A sermon for the planet
1st Sunday after Christmas, December 27 2015
1 Samuel 2.18-26; Psalm 148; Colossians 3.12-17; Luke 2.41-52
St Andrew’s Scots Memorial, Jerusalem
Two days ago, Jesus of Nazareth was born. Today, he is 12 – a rapid growth spurt, even for someone who is the saviour of the world. And when he returns to Nazareth with his relieved parents, he continues to grow in wisdom and stature and in divine and human favour.
Two weeks ago, with the bang of a French gavel, 195 countries reached a landmark climate accord to save the planet. For the first time, the nations of the world committed to lowering the greenhouse gas emissions that are warming our planet and to work together to stave off the most drastic effects of man-made climate change.
The Swiss theologian Karl Barth long ago urged us to go through life with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. Even so, to see how these two things link together requires a little thought.
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Begin with the psalm we sang.
We tend to think of worship as something we do, but Psalm 148 thinks of worship as inherent in the very structure of creation. It cries out to all creation to “Praise the Lord!” – the heavens and the earth; sun, moon, and stars; dragons and deeps; fire, hail, clouds, wind and snow; kings, princes and rulers; women and men both young and old. It reminds us that the story we Christians tell is not just about God and Christians, or even God and human beings, but about God and the world. For the whole world is God’s creation and God’s care, and our world is made for praise.
Here is where the 12-year-old in the temple comes in. As we read two days ago, “All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.”
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Here too is where our letter to the Colossians begins. The 12-year-old in the temple “is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers – all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is… the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things…”
Extravagant claims to make for a boy with spots.
But this is what it means to say that Jesus of Nazareth is the Word of God made flesh. In him, says Colossians, we are reconciled to God and made blameless before him. In him, we learn how to think straight and avoid vain philosophy. In him, we are set free to be ourselves.
So today’s reading calls us to clothe ourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness and patience; to bear with one another and to forgive each other; above all, to clothe ourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.
These are calls each and every one of us can take to heart. They would make an excellent set of New Year’s resolutions.
But in the letter to the Colossians these calls are not singular but plural. They are addressed to the Colossians not as individuals but as a community, a church. These are things we are called to do together.
And as with the community of the church, so too with the community of nations. For all of us – all people that on earth do dwell – are created by God in Christ and redeemed by Christ in God.
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On Christmas Day, the first request in our prayers of the people was for spiritual maturity. Spiritual maturity is indeed what we need and to what we are called, in church and in world.
Jesus in the temple and Samuel in the temple are role models for us. For we are called to grow up in every way into Christ, until all of us come to maturity, to the measure of Christ’s full stature.
We need to be grown-ups.
We must no longer be 12-year-olds, as the letter to the Ephesians from which I am quoting adds:
“We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming.”
Only so can we lend a hand in saving our world.
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“Did the Paris climate accord save civilization?” Paul Krugman asked in the New York Times two days after it was gavelled into agreement. “Maybe” was his cautious answer.
Caution is certainly called for.
In Paris two weeks ago, 195 nations – from oil exporters to post-industrial economies to rapidly emerging giants to countries mired in poverty – committed to curbing their heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions. They undertook to cap global warming at well below two degrees centigrade (2C) above the levels that obtained before the industrial revolution began. They promised to pursue efforts to limit the rise in temperature to 1.5C. They engaged themselves to mobilize $100 billion per year from 2020 to help developing countries mitigate the impact of climate change.
Here is the most important point: They recognized that the voluntary carbon-cutting commitments they have made so far fall well short of the old target of 2C, never mind the new targets of well below that or even 1.5C They laid out rules and procedures for verifying each country’s efforts, so that no one can cheat; and they agreed to revisit their pledges every five years, to speed up the transition from dirty to clean energy.
All of this gives us grounds for hope.
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But there are also grounds for concern.
The challenge we face is to move within decades from a carbon-based economy to one that is carbon-neutral. For burning fossil fuels is far-and-away the main cause of global warming.
Happily, we no longer have to burn them. In recent decades, the price of renewable energy has been tumbling. “In the last six years,” says one American energy expert, “solar prices have dropped by more than 80 percent, and now cost less than a new coal plant. Wind is down 60 percent, and LED lights more than 90 percent.” IKEA now sells packs of LED lights as standard.
With other new technologies near at hand, the expert says, “it becomes clear that a clean future costs no more than a dirty one.”
So why are there grounds for concern?
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In the first place, because old fossil-fuel plants built without any pollution control, and with all their capital expense amortized and still enjoying subsidies, can still run very cheaply – if you don’t count their massive carbon impacts. We need a tax on carbon, to make polluters pay and encourage them to stop polluting.
In the second place, because if we are to have even a chance of avoiding catastrophic impacts, upward of 80% of the world’s known oil, gas and coal reserves need to stay in the ground. Do we really expect oil-exporting nations, a fossil-fuel industry worth five trillion dollars, and the legion of politicians at their beck-and-call to go gently into the night?
And in the third place, a particular group of politicians – the Republican Party in the US – has set its face like flint against recognizing and responding to man-made climate change.
Andy Karsner was George W Bush’s assistant energy secretary and one of his climate negotiators. He argues that the Republicans would be wise to put this behind them. Congressional leaders, he said recently, now have an opportunity “to reconnect with mainstream voters, scientific, civic and business leaders, geopolitical strategists and most anyone under 35 years old who’s completed eighth-grade science.”
Will Republicans in Congress, will Republican candidates for President, be wise enough or tall enough to take that opportunity? I’m not holding my breath.
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Perhaps we may say of the Paris accord what Winston Churchill said of the second battle of El Alamein: “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
The real battles to save our planet still lie ahead of us – just as they do for the 12-year old Jesus of Nazareth.
Sources
Coral Davenport, “Nations approve landmark climate accord in Paris”, New York Times, December 13 2015
Thomas L Friedman, “Paris climate accord is a big, big deal”, New York Times, December 16 2015
Marlowe Hood, “COP21: Less than meets the eye”, Agence France Presse
Paul Krugman, “Hope from Paris”, December 14 2015
WorkingPreacher.org