Grazing on Ashes
Sermon by Rev. Douglas Olds
First Presbyterian Church of San
Anselmo
June 16, 2019
A few weeks
ago, my mother returned some shoes she purchased to the mall. She asked for a receipt, and the clerk then
asked her for her email address. My mother said, “I really don’t want to give
that out. Why do you need my email?’ The
clerk retorted, “Ma’am, we want to email you the receipt: we’re trying to save the planet!"
My mother
gets home, and there are two emails from the shoe company. Neither is the receipt. Both are trying to
sell her more shoes.
Welcome to
America, where saving the planet always involves some renewed plan to sell
you. If only we make smarter purchases,
or switch to more efficient products, then we will indeed save the planet.
Consumer capitalism figures out the angles to get you to purchase more and more
in order to change the world. This is
the capitalist ideology. Their world is
driven primarily by business and consumerism.
Yet the
quote from Einstein on today’s bulletin suggests that business as usual is not
the remedy to solving the problems that are coming about from business as
usual. I am very skeptical that the profit motive can cure the mess that
heedlessly seeking a profit regardless of environmental impact has caused.
Our reading
from the Prophet Isaiah this morning is the Bible’s signal and unique message
regarding the scale and misuse of fuel combustion. In this passage from Isaiah, the idol maker
is charged with diverting combustible resources away from personal warming and
cooking toward the creation of idols.
14 He cuts down cedars …. He plants a cedar and the rain
nourishes it. 15 Then it can be used as fuel. Part of it he takes and warms
himself; he kindles a fire and bakes bread. Then he makes a god and worships
it, makes it a carved image and bows down before it. 16 Half of it he burns in
the fire; over this half he roasts meat, eats it and is satisfied. He also
warms himself and says, “Ah, I am warm, I can feel the fire!” 17 The rest of it
he makes into a god, his idol, bows down to it and worships it; he prays to it and
says, “Save me, for you are my god!”…
20 He feeds on ashes; a deluded mind has led him astray, and
he cannot save himself or say, “Is not this thing in my right hand a fraud?”
In
contemporary terms, that fraud in his right hand is our economy’s idol of
luxuries produced by the diversion of combustible fuels away from God’s
intended provision for subsistence needs.
The Prophet
Isaiah in this centrally marked text is to my reading condemning an idolatrous
carbon combustion economy.
Some of you
may be following the ‘Juliana’ lawsuit “Trial of the Century” that began last week in
Portland. 21 children are suing the
government for violating their Constitutional rights to life by subsidizing the
fossil fuel industry. My children know
that their elders in prior generations have created the climate crisis while
they display continuing moral inertia neglecting to change our ways. Older generations are providing the young
with unassailable grounds for moral grievance, not just the foundation for an
innovative lawsuit against the government.
Not only is
grievance culture toxic to community, it brings down the church and the Kingdom
of God in four ways. First, grievance by the young delegitimates institutions,
like the church, promoted by earlier generations. Second, grievance interferes
with a healthy appreciation for Creation’s goodness, running down the idea and our
message of a Creator. Add to this the environmental destruction resulting in
mass extinctions, where the totality of God’s worshiping community is
disrupted. I refer you to the vision of the assembly of animals praising God in
Psalms 104 and 148. Finally, Is. 44 specifically condemns the
combustion-fueled economy that diverts from subsistence as idolatrous and thus is counter to God’s intended Kingdom.
Isaiah’s
message to us is to consider our profligate combustion-fueled economy as both
idolatrous and an immoral wrecking of God’s Kingdom purpose. Our heat-trapping
pollution is a source of grievance by God as felt in God’s favored future, today’s
children. As Christians, we must take this prophetic challenge seriously. Not as a moral scolding (prophets like
preachers can be moral scolds), but as a message to align your lives to be
Saints with the direction God intends.
And I
believe that God’s intention for the planet involves humanity developing the
virtues that preserve the atmosphere, specifically the virtues of thrift,
self-denial, and loyalty.
The virtue
of carbon thrift takes stock of daily decisions to consume and pursues the path
of least combustion. After worship this morning, in our Sunday Seminar, Marin
Interfaith Climate Action will present some steps we can take to pursue carbon
thrift in our living situations and lifestyle.
I hope you all will attend. The virtue of carbon thrift is the most
compelling of our calls to reduce carbon emissions. Individual thrift in combusting carbon
compounds is the foundation for directing society toward sustainability and
Atmospheric Care.
The virtue
of asceticism, or self-denial, is not taking that jet vacation to exotic,
long-distance locations even though we can afford it. We Christians are not
part of today’s culture of self-creation, where diverse and flashy experience
determines or fleshes out our identity.
We are people created anew in God’s love. We are people of the Holy
Spirit, not of the jet. Our identity is not self-created but realized in the
love we’ve experienced of God and that we reflect outward. The selling of capitalism’s idea of a
jet-travel bucket list is pure consumerist propaganda. Christians are meant to
be counter-cultural. At my stage of life,
exotic travel is not essential to my growth in character or in effectiveness.
The bucket list is capitalism’s implant into our desires. I have given up the
goal of worldwide travel in retirement for the sake of the atmosphere. As I’ve learned to testify from my good
friend, Royce: I will only fly for family.
The next virtue,
loyalty, applies to planet and place.
Loyalty to the planet is not falling for the Hollywood, NASA fairy tale
that humanity has a destiny on another planet so that we can trash this one
getting there. Loyalty to place encompasses people vacationing far closer to
home and purchasing food from local farmer’s markets. Two people driving a car to Los Angeles emits
about ¼ of the carbon compounds and its equivalents than those two people
flying to L.A.
