Memories and Memorials

David mourns the death of Jonathan and Saul.

I.

There’s an old hymn; it was already old when we sung it at the Beaver Dam Baptist Church during my childhood, “Precious Memories.”

Precious memories

How they linger

How they ever flood my soul

In the stillness of the midnight

Precious sacred scenes unfold.

On this Memorial Day weekend, precious memories are focused. They are focused on women and men whom we remember as vivacious, lively, filled with promise, and courageous before they lost their lives to war. In the Thought Challenge that John read to us a few minutes ago, “war” and “hell” are synonymous, and so it is. These family members, friends, and colleagues lost their lives to war, to the hell humans created for themselves, and we remember them and their sacrifice. Union General William T. Sherman said, “War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.”

When the war in Iraq started, people in polite society weren’t supposed to call it a war, but it was a brutal bloody war just the same. Much of the media and marketing gurus were making even more money creating bumper stickers and such suggesting that refusing to support the war was the same thing as failing to support our troops. That was a big bunch of malarkey. I consistently supported our troops and just as consistently hated that war.

It is not necessary to approve of war to be able to appreciate the sacrifice of those who lost their lives hoping against hope that should they pay the ultimate sacrifice for their willingness to be placed in harm’s way and to be willing to die, if that happened to be the cost, their sacrifice would mean something. What they couldn’t bear was the thought that their deaths would have no meaning, no purpose. Those of us who bask in the freedom for which many of the war dead died have the responsibility to be certain that those courageous women and men did not die in vain.

I want to pair two quotes from the Prophet Muhammad that are not paired in the Qur'an. The first: “Four things support the world: the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the good, and the valor of the brave.” The second: “He is not strong and powerful who throweth people down; but he is strong who witholdeth himself from anger.”

I cherish freedom, don’t you? And it is certainly true that freedom can be lost if not cared for and protected; more about that in a moment.

Thomas Jefferson writing in A Summary View of the Rights of British America two years before American independence from Britain was sealed: “The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy but cannot disjoin them.” I first knew these words because I was in Men’s Chorus at Carson-Newman College, and we sang one year Randall Thompson’s rousing A Testament of Freedom, a composition that Thompson wrote originally for all male voices, though a version with sopranos and altos written in eventually came along. I did not understand their significance, and I can’t recall if I realized they were penned by Jefferson. I absolutely do remember, though, the chills I got when we sang them: “The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy but cannot disjoin them.”

Thomas Jefferson writing to John Adams from Monticello on September 12, 1821:

I shall not die without a hope that light and liberty are on steady advance... And even should the cloud of barbarism and despotism again obscure the science and liberties of Europe, this country remains to preserve and restore light and liberty to them...The flames kindled on the 4th of July, 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; on the contrary, they will consume these engines and all who work them.

We must say that not every war fought in our country’s history was about the protection of freedom, though those who have engaged our nation in war have almost always claimed that the war, whichever war it was, was being waged to protect American freedoms. That wasn’t always true, not always the case. Some who lost their lives in wars that were not truly about protecting freedom knew exactly what was going on, but they had agreed to follow orders; and that is what they did. They knew, however, that those who were calling for war and speaking in favor of the war but who would never for a second be in any kind of danger were lying about the true cause of the war in which they found themselves fighting. “Freedom” is an excellent deflector, and if the public can be convinced that its freedoms are being threatened they will agree to most anything--from allowing corrupt governments to send their children off to war to economically crippling generations to come because of war debts so staggering that only superbly trained mathematicians and economists can even begin to understand the true impact of the numbers.

The best thing we can do to honor those who gave their lives for this country is to make sure that there are no more war deaths; indeed, that there is no more war. Only naive folks say such things, right? Not at all. Many who lived through the hell of war say it, and no one can consider them naive.

Those who say, “There will always be war,” will offer something, even it is only an attitude or frame of mind, to make certain their prophecy comes true. John Adams, and we desperately need a John Adams for this generation, said viscerally, “What horrid creatures we humans are, that we cannot be virtuous without murdering one another.”

A few months before I was born, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, formerly General Eisenhower, was making a speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, and he stunned them with his assessment of war:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.

My late father, a veteran, had profound respect for General Omar Bradley. This insight from General Bradley stirs me:

The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing that we know about living.

Someone has adapted this, “There will always be war” maxim to say, “There will always be war as long as it is profitable.” That should bring tears to our eyes if it is true, and it surely seems to be.

The Vice President in a previous presidential administration owned major shares of stock in the company that was being paid to do a number of tasks for the US military in Iraq and for the US government more broadly. One of the sweetest things Halliburton did for our military was to prepare much of its prepackaged food. When the sand began to settle, however, and the facts, some of them, came to light, Halliburton, facing serious lawsuits, agreed to reimburse the Department of Defense nearly 30 million dollars because it had grossly overcharged the military of its own country for essential food supplies for those far from home, serving their country in very dangerous conditions.

For that company, that amount of money was a drop in the bucket, and how citizens in a democracy can sit back and allow its own Vice President to grow wealthier by making sure the company he used to run got major contracts and staggering amounts of money on the backs of the military women and men who had to eat the overpriced food to survive is beyond me. This is only one example of Halliburton abuse. These are the kinds of abuses of freedom that make those who died to protect freedom roll over in their graves, which we should be decorating with fresh flowers today.

Charles Sumner said, and we should listen very openly:

Give me the money that has been spent in war and I will clothe every man, woman, and child in an attire of which kings and queens will be proud. I will build a schoolhouse in every valley over the whole earth. I will crown every hillside with a place of worship consecrated to peace.

II.

The ancient Hebrews, so the story goes, wanted to be like other nations in terms of organization and governance. They had done well enough with each of the twelve tribes having its own leadership and joining together when the nation needed to be unified, but many of them continually pled with God, asking God to give them their own king. The sacred storytellers recalled that God heard these prayers and indicated a willingness to act on these prayer requests as long as the people asking for a king understood what was at stake for any nation or would-be-nation who submitted to the rule of a single monarch.

God warned the king-seeking Hebrews that there was more than a little bit of a chance that if they got their king, there would be trouble. In all likelihood, those freedom-loving people would lose much of their freedom, but they couldn’t see it in much the same way that modern US Americans aren’t seeing that the loss of separation between church/synagogue/mosque and state could only mean a substantial loss of a freedom many of us hold dear; a freedom that, if given away by intention or carelessness, would impact the fullness of other freedoms held dear by many of our fellow citizens.

As far as I know, we aren’t told why any where, God reluctantly gave in to the prayer demands of the Hebrews and chose a young Israelite, Saul, to be the first king of Israel. No one initially knew of this appointment, not even Saul himself.

There were several players in this drama, each with a God-given role, but none of them knew they were a part of bringing God’s plan to fruition; they thought they were going about the normal course of their lives. For example, Saul’s family owned donkeys, and some of the donkeys got lost, separated from the others. Saul’s father sent Saul out to find the lost donkeys. What could be more normal or average or logical than that? This was probably something Saul had done a number of times since you know, if you’ve ever lived with a jack ass, that they get lost a lot!

In the mean time, God had made known to the prophet Samuel that he would be God’s instrument in letting the king to be know that he was God’s choice for that job, but in keeping with the pattern Samuel had no idea who the new king would be. God would fix things so that Samuel would know the right person when he saw him. Sure enough, while Saul was looking for the lost donkeys, Samuel saw him, and God caused a little gong to go off in Samuel’s head. That was the sign. The young man who was running around as if in search of something was to be Israel’s first king; he, as I’ve said, had no clue. Living out on a donkey farm, he probably hadn’t heard that God was going to allow Israel to have a king.

