Third Sunday after Epiphany, "Creation saves the day"

B Epiphany 3 BFC 2018

Job 12:7-10; Jonah 1:4-5, 14-17

January 21, 2018

          You may remember that this past fall I preached a “Responses to the Religious Right” sermon series.  In that series, I suggested that we should engage friends and relatives from the religious right with short, strong statements that defined our most strongly held convictions, statements that could also open up to a deeper, wider complexity and understanding.  For example, I used, “Love God.  Love neighbor.”  Jesus summarized The Law or the Ten Commandments this way.   It is simple.  It orients us in the universe.  It explains away so much of the hate, judgment, and shame that has been attached like a barnacle to the bottom of the religious food chain.  “Yeah, I hear what you’re saying about immigrants and refugees, the LGBTQ community, and people not like you.  But love God, love neighbor.  No. Love God.  Love neighbor.  Jesus said that.  Sooooo . . .”  In ongoing conversation with someone after worship that day, I shared what I regularly offer to my friends from the Religious Right who believe that I am a wayward child in need of some good discipline. 

          I say, “Jesus said that the only sign I will give this evil and adulterous generation is the sign of Jonah.  And Jonah is about sending a self-righteous prophet to the very people he considered his enemies, to save them.  He objects to God’s love so vast.  He runs away from a love so wide.  He repents.  But then when God actually saves his repentant enemies, he shows himself to be angry again at a God who would have a love that provides arbitrary kindness and mercy.  So dear religious right friend, when I hear you talk about your morality and the need to draw boundaries, build walls, short sheet beds, and have smaller tables, you sound much like Jonah and not the God who saved Jonah’s enemies.  And the really cool, crazy thing about this God?  God loves Jonah all the way to the end.  So you, friend of mine, regardless of judgment, seem to be embraced by this vast, wide, and broad love of God too.” 

          I was spitballing with a clergy colleague about how we might raise money for our conference church camp, Camp Mimanagish, and I said, “Hey, I’ve written this Jonah play that the youth of our conference could go from church to church performing and raising money for Camp Mimanagish.”  She seemed very excited about the prospect.  I have yet to hear back.  Sometimes, I think I have a warped and overly ambitious perspective about what churches can do.  

          Why would I think a play about Jonah make the perfect fundraiser for Camp Mimanagish?   Because the book of Jonah is a story about creation saving the day, as opposed to the activity of the human prophet.  God uses creation to provide grace and mercy, to teach the moral of the story.  The human prophet, the expected vehicle and messenger of God, runs away, is caught sleeping on the job, and is opposed to the saving mercy and grace of God. 

          Today is Ecumenical Sunday.  One of the ancient symbols for the ecumenical Christian Church was the boat on the sea, presumably referencing the story of Noah and the ark in Hebrew Scripture, Jesus with the disciples on the sea in the gospels.  At times of great persecution against Christianity, the boat could be used to provide a hidden symbol of the faith as the mast in most depictions was in the form of a cross.  In the story of Jonah and the big fish, salvation, however, is not found on the boat.  God uses those parts of creation which were thought to be outside divine mercy and care.  The sea, mythologically the place outside God’s created order, the place of primordial chaos, stirs up the boat at God’s bidding and moves the boat crew to throw Jonah overboard.  The sea monster, the Leviathan, the creature which God opposes and defeats throughout Scripture, is used by God to deliver Jonah to the great city of Nineveh.  And finally, the sun, the wind, the worm, and the plant, used by God as a metaphor for divine judgment and mercy, are all about how God is active and working and seeking to extend the good and the very good to all of creation. 

          What we have learned is that the sign of Jonah has become a minority tradition within the Judeo-Christian myth.  Even some of the best theologians in that majority tradition reference creation as an end to a means, as a resource only valuable as to how humanity may be supported or sustained by it.  I believe we need to own that poor theology within our tradition and bend toward the Native tradition and mythology, a tradition and mythology embodied by St. Francis of Assisi who understood all of creation as an end unto itself, as his own brother, sister, sibling, or cousin.  We are all relatives.  And the only sign this evil and adulterous generation shall receive is the sign of Jonah.  God’s love is more vast, wider, and broader than humankind has imagined.  The sea, the sea monster, the sun, the wind, the worm, and the plant are alive with God’s judgment, grace, and mercy. 

          As people of faith, creation calls us to repentance as creation helped Jonah to do.  Many of you already do that conscientiously with your personal lives, live it through the public work and advocacy you do through your jobs and vocations, and make it real through the ways you establish relationships through your interactions with God’s good earth.  My recommendation is that we find a way to make it real through committed consensus within our church to become earth protectors.  Within the United Church of Christ, one of the ways we could do that is by becoming a Creation Justice church. 

We become a Creation Justice church, as the commercials always say, in six easy steps.  First, we create or designate a group which will be our driving force, a sort of a green team.  Because I know the UCC Minister for Environmental Justice, Brooks Berndt, he seems to like me and I’ve done him a favor, we could even invite Brooks out to speak to our community and help us get started.  Second, we discern and implement ways to “go green.”  We do that through our regular education, theology, and worship.  We do that through our regular institutional life and practice.  We ask ourselves how we do this through our everyday life as a congregation and how we use our building and land to be in loving and just relationship with this very good creation.  We “go green” through circles of awareness and advocacy and connecting with the broader movement—like supporting the 21 young people who are suing the federal government. 

The third step is to draft a Creation Justice covenant.  Faith people are intentional people.  We find ways to hold ourselves accountable, hold each other accountable, and from that covenant comes a grit and determination to make our wider world accountable for God’s vast, wide, and broad love.  The fourth step toward becoming a Creation Justice Church is adopting the covenant and becoming that Creation Justice Church.  Step 5 is submitting our application to the national United Church of Christ and, then, finally, for step 6, we keep on, keeping on and evaluate our progress.[1]  I think some of being a Creation Justice Church is already a part of our DNA so this seems like a no-brainer.  But I think it is time for what is part of our DNA to become a movement we use to transform all of Billings, Yellowstone County, and the wider world. 

As you all can probably imagine, I have ideas, cool and rockin’ ideas, by which we make being a Creation Justice Church a reality.  With all the incredible people in this church who already do so much practice and work around care for the earth and climate change, we could move this church from cool and rockin’ ideas to a cool and rockin’ place and movement. 

The story of Jonah reminds us that God’s love and reach is far beyond what God’s self-righteous messengers often believe.  What would it mean to have a church that set out to make that real in the world, in a world with seas, sea monsters, sunlight, wind, worms, and plants?  What would it mean to have a people who not only did that individually, but collectively and intentionally, decided they would become the forum and leader to transform practice and policy so that our children and grandchildren might not experience the absolutely worst, cataclysmic effects of climate change.  A church like that, a place like that, might be one of our few hopes to reverse or stem the most certain changes coming.   We pray then that God’s grace and mercy is far greater than we imagined as we join hands with God in covenant found in the river, buffalo, sunlight, wind, worms, bitterroot, and sunflower that grows tall and provides shade to let us know in relationship that we are all relatives.  Amen. 

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[1] More detail is found here:  http://www.ucc.org/how_it_works_becoming_a_creation_justice_church.

Second Sunday after Epiphany, "Mentoring prophets"

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. 

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[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.

[6] “The Story of a Mother and Her Son,” www.eachgeneration.org. 

[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.