Readings

FIRST LESSON

The first lesson is from “Jesus Drives a Hybrid” by Mark Morford

“W.W.J.D.” What Would Jesus Drive? is a bizarre but adorable little group of sensitive soft-focus environmentally conscious-caring Christian Bible-thumpers who are clearly asking the most pressing question of the day: if Jesus had been cryogenically frozen like Walt Disney and was successfully thawed out and really needed to hit the Costco or suffer the last temptation of Berkeley by enduring the nightmare that is the San Francisc-Oakland Bay Bridge commute, what kind of vehicle would His Most Pious of Holy Selves pilot?

Of course, Jesus would drive a hybrid; maybe a moped; a bike. This is the overall message: Jesus loathes Earth-hating gas-guzzlers. Christ is omnipotently aware and attuned and ever-sensitive to the Goddess Mother Earth, and loves cars that crank out a good 65 mpg (more on the downhills), top down and hippie hair flyin', blaring POD or "Highway to Hell," with a bumper sticker that reads: "I Am My Co-Pilot."

Jesus most certainly doesn’t drive the all-American titanic land slabs favored by true patriots everywhere, the bloated oil-sucking “reason-we've-gone-to-war” SUVs, or Satan's own Ford Excursion with gun rack. This iteration of "WWJD" is one of those mixed-blessing messages for liberals, atheists, happy pagans, and the rest—those of us who are amused and horrified by the hardcore pro-family anti-everything-else flag-waving proto-Christian groups in places like Kentucky and Colorado Springs.

Perhaps the conservative agenda is most perplexed by this movement. Their leaders trash Jesus’ fine name every day, employing it to start wars, justify assassinations and explain away violent invasions, all with a dose of “our-God-is-better-than-your-God” slogans. They don’t want to hear that the historical Jesus was a serious pacifist, a healer, sage, activist, bucking an uptight system and leading repressed people to new ways of thinking, away from Rome's draconian homeland security.

They don’t want to know that Jesus was a true radical; a renegade; a progressive humanitarian, a wanton liberal, a prototypical Earth First!-er. Jesus wore funky sandals and loathed war and proved the old violent retaliatory “eye-for-an-eye” mentality is for wimps, fools, and spiritually bereft suckers. He was anti-corporate, iconoclastic, and independent. He questioned authority. He infuriated the religious leaders of his day, enraged the general populace, and made heretical statements. Were Jesus alive today, most God-fearing Christians and U.S. attorneys general would, you know, hate Him.

"What Would Jesus Drive?" is a radical statement of individual thought, spiritual questing, and environmental awareness we should embrace and take to the next level. Jesus for Governor! Jesus, the Green Party candidate for President! After all, What Would Jesus Desire? Peace, individual doctrine-free spiritual inquiries, no more warmongering or spitting in the street. A little less hate and bombing in His name, a nice foot rub, and maybe hanging with his pal Buddha, watching "Planet Earth" on DVD on a mile-wide screen.

SECOND LESSON

The second lesson is from Psalm 104

Bless God, O my soul,
      You set the earth on its foundations,
          so that it shall never be shaken.
You cover it with the deep, as with a garment;
      the waters stood above the mountains.
At your rebuke they flee;
      at the sound of your thunder they take to flight.
They rose up to the mountains, ran down to the valleys
      to the place that you appointed for them.
You set a boundary that they may not pass,
      so that they might not again cover the earth.

You make springs gush forth in the valleys;
they flow between the hills,
      giving drink to every wild animal;
          the wild asses quench their thirst,
By the streams the birds of the air have their habitation;
      they sing among the branches.
From your lofty abode you water the mountains;
      the earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work.

You cause the grass to grow for the cattle,
      and plants for people to use,
to bring forth food from the earth,
      and wine to gladden the human heart,
oil to make the face shine,
      and bread to strengthen the human heart.

O God, how manifold are your works!
      In wisdom you have made them all;
          the earth is full of your creatures.
These all look to you
to give them their food in due season;
      when you give to them, they gather it up;
          when you open your hand,
                   they are filled with good things.