Evidently, Karl Rove is America’s Samuel, at least he thinks he is, and he names, the right-wingers say, with God’s direction who will be the next president of the United States. Even though he got it wrong last time, he, like Harold Camping and Judgement Day predictions, keeps right on going. We don’t know who told Donald Trump that he would be the next president of our country, but, to his credit, it wasn’t Karl Rove. Thank goodness, Trump already pulled out; Rove called him a joke of a candidate.

Before Saul is fully confirmed by all the twelve tribes of Israel, some of his fellow Israelites were defeated in a battle with the Ammonites; actually, it was a surrender or die kind of deal, and there were two parts to the terms of surrender: 1) the surrendering Israelites would become slaves to the Ammonites; and 2) as a mark of slavery, each Israelite slave would have one eye poked out. If a master had the benefit of two eyes, then a slave should have only one eye. There is a parallel here with what the Spanish friars did to the Acoma Pueblo Indigenous Americans. They captured them, forced them into servitude, and to make sure the men in the tribe didn’t run, these “missionaries” cut off one foot of each Acoma male.

The captured Israelites got word by messenger to other Israelites, and they pled for intervention. Several of the tribes of Israel sent soldiers to be a part of an army formed for the express purpose of delivering their sister- and brother-Israelites from the Ammonites. Saul was appointed leader of these troops and commander in the battle that would ensue. Surprising everyone including himself, Saul had tremendous military skill, and he led his army to victory over the Ammonites, seeing the Israeli captives released--with two eyes and two feet.

Word spread of Saul’s astounding military capabilities, and the tribes of Israel came together as a nation, as a single entity, and acclaimed Saul their king. Saul, God’s choice as the story was told generation after generation, became the first king of the nation of Israel.

He had it rough from day one. In one particularly striking and tragic representation of God in another war story, God becomes irate when Saul kills most but not all of the Amalekites. The attacks led to a veritable slaughter of women, children, and men. Only the king and the good livestock were allowed to live, and the story says that God was extremely irritated with Saul for allowing any Amalekite or Amalekite animal to live. God had warned the Israelites that they would suffer because of the decisions their new King would make, but as things turned out, it was God who was displeased with Saul. The plot of the story has God becoming livid with Saul for leaving any life there at all, and, unbeknownst to Saul or anyone else, God calls Samuel back into service. It was already time in God’s mind for a new king. (I want to make sure you understand that I'm retelling the ancient story using the same theological framework from which it was told and the same anthropomorphisms for God assumed in the story. These do not match my theology in any sense. Still, the story is a very important one.)

This is when Samuel appoints the shepherd boy David to be Israel’s next, its second, king, but it would take a long time for David to mature and to learn before he could take the throne from the King into whose service he was placed, the King whom he loved. Talk about a rocky road!

Saul had trained three of his sons in the ways of war. The oldest of those sons was Jonathan who became David’s soulmate and eventually David’s lover, though both Jonathan and David were married to women. Jonathan recognized that his father, Saul, whom he loved, was supposed to resign and allow David to take the throne, which was established in the story as God’s will. By no means, however, is Saul going to give up his throne freely. That, however, is for another sermon.

For now, I point you to a fierce battle in which both Saul and Jonathan die. It was the battle of Gilboa. The Philistines fought against the Israelites, and the Philistines won mightily!

When it was evident that the Philistines had won, some of them turned on Saul’s sons and killed all three of them. A Philistine archer wounded Saul with an arrow, but didn’t kill him. Preferring death to capture by the enemy, Saul pled with his armor bearer to finish the job the arrow had only half done. The armor bearer refused to harm his King so Saul tried to end his own life by throwing himself upon his own sword or spear. The second wound had not ended the King’s life, but only caused him to agonize in convulsing pain. A young enemy soldier happened to catch Saul’s eye, and Saul called to him and asked him to finish the job so that he would no longer be in such a state of suffering. The Amalekite soldier did so, and he would respectfully take the King’s crown and an amulet from Saul’s arm to David.

The Amalekite soldier found his way to David and personally told him that both Saul and Jonathan along with the two brothers fighting alongside Jonathan were dead. He explained the circumstances of Saul’s death, and he handed David Saul’s crown and amulet. David was so angry and shocked and bereaved that he ordered one of his men to strike the messenger, and the attack on the messenger killed him on the spot. Tragedy upon tragedy.

The 2009 movie, “The Messenger,” is about two soldiers whose full-time job it is to travel around and knock on the doors in order to announce to family members that their loved one has died in battle. I have a buddy who has been doing that for years; it is a horrible job. Many who perform that function become numb entirely and feel absolutely nothing as they repeat yet another time, “I regret to inform you....”

Even when war is declared for protection or principle instead of, let’s say, oil, there are deaths of military personnel. In a sense, all are unnecessary and only demonstrate how far the human family still has to go in understanding both diplomacy and life itself. Otherwise, war would have become extinct long ago.

Even so, through no fault of their own and in an effort to protect their fellow citizens who are not on the battlefield these military women and men are where they are and die where they die. Some are brought home for burial; others are not. Any way you slice it, they die for our wellbeing. Patriotic poems and an annual holiday to remember the war dead do nothing at all to describe or respond to the depth of their sacrifice.

III.

David intoned this lamentation over Saul and his son Jonathan. (He ordered that The Song of the Bow be taught to the people of Judah; it is written in the Book of Jashar.) He said: Your glory, O Israel, lies slain upon your high places! How the mighty have fallen! Tell it not in Gath, proclaim it not in the streets of Ashkelon; or the daughters of the Philistines will rejoice, the daughters of the uncircumcised will exult. You mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew or rain upon you, nor bounteous fields! For there the shield of the mighty was defiled, the shield of Saul, anointed with oil no more. From the blood of the slain, from the fat of the mighty, the bow of Jonathan did not turn back, nor the sword of Saul return empty. Saul and Jonathan, beloved and lovely! In life and in death they were not divided; they were swifter than eagles, they were stronger than lions. O daughters of Israel, weep over Saul, who clothed you with crimson, in luxury, who put ornaments of gold on your apparel. How the mighty have fallen in the midst of the battle! Jonathan lies slain upon your high places. I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan; greatly beloved were you to me; your love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women. How the mighty have fallen, and the weapons of war perished!

David wanted the news of the death of Saul and his sons kept within Israel; he couldn’t stand the thought that upon hearing the news that King Saul and his sons were dead, there were people, and plenty of them, who would celebrate and rejoice. He wanted the story told throughout Israel, and he wanted learning the story of the death of Saul and Jonathan taught to all generations of children yet to come.

He praised the bravery of both father and son, and he reminded the people in his eulogy that much that they had materially came because of Saul’s protection of and provision for his people. David’s repeating refrain throughout his eulogy was, “How the mighty have fallen,” and he rhetorically moves to a special spoken tribute to his lover, Prince Jonathan. Again: “I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan; greatly beloved were you to me; your love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.”

