Christian Environmentalism

Our current series, The Story of Stuff, continued this past Sunday with a consideration of the question “what does our stuff do to us and to our environment”. This is an important social and political question right now and that is part of the reason we wanted to address it. While we are a community of diverse opinions on the secondary matters, we find it incredibly enriching to at least air out the conversation and search for the relevant Biblical and Christian help. In this way we learn to think together, and hopefully, live differently together. But the story of stuff is also a spiritual question, a question of our most deeply held values. What has been stirring in you over these past few weeks?

The story of stuff carries with it a lot of attendant meanings, all of which we need to consider through the lens of our Biblical faith. We want to ask some deeper questions of ourselves, and instead of asking God to support our lifestyles, see how and where we need to change in order to align with his will and way. The story of stuff should not be a political football. As Christians we should understand that the world we live in is, by definition, a gift to us. This world is the theatre of God’s grace and only ours for a brief time. We receive this world from our fathers and mothers, and pass it on to our children. We are stewards and not owners.

The unfortunate thing right now is that the polarized state of our politics means that we tend to assign issues to the possession of the right and left. And for some reason, even our Christian thinking tends to line up with party politics. But this is a false choice. Don’t we all live on the same planet? Don’t we all share the same limited space and finite resources? Yes we do. The issues of the environment are essentially non-partisan.

But whatever your perspective, I would at least like to nudge you towards an appreciation for the Biblical aspects of earth stewardship. As Biblicists, we see the created order as something God has given us, something we are to care for and manage well. While I would assert unequivocally that it is a category mistake to see the health of the earth as our salvation, or to divinize the earth and make it sacred, I would assert that it is also a mistake to disregard the health of the planet, to use it up and destroy its future liveability. How can either of these choices be right? Biblical Christians ought to be able to discern the differences. Aside from the politics of environmentalism, it is not true to say that this is a non-issue for Christians.

With those thoughts in mind I want to alert you to two current resources which you should take note of: here are the links to The Green Bible ( www.greenletterbible.com ) and to The Evangelical Environmental Network ( www.creationcare.org ). Note especially in the second resource what the Bible has to say about creation care. I will not duplicate here the Biblical case they make, but it is substantial and not to be disregarded.

Finally, it might help some of us to read the poet and farmer Wendell Berry on these questions. Find out who he is and what he has written (you can do this through our friend wikipedia.com). You might find your perspectives changing when you read someone like Berry. He reminds me of my extended family on my mother’s side who embraced many of the same values of Berry, even if they couldn’t articulate them as well as he does. My mother’s family are salt-of-the-earth types, farmers and people of the land. For them, there was no division between a life with the God of the Bible, and our responsibilities to take care of the land he gave us. For them, this was not a left versus right question but a question of responsible living. And that is always the right way to live.

The Story of Stuff concludes this Sunday at 9:29 and 11:11 am. Hope to see you there.

Bob

Over-Consumption

For those of you who heard our first Deep Dive Digital (DDD) conversation, a second is now available for download. You can get it at wkc.org/community/sermonarchive or by signing up for the podcast feed at itunes (search for Deep Dive Digital). In our latest DDD conversation, we look back to the God Debate series and the Easter series which followed. We add a kind of post script to where we have been over the past 6 weeks. But this past Sunday we began our new series which we are calling The Story of Stuff, one good way (we think) to live out our Easter faith.

The title of this series was borrowed from storyofstuff.com, a site we encourage you to visit. On Sunday we showed a segment of the 20 minute mini-documentary that is available there and we encourage you to view the entire piece. It will help you see that while we are consumers by nature -- we must eat to live, we must use the earth to make a world -- we participate in a system that is not currently sustainable. What is particularly coming to light in our time is the way our disposable/throw-away/planned obsolescence culture is actually working against us rather than improving our lives. The storyofstuff.com will help you with an analysis of this reality; perhaps you will see this issue in some new ways.

Our interest in this topic is two-fold. First, we are citizens, participants in the communal good; we carry a responsibility for the well-being of others. Our biblical tradition continually teaches that we live a tension between our pilgrim identity (our journey through life) and our fully-settled citizen identity (we live here, now). And while the pilgrim aspect of our identity tends to get the most play in Christian conversation, there are many times we need to be reminded of our responsibilities as participants in culture. For instance, the prophet Jeremiah counselled those carried into Babylonian exile to make the best of where they were, to participate and work for the common good:

Make yourselves at home there and work for the country's welfare. Pray for Babylon's well-being. If things go well for Babylon, things will go well for you. (Jeremiah 29:7)

