Sermon, Second Sunday of Easter, "Necessary doubt and doubt that does violence"

 

C Easter 2 Pilg 2022

John 20:19-31

April 24, 2022

           The best preacher I have ever heard in person was Rev. Dr. James Forbes. When I heard him preach at the national meeting of the United Church of Christ General Synod at Kansas City in 2001, I laughed and cried all at the same time.  Moved . . . I was.  When I heard him preach at his home church, Riverside Cathedral in New York City, it was for this Sunday in the liturgical year probably close to 30 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 many had.  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 over 30 years ago!

           We come from a faith tradition that recognizes doubt as an important part of an examined life.  We ask critical questions of ourselves.  We necessarily challenge authority and power with doubts and questions.  The Risen Christ even allows doubting Thomas to examine his wounds so that he can make his own proclamation of the resurrection.

           But there is another form of doubt that seeks to unseat confidence of the examined life in favor of the unexamined miraculous, the uncritical claims to power, and for keeping a story being revealed to us under wraps.  Too often that kind of doubt is in favor of a romantic past.  This doubt is about flooding the market with dollars and influence to allow the powerful to continue along a path that harms, destroys, and does violence.  Advertisements, paid endorsements and movements, all show up to make us believe that the movement of the divine comes from the devil.

           Last year, several members of the congregation and I came together a movie inspired by Naomi Oreskes’ book, Merchants of Doubt.  The basic premise of the movie is that the fossil fuel industry, borrowing from the wisdom and leadership of the tobacco industry, intentionally created and is creating doubt about climate change in the wider populace.  Even with 99% of climate scientists agreeing that climate change is real and that human activity is the driver of climate change, much of the United States’ population has not bought in.  Much like the way the tobacco industry made us doubt that cigarettes or second-hand smoke were harmful to human health for so long, doubt about climate change has made it almost impossible for us to get the necessary oomph necessary for the sweeping and transformative change we need.

           The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, has been very conservative about the impacts of climate change and how far along we are.  But now in this latest report, I read, “any further delay in concerted anticipatory global action on adaptation and mitigation will miss a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all."  As a Christian pastor, when I read such things, I believe I am obligated to once again put this before you . . . to say that there are direct and simple ways to work, to say that you are not to blame.   But we need to wax up our anger and courage as people of faith.  To doubt and challenge doubt.  To say that there are different and diverse ways of knowing each of us can bring to this urgent love we must now display for our home.

           Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org and now the senior citizens climate group Th!rd Act[1], 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 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 Climate Science.  She is a self-described evangelical Christian.  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.  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.  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 in them, discerning 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.  One of friends in Billings, Montana, related how her work fighting fires in the West, used to be a seasonal job.  It is no longer.  And the risk of losing one’s life has become even greater.

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, we may have heard about the vast amount of plastics being dumped in the oceans.  But we may want to talk about how, locally, a study done five years ago, "estimates 22 million pounds of plastic debris enters the Great Lakes from the U.S. and Canada each year!"[4]  

If the thriving of our ecosystem is not a concern, then maybe we can relate what was just reported in March of this year.  Plastices have so inundated our lives, that microplastics have now been found in human blood, detected in almost 80% of the people tested.  Microplastics are known to cause damage to human cells.[5] 

And as a recent article in Popular Science magazine pointed out, “Plastic production is a fossil fuel problem.”[6]  And according to the International Energy Agency, plastics, which are made from fossil fuels, are set to drive nearly half of oil demand growth by midcentury.[7]

As people of faith, we can care for our place, our own Lake Michigan ecosystem by bringing our doubts, our critical eye, our movement toward something more life-giving by being critical of the fossil fuel industry and by weaning our investment in it.

Or, as this congregation has been so faithful in supporting relief for Ukraine, we could turn our continued work as peacemakers by recognizing that wars are fought on blood and treasure. 

