’s Trust and Earth Guardians, December 11, 2017.
[2]
Peter Sawtell, “Our Children’s Trust,” Reflections
Newsletter, January 10, 2018.
[3]
“Groundbreaking,” Press Release.
[4]
Peter Sawtell, “Our Children’s”
[5]
Callie Plunket-Brewton, “Commentary on 1 Samuel 3: 1-10,” Working Preacher, January 15, 2012.
http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1185.
[7]
Brooks Berndt, “How Martin Luther King, Jr. Connects to Environmental Justice:
Past and Present,” January 10, 2018, The
Pollinator, http://www.ucc.org/pollinator_how_martin_luther_king_jr_connects_to_environmental_justice_past_and_present.;
“A Movement Is Born: Environmental Justice and the UCC,” United Church of
Christ, http://www.ucc.org/a_movement_is_born_environmental_justice_and_the_ucc.
[8]
Rev. Melanie Oommen, “God’s Abiding Presence in the Prophetic Action of 21
Young People,” May 13, 2016, http://www.ucc.org/god_s_abiding_presence_in_the_prophetic_action_21_young_people.
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