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Sermon 04/30/2006
Forsaken and Delivered~
by Reverand Tomas Cary Kinder
April 30, 2006, Third Sunday of Easter, Observing
Earth Day
First Congregational Church in Thetford, Vermont,
UCC
Psalm 22; Philippians 2:5-11; John 20:19-29
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
The gospel tells us that Jesus spoke those first
words of Psalm 22 on the cross. They speak for
anyone going through any kind of deep anguish
or despair, any kind of crucifixion. I imagine
those words were prayed millions of times by Jews
in Nazi Germany. They have been said by people
going through severe depression. They were probably
said in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina by
the poor people whose lives were already hardly
bearable because of the poverty and prejudice
they endured, who now were being stripped of the
last little bit they had.
If you consider that one of the effects we are
already seeing of global climate change is more
intense hurricanes, if you consider that scientists
are expecting more and more Katrinas, as well
as other blights and natural disasters, then “My
God, my God, why have you forsaken me,” becomes
a cry echoing to us not just from the past, but
from the future as well, from “people yet
unborn.” It is a cry coming from Pacific
Island nations that soon will be submerged and
washed away by rising sea levels. It is a cry
from the refugees who will flee the coasts of
Bangladesh and Florida and Texas, tens of millions
displaced, hundreds of billions of dollars lost
in damages. It is a cry echoing from the future
of these very hills, where loss of brilliant foliage
and maple syrup and skiing will be only the most
visible symbols of our suffering.
Already a week does not go by without the media
reporting another study or another sign of climate
change. Each turns up the volume a little more,
louder and louder: “My God, my God, why have
you forsaken me?”
That cry drowns out the small, still voice of
God replying mournfully, “Children, children,
why have you forsaken me?”
Earth day was one week ago, Good Friday and Easter
two weeks ago. Today’s sermon asks what Good
Friday and Easter suggest we do about the earth.
Christians are particularly called and uniquely
situated to address this issue because our religion
rose up out of the belief that the end of the
world was at hand. Our scriptures are like a manual
for living in the end times. The central message
of Jesus Christ was the same as John the Baptist
before him and the Apostle Paul after him—repent,
for the realm of God is at hand. Repent. To repent
means to turn around from our focus on this world
and put our focus on God. It is the same movement
Mary Magdalene made at the empty tomb, the movement
I talked about on Easter, when she turned around
and saw Jesus. She turned around and he took away
her despair and gave her something to do.
Paul wrote, “Let the same mind be in you
that was in Christ Jesus.” That is what repent
means: to change our mind that way.
We can expect to hear more and more horrifying
stories of global climate change. We can expect
to see people around us panic or despair or escape
into the numbness of hedonism or apathy. We will
be tempted to do the same. But the earth needs
us and God needs us to keep our heads and not
lose heart. We need to have the same mind in us
that was in Christ Jesus, the same Holy Spirit
that comforted, guided and empowered him. We need
more than ever to follow Jesus faithfully through
the time ahead. Because if we do, we may not only
save ourselves, we may help save the world.
The 22nd Psalm tells us much about the mind of
Christ. Many people know the suffering cry with
which it begins. “My God, my God, why have
you forsaken me?”
Jesus was in real anguish on the cross, just as
we will be as we watch and experience the overwhelming
suffering climate change is bringing. He suffered
and cried out that first line. But in Jewish tradition,
to say the beginning is as if you said the entire
Psalm. The 22nd Psalm begins in feeling forsaken
but ends in being delivered. And that is the first
way in which we can be of use to the people of
Earth in the coming years. Like Christ, we can
bear witness to the God who delivers.
The Christian religion gives not only the comfort
of faith, but also the comfort Jesus gave Mary
and the disciples on Easter—the comfort of
having something to do. Others may panic, others
may despair, others may become hedonistic or apathetic,
in the face of immediate disaster, but we do not
have to—those are not for us. Jesus came
among the frightened, confused disciples that
first Easter night, as John tells it, and the
first thing he did was give them peace, and the
second thing he did was give them the power of
the Holy Spirit, and the third thing he did was
send them out to do the same kinds of things he
had done. Those are the three traditional activities
of the Holy Spirit: to comfort, to empower and
to guide. This is the three-fold calling we have
now in a world of global climate change.
Our role is first to do whatever helps us regain
the peace of Christ. For many of us it is prayer.
Our Prayer of the Heart circle works toward inner
peace as we meditate and share communion every
Thursday. Others find the peace of Christ reading
sacred writings or taking walks in nature or knitting
or drawing. We can find Christ’s peace in
the comfort of this congregation, in the sharing
and caring that happens here. Our first task in
the face of global climate change is to take responsibility
for ourselves—to make sure we are contributing
to the peace of the world and not adding to the
panic or despair or apathy.
