We Can Do Better

We Can Do Better
A Sermon preached at St. Luke's Church
by The Rev. James B. Craven III
on the First Sunday of Lent, March 5, 2006

In the name of God - Father, Son & Holy Spirit. Amen
   When Michael White several years ago asked me to try to work stewardship into my sermon, I of course did so. Some of you may remember that I suggested we pass the plate at weddings and funerals. Paul Stirrup in particular liked the idea, though nothing has come of it. So when Anne asked me to say something today on environmental stewardship and the general theme of Every Living Creature With Us, there was but one response. You see, in my ordination vows I promised not only to obey my bishop, but also “other ministers who may have authority over” me and my work. Mind Anne, in other words. This has of course heightened my sense of solidarity with Tom and Sally, but I digress.
    It has helped me that Anne asked me to do this, as it has forced me to try to think seriously and theologically about issues I have never focused on in any sort of activist way. I have not been particularly green in my politics, and in truth am a cautiously skeptical proponent of nuclear power. I am more and more concerned though that we are not serving God very well in our stewardship of the world entrusted to our care.
    The Old Testament lesson from Genesis, one of the most familiar I suspect to all of us, takes me back. I remember telling my children this great story of the aftermath of the flood at the beach perhaps 30 years ago. It’s a good story to tell children when you see a rainbow, and I told it so often that I am confident our three boys remember it now. Just last weekend Sara and I were telling the story to our two year old granddaughter Olivia, as it is never to early to plant that biblical seed.
    Think about it the next time you see a rainbow, God’s sign to us, the sign of the everlasting covenant between God and humankind that never again will all flesh be destroyed by flood waters. I heard a story once from a Montreal doctor, who had heard it from Ted Kennedy, about a man who died and upon arrival in heaven told St. Peter he would like to address the next luncheon, as he had quite a story to tell, as a survivor of the Johnstown flood. St. Peter said that would be OK, but he should be aware that in the audience would be a chap named Noah. In that same vein, there would be those in the audience who lived through or perhaps perished in the Indian Ocean tsunami of St. Stephen’s Day 2004, or Hurricane Katrina in September 2005, or the 1945 typhoon which cost the Navy more ships and men than the Japanese did. All these good and innocent folks might well wonder how serious God was about this rainbow covenant business. Yet another example I suppose of the eternal question of theodicy, or why do bad things happen to good people. To raise the issue is to call into question either God’s benevolence or God’s omnipotence. The Holocaust, the ravage of cancer and Alzheimer’s, natural disasters, all these make us wonder, and there is of course no answer beyond the truism we often forget, that God is always in charge and we aren’t. And, if you want to get technical, never since the great flood of mythological theological history has all creation been destroyed.
    Now science of course plays a role in this. I cannot define acid rain, but when I go home to Burke County I can lift my eyes unto the hills, as the psalmist says, and see its effect on those mountains where I hiked, camped, and fished as a boy. My understanding of the science of global warming is most limited, I assure you, but there are beach locations here in North Carolina where I can swim out a couple of hundred feet at low tide and show you where houses and a hotel once stood. And at a Florida beach I can go out a pretty good way to what was once U.S. Highway A-1, now well under water.
    I have spent many hours of my life fishing, in the sure and certain hope that God does not count such time against one’s allotted life span, and cannot help but notice the depleted stock of fish along our coast. No one to my knowledge has suggested that state of affairs is unrelated to long line fishing by commercial vessels, fishing with lines truly ten miles along with baited hooks every six feet or so. The shrimp harvest off our coast last year was the lowest in history, not unrelated to enormous catch all trawl nets. Serious concerned scientists, noting that atmospheric temperatures rose about one degree Fahrenheit in the 20th century, predict temperatures rising at least 2.5 degrees, if not more, in this century. Oceanography researchers at Duke, East Carolina, and the Naval Academy say we could see an 18 inch rise in sea level by the year 2100. That would threaten much of the Outer Banks and the shoreline areas of Albemarle and Pamlico Sounds.   Are we to blame? Who else? A hundred years ago the Carolina Parrot was seen all over North Carolina, but it was hunted to extinction. The buffalo and the Florida panther barely escaped that fate, and the Evinrude boat propeller now threatens what just may be the gentlest creature on the planet, the Florida manatee. The venerable philosophical/political thesis Not In My Backyard, decidedly not a part of either theological or Christian thinking, plays a part in all this too. We applaud our two senators for voting against more oil drilling off Cape Hatteras. How should we react when they vote in favor of oil drilling in the Artic National Wildlife Preserve? Who will speak for the lynx and the caribou, both of whom were presumably on the passenger manifest of Noah’s ark?
    Can we stop this destructive human behavior? Sure. Will we stop it? I don’t know. Repentance is the key, repentance meaning to turn around, to adopt a different mindset, to resolve to do the right thing. As Jesus said in the Gospel for today, from Mark, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel.” Lent is of course perhaps the most appropriate time to focus on repentance, as the Ash Wednesday liturgy reminded us, along with Peach’s wonderful homily. That doesn’t let us off the hook the other 325 days of the year, but we have just covenanted and agreed with one another and God that we will repent, that we will turn our lives around. During the Ash Wednesday liturgy I found myself emotionally back among those I loved so much in prison. Trust me, they understand repentance, and I often found my task being to try to keep them from overdosing on remorse, reminding them not to forget the Easter that follows Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.
    Traditionally in Lent we also focus on giving something up. I have known folks who have given up alcohol, sex, running yellow lights, and Sudoku for Lent. No one to my knowledge has ever given up all four. I have a suggestion though, that we forget that part religious and part cultural aspect of Lent and look instead in the mirror. On occasion over the years I have told people, some here at St. Luke’s, some in prison and elsewhere to spend five minutes a day in front of a mirror saying “I am really terrific.” For Lent though, maybe all of us need to stand in front of a mirror, literally or figuratively, and say of our lives and actions, individual and corporate, “This is unacceptable. We can do better. And it will start right here with me.” All movements and resolutions start somewhere, with someone, as the life and work of Martin Luther, John Wesley, John Adams, John Brown, Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks attest.
    We do that and this good land God has given us, along with the lynx and caribou, the Outer Banks and the inner cities, the continental shelf and the Appalachian mountains, will be here when this parish church celebrates its 200th anniversary, thanks be to God.
    This past Friday, March 3, we observed the feast day of two of our calendar saints, The Anglican priests John and Charles Wesley. No one put the task before us now better than John Wesley, who wrote that:

You do not become holy by keeping yourself pure and clean from the world, but by plunging into ministry on behalf of the world’s hurting ones…The Gospel of Christ knows no religion but social, no holiness but social holiness.

    Let us pray.

Almighty God, in giving us dominion over things on earth, you made us fellow workers in your creation: Give us wisdom and reverence so to use the resources of nature, that no one may suffer from our abuse of them, and that generations yet to come may continue to praise you for your bounty; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

St. Luke’s
05 March 2006