On Rainbow Covenants; Sermon, March 8, 2020; Lent 2 on Climate Change

Genesis 9:8-17

Mark 4:2-9

 

When I grew up, rainbows were all the rage.  I was born in 1977.  Skittles adopted their slogan, ‘taste the rainbow’, in 1979. On TV in the 80’s, we watched a cartoon called Rainbow Brite, about a magical girl in a fabulous rainbow dress who rode a pink horse.  I had rainbow shoes, rainbow earrings, rainbow hair ties, rainbow clothing…and a rainbow bedspread!  And I, of course, became an expert at coloring a rainbow. 

Thanks to Lucky Charms, I was very aware that at the end of every rainbow there was supposed to be a pot of Gold.  And of course now we are all familiar with the rainbow flag that has taken on a permance beyond little girls’ décor; it has become the official symol and flag of gay pride and gay rights, implying that everyone has a right to be flamboyant and all varieties of human can be celebrated. 

But until Bible Study this week, I honestly had never heard this particular story or read this particular scripture before about the rainbow promise in the bible.  I guess I missed that day in Sunday School!

In the book of Genesis, God flooded the earth, then put a rainbow in the sky as a promise, never again… and as a reminder.  God needed a reminder.  It makes you wonder… why does he need a reminder for such a big promise? Is God like the rest of us who walk into a room with purpose but immediately forget what it was we intended to do there?  Or blanking on names that we’ve known for years?  Does he need that kind of reminder?

Or is it like the reminder for a parent whose child is driving them bonkers and they are just about to raise their voice when they see a magnet on the fridge that talks about modeling the behavior you want to see in your child…?  Is it a reminder for people like dog owners (ahem) who need a reminder that dogs are generally good when they’ve eaten two pounds of bacon off your counter, not to mention your Bluetooth headphones, and emptied the trash and trashed the house?  Is it that kind of reminder that says, ‘deep breaths…’?

Well, God is in fact not destroying the earth this time, we are. 

Last year we saw devastating floods across northeastern Nebraska and Iowa.  The NY Times have named them “The Great Flood of 2019”; across the entire Midwest and south, 3 people died and 14 million people were affected.  There were record levels recorded in 42 locations.  And 1 million acres of farmland were lost across 9 states.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as posted on the Natural Resource Defense Council’s website; “it is increasingly clear that climate change “has detectably influenced” several of the water-related variables that contribute to floods, such as rainfall and snowmelt.”[1] 

How does climate change affect rainfall?  According to the NRDC, “A warmer atmosphere holds and subsequently dumps more water. As the country has heated up an average of 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit since 1901, it has also become about 4 percent wetter.  In the Northeast, extreme storms are 27% wetter than they were 100 years ago, and heavy precipitation events are projected to rise by 50% to 66%.[2]

Flooding is also caused by rising sea levels.  In the movie we started last week and will conclude today, the narrator takes you on a quick trip to get a look at an Antartica without snow.  Indeed, just last week Antartica saw a heat wave above 65 degrees that melted 20% of the island’s snow in just 9 days.[3]  But the thing that was most chilling was not the footage of miles of glacial retreat advancing at a pace double that of a decade ago, or miles-wide chunks of ice ‘calving’ or breaking off into the sea, but the most chilling was the footage of vast rivers of meltwater cutting their way through the glaciers, at times looking like an ice-cold lazy river in an ice canyon, at other times a Niagara River of power all generated by meltwater.  Researchers say these rivers of water are accelerating the melt, cutting pathways through the ice and lubricating the underside of glaciers, helping them break away easier.  As glaciers melt, two things happen; the ice caps in the Andes, Himilayas, Alps and Rockies are shrinking, threatening the water supply of vast populations – and, in the frozen poles of the world, they drop into the sea causing sea level change.  The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that, at our current pace and current level of warming, we should expect the seas to be 10 to 26” higher by the end of the century.  10-26” means several more feet of flooding during hurricanes and tsunamis, and becomes a real danger to cities like Miami and NYC that are already at sea level.  But if things continue to accelerate as our consumption patterns dictate, the accelerated glacial melting could cause the seas to raise dozens of feet – which will swallow up entire states and island countries.[4]

 

We are a covenant people.  We made a convenant with God to til the earth, to care for God’s creation and God’s people.  It seems that it isn’t God who needs to see a rainbow these days.   We are the ones who need a reminder.

