Project 2025 Resources

This is not a sermon, but seeds for action.

I attended the O & A Townhall Meeting with Rev. Derek Terry, Program Director, on Project 2025 on July 30th. There is valuable information and slides to share. I would add there is a strong movement to promote a cultural genocide of silencing and eradicating LGBTQ+ voices of the Heritage Society. I want to note that the President of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, has ties to the Catholic extremist organization, Opus Dei, founded in Spain in 1928 by Catholic priest Josemaría Escrivá with clear fascist leanings. It is worth making available and carrying on grassroots discussions. I find it incompatible with the ministry of the compassionate Christ and his radical inclusive welcome:
• PDF of the Slides: Google Drive Link https://drive.google.com/file/d/10beJiM_UzNKjpBTpX2gWuXQvrwokMAzw/view
• Project 2025 Full PDF https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf
• Financial Info On The Heritage Foundation https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/237327730
• Resources from GLAAD https://glaad.org/election-2024-exposing-project-2025/
• NY Times Article https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/01/us/politics/heritage-foundation-2025-questionnaire.html
• How Project 2025 will Impact Black People https://capitalbnews.org/project-2025-black-voters/

Listen to Voices of Nature Earth Day 2024

Listen to Voices of Nature Earth Day 2024

Listen to voices of nature is important for us this year’s Earth Day. I saw a T-shirt logo, “Earth Day is everyday.” I have learned to listen to nature’s many voices over the many years as I have sought comfort during moments of grieving as well as times appreciating the beauty and sensory feast of nature’s scent, sounds, sharing in cycle of interbreathing oxygen and carbon dioxide with plant life, feeling sun light, wind, and rain. As my embodied senses take in the natural world, our senses become embodied points not only contact but direct consciousness of nature. Often accompanied by my companion dogs, who enjoy the sunlight or being together, I become aware how mindfully they attend the present moment while we humans easily suffer from attention deficit disorder when it comes to nature. In a radio interview, Evelyn Underhill, an author of early studies of mysticism, describes humans as “deaf at a concert.” Here is the full quote:

But so many Christians are like deaf people at a concert. They study the programme carefully, believe every statement made in it, speak respectfully of the quality of the music, but only really hear a phrase now and again. So they have no notion at all of the mighty symphony which fills the universe, to which our lives are destined to make their tiny contribution, and which is the self-expression of the Eternal God.[i]

So many Christians are deaf to the symphony of animacy and subjectivity in nature; they do neither take the time to be attentive to the biophony, the sounds of life, or geophony, the sounds of the natural processes of the bioregions where they live. It raises a thorny question. If we are unable to listen and perceived the S0pirit’s presence in nature, how likely are we able to listen and perceive the Spirit in churches?

We neither appreciate fully our bonds and interconnections to the more than human life around us. We do not slow down to become mindful of what is spatially available and immediate to our senses and feel gratitude for the pre-original gift of the Earth, a gift of the Creator Spirit who provides the necessities for life: air, water, soil, sun and the life around us. Few slow down to realize our relational interconnections unless we practice some contemplative practice somatically engaging our immediate environment. Nature has a sacramental presence of the Spirit and the incarnated Christ. Thomas Berry often quotes, “The universe is not a collection of objects, but a communion of subjects.” We swim in the presence of life entangled with Spirit.

Pope Francis wrote a prophetic message for World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, September 1, 2022. [ii] He starts out his message, “Listen to the voices of creation…” We need to learn to listen to the voices of nature and learn the languages of the more than human life and the Earth. He writes, “If we learn how to listen, we can hear in the voice of creation a kind of dissonance. On the one hand, we can hear a sweet song in praise of our beloved Creator; on the other, an anguished plea, lamenting our mistreatment of this our common home.”

Listening and learning the various languages of the Earth is to learn and listen to our ancestral parents: God’s Spirit and Mother Earth, ultimately the Sun that spun of her star energy to form the Earth. By listening to the anguished voices of nature/Earth, we become aware how our extractive economies are harming life for a myth of limitless expansion for profit and consumption exceeding the resources of the planet are leading to climate instability, floods, droughts, loss of biodiversity, climate migration, and increased suffering both of human and nonhuman life. It is time for us to listen to nature and allows us to rekindle a love affair with the Earth. If we fall in love with the Earth, we will step up to become Earth keepers.

