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Sermon - April 15th, 2007
The Weightless Grace of Song
Rev. Lorenz "Lefty" Schultz
Scripture: Ps. 24:1-2 Ps. 19:1-6
Yesterday was National Climate Change Action Day, and in the last count I saw, over 1200 rallies/actions were held including every state in the nation calling for proactive action and legislation to mitigate the catastrophic consequences of wide ranging climate change.
Several months ago James Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, was in the headlines because he refused to abide by a gag order issued by the Bush administration on scientists on the staff of the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) when the results of their scientific research was in conflict with administration political priorities. Jim Hansen has led a team of scientists that has established an extensive computerized model tracking the impact of climate change. Hansen estimates that we have ten years to flatten the human emissions of CO2 (carbon dioxide) into the atmosphere if we are to avoid – or at least mitigate – catastrophic changes in our environment.
What is Hansen talking about? His climate projections estimate that within the next 50 years, there will be a five to six degree warming of the earth. The last time the earth was five degrees warmer was 3 million years ago when the sea level was 80 feet higher than it is today. If the ocean level were to increase by 80 feet, the cities of Shanghai, Tokyo, Amsterdam, Venice and New York City would be flooded by rising ocean levels. In the U.S, alone, 50 million people live below that sea level. In China, 250 million people would be displaced by the rising ocean level. Bangladesh would have 120 million refugees, practically its entire population. India would lose land that 150 million people now call home. Do you remember the chaos that occurred in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina when some 1 million people were forced from their homes in the Gulf Coast? Can you imagine the chaos that would ensue if the number of refugees from climate disaster were in the range of 100 or 200 million people on the move?
One of Jim Hansen’s major concerns is that by the time, we notice ice sheets in the Arctic and Antarctic are melting, the actual process is already accelerating at a rapid rate. Being naïve in many science matters, I had not realized that the ice sheets/glaciers on Spaceship Earth reflect much of the heat of the sun back into space. Open water absorbs that heat and accelerates global warming. Once again Jim Hansen has said that we have ten years to establish meaningful reductions in our human contributions to global warming – for Hansen, the clicking of that ten year clock began in 2005. That means that the clock is ticking with eight years to go.
The scientific data is there for those with eyes to see. And, yes, sometimes I run across people who say that dramatic steps are not necessary because the scientific data is not yet conclusive. And then I look into the eyes of our children and our grandchildren and realize that we are playing Russian roulette with their futures. And who appointed us to be God in this way?
A recent poll printed in the Oregonian suggested that only 18% of the U.S. electorate believes that addressing the issue of global warming must be one of our national priorities. That is one of the reasons why Bill McKibben decided to organize yesterday’s nationwide action day on global warming and climate change, and hopefully it will mark a dramatic turning point in the national debate about the need for action on global warming. Change is indeed at hand. Recently Duke Power, and a coalition of major US corporations including ALCOA, BP America, Caterpillar, General Electric, and PG&E among others, startled Washington insiders when they issued a major policy statement calling for legislation to reduce greenhouse gases and major efforts to address global warming.
Bill McKibben is a fascinating guy. His book, The End of Nature, is esteemed in the environmental movement just as Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring broke dramatic new ground about the human impact on the creation in the 1960’s. Furthermore, Bill McKibben makes it clear that his fundamental values were shaped in the United Methodist Church. In a recent Portland appearance, he commented that he was much more comfortable teaching in a United Methodist Sunday school than in speaking from the pulpit (“ you will generally find me in the classroom next to the furnace room “, Bill wryly observed). He began writing about global warming some 25 years ago, and he has done so hoping all the while that his conclusions would prove to be wrong. Instead Bill McKibben has found that the realities of global warming are much worse than his gloomiest scenarios had predicted. As Time magazine observed in a recent issue (April 3, 2006):
“ …Global climate systems are booby-trapped with tipping
points and feedback loops, thresholds past which the slow
creep of environmental decay gives way to sudden collapse.”
Time concluded, “Global warming is the real deal and human activity has been causing it.“
Why should persons of faith be at the forefront of those addressing this issue ?
