By Rev. Adam J. Copeland

How Religious Leaders Are Taking Charge of the Environmental

Congregations should be leading the environmental movement, says the Rev. Canon Sally G. Bingham, president of the Regeneration Project. Interfaith Power & Light, which mobilizes a religious response to global warming, promotes energy conservation, energy efficiency and renewable energy.

Have you ever heard someone described as, “So heavenly minded, he was no earthly good?” This phrase suggests one danger of interpreting the book of Revelation. Sadly, when it comes to considering the natural world and Revelation, heavenly-mindedness often undermines care for our environment. Some Christians have a tendency to think, “Well, if I’m off to heaven, I shouldn’t care much about this silly earth of ours. It’s just a temporary home, after all.”

In fact, Revelation suggests the opposite: the earth isn’t truly “left behind,” but renewed, becoming the very dwelling place of God. Revelation 21 calls people to be, well, “earthly good,” caring for creation as we prepare for God to come home.

Climate change

The latest on climate change and our environmental crisis is pretty harrowing. As Earth Day celebrations on Monday reminded us: the clock is running out on life as we know it.

Last week, Maria van der Hoeven, Executive Director of the Paris-based International Energy Agency, penned an Op-Ed suggesting despite our efforts, “the average unit of energy produced today is basically as dirty as it was 20 years ago.” Recent data on the lack of clean energy, she argued, must “serve as a wake-up call” for the international community.

Sadly, some have already been made to wake up. Australia’s main advisory committee on refugees recently urged their government to grant refugee status to those displaced by climate change.

Closer to the U.S., writer, Sunday School teacher, and environmental activist Bill McKibben has led the movement against the Keystone Pipeline which, if approved and the Alberta Tar Sands extracted, McKibben and others say could be “game over” for the planet.

Is hope still possible?

Ideally, this week’s Earth Day events remind us of the need for earth care, but I’m afraid many are losing hope entirely. When battling the wealth of oil companies, the stubbornness of entrenched energy systems, and our usual unsustainable ways of living, it’s easy to hold up one’s hands—or fall to one’s knees—and shout, “God, I’ve had enough!”

In Revelation 21 we find hope for all the world, and assurance that God cares deeply for both the people and the earth God has fashioned.

Of course, the language of Revelation is famously hard to interpret (or, easy to misinterpret, as the case may be). It’s written in a funny style for us 21st century types—not a gospel or letter, but a work of “apocalyptic literature.” (We might think of Revelation’s genre as across between John Stewart’s Daily Show satire and a Stephen King novel.) Such writing is meant to pull back the veil, to expose the truth, opening life up to a new and deeper understanding.

Nearly 2,000 years ago, Revelation’s writer, John, received visions when on Patmos, an island in the Aegean Sea. Revelation employs symbolism to expose the great power of the time: the Roman Empire. John’s visions challenge an imperialist view of the world suggesting a lamb, rather than the emperor, is on the true throne. For us today, it challenges the same: powers and systems that claim a carbon-heavy lifestyle is the only way to live.

God renews the earth with love

By chapter 21, Revelation is describing a rejuvenated, holy city—the “new Jerusalem”—which proceeds from God. Heaven descends to earth, renewing humanity and the earth with a bustling, holy city.

The Bible opens in Genesis with a garden. It ends in Revelation with a more urban feel. City life is lived close together. Compared to sprawling suburbia, cities offer a more sustainable way to live with diverse food, culture, art, and necessary dependence on one another.

Note also that Revelation 21 shows God not plucking us off to some magical planet far away; instead, God comes home.

“See, the home of God is among mortals,” the voice tells John (21:3 NRSV). God hangs out with us creatures on our turf, God’s earth. Humanity, with our messy, fleshy, beautiful, problematic selves shares the renewed earth with God Godself.

The earth isn’t leased to us short-term. Revelation says God moves in, forever our eternal, earthly, roommate.

Even with the language of the holy city connecting heaven to the urban, the natural is also integrated into sustaining life. This passage ends with the promise: “To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life” (21:6 NRSV).

So what?

Many reasons exist for Christians to be committed to care of the earth. The traditional notion of stewardship is compelling—that God has made humans to be careful stewards of creation (esp. Gen. 1:29-31; 2:15). Increasingly, we’ve become aware that expressing love for our neighbors requires careful attention to environmental concerns.
Groups like Interfaith Power and Light support faith communities—and our elected officials—in this important work. People of faith are particularly concerned that environmental degradation disproportionally affects the poor and the marginalized.

While traditional notions of stewardship are well and good, Revelation suggests another reason to care since, at the end of the world, God comes home to live on earth.

Revelation impresses on us God’s care for this earth, this world, since, after all, God made it in the first place and will return to it. Following God, and reading Revelation, calls us to hopeful earthly good here and now.

Additional Resources:

• Barbara Rossing, The Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation, Basic Books: 2005.
• Rebecca Barnes-Davies, 50 Ways to Help Save the Earth: How You and Your Church Can Make a Difference, Westminster John Knox: 2009.
• TheThoughtfulChristian.com downloadable group study, “Revelation” by Susan R. Garret.

Learn more about the ON Scripture Editorial Board Click here

Learn more about ON Scripture Click here

Like ON Scripture Click here

Follow ON Scripture Click here

ON Scripture is possible by a generous grant from the Lilly Endowment

By Margaret Aymer

Resurrection is the theme of the fifty days of Eastertide. Yet, for decades, the month of April has been filled with particularly horrific deaths:

• The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. (April 4, 1968)

• The murder of 13 persons at the American Civic Association Immigration Center in Birmingham, NY. (April 3, 2009)

• The shooting death of 32 students at Virginia Tech. (April 16, 2007)

• The end of the Waco siege and the death of 82 members of the Branch Davidians. (April 19, 1993)

• The bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City that killed one hundred sixty-eight children and adults. (April 19, 1995)

• The Columbine High School shooting resulting in deaths of 15 persons (April 20, 1999), a shooting that has been echoed in 31 schools since, most recently in Sandy Hook Elementary School of Newtown, CT.

A Cycle to Fight Gun Violence

Bicyclists recently took a 400-mile ride from Newtown, Conn. to Washington to urge for gun legislation, joining members of the Virginia Tech Victims Cycling team Tuesday in College Park, Md. “Most Americans want to cure our gun violence epidemic,” said Monte Frank, whose daughter’s teacher was killed in the shooting of 26 at the school. “Here’s our message: Please put politics aside and get it done.” This piece is part of an ongoing series on Sandy Hook: A Healing Journey.

In 2013, April continues its trend. On Monday, April 15, someone decided to plant bombs along the route of the Boston Marathon. The explosions killed at least three people and wounded more than 100. Among the dead is 8-year-old Martin Richard, who was watching his father run the race.

