WWW.JESUSRADICALS.COM - Vol 2. No. 2

Introduction

Wed, 04 Mar 2020 05:00:00 GMT

By: Morning Wilder

This issue of Rock! Paper! Scissors! is being released at the start of Lent, the annual Christian observance in which some people intend to abscond from eating animals or processed sugars; check e-mails only once a week and disavow Facebook; avoid shopping; or pencil in time for a personal practice that might hopefully be worthwhile.

These are, of course, acts generally meant to signify contrition, repentance, and denial of self in anticipation for Easter, the remembrance of when the body of the Word Made Flesh was slashed, punctured, and put on display for our errors.

I don't mean to be glib about the fasts or disciplines people choose to undertake; I think that even acknowledgment of this rite can help us remember our humanness, reset our objectives, and encounter personal growth. I do, however, want our interpretation of the word "observation" to deviate from its meaning of "a customary practice or procedure as for a particular occasion" to another of its meanings: "the habit of regarding attentively or perceiving."

This year for Lent I am abstaining from driving. This is not an exceptional challenge; in the past I have gone for years without a car, biking year-round in a large, cold city. Yet now I am in a considerably smaller, slightly warmer city and still sometimes drive. The only reason my vehicle fast seems a challenge at all is because my lifestyle now includes a motor vehicle, so excluding it feels like a deprivation. But the truth is that there are no great reasons for me to use a car. In fact, the inverse is true: there are great reasons for me to not use a car. One of these is that personal vehicles account for 17% of annual U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Another is that the planet's atmosphere has already been force-fed 416 parts per million of CO2. Another is that the demand for gasoline leads to wars, desecration of indigenous lands, and State violations of indigenous sovereignty. Another is that microplastics are endlessly released by car tires, devastating waterways and aquatic life.

This line of thinking likely holds true for most things people might be giving up this season. There are environmental shortcomings from eating animals, using the internet, drinking coffee, and buying food. Consider animal-eating: Raising livestock accounts for at least 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions. It is responsible for 80% of Amazonian deforestation (usually through total burning). It is also brutal and oppressive. Regarding the other habits mentioned above: Internet servers require massive amounts of land, conflict minerals, and energy. Coffee farms are yet another monocrop, displacing forested lands. Purchasing food ignores the fact that 1/3 of the world's food goes to waste, producing methane in landfills, and maintains the status quo of the food industry.

It is a shame that we might welcome this simple, peaceable season of introspection, take great care in our intentional practices during these six weeks, gain communal and personal benefit, understand the importance of our actions, yet at the conclusion of the season carelessly default back to our 'normal' habits.

We need to shift from observing "customary practices" to being attentive, perceptive people. Because of the plight of the natural world, this shift is needed now.

Project Drawdown, a collaborative climate change solutions initiative, compiled a list 80+ implementable solutions to mitigate climate damage, describing the effectiveness of each based on numerous factors. While many of these solutions are logistically impractical for us to do as individuals or small autonomous groups (e.g. creating geothermal energy plants) or aren't critical enough of global systems (e.g. implementing a 50% fuel reduction in the shipping industry), there are others listed which seem not only reasonable but also aligned with the values we hold in common.

While Jesus didn't explicitly talk about increasing mass transit or educating girls (two of the items on the list), he did communicate a "preferential option for the poor," as the church would say. "Truly I tell you," says Jesus, "whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me."

Some of "the least" of these currently live in the warm rising waters of Bangladesh and India, in the diminishing rainforests of the Amazon, in the melting Arctic. (As an aside, about twenty percent more humans are displaced because of intense weather events and land losses due to global warming (61%) than are being displaced from war and threats of violence (39%).) The actions we could be taking in support of human kin are also actions that support all of our kin, including non-human animals, plants, waters, air, ecosystems, climates. Some of these actions, outlined by Project Drawdown, include reducing food waste and diverting it to those who can eat it; giving people clean cookstoves; giving resources to women in small agriculture; supporting land management by indigenous peoples; increasing access to family planning; and insulating peoples' homes. These are deemed climate actions yet they are also corporal works of mercy.

Let me be clear: the actions God expects us to take in care of our brothers and sisters are the same actions that support all living beings and the entire biosphere.

"Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the [kindom] prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you replenished the soil, I was thirsty and you protected the water, I had asthma and you shut down refineries, I was a refugee and you celebrated my arrival, my lands were burned and desecrated and you resisted in solidarity."

Then the righteous will answer him, "Lord, when did we remediate your soil? When did we protect your water? When did we care for your asthma? When were you a refugee whose arrival we celebrated? When were your lands desecrated that we resisted with you?"

"Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me."

Someone read a verse from Hebrews to me recently, unaware of my writing of this article:

No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.

Six weeks of Lenten intention and action might seem manageable since their end, six weeks in the future, lies ahead. But since we'll already be six weeks deep into their "unpleasant and painful" portion, what if we considered making our adopted disciplines permanent? Can we broaden our religious observations by being attentive to the necessity and impact of our climate actions?

Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. … As it is written: "They have freely scattered their gifts to the poor; their righteousness endures forever."… This service that you perform is not only supplying the needs of the Lord's people but is also overflowing in many expressions of thanks to God.

Morning Wilder

Morning Wilder lives in the Midwest US. She is active in civic engagement, waste diversion, and ruffling feathers.

New Wine

Tue, 03 Mar 2020 05:00:00 GMT

By: Pablo González
A personal chronicle about the environmentalist mobilizations in Madrid around the COP25

In late October, protests in Chile led president Sebastián Piñera to renounce the hosting of the UN’s Conference of Parties to combat climate change (COP25), with Spain offering to take the responsibility. Piñera, however, was to keep the presidency of the event.

Regarding the COP25’s organization, the work of a whole year had to be carried out in a month.This was true not only for institutions, but for the so-called civil society, too. The latter was to put together the social summit, lasting from the 7th of December to the 13th. A meeting to get it started was set up.

As representation of a local environmentalist group, a friend and I headed down to Madrid for the first meeting to start work for the demonstration and social summit. We live forty kilometres away from the city, in the mountains of the Spanish capital city. Our group’s name is Sámara, which refers to samaras in English, a name for several types of winged fruits. We, like samaras, might be light and weak in appearance, but we’re strong since we carry the capacity to develop a whole tree. Our task is to grow, and, no matter what, we will.

Over two hundred people attended the meeting. A friend who lives in the nicknamed ‘Iberian Lapland’, the second least-densely populated region in Europe, asked how we had managed to make such a large meeting work. They can be disastrous, I said, if people don’t respect turns and speak when they have nothing to contribute. This is especially the case for white men who are taught to believe everything revolves around them: that they’re always right and everyone else should listen.

In places where people listen to (and not just hear) each other, the seeds of the samaras may germinate. The next weekend, my group organised a day-long event which included talks, debates, and dancing. The talks were no longer than twenty minutes to make them easy to retain. Our topics ranged from economics to climate refugees to health systems. Our aim was to hint to what we hoped would flourish in the debate: that the struggle to defend the environment is intersectional.

We started the debate by passing the microphone around so that everyone had a chance to speak about their current state of emotions: how we had been this past week and how we felt before and after the morning talks. A handful of people later came to us expressing gratitude for creating this safe space, even among complete strangers. “If it wasn’t for that gesture,” one said, “I wouldn’t have intervened in the debate later.” The climate crisis seems to be laying bare the Western, white, and patriarchal lack of care. We must care for oneselves, for others, and for all living beings! This message of care is at the core of Jesus’ teachings, as well as of many other religions and spiritualities.

That got me thinking that we sometimes forget to highlight Jesus’ human side. We remember his agony while praying in Gethsemane, fully aware of his imminent imprisonment, torture, and eventual execution. “Being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground” (Luke 22:44). Yet when the high priests, elders, and temple guards came to arrest him, he prevented his disciples from taking violent action.

The Gospels show how Jesus fulfilled his duties all throughout his life, but, most importantly, how he did so during the darkest hours. Inspired by him and facing the increasing pain, devastation, and chaos brought by the climate crisis, we must be more prepared than ever to act.

It makes me joyous to type that we’re not alone in this. I have you, we have our loved ones, and by extension we have the whole world (Matthew 5). It’s beyond doubt that Jesus’ teachings are communal; we ought to help each other. We know that the Kingdom belongs to the pure in heart, those hungry for righteousness, those persecuted because of righteousness. We, the salt of the earth, know that we are by God’s side. This should be enough to fuel our motivation to be in the activist struggle. The Sermon of the Mount concisely lays out our ethics so that we are clear about our self-discipline.

