by The Rev. Sally Juarez
SCRIPTURE READINGS Litany of Scriptural Passages on Creation from the Old and New Testaments
Transcribed from the sermon preached on APRIL 24, 2022
I read a little about the history of Earth Day the first of which dates back to April 22 of 1970 and was inspired by a number of environmental disasters like the Santa Barbara oil spill and the Cuyahoga (Ki-ya-ho-ga) River fires of 1969. Many Americans felt it was time we took a more active approach to the stewardship of the planet. Teach ins were organized on college campuses backed by Senator Pete McClosky and environmentalist Denis Hayes, and the group chose April 22, falling between Spring break and final exams, to maximize student participation. So, in April an article in the EPA journal told the story of the first Earth Day: “It was on that day that Americans made it clear that they understood and were deeply concerned over the deterioration of our environment and the mindless dissipation of our resources.”
That day left a permanent impact on the politics of America. In short, that first Earth Day in 1970 launched the Environmental decade. But the concerns articulated at that time, pale in comparison to what we are facing now with the Climate crisis.
Jay Inslee, Governor of Washington State said, “We are the first generation to feel the sting of climate change….and the last generation that can do something about it.”
We have all heard and read a lot of data on the climate crisis. I won’t take a lot of time on this, let me just give you a quick global snapshot; a few “zingers” I like to call them:
a) 2019 was the second hottest year on record
b) Since 1981, the global annual temperature has increased by .32 F each year; It is forecast to increase another 2 degrees within the next 20 years (putting us at the tipping point we always hear about) and over 4 degrees by the year 2100.
c) While CA is experiencing draught conditions all over the State, the number of floods and periods of heavy rain has quadrupled since 1980 and that then doubled since 2004.
d) In North America, snow cover has decreased by 5% annually since 1966. Elsewhere, the snows of epic Kilimanjaro are 80% gone today.
e) In the US in 2019 there were over 120,000 extreme weather records, including snow in Hawaii and heat waves in Alaska
f) In India, between the year 1980 and 1999, there were 213 heat waves, but between 2000 and 2018, roughly the same increment of time, there were 1,400.
g) In Iran in 2017, the temperature hit 129.2 degrees F, one of the hottest temperatures ever recorded.
h) The number of extreme heat waves in Europe have doubled between 1960 and 2018.
I) In Australia: Bushfires between June of 2019-March, 2020 swept across more than 46 million acres killing a billion animals. Over 674 billion pounds of CO2 were emitted during that emergency.
k) After the height of the bushfires, Sydney experienced 15.4 in of rain, the most rainfall since 1990.
And finally in Africa:
SOMALIA: Famine killed roughly 258, 000 people between 2010 and 2012. It failed to rain for three seasons in a row in 2016, 2017 and 2018. Over one 48-hour period in 2017, 110 people died from starvation and draught related illnesses.
Well, that’s enough for global snap shooting. We all get the picture. It’s not a pretty picture.
The 6th assessment of the IPCC was just completed in February of this year (2022) and while previous reports focused on all the adverse consequences of climate change, this most recent report included a lot of information on vulnerability which is defined as the lack of capacity to cope and adapt as it applies to regions of the globe and human beings and livelihoods and to other species and ecosystems.
The Climate crisis is a theological issue and one of the reasons why this is so important for the Church to reckon with is made very clear in Matthew 25: Jesus said: “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.” Jesus is talking about the same kinds of people identified in the 6th assessment: what we do or do not do for the most vulnerable, those who don’t have the means and resources to cope with the changes that are happening on the planet…the draughts, the famine, the fires, extreme heat or extreme cold…these are the most vulnerable in today’s climate crisis. So, Jesus calls us to do for them as we would do for Him; and that is where we find Christ; right in the heart-center of the most vulnerable among us in our world today. And as Jesus also said, the poor are always with us. But today we have a new kind of poor and vulnerable: We will have a whole generation of climate refugees, displaced from their homes by climate disasters. The World Bank has predicted that by 2050, 200 million climate refugees will have fled their homes.
St. John’s is known to be, and I think is proud to be known as a social justice church: In recent years tens of thousands of people have fled Central American countries like Honduras and Guatemala and they are not only leaving because of gang violence, they are leaving because draught and extreme weather conditions have made it impossible to grow crops. Life can’t be sustained there anymore.
In Bangladesh, hundreds of thousands of people are displaced every year by larger and more unpredictable monsoon floods. The Word Bank says 8 million people have left the country so far.
West Africa, a similar story. In the Caribbean, massive hurricanes drive people out of their homes every year now. Far from being a future concern, climate change driven migration and displacement is already happening. All over the globe.
Last summer we all experienced end to end fires in California. My niece had just moved from Seattle and bought a new home in Paradise.