The thing is, none of this is a done deal.  None of this scary doomsday predictions have to come true if we just change – a little.  If we just change some of our habits, each of us just a little but all of us collectively, we can thwart these dire predictions.  Climate change is a problem because there are so many of us – globally – and so much of it is entangled in market forces.  But – even though there are billions of people in developing countries like China and India (and we will talk about that later in Lent;) even though we only make up about 4.5% of the global population; we use about 17% of the the energy in the world, according to the US Energy Information Administration.[5]  Now, that’s down from 25% in 2005, but whether that’s because we are using less or other developing countries are now using more is unclear.  What is clear is that people in other countries hold the American lifestyle as the standard.  As long as we continue to consume energy carelessly and without regard for others, we model that carelessness for the rest of the world.  But small behavior changes, like the change on your dresser, collectively add up to a lot more than you would think!  

Now, changing our habits and behaviors can be hard.  At least, that’s what we’re learning from the Coronavirus.  Last week it seems that the whole country was taught, for the first time officially, to wash their hands.  I don’t know about you, but I saw the facebook instruction that showed, under a blacklight, just how much germs are washed away with 6 seconds under water without soap, 12 seconds, and finally clean hands at 20 seconds.  And that made me aware, all week long, how bad I’ve become at handwashing…6 seconds felt long!  And then this week, we were told not to try not to touch our face.  I heard that headline over and over again…and Ever since, we’ve all become super self-conscious of how often we touch our faces.  Even the President weighed in on how difficult it was.  As annoying as it was, the reminder has etched it into my brain…. they planted a seed.

Jesus tells us a parable in the gospel about a sower who went out to sow, but some seeds fell on the path and became food for the birds; some seeds fell on rocky soil and were scorched by the sun; some seeds fell into thorns and became choked by the competition. But there is always seed that falls on fertile soil and takes root – and when it takes root, it can multiply 30, 60, and 90 fold. 

There are small behavior changes that each of us can do here in Nebraska, in our homes, that actually make a huge difference.  Most of them are just smart; turning lights off, keeping the fridge closed, keeping the a/c in.  I remember my mom always shouting, ‘the air’s on!’ when I’d leave the door open, or intercepting me at the fridge when I’d open it to browse, saying, ‘what are you looking for’?  Of course, I didn’t know, that’s why I was browsing.  But now, I’m working on thinking it thru without opening the door.

And some are more hidden.  For instance, always-on devices, like computers, or things that use remote controls like DVD players, or rechargeable batteries, or anything that has a stand-by light or a digital display creates what energy professionals call a ‘phantom load’ or ‘vampire energy’ – they suck energy even when you aren’t using them.  If each of us go through the trouble of power-ing down and then unplugging these appliances when we aren’t using them, we can save ourselves cash and keep some pollution out of the air.  If every household in the US did it, it would equal the electricity needed from 50 large power plants.   Another easy change is to wash clothes in cold rather than hot water, and then hang-dry as much as possible.  Carpooling, or walking when possible makes a huge difference, as does changing your diet to eat local food, order less food, and eat less meat.  If you did these small changes only some of the time – like decided to participate in meatless Mondays or washed most of your clothes in cold – adds up.  If they fall on fertile soil, each of these seeds can become a habit – and you’ll never how tall they will grow.  Maybe you’ll reduce your utility bills, and with that be able to buy an electric car.  Maybe you’ll discover you like eating differently and will start your own garden.  Maybe you’ll demonstrate to the next generation your love for God’s creation through your actions.  We are planting seeds, seeing where they go, and entertaining what habits we can adopt into our lives that make a difference for ourselves, our kids, our future generations and all the creatures that live on God’s great creation.

