Binkley Baptist Church, Chapel Hill, NC Revelation 22:1-3a July 12, A New Heaven and a New Climate

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1 Isaiah 65:17-25 Binkley Baptist Church, Chapel Hill, NC Revelation 22:1-3a July 12, 2015 A New Heaven and a New Climate Mr. Robert and Miss Donna Harrington lived east of us along Spring Creek. They were closer in to town. So when progress came to our area of north Texas theirs was one of the first farms to which our community said good bye. Mr. Robert and Miss Donna moved in to town in a house next door to their son. Years later, not long before he died, they took Mr. Robert (who his family called Pappy) out to where his home once was. He was heard to say, I can t even tell where the barn used to be. There are many of us, I am guessing, who might share similar stories. Bill McKibben, in his book, Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet, writes about our changing world. What he describes is a place that s different than what many of us knew as kids. Different certainly than the Paradise described in the opening chapters of Genesis whose utopian conditions didn t last long. McKibben goes so far as to suggest that the name Earth should be altered just a bit since it is not the same place. The name of his book is Earth but he spells it E A A R T H. Eaarth? There is a familiarity but it s a little different. Not so different that we don t recognize the sound of this altered name. Even though some of our landmarks are gone we can t tell where the barn used to be it s not so different that we can t still get around on whatever patch of Earth it is that we call home. But our garden is a different place than it once was. Sea levels are rising. Spring comes earlier now. Geographical ranges of many plant and animal species are shifting. Including the species called homo sapiens - human beings. The Economist told us in a 2009 article that we actually need a new definition for the term refugees. No longer does the term refugee refer primarily to those uprooted due to war. Instead the tyrant that is forcing more people to leave their homes is environmental degradation and climate impacted events. 25 million climate refugees were estimated ten years ago, more than 2 ½ times the number of political refugees. The numbers are growing to a point that some would call biblical proportions. Drought, floods, and storms from climate disruption resulting in poverty, disease, and famine among other things. Of course, as always, those who are least responsible for causing climate change are the ones forced to pay the highest price. 1

2 Headlines label these as natural disasters; insurance policies as acts of God but there are more of our fingerprints than God s in these climate catastrophes. Now, this is the point in the sermon where, in less gracious settings, some in attendance might walk out. In our case today we may start making our grocery or to do lists in our head. It s understandable to want to check out. What we have ahead of us is a discouraging task. To slow these rising waters will require the greatest exercise of moral imagination that the world has ever seen. That s why we are talking about this here in church. Sallie McFague in her book A New Climate for Theology: God, the World, and Global Warming says, Mobilizing the Allies in World War II was relatively straightforward. The enemy was clearly identified and we were the good guys. Recruitment is always easier with such an immediate and in your face danger. But climate change is slow, insidious, partly invisible and there is an ingredient required in this battle which we may not be accustomed to repentance - for the enemy, as Pogo once said, is us. Repentance - That s why we are talking about this here in church. On the cover of McKibben s book is an endorsement from Barbara Kingsolver, a favorite author of some of us here. She says, Read it, please. Straight through to the end. Whatever else you were planning to do next, nothing could be more important. I do not come here today selling books. God knows there are lots of resources and materials that are being generated on this topic. But I wonder - might the ecological realities we are facing cause us to put such an endorsement on the covers of our Bibles? Read it, please. Straight through to the end. Whatever else you were planning to do next, nothing could be more important. Of course if we did read it straight through to the end we would arrive at today s text in the final chapter of John s Revelation. The early Christians who first received this apocalyptic message believed that the end of the world as they knew it was imminent. It was written to them as a wake-up call. John was exiled, imprisoned, for his refusal to bow down to Caesar and call him Lord. John saw the idolatry, arrogance, and greed of Rome he witnessed her voracious appetites and relentless consumption so much plenty, yet minimal provisions for the needy, the sick and dying an exploitive and oppressive economy.fueled partly by complacency. No doubt some didn t want to hear what John had to say. Even fewer understood it. But those that listened to John s words heard them in church. It was not written to the church in general but seven churches in particular. to Ephesus, and to Smyrna, and to Pergamos, and to Thyatira, and to Sardis, and to Philadelphia, and to 2

3 Laodicea. Not to individual Christians. Nor to those in the faith who may have withdrawn from public life. But to seven particular churches in seven particular cities. Last weekend down the main streets of American cities, bands marched and flags waved as we celebrated Independence Day. On this day every year we come together and cherish our freedoms as citizens of this country. But to be a citizen is to be a part of something, along with others. To be a citizen is to recognize and value our interdependence a byproduct of our interconnectedness. So it is a city, that quintessential human habitation, to which John brings us in this final chapter. Like all cities, it is a particular place where citizens - people from different walks of life try and figure out how to live together. Down the main street of this city John describes a river. It flows from the throne of God. On either side of this river of life there is a tree. There is a familiarity to this tree. We ve sat under its shade before in the opening pages of Genesis. A tree of life not a tree which bears merely a single fruit though but one with a variety of fruits; a variety of tastes and textures, flavors and fragrances. Each fruit taking turns in alternating months, coexisting as part of an interdependent organism in such a way that the beauty and strength of this tree is its diversity. We all live in the same tree; not in a gated community where a faithful few are saved but an inclusive community with gates wide open welcoming all as we figure out how to live together as interdependent creatures and citizens of this world. But as we are figuring it out, in light of climate chage, the sobering reality is that even if we bring all carbon emissions down to zero today (which we need to) scientists say we will still be living in a warmer world than the one we were born into. There will be a familiarity but it will be different. There are conditions which we have created through excess greenhouse emissions, while not necessarily terminal are chronic. This is an important distinction. It is also helpful here to understand the stages of grief that are sometimes associated with receiving a diagnosis of a chronic condition like heart disease or diabetes. Something you re not necessarily going to die of but will always require attention and treatment. First, with such a diagnosis it is not uncommon for there to be denial. The acknowledgement of having to make lifestyle adjustments feels like a burden. Maybe this will go away. When it doesn t, there often follows sadness or even anger - talk show hosts spewing vitriol at climate scientists or advocates of fossil fuel alternatives. 3

