How Long Will the Land Lie Parched?

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Last summer was the hottest on record.

This summer has been much hotter.

Raging wildfires in the California hills are spreading at record speed, consuming thousands of acres overnight.

Catastrophic flooding in Louisiana, the latest in a string of under-reported epic floods, has put the National Flood Insurance program billions into debt.

While some politicians debate the reality of climate change, FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) and international counterparts struggle to come to terms with the clear evidence of sea level rise and ever worsening 

The Migration Policy Institute has identified climate change as an important factor in the unprecedented surge in global migration, with millions on the move due to drought, famine, flooding, violence fueled by shrinking resources. 

The prophet Jeremiah described a world in which human choice brought environmental consequence: 

How long will the land lie parched and the grass in every field be withered? Because those who live in it are wicked, the animals and birds have perished. (Jeremiah 12:4) 

What would Jeremiah say about oceanic dead zones? The growing man-made deserts in Central Asia and North Africa? Mountain top removal? The lingering sludge of the tar sand spill lining the Kalamazoo?

There is a tight correlation in scripture between the health of the land and the appetites of its people. Adam and Eve’s greed and disobedience in Genesis spilled immediately onto the ground itself: “Cursed is the ground because of you.” 

In Leviticus, God’s people were warned that the productivity of the land would be tied to their obedience in the use of it. Plow and plant for six years, let it lie fallow the seventh, and God would provide far more than they needed: 

If you follow my decrees and are careful to obey my commands, I will send you rain in its season, and the ground will yield its crops and the trees their fruit. Your threshing will continue until grape harvest and the grape harvest will continue until planting, and you will eat all the food you want and live in safety in your land. (Leviticus 26:3-5)

In the prophetic books, Jeremiah and others warned of environmental devastation resulting from misuse of the land, injustice toward the poor, disobedience of God’s laws. They warned of drought, famine, crop failure, barren fields, thorns and thistles, roving jackals.

Explicit condemnation of exploitation of the land echoes through the prophetic warnings: 

As for you, my flock, this is what the Sovereign Lord says: I will judge between one sheep and another, and between rams and goats.  Is it not enough for you to feed on the good pasture? Must you also trample the rest of your pasture with your feet? Is it not enough for you to drink clear water? Must you also muddy the rest with your feet? (Ezekiel 34:17-19) 

As Ezekiel and other prophets make clear, the poor are most harmed by environmental exploitation, least responsible for its cause.

Pollution Yellow Skies, Kay Jackson, Washington DC

Given the connection between greed and global harm explicit in prophecy and increasingly evident in the physical world around us, I find it hard to understand that the strongest opposition to the idea of climate change has come from Christians who claim an allegiance to the authority of scripture.

I find myself wondering: what’s behind the insistence that climate change isn’t real?

Who has most to lose in a shift to renewable resources?

Who has most to gain from continuing the status quo?

Last week I found myself discussing rooftop solar panels with our son, who recently bought a house in Maryland.

I had spent months investigating solar for our own house, with its south-facing roof, and was told by several companies that given our energy efficient house and current Pennsylvania incentives, going solar wouldn’t save us much.

Since the 1830s, Pennsylvania’s energy policy has been shaped by extractive industries lobbying for subsidies and fighting off regulation. Our state is the only one in the country (in the world?) that allows natural gas extraction without any tax on volume extracted.

Maryland and New Jersey, with thousands of miles of coastline and hundreds of low-lying islands, have already seen the effect of sea level rise and have instituted strong policies to shift away from fossil fuel. Both states offer strong support to renewable energy. I find myself wondering: what would it take for Pennsylvania to do the same? 

In 2009, Donald Trump joined dozens of New York executives in an open letter to President Obama commending his attendance at the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference. 

As business leaders we are optimistic that President Obama is attending Copenhagen with emissions targets. Additionally, we urge you, our government, to strengthen and pass United States legislation, and lead the world by example. We support your effort to ensure meaningful and effective measures to control climate change, an immediate challenge facing the United States and the world today. Please don't postpone the earth. If we fail to act now, it is scientifically irrefutable that there will be catastrophic and irreversible consequences for humanity and our planet.

We recognize the key role that American innovation and leadership play in stimulating the worldwide economy. Investing in a Clean Energy Economy will drive state-of-the-art technologies that will spur economic growth, create new energy jobs, and increase our energy security all while reducing the harmful emissions that are putting our planet at risk. We have the ability and the know-how to lead the world in clean energy technology to thrive in a global market and economy. But we must embrace the challenge today to ensure that future generations are left with a safe planet and a strong economy.

