Third Sunday, Seasons of Creation Year C (Storm)
The Rev. Dr. Leah Schade, PhD
Job 28:20-27; Psalm 29; 1
Corinthians 1:21-31; Luke 8:22-25
When I was a
child I looked forward to thunderstorms.
At the first rumble of thunder and crack of lightning, my father would
call my three siblings and me out to the porch swing where we all cuddled under
the blanket and sang the songs he taught us.
As the rain came down in sheets, bathing the green yard, we were bathed
in the warmth of a father’s love singing “Down in the Valley.” There was a feeling of peace in the midst of
the storm.
The writer
of Psalm 29 seems to have a similar positive experience with storms. While there is certainly awe of those mighty
energies of nature that can break trees and cause the wilderness to shake,
there is also a feeling of comfort hearing the voice of God over the
waters. The psalmist recognizes that
nature gives testimony to God’s ultimate power over the forces of nature. In the temple of Earth, all say, “Glory!” –
both human and other-than-human.
Insurance
agencies and power company crews have a less positive view of these energies of
nature. Interestingly, when major
weather events happen they are called “acts of God.” But the attitude is not necessarily one of
reverence. When those broken trees fall
on houses and cars, snapping lines strung between poles and cutting off
electricity, very few are saying “Glory.”
More likely they are cursing or lamenting the destruction left behind.
Something
has happened to the quality and quantity of storms in the last few decades,
however, that has fundamentally changed the nature of these weather events. In an
interview with Bill Moyers on climate change, scientist Anthony Leiserowitz,
director of the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, described the
situation: “2011 was an all-time record year in the United States, for example.
We had 14 individual climate and weather related disasters that each cost this
country more than $1 billion. That was an all-time record, blew away previous
records. And in 2012 we had events ranging from the summer-like days in January
in Chicago with people out on the beach, clearly not a normal occurrence, an
unusually warm spring, record setting searing temperatures across much of the
lower 48, one of the worst droughts that America has ever experienced, a whole
succession of extreme weather events.” (http://billmoyers.com/segment/anthony-leiserowitz-on-making-people-care-about-climate-change/)
Are these
really “acts of God”? Or should they be
described as “acts of human-induced climate change”? How easy it is for some to wave away these new
climate realities as just “part of the natural cycle of the earth.” But the refusal to recognize that climate
change is caused by humanity’s addiction to fossil fuels that leads to greenhouse
emissions that warm the planet and cause untold counts of destruction and
suffering is actually a form of evil. Ecotheologian
Cynthia Moe-Lobeda calls it “systemic evil” that enlists the “over-consuming
class” of society in its never-ending greed for more, at the cost of untold
suffering of billions across the planet (Cynthia Moe-Lobeda, Resisting Structural Evil: Love as Ecological-Economic Vocation,
Fortress Press, MN, 2013).
So what is
the voice of the Lord saying today, in the midst of these catastrophic weather
events and the climate crisis? Where is
Wisdom-Sophia when we need her most? At
a time when our little boat of Planet Earth is more threatened than it has ever
been – by a storm of our own making – it appears that someone is blithely asleep
on the deck below.
The reading
from Job reminds us that God’s wisdom is sometimes hidden. There is a mystery, a profound unknownness to
the inner workings of God’s mind, so to speak.
And, according to verse 28, the way to access that wisdom is through fear of the Lord and departing from evil. The Hebrew word for fear in this passage is
yi’rah, meaning fear, reverence and
respect. The problem with the
corporations who profit so mightily from our addiction to fossil fuels is that
they have no fear of the Lord. In fact,
they think of themselves as gods, and, indeed, appear to have the power to
affect wind and water just as much as God.
The preacher
of today’s readings may want to give the congregation an example of someone or
some entity departing from evil because they finally “get it,” grasping the
import of their decisions and actions.
Moe-Lobeda’s book gives excellent examples of individuals and groups of
citizens who are, in a sense, waking up to the reality of the state of our
planet. They are realizing the way in
which our purchases and choices of energy sources are connected with the storms
and droughts that ravage our communities and lives. They are rousing from sleep, as it were, and
finally taking up the work of rebuking those economic systems that cause the
raging wind and waves. Perhaps that is
one way to understand the story of Jesus being roused from sleep to calm the
storm. It may be that his actions were a
kind of parable: “The kingdom of God is
like waking from sleep to confront the storm.”
Verse 24 of
the First Corinthians passage reminds us that we are called. In what way do we understand our calling as
Christians to stand up together to confront the storm of systemic evil and call
for another way to live? It can feel intimidating
to stand up to the mighty Goliaths of industry who laugh at our tiny,
insignificant voices. To paraphrase
verse 26, many in the environmental movement are neither powerful nor of noble
birth. Aside from the handful of
celebrities who lend their name-recognition to the cause, the majority of those
who work in the environmental movement are ordinary citizens, many of whom had
never been politically active, but now are compelled to do something to respond
to threats to their children’s and community’s air, water, land and public
health. And those individuals are often
despised and publicly derided by bloggers and pundits directly or indirectly
paid through polluting corporations. Yet
we have faith that the actions of those who are “low” will “reduce to nothing
things that are.” And as Christians, we
proclaim this action as initiated by God and ultimately giving glory to God.
The good
news for me as a Christian environmental activist who is storm-weary from
skirmishes ranging from confronting fracking to standing up to a proposed tire
burner in my community, is that ultimately the powers that think themselves
greater than God will fall just as easily as the waves and wind before the hand
of Jesus. Internally, the storms that
rage in me are just as answerable to the command of Jesus. With one cry to the Master, the wild waves
and wind always calm themselves in his presence, and, once again, I experience
peace in the midst of the storms.
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