Sadly, the tragedy in Boston is not the first violent act this April has seen. Earlier this month, a young man brought military grade weapons into New River Community College in Christianburg, VA, with intent to kill. On April 6 and April 8, two separate four-year old children in TN and NJ each shot and killed a neighbor. April may be Eastertide, but for many, it will forever be marked by death.

What are a people of the resurrection to say in the face of the ongoing drumbeat of violent death that seems to haunt Eastertide? Two of the four assigned lectionary texts for this week, Psalm 23 and Revelation 7:9-17, speak defiantly to death calling the believer to fearlessness in the valley of the shadow of death (Ps 23:4) and revealing a vision of a God who will wipe away the tears of those who have gone through the great tribulation. But perhaps the most practical response we can make comes from the Acts of the Apostles.

This Bible passage tells the story of a little church in Joppa, near the Mediterranean Sea. In this church, one of its disciples, a woman named Tabitha (or Dorcas, in Greek) has sickened and died. Tabitha’s death may seem completely unrelated to the violent, gruesome deaths of our April. However, Tabitha lived in a Roman-occupied world in which wealth distribution and the control of goods were in the hands of the two-percent, and in which poverty, malnutrition and illness were deadly siblings. Women like Tabitha would have had a life-expectancy of less than forty years. Her death was likely no more “natural” than those above. It too was an act of violence, an injustice as is all death caused by societally created impoverishment. In the first century, Tabitha, as much as any victim of Roman crucifixion or beheading, was a victim of mass murder, just as are those who die of poverty-related diseases in untold numbers in our rich nation today.

In the face of death, the little church in Joppa took action. First, they tended to Tabitha’s body – an act of care that prevents any masking of the ravages of death. Like Emmett Till’s mother in 1955 and Noah Pozner’s mother in 2013—both of whom kept their son’s caskets open so the world could see what lynching and military weapons do to young boys—the little church in Joppa did not turn away from the violence that illness and likely malnutrition had done to Tabitha. They tended to her disease-ridden corpse as it was, holding the honest truth of the injustice of Tabitha’s death in their hands.

Further, at the death of Tabitha, the widows gathered, weeping and telling her story. There is a power in those who mourn and who will not let the story of a beloved one die. This is the witness of Rachel in Matthew 2:18, and of the devout men of Judea after Stephen’s stoning in Acts 8:2. Even Jesus holds up the worth of mourners (Matthew 5:4; Luke 6:21b). This is the power of the President of the United States giving over his weekly broadcast to Francine Wheeler, the mother of six-year old Ben Wheeler, so that she could tell her story, a story of love and loss, of injustice and the need to protect our communities. And this is the power of those communities of faith who have been calling their legislators and telling the story to compel them to listen, to act.

Unlike the little church in Joppa, not every church can summon an apostle with the power to raise the dead. Peter’s role in this story, although a witness to resurrection power, is outside of most of our capability. But even if we have no Peter, as we remember the named and unnamed death count of April, we can still follow the example of Tabitha’s church. Like them, we can tend to the bodies, telling the truth about the fatal toll of guns, bombs, poverty and disease. When we do so, we break death’s ability to sever our responsibility to one another. Like the church of Joppa, we can tell the stories of those who have died. When we do, we break death’s ability to relegate victims to oblivion and to glorify its acolytes. Like the widows of Joppa and like the devout men of Judea, like Rachel and like Jesus at Lazarus’ tomb, we can gather to lift up our voices in weeping. For our weeping is an act of protest, a refusal to be silent in the face of the injustice of death, death from disease and malnutrition, death from domestic terrorism, death from the increasingly unregulated possession and use of military firearms.

So let the church “gather crying tears that fill a million oceans” (Sweet Honey in the Rock, 2003). For we are people of the resurrection. And we confess, despite all evidence to the contrary, that death will not win.

Learn more about the ON Scripture Editorial Board Click here

Learn more about ON Scripture Click here

Like ON Scripture Click here

Follow ON Scripture Click here

ON Scripture is possible by a generous grant from the Lilly Endowment

By Greg Carey

My Uncle Norman fought in Europe during World War II. An artillery observer, he didn’t return with many “heroic” stories to tell. When I was little, he would roll out some souvenirs from the war, and I’d be impressed: German military dress knives and lovely table linens. I don’t recall all of the stories or how these things became his, but I’m pleased to report the table linens were a gift. His war experience was hardly glamorous.

Why Veteran’s Need Soul Repair

The United States will note the 10-year anniversary of the beginning to the Iraq War on March 19, marking a decade of leaving thousands of soldiers dead or injured. As soldiers return from the front lines, many are faced with moral injury, having to make difficult moral choices under extreme conditions. Moral injury can cause guilt and grief, or in its severest form, it can destroy the will to live. Suicides among veterans hit a record in 2012 with 349 active-duty suicides. To combat the effects of moral injury, the Rev. Rita Nakashima Brock founded the Soul Repair Center at Brite Divinity School, training religious leaders on how to respond.

Uncle Norman did tell of one harrowing experience. He and his partner were identified by German artillery, and they experienced exactly the treatment they dished out. Out in front of their own unit, as they always were, they heard a shot go just overhead and explode behind them. Then one fell just short. Placing a shell a bit to the left and one to the right, the Germans had them zeroed in. Uncle Norman’s friend panicked, frozen, stuck to the ground. And in the last minute – as he remembered it – my uncle tackled his partner and carried him to safety. Pretty dramatic stuff for a kid to hear.

When Uncle Norman was much older, he came close to death after gall bladder surgery. That night he experienced profound nightmares, the Lady Macbeth experience of bloody hands he could not cleanse. The next day, he told me a very different story than the ones I’d heard before. I believe I was the first to hear of the time when he called in the coordinates for an intersection across which a significant body of Germans was crossing. For thirty minutes, he said, he watched the effects of the barrage he had targeted. And now, forty years later, his hands wouldn’t come clean.

Moral Injury

Brite Divinity School in Fort Worth has recognized the kinds of injuries that occur to people whose life experiences have placed their moral character under undue stress. Under the leadership of theologian Rita Nakashima Brock, retired chaplain Colonel Herm Keizer, and biblical scholar Coleman Baker, the Soul Repair Center provides research, curricula, and training to help persons who suffer from moral injury (defined here). Imagine being a sniper for a police agency who finally fires that first shot in the line of duty – and watches the target die instantly. The sniper is doing her job by protecting other people from imminent danger, but it turns out that killing people is bad for the soul. (See Brock’s book, co-authored with Garbriella Lettini, “Soul Repair: Recovering from Moral Injury after War.”)

Moral injury isn’t identical to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), though the two can be related. Moral injury happens when we transgress our basic moral beliefs and expectations. It can occur when we’ve done our best in impossible circumstances or when we’ve simply failed. Millions of people are living with moral injury in the United States alone.