 

Putin can only fund his war because 40% of his economy is floated by fossil fuel exports.  He also controls the chokepoint of natural gas to western Europe.  Peace may require a rapid and massive scale-up of renewable energy—especially in the United States and Europe, as German is implementing.  Such actions, said Bill McKibben, “dramatically reduces the power of autocrats, dictators, and thugs."  With guidance from Patriarch Batholomew, “the Green Patriarch," who strongly condemned the Russian attack, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine could emerge as an advocate for God’s creation and renewable energy as a sign of Ukrainian resilience, independence, and national pride.[8]

 

            Meanwhile, corporate has tried to make us believe either that climate change is not happening, that it won’t be that bad, that human activity is not to blame for it, or that we, personally, are the ones responsible.  They cast doubt on their responsibility and cast blame on us . . . as individuals.

           This casting blame on us has been done through repeated corporate advertising.  The word “litterbug” was coined by the corporate industry.  “Carbon offset” was coined by corporate.  All to make us believe that we are the ones responsible and to blame and to take away our hope that we can ever measure up to meet the challenge.  When what we really need is to bring our critical eye, our diverse ways of knowing, and our imagination for a future that does not depend on fossil fuels.  Even the International Monetary Fund, long seen as a conservative organization, detailed that the fossil fuel industry receives 11 million dollars a minute in subsidies to keep its crumbling infrastructure afloat.[9]  But imagine . . . just imagine . . . if that kind of money was directed toward renewable and sustainable energy.

           You can’t be what you can’t see.  Children’s rights activist, the late Marian Wright Edelman, would say, “You can’t be what you can’t see.”

           What Christian writers have done for centuries, advocating for an examined life, is to not only use their critical eye, and their diverse ways of knowing, but also use our imaginations for what a future might look like if we could choose walk a path that is very different from a harmful, destructive, and violent status quo.  As in the book of Revelation, the writer asked critical questions of a power that seems to be hell-bent on destruction.  And then they ask, what would water look like, flowing crystal clear from the throne of God?  In our mind’s eye, how can we imagine it.  And so, to end, I want to share one of the videos imagined by journalists at The Intercept.   

           (The video is shown) “Message from the Future II:  The Years of Repair,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2m8YACFJlMg

Let us begin these conversations, knowing that the power is within us to do this.  We will do this imperfectly.  Who cares?  Seriously. 

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.[10]

 

Power is in your spirit and in your soul.  Have the strength of our faith to doubt and ask the critical questions—feel the actual wounds of Christ, the suffering that is already happening on God’s good earth.  Have the strength of our faith to not let the doubts of those who are invested in an unexamined status quo steer us away from a faithful future.  Believe that and begin these diverse conversations and diverse actions to transform so that we all may know the power that is in the earth.  Amen. 

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[1] Get started now!  www.thirdact.org

[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] Susan Galowicz, “Researchers study plastic pollution in Great Lakes,” Rochester Institute of Technology, December 19, 2016, https://www.rit.edu/news/researchers-study-plastic-pollution-great-lakes.

[5] Damian Carrington, “Microplastics found in human blood for the first time,” The Guardian, March 24, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/mar/24/microplastics-found-in-human-blood-for-first-time

[6][6][6][6] Erica Cirino, “Plastic production is a fossil fuel problem,” Popular Science, October 14, 2021, https://www.popsci.com/environment/fossil-fuel-plastic-production-links/  

[7] IEA (2018), The Future of Petrochemicals, IEA, Paris https://www.iea.org/reports/the-future-of-petrochemicals.

[8] Rose Marie Berger, “’War Is A Great Evil,’” Sojourners, May, Vol 51, No. 5, 2022, p. 16.

