March 6, 2011
Texts:
Isaiah 49:13-16a
Matthew 6:24-33
The Apostle Paul says in Romans 12, “Do not let the world squeeze you into its mold.” This is precisely what is happening in our country today and we must resist, but not only resist, we must move beyond resistance to help foment a non violent, bottom up revolution. This is the agenda we are working with in the Bridge to Hope mission group and today I would like to share with you some of our thinking.
In this teaching I offer three main points. First is a warning of imminent danger to our planet and to life as we know it. I do not think it is an overstatement to compare the future that is heading toward us to a tsunami, perhaps a tsunami in slow motion, but a tsunami nevertheless. When nature unleashes its terrifying chaotic potential, human control is out of the question.
This warning is real, but it is only part of the picture. So my second point is that as people of faith we believe that people with a calling like ours are not left to our meager strength and wisdom to face this approaching crisis. We have powerful resources in our Christian faith and untapped resources within us as people of faith and a community of faith. My second point is to remind you of those resources.
My third point is a call to action. There is no time to waste. All people who care about our common future are called to the front lines to work together for a future of hope. The good news, as the people of Egypt are discovering, is that there are possibilities behind the wall of seeming impossibility waiting to be claimed.
These are my three points: warning, assurance and call to action. Let’s start with the warning. Many of us have read James Speth’s book, The Bridge at the Edge of the World. Let me read a paragraph from his introduction: “…all we have to do to destroy the planet’s climate … and leave a ruined world to our children and grandchildren is to keep doing exactly what we are doing today, with no growth in the human population or the world economy. Just continue to release greenhouse gases at current rates, just continue to impoverish ecosystems and release toxic chemicals at current rates, and the world in the latter part of this century won’t be fit to live in. But, of course, human activities are not holding at current levels – they are accelerating, dramatically. It took all of history to build the seven-trillion-dollar world economy of 1950; today economic activity grows by that amount every decade. At current rates of growth, the world economy will double in size in a mere fourteen years. We are thus facing the possibility of an enormous increase in environmental deterioration, just when we need to move strongly in the opposite direction. … But today’s environmental reality is linked powerfully with other realities, including growing social inequality and neglect and the erosion of democratic governance and popular control. … we as citizens must now mobilize our spiritual and political resources for transformative change on all fronts.”
This is the coming tsunami and its chaos. The issue is not whether upheaval and rearrangement of life as we know it is heading our way. It is! The issue is how are we to respond? What assurance can we possibly talk about, that we can bring to the struggle that will enable us to divert or weather the chaos?
I am not talking here about God acting while we do nothing. I am searching for language and images to describe God working in solidarity with us and us in solidarity with God and all people who commit to this struggle. In I Cor. 4:1, Paul says, “Think of us in this way, as servants of Christ and stewards of God’s mysteries.” This is who we are called to be: servants of Christ, looking at the world as it is with the love, the hope and imagination of Christ as a community.
Isaiah 49 is a place to start in looking for God’s promise on which to stand as we face the threat bearing down upon us. This text was written for a people in exile. They have been in exile for two generations and many are sorely tempted to give up believing their story that defines them as a people. The prophet we call “II Isaiah” voices the despair of his people as a complaint spoken by their destroyed capital city and spiritual center. “But Zion (meaning Jerusalem) said, “The Lord has forsaken me, my Lord has forgotten me.”
As the environmental crisis grows their complaint will soon be our complaint. “God, how could you allow this to happen?” When this comes to pass, will we remember God’s answer to his doubting people: “Can a woman forget her nursing child or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget yet I will not forget you. See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands.”
Israel like us was a proud people with a powerful history. At that time they were nobodies living under the control and off the crumbs of their conquerors. From all appearances chaos had won. Where is God? Who is God to them in failure and defeat? Have they fallen off God’s radar screen? Does God exist only in their imagination?
To this frightened, defeated people, the prophet counters their despair by reminding them who they are: “You are my servant Israel in whom I will be glorified.” Israel has a calling to be “a light to the nations.” God intends to use Israel as his servant to create order that can withstand chaos. And God will be glorified in the process. The people are thinking hopelessness. God is thinking glory – the manifestation of God’s own glory in which God’s people share.
