Working Together to Slow the Train

It is human nature to avoid facing challenging realities – especially when they ask something of us.  Our current normalized way of living our lives with respect to Creation presents us with a reality that none of us want to face.  The burning of fossil fuels to power our way of life is poisoning our air and killing people at a higher rate every year than COVID did at its height.  Our use of materials and treatment of the land is filling our earth and seas with trash, destroying habitats, and causing species to go extinct every 7 seconds.  Our burning of coal, oil, and natural gas is heating the planet, giving it an internal temperature increase, like a fever, that is causing all of its systems to go out of whack.  This fever is already causing massive disruption, damage, and refugee crises around the world and, unless reduced by 50% by 2030 and entirely by 2050, is threatening to plunge the global ecosystem – and with it human civilization – into catastrophe. 

Our way of life is like a train charging along a track towards a cliff.  There is still room to slow and stop the train, but the track is getting steadily steeper and steeper, making it harder and harder to do so.  We are in a time of profound global urgency with respect to the living system that gives us all life – and we all have a part to play, for good or ill.

So who is on this train?

            There are some people who have never looked out the windows of the train and remain focused on what’s inside the car – they’re just living their lives as they always have, totally unaware.  There are some who have dared to look out the windows, but when they see what’s happening, it’s too overwhelming and so they turn back around, pretend everything is fine, and continue to live as they’ve always lived.  There are some who look out the window and fall understandably into despair and inaction – there is diagnosable pandemic of “climate despair” today, particularly among the young.  Others are actually invested in the train and are (incomprehensibly) doing everything they can to keep others from looking out the windows.  “Everything’s totally fine,” they say, wanting to get every dollar out of the trip, and telling each other that they, at least, will be fine because they each have a golden parachute for when the train goes over the cliff.  All of these people, whether through action or inaction, are participating in the tragic trajectory of the train. 

However, there are others – and their numbers are growing every day – who are doing everything they can to stop the train.

            So who are you in this metaphor?  And who is God’s Church called to be?

            I invite you to join the growing number of people who are working together to slow humanity’s collective train and keep it from going over the cliff.  How can you get involved?  There are so many ways.  First, I would invite you to begin by looking out the window and facing the reality we are in.  Take personal responsibility to learn about the climate crisis, about how you can reduce your carbon footprint and live in better balance with God’s Creation, and about how you can join with others to become a part of the community that is working to slow the train, stop it, and ultimately change it into a different kind of train.

            See the resources below for ways that you can learn.  And I invite you to join the Philadelphia Christian Climate Fellowship, or PCCF.  We meet monthly and are working together to build engagement and energy around creation care within and through the Church.  We are doing a tree planting in a community garden on Sat, May 18 – you can register here: https://CreationCare.org/Gardening-Day     

RESOURCES:

Allen 3-part teaching series on climate action - bit.ly/biblicalclimateaction 

CWP resource on how to reduce your household carbon footprint: www.cwpeasternus.org/net-zero-household

CWP resource page: https://bit.ly/philly-creation-care-resources 

Join the Philadelphia Christian Climate Fellowship (PCCF) by emailing Allen Drew at AllenCWP12@gmail.com

Not Escape, but New Creation

When Jesus is asked how we should pray, the first line he offers is, “Our Father, who is in Heaven, hallowed be your name.  Your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.”  In this simple beginning to the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus sums up well the earth-focused trajectory of the Kingdom of God and of the Gospel itself.  God’s mission for the entirety of the Biblical story is to take a heaven and earth that have been unnaturally separated by our sin and bring them back together as a single, unified heaven and earth reality.  In the Biblical story, we witness the initial union of heaven and earth in Eden before the fall, where Adam and God walk together daily in the Garden.  Soon after in Genesis 3, however, we witness humanity’s failure and the separation that breaks into the world as Adam and Eve are cast out of the Garden.  Yet this is not the end of the story.  All the way at the other end of the Bible, in Revelation 21, we are given a vision of a future reunion of heaven and earth – a “new heavens” and “new earth” that have been made one right here on our planet, and in which God and human beings live together intimately and without separation.  How do we get from the Genesis 3 separation to the Revelation 21 reunion?  This is the story of the Bible – and of our life into the present time. 