[9] Damian Carrington, “Fossil fuel industry gets subsidies of $11m a minute, IMF finds,” The Guardian, October 6, 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/06/fossil-fuel-industry-subsidies-of-11m-dollars-a-minute-imf-finds

[10] Winona LaDuke, https://sacredecology.com/honor-the-earth/

 

Book Report: Dan Egan, The Death and Life of the Great Lakes

I bought this book at my local, independent bookstore  (shout out to Forever Books in St. Joseph) because, I thought, if I am going to drink from and frolic around Lake Michigan, it was time I learned something about it.  Dan Egan states the case well and makes the reader aware just how high the stakes are.

97 percent of the globe's water is saltwater.  Of the 3 percent or so that is freshwater, most is locked up in the polar ice caps or trapped so far underground it is inaccessible.  And of the sliver left over that exists at surface freshwater readily available for human use, about 20 percent of that--one out of every five gallons available on the planet--can be found in the Great Lakes.  p. xiii

Egan does an impressive job of sharing the history of the Great Lakes from the time the colonialists arrived on Turtle Island to the present.  He shares how the want for greater trade and commerce led to substantive, human-made geographical changes in the Great Lakes so that ships could make their way from all over the globe, into the Atlantic Ocean and then further south into these surface freshwater resources.  

Here is what led to one of the major threats to the Great Lakes.  As these ships made their way, the ballast water they had taken on to balance their ships while at home port, would then be dumped in the Great Lakes.  A diverse, biological bonanza was dumped into an ecosystem that had developed an ecological harmony and balance over thousands of years.  In particular, zebra and quagga mussels threatened to kill the lakes with the way they destroyed ecosystem infrastructure without any real predators.  

Though the Clean Water Act had brought the Great Lakes back from filth, fire (remember when Lake Erie was set on fire) death, and extinction, the exceptions for ballast water had left the door open for these intruders.  Efforts to stem this invasion have been half-hearted and lacked enforcement.  Stewards of the Great Lakes have also been concerned about advancing carp populations and how they might wipe out lake life and take with them the Native whitefish, trout, and walleye that were staple fish which used to be so plentiful in the Great Lakes.  

One of the other major contributors to lake pollution and die-off has been agricultural run-off.  Those of you who know me must wonder if all I do is blame our food system for any number of troubles in the world.  Climate change, immigration, and now the death of the Great Lakes!  C'mon, MIke!  Find a new story!

We continue to use fertilizers and pesticides at alarming rates which then run off into our water systems.  I'm not sure we can have any other system but chemical agriculture as long as capitalism is what we turn to deliver goods and services.  Capitalism requires more and more and more--consuming beyond what it means to be engorged.  Farmers look for higher yields and are blitzed with advertising to go bigger, grow more, and extract what they can.  

Egan ends his book with hope for the courageous decisions necessary to reverse the death-giving we give and allow for in the Great Lakes.  He is not romantic without a critical analysis for multivalent solutions needed to meet these challenges.  Yes, courageous decisions will need to be made but some of the native fish within the Great Lakes have already made some evolutionary changes to begin thriving.  Science may contribute a way to end carp reproduction and therefore stem the threat they pose.  

Threaded throughout his book are personal stories each person (scientist, fisherfolk, professor) has in their history of enjoying the relationship they had fishing or swimming or just being in relationship with their family at the Great Lakes.  Not unlike Bill McKibben, who believes we must develop relationships with the particular to really build our muscle for climate change, Egan believes the will for balance and health in the ecosystem of the Great Lakes must be found with those relationships.  He ends his book with a photo of his son having caught his first fish.  

I wish Egan's book was required reading for every local church found along the Great Lakes.  We need people with that relationship to incorporate this critical analysis into their love relationship with a resource that will become more and more necessary as climate change becomes more severe.  We should also remember, as Nick Estes reminded me, when the day comes that climate change comes close to the point of no return, we must not blame Mother Earth.  We are sewing violence into Mother Earth with our economic systems (like food) every day.  I pray that we are not too late to reap only violence.