The moving eulogy closes with a most unusual statement: “How the mighty have fallen, and the weapons of war perished!” The weapons of war have perished in his mind, in his plan, in his hopes, his dreams? What exactly did he mean? How, exactly, had the weapons of war perished? Well, one scholar insists that “weapons” is the wrong translation of this Hebrew word, and a better translation would be “instruments.” The weapons haven’t perished, but those who used the instruments of war have; in fact, Saul and Jonathan and the other two brothers were themselves the instruments of war, and they had perished. There was reason for angst until new leadership was in place. The nation had lost a part of its foundation and some of its sense of security with it.

In insisting that no Israelite should ever be allowed to miss out on the opportunity of knowing who Saul and Jonathan had been and the principles for which they stood, David was establishing unintentionally a basis for our modern Memorial Day. Memories and Memorials.

Something is wrong with letting people who have stood for a cause that impacts us die forgotten, as if they’d never been here. This is why many Christian churches and seekers’ congregations remember each year those in their number who, in the previous twelve months, have left this world for life in the next realm.

Something is also terribly wrong with failing or refusing to learn from the situation that led to the military person’s death. Dorothy Brown Thompson, “Unlearned Lesson.”

Memorial Day

Of every year

The little valiant

Flags appear

On every fallen

Soldier's grave--

Symbol of what

Each died to save.

And we who see

And still have breath--

Are we no wiser

For their death?

In the book of Revelation, the book of symbols unveiling vital spiritual truths for people living through crisis and tragedy, some people on earth are concerned about those who have died isolated or en masse at the hands of evil and been forgotten. The word that comes back to them from God’s realm is that they were never lost to God and certainly not forgotten. God knew their names when they died, and God remembers them, their suffering, and their lives before they suffered because they stood for God’s goodness in a world heavily tainted by a very active evil.

Similarly, on Memorial Day, we pledge to the best of our abilities never to forget those who died for our freedom and for other causes to which our country connected itself. The tomb of the unknown soldier reminds us that some brave souls, their lives on the line for our wellbeing, did leave this world anonymously--some all alone, some in the company of other victims who didn’t know them at all, some surrounded by enemies who didn’t care to know their names.

The fallen military personnel gave what they gave with no strings attached. They were not seeking recognition, much less glory. They gave their lives in the hopes that the world they left behind might become a better world--a safer world, a freer world. At the very least, they earned the right to be remembered.

Amen.

Why Judgment Day Didn't Happen Yesterday: Prayer and Sermon

A PRAYER FOR THE DAY AFTER JUDGEMENT DAY FAILED TO OCCUR

Gracious God,

We are grateful for the reality of your unconditional love for all people, even though we don’t come close to understanding it. And we are grateful for the fact that you neither threaten nor taunt the human members in your created order.

You are not an ancient sultan who becomes angry with us when we fall short individually and collectively, holding on to your anger until it explodes in some sort of catastrophic event that damages, maims, terrifies, and often kills human beings whose greatest fault, if it is a fault, is lack of understanding. In fact, we can only find any anger in you at all when project our ways onto to you and do our level best to make you one of us. Your mystery, your intangibility irritate us so we allow ourselves to conceive of you, your traits, and your actions as decidedly human. Since we become angry enough to destroy, we contentedly surmise that you also must have such anger, and since you are God, your anger is the anger beyond all angers. When you express it, in this way of erroneous god-building we do, someone has to die; most often large groups of people die because the death of an individual here and an individual there makes too little impact.

Today, we put aside all our past and present leanings to create you in our own image: god with a temper, god who destroys even what has been divinely crafted and presumably loved. We reaffirm that you are THE God who is unconditional love. No exceptions.

We embrace you, as a result, as a God who is neither in the judgment business nor the business of damnation. Hell is another human-made “creation” that we constructed in our imaginations because we didn’t and don’t know what to do with the overpowering evil in the world. How can mass murderers and war criminals get by with what they did to others? The worst of punishments in this world didn’t seem suitable enough to our way of thinking so we created a hell in which we could picture those who embodied evil as suffering for eternity, far beyond the worst pain that could be inflicted in this world in a prison cell or an execution chamber.

Today, we, some of us, join with our sisters and brothers, many of them much more theologically conservative than most of us, who have had the courage to stand up and say, “A God of love could not, would not create a hell.” There is no hell, and such a mental creation must never be used again to try to coerce those struggling with their faith issues and possibilities that they’d better speak of you and to you in “approved ways” or singe and smolder in hellfire for eternity. Further, without a hell, we are convinced that there is no Judgment Day.

Gracious God, we thank you today that you’re not a god who plays games with us about what we must rationally grasp and affirm in order to stay in your good graces. We thank you for the reality that we need not fear a sudden reappearing of Jesus on Plant Earth that while ostensibly saving some will destroy and damn others. We understand the deeper truth--that you have given us this world and all the families in it to nurture in an abundance of ways, most significantly by sharing the good news of your boundless love in whatever we say or do.

Amen.

SERMON

I.

Well, here we are! Either Judgement Day didn’t happen yesterday; OR it did happen, and we are among the vast majority “left behind” to catch hell, as it were. As you can guess, I’m opting for the former option. There was no Judgement Day yesterday, and, as a matter of fact, there never has been and never will be a Judgement Day. Biblical teachings about some futuristic run-in with an angry, punitive god are either dated very early in the development of monotheism, OR they are symbolic.

If the way I state my view on this issue or my confidence in my perspective seem arrogant to you, let me assure you that I don’t feel that way and don’t want to communicate that. I am not happy, however, with those who get on the predictive bandwagon and lead gullible, trusting people astray. Some of these false prophets don’t know any better and are doing what they’re doing because someone whom they trusted led them in this direction. Many or most of the false prophets, however, know better and are intentionally manipulating uninformed folk because they, the false prophets, enjoy the power of moving the masses and/or the tremendous financial benefit that typically comes to those who use fear and pseudo-biblical “interpretation” consistently to scare people to death.

Pam Cummings gave me a wonderful sign several months ago, and it’s now affixed to my office door. Instead of a sign that says, “Pastor’s Study,” there is Pam’s sign that reads, “Non-Judgment Day is Coming.”

Eschatology, possible damnation, and potential consignment to hell all go hand in hand, and as long as there has been a doctrine of hell, which isn’t very long historically speaking, there have been those, clergy and laypeople alike, who just love it. For these lovers of the idea of hell, thinking about one person at a time getting dropkicked into a fiery hell for eternity, time without end, is somewhat exciting and entertaining, but the image of innumerable souls sent en masse to hell on Judgement Day makes these people utterly ecstatic. That is unspeakably sad. But here’s the bottom line: if there’s no hell, there’s no Judgment Day.

Several weeks back, when these Judgement Day billboards started showing up all over the place, a writer from the Community Newspapers, Antonio Prado, called me and several clergypersons all around town, folks all over the theological spectrum, to get a read on what the religious community was thinking about this ultra-specific end of time prediction. As you can surmise, the views of Wilmington’s ministers were all over the place. After a thirty minute telephone interview, I got two sentences of my beautifully conceived and stated theological perspectives reported in Tony’s final product. Tony has reported on several Silverside projects through the years; he’s a good guy. I harbor no ill will that he only used two of my sentences! For whatever reason, he focused on my statement that every prediction of the end of time throughout history has been wrong. That, in a sense for me, is all that needs to be said about all of this; however, I have a seminary degree or two, and I can’t keep myself from saying more!

Harold Camping who made this prediction, his second try--the first being September 1994, is radio talk show host on the west coast. Mr. Camping is an 89 year old civil engineer turned radio broadcaster who is the current president of Family Radio. He has no formal theological training, which may not mean a lot as it’s possible to do a great deal of theological and biblical self-education because of the availability of vast collections of materials. (Don’t spread that around because seminary enrollments are finally starting to increase again after some years of rather heavy decline.)