Peter’s Role

John 21:1-19 features the risen Jesus and especially his relationship with Peter. John’s Gospel gives a distinctive role to Peter and places Peter second to the unnamed “Beloved Disciple.” (Church tradition identifies him as the disciple John, but the Gospel leaves him anonymous.) For example, when Mary reports the empty tomb to the disciples, these two run to the tomb. Not only does the Beloved Disciple outrun Peter, he also believes long before Peter is prepared to believe (20:1-10). The drama between these two disciples resumes just after our passage, in John 21:20-23.

In our passage, Peter leads six other disciples fishing in Galilee. The disciples spot the risen Jesus standing on the beach, but they do not recognize him. (Mary Magdalene has the same experience outside Jesus’ tomb in John 20:14.) Once again the Beloved Disciple bests Peter by recognizing Jesus: “It is the Lord!”

Peter reacts by putting on his outer garment and then jumping into the sea to swim to Jesus, thus leaving his colleagues to bring the boat – and a miraculous catch of fish – ashore. Whether we’re to laugh at Peter for getting dressed before swimming or for being naked in the first place is unclear. In any case, the Beloved Disciple has bested Peter one more time.

Charcoal Fire and Moral Injury

John 21:9 employs a Greek word that occurs only twice in the New Testament, anthrakia. We translate it, “charcoal fire.” Once the disciples arrive on shore they “see” a charcoal fire with fish on it and some bread. We get the impression that Jesus has set this fire, for the disciples previously had nothing to eat (21:5; translations vary).

In setting this fire, Jesus has also “set up” one of the New Testament’s most gripping scenes. For John’s Gospel includes the New Testament’s only other reference to charcoal fire. In John 18:18, Peter warms himself beside a charcoal fire – and he remains there warming himself as he denies knowing Jesus three times. While Jesus undergoes interrogation and beating, Peter warms himself and denies Jesus. Three separate times.

John’s literary artistry has come into play, for now beside a charcoal fire Jesus will interrogate Peter (21:15-17). Three times Jesus asks, “Simon son of John, do you love me? (NRSV).” Twice Peter replies, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you,” but on the third occasion Peter is distressed by the question: “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” After each question and answer, Jesus instructs Peter: “Feed my lambs,” “Tend my sheep,” and “Feed my sheep.”

Interpreters have probably made too much of the nuances of Greek vocabulary in this passage, but we can readily see why Peter is grieved. The last time he stood by a charcoal fire, he failed miserably three times. Now Jesus brings Peter back to the scene and puts him through another three-fold interrogation.

Jesus has confronted Peter with the moral injury of the past. Through a ritual reenactment of that scene, Jesus walks Peter through his past and ushers him into a brand new future. Yes, Peter has regrets; and yes, this regret has scarred his soul. But now Peter must do the work of Jesus and tend the flock. Somehow healing begins, and new life bursts forth. May it be so with all who suffer moral injury.

Learn more about the ON Scripture Editorial Board Click here

Learn more about ON Scripture Click here

Like ON Scripture Click here

Follow ON Scripture Click here

ON Scripture is possible by a generous grant from the Lilly Endowment

By Rev. David Lewicki

There is a pall over this morning. As this story begins in John’s Gospel, “it is still dark.”

It is still dark where we wake up today. Beautiful, beloved children of God awake this morning in rooms where no light will break through. Morning brings no solace. It is still dark.

How Women Are Breaking the Church’s Glass Ceiling

Jesus treated women differently than others would have treated women during his time, serving as a sort of early feminist, says the Rev. Susan Sparks, senior pastor at Madison Avenue Baptist Church. “Maybe you could even say Jesus was sort of the Betty Friedan of first century Palestine, because you look at how he honored and upheld women.”

You know this. Your dear ones suffer from sickness that has no cure. Your own relationships are fragile to the point of breaking. Old hurts—personal, cultural—have not healed. Not far from the dark room where you slept, fellow human beings are hungry and enslaved.

Do we need to say more? It is still dark.

That is why this particular story, after all these years, still matters.

Mary Magdalene came to the tomb of Jesus while it was still dark.

The broken body of her friend had been pushed hastily inside two days before. There had been no time to prepare his corpse before the Sabbath came.

Mary arrived in the dark. The gospels don’t agree on all of the details of Easter morning, but one fact is consistent across the stories: Mary was there. Mary, from the Galilean town of Migdal, was one of Jesus’ disciples. In Luke 8:2, she is described as a woman who had seven demons cast out from her—a liberation that led her to follow Jesus. We don’t know how it was that Mary—nor any of the female disciples—came to be an independent woman, traveling with Jesus. But with this company of women and men who befriended Jesus, and sat at his feet to learn about the Realm of God, she is free. Jesus honors women and men. They are equals. They are family.

On Easter morning, Mary arrived first at Jesus’ tomb. According to John, she finds the great stone covering the entrance has been moved; she assumes the worst. Shocked and troubled, she runs to tell Simon Peter and the Beloved Disciple, who go to see the tomb for themselves. Both find it empty, except for Jesus’ burial clothes. It is too much: their friend has been tortured and executed, and now, have they also desecrated his corpse? Simon Peter and the Beloved Disciple fear for their lives. They flee to their homes.

Mary knows the danger, too—she was one of the only disciples who stayed to watch Jesus die. But she returns to the tomb again, drawn by her grief. She is weeping. She peers into the tomb for the first time. She sees angels where the men saw emptiness. “Why are you crying?” they ask. “They have taken my Lord,” she says to them. Death leaves a body—where is his body?

In that very moment, Mary turns to see the form of a man whose face she does not recognize. She assumes he is the gardener. He speaks to her: “Woman, why are you crying?” “You have taken him,” Mary pleads, “Where is he?”

“Mary.” Jesus calls her by her name. He knows his own—and his own know him. “Teacher!” she replies. Death has not taken him.

“Go and tell the other disciples,” Jesus says to Mary. Mary listens to Jesus. She goes immediately and declares to disciples, “I have seen the Lord.” Mary Magdalene is the first one to grasp the good news and the first one to proclaim that the power of death is defeated: Christ is Risen.

This same message is spoken to us today. Christ is Risen. It is a word of life for all who hear and receive it.

Christ is Risen. Mary’s proclamation has never been more important. Remember, it is still dark.

Journalist Nicholas Kristof has spent much of his life reporting from parts of the world where the dawn of morning brings neither light nor life. In 2010, Kristof and his partner Sheryl WuDunn, wrote one of our generation’s most important books, “Half the Sky.” It is the painful, true story of the brutality inflicted upon women and girls around the world, through slavery, sex trafficking, and legal and economic repression. Kristof and WuDann call the subjugation of women the most important moral challenge of our century. But more than a story about crimes against women, Half the Sky is, ultimately, a proclamation of hope. It represents an emerging consensus that freeing women and girls to live into their full humanity is the most important thing we can do to ensure the flourishing of humankind.