In listening to the pain of anguished voices of nature, we might discover that that the Spirit and the incarnate Christ have deep roots in life and in the planet. They are found in our midst. In his daily reflection, Richard Rohr made aware of bronze statue of the descent of Spirit of St. Francis of Assisi. Take a look at the figure.[iii] The Spirit is not descending from above, for Francis looking to the dirt of the Earth and finds Spirit in the soil. The Spirit is revealing herself in the soil. It reminds me of the insight of American environmentalist, farmer, author and poet, Wendell Berry, who wrote,

The most exemplary nature is that of topsoil. It is very Christ-like in its passivity and beneficence, and the penetrating energy that issues out it its peaceableness. It increases by experience, by the passage of seasons over it, growth rising out of it and returning to it, not by ambition or aggressiveness, It is enriched by all things that die and enter into it, it keeps the past, not as history or as memory, but a richness, new possibility, its fertility always building out of death into promise. Death is the bridge or funnel by which its past enters into its future.[iv]

In Genesis 2, humanity is born from the soil, and we are part of the soil community. Berry makes an amazing correlation of Christ as topsoil, the most fruit Good topsoil is full of nutrients and full of billions of live bacteria. Topsoil is the foundational of Earth’s ecology; it contains living creatures and non-living nutrients that provide a double ability to drain and retain water that allows good crops as well as provides erosion control. It is the terrestrial matrix for generating risen life, a perfect symbol for tomb in the garden, germinating into the risen Christ (Jn. 12:24-26) The artist of the descent of Spirit upon Franics and Wendell Berry point to a powerful union of resilience for our churches if we take the opportunity to realize that Spirit and incarnate roots of Christ is in topsoil. The topsoil preserves and generates life. The seeds planted in the soil are the Spirit’s churches and numerous groups. We must grow our churches and faith communities and sprout as resilient communities of hope, resistance to nature’s commodification and exploitation, and become Earth Protectors. Watering, sunlight, and good soil as well nurturing and interrelations provide growth. Similarly, our churches must planted in earthen soil and ecological interrelated elements, not am isolationist heavenist salvation escaping earthen life and its responsibilities to our more than human siblings.

The Spirit amidst the symphony of Earth voices calls us peoples of faith to a renewal to connect to the Earth community of life. The Spirit calls for a new creation-centered church to address the climate crisis and catastrophe that we collectively have created. Rev. Brooks Berndt, the Environmental Justice Minister of the United Church of Christ, asks us and our churches to imagine a new ecological Pentecost for Christian churches:

What if we thought of this moment as the beginning of our story (of Pentecost)? In the unlikely circumstances, it is a time for dreaming, for imagining new possibilities. Others might not understand it. They may even disparage it, but the vision of what could be is more powerful than the voices of critics and naysayers.

What is this moment is the dress rehearsal for for your church? It is your chance to try out new ways of being, to enact an alternative to the dismal reality of the present. Like any dress rehearsal it is okay to make mistakes, perfection is not expected. What matters is the effort and practice that is always leading toward the next inspired performance.

Or perhaps, you prefer a different metaphor. What is your church is the training ground, the experimental lab, the flight simulator for budding movement? Whatever the case may be, your church now has the opportunity, a chance to empower its members to go out into the world equipped, trained, and prepared to respond to the call placed upon our present generation. Now it the time, This is our kairos moment. All of have us have the power to act, to be vessels of the divine, and to make possible the world to which we dream.[v]

Our ecological kairos as individuals and communities stand before us a decision to make this Earth Day. Are we to be grafted to Spirit and the Incarnated Christ and commit to become Earth lovers and Earthkeepers? Or do we fail to listen to the voices of Earth and nature?

[i] Ibid.

[ii] Read Pope Franics’ message: https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/messages/pont-messages/2022/documents/20220716-messaggio-giornata-curacreato.html

[iii] https://cac.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/St.-Francis-Statue-Original.jpg Richard Rohr, “The Transformation of Art,” Daily Meditation, April 15, 2024, https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgzGxSlPVsbgvTkqTjpWvWsMhQVzn

[iv] Wendell Berry, The Long-Legged House, (New York, Harcourt Brace and World, 1969, 204

[v] Brooks, Berndt, Cathedral on Fire: A Church Handbook for Climate Change, Cleveland, United Church of Christ, 2020, 54.

A Moment of Conflicted Conscience

Much of the research on microplastics has focused on rivers, lakes and oceans. But plastics are a major problem on land, too. From water and soft drink plastic bottles, and single use plastics such as grocery bags, discarded plastics pollute soils and ecosystems of the planet. Tiny microparticles of plastic have been found everywhere — from the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean, to the top of Mount Everest, to our waterways, and even in the food we eat. The plastic pandemic has permeated nearly everywhere. In the last year, researchers have documented microplastics in the human body, in lungs, maternal and placental tissues, human breast milk and blood.

At Annual Gathering of the Florida Conference, we celebrated all the 2023 Synod Resolutions passed, including the Plastic Free Resolution to attempt to mitigate plastic usage. I am not pointing any fingers at anyone, for I am as complicit in buying food wrapped in plastics from the grocery market, and I eat peanut sandwiches from bread wrapped in plastic. We have reduced plastic bottles in our household and even recycle them when I know the municipal waste management does not really recycle but burn plastics when 30% remain in the ashes and slag and cancer-causing dioxins and furans are released into the atmosphere. In the last two years, plastics research has escalated how it ecologically hurts the environment and human and other life.

