Good News for the Earth

Proclaiming Good News.  Not every church claims a Season of Creation.  Not every church wants or needs to be a Creation Justice church.  But it is an extraordinary gift that we choose to do so. We bring something a little different to the mix thanthe Sierra Club or the Surfrider Foundation.  We sometimes undertake practical jobs like lobbying or native gardening or installing solar panels.  We also do the spiritual work of naming the earth and all its life sacred and worthy of care.  We use spiritual tools of prayer and ritual that invite the transformation of hearts and minds.  We name and grieve the brokenness of human relationships with nature.  And we proclaim Good News where we see it.  

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Brea Congregational United Church of Christ

November 18, 2018
(video at https://www.facebook.com/georlyn/videos/10102231443221890/?multi_permalinks=10155665714555964%2C10155664908140964&notif_id=1542564309001649&notif_t=group_activity)

Good News for the Earth

Mark 11:12-25  On the following day, when they came from Bethany, he was hungry.  13Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see whether perhaps he would find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs.  14He said to it, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard it. 

            15    Then they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves; 16and he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple.  17He was teaching and saying, “Is it not written,  

            ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? 

                        But you have made it a den of robbers.” 

18And when the chief priests and the scribes heard it, they kept looking for a way to kill him; for they were afraid of him, because the whole crowd was spellbound by his teaching.  19And when evening came, Jesus and his disciples went out of the city. 

            20  In the morning as they passed by, they saw the fig tree withered away to its roots.  21Then Peter remembered and said to him, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree that you cursed has withered.”  22Jesus answered them, “Have faith in God.  23Truly I tell you, if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and if you do not doubt in your heart, but believe that what you say will come to pass, it will be done for you.  24So I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. 

            25  “Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone; so that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses.”

Proclaiming Good News in the face of all evidence to the contrary: this is our job as followers of Jesus, and the job of all people seeking a just and compassionate world.  Compassionate Communication creator Marshall Rosenberg learned one way of proclaiming good new from group of women who sought social change.  Marshall sat in at their organizing meeting.  Here’s how it began.   They recited celebrations and gratitudes for seemingly mundane things that each of the members had done, and went on at some length about each of those little actions. This took over thirty minutes.  Marshall tried to be patient, but finally he couldn’t take it any more, and he asked, “Why are you spending so much time on rehashing these things?  Don’t you want to move forward?”  One of the women explained, “Marshall, we’re working on a really difficult issue.  We know we’re not going to achieve our goal anytime soon.  We may not achieve it in our lifetime.  So we have to enjoy the journey. We’ve decided to celebrate every small step we take. We are fighting for our lives.  So we can’t wait till later to celebrate. Our lives are being lived now.” 

Proclaiming Good News.  Not every church claims a Season of Creation.  Not every church wants or needs to be a Creation Justice church.  But it is an extraordinary gift that we choose to do so. We bring something a little different to the mix than the Sierra Club or the Surfrider Foundation.  We sometimes undertake practical jobs like lobbying or native gardening or installing solar panels.  We also do the spiritual work of naming the earth and all its life sacred and worthy of care.  We use spiritual tools of prayer and ritual that invite the transformation of hearts and minds.  We name and grieve the brokenness of human relationships with nature.  And we proclaim Good News where we see it.  

We are bearers of the Good News of Jesus Christ: the presence and power and love of God that meets every trial and terror, that leads us to healing and abundant life. We witness Good News in the wonder of creation, in “All our Relations, ” our connection to the earth and the life on it.  In spite of ecological devastation, we do have Good News for the earth, both the ordinary kind of news and the extraordinary kind that flows from our faith.

Here is some of the ordinary kind of good news for the earth.  While U.S. national parks and wild lands are under threat from the current administration, worldwide, over 15% of the earth’s lands are now protected in some way.  Public-private partnerships and economic incentives are being crafted around the globe to help protect more land.

