Embracing Progressive Christianity - The Environment

Transcript of sermon preached by Rev. Shawn Coons on February 12, 2023

Come with me on a journey here a little bit. I want you to imagine the scene. We are in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, but we're high above. We're looking kind of down on it from a little bit. And you can see it's a calm day. It's a sunny day, can feel the breeze, smells of the ocean. And as you look down, there is something just under the surface of the water, it seems to be breaking the surface of the water.

And it's a pod of whales. And now as we zoom in a little bit on these creatures, we can see they're breaking to the surface to take a breath, and then they dive down deep just a little under the surface. And we're going to zoom in again to see around the whales. And the water looks a little cloudy there.

There's all sorts of small little things in it. And you can see that it's krill, the food that whale eat, small little crustaceans. And they just open their big mouth and take them in by the hundreds, by the thousands to sustain themselves. But as we zoom in on the krill, we can see there are other little particles and little things around.

And what we're seeing is hundreds of thousands, millions of little tiny nano-particles in what they're called of plastic. And so we stick with this view. The whale opens its mouth and inhales, big gulp of water, the krill come in and all these nano-particles of plastic come in. And now our camera goes like Jonah inside the whale.

And what we see in here is the digestive system of a whale, but we also see more plastic. Those garbage bags or those bags we get at the grocery store. Old fishing nets and fishing mines sometimes referred to as ghost gear. The equivalent of a garbage truck of plastic gets put into the ocean each day, eight tons of plastic end up in the oceans each year.

At this rate in another 20 years, it's estimated that there will be more plastic in the ocean than there will be fish in the ocean. So we pull back from our scene in the Atlantic Ocean and we go to the coast, the coast of the United States, eastern coast along South Carolina. And we kind of zoom in there and we see where the ocean meets the coast in this area.

There's a lot of marshes around. And we see an African American woman dressed colorfully, almost regally. Her name is Queen Quet of the Gullah Geechee people, the Gullah Geechee people are descendants of slaves brought to America that have lived on the coasts of North Carolina down to Florida for generations.

This is their land traditionally, but it's being threatened. The waters rise, development happens that takes up some of the marsh land where the flooding used to go and abate so it wouldn't go further inland. There have been offers by the government to buy out these folks, have them go somewhere safe or have them leave the land that they have been on for generations.

Queen Quet asks, why is there no interest in buying out the hotels? Why is there no interest in buying out the resorts, locating them somewhere safer? We're in our final week of embracing progressive Christianity, understanding what it is and what it means to be a progressive Christian. And this morning we're talking about the environment and the focus that progressive Christians and many others have in caring for creation and working for environmental health.

I wanted to begin with these stories this morning because oftentimes we can kind of abstract environmental harm and environmental issues. But really what it comes down two in terms of advocating for our environmental justice is loving and protecting our neighbors.

It's a fulfillment of that great commandment, love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul, and love your neighbors as yourselves, whether they are our human neighbors or whether they are our animal neighbors. And to be fair, this is an area that many Christians, many people and many churches and maybe our own included, have not emphasized as strongly as they should.

Statistically speaking, the older we get, the more right-leaning we get, the less likely we are to be concerned about environmental destruction. At this day and age, almost everyone can agree that there is global warming. We only look at the charts to see that temperature is rising over the years, over the decades. But then we start to differ.

There's a consensus among scientists over 80%, sometimes they'll say over 90% of climate scientists say that this warming is human made, that it's harmful and that we can do something about it. Global temperatures, as I've said, we can see have gone up. Here's a chart showing over since 1880, the steep rise that they've had. And coinciding with this carbon dioxide has spiked up incredibly in the last recent history.

You can see this is a timescale of 400,000 years that have [inaudible 00:06:54] almost all that time it was steady until just recently. And you put these side by side and we can see that the rise in carbon dioxide, the rise in the temperatures, they are together. They're happening at the same time.

