You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
This month my parishes are having a worship series on “Celebrating Creation,” following the “Season for Creation”resources developed for worship by the Episcopal church. This week we reflect on what Jesus' teaching that we must “lose our life for the sake of the gospel in order to save it” might mean when it comes to saving our planet. Being a disciple of Jesus and a lover of God includes caring for the creation God made, especially when it has been damaged almost beyond repair by human over-consumption and practices that degrade the earth, its habitats and creatures.
If we choose to live like we care in order to heal our earth (the first two themes in our worship series…) we will have to be willing to lose our lifestyle (the third) – or at least dial back our addiction to three “c’s” – convenience, comfort and consumption. Those happen also to be things that impede our Christian discipleship.
Convenience – so much of the garbage choking our planets waterways and wildlife is a consequence of our addiction to convenience – fast food and its packaging; online ordering and its packaging and use of fossil fuels; processed foods with their high chemical content; paper towels and disposable wipes for the spills we can’t take an extra five minutes to clean with reusable sponges – these are just a few examples. Where is convenience driving your consumption and increasing your trash volume? Where are some places you can cut back or change your patterns to so you can reduce, reuse, recycle even if it takes a little longer and a little more effort? What can we teach our grandchildren?
Comfort – Americans are increasingly addicted to living in a very narrow temperature range – too cold in the summers and too warm in the winters. Feeding this addiction to total comfort all the time contributes directly to the overheating of our planet, to extreme heat and weather that is making life untenable for many of the rest of the planet’s residents and wildlife. Air conditioners in a city can raise the outside temperature by 3 or 4 degrees – when we’re already at 85 or 90, think about the implications. This narrow comfort range is also unhealthy, causing our bodies to lose the ability to adapt. Where might we compromise our desire for “comfort” for the sake of the rest of the world?
Consumption – So much of our climate crisis has been driven by our insatiable desire for more stuff, more food, more drink – perhaps to help stuff down our feelings at seeing the damage our over-consumption has done to our earth. Consumption drives us to mine precious metals at great cost to the habitats around them, to torture and slaughter chickens, pigs, cows and other animals, to over-fish our oceans, over-farm our land… just think of the implications of our lust for a certain kind of avocado, which has fueled cartel violence and the degradation of the landscape. Can we train ourselves to eat locally sourced foods and become more moderate in our appetites?
What if we tweaked Jesus’ words to his disciples: He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, ‘If any want to heal this earth God has given us, let them deny themselves and take up their care for creation and follow me. For those who want to save their lifestyle will lose it, and those who lose their lifestyle for my sake, and for the sake of my creation, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?
It is our lives in the balance, my friends – and certainly the lives of our grandchildren consigned to live on a planet that can no longer sustain human life. If that doesn’t get us moving, what will?
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
No comments:
Post a Comment