Foundry UMC DC: Sunday Sermons
Religion & Spirituality:Christianity
Foundry UMC Earth Day 2021
The Reverend Jenny Phillips is Senior Technical Advisor for Environmental Sustainability at Global Ministries in Atlanta, GA. Her work integrates sustainability practices into every aspect of mission. She has a Master of Divinity from Union Theological Seminary in New York and is an ordained elder from the Pacific Northwest Conference of The United Methodist Church.
Sermon Text:
Matthew 25:14-30
Less than Zero
Please pray with me: Creator God, all of creation sings your praise. Open our hearts that we may hear your call to protect all that you have made. Amen.
I’m so very happy to be here with you today. As Ginger shared, I serve at Global Ministries, which is the worldwide mission and development agency of The United Methodist Church. Global Ministries supports more than 200 missionaries, and has personnel, projects and partners in 115 countries. As a part of Global Ministries, the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR), is the global humanitarian aid and development arm of The United Methodist Church.
Much of the work of contemporary mission focuses on addressing problems caused by the broken relationship between God, humans and the earth. We support sustainable agriculture in places that are food insecure and that have histories of conflict and oppression. We provide healthcare in places with deep infrastructure challenges. We provide services for people experiencing forced migration from their homelands. We respond to disaster and support recovery in places hardest hit by weather events exacerbated by climate change. We seek to alleviate suffering.
Our creation story says that human suffering is rooted in the distorted relationship between God, humans and the earth. In Genesis, God offers the first humans food from an abundant garden. God says they can have as much as they could possibly want to eat from the garden of Eden. But God also sets a boundary. God says to not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Well, you know what they do. They cross the boundary God sets--a boundary meant to limit their consumption of the earth’s resources. In doing so, they break our relationship with God. Now pay attention here. That first rupture in relationship, that SIN is not just any kind of sin. It is the sin of overconsumption. God tells them to eat their fill and they say great, thanks very much, and now I’ll have what’s over there. They take more than they need. They take more than God wanted them to have.
Then, even as they are cast out from the garden, their children learn that natural resources are a source of power among humans. They raise generations of humans obsessed with controlling food and land and lives, even as the earth cries out when their blood is spilled and their habitats are ransacked. The shards of colonialism and plunder and racism are embedded in the lattice of our spiritual DNA.
Those of us who are white come from people who have leaned way too hard into that aspect of our spiritual histories. We have built our communities and our wealth and even our churches on the backs of Black people, Indigenous people and People of Color. And we have built our communities and our wealth and our churches on the groaning lands and seas of ravaged ecosystems worldwide. Some of us here today benefit from the fruits of that exploitation. And now we are resistant to breaking the cycle, lest it cost us our places in the world as we know it.
But of course, the world as we know it is no Eden. Colonialism left generations of many humans and other creatures poorer, sicker, and weaker. Then exploitation of people and the earth went into hyperdrive with industrialization. And with industrialization came human-induced climate change.
Let me take a detour here to tell you how climate change works. When we look up at the sky, it appears to be a limitless expanse. But between us and outer space is a thin blanket of gasses surrounding the planet. This is called the atmosphere. One of the things that the atmosphere does is stabilize earth’s temperature.
The sun sends energy to the earth in the form of light.
The earth absorbs the energy, but some of that energy is radiated back in the form of heat.
Some of the heat escapes through the atmosphere, but some of it stays in.
As we add more gasses to the atmosphere--we call them greenhouse gasses, more heat gets trapped. The gasses thicken our atmospheric blanket. Just like when you put a thicker blanket on your bed, you get warmer, as we thicken the atmospheric blanket, global temperatures increase. And as temperatures increase, that destabilizes weather systems, leading to the changing weather patterns and extreme weather events we are experiencing more frequently today.
In the DC area, this means hotter summers. Scientists project the number of heat wave days in your area will increase from 10 per year to 60 per year by 2050. Heavy downpours will increase as well, leading to more inland flooding. And on the coast, we expect between 2 and six feet of sea level rise this century.
These changes are creating crises in low-income and high-income communities alike, but like with so many challenges, it is low-income communities and communities of color that suffer the most. This deepens the need for humanitarian intervention. We must ensure that our short-term interventions contribute to long-term environmental health. We have much to do when it comes to addressing the environmental impacts of ministry. We are only just beginning to understand the ways in which we have contributed to the suffering of future generations through practices like building structures without thought to energy efficiency, relying on diesel generators in places with limited energy access, and investing our assets in companies that contribute to the harm. The more we learn, the clearer it is that we must transform the ways we do ministry.