Not long ago, I participated in a church-based forum called “End Hunger Now.” Each of the four experts who presented had devoted their lives to discovering the underlying causes of hunger and working to end it. To a person, they focused on the central role of empowering women. If women can work, if they can keep their earnings, and if girls can receive an education, hunger will end. John Coonrod, Vice President of The Hunger Project, declared:

“Most hungry people in our world are working women who are prevented by cultural forces from benefiting from their own labor. We can and should all be feminists!”

For the sake of the world, we should all be feminists. And given what we know about the role of independent, empowered women in the community of disciples, for the sake world, we might be “Christians.”

Raymond Brown, the late, great scholar of John, writes: “In this Gospel, where light and darkness play such a role, darkness lasts until someone believes in the risen Jesus.”

Therefore no darkness, no heartbreak, no grief, no injustice can long stand where the Risen Christ is proclaimed. Jesus Christ is the light of the world. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness does not—cannot—will not overcome the light.

This morning, we awake, and it is still dark. But carried through the darkness on the lips of a woman who has seen and believed, comes a Word.

Wake up! Morning has broken, Christ is Risen!

Learn more about the ON Scripture Editorial Board Click here

Learn more about ON Scripture Click here

Like ON Scripture Click here

Follow ON Scripture Click here

ON Scripture is possible by a generous grant from the Lilly Endowment

By Greg Carey

Immediately following the election of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio as Pope came the predictable speculation. From the United States and other wealthy nations, folks wondered what the new Pope would say about issues related to gender and human sexuality. What about birth control, homosexuality, and women’s leadership in the church? Did the new Pope really support civil unions for gay and lesbian couples in Argentina, as some reported? Others, including many from Latin America, Africa, and parts of Asia responded to Pope Francis’ commitment to a simple lifestyle and his commitment to economic justice. While some fretted about his relationship with the Argentinian military dictatorship during the 1970s and 1980s, most have been impressed with his social witness. In one of his first public acts, Pope Francis entered a youth detention center in Rome and washed the feet of young offenders.

Lots of observers might wonder, “Why is the church expending so much energy on controversial social issues? Shouldn’t the church focus on spiritual matters rather than concerns of the flesh? Why does the church need to meddle in matters that lie beyond its purview?”

The Easter stories offer a direct answer. Whether we agree with the Pope or not, Christians care about human bodies. The resurrection story implies that bodies matter. Jesus’ resurrection is not merely a spiritual thing – the apparition of his ghost, or his ongoing spiritual influence. The Gospels all insist that the resurrection includes Jesus’ body.

“Doubting Thomas” and Jesus’ Body

Our particular story, John 20:19-31, is famous for “Doubting Thomas.” Like the rest of the Fourth Gospel, John’s Easter account dwells upon the mysterious relationship between seeing and believing. Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb. She sees the stone rolled away but doesn’t know what to make of the scene. She certainly does not believe: “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him” (20:2; NRSV). So Mary reports the empty tomb and two disciples, Peter and the Beloved Disciple, run to the tomb together. Peter sees Jesus’ abandoned grave-clothes, and so does the “other disciple,” but only the Beloved Disciple believes. Later, Mary does see the risen Jesus – but without recognizing him at first. When she recognizes Jesus, Mary announces to the other disciples, “I have seen the Lord.”

Now we come to our Bible passage. That very first evening, Jesus somehow appears among the disciples despite the fact that they are hiding behind locked doors. He shows them his wounded hands and side – the disciples see Jesus’ body – and the disciples rejoice at the sight.

Unfortunately, Thomas is absent for this Easter evening appearance. We do not know why he misses this event. In any case, Thomas does not see Jesus, and he is therefore determined not to believe: “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe” (20:25).

It’s unfair that we belittle Thomas for his failure to believe. No one else in John’s Easter account has believed without seeing. The Beloved Disciple comes close. He believes when he sees just the empty tomb and Jesus’ grave-clothes.

Resurrection and Bodies

We know how it turns out. Jesus returns – again passing through shut doors – and invites Thomas to inspect his wounded body. We must go without knowing whether Thomas actually inspects Jesus’ wounds. The story simply doesn’t tell. Upon seeing Jesus, Thomas believes – “My Lord and my God” (20:28). Jesus notes Thomas’ sensory-based belief and says, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe” (20:29).

We overhear ourselves in Jesus’ pronouncement. If we believe, we do so without encountering Jesus’ risen body. Indeed, the author of John goes on to share the Gospel’s purpose. It is written “so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name” (20:31). Not everyone gets a direct encounter with the risen Jesus.

John’s resurrection story pushes the boundaries of self-contradiction. It insists that Jesus’ body is there to be touched. The risen Jesus has a body that bears the wounds of his crucifixion. (It’s hardly a pretty scene.) Yet Jesus also somehow passes through closed doors to surprise the disciples. What sort of body does this risen Jesus possess?

Without being too technical about things, it may help to know that ancient Jews and Christians devoted quite a bit of energy to the question of resurrection and bodies. Suppose someone dies at sea and misses a proper burial: will that person miss out on the resurrection? No, says Revelation 20:13: in the resurrection even the sea will return its dead. We see the Apostle Paul grappling with such questions in 1 Corinthians 15. His explanation may not satisfy our linear logic, but Paul insists that risen bodies have passed through a transformation. “Sown,” or buried, as physical bodies, they are raised as “spiritual” bodies. How that happens, Paul does not speculate.

Bodies Matter

Whatever we believe about the nature of resurrection – how it works, whether the language is metaphorical – early Christians insisted that the resurrection involves bodies.

Very early in Christian history, some believers argued that the Savior could not have inhabited a real human body. Bodies, they argued, come with problems. We all get sick, experience limitations, decay, and eventually die. Therefore, what matters is not the body but the spirit. These “docetists” believed Jesus only appeared to be human and to die.

The larger church rejected the docetic view. Bodies are important, the church testifies. When we say the Apostles’ Creed, we do not say, “I believe in the immortality of the soul”; we say, “I believe in the resurrection of the body.” To put it simply, we believe that God redeems all of creation. The resurrection embraces all of who we are, body and soul. Indeed, it’s probably a mistake to think of body and soul as separate categories. Bodies matter.

Thus Christians do care what happens to our bodies. This is why Christians establish hospitals, and it’s also why we argue over difficult ethical questions like abortion, sexuality, gender, and poverty. It’s not easy, but it is faithful, because bodies matter.