The weeks prior to the 6th of December demonstration and the social summit were, given the time crunch, chaotic perhaps, but they also revealed our will to keep the revolution ball rolling. I attended the only explicit religion-related event in the social summit: ‘We’re Amazon: inter-religious celebration for the Amazon’. This was a dynamic and engaging service developed by members from different religions, including different denominations within them. Despite a group of reduced size (around two dozen people) I was amazed at how diverse it was. The bilingual celebration underscored that, metaphorically speaking, we all speak one language though with different accents.

Regarding helping each other, I often think of the bodhisattva vow in Buddhism. Bodhisattvas are beings advanced enough to attain enlightenment (nirvana), but who promise to stay in this world, therefore accepting the suffering that comes with it. This is so they can much more directly help liberate all beings from pain. Only when everyone is enlightened, they vow, will they reach nirvana.
These past weeks, especially while browsing the social summit program, I have been realizing how significant the issue of ‘eco-anxiety’ is for many: an anxiety which plagues those who are environmentally-conscious and aware that failing to radically change course is causing impending doom. I truly believe that philosophical and religious-minded activists need to take a step forward and be permanently offering tools to dispel feelings of despair, isolation, and hopelessness.

The eco-anxiety epidemic reveals the elephant in the room: that the climate crisis is way deeper than what mainstream environmentalism claims it to be. ‘The Collapse Party’ we called Sámara’s event. The old system, based on violence, individualism, and carelessness, is collapsing. It’s trying to bring down everything with it: human and non-human animals, all living beings, and our sheer planet. The new system — and this can’t be stressed enough — must rise. For this to happen, new ways need to be generated, collectively, for Creation’s well-being — that is, we need new wine in new wineskins, not old ones, or else they’ll burst (Mark 2:22). This is the golden opportunity to realise justice, freedom, and equality: the Kingdom of God.

We have everything we need; we only need to do it. Does this not hold the purpose to serve as an anesthesia to eco-anxiety?

“We’re not afraid of ruins because we carry a new world in our hearts. And that world is growing at this minute,” said Buenaventura Durruti, a prominent Spanish anarchist, and his words may even be more relevant now than they were in his days. One of the last lines we collectively proclaimed in the inter-religious service was the following:

‘From today, we commit to be transformed. To acknowledge our place and purpose in life.’
So be it. Resist, spread, grow!

Pablo González

Pablo was born and raised in the mountains of Madrid. He has always been drawn to the struggles for justice, equality, and freedom, acknowledging from a young age that they are a collective effort in which no single truth exists. He enjoys Tolstoy, studied Religions in the UK, and has been living and working in Chinese Buddhist monasteries for the past three summers.

A Chapel for the Global Climate Strike

Mon, 02 Mar 2020 05:00:00 GMT

By: Benni and Rhianna Isaak-Krauss

Photo by Joann Boswell used with permission.

This liturgy was created for chapel at AMBS, inspired by the call for a Global Climate Strike. For more information about the climate strike see https://globalclimatestrike.net/

Throughout the chapel we use the biblical metaphor of hardened hearts to describe the condition of implicative denial. Implicative denial is when we acknowledge the science of climate change but continue to live our lives undisturbed by it, “as if nothing happened.” In the biblical story hardness of heart is one way to describe sin and a lack of understanding of God’s working in the world. The work of the Spirit is like water slowly softening our hearts and preparing the ground for transformation and radical action.

We were inspired in this by the work of Ched Myers and others who work on Watershed Discipleship, especially Ched’s essay: “Nature against Empire: Exodus Plagues, Climate Crisis and Hardheartedness.”

Before the service practice ‘Oh Healing River’ with the congregation.

Call to Worship:

Dearly beloved,
Thank you for coming. It has been a full week of working, studying, and wrestling with countless tensions.

Today, millions of people are responding to the call by young people to strike for the climate. From Australia to Africa, Asia to Europe, and throughout the Americas children and youth are leading a movement to draw attention to the abuse of our Earth and the groaning of creation.

As a community, we have not chosen to close down for the day. While some of us may join other actions today or in the future, our primary collective contribution to the climate strike is worship.

Worship is an act of protest against the reality of sin in our world and a declaration of God’s victory over the powers of sin and death. At the same time, Christian worship also allows us to tell the truth about ourselves and our own complicity in evil, while affirming God’s ongoing goodness. This is called confession. Only when we tell the truth can we mourn and, out of mourning, transform grief and anger into appropriate action. Confession is a necessary step to allow God to soften our hardened hearts. Though we also pray for creation in travail and hope for a creation restored, today we will make confessions.

Prayer:
Creating and Healing God,
You have promised you will reconcile all things to yourself.
Soften our hard hearts with your lifegiving water;
Teach us to listen;
Fill us with courage to confess the truth.

Scripture:
Listen to the reading from the prophet Isaiah, speaking to a hard-hearted people:

The earth mourns and dries up,
and the land wastes away and withers.
Even the greatest people on earth waste away.
The earth suffers for the sins of its people,
for they have twisted God’s instructions,
violated God’s laws,
and broken God’s everlasting covenant.
Therefore, a curse consumes the earth.
Its people must pay the price for their sin...

The earth has broken up.
It has utterly collapsed;
it is violently shaken.
—Isaiah 24: 4-6, 19

(silence—listen to the ambient sounds)

Introduction to the Ritual:
Like the Pharaoh of Exodus, we harden our hearts when faced with deep pain.
Despite the voices of prophets, we harden our hearts when repentance feels impossible.
When we feel overwhelmed by helplessness and hopelessness we harden our hearts to continue on.

Together we will seek God’s healing waters through confession.
Many of you have pieces of paper on your seats. Read it over silently to yourself now.
As we go around the circle, please come forward and confess--on behalf of yourself and on behalf of humanity.
We will join you with the words: LORD soften our hearts.
Then dip your hands in the living water and wet the hardened clay.
This ritual is an act of faith: that our hearts can soften and that the parched Earth can soften and heal as well.

Confession:
Ritual:
Step 1: Confess
Step 2: Congregation responds: Lord, soften our hearts.
Step 3: Reach into water, cupping your hands in the cool healing waters to pour over parched earth.

Leader: Jesus says: “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:32)
Trusting these words and knowing that we are beloved in God’s eyes, we can tell the truth about ourselves and the world we live in.

1: The truth is you have given us an amazing planet to be our home. You have woven an intricate web of life in which all relations are interdependent and a stable climate providing abundant food for all.
Lord, soften our hearts.

2: The truth is we are the ones who have broken this precious balance. We have taken more than we needed. We have abused the power with which you vested us. We have sought to remake the world in our image rather than seeking to conform to your image which you placed in us.
Lord, soften our hearts.

3: The truth is we have become addicted to fossil fuels and the pipe dream of endless growth. We want to go quickly and eat cheaply regardless of the human and ecological sacrifices. Like addicts, we choose denial. We lash out at those confronting us with the inconvenient truth.
Lord, soften our hearts.

4: The truth is fossil fuel extraction and consumption are the main drivers of climate change. Unless we rapidly begin recovery, our addiction to fossil fuels will kill us. It is already killing millions of people and a countless number of God’s other beloved creatures.
Lord, soften our hearts.

5: The truth is climate change is not some potential future threat. We are already realizing the effects of a one degree Celsius increase, leading to more extreme weather. Yet the hurricanes, floods, and droughts we are experiencing today are only the first fruits of the harvest of destruction that we are bringing upon ourselves.
Lord, soften our hearts.

6: The truth is the coral reefs and the majestic creatures of the sea are dying. They are overheating by rising temperatures, dissolving by increasing acidification, being strangled by plastic waste, and weakening by overfishing.
Lord, soften our hearts.

7: The truth is the Amazon forest is burning. Fires laid by cattle herders are displacing wildlife and indigenous peoples and destroying one of the world’s largest carbon sinks. The truth is our insatiable appetite for meat is driving this destruction.
Lord, soften our hearts.

8: The truth is climate change is already displacing millions of people. As islands are swallowed by the sea, and once-fertile lands experience drought after drought, millions more will lose their home. Unfortunately, many harden their hearts and refuse to let climate refugees take shelter.
Lord, soften our hearts.