Please allow us, the United States of America, to serve in modeling the change necessary to protect humanity and our planet. 

More recently, Trump has described "the concept of global warming” as a hoax “created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive."

Here’s the latest Trump energy environment plan, described in a speech in North Dakota this spring:

• We’re going to rescind all the job-destroying Obama executive actions including the Climate Action Plan and the Waters of the U.S. rule.
• We’re going to save the coal industry and other industries threatened by Hillary Clinton’s extremist agenda.
• I’m going to ask Trans Canada to renew its permit application for the Keystone Pipeline.
• We’re going to lift moratoriums on energy production in federal areas
• We’re going to revoke policies that impose unwarranted restrictions on new drilling technologies. These technologies create millions of jobs with a smaller footprint than ever before.
• We’re going to cancel the Paris Climate Agreement and stop all payments of U.S. tax dollars to U.N. global warming programs. . . . 
• We’re going to do all this while taking proper regard for rational environmental concerns. We are going to conserve our beautiful natural habitats, reserves and resources.In a Trump Administration, political activists with extreme agendas will no longer write the rules. Instead, we will work with conservationists whose only agenda is protecting nature.
• From an environmental standpoint, my priorities are very simple: clean air and clean water.

It's hard to imagine a more delusional, contradictory policy: unlimited gas and coal, no EPA, no regulations, crystal clear air and water. If only.

According our other major candidate, Hilary Clinton: 

Climate change is one of the most serious challenges we face. It’s real, it’s driven by human activity, and it’s happening right now. We need to use every tool we have to combat climate change and accelerate the transition to a clean energy future.

She’s described the tools she’s willing to use, but has also acknowledged that the tool economists consider most effective will not be discussed. 

“The clearest and most obvious way to reach the climate targets is with a nationwide carbon pricing method, whether a carbon tax or a cap and trade,” said Robert Stavins, the head of the environmental economics program at Harvard University. “But it’s not surprising, given the politics, that Secretary Clinton would not want to explicitly talk about carbon pricing.”

Climate Change in the American Christian Mind: Stewardship

The health of our globe, our communities, our children has fallen prey to political gamesmanship that will benefit a handful of extractive industries and the investors who lobby hard to bend the rules to their own economic advantage. 

Last year Yale University released a report on Climate Change in the American Christian Mind. The report probed beliefs and concerns about global warming, perceptions of risk, ideas about stewardship and care of the earth and natural resources. 

The margins were narrower than I’d feared, but I still find myself wondering: if the trademark of the evangelical Christian is a strong belief in authority of scripture, how is it that we’ve missed the prophetic insistence that care of creation, care of the poor and obedience to God are inextricably linked?

This post is part of a series on What's Your Platform

Beyond the Party Platform July 24, 2016

A Different Way July 31, 2016 

Election Fraud and Rigged Elections, August 10, 2016 

Part of this was posted in 2012: Earth Day Shalom, Ripples of Resurrection 

Earth Day Shalom: Ripples of Resurrection

How long will the land lie parched  and the grass in every field be withered? 
Because those who live in it are wicked, the animals and birds have perished.                      (Jeremiah 12:4)

Pollution Yellow Skies, Kay Jackson, Washington DC

What would Jeremiah say about oceanic dead zones? Or the growing man-made deserts in Central Asia and North Africa? Mountain top removal? Or the lingering sludge of the tar sand spill lining the Kalamazoo?

There is a tight correlation in scripture between the health of the land and the appetites of its people. Adam and Eve’s greed in Genesis spilled immediately onto the ground itself: “Cursed is the ground because of you.”  In Leviticus, God’s people were warned that the productivity of the land would be tied to their obedience in the use of it. Plow and plant for six years, let it lie fallow the seventh, and God would provide far more than they needed:

“If you follow my decrees and are careful to obey my commands, I will send you rain in its season, and the ground will yield its crops and the trees their fruit. Your threshing will continue until grape harvest and the grape harvest will continue until planting, and you will eat all the food you want and live in safety in your land.” (Leviticus 26)

In the prophetic books, Isaiah, Jeremiah and others warned of environmental devastation resulting from misuse of the land, injustice toward the poor, disobedience of God’s laws. They warned of drought, famine, crop failure barren fields, thorns and thistles, roving jackals.

