Ecological loss is a tragedy of mind-blowing scale, and it is unfolding now. Like the prodigal son in the mud with the pigs, some of us are starting to wake up. Is anyone here a Greta Thunberg fan? Before she started Fridays for Future, the climate protests that have spread all over the world, Greta had debilitating depression for a full year over the state of the planet. A lot of young people, and long-time environmental activists, also have debilitating depression and despair. How many of you know young people who have decided not to bring children into a world that will be increasingly chaotic and possibly uninhabitable? Here’s the thing. We can’t tell them those young people they’re overreacting. You may believe they’re wrong. I hope they’re wrong, but it’s quite possible they’ll be right.
Whatever the extent of the loss we face, remember that it is never too late to be faithful to what is sacred; to show respect and care for the earth, and the vulnerable people on it. One activist said this:
Once I dropped from my shoulders the self-imposed burden of having to “save the world”, I could breathe a sigh of relief and ask myself, “What can I still do?” (3)
Irvine United Congregational Church
February 2, 2020
Doom and Bloom
The Prodigal Species A Reading Based on Luke 15:11-21
(Adapted from a script by Chris Sunderland, inA Heart for Creation by Chris Polhill.)
All: There was a man who had two sons.
Reader:There was a God who, over millions and billions of years, danced a great creation into being, with a whole host of species upon an earth. And there came a time when one of those species came to understand themselves to be special in the eyes of God.
All: And the younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the inheritance that is due to me.’ And he divided his living between them.
Reader:And the humans said to God, ’Give us our inheritance,’ and they plundered the earth with mines and drills and rigs, sucking out the black treasure, consuming it in their machines and spewing the waste gas into the sky.
All: Not many days later the younger son gathered all that he had and went on a journey to a far country, and there he squandered his inheritance in loose living.
Reader:A great economic system arose, fuelled by ingenuity and greed, based on limitless consumption, and relying on the black treasure. The people travelled everywhere and nowhere. Forests were destroyed. It was party time. The air was filled with laughter... But the clouds were gathering.
All: And when it had all gone, a great famine arose in the land and he began to be in want. So he went and joined himself to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed the pigs. And he would gladly have eaten from the pigs’ trough, but no one gave him anything.
Reader:It was the climate, you see. They hadn’t thought of that. And once they had, it was too late. The animals and plants began just to disappear. Epic storms devoured cities. Nearby, drought drove people to desperation. Fires choked them for weeks, while oceans turned rank with death. Anxious people ... Angry people ... Violent people. The rich built castles. The poor made battering rams.
All: And then he realized; he said, ‘Why even my father’s hired servants have bread enough to spare but I perish here with hunger. I will arise and go to my father and say, “Father I have done wrong against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me as one of your hired servants.”’
Reader:And a few began to dream of a home: they dreamt of living at peace with God and respecting creation, and they set out to make that vision real.
All: And he arose and set out for his father. And when he was far off his father saw him and had compassion and ran and embraced him.
Reader:And I will leave you to fill in the rest of the story.
I love pelicans. My earliest childhood memories include these characters flying in formation at the shoreline in Santa Cruz, and dive-bombing for their dinner. By the time I was a teen in the 1970’s, pelicans had almost vanished from our country’s shores due to DDT. The federal government banned DDT in 1972. By the time I returned to the California coast in 1995, pelicans had made a comeback. For me, the pelican is a symbol of hope and healing.
Your Green Faith Team at IUCC feels some urgency to guide us in caring for the earth. Being a church, we also want to offer a spiritual frame, sacred stories to guide our thinking and our action. One such story is “The Prodigal Species.”
Ecological loss is a tragedy of mind-blowing scale, and it is unfolding now. Like the prodigal son in the mud with the pigs, some of us are starting to wake up. Is anyone here a Greta Thunberg fan? Before she started Fridays for Future, the climate protests that have spread all over the world, Greta had debilitating depression for a full year over the state of the planet. A lot of young people, and long-time environmental activists, also have debilitating depression and despair. How many of you know young people who have decided not to bring children into a world that will be increasingly chaotic and possibly uninhabitable? Here’s the thing. We can’t tell them those young people they’re overreacting. You may believe they’re wrong. I hope they’re wrong, but it’s quite possible they’ll be right.
Atmospheric carbon dioxide is now at an annual average of 411 parts per million, and rising as fast as ever. (1) Does anybody remember that we were supposed to keep CO2 under 350, or dire things would happen? We can’t undo this, folks. Carbon capture at scale is just a theory.
Welcome to the Anthropocene. (2) Millions of years from now, evidence of earth’s sixth great extinction that is unfolding around us today will be compressed into a little layer of radioactive debris. In the meantime, we mourn what is already lost, as we struggle to find the personal and political leverage to limit further loss. Limiting this loss feels like trying to stop a runaway semi truck with the soles of our sneakers.