Second Sunday of Lent, Psalm Series, "Created to be powerful, capable, connected," March 8, 2020

A Lent 2 Psalm 8 BFC 2020

Psalm 8

March 8, 2020

          A little under six years ago, I gave my candidating sermon at Billings First Congregational Church.  In that sermon, I spoke of human-induced climate disruption and quoted environmental activist and Harvard Divinity school graduate, Tim DeChristopher who asked for hard deeds.  I quoted Nobel Peace Prize winner, Wangari Maathai who said, there come times when a necessary change of consciousness is called for and she said, “That time is now.”  It must seem crazy that I would get up in front of a congregation, in a city built by fossil fuels, and preach what we call a “trial sermon” to ask you all to join me in offsetting human caused climate disruption. 

          Trial sermon.  “Take the accused and throw him in the trough of justice!  If he be a witch, he will float on polluted waters.”[1]  Luckily, all you did as a congregation was make me wait outside with my family as you voted.  No troughs of justice.  Whew.

          But I wanted to know.  Could we be courageous together?  I didn’t want to pretend I was this kind and sweet feller from Illinois only for you to realize, “Yeah, he’s kind of a bastard,” a year into my ministry in Billings.  Seriously, I wanted to find a congregation that would join hands with me to draw a line in the sand and say, “This is not who God created us to be.  This is not who we were born to be, to set the world on fire and watch it burn, to destroy and divide in our diversity rather than celebrate it.  And I didn’t want to preach a sermon that made it easy to like me only for you to find out what a bastard I can be.”  Hard deeds.  The time is now. 

          You may say different but I thought the recent movement to place the Welcoming Diversity Ordinance was glorious.  How amazing is it to be part of so many courageous people who stepped forward to represent the beautiful tapestry of Billings, Montana.  In that moment, I became somewhat of a fanboy about Billings, Montana.  I looked around at all these beautifully diverse people and, contrary to what you hear colloquially, Billings is and is becoming this wonderfully colorful, gritty, celebratory people.  I find myself sneering about other cities in Montana who think they are better.  Even with friends in each city, I have prejudices about the people who live there.  Is that healthy?  Am I just getting grouchy in my old age?  Or is Billings just becoming that glorious—as Native people rise, all the women who represent me at City Council or in the legislature seem to be a force of nature, and the 406 Pride in Billings throws the best parades with the best Grand Marshalls?  This is Billings.  And it’s darn glorious.  Right?  Not only is there bone beginning to connect to bone here but spiritual muscle is straining and growing  and exerting itself in very real ways. 

          I share all this remembering that last week I began my sermon referencing about every person I have talked to over the last month sharing with me just how tired they are, how exhausted they are, how exhausted I am.  I want you to hear that I think that exhaustion is intentional.  We are being fed a steady diet of narratives to batter us, wear us down, to keep us off balance in fear, and to make us believe we are powerless.  So last week I wanted you to make plans to be resilient—to make plans to plant yourself near resources that feed you, to keep your heart pliable and tender, and to share your gifts at the right time remembering your interconnection with all of creation. 

          Today I want to go a step further with this passage I have preached from twice before.  In my trial sermon, the one where I was found not to be a witch (so they say), I preached about our created-to-be connection with Creator’s universe.  In the second sermon, I spoke of the balance the Jewish creation stories put before us—we are created both out of the humus, the fertile soil, literally Children of the Earth, as a humble people full of potential, and created to be a little less than the Divine Artist, crowned with glory and honor.  All that stuff about original sin is just so much fertile topsoil.  Seriously.  This is what the Jewish creation story says and what Psalm 8 says.  

Today I want to emphasize that second statement made by the Jewish creation stories and repeated by Psalm 8.  We are capable.  We are powerful. 