Loyalty to
place displays to neighbors the changes in personal lifestyles one is making
for the benefit of the atmosphere.
I’ve brought
to you this morning the message that profligate consumerism founded on a
carbon-combustion economy negates the Kingdom of God in many ways, and that the
solution is found in our commitments to pursue the virtues that commit
ourselves to the care and stability of the atmosphere. I mentioned that the prophets were moral
scolds when they called ancient Israel’s attention to God’s intention for society. I want to try to suggest how this prophetic
scolding for the sake of the atmosphere and reduced carbon-combustion
consumerism is actually pastoral. In
other words, my message this morning is intended to stimulate saintliness and
the rewards of virtue brought about by carbon thrift, loyal, and consumer
self-denial.
I mentioned
at the outset of my reading from Isaiah that the passage Is. 44.9-20 is not in
the Protestant lectionary. That is, it
is not part of the usual cycle of worship readings in the Church. I have come across only one person who has
heard this passage preached before in the Presbyterian Church, and that was 40
years ago. But I want to point out that this passage is integral to the yearly
cycle of Bible readings in the Jewish synagogue.
Reform
Judaism employs Isaiah 44 (including 44.9-20) in its annual sequence of
parashah and haftarah readings.[1]
That sequence of Isaiah’s condemnation of fuel idolatry is particularly linked
in its readings with God’s Final Judgment. In the year 2020, the Va-yikra
service of 5 Nisan 5780 (March 28) has as its haftarah reading Is. 44.6-23,
with the description, “God’s greatness contrasted with the sin of
idolatry.” The following week (Tzav) has
a haftarah reading of Malachi 3.4-24, described as “Approach of the Day of
Judgment.” This sequence of haftarot that follows the betrayal of God through
idolatry with the Approach of the Day of Judgment is repeated in the year
2021. This sequence is instructive regarding
how seriously Judaism takes the sin of idolatry described by this morning’s
reading of Is. 44. 9-20: It is to be followed by God’s Judgment.
So as a
preacher with a pastoral intent for his call to virtue this morning, I intend
to direct your path to saintliness in your economic and carbon-consuming life.
God’s final judgment awaits us all. And
here’s why I believe that matters existentially beyond solely the legitimate
fear of a powerful and demanding God holding us accountable. I believe God’s final judgment will assign us
to our eternal destiny. While no one
knows what happens after death, our Reformed predecessors thought long and hard
on our final destiny as Christians. They
believed, and it makes sense to me, that our final destiny with God will
reflect the values, virtues, and commitments that we display in our current
life of freedom. If our values,
practices, and virtues pursued in freedom in this life support God’s natural
creation (including atmospheric care and thrift in carbon combustion), then I
believe that our final destiny at God’s assignment will include God’s ongoing
richness of natural creation.
On the other
hand, if our values and commitments in the freedom of this life focus solely or
mainly on technology and material consumption, I believe it is possible that
our final destiny would involve an environment of primarily human-derived
features. I don’t know about you, but I choose the destiny of Saints who rely
on God’s ongoing creative, infinite goodness more than the limited and flaw-infected
creations of humanity no matter how seemingly spectacular and impressive. If we
pursue the values of self-creation through consumerism, it’s possible that will
be our final destiny. If instead, we pursue the values and virtues that serve
God and God’s creation, then I believe that we will receive the exceeding
overflow of benefits in the eternal destiny of God’s goodness and creativity.
Scientists
have their ear to the tracks: they can hear the massive vehicle of climate
change off in the distance, but the enormity of the signal they pick up complicates
their prediction as to the timing of arrival and magnitude of the effects:
The
refugees, the droughts, the famines, the extinctions.
The problems
loom catastrophic, and many of the effects of climate change have already begun
arriving.
In addition
to the cultivation of the virtues of carbon thrift, self-denial, and loyalty to
planet and place, I suggest a visualization exercise for atmospheric
trusteeship. Of course, carbon dioxide and its gaseous equivalents are not
visible, which is part of the problem. However, I’ve begun to visualize
products and processes as the “ashes” that result from their production.
When I look
at my unconsidered purchases of two gadgets for my kitchen, I wince as I
visualize the ashes embedded in their production and operation and the dust of
rust from their obsolescence.
When I see a
plane’s contrail (which scientists are still studying as a potential,
significant source of global warming), I visualize it as a train of ashes.
The Prophet
Isaiah is warning us: Is. 44’s image for the modern combustion-fueled economy
is feeding upon ashes.
The vision I
want to leave you with is the picture of ashes as the material goods and
services one consumes. Ashes of injustice against the poor and other species, ashes
of the futility for material consumption to enable happiness and satisfaction.
Try
visualizing ashes yourself, and you may find your resistance to the carbon
combustion-intensive tragedy increasing and your participation in it abating.
Radical
political and social change is necessary, but even more so is rapid change in
personal lifestyle practices and responsibility.
Our children
and grandchildren are begging, poignantly begging, that we panic over global
warming, but panic with purpose. Let’s turn aside their basis for grievance
against us.
We can have vast
carbon-fueled luxuries, or we can give our children and their children a decent
life. We can’t have both.
Let us stop
grazing on society’s consumer ashes.
Let us learn
instead to embrace and Kiss the Sky. AMEN.
[1] Assembly
of Reform Rabbis UK. “Calendar of Torah and Haftarah Readings: 5779 – 5781/2018
– 2021.” The Movement for Reform Judaism, 2017. Accessed April 13, 2019. https://www.reformjudaism.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Calendar-of-Torah-and-Haftarah-Readings-5779-5781.pdf.
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