C Easter 2 BFC 2019
John 20:19-31
April 28, 2019
I only got to hear him twice but the
best preacher I have ever heard in person was Rev. Dr. James Forbes, the former
Senior Minister at Riverside Cathedral in New York City. I laughed and cried all at the same time when
I heard him preach at General Synod.
When I heard him preach at his home church, it was for this Sunday in
the liturgical year probably over 20 years ago.
He used the “doubting Thomas” story we have in Scripture today, its
proximity to Earth Day, to talk about climate change and remind people that
some folks will have to be brought along, not everybody has seen the light as
we have. Others will need to have not
only evidence but personal experience of touching and seeing to join in the
work of stemming climate change. That
was twenty years ago! Those prophetic
words still hold true.
Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, environmentalist,
educator, and writer for the Christian social justice magazine, Sojourners, believes the only way we might be able to
turn the tide for the will on climate change is actual relationships people
develop with rivers, mountains, and animals.
Out of those relationships, that real touch and see, McKibben believes,
we may grow into the necessary courage to step forward.
Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric
scientist, is a professor of political science at Texas Tech University where
she is the Director of the Climate Science.
She is a self-described evangelical Christian and will be a featured
presenter for a United Church of Christ webcast on Wednesday, May 8, at 11:00
a.m.[1] Professor Hayhoe believes the most important
thing we can do about climate change is talk to people about climate
change. We need an overwhelming movement
that transforms people’s hearts and minds.
It might seem impossible in Billings, a city built on the wealth
provided by fossil fuels, but if we can make that transformation here, imagine
what we can do in public policy throughout our country. We can be the leaders, the movement, those
who finally turn the tide because we are persistent, because we keep talking,
because we refuse to go away. Let us
help the “doubting Thomases” touch and see the reality of climate change.
How?
Aditi Judeja, co-creator of the Resistance Manual, said it is critical
to have conversations about climate change in the everyday places. “The basis of democracy is self-governance,”
Judeja writes, “and that requires citizens to engage with one another.” We begin, Judeja believes, by assuming the
best in other people. We should remember
that others can disagree with us and still be good people. Secondly, we should be well-informed. I have printed out Judeja’s Resistance Manual
so that we could all read up on policy background and read up on the history
behind the issues. But it is to
remember, she warns, that people will rarely come together over the facts. Know our audience, use humor, and learn what
the other person cares about. Finally,
she counsels, stop complaining about it and take ownership for making
conversations happen. Start. Practice.
Stink at it. Keep practicing.[2]
What every person who advises in
getting climate conversations started is not only knowing your audience but
finding out where you connect with the other person, have in common, and what
the other person values. As Katharine
Hayhoe suggests, if they are a skier, talk to them about the shrinking
snowpack. If a birder, how bird
migration patterns are being disrupted.
Tim Guinee, as a volunteer firefighter, always wears his dress uniform
and talks about how climate change creates danger and exhaustion for emergency
service providers. Maybe even more than
what others value, speak to what people most love and how climate change will
most affect the people and things they most love. When Hayhoe spoke to the West Texas Rotary
Club, she used the Four-Way Test the Rotarians use as an ethical guide to talk
to them about climate change.[3]
For
example, locally, you may want to relate that the American Lung Association,
that nefarious liberal institution, has said that Missoula area has been
named the 11th most-polluted city in the United States for annual particle
pollution, and the fifth-most polluted for short-term air quality, driven by
wildfires, driven by climate change.[4]
Our faith was built on ancient
societies that knew no difference between the political and religious. We sang the “Hallelujah Chorus” last week to
end our Easter Day service. If we had hummed
every part of the “Hallelujah Chorus” that used political language, we would have
been doing quite a bit of humming.
There
is something to be said about separating the political from the religious. We do not want one faith seeking to dictate
and destroy others in a richly diverse and pluralistic world. But the end result of separating the
religious from the political is that sometimes we make statements about what is
holy and sacred which end up being nothing but impotent and useless.
Wangari Maathai, biologist, founder of
the Green Belt Movement, and the first African woman to be awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize, remembers well when she was collecting firewood as a child. Her
mother told her never to collect wood from one particular tree. Her mother told her, ““That is a
tree of God. We don’t cut it. We don’t burn it. We don’t use it.” When Christianity moved through that part of
Africa, those trees, one after another, were cut down, as a way of conveying
that another God had come to town. What
they were to find out later was that ancestral wisdom had kept those trees
because they helped stabilize the land, protecting people from landslides. But what we call holy and sacred is often not
enough to provide real life protection and political value. We need a language that is both religious and
political.