          Recent research by sociologist, Nicholas Christakis, a professor at Yale University, says that we are wired for goodness.  “We come to social goodness as naturally as our more bloody inclinations.”[2]  It is not true, Christakis believes, that we are born for cruelty, selfishness, and fearful of our own diversity.  There is great proof that in our very social DNA is written cooperation, friendship, love, and teaching.  Below the surface, these are tectonic forces we are choosing again and again.  On the whole, we are kind to strangers, we cooperate with one another, and we teach each other things.  We do it, in contrast to much of the animal world, across genetically unrelated individuals.  It is encoded within us to learn from each other, to imitate one another.  Christakis does not discount that each age comes with its horrors of what humankind does to one another and to this good earth.  But he wants us to be aware that we are not naturally just a bloodthirsty, colonialist, and violent lot.[3]  We have built into us what Christakis references as a great social suite that shows our capacity and capability for amazing social goodness.

          We need to be reminded of that great capacity and capability as we turn to the challenges that face us.  Again, at the Welcoming Diversity Ordinance conversation at City Council I was just reminded how intersectional, interconnected all of those challenges are by a speaker who did not support the WDO and said that the City Council should invest their time and dollars in the things that made Billings great as a city—our history in fossil fuel extraction economies which threatens to destroy all of us.[4]  I thought to myself how this gentleman’s speech reflected a weird kind of indigenous wisdom which knows the despoiling of the earth as the first injustice.  For that history not only reflects our present despoiling of the land but it also is a reminder of the historic racism perpetuated against Native people for profit, power, and to perpetuate the lie that white folk are somehow chosen, through manifest destiny, to take as they see fit—all three-power, profit, and to take as we see fit-eerily similar to the temptations of Jesus in the wilderness.  Now this gentleman was confirming that the first injustice also required the dehumanization of the LGBTQ+ community. 

So let’s say it straight out.  We were not born broken with the need to extract and exploit and profit at another’s expense to be human.  This violence does not make us human.  This is a lie.  And I say to you, sisters and brothers, siblings and cousins, we have the capacity and we are capable.  It is God-given.  It is in us. 

          I say this but I also know the reality is grim.  Since that candidating sermon almost six years ago, our historical usage of extractive economies, our unwillingness to see ourselves as made of land and water, is actively leading to cataclysmic results.  The insanely warm winter we are having in Billings and the Corona virus pandemic are indicators.  The World Heath Organization shares that climate change will affect infectious disease occurrence.[5]  In August 2019, Greenland lost 11 billion tons of surface ice to the ocean in one day.  That is the equivalent to 4.4 million Olympic size swimming pools.[6] 

          Our capacity and capability does need to be measured by a humility to remember our connection.  It was Mark Twain who said of glaciers,

A [person] who keeps company with glaciers comes to feel tolerably insignificant by and by.  The Alps and the glaciers together are able to take every bit of conceit out of a [person] and reduce [their] self-importance to zero if [they] will only remain within the influence of their sublime presence long enough to give it a fair and reasonable chance to do its work.[7]

And you may know better than me that the snow in Glacier National Park is now on the ground an average of thirty days fewer than it used to be, meaning that trees grow earlier in the season, grow larger, and use up more water.  Thus, the size of forest fires grows.  To compound this great loss, Dr. Dan Fagre, the United States Geological Survey’s research ecologist and director of the Climate Change in Mountain Ecosystems Project says of the glacier ice at Glacier National Park, “Ice is not just melting, it is collapsing.”[8]

            Once again, the intersectional nature of justice issues has almost all climate action groups centering the voices of indigenous people around the globe.  Noam Chomsky, the celebrated, almost 90 year-old linguistic professor, peace activist, and social critic said back in 2016 that indigenous people are taking the lead in so may struggles to try to save us all.  Even back then he related the great stands indigenous people were taking at threat to their own safety from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.  “The commons is under attack,” Chomsky said, there are those who are trying to take the global environment away and sell it off to the highest bidder.[9]  Indigenous people around the world  are making courageous stands to save us.  Chomsky saw that in 2016 with a struggle in Canada which has been heightened all the more by the courageous stands taken by the Wetʼsuwetʼen First Nations people.[10]

            Not surprisingly and sadly, at Standing Rock, all the predictions the Native elders made about what would happen with the pipeline have come to fruition.  Nick Estes, writer of the great book, Our History Is Our Future:  Standing Rock versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long History of Indigenous Resistance  shared that the leaders of the protest were often from the Two Spirit community.   All intersectional.  All tied together.  All connected. 