Learn more about the ON Scripture Editorial Board Click here

Learn more about ON Scripture Click here

Like ON Scripture Click here

Follow ON Scripture Click here

ON Scripture is possible by a generous grant from the Lilly Endowment

Dr. Walter Brueggemann

The voice that speaks in Isaiah 50:4 – 9a is the poet of the exile himself. Here he offers an autobiographical reflection on his call as a prophet sent by God to the deported Jews in Babylon in the sixth century BCE. His message to the Jews is they are now free to go back home to Jerusalem. This freedom came, says the poet, because of the dispatch of Cyrus the Persian at the behest of YHWH, the Lord of all of history.

The poet, and his poetry, is completely preoccupied with the presence, purpose, and person of YHWH. In this short poetic unit, “the Lord God” is named four times. The utterance of the name makes available to both the speaker and to his listeners the entire historical memory of YHWH, “the Lord God.” Specifically it is this singular God who is remembered in the poetry of Isaiah as the one who had enacted the ancient Exodus and who will now enact a new Exodus back home from Babylon in the sixth century (see 43:14-21). Thus the message is emancipation from imperial control, just when the conclusion had been drawn by his Jewish contemporaries that the empire of Babylon and the gods of Babylon had claimed complete control. Consequently the “Lord God” is rendered an historical irrelevance. But the poet, by daring utterance revivified YHWH as the God of the Gospel (40:9; 52:7), the good news of freedom. In 50:4-5, the poet asserts of himself:

• that he was properly instructed by YHWH so that he knew how to sustain Israel
• that he has been attentively obedient to that divine instruction.

The poet reflects on the fact that his message from God concerning emancipation evoked enormous hostility. His adversaries struck him, pulled his beard, insulted him, and spit on him. They sought to in every way to humiliate and discredit him. The poet does not identify his adversaries. It is possible that they were Babylonian authorities who did not want his message of freedom heard. Alternatively, his adversaries might be Jews who have settled in to the imperial economy of Babylon and did not want to go home. Either way, they refused his gospel of homecoming, and so sought to silence the messenger.

In the last two citations of the divine name, the poet tells how he responded to such abuse (vv. 7-9). His face was as tough as flint; he did not yield. The reason he did not blink is that the Lord God helped him. Indeed he uses the term “help” twice. We do not know the form of such divine help; we only know that he found courage and energy for the gospel that was entrusted to him.

Apparently he was subject to formal charges as a subversive or as a false messenger. Either that, or the poetry uses such references metaphorically. He uses juridical language concerning a) those who want to “declare him guilty” and, b) God who “vindicates.” The two terms, “guilty” and vindicate,” are in fact “guilty or innocent.” While charged as “guilty,” it is the power of YHWH to resist and so thwart such charges. In the end, his adversaries will either “wear out” or be “eaten up.” Either way, they cannot prevail against the resolve of YHWH to vindicate.

The church has read this poem (and others like it) with reference to Jesus, accepting that Jesus is the one who speaks these words. It is Jesus who was well instructed in gospel news, who was utterly obedient to that mandate, and who faced adversaries who put him on trial, but who (in Easter action) is vindicated by God.

In order to link this text to Jesus in the interpretive imagination of the church, we must consider his gospel (see Mark 1:14-15). His message is that the reign of God has begun in his person, and therefore the authority of the Roman Empire (and of its Jewish colluders) is overthrown. We know, of course, that this message of Gospel freedom from imperial authority evoked huge hostility from both Roman authorities and from Jewish authorities, both of whom defended the status quo and did not want voiced a message of alternative freedom. Thus the self-reflection of Isaiah is readily transposed into the self-reflection of Jesus. In Christian faith, Jesus is the Son who appeals to the authority the Father. The four-fold “Lord God” refers to the Father who authorized the Son and who vindicates the Son in the wonder of Easter. With both Isaiah and Jesus, the message is emancipation from imperial authority for an alternative life of freedom in obedience only to God. In both cases, the message evokes hostility, and in both cases the messenger is ultimately vindicated and not defeated by the empire.

If we consider how this text might touch our contemporary life, we may consider that in the United States (and in many other places) life is propelled by a predatory economy backed by the claims and force of empire, in the case of the United States by the market ideology of consumerism backed by a culture of militarism. In such a context, the God of emancipation no doubt dispatches messengers (artists, activists, preachers, reformers) who invite people to resist the market ideology of the US Empire for the sake of a very different life of neighborliness. Such a message includes a critique of the predatory economy and anticipates alternative forms of social life. This message readily evokes hostility from the beneficiaries of the status quo and those who unwittingly support the status quo even when it is against their own vested interest. It is not difficult, in the wake of Isaiah and Jesus, to imagine in our contemporary society the same sort of gospel. It features those who are schooled in critique and alternative, and who are obedient by act and by word in a way that deconstructs the claims of the US Empire and invite to another way in the world. Empires and their colluders—whether Pharaoh’s Egypt, Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon, Caesar’s Rome or our own empire—are acutely vigilant about such subversions.

But in every such circumstance we dare imagine that the God of the gospel dispatches agents to the contrary. In the horizon of the empire, such voices of alternative are readily “declared guilty.” It is only a daring divine confirmation of faith that leads to a deeper vindication of such voices. In the process, such a male advocate may expect to have his whiskers pulled. And a female advocate may anticipate other forms of abuse. That abuse notwithstanding, the gospel of an alternative way in the world is made available; and those who live it are vindicated! As we ponder in Lent the conflict of Jesus with the empire, we readily see how disturbingly contemporary the issue of this text is. The empire will hardly ever tolerate a well-instructed, obedient advocate of alternative. But the text witnesses to the power of God on behalf of such faithful advocates.

Learn more about the ON Scripture Editorial Board Click here

Learn more about ON Scripture Click here

Like ON Scripture Click here

Follow ON Scripture Click here

ON Scripture is possible by a generous grant from the Lilly Endowment

By Efrain Agosto

I have often wondered about the trajectories my life has taken. I was raised a Latino Pentecostal in New York City but educated in a liberal arts tradition at Columbia University in Manhattan. I was exposed to evangelical and then liberal Protestant traditions in seminary and graduate school. My theological views have changed over the years. I have moved from Pentecostal to Baptist to Congregational (United Church of Christ) church traditions.

Yet at each step of the way, I have been able to build on the solid foundations of the past in moving to new understandings for the new circumstances in my life. These life transitions never started from “scratch.” Some of these same tensions might have motivated Paul in considering, at least rhetorically, his past a “loss” in comparison to a new way of living and being in Philippians 3:4b-14.

Credentials Aside, What is Truly Important?

It is hard to imagine the Apostle Paul rejecting tradition and received knowledge, but that is what he does here in the middle of this letter. He writes from prison but doesn’t seem to mind focusing on such values as joy, unity and perseverance, even when his circumstances should lead to desperation, fear and hopelessness.