California met its renewable energy goals for 2020—in 2016!  Over 30 percent of our electricity comes from renewable sources. Solar is getting more efficient than ever.  In 2020, all new homes built in California will have solar panels.

Experienced political organizers who came to help organize Orange County were surprised to discover that almost everyone here, Republican and Democrat, is passionate about protecting our environment.  And in recent news, Governor-elect Gavin Newsom is talking about a fracking ban in California.  

A couple miles from my house, the Irvine Ranch Water District has a purification plant that includes the San Joachin Wildlife Sanctuary.  A series of square quaternary treatment ponds, framed with native plants, is an oasis for thousands of rare and migratory birds.  This facility creates drinkable recycled water, and is a model that people from across the country are copying.

My sermon blog got 150 page views last month.  My California native garden blog got 1800 views, despite the fact that I haven’t posted a new article in almost a year. Peoples’ connections to nature are real and life-giving.  

The “right kind of farming” can grow food for us, respect and the earth, and give farmers economic security. Wendell Berry is known for his writing about farming that is in harmony with the earth, and gives farmers dignity.  He has proposes a “farm bill” to accomplish this.  Something to lobby our new congress about? 

All this good news is ordinary, but also extraordinary.  Somebody bothered to love the land and found a way to preserve it.  A lot of people around here voted in the last election to help the planet. Somebody feels a call to plant a native garden.  The ordinary is extraordinary, because it’s all sacred. Creative transformation is at work in it, and in us.  

People are rediscovering the therapeutic value of nature.  Forest bathing is a term for meditative walking among trees. It is prescribed in Japan for its proven heath effects.  Having green plants outside your hospital window has proven health effects. 

Pilgrimages are becoming popular around the world: people walking for miles along traditional paths or newly made paths to visit sacred sites, to connect with God, the land, and themselves.  Santiago de Compostela in Spain is the most famous pilgrimage route, but routes are all over Europe.  Rupert Sheldrake, a biologist and a process thinker, didn’t know what to give his godson for his sixteenth birthday.  He didn’t want to buy him stuff.  So Sheldrake offered to take him on a one day pilgrimage, less than ten miles walk along footpaths to a cathedral, followed by going out for cream tea.  I think that’s English for dessert.  They never had so much quality time together.  They enjoyed it so much they’ve done it every year since.  We don’t have ancient cathedral in the U.S.  Sheldrake calls our national wildlands America’s cathedrals, so hiking is an American version of pilgrimage.  Bring your own dessert.

We are nearing the end of our year with the Gospel of Mark.  Today Jesus has publicly taken a stand for the Good News of God. This was not good news to the Powers that Be: the corrupt Temple establishment that put Roman rule and power and profit ahead of God and human compassion.  We expect compassion from Jesus; today we see confrontation.  He even kills an innocent fig tree, to make his point.  

The problem is that Good News isn’t good news to everybody.  State Attorneys General are investigating Exxon for fraud, for hiding their role in global warming for decades.  Cities are suing oil companies for damages due to sea level rise. Children are suing the US government to cap CO2 levels, so they can have a future.  Activists have been protesting fossil fuel pipelines by turning off their valves.  This strategy of nonviolent direct action looks to me a lot like overturning the money changers tables, and it is about as well received.  These activists are using a “necessity defense,” claiming that they must shut down pipelines to prevent immanent destruction of our planet.  Occasionally that defense work.  But some states are claiming that turning off pipelines is terrorism, and legislating massive jail terms.  And we saw what happened to water protectors at Standing Rock.  The Powers that Be do not want good news for the earth that gets in the way of their profits.

At the end of our gospel reading is a provocative verse that I have struggled with. Jesus speaks of our power to move mountains. He says, “Whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.”  This is not my experience.  So let’s take it in context.  Maybe he was trying to say this.  “You can’t see how this soul-crushing system can change.  But I can.  The first step is prayer: expressing your anguish and your hopes for the future.  And then you don’t know what is possible and what is impossible.  So live as if your prayer is possible.  Live into it.” 

