I figured I had been fired, though it was the sort of firing I didn’t particularly mind. The clock was ticking down to the global climate justice teach-in, and for the last two years, I have spent part of that day on a panel at Elmira College. Maybe they were looking for some fresh voices? That was certainly reasonable, and I’m a little busy these days.
Then, pretty last minute, I got an invitation to be a panelist. Turned out I was right. Professor Stoker had tried to populate the panel with new folx, including indigenous voices, and they had one by one canceled. So he turned to old reliable here, for I may be boring, but I am definitely reliable.
The professor was prepared to speak as well, only if needed, though that looked to be the case. I was there, what passed for Christian representation, and there was a swami from a local Hindu community that was going to connect spiritual vegetarianism with climate action, but the rabbi was late. Thankfully, he finally made it, flustered that he could not find bicycle racks to park his bike at an event on climate change. I thought to point out that there were snow squalls outside, but the man is Canadian after all.
The problem, the reason I had no FOMO (fear of missing out), is not that I have nothing to say about Climate Justice. I would not be this congregation’s pastor and teacher if I did not share your core commitments. The problem is that to get to the theological basis of our climate activism, you have to bulldoze your way past a whole lot of traditional Christian beliefs that we hold loosely if we hold them at all. The question for us is how must we live now, knowing what we know now, having experienced what we have experienced, in the face of holy mystery, and not how to live under ancient and pre-scientific paradigms.
Letting God be God, letting God be at the center of Creation rather than seeing ourselves at the center of Creation, is admittedly pretty radical. And those college kids in the audience, if they thought about Christianity at all, had either experienced it or perceived it in the traditional men-at-the-center blood-of-Jesus form, still dominant if in decline. At best, they might know of liberal do-gooder Christianity, without knowing the “why” behind it.
Why, for example, move beyond traditional Christian understandings of homo sapiens as having dominion over the earth and all of the life upon it, even beyond modern Christian understandings of homo sapiens having stewardship responsibility for the earth and all the life upon it, an improvement but still not all the way there, to the notion that homo sapiens as just one more evolved species and not the center of the known universe? And to do so on a one-time panel and deal with all of the existential angst when we start to ask difficult questions?
For example, I might have shared an anecdote from Barbara J. King’s “Evolving God: A Provocative View on the Origins of Religion.” A chimpanzee, Tina, has been killed by a leopard. Brutus, the group’s alpha male, guards the body for five hours. He only allows one other chimp to approach the corpse, Tina’s little brother. This moves beyond the already controversial notion that animal grieve. This looks a lot like empathy, looks like Brutus understands that Tina’s little brother had a unique relationship with her. Which makes you look at that bacon a little differently and start to wonder if the swami is right after all, and bring on the tofu!
And if that notion, that humans are the god-shaped reason for creation itself, is emptied, then what other theologies fall by the way side? And do the new theologies we construct have the power to give shape and comfort in the haphazard holiness and harm of existence in these finite bodies?
I did the best I could, in the time allotted, relying on the broad concept so key to our United Church of Christ faith, that we are always open to learning more about holy mystery, a notion based on “more light and truth to break forth from God’s Holy Word,” as spoken by Pastor John Robinson to the departing Pilgrims at Leiden, carried forward in the dry theological term “continuing testament,” and in the slogan “God is Still Speaking.”
De-centering humans, freeing God from one tribe, as we discussed last week, or even one species, as I am suggesting this week, is pretty abstract. So let’s get to something very concrete, the notion, so popular among evangelicals, that creation is flawed, and that it will be replaced in a dramatic apocalypse with a rightly ordered new creation, “Behold, I make all things new” as in the Revelation to John of Patmos.
You do not need to bother yourself with protecting a disposable planet.
Apocalyptic thinking in the biblical age arises as a response to crisis. We see it first around 150 years before Jesus, when Jerusalem and the region were under the control of the Seleucids, one branch of regional rulers that followed Alexander the Great.
It appears again around the time Jesus is born, under the rule of the Herod the Great. Herod and his people are converts to Judaism, but his behavior is more that of his Roman overlords. He initiates great building projects, and someone has to pay for them. The lifestyles of the powerful and priestly had always been an issue in the Israelite cultural and religious heritage, calling for a response from troublesome prophets, but Herod’s rule under the newly imperial Rome started a series of accelerating and intensifying crises.
We can debate whether or not the historic Jesus was actually apocalyptic in his orientation, or simply saw the re-ordering under God’s right rule as a possibility in this current creation. But there is little doubt Paul expected a divine reversal, and that became part of Christianity’s DNA.
Today, a significant number of Christians continue to believe that the world is too broken to be repaired, that evil was woven into the design by God in order to tempt and test. And a subset of these believe it is their job to help initiate the end times, which is crazy and dangerous in oh so many ways. If you think Palestine is burning now, wait until these wingnuts destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque so they can start construction of the Third Temple, a move they believe will trigger the conversion of the Jews to Christianity and Jesus floating down from the sky.
I hope Come-back Jesus at least pulls off the classic superhero landing, fist to the ground.
Let me be clear. Those who long for the apocalypse and are cocky enough to believe they are among the chosen do not buy electric vehicles. They don’t care about preserving the rain forest. And can I just throw in a little snarky “Who says theology doesn’t matter?” with a lift of one eyebrow?
The Bible is full of holy fiction, from the creation myth and the great flood to the story of Daniel and the Revelation to John of Patmos, this last meant to provide hope and comfort, not a blueprint. And honestly, Christian history is filled with people who questioned whether it belonged in the canon at all, including Martin Luther.
Apocalyptic scripture is fiction, work of holy hope and holy imagination in dire circumstances. But like race, Revelation is a dangerous fiction, one that may just wipe out life on this planet.
Maybe we go to heaven. Heck, maybe Tina the chimp is there too. Since none of us have proof either way, work with whatever gets you through the day.
But right here, right now, there is a little bit of heaven right here on earth. And it actually matters what other people believe, because it is the basis of their behavior, and more important, it is the basis of how they vote.
Choose to be clear. God did not create a broken world with broken humans at the top, and we need no Jesus-in-the-sky to set things right. Christ is already with us, God’s grace is sufficient, and we have already received all of the gifts we need to live in harmony as finite and fragile creatures on a mysterious and ever-changing journey through time and space. Amen.