The idea of citizenship is the idea that we must live cooperatively, with an understanding of how our human integration and interdependence is a reality we cannot avoid. With this is mind, isn’t the stewardship of the earth a Christian ideal? Aren’t all these current matters in our politics -- issues of consumption, ecological health and stewardship of the earth, more equitable and sustainable economic systems -- all matters that sincere Christian citizens should care about? Of course they are.
But our second interest in this subject is a spiritual one, for the story of stuff has very deep spiritual implications. It is not hard to see that, as we try to help each other pursue the Jesus kind of life, the issue of needless and wasteful consumption is a spiritual issue as well as social-political one. The truth is that we all experience how buying and acquiring becomes a spiritual experience in itself. Our interest in stuff -- more stuff, other stuff, new stuff -- is often connected to our sense of self, our emotional needs, our ache for joy, our flight from boredom or lack of meaning. The story of stuff in our time is a spiritual story.

One of the most consistent and enduring Biblical discussions (shot through both testaments) is that of idolatry. To be sure, the very word idolatry seems archaic, even trite, but the idea itself reveals our enduring human struggle. Idolatry could be defined simply as turning lesser things (which can be good in themselves) into ultimate meanings. It works by the power of a corrupted imagination, by the failure to see reality in right proportion. One way to understand idolatry is the tendency we have of worshipping the things we make, of turning to our own creations as some kind of answer to the spiritual ache and void within us. I will conclude my thoughts by quoting the prophet Isaiah at length. In chapter 44 of his prophecy [vs. 12-20, Message Bible] he reveals the folly of this way with some very effective contrasts. See if you don’t see the story of stuff as it was worked out in an ancient culture:

The blacksmith makes his no-god, works it over in his forge, hammering it on his anvil—such hard work! He works away, fatigued with hunger and thirst.

The woodworker draws up plans for his no-god, traces it on a block of wood. He shapes it with chisels and planes into human shape—a beautiful woman, a handsome man, ready to be placed in a chapel. He first cuts down a cedar, or maybe picks out a pine or oak, and lets it grow strong in the forest, nourished by the rain. Then it can serve a double purpose: Part he uses as firewood for keeping warm and baking bread; from the other part he makes a god that he worships—carves it into a god shape and prays before it. With half he makes a fire to warm himself and barbecue his supper. He eats his fill and sits back satisfied with his stomach full and his feet warmed by the fire: "Ah, this is the life." And he still has half left for a god, made to his personal design—a handy, convenient no-god to worship whenever so inclined. Whenever the need strikes him he prays to it, "Save me. You're my god."

Pretty stupid, wouldn't you say? Don't they have eyes in their heads? Are their brains working at all? Doesn't it occur to them to say, "Half of this tree I used for firewood: I baked bread, roasted meat, and enjoyed a good meal. And now I've used the rest to make an abominable no-god. Here I am praying to a stick of wood!"

This lover of emptiness, of nothing, is so out of touch with reality, so far gone, that he can't even look at what he's doing, can't even look at the no-god stick of wood in his hand and say, "This is crazy."

It is time for us to realize two things at once. First, that our over-consumption is bad citizenry, that we are moving through this historical period as over-sized pac-men leaving nothing in our wake. And second, that deeper than the social-political issue, our over-consumption reveals a hunger for life that we are trying to meet, but are not succeeding. As followers of Jesus, there really is a better way to live. The Story of Stuff continues this Sunday at 9:29 and 11:11 am. Hope to see you there.

Bob

Easter Politics

Through Holy Week we presented a series entitled Change. Happened. Here. And what we signified at each point of the journey (Palm Sunday, Good Friday, and Easter) was the real change the Easter gospel has brought about.

As a conclusion to the Easter season and the Easter message I would like to reflect on one aspect of the real change that has happened because of Jesus. I would like to consider for a moment “the politics of Easter”. For if Easter is a transcendent event, the moment that defines the meaning and hope of the world, then it is no mere religious event. It cannot be contained in such narrow and confining things as religious practices and institutions. Resurrection, by definition, is bigger than religion. It is a material-spiritual event that not only redefines reality but all human enterprise in light of that reality. Resurrection changes all value and meaning, all action and hope. Resurrection is, in other words, also a political event.

It is not hard to see that the first Easter took place in a political environment. Competing groups attempted to use power to advance their agendas. There were the Romans who imposed their empire and the various brands of Jewish terrorism who sought ways to make their stay as uncomfortable as possible. There were the competing Jewish parties, the Pharisees and Sadducees, each proposing solutions for a Jewish state living under Roman domination. And then there was Jesus who was none of the above. While all of these political solutions have either failed or became irrelevant in time, their ideological offspring are still with us.