We cannot force someone to hear a message they are not ready to receive.  But we must never underestimate the power of planting seeds in our lives and in their minds that may sprout one day.

Because let’s not forget what it is we are doing here, during Lent.  These 40 days are merely the way we remind ourselves that hope springs eternal, that death rises from the grave, that seeds break through the soil even when things seemed darkest and frozen.  We will rise, just as Jesus did.  We can revisit God’s law and spend some time repenting. We can realign ourselves with our covenant to safeguard God’s creation. We can rise to the occasion, the needs of the situation we find ourselves in – and we can collectively grow a new way of living that helps sustain our world.  I know it can be done, all it takes is a little sunlight, a little rain, some fertile soil, and a seed.  If our pioneer ancestors could figure out how to grow food in the sandy soils of Nebraska, we can figure out how to adjust what we do daily to be able to keep growing in the sandy soils of Nebraska.  

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[1] https://www.nrdc.org/stories/flooding-and-climate-change-everything-you-need-know#causes

[2] ibid

[3] https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/24/world/antarctica-heat-wave-melt-february-trnd/index.html

[4] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/sea-level-rise/#close

[5] https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=87&t=1

Eve Chose Wisdom; Sermon, March 1, 2020; Lent 1 on Climate Change

Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7

Matthew 4:1-11

Who were Adam and Eve?  The first people to not read Apple’s terms and conditions.

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Do you know what is the oldest computer?

It was an Apple.
But it had extremely limited memory.
Just 1 byte.
Then everything crashed.

One of my Seminary professors wrote a book called Dreaming of Eden, which discusses references to good and evil in secular culture, especially in our favorite films and TV shows.  But she opens the book drawing attention to the Apple computer logo, something I had never thought about.  The logo is an apple with one bite.  But…hold that thought.

This week we read of Adam and Eve in the garden, a story that is so deep in our collective psyche that it shows up again and again in our pop culture: from the apple in the Snow White story, to the Star Trek episode in an idyllic garden, to Voldemort’s snake in Harry Potter – allusions to the Garden of Eden story abound.

As we begin Lent, the 40 days we are encouraged to spend in reflection on our sins and repentance to prepare ourselves for Easter, I think it’s an appropriate time to ask – what is sin?   What’s your definition of sin? Is it the same as evil?  Do you believe in the devil, the tempter, Satan, who some Christians call ‘the enemy’?  Does the devil cause people to do things?  Or is that another word for temptation – that one could not withstand some specific temptation, which is obviously of the devil?

When we discussed this week’s readings in bible study this week – the garden of Eden and Jesus’ 40 days of temptation - one person said the snake in the garden was the devil… which makes sense.  The snake acts as Satan’s mouthpiece in the garden to tempt God’s beloved creation away from blind obedience and trust in God.  Because they are flawed humans – or perhaps because one of them is a weak-willed and feeble-minded woman – they succumb to temptation and disobey God, committing the original sin.  As a consequence they are banned from the Garden and all of humanity for all of eternity will struggle to get back to that close of a relationship with God.  And then comes Jesus, part human, part divine, and he alone is able to withstand temptation, because he is not merely a flawed human like us.  And when, at the end of these 40 days, he begins his journey to the cross and dies, to be resurrected 3 days after, providing all of us a pathway back to God.  That’s the most common interpretation of this story, I’d say. 

But if the snake is the devil, how come he is the one telling the truth? 

God tells Adam and Eve that they must not eat of the fruit of the one specific tree in the garden because if they do so, they will die.  But they do not die.  God had lied, and what the snake said was true – their eyes were opened and they became like God, knowing good and evil.  