When you hide your face, they are dismayed;
      when you take away their breath,
          they die and return to their dust.
When you send forth your spirit,
          they are created;
      and you renew the face of the ground.

This Week's Sermon

Date: April 25, 2010

Title: The Green, Green Grass of Home

Message Delivered By: Rev. Dr. Joe McMurray

The following is from “Restoring Nature, Restoring Yourself,” an article in
“YES! Magazine” by Francesca Lyman.

Given months to live and told to find a hobby, a disabled Vietnam veteran turned to restoring the polluted creek behind his house. The effort saved his life. For a man broken by war, John Beal found himself an unlikely place of refuge. Hamm Creek was an open sewer, plugged up with garbage.

Told that he had less than four months to live and advised by his doctor to find a hobby to take his mind off his pain and suffering, Beal wandered down to the stream behind his house to contemplate his future. He stood on the shores of a backwater tributary of the Duwamish River, a dredged shipping channel on the outskirts of Seattle, edged by concrete factories and laced with toxic waste.

He was still recovering from bullet wounds and haunted by flashbacks. Besides suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, he had gone through three heart attacks, followed by a serious motorcycle accident.

"I went down to the stream behind my house and just cried, wondering how I'd care for my wife and four kids," says Beal. "Then the idea came to me: If you're going to check out, so to speak, try to leave this place better than it was when you found it. I looked at this wreck of a stream, filled with refrigerators, computers, old tires, torn garbage bags, broken swing sets, and stinking carpets, and all I wanted to do was clean it up."

Maybe it was a way of processing his memories of the wreckage of war, he admits. Maybe it was survivor's guilt. Or maybe his doctor's advice propelled him. Instead of despairing, he started simply pulling out the garbage. "When I yanked out this huge refrigerator, I thought it would surely kill me. Instead I felt better."

Since that day 23 years ago, Beal has directed all of his energies to cleaning up and restoring this polluted stream flowing out of Seattle's industrial south end. During the last ten years he has moved on to restoring the entire watershed of which it is a part.

Beal has recruited hundreds of crews to clean up and replant around the streams and has now established a network of volunteer groups living in the area, as well as drawing the support and interest of the local Duwamish tribe.

Through sheer persistence, and with the help of groups like People for Puget Sound, Beal eventually raised enough public awareness and pressure to persuade the local utility to allow Hamm Creek, which had been channelized and paved into a culvert, to be day-lighted and rerouted over its property.

For Beal, the impulse to do environmental restoration is itself restorative: "It has empowered me and kept me alive." That same impulse has spurred the energies of thousands of volunteers. "I've seen remarkable things happen to people who connect with Mother Earth," he concludes, describing dozens of cases of people disabled physically or psychologically who benefit from the exercise and feeling of accomplishment. "They see a light go on when they get here."

"I remember watching a young man who had been in a wheelchair for eight years come out to help us weed and plant," he says. "After two years, he's almost able to walk." At first, the disabled man would fall out of his wheelchair, Beal recalls. But now, he says, the man is able to clamber down the slope of the shore, willing himself through. "He was out there every single day. And lately he's saying, ‘Now I've got a mission in life.'"

The redemptive feelings Beal describes are echoed by thousands of visitors and volunteers who have come to his restored creek site. They are also confirmed by an emerging movement loosely called "ecopsychology"—the study of nature's therapeutic benefits.

People long to be put back into nature, crave having their lives fit into some ancient order. In the last decade, hundreds of studies have begun documenting what many people know intuitively about the healing power of nature.