Stan Rushworth, a Cherokee Elder, and teacher shared that the Elders he invites into his classroom have known what is happening and spend hours speaking to his classes about the recognizable signs.  When asked by the class what they can do, the Elders almost always respond by reminding the students of their capability and capacity.  “What can we do?” Arapaho Elder Henry Tyler was asked.  He would take a finger and point to his head, say nothing in a long pause, and then answer, “Use this,” and smile.[11]

            As our creation stories teach us, we are called to be the shadows of the divine in the world.   Psalm 8, that ancient hymn, remembers these great Jewish creation stories that tell us we are a little less than God or the angels, people of great capacity, capability--and what I know of this incredible congregation, people of great courage.   Think I’m kidding?  When news broke on Facebook of someone with a gun at our church, some feared it was because of our courageous stands in the community.  Who was our most ardent defender?  It was Adrian Jawort, a profound and wise Two Spirit Native writer, who was asked to speak at our church last year for Our Whole Lives Sunday and spoke at the Climate Strike in September.  He spoke in deep and loving ways about how we had embraced him. 

There are some ways that Billings was a great city already.  But what is happening now is that Billings is changing in such profound ways that opponents of the WDO have to ship pastors in from Laurel to tell us how we should run things in our fair city.  People from the LGBTQ community led us out.  Who were the prolific city leader allies who did the blue-collar work?  Who brought up the WDO?  Penny Ronning.  Who helped to organize from the faith community?  Lisa Harmon.  Who organized the speakers?  Carmelita Dominguez and Kiely Lammers.   And this congregation already knows about what great leadership we have in the Montana legislature with Margie MacDonald and Emma Kerr Carpenter.  And, of course, many of us have first-hand knowledge of the rising of the Native community in Billings.

But the challenge is before us.  For our own salvation, Billings must become more than its fossil fuel history to be crowned in glory and honor.  In a month, the week around Earth Day is being hailed as hopefully the largest climate strike ever around the world.  We have the capacity.  We have the capability.  We have the courage.  How shall we use this as an opportunity to sing of the great truths shared in Psalm 8 and make it a point of departure for even greater work in our beautiful city.   Because we are Billings.  We are Billings’ first church.  Powerful.  Capable.  Courageous.  Amen. 

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[1] Please . . . you don’t remember?  Steve Martin as Theodoric of York from Saturday Night Live.  See.  When you have to explain a joke . . .

[2] Nicholas Christakis interview with Krista Tippett, “How We’re Wired for Goodness,” OnBeing, March 5, 2020, https://onbeing.org/programs/nicholas-christakis-how-were-wired-for-goodness/. 

[3] Ibid.

[4] The Scottish American naturalist, author, philosopher, and early wilderness-preservation advocate John Muir who knew a different set of values, “I am losing precious days.  I am degenerating into a machine for making money.  I am learning nothing in this trivial world of men.  I must break away and get out into the mountains to learn news.”  Dahr Jamail, The End of Ice:  Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption, (New York:  The New Press, 2019), p. 8.

[5] World Health Organization, “Climate change and human health - risks and responses. Summary,” https://www.who.int/globalchange/summary/en/index5.html.

[6] Mark Tutton, “Greenland's ice sheet just lost 11 billion tons of ice -- in one day,” CNN World, August 15, 2019, https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/02/world/greenland-ice-sheet-11-billion-intl/index.html.

[7]Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad (Leipzig, 1880), p. 158.

[8] Dahr Jamail, The End of Ice:  Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption, (New York:  The New Press, 2019), pp. 36-39.