Mr. Camping is an entirely sane and sincere person as far as I know. He is a biblical literalist, and he made his predictions, both of them, based on dates and numbers given in both Hebrew and Christian scripture regarding how many generations there were between this person and that one and, naturally, taking all biblical materials to be entirely accurate historically and intended as literal, even the numbers the writer of the book of Revelation tells his hearers are SYMBOLS. Symbols by their very nature can convey profound truths, but are not to be taken literally.

Mr. Camping has every right to interpret scripture as he sees fit, and he has every right to exercise his freedom of speech. I also have every right to take issue with him, and, in case you’ve missed my subtlety, I do.

What is really interesting in the matter of interpretation is that in order to have made his prediction, he has to have taken something attributed to Jesus as non-literal while I take that part of what has been attributed to Jesus literally. What a heck of a flip flop! I’m not absolutely certain of this, but I think that in order to retain membership in the biblical literalists’ club, a member has to interpret everything, every single thing, in Hebrew and Christian scripture literally. I don’t know why someone didn’t pass along this rule to Mr. Camping.

I don’t want to give him a hard time; I’m sure he must be feeling kind of embarrassed and miserable today, and at 89 how many more shots does he have at predicting Judgement Day? In any case, this is the vitally important verse in question. As I said, these are words attributed to Jesus, and the writer of Matthew’s Gospel reports them in this way: “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (Matt 24:36 NRSV).

It’s sort of a strange verse anyway. I mean, Jesus is still living when he presumably speaks these words. He hasn’t yet died and left this realm of living. Logic, I think, tells us that someone has to leave before she or he can return or reappear, and the ever popular question also arises here: if Jesus were talking about himself as the one who’d return or reappear, why didn’t he simply use the first person singular pronoun, “I”? That’s for another discussion, but for our purposes today, let’s say the traditionalists are correct in their view that Jesus was doing the speaking here, that Jesus was referring to himself as the Son of Humanity who would return or reappear even though he hadn’t left, and that Jesus, though the very one who’d be returning or reappearing, had no idea when that would be.

For some real fun, one could bring up trinitarianism here. If Jesus and God are one and the same, then how could God know the time of Jesus’ return or reappearance, but Jesus, being God, not know? Again, that’s for another discussion.

More words attributed to Jesus in the same context:

...if anyone says to you, “Look! Here is the Messiah!” or “There he is!” —do not believe it. For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and produce great signs and omens, to lead astray, if possible, even the elect. Take note, I have told you beforehand. So, if they say to you, “Look! He is in the wilderness,” do not go out. If they say, “Look! He is in the inner rooms,” do not believe it (Matt 24:23-26 NRSV).

In fairness, we must acknowledge that Jesus himself and certainly the Apostle Paul believed in some dramatic ending to this chapter in human history. For Jesus, while no one may know the day or the hour except God, something highly unsettling is coming, and it can be compared to how shocking the tragic, massive flood was in the days of Noah. Only Noah and his family knew a killer flood was coming, but even they didn’t know when precisely. Other humans in that strongly pessimistic piece of mythology didn’t know a thing at all. They just started having a few days of rain the way we have lately, but the rain didn’t stop. It continued in intensity, and while Noah and clan were safely in the ark, the others had no where to go so they all drowned as an act of judgment from God on them for their disobedience. Jesus said that whenever the end comes and the time of judgment is ushered in, most if not all people will be just that unprepared and just that shocked, just that out of luck.

Very few people who are connected to or have ever been connected to the Jesus Movement are comfortable thinking, much less saying, that Jesus was wrong about anything; yet, being just as human as you or me, he did make a few errors in action and understanding. For example, early in his ministry, Jesus was pro-Israel to a fault; he thought Jews really were God’s favored people and that non-Jews were lesser humans than the Jews. That wasn’t true. Another example of something about which Jesus was wrong is this cataclysmic end of time thing; he anticipated it. Some would even say he openly predicted it, but it never came; and as an act of divine punishment on humanity it will never come.

II.

The oldest written materials we have in Christian scripture are from the pen of the Apostle Paul--well, more often from the pen of Paul’s secretary. He was visually handicapped and couldn’t see well enough to do more than sign his name to the occasional document written out by his secretary. Anyway, all of Paul’s letters were written and circulated before any of the Gospels were completed and circulated. Yes, the Gospels dealt with the life of Jesus, which had been concluded before Paul embraced the faith and began writing, but as finished literary documents they follow Paul’s writings.

So, in the oldest materials we have in Christian scripture, Paul’s correspondence to the Thessalonian Christians, what we now call 1 and 2 Thessalonians, we have a zealous, Christian Paul--formerly, zealous Jewish Saul--preaching that the world is going to end any second. Therefore, don’t bother with any of life’s typical responsibilities; there was no need to, because Jesus would return or reappear any second and bring the world as it had been known to a close.

By the time Paul finished all his letters and found himself awaiting death at the hands of Rome, the world had not come to an end. There had been no Judgment Day, no second coming or reappearing of Jesus on Earth. Paul’s later writings, then, change to reflect his realization that we can’t ignore life on Earth because its ending is coming some day, as he saw it. His later writings are filled with advice on how to cope with the day to day demands in this world as it is.

We have seen that both Jesus and Paul were wrong about Judgment Day and the end of time, and many devout and sincere spiritual descendants of theirs have found themselves in the same boat--most recently, Mr. Harold Camping. There’s no reason to pick on Mr. Camping, however, since he’s in the company of many like-minded end of time predictors.

The last big hoopla I remember about the immanent end of time was when the so called new millennium was about to dawn, as 1999 went bye bye, and Y2K was born. The world didn’t end though many were out on hillsides in preparation to be taken up into God’s realm leaving this old world behind. Didn’t happen, not in any of the time zones.

There were arguments, as I’m sure many of you know, about which time zone would be first to experience the new millennium when Jesus came back. Would it be in the first time zone where each new day begins on Planet Earth, or would it be when the clock stuck midnight right here in the eastern part of the United States? What was Jesus’ preference for the US east coast or anywhere in the US, for that matter, all about? Why not in London, where it could be tomorrow a few hours before it’s today here? It’s really silly argumentation, isn’t it?

During the First World War, in 1917, a publication titled the “Weekly Evangel,” boldly reported, “The war preliminary to Armageddon, it seems, has commenced.” The battle of Armageddon is taken by literalist readers of the book of Revelation to be the last war in human history, the war that ushers in the end of this world and with it Judgement Day.

Similarly, in 1919, a popular speaker on biblical prophesy by the name of S. D. Gordon, announced with absolute certainty that the end of the world would occur in his generation. In one address or article, he explained “...that the man [or woman] of average age now living, and all younger, barring the usual accidents of sickness and death, [will] witness the tremendous climax and transition.”