There’s another interpretation of this story, coming from the Eastern Orthodox Christian Church, where the garden is merely a metaphor for our lives as pre-adolescent children – that time when perhaps our parents do lie to us to keep us safe and innocent and carefree and trusting.  And that lasts for a while, until we’ve grown to a point where we become curious.  And independent. Or possibly rebellious and disobedient.  That time when we take chances at making our own decisions, using our own thoughts to discover what we do and don’t agree with, a time when we feel like striking out from the garden of our parents’ protective rules and watchful eye.  The Eastern Orthodox church views the Garden of Eden story as a coming of age story.  We have to leave the garden to truly become independent adults.  In this story, the snake is a truth-teller, and the woman is not weak or feeble-minded; rather the woman desires wisdom.  The woman wants knowledge.  And she wants to share it with others. So with that one bite, she and Adam understand what God understands, have to leave the garden to make their own way in the world, and they gain the free will God gave us to determine our own lives.

 

(Now you are thinking about the apple logo again, right? The Apple with one bite?  The pursuit of wisdom, including all the good and bad ways it manifests….) 

So, getting back to sin – we know the basics, right?  The ‘thou shalt nots’ –no murder, no adultery, no stealing, no lying, no coveting – not to mention having no other Gods and keeping the Sabbath holy.  Then there’s 2 whole books of the bible – long ones – that start laying out many, many more sins, putting them into laws, and the appropriate punishments for each. But then Jesus arrives on the scene and tells people, among other things, that those laws should not cause suffering or supercede human compassion – and that no sinner is beyond redemption and reintegration into community.  And then Saint Paul lays out some others – like gossiping and boasting – in his letters, so we have a few more guidelines.

I would say these are all personal and intentional sins.  Can there be an unintentional sin?

Is sin always in someone’s personal power to do or not do?   Or is there sin in which we are unintentionally complicit?  Or is sin something that has to be within our personal power and personal intention to do?  And what is the relationship between sin and evil?  If good can be created without intention… like the secondary impact of, say, mentoring is that the mentored child becomes a role model for younger siblings – then it naturally follows that evil can be created without intention as well, right?

I don’t necessarily have all the answers -  these are honest, rhetorical questions…but I’d like to say it’s not so black and white.  I believe there are times when our involvement in a system is, in itself, both innocent but also contributes to evil…. That is to say, unintentionally sinful.  There are times when we are complicit in creating evil through personal sin without knowing it.  And I think those situations of life where we are complicit in evil but not intentional in our actions are the hardest parts problems that we face – in our families, in our society, in our government, all of it. 

For example, thinking about this on a family level – maybe it’s a marriage situation where one spouse is addicted, and the other does everything possible to keep the family afloat, but the situation creates pain and trauma that enables the addiction and impacts the emotional development of the children.  Or when a parent has a child addicted to drugs and finds themselves in the impossible position of decided whether to continue to provide for their child to keep them safe, knowing that their support is enabling that disease of addiction that has overpowered them both… I’m not trying to make light of any of the decisions in such complicated situations. There is no right answer, but there are often unintended consequences that we shy away from calling ‘sin’ but that may contribute to negative outcomes.

Or, on a societal level:  One of the biggest sins and evils in our society is the continued presence of racism and the huge inequity between the races, which was formed over decades of discrimination built into our institutional structures, as well as exercised in the sins of as harassment, intimidation, assault and even murder.  Sometimes talking about race will get boiled down to whether ones’ family once owned slaves or were part of the KKK, because we are trying to assign intentional sin to individuals.  But the race issues we have in this country continue to persist because of the unintentional ways that we have all been complicit – issues around housing, and loans, and education, and policing, and community breakdown.  And yes, even us living here in Nebraska benefit from being the preferred race in this country – we benefit from not being the target of suspicion, accusation, doubt, and having the knowledge that we can go anywhere and do anything without being in danger.  The fact that there is a flip side to that existence – that there are people who regularly wonder if they will be welcome in whatever new space or classroom or town or workplace that they are headed to – that is a sin, it is evil.  And yet, for the most of us, we have never intentionally done anything to harm anyone who doesn’t look like us. 