Despair, you farmers, 
   wail, you vine growers; 
grieve for the wheat and the barley, 
   because the harvest of the field is destroyed. 
The vine is dried up 
   and the fig tree is withered; 
the pomegranate, the palm and the apple tree— 
   all the trees of the field—are dried up. 
Surely the people’s joy 
   is withered away.  
       (Habbakuk 38)

Explicit condemnation of exploitation of the land echoes through the prophetic warnings:

“As for you, my flock, this is what the Sovereign Lord says: I will judge between one sheep and another, and between rams and goats.  Is it not enough for you to feed on the good pasture? Must you also trample the rest of your pasture with your feet? Is it not enough for you to drink clear water? Must you also muddy the rest with your feet?” (Ezekiel 34)

The Great Promise to the Creation, collage
Jae-Im Kim, Korea, 2007,

Yet amid the prophetic warnings are promises of shalom: God’s peace, but more than peace. Nicholas Wolterstorff, in Educating for Shalom, wrote:

“…Shalom is the human being dwelling at peace in all his or her relationships: with God, with self, with fellows, with nature. . . But the peace which is shalom is not merely the absence of hostility, not merely being in the right relationship. Shalom at its highest is enjoyment in one’s relationships. A nation may be at peace with all its neighbors and yet be miserable in its poverty. To dwell in shalom is to enjoy living before God, to enjoy living in one’s physical surroundings, to enjoy living with one’s fellows, to enjoy life with oneself. . .”

The coming shalom described by the prophets invariably includes a healed creation: mountains and hills shout for joy, trees dance and sing, streams gush into barren places, abundant harvests bless humans and hungry creatures alike:

The desert and the parched land will be glad;
   the wilderness will rejoice and blossom.
Like the crocus, it will burst into bloom;
   it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy. (Isaiah 35)

You will go out in joy
   and be led forth in peace;
the mountains and hills
   will burst into song before you,
and all the trees of the field
   will clap their hands.
Instead of the thornbush will grow the juniper,
   and instead of briers the myrtle will grow. (Isaiah 55)

The Tree of Life, Helen Siegl 

If the resurrection was the sign of the great reversal, it was also the sign of the coming shalom. When the resurrected Jesus greeted his friends, his first words were “peace be with you.”  In his letter to the Colossians, Paul insists that all creation is woven together by the creative, sustaining power of Jesus himself, and that the resurrection is the start of reconciliation and God’s shalom for “all things - on earth - or in heaven,” not just for humans, but for all creation:

The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. . . For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. (Colossians 1)

Can Christians be green? Tim Keller, of Redeemer Church in New York, gave a terrific sermon on this topic not long ago. His conclusion is the same as church fathers through the centuries: Christians are called to live as passionate promoters and protectors of creation.

Keller offers examples:

Stuart L Pimm, winner of the Hieneken Prize for Environmental Science:
“I’m a believing Christian. “God so loved the cosmos that he gave his only son.” That’s an injunction from St. John. To me, this says that Christians have an obligation to look after the world — stewardship. We cannot pointlessly drive species to extinction and destroy forests and oceans. When we do that, we are destroying God’s creation.”

Joel Salatin of innovative, “beyond organic” Polyface Farm in Virginia: “We want a farm that builds soil, builds immune systems, builds nutrient density. Ultimately, as a farmer, I am in the land redemption business . . . (We need to) step in as loving land stewards, caretakers, as an expression of God’s grace, abundance and redemptive capacity.”   

St. Francis Preaches to the Birds,
Sadao Watanabe, Japan, 1985

I’m not a farmer, or environmental scientist. But my knowledge of Christ’s shalom calls me to extend that experience of welcome and safe haven. On our own suburban half-acre, I’ve been working to build a place of sanctuary for bugs, butterflies, and birds. Native plantings, non-chemical lawn care, and lots of bird feeders and water supplies have helped create an oasis of bird song. Nesting in our yard this year are bluebirds, downy and red-bellied woodpeckers, tufted titmice, chickadees, white throated and song sparrows, blue jays, cardinals, and two very dignified crows.

I know, though, that the world is bigger than my yard. Over the years I’ve helped plant trees on a city street, organized landscape days for a local elementary school, planted wildflowers around the edge of a townhouse complex. I’m currently trying to help organize a group of stewards for a neglected wetland near our home.