These erroneous predictions were clearly not exclusive to the early twentieth century. In 1970, half way through my high school years, Hal Lindsey, who wrote and talked end time stuff constantly, began to suggest that the rapture would take place in 1981, seven years before Israel’s fortieth birthday. Explaining why he’d say such a thing, Lindsey wrote in his big time best seller, The Late Great Planet Earth:

A generation in the Bible is something like forty years. If this is a correct deduction, then within forty years or so of 1948, all [biblical indicators of the coming of Judgment Day] could take place. Many scholars who have studied Bible prophecy all their lives believe that this is so….The most important sign in Matthew has to be the restoration of the Jews to the land in the rebirth of Israel. Even the figure of speech “fig tree” has been a historic symbol of national Israel. When the Jewish people, after nearly 2,000 years of exile, under relentless persecution, became a nation again on 14 May 1948 the “fig tree” put forth its first leaves. Jesus said that this would indicate that He was “at the door,” ready to return. Then He said, “Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.” What generation? Obviously, in context, the generation that would see the signs--chief among them the rebirth of Israel.

That preposterous reading of Matthew misses the blatant point Jesus was trying to make. He was telling the people who heard him in his time that THEIR generation wouldn’t pass away until the end of time had come. If that is what Jesus meant, then on that point he was mistaken.

There was no 1981 Hal-Lindsay-predicted end of time. Another book. 88 Reasons Why the Rapture will be in 1988. In this book, the author, Edger Whisenant, put his reputation as a prophecy specialist on the line. He wrote, “Only if the Bible is in error am I wrong, and I say unequivocally that there is no way Biblically that I can be wrong; and I say that to every preacher in town.” Well, by his own standard, the Bible was in error.

When I was in college, the most famous “scholar” of prophecy, I suppose, was the President of Dallas Theological Seminary. For some reason, our progressive Religion Department at Carson-Newman invited this scholar, Dr. John Walvoord, to speak to Religion majors and all other interested students and staff. I’m guessing that there were about 75 of us who wanted to hear what he had to say. The basis of his message, and he was sharing with us what he was sharing all around the country, was that in the last quarter of the twentieth century the world would end, and all who inhabited or ever had inhabited Planet Earth would face Judgment Day. He, from all indications, believed this right up until the twentieth century came to a close; then he had a disappointing two years in the new millennium before he died.

The late Jerry Falwell was preaching on his “Old Time Gospel Hour,” at the end of 1992 when he confessed, “I don’t believe there will be another millennium. I don’t believe there will be another century.” What he meant, of course, was that the end of time would come about before another hundred years passed.

One commentator on contemporary religious patterns said aloud what many of the end of time predictors don’t want to hear. As in all generations before us, so also in the twentieth century and what has transpired of the twenty-first century, there have been loads of failed predictions of Judgment Day. Loads!

Why, then, do they continue? Well, the same commentator, J. D. King, explained that.

Whenever predictions don't come true, many prophecy teachers just make readjustments to account for new historical developments. Ongoing catastrophes and civil unrest are “exploited” to distract from errors in calculations. Just as soon as one date goes by, then another becomes important.

I think he’s right on target, and, thus, new predictions of the end of time and Judgement Day will be forthcoming. Camping will be patted on the back and thanked for his efforts, and the next self-proclaimed and self-appointed prophets will correct his good faith estimate and come out with the corrected date, even though Jesus, now living in God’s realm, still has no idea of when it will be. Part of the reason for this, and I say it again, is that there will never be a God-ordained, cataclysmic end to this world accompanied by a Judgment Day on which every person who has ever lived on Planet Earth will have her or his eternal fate pronounced and sealed.

III.

Sadly for those who keep trying to find ways to use and make literal sense of a Bible containing many unhelpful parts, there is a body of biblical writing called "eschatology," the study of "last things. There are eschatological writings in both Hebrew and Christian scriptures. I daresay, and I do so with a heavy heart, that threats and resultant fears of eternal damnation have motivated more people to embrace the Christian religion than has the true core of the faith, which is the good news of God’s unconditional love for all people.

In the late 1990’s, the most prominent African American pentecostal preacher in the United States began having concerns that one of the key beliefs he’d been taught in his denomination and as a student at Oral Roberts University, a belief he had publicly pounded into the heads of his huge following, was, in a word, wrong. That doctrine was built on the belief that people who didn’t have the “correct” perspectives on God and Jesus would go to hell when they died and suffer eternal punishment there; they would be damned, in other words, and “they,” it turns out would be most of humanity. The Reverend Carlton Pearson who, then, was pastor of the Higher Dimensions Family Church of Tulsa (as in Oklahoma), was serving 5,000 congregants who loved him and supported his church financially to the tune of $50,000 per Sunday.

He may have first come out as an inclusionist in an interview with the Dallas Morning News in Y2K. He said to the reporter that he had to come clean, that he no longer believed in the “holiness or hell” creed. And great was his fall. The congregants who had adored him as long as he held them and their enemies over hell week by week turned on him. Fairly quickly, Pastor Pearson lost 90 per cent of his members, and I don’t have to tell you what happened to the offerings. Rich pastor/poor pastor. Someone should write a novel, or a biography!

Seeing clearly where things were going, Pearson would not stop preaching his gospel of inclusion, and to make certain everyone knew exactly where he stood, Pearson said that if the devil himself apologized to God for leading so many people astray, he would be admitted permanently into heaven. Mercy! Mercy! Can you see the faces of fundamentalists while the preacher preached that sermon? Michael Moore, where were you?!?

Carlton Pearson is on a bit of a rebound now, but he will likely never have what he had before; and we have to admire him for being willing to lose all to preach the truth, his truth. Said the good Reverend, “People don’t follow preachers as much as they follow popularity. I always knew that. And as soon as I quit preaching what was popular, the people were gone.”

My dear friends, judgment, damnation, and hell are more popular than divine love in Christianity at large. Here’s a quick trivia question for you: Who introduced Silverside Church to the Reverend Carlton Pearson? The shocking answer is, Dr. Steve Fifield.

I stopped believing in hell years ago, and when I finally dared to articulate my change of heart in a previous congregation, I got great congregational affirmation. The truth, though, about the service where I spoke my convictions about hell is that something went screwy with the public address system right at a critical moment, and when I said, “I no longer believe in hell,” because of the static the congregants thought I said, “I will no longer give you hell.” Many smiled and nodded their heads with approval. I was a little surprised, but very pleased. When the word of what I’d really said spread, I had many detractors, but my list of haters didn’t grow. I was reluctantly given the freedom to continue thinking and speaking my own theological thoughts, which--as I’m sure most of you know--is the only way I can work.

A little less than two months ago, the News Journal ran an Associated Press article about the Reverend Chad Holtz, pastor of a little rural Methodist congregation in North Carolina. I don’t know if the journalist who wrote the article, Tom Green, came up with the great title for it or if that was the creative work of someone at the News Journal. Anyway, it’s a great title for a very sad story: “Hell, no: Pastor ousted for rejecting eternal damnation.”

Let me read the opening sentences of the article to you, and you can then fill in all the gaps--quickly and easily:

When Chad Holtz lost his old belief in hell, he also lost his job. [He] wrote a note on his Facebook page supporting a new book by Rob Bell, a young evangelical pastor and critic of the traditional view of hell as a place of eternal torment for billions of damned souls.

You’d better take care with what you post on Facebook.

I have to tell you, until this week, I had no idea who Rob Bell is. Thanks to Roger Uhler and his ministry of mailing articles of import to friends, I received a clipping from Roger’s and Mimzie’s April 25 edition of Time magazine. Lo and behold, it was about Rob Bell, the pastor who had written the book that influenced Chad Holtz. No doubt, Carlton Pearson laid the groundwork in some kind of way for Rob Bell’s change of heart on the same subject and empowered him, Rob Bell, to press the matter further, which he has done and is doing in his 7,000 member church and in his best selling book, Love Wins. It’s Bell’s own articulation of the same basic idea that cost Pearson 90 percent of his members--not to mention loads of disdain from the Evangelical Community at large.