Note that apathy and peace are not the same. Apathy
seeks a way out of suffering by not caring about
the truth; peace comes by finding a way through
suffering to deeper truth. Apathy remains captive
to what it refuses to care about; but peace has
found the truth that sets us free.
This movement toward inner peace in the face of
end times is deeply rooted in Christian tradition.
Thomas Merton says that the earliest Christian
monks saw the society of the Roman Empire as a
shipwreck compared to the way of God’s realm.
They saw that they had to swim for their lives,
or they would go down in the wreck. So they did
what they had to do to reach the rock of Christ’s
peace. It looked like escapism at first as they
fled to the desert monasteries and hermitages.
But, Merton says, once they were there on solid
rock above the waves, they saw that they had an
obligation to turn around and help others. It
was their calling from Christ to go back into
the world and do the kinds of things he did—working
to heal what was hurting and restore justice and
help the whole world come to dwell in the peace
of God’s realm.
Even as we seek the Spirit’s comfort, we
need to open ourselves to receive the Holy Spirit’s
power. Every one of us has been given gifts. Some
of our gifts and talents we were born with or
developed. Some are experiences that have helped
us gain compassion or wisdom. Some of our gifts
are material resources. The Holy Spirit’s
power takes those gifts and makes them alive within
us. It charges them, breathes life into them,
gives them boldness and magnifies them. This is
what happened to the disciples when the Holy Spirit
came upon them.
The Spirit of Christ gives us comfort and peace,
it gives us power and then it gives us work to
do. The Spirit will use us in ways large or small,
direct or indirect, to help save the Earth and
its inhabitants from shipwreck. Christians who
do not panic or despair but who use their inner
peace and power to try to save the world from
global climate change will work miracles as the
Spirit’s instruments.
We cannot know what miracles. We cannot know what
future we will help God usher in. We may not live
to see what good we have done. We need to do this
work not in order to see change, but because it
is the right thing to do. We need to do this work
simply for the sake of doing it, because we are
called to witness to the way of Christ and God.
We need to keep doing it even when all hope of
saving humanity seems gone. We should not fret,
but keep on seeking peace, spiritual power and
something to do.
Each of us has our own role to play. Look what
the Spirit did to the first disciples in the Book
of Acts. Peter preached and led. Stephen was a
Deacon who took care of those in need and spoke
truth to power. Paul was an organizer and educator.
Some of us will be called to educate, some to
organize, some lobby, some take care of those
suffering from the effects of climate change,
some preach and lead. And like Peter, Stephen
and Paul, some of us may be put in jail or even
die for the sake of the vision of God’s realm
on Earth.
This is the struggle we are engaged in—a
struggle between two visions: on the one hand,
the vision that we are completely forsaken, that
our children will inherit unthinkable suffering
as our planet convulses and life rushes toward
extinction; or on the other hand, the vision that
Psalm 22 ultimately affirms, that our children
will live to “proclaim God’s deliverance
to a people yet unborn.” Our task in the
face of global warming is to hold onto the vision
of God’s will and keep working toward that
ideal, no matter how unrealistic it may seem.
Imagine that with our help our children will find
God’s presence in their affliction, and Christ’s
peace, and the Spirit’s comfort, power and
guidance.
Imagine that with our help our children will turn
this world around so that sustainability and sufficiency
for all will govern our economic systems, rather
than profits for a few and poverty and pollution
for millions.
Imagine that our children will live to see God’s
Creation valued above the creation of wealth and
power, and will see clean water and air and healthy
food for all guaranteed as a fundamental human
right.
Imagine that our children will consider violence
against another being to be an abomination and
will live in world where all people love their
neighbor and their earth as their self, where
people see that to hurt another is to do harm
to themselves, and where all Creation is seen
as one unified manifestation of God. Imagine a
world where mercy and justice for all guarantee
peace forever more.
This is what we are praying for when we say, “Thy
will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
Global climate change and the polluting greed
and cold-heartedness that lead to it are completely
incompatible with this vision of God’s will.
Is this vision worth living for? Is it worth suffering
and even dying for? If so, whether we live or
die, let us do so for the sake of establishing
God’s realm on Earth, however wild and distant
a dream that may seem. Let us do so in the faith
that even when we feel forsaken, God’s love
is with us and will deliver us. Jesus comes through
locked doors. We may die, but the Spirit never
dies.
As the Rev. William Sloane Coffin said on his
deathbed, “When all seems hopeless, remember
to hope.” That sums up the message of the
22nd Psalm, and the message of Good Friday and
Easter to people living in cataclysmic times.
Let us pray in silence, asking the Holy Spirit
to comfort, empower and guide us. Let us pray….
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