Sermon, The First Sunday of Lent, 2020
Redefining the Wilderness in the era of Climate Change
John 2:13-22 Jesus clears the temple
In today’s reading, Jesus “turned over” the tables of the marketplace, which was inside the temple in Jerusalem, the capital city of the nation, at the busiest time, on one of the holiest days of the year. And his disciples remembered later that when he was asked, “What sign can you show us for doing this?” he told them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”
What is the first temple - in Jesus’ response - that Jesus tells his followers to “destroy”, and what would be the second temple, which he proposes to “raise up” in three days?
Disciples follow their teacher’s lessons and actions, and in the first century after Jesus’ death, the accusation they were charged with most often was that the Jesus movement turns “the world upside-down.” In other words, just like their teacher, the disciples - the post-resurrection followers of Jesus - emulated what their teacher showed them and “turned over” the tables of fundamentalism: the holy agendas and authority of the powerful people. Even in Jesus’ time, it is obvious that the most invincible and unspoken holy agenda seems to be money and power. So, possessions. Like teachers, like disciples: In his ministry of the very short 3 years before he died, (and he was young), Jesus disrupted the symbolic universe of the Jewish world at that time. It was the symbolic actions he performed - including “turning over the tables of the marketplace” in today’s reading - in the temple which forced the powerful priestly elites to seize him and bring him before the Romans - to a death sentence. In this sense, we can say, the first temple Jesus says to destroy would mean the fundamentalist world and its holy agendas. The second temple he says that he would raise up in three days means the other kind of temple - a community in which everyone, every being that participates would ‘break bread’, share, together, a life of abundance. The question for us is, where do we stand? What is our temple practice in the scope of “global life” in the era of climate change? Our fellow beings are not just those who gather today in this sanctuary, but as we said in the prayer of confession this morning, they are also the land, the water, the air, the forests, the creatures, plants and animals, human communities (especially those whose lands and life are most vulnerable to climate change - in both the Global North and Global South - ) and children.
When I think about Jesus turning the tables upside down, the first activist who comes to my mind is Greta Thunberg. Was the global-wide climate change movement she led a passing phase? Is it quiet now? Just like, perhaps, after Jesus left the temple, and in three days, or even three hours, or maybe thirty minutes, people continued to “sell cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables” as if nothing had happened. No! young people, with or without Greta, still meet here in Winnipeg, and also in Bristol, last week, in School Strike week 80. Her Facebook shows a picture of at least 30,000 people continuing the climate strike, school strike for climate change action, Fridays for Future, in the pouring rain in Bristol, England. And, we are talking about - for now, most of us are just talking, sadly - what would be a responsible and faithful action and daily practice we can do during our day? During just one ordinary day by ordinary people? That is incredible… The question how we might be able to turn over the fundamentalist world, the fundamentalist table has now reached all the way down to a local ordinary church like ours.
The next question is, then, what is the fundamentalism of our table, our world, that we must challenge and disturb – or, okay even “destroy” - if we, as a nation, or nations, collectively and individually intend to “do our share” (quote from the Men’s Study Group letter, Immanuel) and work together to “strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change … by holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels (striving for 1.5°C)” set as the goal to all nations in the Paris Agreement on climate change (December, 2015)?
What are our fundaments, our foundations that need overturning? May I invite your thoughts? (Hear a few answers from the congregation)
Capitalism, for sure.
And colonialism. Over time, I would like to share with you and learn with you how, and why, colonialism is the hidden (OR, “holy and unspoken” agenda of today and of the past) cause of our environmental crisis. We love Greta, and on Nov 9, 2019, in the article entitled “Why we strike again,” written by her and two others, she claimed, "The climate crisis is not just about the environment. It is a crisis of human rights, of justice, and of political will. Colonial, racist, and patriarchal systems of oppression have created and fueled it. We need to dismantle them all. Our political leaders can no longer shirk their responsibilities.” The article takes up one of the arguments of de-colonial environmentalism: that the climate crisis is linked to the history of slavery and colonialism as practiced by Western powers.
Last month, Immanuel United Church called people to gather and decide on the theme of the season of Lent, 2020, and seven people sat together and talked, and inspired by the passion of the Men’s Study Group on climate justice, we created the title of the theme together: Wandering the Wilderness of Climate Change. And I promised the people there that I would assist the congregation to redefine Wilderness, the Desert, to be more relevant to the era of climate change and to the call of our faithful response. To do this, I would like to teach the same way Jesus taught his disciples - by inspiring questions inside our hearts when we hear a story or a parable. What would be the wilderness in an era of climate change? In the Hebrew Bible, traditionally, wilderness and the practice of wandering in the wilderness was presented as a very difficult place to be: Wilderness mirrors the landscape. It's a desert. Hot in the daytime, cold at night. Wilderness symbolizes complaint, confusion and conflict. The Gospel tells us that after his baptism, Jesus was led to the wilderness, and wandered there, and was tempted for 40 days and 40 nights. After baptism, and after identifying and overcoming temptations, he came to the villages and found friends to do the work together.
Here’s a story, which I hope inspires some questions for you to think about this week. Some of you might recognize the story; it’s an abridgement of a short story by science fiction writer Ursula K. LeGuin called, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.” Imagine a place where everyone lives happy, peaceful, rich lives, a place filled with music and dancing and cultural expression, where everyone has just what they need to live their best life. But - there is one exception. A very small one. In a tiny, dark closet in a dank, unfinished basement in a single lonely building within this vibrant and beautiful city lives a small child, terrified and alone, given enough food to barely survive, never given love, or comfort, or even a word of kindness. The entire city, this vibrant, happy, rich, place of great freedom, peace and prosperity lives with the knowledge of this child. Every inhabitant of Omelas was initiated to the secret of the place when they were twelve or thirteen. They were shown the child, the miserable, suffering child, and asked to keep the city’s agreement, the “holy and unspoken agenda” that the foundation of all their happiness is inextricably linked with the forced misery of that one innocent child. It’s written into the pact the founders of the city made with an unknown entity long ago - the prosperity and peace of an entire city for the cost of just this one small being’s suffering. Who is this one little girl? That’s the question I would like to share with you.
Where the wilderness comes into the story is in the ending. This is how the story ends:
“At times one of the adolescent girls or boys who go to see the child does not go home to weep or rage, does not, in fact, go home at all. Sometimes also a man or woman much older falls silent for a day or two, and then leaves home. These people go out into the street, and walk down the street alone. They keep walking, and walk straight out of the city of Omelas, through the beautiful gates. They keep walking across the farmlands of Omelas. Each one goes alone, youth or girl, man or woman. Night falls; the traveler must pass down village streets, between the houses with yellow-lit windows, and on out into the darkness of the fields. Each alone, they go west or north, towards the mountains. They go on. They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back. The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.
Ha Na Park
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