What these ministers are embracing isn’t a new doctrine at all; it’s old name was “universalism.” Some years ago, both the Unitarians and the Universalists, then separate religious groups, melded and became the religious movement we know today as UU, Unitarian Universalists. What the doctrine of universalism means is that there is no hell for anyone to go to. It means that a loving God could neither conceive of relentless, unending punishment for any human nor oversee it. Universalism or universal salvation means that everyone makes it to God’s realm after life in this realm ends--regardless of what they did or didn’t do, regardless of what they believe or don’t believe or never knew to believe.

The embracing of inclusion, universalism, whatever you want to call it is by far and away the most significant and hopeful sign not only that the Christian religion may live and not die, but also the characteristic that would make Christianity worth hanging onto and being a part of. Many people in the Silverside tradition have believed these or similar ideas for years and years and years, but we don’t make as much of an impact when we say what Rob Bell says because too many people have already written us off as liberals. That’s what they would expect us and “our kind” to embrace. The only thing we can say for ourselves is that we held onto inclusion when almost no one else affirmed it; in ways, ours has been a lonely road.

When preachers who have been preaching hell with fervor and delight suddenly stop and stand before their congregations with an honest confession to offer, they get a hearing, even from those who may despise what they hear their pastor saying. “I have preached judgment and hell with clarity and conviction, and I have been wrong. There is no hell, for a God of unconditional love could not, cannot conceive of it or tolerate it, and as long as I have the breath to keep on preaching I will use all of my preaching energy to rebuke the message I myself have made pivotal. I recant. There is no hell in the next realm, only the fullness of divine love.” That takes guts, but it’s going to give Christianity new life. Rob Bell said, in the article Roger shared with me titled “Is Hell Dead?”, “I have long wondered if there is a massive shift coming in what it means to be a Christian. Something new is in the air.”

Amen.

A Green Faith

I.

“The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof; the world and they that dwell therein.” These words open Psalm 24, and, as one of the psalms, we know that these words would have been sung and/or read in worship--certainly at Solomon’s great Temple in Jerusalem and maybe at other gatherings where people came together to praise God as their faith presuppositions would have motivated them to do.

As is often the case, however, we need to check up on translations and see which words were available to the translators in bringing specific words into English. We also have to see if the word chosen speaks with clarity and precision to a contemporary society in which the verse is used for inspiration and/or instruction. The internet makes these tasks possible for non-seminarians and for those who haven’t studied the original language in which a verse or passage was passed down to us.

“The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof,” or we could say “...and all that fills it”; “...the world and they who dwell therein.” Undoubtedly, we read that excerpt and hear it as if written by people and for people in our time; this is certainly not the case. The original Hebrews who heard this read and sung in worship were not planetary people in their understanding of the world. They knew little or nothing about the possibility of other planets. When we hear the word “earth,” except for a few instances where we might dress up the word “dirt” by trading it out with “earth,” we think Planet Earth. The ancient Hebrews didn’t hear that at all, and as far as we know had no real notion of what a planet is so let’s change the word “earth” in this verse to “land.” Keep in mind that the land was all gathered into one place according to their worldview and was an island, held up by columns that went down into the watery abyss under the land, the island-earth, to hold the land in place.

The land is the Lord’s and all that fills the land, the world and all who dwell therein. We have exactly the same challenge with the word “world.” We might think of the word, “world,” cosmically; the ancient Hebrews certainly did not. “World” in this stirring verse means “the inhabited land” or, perhaps, “the inhabitable land.”

The role of those who inhabit the land is not detailed here; that is not the subject of this verse. Here one of the several psalmists is making a faith affirmation about what she or he believes makes God praiseworthy. The land is the ground on which we walk; it belongs to the God who created it as does everything that fills the land. Similarly, the inhabitable land and all the inhabitants themselves belong also to God.

In order to make the Hebrew scriptures readable by those who long ago read Greek instead of Hebrew, and this was many years before Paul was busy trying to evangelize the Greek world--in fact, more than a hundred years before Jesus was born, the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek. That famous and important translation of the Hebrew Bible came to be called “the Septuagint.” In the Septuagint, the word chosen to translate what the Hebrews called “land” is ge, ground. It’s the Greek word from which the first part of our English word “geology” derived. Ge plus logos referred to the study of the ground and eventually much more than the ground alone. What the Hebrews had called “inhabitable land,” the Greeks chose for the Septuagint a word best translated as “economy,” meaning order, but obviously not economy in the sense of money, salaries, investments, and financial wellbeing or lack of same. If you read far enough down in the list of definitions for the word “economy” in your dictionary, you will eventually come to one like this as an option for defining the word: “the arrangement or mode of operation of something.” Thus, “The ground is the Lord’s and all that fills it, the divine economy or order and all who inhabit God’s order.”

One scholar says that modern science, knowing what it knows today about our planet, the planetary system, and the cosmos could legitimately look back and contemporize for today’s readers the word the Greeks translated as “economy” (oikoumene) as “biosphere.” In this scientific era, God’s order, where living entities live, is a or the biosphere.

It is our privilege and our responsibility to care for the biosphere and all who dwell therein on behalf of God, the owner--if you will. We are temporary tenants, and our responsibility is to pass along to those who take up our jobs after us a world that is at least as good as we found it and hopefully better. Having stated that, I will say out loud what many of you are thinking, “It’s been a long, long time since one generation of humans passed on to the next generation a healthier world than the one they inhabited.” This is to say, we in the human family have typically passed on to our descendants a biosphere whose health is significantly more compromised than it was when it fell to us to serve as its caretakers. Not good. Not sensible. Not forward thinking. Not logical. Not caring.

Words from the prophet Isaiah:

The earth dries up and withers, the world languished and withers, the exalted of the earth languish. The earth lies under its inhabitants; for they have transgressed the laws, violated the statutes, and broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore a curse consumes the earth; its people must bear their guilt.

And similar words from the prophet Ezekiel:

As for you, my flock... Is it not enough for you to feed on good pasture? Must you also trample the rest of your pasture with your feet? Is it not enough for you to drink clear water? Must you also muddy the rest with your feet?

Very powerful, very penetrating questions put in the mouth of God Godself by the prophet. A paraphrase, mine: “As for you, my twenty-first century flock, ‘Is it not enough for you to have the most and the finest food available to any group of people yet to have lived in the divinely created biosphere? Must you have so little regard for those who will be left to provide food for themselves after you that you rob good and healthy food and provisions for food from them by trashing what has been so good to you? Is it not enough for you to drink pure water if you’re careful enough to find it? Must you leave no unpolluted water for those who will come after you?’” It’s astounding that these questions were first asked thousands of years ago, and we’re just about to make what they anticipated as responses reality by answering yes to all the earth-abuse questions asked so long ago.

All the way back in 1923, Havelock Ellis wrote a book titled The Dance of Life. What he wrote was prophetic in the same sense that biblical prophecy is prophetic; it’s a commonsense statement about what’s going to happen, usually something not good, if the people to whom the prophecy is directed refuse to change their ways. Havelock Ellis: “The sun, the moon and the stars would have disappeared long ago...had they happened to be within the reach of predatory human hands.” That was hardly high praise for beings created with the capacity to care for their environment. We have so much potential, we humans, and we have done such amazing things. Why is it that we keep ourselves in such a mess?

