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St. Paul’s United Church Sunday, March 5, 2006

Lent 1

Rainbows and Promises – Rev. David Mundy

Genesis 9:8-17 Mark 1:9-15

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The worst natural disaster in United States history. That is the way Hurricane Katrina has been described since the extent of the devastation of this storm has been realized. At the time of the hurricane late last August nearly a thousand people died and hundreds of thousands were displaced. We were horrified by the snail’s pace of response, but that was only the beginning. In this week of Mardi Gras, which precedes the season of Lent, news reports point out that the city of New Orleans and the state of Louisiana are far from recovery. The extent of the damage numbers in the billions of dollars and it may be that many residents of the state who were forced to move elsewhere will never return.

In the weeks following Katrina we heard the speculation that this “natural” storm and the many others of the busiest and longest hurricane season of record may have been accelerated by the effects of global climate change caused by humans. While there is no conclusive evidence to support this yet, scientists tell us that it takes only minor increases in the warmth of tropical waters to make hurricanes more intense. We may be at the beginning of a trend of more extreme weather everywhere on our planet.

There probably wasn’t a bigger environmental news story during the year 2005, but it wasn’t the only one. We were informed that the Gulf Stream which originates in the warmer waters off the Caribbean and moves powerfully northward is slowing down. Because this current warms Europe its deceleration could lead to much colder winters and the inability to produce crops.

We were also told that the ice caps at both the north and south poles are melting at an alarming rate. The melting of the Greenland glaciers could cause sea levels to rise by as much as seven metres, which, for those of us who grew up with the dinosaurs is about 23 feet. It would mean the inundation of islands around the world and radically alter coastlines and port cities. Even more than that, it could lead to an alteration of the Earth’s rotation.

There are a couple of things that these three stories have in common. One is that humans are at least somewhat responsible for causing them to happen. These three stories also involve water, which is, after all, what covers the majority of our planets.

I wasn’t sure whether I would get to the sixth and final subject of those you chose for the series on current social issues which I began early in January. But this morning we listened to two scriptural stories which involve water as we begin the Sundays of Lent. Jesus was baptized in the Jordan river by his cousin John and then he heads out into the desert for forty days and nights.

Our Older Testament story involves forty days as well, forty days of rain which cover the earth in water. Is there any better known story in the Old Testament than this one? Just to refresh your memory, in chapter six of Genesis it says: “the Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually . . . So the Lord said, ‘I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created – people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air . . . ’“

God chooses a man named Noah, who is described as righteous, to build a boat, an ark, which will carry his family and representative creatures to safety when the waters of a great flood begin to rise. Some of you will remember the old Bill Cosby comedy sketch about Noah, the one which made Cosby famous. Noah hears God when he is working in his rec-room.

Noah!

Who is that?

It's the Lord, Noah

Right! Where are ya? What you want? I've been good.

I want you to build an Ark

Right! What’s an Ark?

Get some wood build it 300 cubits by 80 cubits by 40 cubits

Right! What’s a cubit? Let’s see, a cubit . . . I used to know what a cubit was . . .

Well don't worry about that Noah When you get that done, go out into the world and collect all of the animals in the world by twos, male and female, and put them into the ark.

Right! Who is this really?

Of course Noah built the ark, as improbable as the task might have seemed, and the deluge came. We listened to the happy ending of the story this morning – at least the part that is happy for Noah and his family and the creatures aboard his ship. The rain eventually stops and the ark comes to rest on dry land and God makes a promise. God won’t do this again. Every time a rainbow appears in the sky God will be reminded of what happened and will choose not to act in such a devastating manner.

It doesn’t tell us whether humans will choose another path, whether they will remember and repent of their unfaithfulness and foolish ways. I don’t know whether you take this story literally or figuratively, but whatever your interpretation, there is both a challenge and promise in the image of the rainbow.

What are our rainbow opportunities as the people of God for this day and age? As Christians we affirm that God’s love is steadfast and sure. How do we respond as people who are the recipients of that love? The task of changing our ways as the six and a half billion humans on the ark called Planet Earth is a far more daunting challenge than building a floating zoo. We are being asked to do the opposite of what seems to be the natural inclination of our species. Instead of using more and hoarding more we are being encouraged to use less and live more simply. We must use less of the earth’s natural resources and fossil fuels so that the air is breathable and the water is drinkable and the climate can sustain life.

What we are slowly realizing is that changing our activities and patterns is actually a matter of faith. When the international conference on Climate Change met in Montreal last December there was a delegation which included David Hallman from the United Church and former Conservative cabinet minister David MacDonald, who is a United Church minister.

They reminded the delegates that while climate change has social and economic implications, it is also a spiritual issue. We have been saying this for decades in our United Church, thanks to individuals such as David Hallman. It is encouraging to see that some Christian traditions that have been reluctant to make the connection between faith and care for the planet are finally doing so. Recently a group of evangelical Christian leaders issued a statement called Climate Change: An Evangelical Call to Action. In this document they recognize that the ecosystems of the earth are resilient, but not infinitely so, and that within this century millions of people, not to mention other creatures, will die as a result of human activity, unless we make radical changes.

If governments and international agencies and religious groups are finally willing to admit that we are creating the conditions that lead to ever more violent and destructive weather, and that we are altering the currents of the oceans, and that we are causing the icecaps and the glaciers of the planet to melt into the sea, what can we possibly do? Let’s be honest. It’s hard to grasp the meaning of six and half billion human beings and their impact on the Earth. It’s hard for us to be deeply touched by the fate of islanders on a Pacific island far away whose homes may disappear. We don’t respond readily to the extinction of species.

Perhaps we need to bring this much closer to home, and we can do that by looking at the story of Noah again. Noah had a wife and a family and some of them are named. The building of the ark was not only for self-preservation. It was for the benefit of the next generation and generations to come.

Many of us here this morning are parents and grandparents and even great-grandparents. On a good day we can actually remember the names of our kids and grandkids! They are precious to us and we trust that they are precious in God’s sight as well. If you were asked to donate blood so that your child could be transfused, would you do it? Of course you would! What if you were asked to donate bone marrow or even a kidney. It would be a more difficult decision but many of you would still say yes. Some of you would go so far as to say that you would give your life for your child. You would do all of this for love. If this is all true, then why can’t we choose to change our lifestyles out of the love which begins in our relationship with Christ and extends to our families and beyond. We can only do this by the personal choices we make beginning today.

God is speaking to us and commissioning us as righteous men and women to ensure that this planet will be the ark of safety for future generations of human and nonhuman creatures. Rather than saying “right, who is this really” we will listen and respond. There is an organization in the United States called Ecojustice Ministries, a Christian ministry which addresses Earth-care as a central aspect of faith. In a recent newsletter the executive director, Peter Sawtell, suggests four questions we can all ask of ourselves as Christians about making a difference for the future. They are

What sort of world do I want to leave for my children and grandchildren?