4 Then comes bargaining when deniers begin to acknowledge that global temperatures are indeed rising, but claim it's due to natural causes. Or they take a stance like ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson -- admitting climate change is a major, man-made problem, but claiming that the answer is to "adapt" to it instead of changing our behavior. We all live in the same tree. But until the fruit of the ever bearing tree of life satisfies the hunger of all who live interdependently on this planet we must repent and change our behavior. This is why we are talking about climate change in church. There is healing needed to salve the wounds of this chronic condition. But we must first not only recognize the altered status of our planet Eaarth. We must recognize her voice as it cries out from the ground. It s cries are heard through climate related hunger and malnutrition, thirst and water scarcity, floods, disease, species extinction, refugees, and violent conflicts over oil. Even though our world is different, when we read our Bibles straight through to the end God s voice is still speaking. God s throne is in our midst so that we might hear more clearly. According to David Rhoads, New Testament scholar, the early Christians that heard this message from John had some characteristics that may speak to us as we are experiencing our own revelation about changing times. Dr. Rhoads lists seven. 1. They had a deep sense of mission and a tremendous urgency to spread the message to call people and cities and nations to repentance and change of behavior. 2. Like Jesus, the early Christians were truth tellers. They faced their own hypocrisies, identified many of the destructive dynamics of their culture, and sought to change it. 3. Many early Christians withdrew from the cultural values and institutions of Rome that were destructive and instead identified with the values and behavior of the emerging new world of God s commonwealth. 4. The early Christians confronted the destructive powers, fearlessly challenging their idolatry and hypocrisy. 5. They created alternative communities, quite different from the culture around them, They had a vision of the future and sought to live it now in the present. 6. Like Jesus, they did prophetic acts out of a vision of the future - healing the sick, feeding the hungry, eating with outcasts, forgiving sinners. 7. In all of this, they were willing to act unilaterally, as far as they were able, to create a new world without waiting for the leaders of the nation or the rest of the populace to lead the way or even to agree with them. 4

5 Oh, those Christians!...Those church going Christians to Ephesus, and to Smyrna, and to Pergamos, and to Thyatira, and to Sardis, and to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea and to Binkley There is a particularity about you. You have your own particular personalities and contexts, political and natural landscapes There is a unique particularity to the healing that you are able to bring. And on the other side of the river, both literally and metaphorically, there is a particularity that others can offer to which your particularity will be interconnected. For the tree of life in this holy city of which John says we are citizens is sprouting on both sides of the river. There is a tree you may be interested in that I learned about recently. Its name, given by a University of Michigan botanist, is Pando. What it appears to be, above ground, is a grove of individual aspen trees. But underground the trees are interconnected by a single and vast root system. They are genetically identical. What appears to be a grove is one tree, spread over more than a hundred acres and considered to be the largest and oldest organism on the planet. Perhaps 80,000 years old. Like Panda, we don t live as isolated trees. The chronic conditions of climate change will receive the attention and treatment that is needed for healing when we realize that we do not stand, much less live, alone. Ordinary leaves from trees, according to the mountain people of North Carolina and certainly the native Americans, can be used for healing sores and wounds. Eaten or ground up they can be made into salves or poultices. When applied to a wound one that is mean and raw the poultice made of ordinary leaves comes in contact with what was once threatening and worsening and it calms down. Tissue regenerates. Scars leave their mark as a reminder of both the healing and the woundedness. There are wounds on our planet and there are those who are wounded as a result. Even when the wounds are the result, unknowingly, of our hand, John reminds us that God s throne remains set in our midst. God stays with us. Speaking to us, encouraging us in a world that is always changing and the change is not always bad. There can be transformation, restoration so that it might be called good; even very good. 5

6 Our river - God s river - has gotten cloudy; even murky - but it can clear up. It can become as bright as crystal. As the body of Christ, as representatives, disciples, followers, practitioners, and apprentices of one who is known as the Great Physician, we have a particular role to play. A particular role in this particular place. First, we must feel the rootedness the interconnectivity, the interdependence - that links all of us as children of God. It is then that we will be able to place our hands on the stout trunk of this tree that we call home and see in each other s faces the smooth and rough surfaces of leaves which are healing. (a gentle sniff of the air) Does anyone notice that?...smells like fruit. Thanks be to God! With gratitude for the inspiration from: Sallie McFague - A New Climate for Theology: God, the World and Global Warming Bill McKibben - Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet Pando Populis: Where big ideas come down to earth 6