New Zealand’s indigenous Maori people
call the Whanganui River holy and sacred but that has very little relevance or
power in the political sphere. Knowing
this, the Maori moved politically to win personhood for this river, giving the
river legal rights and protections.[5] The
spiritual truth of holy and sacred is translated into the political realm. We must also translate. We must take what we know to be holy and
sacred and translate it into political power.
Children’s rights activist, Marian
Wright Edelman, would say, “You can’t be what you can’t see.” You can’t be what you can’t see.
In the political realm, new legislator
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, worked with the journalists at The Intercept, to put
together a video of what, politically, might be. I do not intend this to be an endorsement of
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic Party, or even The Green New Deal, but
I do believe we need to imagine, to dream what we may be. And so I show this video.
(The video is shown)
Now I want to use one of the very
resources Ocasio-Cortez related as important for making the Green New Deal
real. Bill McKibben related in a recent Sojourners article that even the pope
believes our indigenous sisters and brothers, siblings and cousins should be
leading the way in these conversations.
As Sitting Bull said 150 years ago, “Let us put our minds together to
see what kind of future we can make for our children.”[6]
We
need to rely on the ancestral wisdom of indigenous and Native peoples. As I read Native input into these issues,
here are three points important to make this movement deeper and broader. First, we need to remember that our wider
world, the environment acts upon us as well as we act upon it. Christians too often talk about rivers,
mountains, and stones as “stewards” rather than seeing them as our grandfathers
and grandmothers, our siblings and cousins.
We need to use the language of relationship instead of a language that
shows humans atop the environmental hierarchy.
Second,
we also need to recognize, as Crazy Horse said, that “we and the land are
one.” We and the river are one. In Flint, the water was poisoned. After five years, it is still poison. As the river is poison, so we are
poisoned. We and the river are one.
Finally,
one of the strong criticisms made of the Green New Deal by Native scholars and
wisdom givers is that we cannot have only incentives remaining within the same
economy that continues to buy and sell, negotiate and trade in ways and practices
that are extractive and exploitative .
Our economy must radically change.
Bill McKibben has said, “If our theology breaks the planet, it’s a bad
theology.” The same is true for our
economy. Native scholars and
wisdom-givers are asking us to find an alternative to capitalism—an economy
based on greed and self-interest.
Let
us begin these conversations, knowing that the power is within us to do
this. We will do this imperfectly. Who cares?
Seriously.
In
a couple months, I will be traveling with some of the leaders from our church
to go to the national meeting of the United Church of Christ in Milwaukee, from
an Algonquin word meaning “Good, beautiful, and pleasant land.” Every time I have gone to General Synod,
Native wisdom-giver Winona LaDuke presents at a workshop. She
will be the first workshop I sign up for again this year. Winona LaDuke has written,
Power
is not brute force and money; power is in your spirit.
Power
is in your soul. It is what your ancestors, your old people gave you.
Power
is in the earth; it is in your relationship to the earth.[7]
Power is in
your spirit and in your soul. Believe
that and begin these conversations to transform so that we all may know the
power that is in the earth. Amen.
[1] Sign up for that webinar here: https://ucc.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_A85O4LYnTuKUqqOcx55Bjw
[2] Aditi Judeja, “Your next bar conversation is about
climate change. Here’s how to do it,” grist, https://grist.org/guides/umbra-apathy-detox/your-next-bar-conversation-is-about-climate-change-heres-how-to-do-it/.
[3] “3 Tips from the Experts: How to talk about the climate crisis
effective,” The Climate Reality Project,
March 29, 2019, https://www.climaterealityproject.org/blog/3-tips-experts-how-talk-about-climate-crisis-effectively.
[4] David Erickson, “Report: Climate change worsening air
pollution in Missoula, other MT areas,” Billings
Gazette, April 25, 2019.
[5] https://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/587689/river-me/. This is a beautifully done video.
[6] Bill McKibben, “Native Activists Show the Way,” Sojourners, August 2018, https://sojo.net/magazine/august-2018/native-activists-show-way.
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