These words – God being gloried – sound strange to our modern ears. But is it really so strange? Let me suggest a modern example. Suppose we in this room suddenly heard sirens drowning out every other sound. Someone opens her I Phone and reads a text message saying a tsunami is headed our way, or to change the metaphor, the building is on fire.
What do you think would happen? Would there be panic or would leadership kick in to evacuate this space without anyone getting trampled? No one can say for sure but I would put my money on order over panic. Why? Because we are a community and in a crisis I believe that identity would kick in because that is who we are, and enough people would pull together to get as many as possible out safely at the risk of not getting out themselves. This is who we are.
Our identity as a community is not something we conjure up. It is something that we are drawn into over time. It happens to us. It is gifted to us. And God is glorified whenever we act consistent with who we are.
This solidarity with God and each other is generated over time, bit by bit – through sharing the inward journey and the outward journey, really coming to know each other, reaching out to each other in bad times and good times, struggling with each other, and affirming our identity as a people of God in worship and mission. It was earthy stuff like this that the prophet Isaiah heard in Isaiah 49: “You are my servant Israel in whom I will be glorified.”
In contrast, the mold our culture is trying to squeeze us into goes like this: “Disaster may come but I shall accumulate enough money and power to insure that when it comes I and mine will escape.” Is this glory to God and the people? No, it is shame!
Let’s turn now to my third point and consider a call to action. Let me say upfront that I do not expect that everyone will agree on the details of the warning. Some of you may be convinced that everything moves in cycles and that this too will pass or that in time technology will rise to the challenge and save us. Others may think that there is no way God will allow disaster on the scale of a tsunami to happen.
My view is that radical upheaval is coming no matter what we do and that this upheaval will test us like nothing before. I also stand on scripture that regardless of how the future unfolds God will be working with us and within us, even if we become confused and even abandon faith in a loving, self giving God. The issue is not the caring mercy of God. The issue is what is our call in the face of the crisis coming toward us?
Douglas John Hall in his seminal book, Lighten Our Darkness, says, “On every side – by scientists, economists, social scientists, prophets and poets – we are told that we must acquire a new attitude, new lifestyles, and a new concern for the quality of life. And there can be no doubt that what all of this means concretely is that we must limit ourselves, or else we shall be limited. It is as simple as that. We must discover a new way of being in the world, or else we shall have a new way thrust upon us by famine, overcrowding, noise, wars of global proportions (unmatched by anything to date), depleted natural resources, and a dried up and barren earth. And we must find this new way of being soon, very soon, now!”
Here is a compelling vision: a public groundswell for a new way of being in the world. It seems like I have heard this before. A public groundswell – a movement for change from the bottom up as is happening in Egypt today, as happened in South Africa and in the United States in response to the Civil Rights Movement. And let us be clear that the Mubaraks of our country – the bought politicians and the economic interests that buy their reelection - are not going to abdicate voluntarily until the groundswell gives them no choice.
A new way of being in the world – the reordering of priorities – what is sustainable and what is not? What is enough? What really leads to happiness? Where must we and can we accept limits to allow more people at the table? A new way of being is economic, social, political and spiritual. It is also about more fun that is utterly free, more joy and less stress, more time for relationships that evoke love and laughter.
A public groundswell for a new way of being in the world – yes, you and I have heard that before. That, in fact, is what the Bible from Genesis to Revelation is all about.
Is it possible? Let me offer a second metaphor to juxtapose with the metaphor of a tsunami. It is the metaphor of a vast choir encircling the globe conducted by the Holy Spirit. The conductor activates this section and that section to sing their parts of the anthem of a new way of being in the world. From time to time the conductor pulls in all parts of this universal choir. At the conductor’s direction the combined sound may be soft as a whisper or as loud as the Hallelujah Chorus. Is such a groundswell possible in real time? That is not the question. The question is who will sing in the choir?
This is a “come to Jesus” time. History itself is giving the altar call. And history is speaking to us one by one, church by church, nation by nation. The call is not to get more religious. The call is to embrace life and all living creatures more deeply and broadly than ever before. And it is to get serious about God’s righteousness – not your righteousness or my righteousness but God’s righteousness – the righteousness of God that is reflected in our being who we were created to be – not masters but stewards, not owners but recipients.