First of all, there is a fundamental issue of social justice. Bangladesh is a small populous nation on the Bay of Bengal. As noted, with a rise of ocean level of 80 feet, almost their entire nation would be under water with over 100 million refugees. Did you know that it is estimated that Bangladesh produces – at the most - .001% of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions? At the same time, the United States, which has only 4% of the world’s population, is responsible for 25% of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions. As Bill McKibben noted, if in 50 years, the people of Bangladesh are having to cope with ocean levels up to their waist, the magnitude of the increase up to calf level is solely due to carbon emissions from the United States. If our God is a God of justice,what possible rationale can there be for our own refusal to curb our greenhouse gas emissions placing millions of sisters and brothers all over the world at risk for their lives? To be sure that rapidly developing economies of China and India will bear their share of responsibility, but who will take the lead in the community of nations on this issue?
Second, there is the impact that we have upon other species in God’s creation. Did you know that armadillos have been found in Arkansas? They are moving north because of the impact of climate change. Have you seen some of the sad pictures of polar bears trapped on tiny ice floes because the Arctic ice sheets are breaking up ? The warming of the earth’s surface carries the probability of catastrophic change for other species who travel alongside us on Spaceship Earth.
Third, and maybe for many of us closest to home, is the legacy we are leaving for our children, our grandchildren, and future generations yet to come. Scientists project that with a temperature change of five degrees in the Willamette Valley, future generations may well have to deal with malaria and dengue fever as real disease risks. There is something I have never quite understood. If the human impact on the earth’s climate is potentially catastrophic for future generations, is it not prudent that we should err on the side of caution and restraint rather than being in the position of trying patchwork, band-aid solutions after catastrophe has occurred ? I am the product of generations before me that wanted to pass on a better quality of life to their children and grandchildren. However naïve some of the expectations of our parents and grandparents might have been, is this still not a laudable goal ? We are accountable to God if we try to pass on a world where the air is unbreatheable, where we have exhausted its wondrous natural resources, where the rich biological diversity of the planet shrinks and is continually compromised, where rising temperatures will bring untold suffering to millions of people.
Several years ago Wendell Berry, an amazing poet who is also a Kentucky farmer, published a collection of poems, A Timbered Choir: Sabbath Poems 1979-1997. He captured the wonder of creation in the title poem for the collection:
Great trees, outspreading and upright
Apostles of the living light.
Patient as stars, they build in air
Tier after tier, a timbered choir,
Stout beams upholding weightless grace
Of song, a blessing on this place.
Like those psalmists many generations ago who proclaimed, “ The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world and those who live in it “ and “ the heavens are telling the glory of God and the firmament proclaims God’s handiwork “, Wendell Berry’s Sabbath poems call us not only to awareness but to action. Dr. Lynn White may well have been right when, in 1967, he suggested that the biblical injunction to “ subdue and dominate the earth “ has been a major source of our environmental crisis. But it is also clear that, biblically, human beings are also placed in creation as caretakers and stewards. I have heard about growing numbers of congregations – including mainstream churches and evangelical megachurches – who have formed task forces to help their members learn about climate change and address the issue at the local and national level. However we may have been misled by the biblical injunction to “subdue and dominate the earth”, if persons of faith cannot be counted on to stand in word and deed as faithful stewards of all the wonderful gifts that God has given us in the creation, we will fatally have compromised the faith we proclaim.
In 1961, the Lutheran theologian, Joseph Sittler addressed the World Council of Churches and called for a “ daring, penetrating, life-affirming Christology of nature “, Sittler insisted that until we follow a Christ of nature, the powers of grace will not be loosed on the Earth “ to diagnose, judge, and heal the ways of humans as they blasphemously strut about this hurt and threatened world as if they owned it."1
Joe Sittler was a man before his time – he spoke these words over 45 years ago. He proclaimed that “ loosing the powers of grace “ as Earth creatures for Earth is the great work of reformation for this generation and the generation to come, to move inch by inch from a cumulatively destructive presence that we human beings have had on the planet to a mutually enhancing and harmonious relationship between humankind and the rest of God’s good earth.
i “Called to Unity “ p. 46 in Evocations of Grace, Joseph Sittler (Eerdmans) 2000.