Meditation
As you heard last week, General Synod was quite an experience. It always is. Each of the 27 Synods has had its own unique set of highlights and “lowlights.” Seeing Diane honored for her years of service to the church was certainly a highlight for me as was hearing a sermon by The Rev. Dr. Otis Moss, Senior Pastor of the Trinity UCC in Chicago.
Despite the distinctive qualities of each Synod, however, there is one thing you can count on: you will get to see lots of fascinating t-shirts! One displayed on the back 20/30. On the front was “This is what clergy look like.” There is in the United Church of Christ a coalition of young clergy in their 20’s and 30’s. Their T-shirts brought enthusiastic responses as older generation delegates and clergy alike, were given a glimpse of fresh new faces coming into ordained ministry in the 21st century.
Many people were wearing the now traditional red, “God Is Still Speaking”shirt. Others had shirts designed from recent UCC marketing campaigns: “God makes room for quantum mechanics,” or “If you think getting up Sunday morning is hard, try rising from the dead,” or “Our faith is over 2,000 years old. Our thinking is not.”
But there was a new one for me with the number 350 posted on the front. 350 ? Of course, I had to inquire and I learned that the number 350 is the number of parts per million of carbon monoxide in the atmosphere humanity needs to stay under to avoid runaway climate change. The good news is that we with a concerted effort we can get there. The bad news is that we are already at 390 ppm. Not good.
The Book of Genesis tells us that God put us in charge of the earth. We are earth’s stewards and therefore have a responsibility to take care of it as best we can. The Psalmist declares today, “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof…” God created this incredible planet and we are its custodians.
The number 350 is not political, although it certainly has political implications. The number 350 is a line in the sand, of sorts, and we have crossed it. The number 350 is a marker. Regardless of where you stand with the controversial wind farm proposed for Nantucket Sound, no matter your position on atomic energy, despite your feelings about going green, or your opinions of hybrid cars, the number 350 is a scientific issue.
Just how far can we as a human race go in dumping pollutants into the air before we exceed the feared increase of two degrees in our average temperature; a point at which almost everyone agrees will bring catastrophic melting of the earths ice pack? Two degrees!
Setting all politics aside, we are jeopardizing this planet. True: the consequences will likely be felt most fully, if unchecked, in three to four generations from now after we are long gone, but that is no excuse to bury our heads in the sand. The prayer of invocation this morning addresses this quite well: “Speak to us a word of truth that reveals our deceit and leads us away from falsehood.”
I would, therefore, challenge each of us to think of ways that we might begin to help turn this present number of 390 back down to 350 or below. It is an issue as simple as a strip of insulation around a front door and as complicated as trying to convince the Chinese government that they need to wean themselves of fossil fuels, something that we as a nation have only started to address.
As many of you know from either attending a Charter Membership Class or reviewing our web site, we have in our Vision Statement the following words:
“We will live as a community concerned for the environment. We commit to being a “Green” church as we make all and any decisions around the development of a future site with special consideration of the fragile ecosystem of Cape Cod. As individual members, we will be open to reviewing and changing personal life patterns and choices that contribute to environmental damage by seeking to reduce the carbon footprint of our homes. (Gen. 1:26)”
We will certainly spend time in the future discussing this declaration as our Vision Statement is a working document. No doubt, there is language to be added and there are developments in the world of science that will enable us to become more sophisticated in our intent to be good stewards of God’s great earth.
But for now, many of you contributed energy-saving bulbs when we moved into this building. I saw the electric bill go down immediately. The old and oversized hot water heater was replaced by Chris Burden with a new, smaller, and energy-efficient unit. I saw the electric bill go down immediately. Brad Sweet worked with the property manager, Rita, to determine which exterior lights would be necessary in the various seasons of the Marketplace and we figured out which breakers controlled which lights so that when we were not here during the evenings the flood lights would not come on. I saw the electric bill go down even more.
There was nothing earth-shattering about any of these actions, lots of small efforts to reduce our use here and there. But, in their totality they made a difference. Not only did we reduce our consumption of electricity but we freed up some of our funds for ministry for other areas in our budget.
Our daughter and three grandchildren from Montana are spending two weeks with us. On Friday we headed off to the beach for several hours where we engaged in the usual activities of sunbathing, eating, drinking, sand castle building, swimming with and without boogie boards, and, of course, beachcombing. Toward the end of our time there, our oldest grandson, Austin, the same grandson who was here a year ago, the one we took to Disney World, decided to go digging for sand crabs. He managed to dig up about five of them and placed them in a temporary sand-crab farm.
I was reminded of my childhood and how I used to do the very same thing, although the notion of creating a sand-crab farm had never occurred to me! I thought about how many generations of children in the past had done the same and I wondered how many children in future generations would be able to continue the tradition? What about the endangered species of life in the ocean? What about God’s magnificent forests? What about God’s lakes and rivers? Will there be clean water? Will the planet survive it population explosion? Will we be able to avoid the “tipping point” for the environment? We are two thousand years into Christianity. What will it and God’s world look like two thousand years from now in the year 4009? What will history have to say about our generation’s care for the earth?
“The Earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof…” We have been born into the midst of one of God’s greatest creations and we have the responsibility of caring for it. What can we do as a community of faith to guarantee its safe passage into this new millennium. This space ship we call “earth” is a creation beyond our imagination. But with God’s help we can find the path to its preservation for our grandchildren, their grandchildren and generations into all eternity.
For now, one t-shirt says it all.
AMEN
