We Are the Ones Creation is Waiting For
April 25, 2010
April 25, 2010
The Rev. Susan E. Gilbert Zencka
Frame Memorial Presbyterian Church
Texts: Isaiah 65:17-25, Romans 8:19-23a, John 14:15-21
A great deal of the Bible shows that God intended humans and animals to live in harmony: from the creation stories to the many psalms that describe animals, to the Exodus stories where firstborn animals were killed or spared in the original Passover alongside the humans who lived or perished. Our lot, in the Bible, is cast with the fate of animals around us.
But a great deal of human effort in the world has been put into getting animals (and, indeed, all of creation) to submit to us instead of learning how to live together. Some municipalities have passed laws to try to manage the relationships between humans and animals. Let me share a few with you:
Of course, from the perspective of animals, they would probably like to pass more laws governing the behavior of humans. And the science is affirming that it is human behavior which is leading to unlivable conditions here on earth.
There’s been a lot of press about the so-called debate over climate science. The truth is that within the scientific community, there is very little debate – the science of climate change, or of global warming, has been largely understood since the 19th century. We are able to measure, through ice core data, records going back 670,000 years and the data tells a single story: the correlation between CO2 levels and global temperatures. As Nate Lewis of CalTech summarizes: “We know that this increase of CO2 is going to give us a different climate than the one we have now because in 670,000 straight years, whenever CO2 has gone up, temperatures have gone up, and whenever CO2 in the atmosphere has gone down, temperatures have gone down. So to say that the additional CO2 added by humans is not a problem is to bet against 670,000 straight years of data, and to hope that we are going to get lucky this time.” But because there has been political resistance to the public policy implications of the data, the media has tended to report climate change as a political issue where two opinions should be treated in a balanced way. Also, many people are not equipped to assess the disagreements between a scientist paid by the oil companies and the weight of independent peer-reviewed research. And the concerns around what’s known as “climategate’ have led some to question the validity of the science, when it was only the character of some scholars that was flawed. So the public has gotten the impression that the science is not as settled as it is. John Holdren of Harvard describes the scientific conclusions this way: “They are based on an immense edifice of painstaking studies published in the world’s leading peer-reviewed scientific journals. They have been vetted and documented in excruciating detail by the largest, longest, costliest, most international, most interdisciplinary, and most thorough formal review of a scientific topic ever conducted.”
What is becoming open to question within the scientific community is whether it has underestimated the speed and the scope of changes that will come –scientists failed to appreciate some of the acceleration that might take place created by some of the effects of change itself. They failed to consider how climate change itself might create conditions that exacerbate change.
Holdren concludes: “The way I like to put it is that we’re driving in a car with bad brakes in a fog and heading for a cliff. We know for sure now that the cliff is out there, we just don’t know exactly where it is. Prudence would suggest that we put on the brakes.”
So how do we put on the brakes?
Part of the problem is that in the partisan environment we now have, politically and culturally, it is very difficult to build relationships that can find common cause in taking on big issues. And this is the biggest challenge that the world has yet faced. Embracing the earth is a far greater challenge than chasing the moon. And while it would be best, obviously, to arrive at collective agreements that would unite the world’s nations, it is important for those especially the nations who contribute more to the CO2 levels to show leadership not by waiting, but by initiating steps that may, in time, inspire others to join.
It is also important to realize that the impact of climate change is being disproportionately borne by those who are poorest in the world. First of all, the poorest people live in the most direct relationship to their natural surroundings, and so are vulnerable for that reason. Jeffrey Sachs, economist and director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University explains in his book Common Wealth that the poor are also vulnerable because the changes exacerbate some of the conditions that already create poverty. There are increases in disease transmission for diseases such as malaria that are impacted by climate. Malaria is expanding into the highland areas of Africa already, where temperatures used to be too cool to allow malaria to flourish. There will also likely be decreases in agricultural productivity in the hotter and drier regions of the world – those areas that are most susceptible to water shortages and excessive heat. Cooler parts of the world may actually experience some increases in crop productivity. There will be decreases in water availability – and that is already occurring. I learned last summer that the Sea of Galilee is already shrinking. Lake Chad, which borders Cameroon, Nigeria, Chad and Niger has shrunk by 90% since 1968. And water shortages will likely lead to future wars – if we think oil shortages have created difficulties in the past, that is nothing compared to water shortages. There will also be increases in natural hazards such as hurricanes, tornadoes, and blizzards – and of course, the poor are the most vulnerable. What we saw following Hurricane Katrina five years ago is a good example of the poor bearing a special burden.