But I'm not here this morning to lecture about global warming, I'm not here this morning to go into the science and make the case for it. Instead, I want to shift our focus. What does it mean for us as Christians? What does it mean when progressive Christians make these issues a forefront of their faith?

We talked last week when we talked about politics, that as Christians, we are political. We don't shy away from politics, but our faith doesn't lead us to partisanship. There's no one candidate, there's no one party that represents God. We also said partisan neutrality does not mean moral neutrality.

Environmental destruction is a moral issue. It is about loving our neighbor. It is a faith issue. We heard a moment ago, Stephanie read from Genesis chapter one. And some people have said that in Genesis chapter one, specifically in verse 28, we get the first ethical commandment found in all the Bible where God says, "Be fruitful and multiply.

Fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth." The first ethical commandment we get in scripture. Now on first reading, especially as we hear these words in English, we can say, okay, subdue. Dominion sounds a lot like dominate.

It's like, okay, we're in charge. We're the boss. We have the earth to do with whatever we want. God put us in charge, yeah. But if we look in the Hebrew at these words, there's a different sense of them. There are words, one of them is a word, the dominion word is a word like a shepherd has dominion over their flock. And a shepherd cares for their flock.

A shepherd protects their flock. This isn't have at it. This isn't all right, here's your play things. The earth is yours to do what you will. It is God saying to us, "You are in charge of creation. Care for it as I would care for it. You are my steward," if you will. We talk about stewardship in the church a lot. And usually we mean money. We are stewards of creation.

We are stewards of the earth. We are stewards of the water, of the air, of the animals, of the land. "Care for it as I would," says God. And we haven't. We've failed. We've sinned. So the question is, how can we do better? And as Christians, why should we do better? Why do we emphasize this? So let's turn to our second scripture lesson this morning. Deuteronomy chapter six. And we're going to start with verse one and go through verse nine.

Now this is the commandment, "The statues and statutes and the ordinances that the Lord God your, the Lord your God charged me to teach you, to observe in the land that you are about to cross into and occupy so that you and your children and your children's children may fear the Lord your God all the days of your life and keep all his decrees and his commandments that I'm commanding you, so that your days may be long.

Here therefore, oh, Israel, observe them diligently so that it may go well with you so that you may multiply greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey as the Lord, the God of your ancestors has promised you. Here, O Israel, the Lord is our God. The Lord alone.

And you shall love the Lord your God with all your hearts and with all your soul and with all your might. Keep these words that I'm commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead.

Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates." This is the word of the Lord. [inaudible 00:11:43] So after wandering in the wilderness for 40 years, after coming out of Egypt, the Hebrew people, they're on border of coming into Israel, of coming in to take this land God has given to them. And God says, "Wait. Before you go here, listen to what I've said.

I've given you a lot of guidelines and the rules and the law and the wilderness. Listen to it. Remember it. Remember what I have taught you." And why does God say to do that? God says it several times here in this passage, but also multiple times in other parts of scripture. Why is Israel supposed to do that? So that it may go well with you, but not just for you, for your children and for your children's children.

Just as in Genesis, the people of Israel are not given the land of Israel for themselves. It's not here. This is yours, do with it what you will. It's hold it in trust for me. Hold it as a steward so your children may live here and do well. So your children's children may live here and do well. Once again, we are stewards of what God has given us. We are stewards for our children, we are stewards for our children's children.

There's a saying, and it's been attributed to a number of people said throughout the decades, we do not inherit the earth from our ancestors. We borrow it from our children. From the beginning, literally in the beginning, we have been charged to be stewards of creation, stewards of creation for us, for all people, for our children, for all of creation. And when we see this multiple places in scripture in the 10 Commandments, we're given a day of rest, a Sabbath.

And if you remember, it's a sabbath for you. No one should do work on that seventh day, not you, not your slaves, not your animals are included in that. In Leviticus, every seven years, the Israelites are instructed to let the land go fallow, give the land rest.

