Creation Care Sermons: "One in Christ"

Each year, millions of Christians observe the Season of Creation from September 1 to October 4, an annual celebration of prayer and action to protect God's earth. In 2019's Season of Creation, nearly 600 Faithful America members pledged to either preach or ask their pastor/priest to preach on the climate crisis.

This sermon is by Faithful America member Nori Kieran-Meredith, M. Div., a member of the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests. Nori preached versions of it at three churches on October 6, 2019, including Wesley United Methodist Church in Riverside, CA. Her text was John 15:1-11.

A group called Faithful America dared clergy to preach about climate change. That stopped me dead in my tracks! The Spirit had been moving me in that direction, so now I have the green light. It helped no end that Time magazine devoted an entire issue to climate change. While I acknowledge I could broaden my scope from a single magazine, I do have limitations on my time. In the past, Time’s reporting has generally been fair, and I assume the same now. I have seen no criticism of this issue, so I’m basing my preaching on it.

First of all, hat’s off to the millennial generation for taking the lead on climate change! On September 20, I joined a couple hundred of them and four million others in protest marches. (Sadly, Gen Xers and my fellow baby boomers were only scantily represented.)

Starting with a barrage of gut-wrenching statistics, Time also presented bits and pieces of real promise. Let’s take a look at the negative and the positive. I’m not going to say quote and unquote constantly; just know that much of this is Time’s wording, not mine:

Example: Humanity is spewing forth 110 million tons of pollution every day into the exceedingly thin shell surrounding our planet, as if it were an open sewer. The extra heat energy is now equal... to that released by 500,000 Hiroshima-class atomic bombs exploding daily, per James Hansen, a leading climate scientist.

Example: In July, all-time heat records were topped in Germany, Belgium, France and the Netherlands. Wildfires raged in the Arctic, and Greenland’s ice sheet melted at a record rate. More than 90% of the extra heat is going into the oceans, fueling supercharged hurricanes. Globally, July was the hottest month on record.

Example: When it gets too hot for our bodies, blood flow to the skin increases, straining the heart. The brain tells the muscles to slow down, causing fatigue. Nerve cells misfire, leading to headache and nausea. At 41 degrees centigrade, approximately 106 degrees Fahrenheit, organs start shutting down and cells deteriorate. And if you factor in high humidity, temperatures over 100.4 Fahrenheit turn deadly.

Example: The World Bank predicts climate change will force 85,000,000 sub-Saharan Africans to migrate. Where are we going to put them?

Example: There were 46,000 fires in the Amazon in 2019. That’s a 111% increase in one year. And there was a 92% increase in deforestation, no doubt exacerbated by the 46,000 fires. If things don’t change, the Amazon rain forest will disappear, leaving behind scrubland.

I’m not going to ask you to absorb more than that ~ that’s already too much. Suffice it to say that the problem is dire. The future of humanity is at stake!

The good news – and it is very good news – is that we can stop climate change. We know what to do and are constantly developing new ways to do it. While we may still need to do better faster, there is real promise to hang onto.

Example: the Great Green Wall Project is spearheaded by the African Union and funded by the World Bank. In August, 399 volunteers from 27 countries gathered in northern Senegal. Their goal was to plant a barrier of trees 4l,815 miles along the southern edge of the Sahara Desert. Planting trees on a global scale could remove 2/3 of all human emissions since the Industrial Revolution. But that would call for two billion acres of trees. So far the Great Green Wall has planted 18,000,000 trees on 99,000 acres of restored land. The bad news is that other devastation of Saharan acreage is outstripping this effort many times over.

Example: Great Britain is championing a process called rewilding. Their most significant project involved scooping out 3,000,000 metric tons of dirt from beneath the city of London, driving it 50 miles east, and piling it onto coastal farmland in Essen County. When the dirt meets up with slow-flowing salt marshes, carbon gets stored – safely – in thick, gloppy mud.

Example: A similar opportunity occurs in several Northern European countries with large expanses of peatlands, also called moors or bogs. As plants grow on peatlands, they sequester, or absorb, carbon dioxide. Peatlands cover 3% of the globe. They sequester more carbon dioxide than all other kinds of vegetation combined. Make that 370 million metric tons annually. But 15% of the world’s peatlands have been drained. Restoration can trap a metric ton of carbon dioxide for a measly $16 per year. But to zero out its national carbon emissions, the U.K. would need to re-wild wetlands 10 times the size of the entire country’s land area.

Example: A startup in Switzerland called Energy Vault uses surplus electricity gathered on windy days to stack large bricks into towers. Then Energy Vault knocks the bricks over. As they fall, they recapture kinetic energy and store it for future use.

Example: Nuclear reactors have been providing zero-carbon power since the 1950’s and today supply 20% of the U.S.’s electricity and 11% of the globe’s. But only one has come on line since 2000. We must reduce the danger level!

Scientist Jane Goodall has put it all in a nutshell for us. We need to solve four problems: We must eliminate poverty. We must change the unsustainable lifestyles of so many of us. We must abolish corruption. And we must provide for our growing human population. There are 7.7 billion of us today. By 2050, the U.N. predicts there will be 9.7 billion.

All of this is simply overwhelming! Nothing in the last several decades has prepared any of us for this. It’s all coming up faster than we can think it through. If ever there was a time to surrender to the mercy of God, this is it!

Fortunately, we can surrender to the mercy of God. We can give ourselves over to the All-Resourceful One Who is expert at getting us out of jams. We’re beyond our individual capacities to cope. But collectively, with Jesus suffusing us with His presence and His wisdom, we very possibly will manage this!

The image that offers so much promise in these circumstances is not the mustard seed, the original reading for this day. Rather we look to the vine and the branches. With Jesus the vine to which each of us is affixed, we become way more than the sum of our parts. Together, we become one and immensely powerful. And every bit of that power will be needed in the years ahead. Together, we can handle this situation, but it’s going to take all of us, each with an individual role, yet one with Christ masterminding the entire operation.

The point we all need to grasp is that our situation is desperate. We don’t have time to muck about with irrelevancies. We need to re-think our lives. You can bet that Jesus has a vine branch reserved for each and every one of us. How do we fit into a climate change agenda? Will we contribute financially to various causes? Will we participate in marches? Will we plant trees and re-seed crops? Will we pray our hearts out? Will we cheerfully bear our crosses to support one another? We ... all ... must ... do ... something! The vine and the branches must blossom into their utter fullness, as quickly as possible. And so they can and so they will, so help us God.