9: The truth is we cannot put our trust in political leaders. Too often they are even more captive to the fossil-fueled delusion of endless growth and development. While a few politicians openly deny the reality of climate change, many more pay lip service to environmental protection while approving new fossil fuel infrastructure. We are in dire need of leaders who will listen to the people over the fossil fuel industry.
Lord, soften our hearts.

10: The truth is our destruction of habitat is driving animals into extinction at rates 1000 times faster than normal. Each day ten to twelve species go extinct. By 2050 half of all species may be gone. While we might not notice some of these animals, they form the basis of the food web and are precious and known in God’s eyes.
Lord, soften our hearts.

11: The truth is that while the rich countries of Europe and North America have contributed the most to climate change, the impacts are most severely felt in poor countries, especially in the tropics. We add insult to injury by blaming ecological problems on overpopulation in the Global South, while conveniently ignoring the obscene overconsumption of resources in Western countries, especially by the super-rich.
Lord, soften our hearts.

12: The truth is we have been warned. We have not heeded the countless warnings of indigenous peoples, scientists, and our own holy scriptures. We have been willfully ignorant of the consequences of our actions and have even justified ourselves by expecting you to whisk us away to a new place instead of renewing your creation here on Earth.
Lord, soften our hearts.

13: The truth is while we have gotten ourselves into this mess, we cannot get ourselves out of it. As we struggle with our personal addiction to fossil fuels and meat, we know that individual change will not save us. Only a great awakening, a global conversion of our economic system and spiritual state might give us a chance to stave off the worst catastrophes. Only the Guardian of Creation can protect us from the waters of chaos.
Lord, soften our hearts.

14: We confess that as we begin to face the daunting reality of climate collapse, we are tempted with despair. We are tempted to forget your acts of deliverance and deny your powerful saving grace. We may realize that in our comfortable lives we never really believed in you in the first place.
Lord, soften our hearts.

Assurance
Leader: These are bitter truths and hard to swallow. May we chew on them until they become sweet in our mouths and our hearts begin to soften.
Hear these words of assurance:

The truth is, “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it.” Psalm 24:1
Lord, soften our hearts.

The truth is, “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” Matthew 5:5
Lord, soften our hearts.

The truth is, “Christ is the firstborn of all creation … in him all things hold together.” Colossians 1:15
Lord, soften our hearts.

Sing Oh Healing River (Sing the first verse, or one time through, then process whilst singing).
Process outside singing Oh Healing River, in call and response form.

Benediction (from Revelation 22)
Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.

Benni and Rianna Isaak-Krauss

Benjamin and Rianna Isaak-Krauss believe that mourning is a crucial spiritual practice to persevere in the Anthropocene. They believe that Christian theological imagination and liturgical practices have a gift to make to the climate movement. After studying at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Elkhart, IN, they moved to Benni's native Germany and are hoping to connect with European climate justice and peace movements in the Rhine and Danube watersheds.

Inevitable Transition and Other Poems

Sun, 01 Mar 2020 05:00:00 GMT

By: Joann Renee Boswell

Inevitable Transition

entwined fates
no planet
           B
prepare, Pioneer,
eliminate unnecessary
twining polymers conjoined
(all hail convenience!
single-use glory!)
u n t a n g l e w e b
plastic proliferation
processed, refined
hatched petroleum
cheaper fiscally
consequences minuscule
viewed through spyglass
turn away, blind
long-term toll
a s t r o n o m i c a l
but, spoiled, only
understand tangible
bills, smooth
and dirty rubbing
our palms dry,
oil we produce
sucked up
into greenbacks,
so we must seek
alternative lubrication
natural depleted
devalued, deceased

reluctant know-it-all,
breathe deep, Visionary,
remember humility
humanity just one
part of sacred
Universe, indwelling
communion of ecology
nullify narcissistic
human-supremacy
Earth incarnation
deep divinity --
all have value.
prioritize sharing
minimize possession
downsize ego
l i s t e n
meaningful non-human
speech abounds
pay attention
when science shares --
scientists have souls,
a f t e r a l l.

inevitable transition
plastic-free society
ease gently, Desperado,
resolute empathy
convictions firm
infuse kindness
while enmeshing
customer service,
strangers, friends
colliding care with
c o m f o r t
nonjudgmental
       nuisance
potluck dishes
lugged, washed,
time consumed
researching soap,
consignment shop,
bike, skip, walk,
think ahead
pack utensils
minimize fingerprint,
glaring sore thumb
counter-culture loud
even in whispered,
       no straw please.

Extinction

like watching Notre-Dame burn
collective gasp escapes crowd --
perhaps we’d pay more attention,
if dogs puttered out
before the Spix’s Macaw --
spire collapse and puppies
cease breath.

but these changes are too slow --
we don’t drop everything and stare,
watching The Great Coral Reef dwindle.
we don’t stand in parking lots weeping
observing cart after cart of plastic
exiting the store, megascreen displaying
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch churning,
groaning with each sack, half-full
rolling along to conveniently
single-personed cars, live videos
from our hands to your feed,
worldwide appall, tears clearing soot,
snot as murky as the sea.

millions aren’t
gramming and tweeting
favorite memories,
selfies with Mother Earth
as She turns to cinder --
#rememberearth?

something so profoundly beautiful
destroyed, we toss water
wring out our souls
dripping emojis of despair
   that universal symbol
       that all-consuming hope
           that ancient inspiration

g   o   n   e   .

so loud and quick,
public display of affliction.
we all took ownership --
   we felt it, built it:
   fire of grace, Our Lady.

Nature took our spark,
permission to create flames --
steeples licked molten
surrounded by water, helpless
we fear our babies lives.

money pours in
billionaires eager to restore
this One True Beauty
flooded with rich empathy.

I sit silent
d   i   r   g   e
attend Earth’s slow demise
too steady subtle
for society’s grasp.

wind pulls ivy playful dance
whispers sun-bleached bricks
lush Spring flings life.
these grounds, sanctuary.

witness this beauty as history
my grandchildren will not believe.

Gaia

I am not positive
what woke me
fully

I’ve been napping a lot
ever since that asteroid
Chicxulub concussed me

maybe greedy carbon
dioxide crowding, choking

or pesticides and plastics
weeding over my tiny
inhabitants, little voices
absent in my white noise mix

perhaps drilling deep
boring my skull
seeking oily marrow
as if I was not providing
all you need generously

you call me Mother
but I am Womb
if you kill me
you will die

that is not a threat,
Beloved, it is plea--
pollute the placenta
and we won’t survive

I give life, oozing
petrichor through pores
abundance of sustenance
nutrients seeped into every fiber
of your soil, your air, your aura

I speed my benediction:
may the forest be with you
to nurture you with nature
sustain your human rights
to breathe free, live harmoniously
with all that I offer, all that I am

but you spray poison
on my offering before
you consume me

long after you have gone
my unburied corpse
mourned by stars
will continue in stellar procession
until alien explorers attempt
unearthing the mess you made
discover your mortal flaws
resuscitate me

Joann Renee Boswell

Joann Renee Boswell is a teacher, mother, photographer, and poet living in Camas, WA, with her spouse and three children. She previously taught and directed high school theatre. She loves rainy days filled with coffee, books, handholding, moody music, and sci-fi shows. She has been published in Untold Volumes, Voices of Eve, Western Friend and Mothers Always Write among others. Her first book of poetry is expected May 2020 through Fernwood Press.

Attend and Listen for the Time to Come

Sat, 29 Feb 2020 05:00:00 GMT

By: Janeen Bertsche Johnson

Thus says God, the Lord, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it,

who gives breath to the people upon it and spirit to those who walk in it:
I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness, I have taken you by the hand and kept you;
I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations, to open the eyes that are blind,
to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness.
I am the Lord; that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to idols.
See, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare; before they spring forth, I tell you of them.

The Lord was pleased, for the sake of his righteousness, to magnify his teaching and make it glorious.
But this is a people robbed and plundered; all of them are trapped in holes and hidden in prisons;
   they have become a prey with no one to rescue, a spoil with no one to say, ‘Restore!’
Who among you will give heed to this; who will attend and listen for the time to come?
     Isaiah 42:5-9, 21-23

The beginning of Isaiah 42 is one of the four “Servant Songs” of Isaiah, passages which are often used to describe the work of Jesus. Verses 21-23 near the end of the chapter describe the hopelessness of exile. What would it look like to read this text as it applies to our concerns about ecological issues such as climate change?