Gandhi who understood humanity extraordinarily well said, “There is a sufficiency in the world for humanity’s need but not for humanity’s greed.” Ouch!

It’s nice to remind ourselves from time to time that not all of our entertainers have the mentality of Charlie Sheen, and if Charlie’s behavior is related to a disease or disorder, I apologetically withdraw my barb. I am sick of hearing about Charlie, however. Some of our entertainers, and I really have no idea what the percentage is, make tremendously positive contributions to our nation and our world. They use their celebrity to better life for people in need and an environment in need. Robert Redford is one of those good guys. This is what he said about our environmental crisis, and I think it’s profoundly insightful: “I think the environment should be put in the category of our national security. Defense of our resources is just as important as defense abroad. Otherwise what is there to defend?”

Here’s a poem worth knowing and memorizing. The poet is Alan Eddison:

Modern technology
Owes ecology
An apology.

II.

Two and a half months ago, the City of Brotherly Love, good ole Philly, was named by Forbes as the most toxic city in the United States. Lovely huh? Here’s a quote from Rhonda Abrams writing for “USA Today”:

Philadelphia, a U.S. capital during the Revolutionary War, is often known as the City of Brotherly Love. Yet it gets another, much less flattering moniker in a new scorecard of U.S. cities -- the “capital of toxicity.”

The Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington metro area, which includes parts of four states (Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland) ranks No. 1 on Forbes’ 2011 Most Toxic Cities list. The reason? It has more than 50 Superfund sites, which are unused areas containing hazardous wastes.

The second most toxic US city is Bakersfield, California. Third, Fresno, California. Fourth, New York, New York. Fifth, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Sixth, Los Angeles, California. Seventh, Houston, Texas. Eighth, St. Louis, Missouri. Ninth, Salt Lake City, Utah. Tenth, Riverside-San Bernardino, California.

I’m pretty sure George Carlin never expected to be quoted in an abundance of sermons, but this is Silverside Church! The poetic George Carlin:

Oh Beautiful for smoggy skies, insecticided grain,
For strip-mined mountain's majesty above the asphalt plain.
America, America, man sheds his waste on thee,
And hides the pines with billboard signs, from sea to oily sea.

I’m sure you want to know who’s at the other end of the spectrum, who’s getting this environmentalism thing correct. The LEAST toxic city in the United States is McAllen, Texas. I have no idea where that is. Maybe most people don’t know where it is, which would be why it’s so clean. The upstairs part of my house is the cleanest part of the house because my dogs and I don’t go up there. When we find out where it is, McAllen, Texas, I mean, I think we should give serious consideration to establishing a satellite Silverside out there, Silverside II. The pastor, that would be me, would spend a month here and a month there. There would be so many advantages. Just think! During the months I’d be gone, you could sing only those hymns you love to sing. Actually, that would be the only advantage. So few advantages to having me elsewhere; not even worth thinking about. Forget I mentioned it. So, to quell your curiosity, I looked up McAllen, Texas. It’s right at the southern tip of Texas in the Rio Grande Valley.

The second least toxic US city is Little Rock, Arkansas. Third, Raleigh, North Carolina. Fourth, Orlando, Florida. Fifth, Las Vegas, Nevada. (There are several different kinds of toxicity!) Sixth, Nashville, Tennessee. (I can’t believe it! Three hours from my home town!) Seventh, get this: Scranton, Pennsylvania. Eighth, Bradenton, Florida. Ninth, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. (You go, Oral Roberts!) Tenth, Wichita, Kansas.

Let’s put this in a world context. Here are the top ten eco friendly cities in the world, but this time we’re going to count backward from 10 to 1. By the way, slightly different scorecards and a separate panel of evaluators determined the list of the world’s most eco friendly cities so none of the US cities on the “good” list I’ve just read appear on the list I’m about to present to you.

The tenth most eco friendly city in the world is Sydney, Australia. Ninth, Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador. Eighth, San Francisco, California. Seventh, London, England. Sixth, Copenhagen, Denmark. Fifth, Vancouver, Canada. Fourth, Malmoe, Sweden. Third, Curitiba, Brazil. Second, Portland, Oregon. First, the most eco friendly city in the world: Reykjavik, Iceland.

Thankfully, this is not hand-wringing Sunday. Next Sunday is hand-wringing Sunday, just in case the predictors of Judgement Day were a day late with their projections. Just kidding, of course. What I want to say, seriously, is that there are many steps we can take to heal our damaged and much abused habitat. Greenworld.com insists that the most important step we can take is to fight global warming, and the very best way to do that is create tree plantations wherever we can. The dramatic reduction of forest space is one factor that has allowed the greenhouse effect to have such a negative impact on our dear Mother Earth.

In order to do something constructive about the increasing average temperature on Planet Earth, creating tree plantations takes the lead in combating the multiple problems of global warming for several reasons. One is that trees reduce the levels of carbon dioxide in our living space. Forests play a vital role in regulating water supplies; they help prevent water shortages during draught times, and they help control damages caused by floods. Trees help prevent soil erosion. Within a plantation of healthy growing trees, other plant life as well as animal life can flourish to the advantage of the environment.

Obviously, ditching our dependency on oil can help to revitalize the health of our environment in a big way--and as a side benefit, oh, get rid of one of the primary causes of war that few people in power will admit to. People don’t have to acknowledge a fact to make it true, though. It’s true.

Recycling is essential. We have to reuse everything we possibly can, and we should make our preferences known by how we spend our money. Don’t buy products that are sold in eco-damaging wrapping materials. David Wann wrote: “The packaging for a microwavable dinner is programmed for a shelf life of maybe six months, a cook time of two minutes and a landfill dead-time of centuries.”

Humorist and satirist, the late Art Buchwald, wasn’t trying to be funny at all when he wrote:

And Man created the plastic bag and the tin and aluminum can and the cellophane wrapper and the paper plate, and this was good because Man could then take his automobile and buy all his food in one place, and He could save that which was good to eat in the refrigerator and throw away that which had no further use. And soon the earth was covered with plastic bags and aluminum cans and paper plates and disposable bottles and there was nowhere to sit down or walk, and Man shook his head and cried: “Look at this Godawful mess.”

The Greenhouse Crisis Foundation in DC began publishing a list of 101 ways to heal the environment back in 1989. You can look up the whole list if you wish, but I’ll tick off the top 20 suggestions:

Number one. Become an active, permanent part of Silverside Church. Oops. Wrong list, but still a GREAT idea.

1. Insulate your home.

2. Buy energy-efficient appliances.

3. Caulk and weatherstrip doors and windows.

4. Install storm windows.

5. Close off unused areas in your home from heat and air conditioning.

6. Wear warm clothing and turn down winter heat.

7. Switch to low-wattage or fluorescent light bulbs.

8. Turn off all lights that don't need to be on.

9. Use cold water instead of hot whenever possible.

10. Opt for small-oven or stovetop cooking when preparing small meals.

11. Run dishwashers only when full.

12. Set refrigerators to 38°F, freezers to 5°F, no colder.

13. Run clothes washers full, but don't overload them.

14. Use moderate amounts of biodegradable detergent.

15. Air-dry your laundry when possible.

16. Clean the lint screen in clothes dryers.

17. Instead of ironing, hang clothes in the bathroom while showering.

18. Take quick showers instead of baths.

19. Install water-efficient showerheads and sink-faucet aerators.

20. Install an air-assisted or composting toilet.

The Health and Environment Alliance headquartered in Brussels has released this statement: “From asthma and allergies, diabetes and reproductive problems to cancer and obesity, environmental degradation plays a role.” Shocking! In an interview with “The Ecologist,” Genon Jenson, the executive director of the Health and Environment Alliance, said:

I think we would move a lot more quickly and do a lot more on environmental problems if we engaged citizens and the health community on the health side of the issues. That is why I set up the Health and Environment Alliance. It’s not about saving the planet. It’s a question of saving our health. I think the planet will continue to exist, the real question is what kind of quality of life humans will have.