Moving mountains?  We know that’s possible.  Coal companies do it all the time.  And we just did it in Orange County, getting more than three times the people to vote in this midterm election than the last one, and getting national representatives who will listen to our hopes and fears.  Thousands of us picked up our little shovels, and we moved that mountain. 

It will take a miracle to stem our global population.  But that miracle already exists.  Birth control is cheap and easy to use.  Women who have access to birth control, and the freedom to use it, and safe conditions for their children to survive to adulthood, do limit their family size.  Problem solved, in theory.  OK, we still have some digging, but that mountain can move.

It will take a miracle to wean us off our carbon addiction.  Fossil fuel companies will not let go without a fight, and there are technical barriers we don’t know how to overcome.  Yet we must plan and act as though it’s possible.  We can learn from our global neighbors to enjoy living simply. We can take pride in having shared households and multigenerational households (that save lots of resources compared to big suburban homes with one or two people in them).  We can buy less and waste less.  The transformation required is huge, and change is scary.  So we take baby steps in the right direction.  Pick up your shovel; we’ve got one big mountain to move.

It will take a miracle to prevent more fires like the Camp fire that hit the town of Paradise.  Let’s pray for that miracle.  Or any related miracle we can get.  Like the infrastructure for safe evacuation from firestorms.  Like effective relief and housing for these climate refugees, and for the next climate refugees.  Generosity to address human need, and effective governmental intervention: these are miracle worth praying for. And they are possible.  

We are not slaves set by God to toil on impossible tasks.  We are beloved children of God, called to live now as if justice and mercy and hope are real, as if the earth and all the life on it truly matter.  Called to celebrate, and called to care for one another, no matter what.  This is how we live as if the mountain is already being moved. This is our good news that goes beyond what the Sierra Club and the Surfrider Foundation can do.

In the last line of the reading, Jesus says, “Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone; so that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses.  He is inviting us to let go of the baggage that prevents us from working together to move those mountains, to let go of the baggage that prevents us from caring for each other well...  and he is inviting us to be humble.  None of us really knows how to move mountains, and some of our best ideas may backfire.  Dogmatism and scapegoating move nothing.  We need to be in relationship first, rather than being right.  We need to trust, and give grace.  We can move this mountain, with God’s help.  

So we celebrate the Good News that we see today, and we pray to open ourselves up to possibilities for transformation we do not yet see, to possibilities for healing the earth.  And we live as if all the earth is sacred, full of wonder and full of God’s spirit.  Because it is.  I finish with a prayer by Walter Brueggeman:  God of all life,

Sink your generosity deep into our lives
that your abundance may expose our false lack
that endlessly receiving we may endlessly give
so that the world may be made Easter new,
without greedy lack, but only wonder…
Finish your creation, in wonder, love and praise. Amen.”

Global land protection: https://www.iucn.org/news/secretariat/201609/world-now-protects-15-its-land-crucial-biodiversity-zones-left-outand  https://www.landconservationnetwork.org

The birth of the San Juaquin Wildlife Sanctuary: http://www.seaandsageaudubon.org/Chapter/PSwanSJWS.html

Wendell Berry’s Farm Bill:  https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/01/opinion/wendell-berry-agriculture-farm-bill.html  See also Allan Savory’s breakthrough grazing land management:  https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_world_s_deserts_and_reverse_climate_changeAllan Savory has discovered, rediscovered actually, that grazing animals, properly managed, can heal grasslands, feed people with net positive environmental impact, and help sequester carbon.  His Institute is helping people around the world to learn holistic land management and to heal grazing lands that were turning into desert. His before and after photos are astonishing.  If you’re curious, ask Kris Percy’s sister Kate Potter.  She has used Savory’s methods. 

Pipeline protests: the necessity defense: https://theintercept.com/2018/03/21/pipeline-protest-necessity-defense-tar-sands/

Climate change lawsuits: https://insideclimatenews.org/news/04042018/climate-change-fossil-fuel-company-lawsuits-timeline-exxon-children-california-cities-attorney-general