Bishop's Writing / Enews July

Dear Friends in Christ,

This past Sunday some of you read from Isaiah.

Isaiah 55:10-13

As the rain and the snow come down from heaven,
and do not return there until they have watered the earth, 

making it bring forth and sprout,
giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, 

so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
it shall not return to me empty, 

but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

For you shall go out in joy,
and be led back in peace;

the mountains and the hills before you
shall burst into song,
and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. 

Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress;
instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle; 

and it shall be to the Lord for a memorial,
for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.

Last month I made a wry comment about the weather and about enjoying some time off in the midst of smoky skies. Since then the weather has been “biblical.” That’s a metaphor we use to express an experience of destruction and loss that is apocalyptic and beyond our understanding. Such destruction, like the plagues against ancient Egypt, can only come from beyond us, from God.

The weather has been truly awful almost everywhere. No part of the globe has been spared extreme heat or extreme rain, forest fires or landslides, drought, or flooding. High-temperature records are shattered weekly in Arizona, Northern Africa, and China, forest fires burn unchecked in Canada and Siberia, and 1000-year floods are repeating in Vermont, India, and Japan. Many people find the weather ominous and frightening. Others shrug their shoulders saying, “What can you do?” Nearly all of us continue to do what we’ve always done, not making any significant changes in the ways we live.

Psychologists and sociologists tell us that this response is typical of human behavior when we encounter something entirely beyond our experience. We cannot fully comprehend what is happening, and, therefore, our minds tend to dismiss it or minimize it, thinking that normal life will soon return again. We just want things to be normal! And so we don’t take actions that will actually change our lives.

The difficulty, however, is that a new world is truly upon us, and we know why. The climate is changing because human beings are creating too much carbon dioxide. The dislocations caused by this change are affecting everyone, in every corner of the globe. These dislocations continue even as we try to live life as usual, balancing our budgets, and fighting our wars.

The Biblical writers often used the predictable and stable cycles of nature to serve as metaphors for God’s work. The natural world was understood as a sign and an extension of God’s presence, a way that made Godself known to humanity. The workings of the natural world were familiar to agrarian people, and we can see the listener nodding his or her head as Isaiah proclaimed that God’s word was as steadfast and reliable as the snow and the rain…

But what do we do, how do we have hope, when the patterns of sun and rain change, when the actions of nature are no longer reliable and life-giving?

Human beings have long taken the natural world for granted, as something to be used and abused without consequence. Classical economic theory does not even assign an intrinsic value to natural resources, giving them value only as they are harvested or mined and consumed or transformed. We are learning now, if we had not known before, that nature is not neutral, that it has its own existence and value, and that we are dependent on it. As nature suffers, so do we all.

As we wrestle with climate change, It’s important to remember that the Biblical writers were using nature as a metaphor, as a way of describing God’s actions. The falling of the rain and the snow was like the reliability of God. The natural world was a reflection of God's intentions. The metaphors from nature created the lyrical beauty we find in Isaiah’s poetry.

But the primary thing is God. God’s word “shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” As we awaken to the perils of climate change, and as we begin to comprehend the kinds of changes we need to make for ourselves and for the natural world, I believe God is in our midst calling us to assist one another in making those changes. There is hope because God is with us and will not abandon us. As in everything else, God is present, bringing life out of death and encouraging us to be God’s new people. Nature may no longer serve as a metaphor for stability and predictability, but God’s intentions for humankind are unchanged. God still wills for us to live together in peace and joy.

Like you, I look to the sky with a good bit more apprehension than I used to. May you and I put that energy to work, in our prayers and in our actions, trusting that God will use what we do for good.

Faithfully,

+Steve