John Beal, like the ecopsychologists, believes that the impulse toward environmental restoration is about the need for connection and purpose in a world increasingly disassociated from nature. "It's the connection to something larger than yourself," says Beal. "When you are so overwhelmed by your depression, or anxiety or sense of illness, it takes away that worry; it calms that fear."
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Will you pray with me? God, on this day when we revere the gift of this great planet, we also lament the ways that we have taken her for granted. We have betrayed your trust in us as caretakers; and we have exploited the treasures you have bestowed upon us. Give us the foresight to stop the damage that we’ve done; help us to reverse the harm we are continuing to do; and give us the knowledge and the resolve to make the earth whole and complete again. And may my words and all of our thoughts be filled with honor and praise to you. Amen.

I’ve always been amused when people try to speculate on the question, “What would Jesus do?” When the most recent “WWJD” craze hit in the 1980s, I was immediately suspicious of it because of the people who were promoting it. After all, these marketing geniuses were just trying to make a fast buck by selling slogan bracelets to impressionable teens who wanted, as most teens do, to wear their passion on their sleeves (or, in this case, their wrists). It’s always fun to belong to a “movement”—particularly a self-righteous one that allows you to point a finger at anyone else but yourself.

I didn’t know that there have been variations of “WWJD” for centuries, and that the first official “WWJD” movement was in the 1890s. That movement began to apply the social justice ministry of Jesus rather than concentrate on his divine image.

Of course, none of us knows “what Jesus would do.” Everybody has an opinion about it. For example, last week, we heard that Glenn Beck’s opinion was that Jesus would not advocate today’s social justice ministries, which I’m certain most of us found surprising. Which goes to show that anybody can postulate—there are no certain answers. Jesus is not here to answer for himself. Of course, my guess is that there are speculations that are probably closer to the truth than others … but again, we just don’t know.

Mark Morford’s humorous speculation is probably as close as anyone’s, though it, too, can be viewed as too clever by half. But a lot of what he says makes sense. Jesus was a radical thinker for his day. He understood his relationship with God, and God’s relationship to humanity. He knew right from wrong, and was revolutionary in his justice-seeking. He broke rules that were unjust and gave a voice to those who had no voice.
We can speculate all we want about what we think Jesus would do, but you can bet that if it was life-giving and respectful, he would be supportive of it.

The old song “Green, Green Grass of Home” reminds us that we can no longer live in the past; we can no longer claim that things can or should return to the “good old days,” for they are gone forever. When we look back too far at what once was and long for the “good ol’ days,” we do nothing more than romanticize our yesterdays; instead, we should be dreaming of what our tomorrows can bring.

Memories are wonderful glimpses of the past; but realistically, we are constantly moving forward whether we resist it or not. A fish may swim downstream against the current, but the current still continues to move upstream. The current is constantly changing.

As midwives of the Earth—an earth that began its birth cycle before humanity was conceived and will continue to be born long after we’re gone—we must choose to nurture life by choosing to care for the world.

Yet today, we are faced with something humankind has never had to consider before. Today we hear frightening stories of what appears to be the start of the destruction not just of one another but of the earth and her resources. We are beginning to experience the ramifications of being poor caretakers of our planet.

More and more we hear about the impact of global warming on our planet. The Earth’s climate is warming from greenhouse gases, as we observe increases in average air and water temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising sea levels. Reports confirm that the current atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide and methane, two important heat-trapping gases, exceeds by far the natural range of the last 650,000 years.

I know that statistics can begin to make our eyes glaze over, but I want to share a few facts that are of great value to how we move forward. Eleven of the last twelve years rank among the 12 hottest on record (since 1850 when worldwide temperature measurements began). We’ve seen increases in severe weather, including storms and flood-producing rains. The intensity of tropical storms has increased, directly related to surface temperatures of the water. Droughts have become longer and more intense, and have affected larger areas since just the 1970s, especially in the tropics and subtropics.

Since 1900 alone, the Northern Hemisphere has lost seven percent of the maximum area covered by seasonally frozen ground. Mountain glaciers and snow cover have declined worldwide. Since 1978, satellite data has shown that the extent of Arctic sea during the summer has shrunk at an alarming rate. Melting glaciers and losses from Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have also contributed to a recent rise in sea level.