Theologian Sallie McFague points out in her recent book A Climate for Change that although “North America and Western Europe have contributed 2/3 of carbon dioxide emissions, while only 3% has come from Africa…the northern, richer countries will suffer fewer adverse consequences, and they are also better able to pay for expensive adaptive measures to reduce the impact.” So we, as Christians, need to face not only the stewardship issues around care of creation that create an imperative for us to intervene in the care of God’s world, but we also need to acknowledge the justice issues that create an additional imperative for people of faith.
We need to take note of passages such as the one we read from Isaiah that describe the dream of God for the world, a world in which economic disparities don’t prevent home ownership, or good health care, a world in which hunger is no longer an issue, people are adequately employed, and harmony prevails so thoroughly even natural enemies live in peace. God’s dream is of a world where the earth and the economy support us all.
Throughout the Bible there is an imperative to help the poor. In Deuteronomy, we find it clearly expressed: “If there is among you anyone in need, a member of your community in any of your towns within the land that the Lord your God is giving you, do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward your needy neighbor. You should rather open your hand, willingly lending enough to meet the need, whatever it may be.” And in the New Testament, Jesus expands the notion of neighbor to even include those who have been seen as outsiders and enemies. We are called by God to take care of the poor. We are called by God to take care of the earth. We cannot claim to be serious about our faith and ignore these imperatives.
So, as I asked earlier, how do we put on the brakes? How do we reorient to a lifestyle that will lead to sustainability over the long haul??
When we think of what we will be leaving for others, for future generations, many of us have come to realize that our generation – those of us who are adults now – may be the first whose descendants have a decreased standard of living from our own. But this is not necessarily a bad thing – what if we thought of this as living deeper rather than living lower? Bill McKibben, in his book Deep Economy describes a lifestyle that could be slower, more relaxed, more relational than consumer-oriented. Such a life could be more satisfying, and healthier for us and the earth, than the one we have found ourselves pursuing.
And such a life would be in deeper harmony with our faith that has long taught that a habit of acquisition can enslave us. What if we lived in response to the promptings of the Holy Spirit instead of Madison Avenue?? The Holy Spirit teaches that we are lovely, lovable, and beloved, that we are claimed and called by God, and that our talents are given to us in order to serve God. Madison Avenue teaches that we need to be more and have more if we are to be happy. The message of our faith is that we can make a difference. The message of our culture is that we need to be made different. The message of our faith is that we are claimed and called and are important to the living out of God’s dream for the world. The message of our culture is that nothing is as important as our own happiness. Paul’s letter to the Romans tells us that all of creation is groaning for relief, and that “the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.”
Confirmation used to be understood as the gift of the Holy Spirit – but now we understand that the Spirit is already present in all of life. We need to entrust ourselves to the Holy Spirit – seek to deepen ourselves in the Spirit, and build alliances with others in building a movement of voluntary simplicity and advocacy for the earth. The environment is a natural issue around which to build relationships with people of other faiths and of no faith. The Greek word oikos, meaning household, is the word from which three important words are all derived: ecology, economics and ecumenism. Some of us already work with people of other faiths through the Interfaith Community for the Earth. Wisconsin has just started a chapter of Interfaith Power and Light – an interfaith organization that is in 29 other states and has over 10,000 congregations of many faiths associated with it throughout the country.
While this will be a particular challenge for the next generation, we don’t just point our children toward God’s dream – we begin to live it ourselves. We put our best efforts into changing ourselves and our own lives and gathering with others who share our commitment to living God’s dream for the world. The idol of consumerism does not lead to happiness or peace, but to a growing addiction to ‘more’ and as with all addictions, we can never get enough of that which we don’t actually need.
When we tune our hearts to the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit that flows through us and through all creation, we will find our connections to what is real deepened, and our sense of abundance growing. We will be present to the God and to the world around us, and such presence leads to greater authenticity in our own lives.
If ever we needed to engage and submit to the power of the living God, it is in this moral and spiritual crisis. This is not only the greatest challenge that humanity has faced, but it is, perhaps, the solution to the crisis of spiritual lethargy and lack of engagement that has impacted much of the post-modern church – for it is in this issue that science and faith are natural partners, where we will need to develop our fullest intellectual and moral capacities, where we will need to forge not only tolerance but deep mutual respect and partnership among all nations and generations. It is for such a time as this that we have been gifted and called, and all of us – not just our young people, will need to confirm the promises that were made at our baptism and serve God in the challenge that we might not have chosen, but which has chosen us.
May God bless, guide and equip us to serve God and all creation in this hour. Amen.
The Rev. Susan E. Gilbert Zencka
Frame Memorial Presbyterian Church
Texts: Isaiah 65:17-25, Romans 8:19-23a, John 14:15-21
A great deal of the Bible shows that God intended humans and animals to live in harmony: from the creation stories to the many psalms that describe animals, to the Exodus stories where firstborn animals were killed or spared in the original Passover alongside the humans who lived or perished. Our lot, in the Bible, is cast with the fate of animals around us.