We are a people robbed of hope, trapped in the hole of insatiable consumerism. Our environment has been plundered by the reckless rape of the earth’s resources. We are a people hidden in prisons of apathy. We are the spoil of the forces of a dysfunctional culture and no one seems able to rescue us.

Yet in the midst of this bleak reality, the words of Isaiah pierce our hearts: “Who among you will give heed to this; who will attend and listen for the time to come?” There is hope here, an invitation to engage the pain of the world with the promise of God. This text urges that some of the most important works of Christian creation caretakers are to attend, to listen, and to imagine.

Attending and listening to the things happening in the world around us are harder than they sound. It is so easy, in our current context, to ignore the created order. Most people spend their waking hours inside a building or in an air-conditioned car that moves too fast to truly see what is around them. We are in a constant state of hurry, which does not lend itself to the act of attending.

In addition, many of us haven’t been trained to understand the natural world and the signals it gives. We may notice a few things but not know how to interpret them. I have heard people scoff, in the middle of a harsh winter, “How can people talk about global warming? This is the coldest winter we’ve ever had!” But an exceptionally cold winter in parts of North America does not mean that the polar ice caps and glaciers are safe! We have to learn what certain patterns mean within a bigger picture.

Another reason we struggle to attend and listen to the earth is because we are in denial and we’d rather continue that than face harsh realities. If we attend to creation and the signals it is giving we will become aware of widespread habitat loss, disappearing species, droughts, famines—in short, signs of environmental breakdown. These are sounds of distress from a world that is being scarred by human ruthlessness and carelessness. Romans 8:22 describes the whole creation groaning as if in labor pains, waiting for redemption. Many people don’t want to face that bad news, or the guilt they feel, or the awareness that their way of life needs to change. We may become so hopeless that we shut down rather than paying attention.

Isaiah 42:23 specifically cries out for someone to “listen for the time to come.” What does that mean? I believe it links back to verse 9, in which God declares, “See, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare; before they spring forth, I tell you of them.”

Our faith proclaims that God is always at work reconciling all things to God’s self—restoring creation as well as humanity. Throughout the scriptures, God asks God’s people to watch and listen for the signs of that work so that we can join in it and give testimony to others. Sometimes our work is to watch and listen for signs of restoration around us. At other times it is to listen to God’s promise, even before the restoration springs forth.

Attending to and listening for the time to come invite us to envision the future God intends, the reconciliation of all of creation, and our role in it. This is the work of imagining new possibilities and this provides the basis for experimentation and action.

Fifteen years ago, almost all of the Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary campus was a mowed lawn. Then some students asked if the seminary could leave some of its immense lawn un-mowed and plant wildflowers in those areas. There was hesitation at first, especially about what the neighbors would say. But eventually they decided to try leaving a small patch of land un-mowed, on the far side of some buildings, fairly hidden from sight. Later, another patch of wildflowers was added.

By the time AMBS built its LEED-certified library in 2007, there was no hesitation on campus about planting six acres of native prairie flowers and grasses in front of it. What started as the imagining of a few students led to a totally different campus habitat! The prairie grasses absorb much more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than lawn grass does and provide a habitat for a whole range of wildlife. Less mowing also requires less time and reduces the burning of fossil fuels.

Imagination has a critical role in confronting the challenges facing creation and in cultivating new solutions.
May we be people who attend to and listen for the time to come in the confidence that God can use our imagination and actions to help restore the earth.

Janeen Bertsche Johnson

Janeen Bertsche Johnson is an ordained pastor in Mennonite Church USA and has been campus pastor at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary (AMBS) in Elkhart, Indiana, since 1995. She also serves as alumni director, admissions associate, instructor, and creation care coordinator. Janeen coordinates the Rooted and Grounded Conferences on Land and Christian Discipleship at AMBS; the next one is scheduled for 8-10 October 2020.

Environmental Apocalypse

Fri, 28 Feb 2020 05:00:00 GMT

By: Theodore Kayser

The Guardian of London recently reported:

As tourists posed for selfies at St Mark’s Square on Wednesday evening, shop owners mopped the floors of their premises and cleared debris while assessing the cost of the damage caused by record high tides.

“An apocalypse happened,” said Antonella Rossi, who owns a handmade jewellery shop under the portico that surrounds the square.

Image by Sarah Fuller, used with permission.

An apocalypse indeed. Defined as “an event involving destruction or damage on an awesome or catastrophic scale” or “the complete final destruction of the world” this apocalypse could be understood as both. But it is the greek origins of this word to which we will turn. Apokalupsis: to reveal, literally to uncover or unveil.

St Mark’s Square was submerged by more than one metre of water on Wednesday and the adjacent St Mark’s Basilica flooded for the sixth time in 1,200 years – but the fourth in the last two decades.

The scene is bleak, family. As I write, California for weeks has been in the headlines for devastating fires. While the Maria Fire burns in California, Puerto Rico has yet to recover from Hurricane Maria. Ave Maria, pray for us now.

Environmental upheaval is more and more common. Hundred-year storms are happening every other year; three-hundred-year floods every decade.

We have built in the past century formerly unthinkable marvels. We can split atoms for electricity. There is no river which can’t be dammed (or damned). Americans have $3 strawberries in the middle of winter, travel to the other side of the planet in hours (nuclear armed stealth bombers included!), and have their own individual automobiles (or 2 or 3). It all seems quite miraculous if you think about it.

But what is the progress we have made? The Word of God might ask, “Upon what foundations have we built?” The answers: Fossil fuels and a willingness to exploit the earth without end as we have exploited (and continue to exploit) so many we should call our family.

Yes, this is an unveiling. It turns out this “cheap” power from fossil fuels will be our undoing! It gifts us with so many trinkets and conveniences, a seemingly endless supply. Like a people addicted, we say will quit them tomorrow.

Or better yet, we tell ourselves that we won’t ever have to quit; technology will find us a substitute! Solar panels, electric cars, recycling! (No need to think about those less convenient of the “3 R”s: reducing and reusing.) We’d never need to consider how the heavy metals from indigenous lands got to the batteries of our e-vehicles.

The plagues of John’s Apocalypse are not unlike our own environmental destruction: Heat and fires? Got it! Dried up rivers? Check out the Colorado. Poisoned water? Oh yeah — check out the place where the Mississippi enters the Gulf of Mexico. Death of every animal on land and in the sea? Well, we haven’t totally annihilated all life on earth yet though we have recently launched the start of the sixth mass extinction.

I wouldn’t suggest that John on Patmos was predicting our moment specifically but I would suggest that he knew that empires grow grandiose on the destruction of the environment and the exploitation of people. I would not suggest America is the Babylon of John’s Apocalypse but it is definitely a rendition of it.

John’s Babylon was the Roman empire which saw its own environmental catastrophe. The Roman empire deforested the Italian peninsula on a massive scale for fuel and extractive agriculture and because of war. It wasn’t the first or last empire to face a depleted ecosystem, though. Others would see their collapse for similar reasons, such as soil depletion or loss of fauna.

With fossil fuels, however, we can destroy the earth around us so much faster.

The Revelation of John is skeptical of the very things Americans declare as progress, primary of which is material abundance. It is our insatiable desire for an endless supply of cheap consumer products that has gotten us here.

Too many of us in the U.S.and the Global North live off of the exploitation of our neighbors around the corner and around the globe to great effect. This wealth comes at the cost of lives, the environment, and our own humanity. We must face the fact that to do nothing, to change nothing, is to continue on this path of environmental destruction. Things are so bad that even if we don’t make it worse we are already doomed.

Is catastrophic climate change divine punishment for our sins? I don’t know, though it is hard to deny that we have committed many sins and seem intent to continue to do so. I have never been much for God as ‘divine punisher’ but rather for God as liberator. I believe that the good news is that liberation is possible; we can turn away from our systems of oppression and our illusions of limitless consumption.

What we need is conversion. Conversion of our economies, our systems, and, for some of us, our very ways of life. We should not forget this conversion will require atonement. Those countries and people who have grown opulent on fossil fuels will have to remunerate those whose lands we have destroyed, whose wealth has been plundered, and whose cultures have been decimated. It is the only way we can hope to live in peace.