At the beginning of the letter, Paul is clear that he might face death as a result of his confinement in a Roman prison. He writes, however, that he would rather survive and “continue with all of you for your progress and joy in faith” (Phlp. 1:25 NRSV).
We are not sure if he is released after writing this, or if this is one of his final letters. Paul, however, understands that the nature of his ministry was such that suffering and hardship were always just around the corner. After all, he and his fellow believers follow a Christ who “humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross” (Phlp. 2:8 NRSV). In many ways, Paul asserts, believers follow in Christ’s footsteps and become willing to engage hardship for the cause of the gospel.

So putting aside worldly status and “earthly” credentials is not all that big a deal for Paul. He has always had high regard for the traditions that made him who he is and in fact depends on them. At the same time, his experience of Christ has led him to understand his past in a new light.

Paul has all the right credentials as a well-bred, well-educated product of the people of Israel. More than that, he identifies with one of the more highly regarded expressions of Judaism at the time, the Pharisaic tradition. He has always been faithful to the foundations of that historic religious tradition. He even pursued judgment against perceived usurpers to that tradition, the followers of a fellow Jew, Jesus of Nazareth. Yet because of an encounter with that Jesus and how his teachings and memories lived on in a new life, through the resurrection of this Christ, Paul wants to put his past in proper perspective not negating it, but “counting it a loss” in comparison to the “surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Phlp. 3:8). In Paul’s mind, he is not turning his back on who he was but embracing a new perspective that makes him who he is. Many of us will relate well to this experience. After all, don’t we find that our lives change in light of “new knowledge?”

What do we do with this “new Knowledge”?

In these days, what are the sources of such life-altering “new knowledge?” There are many places for us to turn. Though I grew up without guns, I was surrounded by plenty of gun violence in my inner city neighborhoods in the Bronx and Brooklyn. In the aftermath of the tragic losses of our children and educators in Newtown, Connecticut, I wonder if we have gained any new knowledge. Apparently, we live in a country that values the freedom to own guns, even overly powerful ones like assault rifles. “Second Amendment rights” are invoked as if our founders could predict the kinds of weapons that would be available to regular Americans today, even with the “militia” (local police forces) that we also have available to us.The Apostle Paul talks about “not having a righteousness” that is his “own” and “comes from the law,” but rather one that is “righteousness [also translated ‘justice’] from God based on faith” (Phlp. 3:9 NRSV). Further, Paul again acknowledges that he hopes one can learn from the experience of suffering, even as one experiences “resurrection” – new life – like Jesus Christ. And again, I ask, what new knowledge have we gained from the awful experience of suffering in Newtown? Can resurrection – new life – come of it with regard to how we think about guns and gun violence in this country? Can resurrection – new life – arise amidst our children, youth and families?

Pressing On

Paul does not end his exhortation to new life in light of suffering without reminding his readers – and us – that achieving new knowledge and new life is an ongoing process. None of us have “arrived” at our goals for life, but goals we must have. For Paul, the ultimate goal, which he calls the prize, is achieving “the heavenly call of God” that he perceives is available to him through what Christ Jesus has accomplished (Phlp 3:14 NRSV).

Mother of Sandy Hook Victim Noah Pozner Targets Gun Violence

Where do we find a roadmap to a “higher calling?”

I was struck by President Obama’s inaugural address and its focus on such critical goals for our nation in the years to come: climate change, immigration reform, economic justice, gay rights and, thankfully, gun control legislation. Just as the civil rights movement of a past generation (one that we are still working on today) had its “eyes on the prize” of civil and human rights, our generation needs to define the goals we will pursue with faith and determination, “straining forward to what lies ahead” (Phlp 3:13 NRSV). We Americans – old and new – have always prided ourselves on being peoples who set lofty goals and strive to achieve them. May we continue to do so – in light of “new knowledge” – with a roadmap to a higher calling.

Learn more about the ON Scripture Editorial Board Click here

Learn more about ON Scripture Click here

Like ON Scripture Click here

Follow ON Scripture Click here

ON Scripture is possible by a generous grant from the Lilly Endowment

By Eric D. Barreto

Our distaste for people who cut in line remains unchanged as we grow up. Whether someone gets to the front of the lunch line or the airport security check before us in an unfair way, our annoyance is raised. People who steal our parking spots during the Christmas season are the recipients of our worst thoughts. We might–just might–yell a string of expletives and death threats at anyone who has wronged us on the road or in a parking lot.

It’s not just about being orderly and following the rules. Instead, we rue the flouting of justice and fairness. I have been waiting patiently in line; what gives you the right to deem yourself better than me?

Yet if we’re honest, we will quickly realize that such outrageous reactions to outrageous behavior are no better than the line cutter or parking space thief. Moreover, our sense of injustice is quite attuned to moments of personal grievance even as we neglect how our actions may harm others. If anything, these moments of rage reveal much more about us than those we think have aggrieved us.

Such feelings are as ancient as human desire. In Luke 15, Jesus addresses three famous parables about being lost and found to the Pharisees and scribes who disapprove of the company Jesus keeps. Simply stated, Jesus hung out with the wrong people, with riffraff and traitors, with people none of us would ever invite to our dinner parties. And yet Jesus broke bread with them much to the dismay of his critics.

20 to Life: Prisoners Find a Purpose at Sing Sing

In response to their criticism, Jesus tells three famous parables. First, he imagines a shepherd who leaves his flock in order to find one errant sheep. Second, he describes a woman who loses a coin.

Both these stories share some basic patterns. First, we are introduced to a main character. Second, that main character loses something of value. Third, the main character searches frantically–even ridiculously–in search of what was lost. Fourth, what was lost is found. Fifth, and perhaps most importantly, the finding precipitates an excessive celebration. What do we learn from these stories? Jesus concludes each by noting that the heavens rejoice far more with the repentance of one we would call despicable, a sinner, an outcast than when 99 righteous, classy, upstanding, well-regarded individuals do the same.

This is not fair, we might say. Why would God value one over 99?

The third parable answers precisely this haunting question.

At first, it seems like the famous story of the Prodigal Son will follow all the same patterns as before. A father loses a son. A father searches for the son over the horizon unceasingly. When the son returns, the father celebrates extravagantly. But then the pattern breaks because the return of the son is not celebrated by all. Outside the raucous party, the older brother grumbles, steamed over the foolishness of a father who would embrace an ungrateful, wayward son.

We can relate the older brother, can’t we? Can you imagine the audacity of his younger brother? When he demands his inheritance, it is as if he were wishing for his father’s premature death.

But notice the father’s reaction. If the pattern of the first two stories holds, the father is the main character of the parable, not the prodigal. This is not the story of a lost son but a father who never ceases loving his ungrateful child. It is he who searches and yearns for his son’s return. It is he who embraces his lost son, cutting off his apology mid-sentiment. It doesn’t matter why the son has come but only that he has. After all, in the context of these three parables, the son is like the coin and the sheep. Coins and sheep don’t have the good sense to come back home; maybe the prodigal is more like them than not.