But a great deal of human effort in the world has been put into getting animals (and, indeed, all of creation) to submit to us instead of learning how to live together. Some municipalities have passed laws to try to manage the relationships between humans and animals. Let me share a few with you:
- In North Carolina, it is against the law to use elephants to plow cotton fields.
- It is illegal to take a French Poodle to the opera in Chicago.
- Cats in International Falls, Minnesota, are not allowed to chase dogs up telephone poles.
- In New York, donkeys are not allowed to sleep in bathtubs.
- In Atlanta, it’s against the law to tie a giraffe to a telephone pole or a street lamp. (In Detroit there is a similar prohibition but it’s about crocodiles.)
- Horses in Marshalltown, Iowa, are not allowed to eat fire hydrants.
- In Galveston, Texas, it is illegal for camels to wander the streets unattended.
Of course, from the perspective of animals, they would probably like to pass more laws governing the behavior of humans. And the science is affirming that it is human behavior which is leading to unlivable conditions here on earth.
There’s been a lot of press about the so-called debate over climate science. The truth is that within the scientific community, there is very little debate – the science of climate change, or of global warming, has been largely understood since the 19th century. We are able to measure, through ice core data, records going back 670,000 years and the data tells a single story: the correlation between CO2 levels and global temperatures. As Nate Lewis of CalTech summarizes: “We know that this increase of CO2 is going to give us a different climate than the one we have now because in 670,000 straight years, whenever CO2 has gone up, temperatures have gone up, and whenever CO2 in the atmosphere has gone down, temperatures have gone down. So to say that the additional CO2 added by humans is not a problem is to bet against 670,000 straight years of data, and to hope that we are going to get lucky this time.” But because there has been political resistance to the public policy implications of the data, the media has tended to report climate change as a political issue where two opinions should be treated in a balanced way. Also, many people are not equipped to assess the disagreements between a scientist paid by the oil companies and the weight of independent peer-reviewed research. And the concerns around what’s known as “climategate’ have led some to question the validity of the science, when it was only the character of some scholars that was flawed. So the public has gotten the impression that the science is not as settled as it is. John Holdren of Harvard describes the scientific conclusions this way: “They are based on an immense edifice of painstaking studies published in the world’s leading peer-reviewed scientific journals. They have been vetted and documented in excruciating detail by the largest, longest, costliest, most international, most interdisciplinary, and most thorough formal review of a scientific topic ever conducted.”
What is becoming open to question within the scientific community is whether it has underestimated the speed and the scope of changes that will come –scientists failed to appreciate some of the acceleration that might take place created by some of the effects of change itself. They failed to consider how climate change itself might create conditions that exacerbate change.
Holdren concludes: “The way I like to put it is that we’re driving in a car with bad brakes in a fog and heading for a cliff. We know for sure now that the cliff is out there, we just don’t know exactly where it is. Prudence would suggest that we put on the brakes.”
So how do we put on the brakes?
Part of the problem is that in the partisan environment we now have, politically and culturally, it is very difficult to build relationships that can find common cause in taking on big issues. And this is the biggest challenge that the world has yet faced. Embracing the earth is a far greater challenge than chasing the moon. And while it would be best, obviously, to arrive at collective agreements that would unite the world’s nations, it is important for those especially the nations who contribute more to the CO2 levels to show leadership not by waiting, but by initiating steps that may, in time, inspire others to join.
It is also important to realize that the impact of climate change is being disproportionately borne by those who are poorest in the world. First of all, the poorest people live in the most direct relationship to their natural surroundings, and so are vulnerable for that reason. Jeffrey Sachs, economist and director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University explains in his book Common Wealth that the poor are also vulnerable because the changes exacerbate some of the conditions that already create poverty. There are increases in disease transmission for diseases such as malaria that are impacted by climate. Malaria is expanding into the highland areas of Africa already, where temperatures used to be too cool to allow malaria to flourish. There will also likely be decreases in agricultural productivity in the hotter and drier regions of the world – those areas that are most susceptible to water shortages and excessive heat. Cooler parts of the world may actually experience some increases in crop productivity. There will be decreases in water availability – and that is already occurring. I learned last summer that the Sea of Galilee is already shrinking. Lake Chad, which borders Cameroon, Nigeria, Chad and Niger has shrunk by 90% since 1968. And water shortages will likely lead to future wars – if we think oil shortages have created difficulties in the past, that is nothing compared to water shortages. There will also be increases in natural hazards such as hurricanes, tornadoes, and blizzards – and of course, the poor are the most vulnerable. What we saw following Hurricane Katrina five years ago is a good example of the poor bearing a special burden.