It's a sabbath for the land. Taking care of the animals, taking care of the land is good. It's good for the land, it's good for the animals, but it turns out it's good for us as well. You remember that saying, you take care of the people that take care of you? You take care of the land, you take care of the animals that take care of you.

Once again, we have not done this. We have not done this as well as we should. We have sinned in becoming consumers rather than stewards. A consumer sees what they have been given as merely for their own use. A steward sees what they have been given as something in their trust and something in their charge to hold, to care for for somebody else, for the good of others.

And as Christians, we are never called to be merely consumers. This applies to many areas of life. We have embodied this at Fairview, moving from consumers to stewards. I see it in the 10, almost now, 11 years that I've been here in how this church has operated. When I first came here, there was a lot of people doing a lot of good work, but sometimes we kind of leaned back and we relied a little bit too much on others.

And there was a video I used to show a couple times in a sermon and I said, "Are we on a cruise ship or are we on a battleship?" On a cruise ship, you ask, "Oh, what's the activities that are playing for me today?" You pay your fee and you get people to wait on you, and you just kind of kick back and let others do the work. On a battleship, we're all together, we're all the crew, we're all working towards a common mission.

Over the years, I have seen this congregation just embrace that mission of being stewards and not consumers, of everyone pitching in and everyone doing their part. And there is a wonderful spirit and a camaraderie here. And I am just amazed at how everyone serves here. You have become even more than you were before, stewards of this church rather than consumers. And it's incredibly heartening. That's what we need to do as we approach the environment, as we approach all areas of life.

And I think sometimes if you're like me, I will admit, here's my confession this morning. I am not as passionate about environmental issues as I am about other issues. This has never been kind of my area and my cause. And as I reflect on that and as I talk to some others who feel similar, it's such a big issue, and it's complex and it's abstract and it's kind of indirect.

We don't see the direct effects of global warming. It affects this weather system, which it affects this here and goes here. I was thinking about racial justice with the George Floyd video. With the Tyre Nichols video. There is no George Floyd video for environmental destruction, for global harm.

And so sometimes it just may not feel as pressing. Or maybe sometimes it's too big. So what do we do? Well, there are small steps we can do, but frankly, even if you and I, if we all recycle, if we all get solar panels on our house, that's a step. But it's going to take big changes as well. Big changes from government, big changes from corporation, from corporations.

So there's our call to be politically active again, be active with our wallets. But I don't want to skip over doing the small things because I think that's important, especially as we talk about changing kind of our own hearts and changing our own practices. I realize as I was doing the sermon, this is the first time I've ever preached directly on the environment in any church I've served.

20 years of ministry and I've never done this sermon before. And that's too long, that's on me. I have been in my practice as more of a consumer than a steward, and that's on me as well. So what do we do? What do change? Well, I want to challenge you to embrace one small step. And maybe together we can kind of move in this direction.

My small step, I usually have a case of bottled water up in my office and I drink it throughout the week. I drink it on Sunday morning. I'm finishing off my last case that's up there right now. I've got a brand new water bottle that I'm not going to do plastic water bottles. It's a small thing. It's not going to revolutionize things, but it's something for me to do. And so I challenge you.

What is one thing that you can embrace, one thing you can do? And it may not be easy, I forgot my water bottle this morning. Carrie had to bring it to me. But it's a step, it's a small step. I'm trying. If you want some ideas, you'll see here on the screen a few websites. You can go back. I want to say I put these in the bulletin, but I can't remember if I did. Maybe I didn't. I was going to.

But you can go back on the Facebook video and find these links. Snap a picture of it. Now they're just some ideas, just some ways that we can make a difference. So let me leave you with this. What kind of world do we want to leave? What kind of world do we want to leave for our children, for our children's children?

Do we want to leave a world where 50 years from now, 2070 water levels, maybe four to five inches higher? Air temperature, four degrees. Higher barrier reefs, which are already being threatened, half or more of them gone. Plastics, more plastic in the ocean than there are fish. We can do something collectively, we can do something. What kind of world do we want to leave? What kind of stewards will we be? Let us pray.