Since money talks, let’s look at the financial benefits of a healthier environment. Ms. Jenson again:

If we commit to a 30 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from the current 20 per cent, we can save almost 60 per cent more in healthcare in the EU. That, in a way, speaks very loudly to those involved in climate change--not only environmentalists, but also to the climate negotiators who need to detail how much it will cost to commit to emissions reductions. We are saying it will cost much less, because of the public health savings that the government--and the people--are going to reap.

Whatever would benefit the EU in this regard would benefit us too!

III.

From a Unitarian clergyperson by the name of the Reverend Fred Small:

Automobile fuel economy is an environmental issue. But when our dependence on cheap gasoline drives a tanker aground and the spreading slick deprives an Inuit family of seal meat, that's an issue of justice and compassion.

Recycling is an environmental issue. But when a Chicago woman who's never smoked cigarettes gets lung cancer from breathing fumes from an incinerator burning recyclable trash, that's an issue of justice and compassion.

Deforestation is an environmental issue. But when tree root systems no longer hold soil in place and a mud slide sweeps away a peasant village, that's an issue of justice and compassion.

Energy conservation is an environmental issue. But when our tax dollars subsidize prison construction instead of green job training that could keep at-risk teens out of prison, that's an issue of justice and compassion.

Climate change is an environmental issue. But when people on the island nation of Tuvalu must abandon their homeland before it's swallowed by the sea, that's an issue of justice and compassion.

As we awake to the dangers of global warming, we realize that our profligate use of fossil fuels offends our most fundamental religious precepts.

Every religious tradition teaches us to hold sacred the wonders of creation, yet wantonly we desecrate them.

Every religious tradition cautions us to temper our cravings for sensation and material things, yet we pursue them addictively, vainly hoping to fill our spiritual emptiness.

Every religious tradition forbids theft, yet global warming steals from our children and our children's children. Its victims are and will be disproportionately poor and of color—those least able to contend with or to flee the storms, droughts, famines, and rising sea levels to come.

People of faith take the long view. We know that a community survives and thrives not merely in space but also through time, extending backward through memory and tradition and forward through vision and legacy.

When I was a young preacher, I was intrigued (I guess that would be the best way to describe how I felt) with the man who called himself “the Chaplain of Bourbon Street,” the Reverend Bob Harrington. With that title, you might well expect that the guy was on the flamboyant side of things ministerial. At that point, I had absolutely no hint or desire ever to live in New Orleans--though I surely did love it once I got there!

During my years in New Orleans, Harrington had fallen into disfavor with a large number of people, including many of his former supporters, because he was traveling around having debates with the famous atheist, Madalyn Murray O'Hair. He, of course, was speaking for Christian believers and she for atheists. I don’t recall how the beans were spilled, but their debates were exposed as staged. It was all a sham, and both of them were making money from their fake debates. In reality, they’d become buddies. He lost his high public approval rating, and the debates were only parts of what was really going on. No one is perfect, except for several members and friends of Silverside Church of course, but “Brother Bob” was shown by the press to be doing everything he preached against. Many years later he got his life back on track and went back to his work in the French Quarter.

Before he fell from grace, as it were, I got to hear this famous preacher in person at the Knoxville Civic Auditorium. He had lots of jokes, mostly canned stuff, but funny enough if you’d never heard them. He asked the packed auditorium if anyone there had a red Bible; anyone who had one, he asked that the person hold it up for everyone to see. No one raised a Bible; nowadays, many folks get colored Bibles. Back in those days, they were rare. Anyway, he said, “No red Bibles here? Not a one of you have READ your Bible? Shame on you.” Ha. Ha. Ha.

Now, there is such a thing as a GREEN Bible. It isn’t all green in color, but it is made of environmentally friendly materials; some editors have gone through the whole Bible, and every passage that they regarded as related to environmentalism was printed in green ink. I bought one the second I heard about it, and I really enjoy it. Sad to say, many copies of the Bible printed since Gutenberg are neither earth nor animal friendly. Ironic huh? Why did it take so long for someone to notice and to care?

Solar energy is a wonderful thing, and I’m so proud of our church’s spiritual and financial investment in it. It seems like such a new thing, but the truth is it was around a long time being ignored. Going all the way back to 1980, Ralph Nader said, “The use of solar energy has not been opened up because the oil industry does not own the sun.”

This is how a fairly new translation of the Bible, the Common English Bible, renders the story of the creation of humanity in the first chapter of the book of Genesis. The second chapter of Genesis, as you may know, has a different order for the creation process, but our concern for today is with the teaching of chapter one--a very beautiful selection from Hebrew mythology. This is a record of God’s activity on the sixth day of creation:

God said, “Let the earth produce every kind of living thing: livestock, crawling things, and wildlife.” And that’s what happened. God made every kind of wildlife, every kind of livestock, and every kind of creature that crawls on the ground. God saw how good it was. Then God said, “Let us make humanity in our image to resemble us so that they may take charge of the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the livestock, all the earth, and all the crawling things on earth.” God created humanity in God’s own image, in the divine image God created them, male and female God created them. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and master it. Take charge of the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and everything crawling on the ground.” Then God said, “I now give to you all the plants on the earth that yield seeds and all the trees whose fruit produces its seeds within it. These will be your food. To all wildlife, to all the birds of the sky, and to everything crawling on the ground--to everything that breathes--I give all the green grasses for food.” And that’s what happened. God saw everything [divinely] made: it was supremely good.

Not only is there a wonderful equality between female and male the way Genesis 1 tells the story, but also there is a wonderful circle of life theme in the whole of creation. There is absolutely no way to read acceptability of environmental abuse into this vitally important passage from the Hebrew Bible. Marye Mannes, “The earth we abuse and the living things we kill will, in the end, take their revenge; for in exploiting their presence we are diminishing our future.”

God said, “Let us make humanity in our image to resemble us so that they may take charge of the fish and the birds, land animals, crawling things, and the earth itself.” Remember that “earth” in the Bible doesn’t refer to the planet, but to the land.

This business of “taking charge” of all living things and the land itself has nothing whatsoever to do with being the big bosses whom everything else exists to serve. “Taking charge” in this context would have a meaning similar to “taking charge” of caring for a child; there is no suggestion that if the child displeases you, you have the right to abuse her or him. Certainly, there is no suggestion that if the child fails to do what brings something selfishly good for you, you have the right to neglect the child. “Taking charge” is taking charge as in stepping up to the plate and exhibiting the care, protection, and growth needed by all parts of the created order including the earth, the land, itself.

Same thing with this imperative: “Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and master it.” “Mastering” the created order isn’t showing it who’s the boss; it’s mastering the skills needed to provide the nurture required so all parts of creation are sustained. They last, and they pass into the hands of caring future generations.

Amen.