Theologian Sallie McFague points out in her recent book A Climate for Change that although “North America and Western Europe have contributed 2/3 of carbon dioxide emissions, while only 3% has come from Africa…the northern, richer countries will suffer fewer adverse consequences, and they are also better able to pay for expensive adaptive measures to reduce the impact.” So we, as Christians, need to face not only the stewardship issues around care of creation that create an imperative for us to intervene in the care of God’s world, but we also need to acknowledge the justice issues that create an additional imperative for people of faith.
We need to take note of passages such as the one we read from Isaiah that describe the dream of God for the world, a world in which economic disparities don’t prevent home ownership, or good health care, a world in which hunger is no longer an issue, people are adequately employed, and harmony prevails so thoroughly even natural enemies live in peace. God’s dream is of a world where the earth and the economy support us all.
Throughout the Bible there is an imperative to help the poor. In Deuteronomy, we find it clearly expressed: “If there is among you anyone in need, a member of your community in any of your towns within the land that the Lord your God is giving you, do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward your needy neighbor. You should rather open your hand, willingly lending enough to meet the need, whatever it may be.” And in the New Testament, Jesus expands the notion of neighbor to even include those who have been seen as outsiders and enemies. We are called by God to take care of the poor. We are called by God to take care of the earth. We cannot claim to be serious about our faith and ignore these imperatives.
So, as I asked earlier, how do we put on the brakes? How do we reorient to a lifestyle that will lead to sustainability over the long haul??
When we think of what we will be leaving for others, for future generations, many of us have come to realize that our generation – those of us who are adults now – may be the first whose descendants have a decreased standard of living from our own. But this is not necessarily a bad thing – what if we thought of this as living deeper rather than living lower? Bill McKibben, in his book Deep Economy describes a lifestyle that could be slower, more relaxed, more relational than consumer-oriented. Such a life could be more satisfying, and healthier for us and the earth, than the one we have found ourselves pursuing.
And such a life would be in deeper harmony with our faith that has long taught that a habit of acquisition can enslave us. What if we lived in response to the promptings of the Holy Spirit instead of Madison Avenue?? The Holy Spirit teaches that we are lovely, lovable, and beloved, that we are claimed and called by God, and that our talents are given to us in order to serve God. Madison Avenue teaches that we need to be more and have more if we are to be happy. The message of our faith is that we can make a difference. The message of our culture is that we need to be made different. The message of our faith is that we are claimed and called and are important to the living out of God’s dream for the world. The message of our culture is that nothing is as important as our own happiness. Paul’s letter to the Romans tells us that all of creation is groaning for relief, and that “the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.”
Confirmation used to be understood as the gift of the Holy Spirit – but now we understand that the Spirit is already present in all of life. We need to entrust ourselves to the Holy Spirit – seek to deepen ourselves in the Spirit, and build alliances with others in building a movement of voluntary simplicity and advocacy for the earth. The environment is a natural issue around which to build relationships with people of other faiths and of no faith. The Greek word oikos, meaning household, is the word from which three important words are all derived: ecology, economics and ecumenism. Some of us already work with people of other faiths through the Interfaith Community for the Earth. Wisconsin has just started a chapter of Interfaith Power and Light – an interfaith organization that is in 29 other states and has over 10,000 congregations of many faiths associated with it throughout the country.
While this will be a particular challenge for the next generation, we don’t just point our children toward God’s dream – we begin to live it ourselves. We put our best efforts into changing ourselves and our own lives and gathering with others who share our commitment to living God’s dream for the world. The idol of consumerism does not lead to happiness or peace, but to a growing addiction to ‘more’ and as with all addictions, we can never get enough of that which we don’t actually need.
When we tune our hearts to the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit that flows through us and through all creation, we will find our connections to what is real deepened, and our sense of abundance growing. We will be present to the God and to the world around us, and such presence leads to greater authenticity in our own lives.
If ever we needed to engage and submit to the power of the living God, it is in this moral and spiritual crisis. This is not only the greatest challenge that humanity has faced, but it is, perhaps, the solution to the crisis of spiritual lethargy and lack of engagement that has impacted much of the post-modern church – for it is in this issue that science and faith are natural partners, where we will need to develop our fullest intellectual and moral capacities, where we will need to forge not only tolerance but deep mutual respect and partnership among all nations and generations. It is for such a time as this that we have been gifted and called, and all of us – not just our young people, will need to confirm the promises that were made at our baptism and serve God in the challenge that we might not have chosen, but which has chosen us.
May God bless, guide and equip us to serve God and all creation in this hour. Amen.