The Global Ministries Theology of Mission says that God’s mission begins with the act of creation and ends with the shared redemption of all creatures and all of creation. This means that Christian mission must begin and end with the mandate to ensure the flourishing of all creation, including both human and nonhuman life. This is why we must address eco-recklessness in our ministries. Eco-recklessness functions in ways that resemble other systems of oppression, maintaining a status quo that privileges certain types of power, behavior, and practices. It pits humans against creation, pretending as though one has no need of the other, or as though it were possible to meet the needs of one without ensuring the health of the other. It affirms the theologically distorted view that God gave humans limitless power to dominate over and consume the resources of the earth at any cost.
While examples of individual eco-heroism and creation-friendly initiatives abound, formal and informal structures of church institutions exhibit eco-recklessness at every level. Not just agencies, but all of us. We need to stop using environmental initiatives as one-off projects to celebrate on Earth Day and start recognizing them as life-saving strategies that are necessary to create a healthy, just world. Given the clear scientific consensus that human activity is the primary driver of climate change (NASA 2020b), it is reckless for churches to dump greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere through their ministries without regard for their impacts.
Now what would Jesus say about all of this? He doesn’t talk about climate change. But he does talk about resources. While Genesis contains the story of our broken relationship with creation, Jesus presents an alternate vision in an unexpected place--a story known to many as the Parable of the Talents. This story, like other parables, is an allegory--a story with a concealed meaning. Many people immediately assume that this parable should be interpreted as a teaching on how to manage financial resources. Indeed, the version of the text we heard from the Inclusive Bible today refers to not talents, but dollars. Others suggest that the talents symbolize our literal talents--in other words, our gifts and our skills that should be used to support God’s realm.
But what if we considered a third possibility: that the talents represent not economic resources, but rather ecological resources that God has placed in our care. Perhaps in this story, the wealthy landowner is God, the owner of all of creation, leaving us each with access to varying levels of resources. God gives us these resources to manage for a while. And if we fail to ensure that they flourish under our care, there will be a lot of suffering.
This perspective is consistent with the passage that follows, the one in which Jesus says that those who feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked and care for the sick are the ones who will inherit God’s kingdom. We can only help the most vulnerable among us flourish when all of creation flourishes. We can’t feed the hungry without affordable food. We can’t give drink to the thirsty without clean water. We aren’t going to welcome the stranger if we feel like we have to compete with her over scarce resources. And by the way, Jesus ends that passage with another promise of suffering for those who do not heed. I think that means he’s serious.
Well, I have some good news. Many of us who manage resources on behalf of the United Methodist Church have decided to get serious too. 11 United Methodist agencies, including Global Ministries, announced on Earth Day that we have committed to work together to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to support a just and equitable transition to renewable energy that builds resilient and flourishing communities. The heart of the commitment is this: We pledge to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 across ministries, facilities, operations and investments and to leverage the gifts of our connection putting equity and justice at the center as we build a net-zero emission economy by 2050.
I really want you to hear this. We’re going to eliminate emissions across ministries, facilities, operations, and investments. And we’re going to do it in a way that ensures equity and justice.
This is a serious commitment to systemic change. The agencies that are making this commitment are involved with stewarding the global physical, financial, social educational, historical and political infrastructure of the UMC. We are making plans to radically transform our stewardship to ensure that we aren’t contributing to suffering around the world in our efforts to alleviate it. We believe the changes we make in the next 10, 20 and 30 years will reverberate throughout the denomination and will impact people and ecosystems globally.
To be clear, we have made this commitment not because we know how to do it, but because we know who we are called to be.
There is no map for this journey. So we’re starting with questions. Some of the questions we’re asking at Global Ministries include: What does this commitment mean all that travel we do when we’re engaged in work around the world? What does it mean for our disaster response work in places where power grids are destroyed and diesel generators are the norm? What does it mean for our health clinics in low-income places around the world that rely on kerosene lamps because they don’t have electricity? What tools, strategies and technologies do we need, and how will we pay for them?
