Alanna Mitchell is an award winning Canadian journalist who has worked for the Financial Post and the Globe and Mail newspaper. In recent years she has developed an exceptional talent for writing about environmental issues and one of her awards was from the World Conservation Union and the Reuters Foundation, naming Mitchell the best environmental journalist in the world in the year 2000, after an international competition.

Her most recent book is called Sea Sick: The Global Ocean in Crisis. You may have had the misfortune of being seasick, that queasy feeling which often has an unfortunate outcome when rocking and rolling on a ship at sea. Mitchell’s title is a play on words addressing the grim reality of the decline of the world’s oceans.

You may be like me and find the facts and figures about our changing world to be rather overwhelming and difficult to absorb but Mitchell manages to mix this information with images that are easier to grasp.

She points out that while the oceans of Earth make up about 70% of its surface area, they represent about 99% of the living area on the planet because of their great depth. They are so vast that we tend to think of them as unchangeable by humans beings but roughly one third of the carbon dioxide humans are putting into the atmosphere has entered the oceans and about 80 per cent of the extra heat has been absorbed by the oceans. Apparently it is true that what goes up must come down.

What does this mean? Mitchell likens it to what happened when her daughter was born. Her newborn baby was a very sick child who was running a fever and whose blood was not absorbing oxygen. Fortunately the doctors were able to address her problems, but if they hadn’t she would have died.

In a way the world’s oceans are running a fever with the possibility of dire consequences. Human-created factors are changing the chemical balance of the oceans and the result is large dead zones where nothing can thrive and coral reefs that are skeletons rather than living organisms. I am tempted to say “our” oceans but of course the Judeo-Christian tradition says that they are God’s oceans. Both our Old Testament reading and our psalm for the day say that God is the one who brought all things into being and psalm 104 exclaims:

O Lord, how manifold are all your works!...

In other word, God your creation is so diverse!

Yonder is the sea, great and wide,

creeping things innumerable are there,

living things both small and great . . .

Praise the Lord!

The reading from the book of Job takes on a different flavour. A few weeks ago I suggested to you that Job is a lengthy parable rather than the story of an actual man, but like the parables of Jesus it is a true story.

You will recall that Job loses everything important to him, his wealth, his family his health, and while he tries to stay faithful and strong he does question God’s mercy and fairness. God finally speaks in chapter 38 and what he says to Job is probably not what we might expect. God speaks out of a whirlwind and tells Job that he is small in the overall scheme of things and he needs to be humble. As one writer puts it, God’s diatribe is sarcastic and scathing and loving, all at the same time. Job is invited to look at the stars and the storms above, as well as the living creatures around him to awaken to a greater scheme of things. This goes on for several chapters and Job eventually says “enough already – I get it – you are God and I’m not!”

Do we get it, as God speaks to us out of the whirlwind of information we are given about the state of our planet? God made us smart but it’s up to us to be humble and wise and if we are honest we know that humility and wisdom are not strong points for human beings. We are clever enough to take . . . and take and take, but we just don’t seem to know when to stop. Peter Sawtell is the director of Eco-Justice ministries in the U.S., and he comments on Job in a recent article:

As we read this old text, I’m afraid that we have a new layer of difficulty in understanding in this modern age . . . We humans have claimed Godlike power and knowledge, and we think we can answer the queries from the whirlwind.

What he says is true, unfortunately. It used to be that finding coal or oil to heat and light our homes and power our industries required digging far beneath the surface or drilling wells. Now whole mountains are levelled and forests are scraped away, literally altering the landscape.

Not long ago when we spoke of farms we didn’t include the word “factory.” Think about that phrase, “factory farms.” Now we have thousands of animals housed together so we can have the cheapest groceries on the planet.

Only a century ago, even fifty years ago, fishing in the seas required a skill and a scale that allowed species to flourish. We have figured out how to find and catch just about everything, to the extent that 90 per cent of all the large fish in the oceans are gone. Magnificent creatures such as tuna may soon be on the verge of extinction.

We are so “smart” that we use and take and exploit to the point that there may not be much left for future generations. And we receive such a whirlwind of bad news that we are tempted to act as though we haven’t heard, or that it is beyond our ability to make a difference.

What can we do then to actually change the course of our wasteful, sinful behaviour? We can start with a belief that our faith in God matters and that being a Christian will lead us away from exploitation of the Earth toward balance and Earth care. We can choose to be wise as well as clever, and we choose hope over despair. The health and well-being of our planet come under the category of environmental issues, but they are also spiritual issues.

We didn’t include a gospel reading today, which is unusual, but if we had I might have chosen the story of the question put to Jesus by religious leaders about which is the greatest commandment of all and Jesus answers by saying that we love God first – which I take it includes listening humbly to God – and then that we will love our neighbour as ourselves. And who is our neighbour, Jesus was asked? Christian environmentalists argue that today our neighbours include other species which we are threatening by our greed and our effect as human beings. And our neighbours are also the billions of people of the next generation, and the next and the next.

When I read the book Sea Sick I was aware of several references to biblical themes, including resurrection, which intrigued me. So I contacted Allana Mitchell through the wonders of the internet and told her I was going to mention her in a sermon. That tends to get a writer’s attention! I asked if she had any religious convictions of her own. She emailed me back saying that she is a member of Beach United Church in Toronto and she offered her thought that it is important for faith communities to do whatever they can, to raise their voices and to act because governments are so reluctant to set a new course for the planet. At the end of her response she offered an encouragement in the words attributed to St. Francis “continue to preach and if necessary, use words.”

Rather than being numbed and overwhelmed by discouragement we can ask ourselves how simple changes can happen at every level of our lives. If we are as smart as we think we are we will fix what we have broken. When we choose to live more simply and “have a care” for the Earth we are actually living out the gospel of Jesus.

We can insist that the producers of our consumer goods do so in a way that respects the integrity of creation. Here in Bowmanville we are in an area that has been highly dependent on the auto industry for our prosperity. For decades all the car makers told us that it was not feasible to create an alternative to internal combustion engines. Now all of them including General Motors are offering a number of alternatives which create less pollution. Change can happen!

Just recently a huge new solar panel installation went on line here in Ontario which can power thousands of homes, while the Nova Scotia government announced a new tidal project to harness the energy of the Bay of Fundy. This is good news.

All of us are voters who can influence governments to agree to targets which will reduce the greenhouse gases which are choking our planet. Canada has a terrible record in that regard, going back through several governments, but that can take a different direction at the upcoming Climate Change Conference in Denmark – if there is a will to do so.

You can do this. I can do this.

Sometimes we need to put our desire for the integrity of God’s creation in the simplest of terms to really get a grasp on why we want to change our ways and make different choices. This morning we baptized little Julia in water although it is definitely fresh rather than salty like the seas and oceans. Many of us waited with some trepidation as her birth approached because of complications, and even after she came into this world there were a few more concerns that kept us wondering. There were many prayers offered up on her behalf.

Today we see her thriving and our continuing prayer is that Julia will grow up in a hospitable world of beauty and diversity, similar to the one we have enjoyed. We hope that she may be able to go to the seashore one day and as she explores the water’s edge her parents won’t have to say that the ocean was once alive with fish and all manners of creatures which no longer live there. Of course this is the hope for all of our children and their children. It can be our heart’s desire that they will look at the world around them and say “God, your creation is so wonderful, so diverse!”

To return to Peter Sawtell:

May we hear the voice of God – from a whirlwind, a pulpit, or a scientific journal. May we lose our lives of exploitation and control, and find new lives in community and respect among God’s beloved creation.

Amen!