John’s revelation of the new Jerusalem suggests a city rewilded. Rivers flow down main street, trees abound. Those who were killed by the empire of profit are remembered and celebrated. We must count those who die from catastrophic climate events among the number of martyrs past and future. Let us not forget why they died.

The God who is Love implores us to tear down these systems of death, to leave not one stone upon another, assuring us that we will not have to do it alone.

The fall of Babylon is cause for celebration. In heaven its fall is met with cries of joy. Only those of us who unfairly and unequally benefit from its plunder, its resource extraction, its exploitative labor, and its other unjust systems will weep and mourn the passing of the current arrangement.

Theo Kayser

Born and raised in St. Louis, MO, Theo has been a Catholic Worker around the West Coast and Midwest for the past decade. He has regularly contributed to the Los Angeles CW's The Catholic Agitator as well as other Catholic Worker Publications. He prays daily for the strength to confront the powers and principalities; his aspiration is that his writing might shed some light on their nature.

A Practice in Revelation

Thu, 27 Feb 2020 05:00:00 GMT

By: Morning Wilder

I created the following as a participatory group performance piece requiring no practice, foreknowledge, or talent; I made it as an educational tool to make direct (though possibly flawed) connections between the growing climate crisis to prophesies given in the book of Revelation. This activity proved to have great impact; I think that as time goes on and the body of evidence grows, this activity can be continually updated to draw stronger and less refutable connections between the state of the world and the biblical text.

The format of this activity is a Call-and-Response: after an initial introduction to the theme of the piece, sections from Revelation are paired with excerpts from secular news sources. References can be found at the end.

1. The alarming new report you may have read about this week from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — which examines just how much better 1.5 degrees of warming would be than 2 — echoes the charge. “Amplifies” may be the better term. Hundreds of millions of lives are at stake, the report declares, should the world warm more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, which it will do as soon as 2040, if current trends continue. Nearly all coral reefs would die out, wildfires and heat waves would sweep across the planet annually, and the interplay between drought and flooding and temperature would mean that the world’s food supply would become dramatically less secure. Avoiding that scale of suffering, the report says, requires such a thorough transformation of the world’s economy, agriculture, and culture that “there is no documented historical precedent.”

2. I know your works; behold, I have left an open door before you, which no one can close. You have limited strength, and yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name. …Because you have kept my message of endurance, I will keep you safe in the time of trial that is going to come to the whole world to test the inhabitants of the earth. I am coming quickly. Hold fast to what you have, so that no one may take your crown.

3. This new study says that going past 1.5C is dicing with the planet's liveability. And the 1.5C temperature "guard rail" could be exceeded in just 12 years, in 2030. The report says there must be rapid and significant changes in four big global systems: energy, land use, cities, and industry. But it adds that the world cannot meet its target without changes by individuals, urging people to buy less meat, milk, cheese and butter and more locally sourced seasonal food - and throw less of it away; drive electric cars but walk or cycle short distances; take trains and buses instead of planes; use videoconferencing instead of business travel; use a washing line instead of a tumble dryer; insulate homes; and demand low carbon in every consumer product.

4. I know your works; I know that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. For you say, ‘I am rich and affluent and have no need of anything,’ and yet do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked….Those whom I love, I reprove and chastise. Be earnest, therefore, and repent.

5. Lifestyle changes can make a big difference, said Dr Debra Roberts, the IPCC's other co-chair. "That's a very empowering message for the individual," she said. "This is not about remote science; it is about where we live and work, and it gives us a cue on how we might be able to contribute to that massive change, because everyone is going to have to be involved. You might say you don't have control over land use, but you do have control over what you eat and that determines land use. We can choose the way we move in cities and if we don't have access to public transport - make sure you are electing politicians who provide options around public transport."

6. When he broke open the third seal, I heard the third living creature cry out, “Come forward.” I looked, and there was a black horse, and its rider held a scale in his hand. I heard what seemed to be a voice in the midst of the four living creatures. It said, “A ration of wheat costs a day’s pay, and three rations of barley cost a day’s pay."

7. A study has highlighted the risk posed by projected climate change on the world's ability to grow enough food. A US team of researchers found that forecasted shifts in climate by 2070 would occur too quickly for species of grass to adapt to the new conditions. The species facing an uncertain future include wheat, corn, rice and sorghum, which provide almost half of the calories consumed by humans. Not only does the grass family of more than 11,000 species form the staple of people's diets across the globe, natural grasslands cover about a quarter of the planet's land area and provide a home to a rich diversity of dependent flora and fauna. Thus, if climate change has strong negative impacts on grasses, there might be significant consequences for both global biodiversity and for humans.

8. When he broke open the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature cry out, “Come forward.” I looked, and there was a pale green horse. Its rider was named Death, and Hades accompanied him. They were given authority over a quarter of the earth, to kill with sword, famine, and plague, and by means of the beasts of the earth.

9. In the last century alone, smallpox killed 300 to 500 million people. The 1918-19 Spanish flu killed 50 to 100 million and Aids has taken 40 million lives since it was first recognised in 1981. The annual influenza outbreak still claims half a million people a year worldwide. The west African Ebola crisis took more than 11,000 lives – seven times the total of the 22 Ebola epidemics that preceded it.

10. Earlier this year, the World Health Organisation (WHO) issued a global alert for a disease that doesn’t exist yet. A potentially savage pathogen called Disease X. “History tells us that it is likely the next big outbreak will be something we have not seen before,” says WHO committee science adviser John-Arne Rottingen. By officially designating an unknown pathogen as a likely cause of a global outbreak, the WHO has upped the ante on the need to be better prepared. While we may not know what ‘Disease X’ is, in all probability it’s coming. Conditions are ripe for its arrival.

11. These are the ones who have survived the time of great distress; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. For this reason they stand before God’s throne and worship him day and night in his temple. The one who sits on the throne will shelter them. They will not hunger or thirst anymore, nor will the sun or any heat strike them.

12. One of the most immediate effects of higher temperatures is an increased threat of health risks such as heat stroke. This is probably the most easily understood risk. There will be more droughts. For one thing, higher temperatures will lead to faster evaporation of surface water. For another, they will mean less snowfall, as precipitation will be more likely to fall as rain. In some regions, like much of the Southwest, flows of water through the spring and summer are a function of snow melting in the mountains. Reduced snowpack means less water later in the year.

13. The seven angels who were holding the seven trumpets prepared to blow them. When the first one blew his trumpet, there came hail and fire mixed with blood, which was hurled down to the earth. A third of the land was burned up, along with a third of the trees and all green grass.

14. Fires have been raging across [Australia] killing nine people since September, destroying about 1,000 homes and burning more than 12 million acres. Bushfires have always been a feature of Australian life, but this year’s fires are the most intense and destructive since 1974. In 2018, fires [in California] burned through 1.8 million acres in the state and 1.3 million the previous year. Seven of California’s 10 most destructive fires have happened in the last four years. The Amazon saw more than 80,000 forest fires this year, an increase of 75% from 2018. Many of these fires have been blamed on people and companies clearing land for industry and agriculture ― predominantly beef and soy farming. “This is not an isolated event,” Julien Jreissati, a campaigner at Greenpeace Lebanon, told The Ecologist, “as 2019 has been a year of unprecedented forest fires from Siberia to the Amazon, from the Canary Island to Indonesia, sending clear signals that our planet is burning and it is time to act like it.”

15. When the second angel blew his trumpet, something like a large burning mountain was hurled into the sea. A third of the sea turned to blood, a third of the creatures living in the sea died, and a third of the ships were wrecked. When the third angel blew his trumpet, a large star burning like a torch fell from the sky. It fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water. The star was called “Wormwood,” and a third of all the water turned to wormwood. Many people died from this water, because it was made bitter.

16. Fire liberates the mercury from the soil and trees in the forest, and changes in the food web moved the mercury quickly up the food chain. In this case, invertebrates feasted on the nutrients and mercury that the fire introduced. Rainbow trout and lake herring capitalized on that bounty of invertebrates, and passed on the mercury to lake trout that prey on them. At the top of this food chain, the concentrations were high enough for government officials to issue a health warning for fish consumption by humans.