These are questions that we are pretty uncomfortable asking because many of the answers necessarily require significant changes to how we do our work. What we’re saying with our commitment is that it’s time for our agency to face the uncomfortable truths that come with measuring our impact and tolerate the discomfort we feel over the next few decades as we figure out how to ensure our ministries contribute to the flourishing of people and creation in the present and in the future. We have quite a bit of hope this is possible, because we’re working with our partner agencies to leverage each other’s resources and wisdom to support one another. And we are already engaged in pilot projects to help us learn how to do this work better. We’re sending vaccine refrigerators powered by solar panels to health clinics in Liberia and solarizing a hospital in Congo. We’re doing energy studies on health clinics in West Africa. We’re looking at strategies for displacing diesel generators with renewable energy in many contexts where we work. We’re doing the work in our own office as well, with basics like making sure the thermostats are set at the most energy efficient levels possible. And we’re discerning how to measure our current emissions across ministries so we can evaluate our efforts to reduce them.
Scripture suggests that our consumption drives people out of the garden and away from God. Science confirms that it leads to wailing and gnashing of teeth. Ensures hardship through Heat. Drought. Fire. Floods. Super storms. Forced migration. For many vulnerable communities, life as they knew it is already over. If the way we respond to need undermines the flourishing of God’s creation, then we are simply contributing to the suffering we are trying to alleviate. We must do ministry in ways that ensure the impact of the short term good we are doing is actually greater than the footprint we leave behind.
I can’t help but read in the Parable of the Talents that even a commitment to net-zero emissions isn’t enough. It’s simply maintaining the status quo. Jesus would have us ensure that not only do we maintain the resources with which God has entrusted us, but also ensure that they flourish. Not simply stop harming God’s creation, but also start restoring it.
What would it look like for The United Methodist Church to be a leader in the restoration and flourishing of God’s creation? Perhaps our churches would look more like a new building that recently opened at the Georgia Institute of Technology. The Kendeda Building for Innovative and Sustainable Design at Georgia Tech was certified as a Living Building this week. This means that it is a regenerative building. With emissions that are less than zero. It doesn’t just harm the environment, it also contributes to its health. It generates excess energy and drinking water for use on other parts of the campus. It is at least 60% more energy efficient than comparable campus buildings. The project included habitat restoration. The property grows food and native plants and is home to honeybees. Friends, these are strategies we can incorporate into our buildings, our properties, our mission and ministries.
What creation most needs from Christians right now is for us to figure out how to tolerate the horrible discomfort that comes with recognizing our brokenness and the ways it has become institutionalized in systems that fail to account for the costs of waste and pollution and destruction. Because it’s only when we can tolerate looking directly at our hypocrisies and our failings that we can confess, repent and call for the collective social, economic and political change that the world needs in order to move toward sustainability.
The change must be systemic. While examples of individual eco-heroism and creation-friendly initiatives abound, formal and informal structures of the church--even the local church--exhibit eco-recklessness at every level. It is reckless for churches to dump greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere through their facilities and operations and ministries without taking action to sequester or offset those emissions because they exacerbate SO MUCH SUFFERING.
Look. I know we don’t mean to cause harm. And I know that acknowledging the harm is upsetting and overwhelming. But starting to tell the truth about it is actually kind of liberating. And when you start to look at strategies for making your operations and ministries efficient and regenerative, it’s pretty exciting.
The practices that lead to change are going to look different for everyone. You’ve got to look at the ways in which you’re investing your resources--your time, your energy, your money, your wisdom, your spirit--into helping the world flourish. And you’ve got to look at the ways in which your investments are causing grave harm to God’s creation and consider how new ways of doing ministry can contribute to justice for all God’s people and all of God’s creation.
This Earth Day Sunday, I ask you to pray for our agencies and support us as we begin this systemic change. And I ask that you begin to consider ways in which Foundry could do even more than you already do to express your commitment to justice, wholeness and flourishing for all God’s people AND all God’s creation. I’m excited for your kids Earth Day totes and I’m excited for your Going Green program. I also believe that you have it in you to do much more. I believe Foundry can be a church that ensures the flourishing of the resources with which it has been entrusted. Not just mitigating harm but cultivating life. That you can be a church to whom the Great Landowner says, Well Done! You are good and faithful workers! Come and share in my joy.
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