Yes, her home was destroyed by the fire along with the whole rest of the town. Now most people living in Paradise could recover. Their homes were insured. They could rebuild and start over. Trauma aside, they will be fine…are already fine. In our country, we have the infrastructure and the resources to respond to most disasters. We do certainly have the poor and vulnerable in this country too, but not to the same degree. We are not among those that Jesus was talking about, “the least of these” in Jesus’s family. There are an ever-increasing number of people all over the globe that are. And why this is a matter for the Church is that Jesus, whom we claim to follow, calls us to do for them as we would do for Him. This is central to our faith.
Here is the second reason why Climate change is an issue for the church. Maybe it is number ONE. It is God’s precious gift of Creation that human activity is destroying. I want to suggest that this is a call to all of us to take up the cross and carry it as we work on all the ways that we can be part of the solution to the Climate Crisis.
So, what are we in the pew to do? The words of youth climate activist Gretta Thunberg provide us with an appropriate response to that question: “We cannot solve a crisis without treating it like a crisis.”
In the March edition of the Community Connection Newsletter, which is the monthly Newsletter I write every month at the Mission Homes, our brand new Creation Care team published a long list of ways in which we might live more sustainably on our Good Mother Earth, God’s gift to life on this planet. And with the list was the challenge to focus on only three of those ways :
1) Reducing your use of fossil fuel by driving less and walking more
2) Eating less meat
3) finding ways to cut back on your use of water.
We know that governments, corporations, financial institutions who invest in the Fossil Fuel Industry ….these powerful social structures in our world must make the biggest shifts to change their current path to a new direction of advancing the use of sustainable energy. That they continue to support fossil fuel use for their own profits and personal gain at the expense of all life on the planet is a sin of epic proportions, but we must also find ways to avoid being the consumers of fossil fuels and petroleum products like the ubiquitous plastics that are everywhere on and around everything; it is estimated that 150 million metric tons of plastic circulate in the world’s oceans. We need to stop contributing to those numbers as a matter of practicing our faith and our love of our Creator. We need to start behaving like we are living in an ecological crisis. Because we are.
So, how does this translate into our everyday lives? Well, we all need to be climate activists, for one thing, starting with pressuring those most responsible for the climate crisis: the corporations that put profit ahead people, pressure on the fossil fuel industry to transition to clean energy, put pressure on governments and policy makers. I got an email recently from Green Faith, a global organization that is galvanizing faith communities around the globe to work together on fighting climate change and in the email was a pledge they asked me to sign that I would not vote for any candidate that did not include in his or her platform a strong position of action on the climate crisis.
So, that is one thing we can all do. Write letter, sign petitions, make phone calls… Become a Climate activist!!
I have told this story to some of you…the story of how I became a vegan:
My grandson Karim was a meat eater extraordinaire! He likes nothing better than a burger or a big juicy steak. Whenever he came to visit, I made a point of serving his favorite meat-heavy dinners and lunches.
But at about the age 16, Karim was learning about climate change and about how much the agricultural industry and particularly the cattle and the animals raised for food contributes to the Green House gasses that are responsible for global warming. As a result of that learning, Karim and his 5 best buddies at school all made a pact to become vegan which they are all are to this day.
I was sitting at my dinner table at home one night after hearing that story and as I carried the piece of chicken on the fork towards my mouth, I could not open my mouth and put it in. I put the fork down and I haven’t eaten any animal or animal products since. Nor has Karim’s whole family. That is going on 3 years now and …
Karim is in his freshman year at Cornell majoring in environmental studies.
Now, you might be thinking that the little I do as an individual isn’t going make any perceptible difference in the climate change trajectory.
But I want to suggest to you that there are at least three important reasons why it does make a difference:
1) (Pete Seeger) the chorus to one of his famous songs says if two and two and 50 make a million, we’ll see the day come ‘round…we’ll see the day come round. If more and more of us:
Stop eating so much meat;
Switch to solar energy in our homes;
Buy a new or even used electric car;
Reduce our use of plastics;
Use less water …
…collectively we can make a difference.
2) You know it is our young people are the ones left to live in our hotter, more turbulent and weather distressed world. So, our children and grandchildren, our nieces and nephews, the young people in our lives will see our actions modeling a changed way of living on the planet; they will know and remember us as someone who made sacrifices and fought with our whole heart and soul to leave them with a livable future. It will make a very big difference in the kind of legacy we leave behind us. So that’s the second reason that what we can do as individuals matters…
3) and finally and perhaps most importantly we want God to know that we did everything within our power to restore the precious gift of Creation. I believe it will make a huge difference to us knowing that we understood what humans are doing to the planet and that I responded with all our passion to do our part to turn it around. That we made the intentional a deliberate choice to do the holy work of greening our lives. It will make a huge difference in who we are before God!
AMEN.