Or in an economic model.  In Seminary, we all had to write a capstone paper called a Constructive that spelled out how we thought about God, Jesus, Sin, and Ministry.  Most people do these in the context of a congregation, but I had been a health care organizer, so I did mine on health care.  And my definition of Sin and Evil was all about unintentional complicity created by the Capitalist system.  Say you are a small business owner that wants to provide health care for your employees... but profit margins are slim and you have to stay competitive to stay in business.  Your competitor does not offer health care, greatly reducing their labor costs, and your company just can't compete - so you drop health care.  But your employees then, when sick, end up in the world of the uninsured, going to the Emergency Room only when absolutely necessary and therefore creating health care costs they can't pay for, which then get passed onto other peoples' insurance, which then makes health care more expensive, which causes more employers to drop coverage.  It's an evil spiral that keeps getting worse, unintentionally.  

And that brings us to climate change. You may have read in the March Newsletter that this year, the Justice Committee will be presenting, during these 6 weeks of Lent, diverse offerings to help us understand what climate change is, how it will impact us and others, what the timeline is, and what actions we can take to alleviate our sins that have gotten us here. 

What?  Did I just say ‘our sins’?  I did.  None of us got to this place intentionally.  We were just living our lives in the best way that we were offered.  But unfortunately, our lives have had unintended consequences – our unintended sins have created unintentional evil has and will continue to threaten our very way of life and that of future generations.  As our farmers already know, it will continue to impact our food production system, our ecosystem and species survival, the preservation of our property, our world’s beauty, and our health.  And these will manifest itself, first and foremost, on ‘the least of these’ – the poor and the vulnerable globally, nationally and in our own communities.  People of limited means and limited personal power have the least amount of capacity to prepare, adapt and survive the natural disasters and food shortages anticipated in our future. 

In his 40 days with the devil, Jesus was tempted by hunger.  The devil suggested he turn stones to bread.  And he was tempted with security – the devil challenged him to throw himself down and let God save him from the rocks below.  And he was tempted with power – to possess all the kingdoms of the world in their splendor. Jesus said no, and banished the devil from his presence.

We have these same temptations, on a daily basis, and they all relate to climate change.  We grow, produce, eat, and throw out more food than is necessary or healthy or wise, recklessly using excess fossil fuels and adding to carbon pollution, while leading other countries down the same destructive path of fuel-intense farming and overproduction.

We fill ourselves up with anxiety over making sure our lives and livelihoods are secure, all the while ignoring the vast majority of people who will never have security, and shunning those who will lose what security they have as natural disasters intensify because of the climate. 

We resist making changes to our lifestyles, our laws, our regulations, or our economy to preserve our power at the table of nations, making sure that our profits continue, all the while ignoring that the very grandchildren who inherit any wealth we create will also inherit a planet that may not have clean water, glaciers, coral reefs, plants or animal species, sustainable food production, or some of the major cities and beautiful coasts we currently enjoy.

So this Lent needs to be not what you will give up, but what you will live for.  Over the course of the next few weeks, we will explore the temptations of bread, security and power that connect with climate change. We will explore what changes are possible and how to do them – for instance, we will be encouraging all of you to check this tool out from the library in order to discover your home energy usage – and your home energy waste.  There are 2 of these available from Hastings’ library, on a 3-day checkout period.  These tools will help you see how small, easy changes – as easy as turning off monitors when they aren’t being used – actually do matter and actually can contribute towards changing the course we are on.

In the garden, we chose to be wise. Our ancestor Eve chose wisdom.  She chose knowledge.  She chose to know what God knows.  With that knowledge comes the free will and the responsibility to do the critical thinking required when we are unintentionally complicit in evil.  With that wisdom comes the obligation to come to the hard decisions to honor our relationship with God and future generations.  Doing the will of God requires going beyond our own self-interests. As people faithful to a God who calls us to care for the least among us, any action to slow climate change is action not on our behalf, but on behalf of the poor and vulnerable in coming generations. So I implore you to take advantage of the research and preparation of the Justice Committee these next few weeks and discover where you can make small changes and big changes that, collectively, can have a multiplied impact on our world.  And then we will truly have done our work of repenting our sins during this Lenten season.  Let it be so.  Amen.