On Sunday we reflected on this text from Acts 1:6

when the apostles were with Jesus, they kept asking him, “Lord, has the time come for you to free Israel and restore our kingdom?”

This represents, of course, a set of political questions: who would rule them? what hope could they have for their nation? how could they endure the humiliation and abuse of a dominating empire? And all such questions were pinned to their view of Jesus as Messiah. Wouldn’t he now solve the issues that defined their times?

Indeed, he would. Indeed, he had. But it would not be through politics as usual. While so much of political change works from the top down, or from the outside in, the kingdom of Jesus works in an opposite direction. The politics of Easter works from the bottom up, from the inside out, from the gift of grace that works toward personal and social change over time. Jesus changes everything through self-sacrificial love, through forgiving grace, and through a reversal of power as we usually know it. Jesus brings a kingdom into reality, but a kingdom that subverts our brand of politics. Instead of top-down, we change from the bottom-up. Instead of the outside-in change of policy and law, we embrace the inside-out change of Spirit.

Our pastor Chris sometimes talks about “a more complicated hope”. To call hope complicated does not mean that it is a hope that is less than what we need it to be -- quite the opposite. The hope that Jesus brings is complicated because it doesn’t completely satisfy us when we start with our self-initiated plans and schemes. No, it is more complicated than that -- it is a hope that breaks us out into new territory, bringing to light a reality we never could dream up on our own. It is more complicated because we find ourselves wrestling with what it is that we are looking for, even when we don’t know what it is we are looking for, and even while we wait for that unseen reality yet to come.

The resurrection of Jesus begins something new in the human journey, a reality yet to be fully realized. But it is not merely the answer to a religious question, be sure of that. It introduces a change we might even consider as political, a reality that encompasses every conceivable aspect of human experience.

This Sunday we begin a new series which we hope will address issues of materialism and consumerism in our culture. We are calling the series The Story of Stuff. Join us this Sunday at 9:29 and 11:11 am.

Bob

Change. Happened. Here.

Pilate took Jesus and had him whipped. The soldiers, having braided a crown from thorns, set it on his head, threw a purple robe over him, and approached him with, "Hail, King of the Jews!" Then they greeted him with slaps in the face.

Pilate went back out again and said to them, "I present him to you, but I want you to know that I do not find him guilty of any crime." Just then Jesus came out wearing the thorn crown and purple robe.

Pilate announced, "Here he is: the Man."

When the high priests and police saw him, they shouted in a frenzy, "Crucify! Crucify!"

Pilate told them, "You take him. You crucify him. I find nothing wrong with him."

The Jews answered, "We have a law, and by that law he must die because he claimed to be the Son of God."

When Pilate heard this, he became even more scared. He went back into the palace and said to Jesus, "Where did you come from?"

Jesus gave no answer.

Pilate said, "You won't talk? Don't you know that I have the authority to pardon you, and the authority to—crucify you?"

Jesus said, "You haven't a shred of authority over me except what has been given you from heaven. That's why the one who betrayed me to you has committed a far greater fault."

At this, Pilate tried his best to pardon him, but the Jews shouted him down: "If you pardon this man, you're no friend of Caesar's. Anyone setting himself up as 'king' defies Caesar."


When Pilate heard those words, he led Jesus outside. He sat down at the judgment seat in the area designated Stone Court (in Hebrew, Gabbatha). It was the preparation day for Passover. The hour was noon. Pilate said to the Jews, "Here is your king."

They shouted back, "Kill him! Kill him! Crucify him!"

Pilate said, "I am to crucify your king?"

The high priests answered, "We have no king except Caesar."

Pilate caved in to their demand. He turned him over to be crucified.

They took Jesus away. Carrying his cross, Jesus went out to the place called Skull Hill (the name in Hebrew is Golgotha), where they crucified him, and with him two others, one on each side, Jesus in the middle. Pilate wrote a sign and had it placed on the cross. It read:

jesus the nazarene
the king of the jews.

Many of the Jews read the sign because the place where Jesus was crucified was right next to the city. It was written in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek. The Jewish high priests objected. "Don't write," they said to Pilate, "'The King of the Jews.' Make it, 'This man said, "I am the King of the Jews."'"

Pilate said, "What I've written, I've written."

When they crucified him, the Roman soldiers took his clothes and divided them up four ways, to each soldier a fourth. But his robe was seamless, a single piece of weaving, so they said to each other, "Let's not tear it up. Let's throw dice to see who gets it." This confirmed the Scripture that said, "They divided up my clothes among them and threw dice for my coat." (The soldiers validated the Scriptures!)