Even if we act now to reduce emissions from cars, power plants, land use, and other sources, we’ll see continued warming because of past emissions that will stay in our atmosphere for decades still to come. If we take no action at all, there will be twice as much warming over the next twenty years.

Some models suggest that sustained warming between two and seven degrees above today’s average temperature would initiate irreversible melting of the Greenland ice sheet – which could contribute about 23 feet to sea-level rise – meaning severe flooding on all of our coastlines. Key West, as we know it, would virtually disappear.

I know it’s paralyzing to feel so helpless and overwhelmed by statistics such as these. We immediately begin to personalize the fear and say, “What can I possibly do?” It feels as though nothing that can be done – after all we are just individuals in a very small community, representing only a fraction of the world’s population. But we must resist paralysis and seek remedies for what we can do.

These are the same arguments governments make for not addressing global warming; for failing to stop the continued pollution of our planet. We must do our part and become part of the solution instead of remaining part of the problem. As with everything else, feeling overwhelmed is no excuse for not taking responsibility for ourselves and our share of the burden. And if others continue not to cooperate, then we must do more than our share because too much is at stake.

Global warming is not a political issue. It is a religious issue. It is a moral issue. It is a justice issue – justice for the Earth and for all who inhabit the Earth. Our first reading emphasizes the importance that many people of faith place upon fulfilling God’s mandate that we care for the earth.

The Eco-Justice Working Group from the National Council of Churches affirms that we are all connected and interdependent. It says we must be responsible and speak out publicly on these issues so that our representatives know how important this justice position is to us. It calls upon our governments to respect all people, improving the human condition while ceasing to exploit people, land and culture. It demands that everyone’s voice be heard. We all have a duty to participate in this process of healing the Earth.

Many solutions exist to the problems the Earth faces now—problems that we, collectively, have caused and allowed to happen. Through energy conservation, use of renewable energy sources, and many other steps toward ceasing the continued poisoning of our planet, we have a chance to reverse the damage we’ve caused.

Ethanol fuels made form corn and other grains, and including animal fats, are less toxic to our atmosphere. Geothermal energy created deep beneath the earth’s surface is already being used as a heat source in 22 countries. Hydropower, produced from flowing water passing through hydroelectric turbines, is the leading renewable energy source, and already contributes to nine percent of the electricity generated in the United States. The world’s oceans are a vast and untapped source of energy. And the list goes on.

I know what some of us are thinking. I can feel it in the room. These things are just too big to digest; I can’t participate in this; it’s much too large for one person to make a difference, or one family, or even one community. How could we possibly alter the fate of our planet?

The answer lies partially in this: nobody has to change 100 percent of their lives; or even 50 percent. And none of it has to change all at once. There are small steps we can take that will make a huge difference.

There are many simple solutions that almost anyone can do that are offered from a website called www.stopglobalwarming.org. And not only that, but there are many cost-saving solutions to stave off needless energy costs—things that most of us don’t even think about. Many are simple solutions—from changing a few light bulbs in our homes to adjusting the temperature on our water heaters or turning the air conditioning up by a couple of degrees.

Some of the suggestions are costlier and understandably impractical for many of us—such as replacing our gas-guzzlers with hybrids or with more energy efficient cars—but others are easy and cost little or nothing to implement.

And so today, we find ourselves at the precipice—with the future of our planet in the balance. To be kind and loving to our fellow travelers, to treat with dignity and respect our animal friends that by their nature are already close to God, to respect and care for Mother Earth as if she were our mother—these are not just options or choices we can choose to make. These are the responsibilities that come with the wonderful gifts of God’s creation that we must make.

God has given us abundance—our planet, our surroundings, our companions. What we do with that abundance, how we treat each other, how we invest in the future life of our world—this will be the legacy we leave for generations to come.

Let ours be a legacy of humility for having been entrusted with such a gift, a legacy of devotion to the well-being and protection of the Earth, and a legacy of thanksgiving for the bounty God has given us.

And may we continue to follow where God is leading. Amen.