After the Fall, God does not give up on his Creation, but begins a long and immensely patient healing work in our world.  He begins by painstakingly raising up a people to live among and work through – this is the people of Israel, and it is the human community through which he starts to rebuild connection between heaven and earth. Through them, He introduces his laws and values, speaks directly through his prophets, and speaks through all of them as a community into the broader world around them.  Ultimately, with Israel He sets the stage for his own entrance into our material existence. 

When God takes on flesh in the person of Jesus, he reconciles heaven and earth in his own body.  Jesus is fully God and fully human – and through his life and teaching, he becomes a living, breathing, place where heaven and earth exist as one reality.  However, despite the planting of this beautiful seed of reconciliation in our world, the sin of humanity still leads to his unjust crucifixion, and ultimately his death and burial.  The reconciliation of Heaven and Earth in the Person of the incarnated God is destroyed by our sin.  And yet, through what CS Lewis calls a “deeper magic,” Jesus overcomes death itself and three days later rises from the grave.  Jesus’ resurrection, which we celebrate every spring, confirms that God’s reconciling work has been successful – heaven and earth have in reality been brought together in the person of Jesus and planted in our present material world.  Furthermore, his resurrected body births a new reality into our present suffering world.  Jesus is the first fruit of what the Bible calls God’s “New Creation” – the reunited heaven and earth reality we see the culmination of in Revelation 21. 

In light of all of this, the role of the church is now to participate in bringing the future Revelation 21 reunion of Heaven and Earth found in the resurrected Jesus to bear in the present suffering world around us.  We do this by participating in the ongoing life and mission of Christ by faith and through the power of the Holy Spirit.  Our goal is, most emphatically, not to escape a material world destined for destruction to live an immaterial life in a place called heaven – this is an ancient Greek philosophical idea taught by Plato.  Rather, as Jesus has taught us to pray, we are to participate day by day in the breaking in of God’s New Creation – the bringing together of heaven and earth found in His risen Body and Revelation 21.  This restoration, working its way through our material world as yeast works through dough, is what we call the Kingdom of God.

And so – the Good News is that God has never given up on our world – he has bled for it, died for it, and become part of it at great cost to Himself.  And we, who are the reason for that separation and for all the suffering in our world, have now been invited through God’s immeasurable love for us to participate with Him in the healing and restoration of all things.  This means that restoring the suffering creation around us is not just a Genesis 1 and 2 foundational vocation – it is at the very heart of the calling of the church and the trajectory of the Kingdom of God.  We are called to participate, in every aspect of life there is, in the reconciling of Heaven and Earth as we walk together towards our Revelation 21 future.  This is an immensely hopeful – and earth-focused – calling that God has given us.  It is also the path of the cross – but that is another conversation …

RESOURCES FOR FURTHER STUDY:

“Surprised by Hope” by NT Wright - https://www.harpercollins.com/products/surprised-by-hope-n-t-wright?variant=32207610806306

3-part Biblical deep dive on the Christian calling to climate action – bit.ly/biblicalclimateaction

Our First Calling

Did you know that humanity’s very first calling was to care for creation?  In Genesis 1, we walk through the story of God’s creation of all of life, and again and again we hear Him call every aspect of it good.  In fact, God loves His creation so much that he introduces a final form of life – human beings – and gives them a very special role.  He sets them in place to be His “image” and to “rule over” the rest of creation on His behalf.  To be God’s image is to be an embodied expression of His Person in the world.  To “rule over it” on his behalf is to govern it with the justice and love that He exhibited in creating it in the first place.  As we move on to Genesis 2:15, there’s more – Scripture says that God sets humanity in the Garden of Eden to “work it” and “take care of it.”  These words are the Hebrew words avad and shamar, which actually mean “serve” and “watch over” or “protect.”  What all of this means is that God’s very first calling for humanity was for us to be loving and just caretakers who serve creation, protect it, and responsibly work to support the flourishing of all of life on earth for His sake.  This is one of the most fundamental aspects of what it means to be human.  How are we doing with this?  I invite you to prayerfully explore the role Biblical creation care plays in your heart, mind, and daily actions. 

RESOURCES FOR FURTHER STUDY:

“Surprised by Hope” by NT Wright - https://www.harpercollins.com/products/surprised-by-hope-n-t-wright?variant=32207610806306

3-part Biblical deep dive on the Christian calling to climate action – bit.ly/biblicalclimateaction