But resurrection ripples outward, from local community, to nation, to world. We’ve given to organizations like Heifer Project, World Vision, and Mennonite Central Committee for tree-planting, bee hives, and sustainable flocks of ducks and chickens. And we support Arocha, an international group of  “Christians in Conservation” begun in Portugal in 1983. Our son spent a summer interning with Arocha Vancouver, living in a tree house with an owl as his nearest neighbor. Now in DC, he's helping launch an Arocha chapter "to conserve Christian conservationists."

Harder, for me, than active practical engagement or support of environmental groups is the call to advocate for the captive, groaning creation. Paul wrote:

For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. (Romans 8)

As a child of God, what role do I have in seeing the world freed from its bondage to decay, not just in the future, but now? Is it enough to sign a petition against fracking, or do I need to do more? Is it enough to buy organic, local food, or do I need to speak out on behalf of sustainable farming?

For each of us the answer will be different. But for each of us, the call is the same: creation waits to see the children of God revealed, as sustainers and protectors of the earth God has entrusted us, as agents of shalom, as resurrection people speaking deliverance and life in places of death and bondage around this wounded, waiting world.

The Deliverance of Creation, Yelena Chersakova, Russia, 1997

This is the third in a series about the resurrection:

Risen Indeed: The Hermaneutic Community
The Great Reserval: A Resurrection People

As always, your thoughts and comments are welcome. Click on the   __ comments link below to post.

Voice in the Wilderness

St. John in the Wilderness,
Geertgen tot Sint Jans

If we really want to pray,

we must first learn to listen,

for in silence of the heart,

God speaks.

—    Mother Teresa of Culcutta

Is wilderness a place of exile, or a period of preparation?

Is it a time of punishment, or a season of promised rest?

Is it a barren burden to be suffered, or a beauty to be longed for?

Advent is always a puzzle. We wait for the lovely story of God’s light shining in the darkness, but read the unsettling texts of John the Baptist’s call in the wilderness. We dream back to a silent village and the inescapable angel song, while around us the pace is faster and faster, the noise and distraction louder, always louder.

As we struggle to keep up, as we make our lists and check them more than twice, somewhere inside we know there is something we’re missing. Something that has nothing to do with tinsel, or cookies, or the carefully decorated tree.

In Matthew 11 and Luke 7, Jesus, reminding the crowd of John’s time in the wilderness, asked “what did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed swayed by the wind? If not, what did you go out to see? A man dressed in fine clothes? No, those who wear expensive clothes and indulge in luxury are in palaces.”

Walter Bruggemann, in Journey to the Common Good, as well as in sermons and essays, describes the wilderness as a place to experience God’s alternative kingdom. God invited his people out of Egypt, the pharoah’s kingdom, into the wilderness, where he showed them his provision and protection.

In the wilderness, God heard and cared for weeping Hagar, a slave woman with no status and no defender. In the wilderness he met and ministered to Elijah, the fearless prophet who faced down bloody King Ahab and the prophets of Ba’al, then collapsed in exhaustion beneath a broom bush and prayed that he would die.

Jesus prepared for ministry in the wilderness, faced temptation in the wilderness, and demonstrated God’s provision by feeding thousands in the wilderness.

Brueggemann points to text after text that call God’s people to step away from their dependence on armies, wealth, stockpiles of food, economic maneuvering:   

“Thus says the Lord: Do not let the wise boast in their wisdom, do not let the mighty boast in their might, do not let the wealthy boast in their wealth; but let those who boast boast in this, that they understand and know me, that I am the Lord; I act with steadfast love, justice and righteousness in the earth, for in these things I delight, says the Lord.” Jeremiah :23-24.

St. John in the Wilderness, Thomas Cole

The people who went out to see John the Baptist in the wilderness went to see if another way of life was possible. As Jesus pointed out, if it was the status quo of power and wealth they were seeking, they would have gone somewhere else.

But now, December 2011, here in the outer suburbs of Philadelphia, there is little wilderness nearby. And no voice that I can hear offering an alternative way.

I pause as I type that. The other night I sat in a Quaker meeting house with a small band of local Occupy Wall Street supporters. One young man spoke with great feeling about a desire for a culture based on something other than selfishness and hoarding. He had read about indigenous gift economies, in which surplus was dispersed through celebrations and lavish sharing of wealth. He was grieving a culture where money is the prime motivator, where value is assigned by net worth, where work is done for a meager paycheck rather than for the love of the task.

