18C, 2019, readings here
I am setting before you today life and death
On Pentecost, I invited the congregation to consider their own visions and dreams for the world and many of you shared your hopes that we will find the mind, the will, and the heart to address the issue of climate change. And, so in response to your visions as well as the wider Church’s call to observe a season dedicated to creation, we will be observing what some have come to call “Creationtide”.
Creationtide, a season within the season of Ordinary Time, invites us to use our worship, our forums and our fellowship as opportunities to explore what a faithful response to the climate crisis might look like and how we are called, as Christians, to care for God’s creation.
So here we are, and I as preacher, have the task of kick starting this season…
I’m going to begin with a quick poll. Raise your hand if you read a newspaper. What about watch the news on television or streaming? The Daily Show? Anyone?
How many of you read scientific journals? How many of you are familiar with the term “Climate justice”?
Raise your hand if you listen to MPR.
So, my job today is not to repeat what you’ve already read or heard or studied. Today’s sermon will not include data points or ominous warnings marking the exact volume of sea ice lost this year. What I hope the sermon will do is help us all to connect the scripture we heard today to the issue of climate change, the climate crisis, and how we can understand the call to action as God’s call in our time and place.
And, that seems like plenty…
So, what happens when you read the text through the lens of the Climate Crisis? What happens when you take seriously the word of God, in light of climate change and all that comes with it?
The first reading we heard proclaimed today was from Deuteronomy. There are five books in the Torah, those books of the Bible traditionally ascribed to Moses. The last of these is Deuteronomy—a book whose principal focus is the covenant between God and God’s people and how that covenant can be maintained through faithful ritual practice and the law.
Deuteronomy’s composition spanned the exilic period following the fall of Samaria and the first stages of the restoration of Judea. The restoration of the people to the land for which they had longed—the land which was, and is, a key feature of God’s commitment to God’s people.
And so, the law in Deuteronomy is law written for the people and the land and the God who had restored them both. Restored them in a place where vines would grow and water would flow and bees would keep their sweet, sweet, honey. The well-being of the people cannot be separated from the health and vitality of the land which they occupy.
For example, from Chapter 11, “the land that you are crossing over to occupy is a land of hills and valleys, watered by rain from the sky, a land that the LORD your God looks after…If you only heed God’s every commandment, then God will give you the rain for your land in its season, the early rain and the later rain, and you will gather in your grain, your wine and oil.”
EVERY commandment…keeping God’s commandments is a prerequisite if creation is to flourish. And, while we tend to focus on the “Big 10”, in Deuteronomy you will find laws governing everything from hunting, to planting, to harvest. Even in warfare, the early Israelites are prohibited from desecrating the land, “if you besiege a town for a long time…you must not destroy its trees by wielding an ax against them.” (Deut. 20:19).
God cares about the people; God cares about the land.
As Christians, we know ourselves as inheritors of the covenant, and our story of liberation follows the trajectory of the early Israelite people as they emerge from exile and settle in the land that they had been promised. What would it be like if Christians, all Christians were to take seriously the biblical injunctions that are intended for the care of creation?
[Pause]
Without the land we have no milk, without the land there is no honey.
No bees, no trees, no fruit, no us.
By reason alone, we must see that God’s care for us cannot be separated out from our call to care for creation. If the land is to flow with milk and honey, the land will need tending.
And so, we are called to tend, and to grow, and to offer the first fruit, fruit from rich soil, watered and nourished through care and sheer grace, to God and to all who hunger.
“the Lord brought us into this place and gave us this land…So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground as an offering. As an offering to God an offering to be shared with “the Levites, the aliens, the orphans, and the widows, so that they may eat their fill” (Deuteronomy 26:10-12).
We must tend the land. Tend the land, so that all may eat. So that all may live.
Creation, land, us, the poor, and our God—we cannot speak of one without speaking of the other. We cannot hope to live in fullness of life, without tending to all of creation.
All of creation…daunting, no? And so, if you like me feel yourself giving up in despair because all is simply too much, I want to remind you of a central tenant of our faith,
Death is not the end of the story. We are a resurrection people. We proclaim every single week that Jesus was dead and he came back to life! We proclaim that death was overthrown, and evil will never win.
And, holding this truth at the center, we need not despair, but we do need to act. We need to act—we need to pick up our cross and address the environmental crisis at hand. In this, we as disciples who have studied what it means to overthrow death, may bring forth life into the world.
Bring forth life, from desert places, by keeping God’s commandments for the care of creation.
The care of creation, for the care of our children. The leaders of the Israelites led them across the desert so that there would be a future for their children. It was not for them, but for their future. Is it any wonder then, that today’s prophets include our children?
Hear the words of 16 year old Greta Thunberg,
“There are no gray areas when it comes to survival. Now we all have a choice. We can create transformational action that will safeguard the future living conditions for humankind, or we can continue with our business as usual and fail. That is up to you and me. “ (Greta Thunberg, “Our House is on Fire” 2019 World Economic Forum,https://www.
Today’s prophets speak…and they sound a great deal like the word of God in our midst.
“See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity…choose life so that you and your descendants may live”
To choose hope, rather than despair. To choose life, rather than death. To choose to act…to act for a future that fills our present hopes.
I have set before you life and death. There are not gray areas when it comes to survival. Now we all have a choice. Choose life, so that you and your descendants may live.
That was Greta, and Moses.
That was Greta, and Moses.
It may seem too much, but good people of God, I turn once more to the scripture—this time the passage from Deuteronomy that immediately precedes that which we heard today, “this commandment that I am commanding you today is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away. It is
not in heaven...neither is it beyond the sea...no, the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe.” (30:11ff)
Scientists, climatologists and ecologists would concur—it’s not too hard or far away.
Scientists, climatologists and ecologists would concur—it’s not too hard or far away.
And, in this, I will end with the words of Bill McKibben, a scientist not known for his optimism. He wrote The End of Nature and in an interview last April he said, “The point is, we don’t lack the things we need to get done that need doing. We have the technology, and we have an enormous number of people who have great love and affection for the world around them and for other human beings.”
This commandment that I am commanding you today is not too hard or too far away. We don't lack the things we need to get done that need doing. We have an enormous number of people who have great love and affection for the world around them the word is very near to them; it is in their mouth and in their heart.
That was Bill McKibben, and Moses.
That was Bill McKibben, and Moses.
And so, we will, with God’s help.
Amen.
Amen.
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