17. So the four angels were released, who were prepared for this hour, day, month, and year to kill a third of the human race. The number of cavalry troops was two hundred million; I heard their number. Now in my vision this is how I saw the horses and their riders. They wore red, blue, and yellow breastplates, and the horses’ heads were like heads of lions, and out of their mouths came fire, smoke, and sulfur. By these three plagues of fire, smoke, and sulfur that came out of their mouths a third of the human race was killed. For the power of the horses is in their mouths and in their tails; for their tails are like snakes, with heads that inflict harm.

18. The threat of air pollution grabs our attention when we see it — for example, the tendrils of smoke of Australian brush fires, now visible from space, or the poisonous soup of smog that descends on cities like New Delhi in the winter. But polluted air also harms billions of people on a continuing basis. Outdoors, we breathe in toxins delivered by car traffic, coal-fired plants and oil refineries. Indoor fires for heat and cooking taint the air for billions of people in poor countries. Over a billion people add toxins to their lungs by smoking cigarettes — and more recently, by vaping. Ninety-two percent of the world’s people live in places where fine particulate matter — the very small particles most dangerous to human tissues — exceeds the World Health Organization’s guideline for healthy air. Air pollution and tobacco together are responsible for up to 20 million premature deaths each year. Airborne toxins damage us in a staggering number of ways. Along with well-established links to lung cancer and heart disease, researchers are now finding new connections to disorders such as diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease.

19. The rest of the human race, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands, to give up the worship of demons and idols made from gold, silver, bronze, stone, and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk. Nor did they repent of their murders, their magic potions, their unchastity, or their robberies.

20. President Donald Trump on Tuesday cast doubt on a United Nations report warning that we have just 12 years to curb climate change by suggesting it wasn't more credible than reports that say the environment is "fabulous." The UN report, which is based on more than 6,000 scientific references from 91 authors across 40 countries, outlines the impact of global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. It warns that the world is rapidly running out of time before the planet will see catastrophic effects.

References

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/10/un-says-climate-genocide-coming-but-its-worse-than-that.html
From Revelation 3:7-13, to the Church in Philadelphia
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-45775309
From Revelation 3:14-22, to the Church in Laodicea
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-45775309
From Revelation 6:5-6
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-37489916
From Revelation 6:7-8
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/18/end-epidemics-aids-ebola-sars-sunday-essay
https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/this-is-not-a-drill-5-reasons-why-the-experts-are-worried-about-the-next-pandemic
From Revelation 7:14-16
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/10/08/what-climate-change-is-actually-expected-do/
From Revelation 8:6-7
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/wildfires-california-amazon-indonesia-climate-change_n_5dcd3f4ee4b0d43931d01baf
From Revelation 8:8-11
https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-wildfires-are-polluting-rivers-and-threatening-water-supplies
From Revelation 9:15-19
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/13/science/air-pollution-fires-genes.html
From Revelation 9:20-21
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-doubt-un-climate-change-report-2018-10

Morning Wilder

Morning Wilder lives in the Midwest US. She is active in civic engagement, waste diversion, and ruffling feathers.

Advent Apocalypse:

Wed, 26 Feb 2020 05:00:00 GMT

A sermon preached on the first Sunday of Advent
By: Rhianna Isaak-Krauss at Fellowship of Hope in Elkhart, IN

Matthew 24:36-44
But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 37 As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 38 For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; 39 and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 40 Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. 41 Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left.

42 “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. 43 But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. 44 So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.

Apocalypse in the text
In this sermon I am going to ask you a question which will not be rhetorical. So stay awake!

Today is the first Sunday of Advent. We begin with an apocalypse.

What is an apocalypse? It is the end of the world we know and the beginning of a new one. Apocalypses do not have to be tragic but they are intense. They are disconcerting, painful, and unsettling because of the cracking and crumbling of major worldviews which create space for new possibilities.

The Christian calendar begins with the apocalypse intimately known by Mary and many other women — pregnancy. The end of her world as she knew it occurred; Mary was shocked by her interaction with Gabriel. After some questions, assurances, and her consent Mary’s life was forever changed. It was an apocalypse. Her life as a young woman ended and a new one as a mother began. Jesus was coming!

Thus Advent begins with the end: not the end of life, but the end of the world we knew.
In these eight verses of Matthew, we hear about not one but two apocalypses.

For as in those days before the flood
they were eating and drinking,
marrying and given in marriage,
until the day
Noah entered the ark,
and they knew nothing
until the flood came
and swept them all away.

This is a story of an apocalypse: the end of the world they knew.

Life had been going on as normal: people had careers, projects, and deadlines. Suddenly things changed. A flood came and many died. Both for those who died and the few who survived — the insects, reptiles, mammals, and Noah and family — the world they had known had ended and another had begun.

Matthew shares another apocalypse:

If the owner of the house had known
in what part of the night
the thief was coming,
he would have stayed awake
and would not have let his house be broken into.

For this homeowner and their family, the thief interrupted life as normal.
Suddenly, their security was gone. Their wealth was gone. It was the end of the world they had known.
In this apocalypse the homeowner’s life continues, but his worldview, identity, power, and privilege were significantly changed. I can imagine that this person did not sleep as soundly for months to come, nervous that the thief would return.

Apocalypse in the world
There have been many apocalypses throughout history in which the world that we knew ended and everything was different afterwards.

For the early Christians this happened when the Temple was destroyed. It was unthinkable: the Romans came through Jerusalem, tearing apart the Jewish temple during the war in 66AD, only 30 years after Jesus died. This was the end of the world as the early church knew it.

Yet we don’t meet apocalypse only in the scriptures.

Harriet Tubman was born into slavery in the United States in 1820. She was a strong and had a close connection with God. Though she was never taught to read books, she could sure understand the Holy Spirit. Harriet’s end goal was freedom: freedom for herself, for her family, for her people. If Harriet continued doing what was ‘normal’, she would continue to be beaten, oppressed, and under the constant threat of being sold.

For Harriet, the end of the world as she knew it, her apocalypse, was the end of her enslavement. Her opportunity to escape was her apocalypse!

Two slaves will be working in the fields together:
one will run for freedom, the other will stay behind.

The fear of change was too much for some. The fear of being caught was too much for others, keeping them trapped in slavery. But Harriet was so desperate for freedom — though she knew she might die trying — that when she had the opportunity, she ran toward liberation, unwilling to stay in the death-dealing system of slavery.

I remember being told of another apocalypse — the ending of the world as my ancestors knew it — that occurred in the 1920s. The Russian Revolution was underway and people were fleeing. The Machno bandits came into the home of my great-grandfather, John Siemens. He was just a boy. He saw them shoot his grandfather and father as he jumped out the window. Little John also witnessed many horrid acts done to his mother, sister, and two brothers.

They knew they had to flee but, at that time, no one knew when trains would come.
One sibling was taken by the train, the other stayed behind.

And so it was: John, his two brothers, and his mother left on the next train.
His sister Maria stayed behind; she was engaged to be married. Her plan was to marry and follow on the next train.
That next train never came. Maria was sent to a Siberian work camp, cutting wood as Soviet forced labour.

QUESTION: Can you think of an apocalypse?
A collective rupture of worldview that you have experienced?

Good news in the text
Take a deep breath in and let it out with a sigh.

A metaphor that theologian Ched Myers uses to explain apocalypse is that of a bifocal lens: rather than having two pairs of glasses to switch between seeing the ‘here’ and the ‘not yet’, the bifocal simultaneously reveals clearly both the violence here and the possibilities to come. This is the apocalyptic vision we are called to during advent as we long for Jesus to be born.

In order to see—we must be awake!

The text calls us to keep awake!
To be ready!
There is a sense of urgency here—don't live life as normal!
And at the same time there is mystery—we don't know when it will be time to flee slavery, we dont know when the next train will come, we don’t know when the next pregnancy will occur, we don't know when the Son of Humanity will bring liberation.

Be ready for Jesus—not to take us away from this Earth, but for Jesus to liberate us here on Earth.

This is the apocalypse we are longing for in Advent.
We are awaiting with pregnant hope for this — end of the world as it’s known.
We are awaiting the coming of Jesus — anticipating our adoption into a new worldview. New world. Renewed world. New Heaven and New Earth.

But let’s face it, we are living life as normal. We eat and drink and sleep every day. We go to work and do homework. We plan for our futures.
What does it look like to prepare for an apocalypse? We can’t literally stay awake. I don't think the author of Matthew meant it literally because our bodies just cannot handle more than a few sleepless nights. Elsewhere in the New Testament when we are called to stay awake it refers to not putting trust in Roman (State) power and security. I will say that again — staying awake means not putting our trust in State power and security.