He was describing the kingdom Jesus came to offer. The kingdom of freedom, rather than enslavement. Of generosity, rather than scarcity. Or love and kindness and welcome, rather than fearful protection of boundaries and anxious exercise of power.

And yet – here is the great grief to me – the Christian church, as it presents itself in this place and time, stands firmly with the pharoic kingdom, the kingdom of scarcity, and power, and fear. So much so that those who stand outside consider any statement of faith an act of aggression, or exclusion.

Thomas Merton, a Jesuit monk, wrote “There must be a time of day when the man who has to speak falls very silent. .  . .There must be a time when the man of prayer goes to pray as if it were the first time in his life he had ever prayed; when the man of resolutions puts his resolutions aside as if they had all been broken, and he learns a different wisdom: distinguishing the sun from the moon, the stars from the darkness, the sea from the dry land, and the night sky from the shoulder of a hill.” - From No Man is an Island

My one little patch of wilderness is a overgrown margin around a small pond not far away. As I wander there, watching for blue heron, smiling at the marsh hawk that flies low above the grasses, I find myself praying, and wondering. What would the voice sound like, clear enough, and firm enough, to call a self-satisfied, self-righteous church back to the wilderness? Where is the voice kind enough, convincing enough, to speak to those who have written off the Christian faith because they’ve see so little compassion, so little mercy, so little wisdom?

Elijah in the Wilderness, Frederic Leighton

As I think, and grieve, and pray, I’m reminded that across generations, across continents, God has preserved a faithful witness. Elijah. John the Baptist. Tertullian. Perpetua. Jerome. Patrick. Monica. Aidan. Francis. Clare. Mother Theresa. The list could go on and on: faithful voices that stood outside their cultures and pointed the way to something very different. I’m thankful, beyond thankful, for those I’ve had the privilege of knowing, for the faithful voices that dared to call me toward the wilderness.

I’m thinking of one voice that crossed my path when I was wandering in a particular season of wilderness. Gene Denham, a leader with Students Christian Fellowship and Scripture Union in Jamaica, came to stay in our creaking old house in West Philly for several weeks when I was a grad student and young mother. Gene was not much older than me, but stronger in every way. She had known deep poverty in Jamaica, had been shuttled from one meager household to another, had experienced great inequity and great injustice. Yet she had a personal knowledge of God as loving father so strong it propelled her work with children and youth all over Jamaica and motivated her to travel to share her work and vision.

I remember the insightful questions she asked, the penetrating observations, the energy she invested in everything she did, the buoyant laughter. I had begun to wonder if it was possible to live as a just, free, faithful follower of Christ. Yes, Gene said. And gave me just a glimpse as we shopped Philly porch sales together, gathering shoes and clothes she would take home to Kingston for her mother and sisters, and as we talked together over tea in the time she had between speaking engagements and visits to donors.

Gene died in her forties of an aneurysm on a much-planned trip to South Africa. At her funeral, over three thousand Jamaicans gathered to sing, dance, share stories of her influence and extravagant generosity of time, energy, and resources, and to pray for courage to be faithful voices in God’s service in the way that Gene had been. Traveling to Jamaica several years after her death, I was moved to meet many of her friends, and to be included in their circle of friendship just because I, too, had known and been shaped by Gene.

Not long before she died, reading the story of John the Baptist, Gene wrote in her journal: “A revolutionary messenger with a revolutionary message for revolutionary times. Lord let my life this year show  a 100% revolution towards holiness so I can be completely your messenger in every way.”

Yesterday was my birthday, a day of celebration and thanksgiving. Today, as I look toward the year ahead, I wonder what kind of revolution in me would allow me to be God’s messenger more fruitfully. And what kind of revolution, in all of us, would allow us to hear more faithfully the voice of God, calling us to, and through, the wilderness. 

Israelites Passing through the Wilderness,
William West

A voice of one calling: 

“In the wilderness prepare
   the way for the LORD;
make straight in the desert
   a highway for our God.
Every valley 

   shall be raised up,
   every mountain and hill 

   made low;
the rough ground 

   shall become level,
   the rugged places a plain.
And the glory of the Lord 

   will be revealed,
   and all people 

   will see it together. 
For the mouth of the Lord 

    has spoken.”   (Isaiah 40)

I wonder: Whose voices have called you to, and through, the wilderness? And how has wilderness, for you, been preparation, rest, a chance to see God's provision? Your thoughts and experience in this are welcome. Look for the "__ comments" link below.