He was dead, and now he is alive. He was lost and is now found. This is why Jesus eats with sinners and tax collectors, with the despised, the grungy, and the uncouth. This is precisely where God’s heart is, with the lost and the dead.

Does this mean that God is uninterested in the 99 who do the “right” thing? No, God cares for all of us deeply. God might say to us, “You are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this sister, this brother of yours was dead and has come to life!”

But that’s the key. As long as the one is lost, the 99 are incomplete. As long as one of our sisters or brothers is broken by the world, cast aside as irrelevant, called a sinner by the rest of us, then we are at a loss, and God’s heart is broken. God will never stop reaching for the one because God’s love is too wide, God’s grace too rich to cease looking for the lost, for those whom we deem unredeemable.

Jesus tells these parables in response to the righteous’s rejection of Jesus’ reaching out to the downtrodden. People of faith naturally don’t want to be lumped together with hypocrites whom Jesus rebukes; we would much rather see ourselves as the recipients of God’s ridiculous grace.

However, we should recognize that more often than not we belong along the supposed righteous rather than the sinners of the world.

When we complain about people who have appeared to cut in line or taken the supposedly easy road, we echo the dismay of those Pharisees and scribes.

When we lambast the undocumented for “cheating” the system and the poor for relying on government without hearing their stories and empathizing with their plights, we join the naysaying of so many purportedly righteous people.

When we see yawning equality between us and credit the wealthy for their success but judge the poor for their fecklessness, we fall into these destructive but ancient patterns.

When we see people convicted of crimes studying theology do we see a waste of time and resources? After all, many of these men will never live outside of a jail cell ever again. Or might we see the promise of new life embodied in these prisoners?

In the end, our response may say much more about us than those we condemn offhand as criminals and sinners.

The story of the prodigal is about God’s ever expanding grace, a grace that will offend our sensibilities and our collective sense of fairness. God’s grace cares little for our reputation in this world. And God’s grace ought to change us if we are its recipients.

Perhaps then these stories will inspire us to see the world as God sees it: God looks for the one who is lost, not the 99 who have life seemingly all figured out. Shouldn’t we do the same?

Learn more about the ON Scripture Editorial Board Click here

Learn more about ON Scripture Click here

Like ON Scripture Click here

Follow ON Scripture Click here

ON Scripture is possible by a generous grant from the Lilly Endowment

By Matthew L. Skinner

Current events, like much about our lives, frequently leave us hopeless, fearful, and uncertain. Religious faith isn’t a matter of wishing away these experiences; it involves perceiving God in the midst of our hardships.

I still remember one Friday night when I, an overly sensitive preteen, made a conscious decision to stop watching the nightly news with the rest of my family. I found what I saw too depressing and threatening: crime after crime, yet another house fire, economic challenges, too much Cold War.

I don’t recall how old I was when I mustered the willpower to face the news again on a regular basis. But a quick scan of the latest headlines makes me wonder why I still subject myself to it: the imminent and potentially crippling sequester, American drones flying in and out of Niger, Iran’s growing nuclear capability, recurring bloodshed in Syria. Maybe I had it easier back in middle school.

The Circle of Protection Urges Moral Focus Ahead of Looming Sequester

Then there’s the private news we must endure. If you can handle the world-affecting issues, the personal ones have their own ability to leave us disappointed: poor health, family squabbles, professional setbacks, unreliable friends.

Life, or our experience of it, often disappoints. It’s common for us to feel subject to adverse forces beyond our control.

“Help!” (Won’t Jesus Fix All This?)

In Luke 13:1-9, Jesus gets pulled into a worried conversation about the latest news cycle: apparently Roman forces had slaughtered a group of religious pilgrims — again. How will he react? Jesus’ response, “Do you think this happened to them because they were bad people?” indicates he wants to discourage anyone from reacting to the calamity with a “blame the victim” mentality. Tragedies don’t obey such neat moral logic.

He rejects that line of thinking, no matter if the violence in question comes from an oppressive political system or a random accident, like the other incident he cites, about tower that fell on eighteen unsuspecting souls.

Furthermore, he refuses to use bad news as an occasion to speculate on the deep secrets of the universe; he gives no explanation for why a loving God doesn’t prevent or magically repair all the world’s pain and injustice. (Either Jesus doesn’t know the answer, he’s not sharing, or, more likely, probably God simply isn’t a puppeteer.

His response to the recent atrocities is not exactly comforting. Instead of sympathy for “those poor people,” we get urgency: “it might have been you.” Jesus doesn’t downplay life’s tendency to deal harsh hands. He essentially asks, “Why should any of you survivors sleep easier tonight?”

And by the way, he adds, if you don’t repent, you will perish, too.

He follows this cheery thought with a story about an unproductive fig tree given one more chance — aided by some reinvigorating horticulture — to realize its purpose. The parable clarifies Jesus’ motivations for previously exhorting people to “repent.” It’s not that repenting will extend our lives or offer a miraculous shield against tyrants, superstorms, computer hackers, and disease. Rather, our repentance will lead, figuratively, to our bearing fruit. True living is about fruition, coming to the place of experiencing God’s intentions for us even in the midst of a sometimes menacing universe.

“Repent!” (It’s Not What You Think)

I’ll leave it for others to hypothesize about how we got to this point, but somehow most people hear “repentance” and think first of behavior and guilt. As if Jesus’ primary goal was to reform personal morality.

But this is to misunderstand repentance. The word translated as “repent” is, at its root, about thinking and perception. It refers to a wholesale change in how a person understands something. It implies an utter reconfiguration of your perspective on reality and meaning, including (in the New Testament) a reorientation of yourself toward God. Your behavior might change as a result of this new perception, certainly; but repentance first involves seeing things differently and coming to a new understanding of what God makes possible.

Jesus, then, is promising an alternate perspective on the cycles of violence, pain, and meaninglessness. To miss out on this way of seeing — to neglect to “repent” — is to miss out on other dimensions of our existence. It is to pass by one’s purpose.

Jesus’ summons to repent is not escapism or a minimization of life’s hardships. It means coming to discover God as the source of sustenance, belonging, meaning, and hope in this difficult life and into future existence. Repentance names the change that occurs within us when God meets us and reshapes our understanding.

Repentance results from an encounter with God. This is why, elsewhere in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus associates a person’s “repentance” with the essentially passive experience of being found and reclaimed by someone who seeks you intently.

Moving Toward Fruition

What are the things we want to be different from how they currently are? What global issues and personal struggles erode our capacity for hope?

Jesus doesn’t promise to change the world by providing instant relief. His coming did not put an end to tyrants or stop buildings and meteorites from falling upon random passers-by. But he does offer a new perspective on what’s possible for us and for our world. He insists God can be encountered, even within this fragile human existence.