The good news of this text is this: An apocalypse is coming! An end to the Roman power is coming! An end to the oppressive political regimes is coming! The structures of this violent world are cracking and beginning to crumble. An end to the world as we know it is coming. Jesus is coming. And we are already able to join in!

Good news in the world
For me, apocalypse looks like climate change.

Two are at the bank: one divests from oil and natural gas, the other continues investing their money and lives in the collapsing system.
Two are in line at the gas pump: one is ready to turn in her keys and bike away, the other keeps waiting in line.
If the manager of the corporation would have known at what time of the night the protesters were coming to shut down the pipeline, he would not have gone to sleep.

We can live into the kindom of God: the one that is both here and not yet.
We can put on our apocalyptic bifocals and stay awake by loving our enemy and praying for those who persecute.
We can live into a world of dignity for everyone, defying systems of slavery and unpaid labor around the world.

Jesus’ coming, the apocalypse that we long for, will end the waiting part of living into the Kindom of God, fulfilling both the ‘here’ and ‘not yet’ and fully realizing the Kindom of Heaven.

Jesus’ coming brings that kindom.

Stay awake—release the security that oppressive empires provide—and live fully into Jesus’ kindom so that this Advent we can prepare for Jesus’ return and the end of these oppressive empires. This is an active hope.

Practice agility! Get ready to flee towards the freedom of Christ by investing ourselves in Christ’s all-encompassing liberation now!

Rhianna Isaak-Krauss

Rianna Isaak-Krauss believes that mourning is a crucial spiritual practice to persevere in the Anthropocene. She believes that Christian theological imagination and liturgical practices have a gift to make to the climate movement. After studying at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Elkhart, IN, she moved with her husband Benni to his native Germany and is hoping to connect with European climate justice and peace movements in the Rhine and Danube watersheds.

Apocalyptic Hope Against Climate Despair

Tue, 25 Feb 2020 05:00:00 GMT

A Sermon for Rooted & Grounded: A Conference on Land & Discipleship, Elkhart 2018
By: Benni Isaak-Krauss

See, the Lord is going to lay waste the earth
    and devastate it;
he will ruin its face
    and scatter its inhabitants—
The earth dries up and withers,
    the world languishes and withers,
    the heavens languish with the earth.
The earth is defiled by its people;
    they have disobeyed the laws,
violated the statutes
    and broken the everlasting covenant.
Therefore a curse consumes the earth;
    its people must bear their guilt.
Therefore earth’s inhabitants are burned up,
    and very few are left.

The ruined city lies desolate;
    the entrance to every house is barred.
In the streets they cry out for wine;
    all joy turns to gloom,
    all joyful sounds are banished from the earth.
Terror and pit and snare await you,
    people of the earth.

The earth is broken up,
    the earth is split asunder,
    the earth is violently shaken.
The earth reels like a drunkard,
    it sways like a hut in the wind;
so heavy upon it is the guilt of its rebellion
    that it falls—never to rise again.
On this mountain the Lord Almighty will prepare
a feast of rich food for all peoples,
a banquet of aged wine—
    the best of meats and the finest of wines.
On this mountain he will destroy
    the shroud that enfolds all peoples,
the sheet that covers all nations;
he will swallow up death forever.
The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears
    from all faces;
he will remove his people’s disgrace
    from all the earth.
The Lord has spoken.
In that day they will say,
“Surely this is our God;
    we trusted in him, and he saved us.
This is the Lord, we trusted in him;
    let us rejoice and be glad in his salvation.”
The hand of the Lord will rest on this mountain;
    but Moab will be trampled in their land
   Isaiah  24-25

I don’t remember a time when climate change was not a part of my reality. I grew up with movies like The Day After Tomorrow and An Inconvenient Truth. In the build-up to the 2009 Copenhagen Summit, I organized a flashmob at my high school as part of a global mobilization to call our politicians to act decisively and limit carbon emissions. Yet Copenhagen came and went just like many other small and big summits without leading to the kind of radical cuts in carbon emissions we need to stay within an “acceptable” level of rise in global temperature. Awaiting each summit I allowed myself to hope and after each summit I felt myself becoming more desperate about the future.

And it’s not just me. The cognitive dissonance between the growing awareness of the climate crisis and the stalwart refusal of politicians and corporations to address it meaningfully have created a climate of despair. Just look at the movies. The only future we can imagine is bleak; the word often used is “post-apocalyptic.”

But despite what most people—including people in the church—seem to think, the word “apocalypse” does not mean “end of the world.” “Apocalypse” is Greek for “unveiling.” Biblical apocalyptic literature, for example, is created by people living under the shadows of empire that threaten their ecosystems and traditional ways of life. Like a bifocal, it unveils two realities simultaneously: It exposes the realities of violence and injustice and it reveals the possibilities of another world. The purpose of it is to create hope, not fear, and to inspire steadfast resistance to the death-dealing powers of empire. If we have eyes to see and ears to hear, apocalyptic literature offers a powerful antidote to the climate of despair which the politics of denial have bred. This is especially because, contrary to another popular misunderstanding, apocalyptic texts are full of ecological concern for the integrity of creation. What better place to begin than with this text from Isaiah which stands at the beginning of this apocalyptic tradition.

We shy away from apocalyptic texts because we do not know how to read them. They are hard for us to understand. But if we just listen, don’t these old words sound oddly fitting to the trouble we’re seeing?
We know that “the earth dries up and withers” because we have polluted her in a myriad of ways. We know the earth is utterly broken; we feel her staggering like someone drinking to forget the hurt and we are afraid that when she falls she will not rise again. We fear that human-caused climate change will open the windows of heaven and cause the very foundations of the earth to tremble and break, making the planet uninhabitable.
Maybe this is what actually makes this text hard for us: it’s not that we don’t understand; it’s that we fear it might be true.

But this radical truth-telling is also the reason we need apocalyptic texts. Only in their radical critique can we hope to get to the root of our ecological crisis. The text leads us to ask: Who is causing this destruction? Is it God or humans? The first verse states that it is “the LORD ... about to lay waste to the earth and make it desolate.” But haven’t we been talking about human-caused climate change this whole time? Is this text excusing humans? Can text like this help us to think more deeply about climate change?
Yet, if we look closely, the text isn’t excusing humans at all. It clearly states that it is humanity, it is us, who “have transgressed laws, violated the statutes, broken the everlasting covenant” which in turn brought about “the curse [which] devours the land.”

These two terms —“curse” and “everlasting covenant” — are keywords. They take us back all the way to the very beginning of the story: to Genesis. They remind us how at first, adama and adam, earth and earthling, humus and humanity were intimately connected, made of the same stuff. They remind us how the land first became polluted: when it was drenched with the blood of Abel, the first shepherd, shed by his brother Cain, the first farmer. They remind us how God listened to the cry of the earth polluted by Abel’s blood and how Cain, the first murderer, was exiled from the land and founded the first city-state. They remind us how these city-states lived off the backs of their surroundings, exploiting land, animals, and people until God heard the cries of the groaning creation and sent a flood. They remind us how God chose Noah and his family to protect the animals of land and air from extinction by building the ark and how, after the flood, God unilaterally disarmed God’s self by hanging the rainbow in the sky and making an eternal covenant with humanity, promising that “As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.” Put in the terms of modern climate science: God promises a stable climate.

“Curse” and “everlasting covenant” then remind us that even though it was humanity which first polluted the earth by bloodshed (and continues to do so), God has been acting consistently to limit the damage we cause to the rest of creation and ourselves and bring us back to ecological sanity. What if, in reading the rest of Isaiah’s apocalypse, we look for the ways in which God is restraining our capacity to pollute and calling us back into relationships?

From this perspective we notice that the city which is destroyed here is called the “city of chaos.” Here, the Hebrew word used for ‘chaos’ is ‘tohu.’ Those who study Hebrew might know the term ‘tohuwabohu’ — the ‘formless void’ of the earth before God’s creative act in Genesis 1. In the ancient Near East, ‘chaos’ was the opposite of ‘creation.’ ‘Creation’ was the ordering of things by separating them from each other, as God did in the creation account, or, like a city wall, separating the ordered inside from the chaotic outside. But if cities are places of order, what’s a ‘city of chaos’?