We are going in the wrong direction and we don’t know how to stop. Christians have a name for this problem: we call it sin. Empire tricked us into believing that sin was a personal problem, and that our virtuous behavior could solve it. We bought the fast food with the plastic packaging. We didn’t eat a plant-based diet. But ecological devastation is more than personal. It is systemic. Our economic system is a pyramid scheme that depends on unsustainable growth. So far, fossil fuel use runs in lock step with economic growth. We are addicted to fossil fuel. Our pushers, the companies that sell it, have bought our national political system. As our myth of infinite growth begins to crumble and fail us, some people are getting scared and angry, even though they don’t understand why. They are voting for crooks and bullies they think will save them, and they are targeting scapegoats: people of color, immigrants. Last week we reached a new low in the Senate. No single law, like that DDT ban, can save us. Environment, good government, human rights: they are all interconnected. Understanding the structural nature of self-destructive behavior, we realize the limits of our power, and the depths of our loss.
The proper response to this loss is not a quick fix or a glib theology. The proper response to loss is to mourn. How do we mourn a loss as big as a planet? Just like any other. Grief does not have a scale. Grief just is.
“Stop, Terry. You’re being too negative.” You’re right: what I’m telling you is unacceptable. Our culture doesn’t know how to grieve. We don’t make space for mourning. But mourning helps us face hard realities. If we do not mourn, we will live in either denial or bitterness.
When you get hurt and you let your hurt harden, that’s bitterness. You define yourself by your loss and then assign blame for it. Blame pointed inward becomes depression or despair. Blame pointed outward becomes tribalism and scapegoating. Bitterness and blame run much of our politics these days, have you noticed? They serve no one. Transforming our bitterness into tears of grief is sacred work.
Denial is handy. Denial is disconnecting, tuning out. Don’t underestimate the power of denial. People can deny their own mortality until they’re dead. Humans might deny ourselves right into extinction. There’s enough fossil fuel left, if you include coal, to heat the planet until only bacteria can survive. But denial is also a protective human response to overwhelm. So take a break to go into denial, but please don’t stay there.
Mourning is hard work, heart work. It is acknowledging that we have lost what we darly love. And mourning hurts. But the tears cleanse. They wash away fear and guilt and shame. Mourning is a sacred practice that connects us to our own hearts, to our common humanity and to the sacred. Mourning is remembering what we value, even if we’re losing it.
In the mud with the pigs, the prodigal son mourned. His mourning released him from his self-destructive path. On returning home, the son no longer acted entitled. He was deeply humbled, ready to take responsibility, to serve– really serve– the household that had given him life and love.
What does returning home look like for a prodigal species, or at least for us at IUCC? Maybe it looks like a respectful relationship with the web of life that sustains us. If you have a traditional Christian theology, you can say it this way: God has made us stewards of life on earth, to guard and nurture it for its own sake, and in sacred trust for future generations. If you have a Process theology, you can say it this way: The sacred, what we name God, is found in and through the entire world, connecting every living being. Therefore we love and honor God by respecting and caring for our home, and all life on it. In either theology the bottom line is the same. The whole earth is sacred. Show respect and care. Say it with me. The whole earth is sacred. Show respect and care.
Whatever the extent of the loss we face, remember that it is never too late to be faithful to what is sacred; to show respect and care for the earth, and the vulnerable people on it. One activist said this:
Once I dropped from my shoulders the self-imposed burden of having to “save the world”, I could breathe a sigh of relief and ask myself, “What can I still do?” (3)
Don’t wait until climate disaster comes to you personally. Plant seeds now. Build relationships with your immediate neighbors now, so that you can trust and care for each other when hard times come. Throw a block party. Borrow a ladder or a lemon, it’s as simple as that. House homeless people and refugees now, so that from your own broken heart you can advocate with authority for climate refugees in the future. Build local political networks now, so we have leverage to do whatever can be done politically. And I invite you to plant a real gardennow. I’m told regenerative agriculture is our last best home for the planet. More to the point, you too can experience the humility that comes from not knowing how to grow stuff, and develop a new appreciation for our ancestors, whose lives depended on knowing how to grow stuff sustainably. Hopefully you will also experience the joy that comes from watching new life unfold before you.
So please humor your Green Faith Team by planting the sweet peas Chuck and Linda grew for you. If you don’t have a yard, there are plenty of irrigated common areas in Orange County that can use a little guerilla gardening. Your sweet peas may die; that’s how gardening goes. But a few of them may thrive, and even reseed, again and again, for twenty years, like the sweet peas I planted in my backyard when my son was in preschool, bringing joy in the form of countless fragrant blooms each spring.
May the seeds of care and connection you sow bloom, and be a blessing to all. Amen.
(2) The term Anthropocene was coined to describe our current epoch where humans have reshaped the world. http://www.anthropocene.info.
(3) Deb Ozarko
Awaken us, O God, to our interconnection with the sacred web of life that sustains us.
We give thanks for this awesome blessing. We pledge to treasure and guard it.
Bless our tears, O God, as we mourn the devastation of the earth our home.
Turn those tears into courageous resolve to cherish your creation.
God of compassion, make us generous in caring for all our neighbors.
Especially those made ill or displaced by climate-induce disasters.
God of transformation, Guide us into new ways of thinking and living that respect our home.
And keep us faithful and loving, generous and merciful, even in the eye of the storm.
Amen.