While the soldiers were looking after themselves, Jesus' mother, his aunt, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene stood at the foot of the cross. Jesus saw his mother and the disciple he loved standing near her. He said to his mother, "Woman, here is your son." Then to the disciple, "Here is your mother." From that moment the disciple accepted her as his own mother.

Jesus, seeing that everything had been completed so that the Scripture record might also be complete, then said, "I'm thirsty."

A jug of sour wine was standing by. Someone put a sponge soaked with the wine on a javelin and lifted it to his mouth. After he took the wine, Jesus said, "It's done . . . complete." Bowing his head, he offered up his spirit.

Then the Jews, since it was the day of Sabbath preparation, and so the bodies wouldn't stay on the crosses over the Sabbath (it was a high holy day that year), petitioned Pilate that their legs be broken to speed death, and the bodies taken down. So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first man crucified with Jesus, and then the other. When they got to Jesus, they saw that he was already dead, so they didn't break his legs. One of the soldiers stabbed him in the side with his spear. Blood and water gushed out.

The eyewitness to these things has presented an accurate report. He saw it himself and is telling the truth so that you, also, will believe.

These things that happened confirmed the Scripture, "Not a bone in his body was broken," and the other Scripture that reads, "They will stare at the one they pierced."

After all this, Joseph of Arimathea (he was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly, because he was intimidated by the Jews) petitioned Pilate to take the body of Jesus. Pilate gave permission. So Joseph came and took the body.

Nicodemus, who had first come to Jesus at night, came now in broad daylight carrying a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds. They took Jesus' body and, following the Jewish burial custom, wrapped it in linen with the spices. There was a garden near the place he was crucified, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been placed. So, because it was Sabbath preparation for the Jews and the tomb was convenient, they placed Jesus in it.

[John 19, The Message Bible]

This Sunday is Easter. Join us at 9:29 and 11:11 am.

Holy Week

Last Sunday, our God Debate series wrapped up with a dialogue, our first attempt at what we call Deep Dive Live. Every few months we intend to air out some of the conversations and questions that take place “off the stage”. We want to involve our community in the process so we welcome your feedback and participation.

And now we move towards the central story in our Christian faith: the death and resurrection of Jesus. This Sunday is “Palm Sunday”, our entry into Holy Week. We join the many pilgrims and worshippers around the world as we pay attention to what God has done for us in Jesus. This is a good place to for us to journey into after the recent dialogue and conversation about God and his existence. We now enter the season in which conversations and questions can be laid aside for a time, a season to be silent and pay attention.

I personally believe that a healthy faith community will encourage a variety of ways of being: seasons of energetic dialogue (such as we just had), and times like Holy Week in which we are encouraged to stop talking and pay attention in worship. For when God is revealing himself and his way -- which is what we deeply believe is happening in the Easter story -- we are compelled to shift away from conceiving of God as an intellectual puzzle to solve. Instead, we learn to encounter God as the personal presence who reveals himself in the narrative flow of history and in the story of our lives. Easter is a story that requires us to notice all the parts, letting nothing slip by. This is difficult if we are distracted or pre-occupied, or if we are still talking about any and all other things.

I have been thinking about a passage from the prophet Habakkuk, and I think it might be an appropriate lead-in to Holy Week. There is a long history in the Biblical tradition of warnings against idolatry, that is, the problem of making gods to serve us, gods we dream up, gods we understand, gods we can control. The prophet Habbakuk continues this warning, mocking the futility of such an enterprise [Habakkuk 2:18-20]:

"What's the use of a carved god so skillfully carved by its sculptor? What good is a fancy cast god when all it tells is lies? What sense does it make to be a pious god-maker who makes gods that can't even talk? Who do you think you are— saying to a stick of wood, 'Wake up,' Or to a dumb stone, 'Get up'? Can they teach you anything about anything? There's nothing to them but surface. There's nothing on the inside.

What does Habbakuk the prophet say we should do instead? He tells us to redirect our energies and attention; he tells us to look and listen:

"But oh! God is in his holy Temple! Quiet everyone—a holy silence. Listen!"

I am always moved and unsettled at what I see in the Easter story. It reminds me that the God I love and serve cannot be reduced to anything that originates in my concepts or arguments. Easter reminds me that I must stop making a “god” I can understand, and instead, see the God who is there, the God who came into our humanity in Jesus. Easter is the time to be silent and pay attention.
My prayer for you this Easter is that you would be moved to worship, to see the God who reveals himself so surprisingly and beautifully in the cross and resurrection of Jesus.

This Sunday we begin our Holy Week journey. Join us this Sunday at 9:29 and 11:11 am. A Special Good Friday service will be held on April 10 at 10:10 am. And then Easter Sunday on April 12. Silence everyone -- listen!

Bob