By calling the city a ‘city of chaos,’ Isaiah claims it is a kind of “anti-creation.” It might appear ordered and orderly and people might talk about the importance of “law and order,” but Isaiah says that this “order” of the city of chaos is antithetical to creation and will lead to the end of life itself.
To understand the symbolism here, we need to ask: What’s so bad about cities? In the ancient world, cities were the places where resources and power could be concentrated, where water could be dammed and channeled, and from where the exploitation of people and land could be organized through sword, debts, and entertainment. Another name for this dynamic is empire.

Today’s cities are more ambivalent. They can be places where empire is visible and has its mailing address—think of Wall Street—or they might have been abandoned by empire decades ago—think of the South Side of Chicago or much of Elkhart. Throughout history, empire has been remarkably adaptable and has had many shapes. Today, empire largely takes the shape of capitalism and of multi-national corporations that have no grounding and make all places do their bidding. Today, the city of chaos is present when oil companies like Exxon and Kinder Morgan continue to get government permits to build pipelines even though remaining fossil fuels need to stay in the ground to keep global warming to acceptable limits. The indigenous Water Protectors at Standing Rock and now at Bayou Bridge and other pipelines were inspired by a Lakota prophecy about a black snake that would slither across the land, desecrating the sacred sites and poisoning the water before destroying the Earth. They see this black snake in the pipelines that invade their lands. By this we could talk about the pipeline of chaos. By destroying the city or the pipelines of chaos, God is putting an end to the ecological devastation wrought by empire.
The destruction of the City of Chaos is good news to all who stand on the side of creation, just as it is good news when these pipeline projects are stopped or go bankrupt.

Don’t let me be misunderstood. To call the end of a death-dealing industry good news is not to disrespect the workers in these industries. It is a form of mourning for the way poverty and lack of alternatives have forced poor people to sacrifice their own health and the health of the planet to provide for their families. In fact, climate justice begins with mourning, as our text knows.

It’s easy to miss the tears God wipes away or to trivialize them into a general human condition. But what kind of tears are these if not tears for all of us caught in the city of chaos? The “shroud” and “sheet” God destroys in the text are associated with mourning, similar to the ash and sackcloth the inhabitants of Nineveh wore after Jonah prophesied the destruction of their city for their imperial sins. And as with Nineveh, the sincere mourning of the faithful has profound consequences.

The presence of specific clothes indicates not just spontaneous mourning, but a practice of mourning.
Mourning is different from despair. Despair freezes up the body while mourning is a way to break out of the cycles of despair and trauma that keep us frozen. Mourning is a way to face the truth without getting paralyzed. It can be scary to open ourselves to mourning. There is so much to mourn: all the people, ecosystems, entire species we have already lost; our inaction in the past; our obstacles in the present. And, given that our inaction has caused an irreversible degree of climate change, we know there will be more cause for mourning.

In mourning, we commit ourselves to remembering those we have lost as well as to fighting for the living. More importantly, without mourning and processing those emotions, we will not be free to address the actual causes of climate change: our addiction to perpetual growth.
This addiction is fueled by the availability of fossil fuels but, more existentially, by our colonized imagination that believes the myth of scarcity: of a world in which there is not enough to meet everyone’s needs. Without mourning it continues to be easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.

The Feast – Cultivating Abundance and Joy in the Midst of Crisis
The myth of scarcity is vital to the health of the empire. Without the myth of scarcity, empire would not be able to control us the way it does, making our existence and flourishing conditional. This myth of scarcity is another way in which empire is the antithesis of creation. We see this nowhere clearer than in the manna stories of Exodus: after hundreds of years of slavery in Egypt’s empire, Israel is needing to learn to rely on God for provision. They don’t know how to live on the land on which they’re wandering and are wanting to go “back to the meat pots of Egypt.” But God provides them enough food and as they learn to take only what they need, to live within their limits, they slowly realize there is abundance even in the midst of the desert.
In the Isaiah text, the meal God provides is antithetical to the scarcity that characterizes the city of chaos. In the city was a lack of wine, but here God provides “a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.” And this feast is not just for a well-selected group of VIPs; there is no bouncer here. God’s feast is for everyone, especially the ones who made it out of the city of chaos!

This is the vision Jesus had and embodied and which got him the reputation of being a drinker.
Jesus celebrated feasts like this one repeatedly with crowds ranging from a dozen to five thousand, cultivating abundance where others only saw scarcity. Jesus invited those suffering from affluenza to share generously what they had and make reparations to those whose suffering had built their wealth. Jesus’ parties were spaces where people cried and tears were wiped away. Following Jesus means celebrating and cultivating abundance and joy where others only see scarcity and despair.

Waiting on the Lord
We’ve seen how apocalyptic texts act as bifocals, exposing the hidden (or not-so-hidden) violence of empire and revealing the world of shared abundance on its way. But what do we do in the meantime, while the city of chaos still seems to reign and rage? I must confess that the part of the Isaiah passage that gives me the most struggle is the last part: “Behold, this is our God, for whom we have waited so that God might save us.”
What does waiting for God in the anthropocene look like? Is it not precisely our waiting and our inactivity that keeps this crisis going? Should we not rather be actively trying to change things? I have two points to these questions:

One is a counter-question: Is it really our inactivity that keeps the crisis going? Or is not it precisely our over-activity, our daily life as a part of a society addicted to fossil fuels? What if part of ‘waiting on the Lord’ is cutting our own carbon emissions by insulating our houses and churches and cutting down on meat consumption? What if ‘waiting on the Lord’ means practicing a carbon sabbath by biking, walking, or at least car-pooling to church? What if ‘waiting on the Lord’ means allowing the land to rest by restoring our lawns to more native flora that need neither mowing nor sowing (as we did on campus with the prairie)? What if ‘waiting on the Lord’ means making a collective covenant to not use air travel? What if ‘waiting on the Lord’ means divesting our personal and institutional capital from all fossil fuel-related companies and investing our wealth in respectable, environmentally-worthy jobs in the poor black and brown communities that have been most impacted by countless forms of environmental racism? What if we practiced mutual aid through no-interest loans for households seeking to better insulate their homes or install solar energy panels?
If the church collectively committed to these practices of carbon sabbath, we would be a city on a hill and a light to the nations in this ecological crisis.

However, we would still need to stop the laying of pipelines of chaos. We would still need to stop the greenhouse covenant from being broken through the burning of fossil fuels, unleashing the curse of an uninhabitable planet. As I learn more about the depth of the “wicked problem” we are in, I find hope in the growing movement of people of faith and conscience who read the signs of the times correctly and decide to take courageous action at personal sacrifice. Steve Heinrichs, the director of Indigenous-Settler Relations for Mennonite Church Canada was recently sentenced to seven days in prison because, together with representatives of other faith traditions, he had joined indigenous land protectors in blocking the expansion of a pipeline. I was moved when I read his statement to the Mennonite church (read it here); he wrote about taking action on many of the things I just suggested but realized, as he listened to his indigenous friends, that individual action within a consumer mode was not enough. He knew where Jesus would take his stand.

This is my second point: ‘Waiting on the Lord’ means waiting for Jesus in the places and with the people he would be around. If Jesus had been born in the Anthropocene, he probably would have been born in Bangladesh and become a climate refugee. He would have recruited his disciples from among those hurting from the consequences of overfishing and pollution. ‘Waiting on the Lord’ happens everywhere we plant seeds for the future and wherever we put our bodies in the way of the black snake, the death-dealing tentacles of the city of chaos.

In light of the dire reality, we put our trust in God who since the fall has worked tirelessly to defend creation against us and nudge us toward ecological sanity and reconciliation with our fellow creatures.

May we have apocalyptic faith to expose and tear down the city of chaos, lifting up the new feast of the Lord that nourishes us, taking us from despair to having a fierce love for all of creation as we wait for God who will save us.

May it be so.

WWW.JESUSRADICALS.COM - Vol 2. No. 2

Introduction

Morning Wilder

New Wine

Pablo González

A Chapel for the Global Climate Strike

Benni and Rianna Isaak-Krauss

Inevitable Transition and Other Poems

Joann Renee Boswell

Attend and Listen for the Time to Come

Janeen Bertsche Johnson

Environmental Apocalypse

Theo Kayser

A Practice in Revelation

Morning Wilder

Advent Apocalypse:

Rhianna Isaak-Krauss

Apocalyptic Hope Against Climate Despair

Benjamin Isaak-Krauss