[9] Michael Keefer, “Noam Chomsky: Indigenous people “are the ones taking the lead in trying to protect all of us,” Real People’s Media, December 22, 2016, https://realpeoples.media/noam-chomsky-indigenous-people-are-the-ones-taking-the-lead-in-trying-to-protect-all-of-us/?fbclid=IwAR0JQFtb6EuIGgwEmC5tCbpALrSsd3N2-l1zasY-1BcJsPRLckQCMeMtexw.

[10] https://www.democracynow.org/2020/2/13/wet_suwet_en_territory_pipeline_opposition. 

[11] Jamail, “The End,” pp. 220-224.

Billings Climate Change Speech

Billings Climate Change Speech

You may have heard that Iceland recently grieved the loss of a 700 year-old, six mile glacier-the loss a result of climate change. This glacier was their grandmother.  Where that glacier once was, a plaque was placed, a message to future generations, which said, "This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and we know what needs to be done.  Only you know if we did it." Find something you know is going to die and attach yourself to it.  Be willing to grieve.  We will experience grief as we experience tremendous losses during this time of climate crisis.  Any healing that occurs will happen because we make grief our companion and walk with it rather than severing our connection to avoid our grief.

Speak and articulate your grief in a way that becomes real and whole for others.  Bear witness to the loss.  Do not let others silence your grief.  As the planet burns, let your grief become a testimony to being human.  In my faith tradition, being human means being of fertile soil and divine breath.  Be human in such a way that allows for the possibility of something more that cruel and barren economics, unceasing and death-giving war, destructive and oppressive violence, and policies and practices that sever the connection Creator intended for this good earth.  These policies and practices occur because we believe the lie we are disconnected. 

Don't believe the lie.  We are connected.  So that when the glaciers melt, I grieve.  When the bee population is poisoned, I grieve.  When the river is polluted and dries up, I grieve.  These are my sisters and brothers, my siblings and cousins.  I grieve.  For actions I have done or not done.  Fora ctions my country now does over and over.

And my grief moves from sadness to anger to a resoluteness to join with Creator to say, "No more.  NO MORE!"  And Creator opens my eyes to to beauty once again, and I rise up, I raise my head, and I see you, you beautiful people, and I join hands with you, with Mother Earth, and say, "No more.  Rise up.  NO MORE!  RISE UP!"  Look at you, beautiful people.  Look at you!  Look at this earth, our kin,our sisters and brothers, siblings and cousins.

Do not sever the connection.  No more.  Rise up.  Vaclav Havel said, "Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something is worth doing no matter how it turns out.”  This is worth doing.

Greta Thurnberg recently said, "Wherever I go I seem to be surrounded by fairytales. Business leaders, elected officials all across the political spectrum spending their time making up and telling bedtime stories that soothe us, that make us go back to sleep. These are ‘feel-good’ stories about how we are going to fix everything. How wonderful everything is going to be when we have ‘solved’ everything. But the problem we are facing is not that we lack the ability to dream, or to imagine a better world. The problem now is that we need to wake up. It’s time to face the reality, the facts, the science. And the science doesn’t mainly speak of ‘great opportunities to create the society we always wanted’. It tells of unspoken human sufferings, which will get worse and worse the longer we delay action – unless we start to act now. And yes, of course a sustainable transformed world will include lots of new benefits. But you have to understand. This is not primarily an opportunity to create new green jobs, new businesses or green economic growth. This is above all an emergency, and not just any emergency. This is the biggest crisis humanity has ever faced.

No more.  Rise up.  No more fairytales.  No more bedtime stories that soothe us.  Grieve, beautiful people.  Grieve.  And then act. 

Second Sunday of Easter, April 28, 2019 "Helping doubting Thomases with climate change"

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. 

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[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.

[7] Winona LaDuke, https://sacredecology.com/honor-the-earth/