Elsewhere the New Testament makes it clear: this new perspective is not about passivity or resigning oneself to life’s afflictions. Nor is repentance a tool for seizing control over the universe to tame its vicious streak. It is a way of aligning ourselves with the God who cares for all the world and wishes to enlist our help in ushering in newness, relief, and justice.

Repenting entails trust. It entails trust in God, yes, but also trust that, because of God’s commitment to us, what we read in the news does not capture the full extent of any story. Every disappointing news item includes a summons to look and work for God’s grace, mercy, and justice, even if those things linger slightly hidden below the fold.

For Further Reading:

Learn more about the ON Scripture Editorial Board Click here

Learn more about ON Scripture Click here

Like ON Scripture Click here

Follow ON Scripture Click here

ON Scripture is possible by a generous grant from the Lilly Endowment

By Melissa Browning

It was Earth Day, 1988. I was in my fifth grade “Earth Science” class, a place where one might expect to talk about the importance of caring for the earth. But this was not what we were talking about that day. At least, we weren’t talking about it until one student asked our teacher about the hole in the ozone layer and whether or not she should stop using hairspray. Our science teacher replied by saying that hairspray wasn’t a problem because the end of the world was coming and the whole earth would be consumed by fire anyway.

While my science teacher did not speak for all people of faith, she also was not a lone voice in the crowd. Caring for the earth is not something Christian churches in the West have been particularly good at. We were late coming to the conversation and have been slow in mobilizing our efforts. This is ironic considering that the foundational stories of our faith, the first words in the book we call holy, commission us to be caretakers of every living thing. In a world where climate change is evidenced in super storms, wildfires, heat waves, droughts and floods, it is urgent that people of faith return to our first responsibility of being stewards of the world in which we live.

This past summer, when my family moved back to Chicago, I remembered my science teacher’s words about an earth on fire. As people who do not like the heat, we decided to leave Atlanta early in the summer so we could enjoy the relatively cooler temperatures we remembered from our previous years in the windy city. But the summer of 2012 was the hottest on record for the entire US, and the Midwest was the hardest hit. Crops were dying in the field due to extreme drought and heat. One crop biologist analyzing the situation said it was like “farming in hell.”

In the midst of those summer heat waves, we felt as if the world actually might be destroyed by fire. Perhaps that is why so many of us were eager for winter, for a good Chicago snow. But then there was another record – 290 days without any measurable snow. At one point in the winter, Dallas had more snow than Chicago. Perhaps another irony – in 2009, the Union of Concerned Scientists projected that unless significant action is taken to curb climate change, then the climate of Illinois would feel like East Texas by the end of the century.

Transforming the Earth

If climate change is going to end, an urgent transformation is needed. In this week’s lectionary texts, we’re reminded of the beauty of transformative places. That’s what Transfiguration Sunday symbolizes – a sacred space of connecting with God. In these texts, we find Moses meeting God on Mount Sinai (Exodus 34:29-35), and see Jesus on the mountaintop with Moses and Elijah (Luke 9:28-36). These are sacred spaces. These are spaces where heaven meets earth; where creation is transformed through an encounter with the creator.

But sacred spaces are not reserved for prophets and patriarchs. The eschatological hope of creating a sacred space here on earth is extended to all. “Since, then, we have such a hope, we act with great boldness” (2 Corinthians 3:12). Second Corinthians reminds us that we’re not the people who sit at the bottom of the mountain and wait for the prophet to arrive. We’re not even like Moses who had to wear a veil (2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2). Instead, we have some transformation work of our own to do.

“We have this boldness”

This leads us to ask an important question. What might this hope that causes us to act with “great boldness” mean in light of climate change? Can we possibly re-create the earth as sacred? Is there still time to work toward the flourishing of the earth and all who inhabit it?

Faith in Action: Power and Light

The National Preach-In on Global Warming slated from February 8 – 10 aims to encourage people of faith to care for the earth for future generations. Interfaith Power & Light, which mobilizes a religious response to global warming, promotes energy conservation, energy efficiency and renewable energy. Connecticut Interfaith Power and Light, one of its 39 state affiliates, offers a practical, real-world way for clergy and faith leaders to practice conservation. The group offers a class on how to make houses of worship — often older buildings with poor insulation — more energy efficient.

Back to my fifth grade science classroom. The hole in the ozone layer caused many of us to start caring. The first decision I ever made for the environment was to switch to non-aerosol hairspray. (If you saw my fifth grade portrait, you’d realize this was a big deal.) Because so many people saw the effects of environmental degradation, legislation was put in place to phase out CFC’s two years after the discovery of the hole in the ozone layer. While the effects of the damage are still being felt today, the hole in the ozone is finally beginning to recover.

Admittedly, climate change is a bigger problem. Even if we made drastic changes to our current carbon footprint, we would still feel the results of the damage we’ve done for decades, maybe even a century, into the future. The debt we’re leaving for future generations demands we regard climate change as an urgent problem to be addressed.

Back to the hope, back to the great boldness – remembering the slow but effective response to ozone depletion. What changes might we make two years after Hurricane Sandy or the record setting summer of 2012 that might turn the tide for generations to come?

Ashes, Fire, and Global Warming

As we move into the season of Lent, Ash Wednesday gives us a powerful reminder of transformative fire. When we wear ashes, we remember that our very bodies are connected to the earth, that after this short time we call life, our bodies will return to dust. Lent itself is a sacred space that opens up opportunity for great hope and great boldness. As we repent of our sins and shortcomings, we make room for transformation.

What would happen this Lenten season if we confessed the ways in which we’ve neglected to care for the earth? What would happen if instead of giving up the standard “dessert” for 40 days, we instead chose to reduce our carbon footprint? What might happen if we committed to 40 practices of caring for the earth, or even one new practice a week? What transformation might take place if we gave up driving, or bottled water, or non-local food, or food that is not sustainably farmed?

This weekend, Interfaith Power and Light is sponsoring a preach-in focused on Global Warming. This event is asking people of faith and places of worship to incorporate a focus on climate change into their weekend gatherings. Participants will be learning more about these issues and sending postcards to President Obama asking him to honor his pledge to do something about climate change. The preach-in is an adventure in great hope and great boldness as it affirms that if humans are responsible for creating the harm done to the environment, then they can also take responsibility in working toward its wholeness and healing.

More than 500 years ago, when Ignatius of Loyola would send a Jesuit out on a mission he would tell them to “Go forth and set the world on fire.” This is not the same fire my science teacher was waiting for. This is the fire that acts with great hope and great boldness. This is the fire that believes that change can come. This is the fire that works to bring transformation into being.

Learn more about the ON Scripture Editorial Board Click here

Learn more about ON Scripture Click here

Like ON Scripture Click here

Follow ON Scripture Click here

ON Scripture is possible by a generous grant from the Lilly Endowment