At the meeting luncheon, several people looked to me to monitor and speak about the plastics used in plastic luncheon containers since I participated in the drafting of the plastics resolution. I finally said to a person, “It is also your responsibility as well.”

At the closing worship, we included a communion service. Pitchers of grape juice and gluten-free wafers wrapped individually in plastic wrappers were on the table. It was significantly different for me than the luncheon plastic containers. My body became anxious, and I found myself decentered. I have a peanut butter sandwich once or twice a week and take bread wrapped in a plastic bag.

I had been writing on baptism and water for Earth Justice Lectionary project. I reflected on te headwaters of the Jordan River that are relatively pure and safe, but the lower Jordan River where Jesus was baptized, the waters are polluted with untreated sewage, agricultural chemicals, industrial waste, and brackish water. The polluted waters of the Jordan are no longer sanctified or even safe for human baptisms.

The Christian writing of the Didache at the first century CE emphasized the use of “living water” over stagnant water in administering baptism. Stagnant water was determined to be detrimental to the symbol of the gift of the Spirit and new life, and even more contaminated water destroys the symbol of God’s providence in the sacrament. How can water that endangers health and safety of the baptized be used for sacrament that represent God’s Spirit, who cares for all and is prayed to a the sustainer of life> and new life? Water’s physicality as clean and safe matters for the administration of baptism. Would you baptize a child or adult from local waters, many of which are contaminated waters with agrochemical fertilizers and pesticides or other dangerous toxins? This is true of Florida’s waterways and the reason for a public ballot initiative for the right for clean and safe water. Water symbolized as new life and the living God is distorted by polluted chemicals, industrial waste, and dangerous toxins.

Now the eucharistic meal that Jesus performed in his open commensality and last supper has been a central feature of my spiritual growth and praxis of compassion and justice since young. As pastor, we celebrated a communion rite each Sunday. (There are a few UCC churches and Disciples/UCC churches also do so). It is central symbol practice of Jesus’ radical inclusive love, hospitality and compassion, and connection to a Jewish creation spirituality. Some scholars have argued that Jn. 6;51 was the part of the bread prayer and Jn 15:5 may have included as the prayer for the cup. No matter what I have perceived that in both discourses in John’s Gospel indicate that God becomes part of the food cycle. Food is a perquisite for nourishment and life. It intimately links us to creation. Eating mattered to Jesus, “give is this day our daily bread” and his practice an open table. New Zealand theologian Neil Darraugh observes, “God’s gift of Earth resources for human survival (and other life as well) and delight (ask my dogs about treats) is not detached from God by being given. God remains immanent to those resources and to human (and other life) users.” (At Home in the Earth: Seeking an Earth-centered Spirituality)

The risen incarnate Christ is particularly present for me in bread and juice at the eucharist. When confronted with the celebrant’s prayer of consecration over the bread, I remembered what I wrote about polluted waters as incompatible with the symbol of living water and the Spirit symbolized in the rite of baptism. I looked at the wafer wrapped in plastics and remembered my peanut sandwich with bread wrapped in plastic my awareness of the plastics pandemic and harm to life, and the UCC Synod Resolution. My reverence for eucharist was so offended by the symbol of plastics covering the wafer. I remembered all the times, as pastor unwrapping communion wafers made by Catholic nuns for weekly Sunday communion rites, but I could not receive the wafer with plastic pollution around what I considered the consecrated body of Christ. I chose not to receive the wafer, and during the music.

I walked up to altar and took a piece of consecrated bread into my body, felt interconnected to Christ incarnated in earthen and ecological life. (Jn. 6:51).
We are in a plastics pandemic that threatens life, and we need to take a stance to limit our exposure to plastics and mitigate and eliminate the microplastics that spread virally in our ecosystems and the ecosystem of our bodies. I quoted Thich Nhat Hanh,

When a priest performs the Eucharistic rite, his role is to bring life to the community. The miracle happens not because he says the word correctly, but because we eat and drink mindfulness. Holy communion is a strong bell of mindfulness. We drink and eat all the time, but we usually ingest only our ideas, projects, worries, and anxieties. We do not drink our beverage. If we allow ourselves to touch our bread deeply, we become reborn, because our bread is life itself. Eating deeply, we touch the sun, the earth, and everything in the cosmos. We touch life, as we touch the kin-dom (my edit) of God. (Living Buddha, Living Christ)

Toolkit: Compassion is Justice: Standing in Solidarity with Transgender Nonbinary Youth and Adults

Rev. Dr. Bob Shore-Goss

I want to start with a scriptural verse Mt. 25: 40 “Whatever you do the least of my family, you do it to me.” Here Jesus brings a notion of the least, those marginalized and scapegoated, he is the persons or groups targeted for exclusion and violence. What I love about Jesus is that he consistently teaches us that compassion is justice. When we stand in solidarity with those who are marginalized we stand Jesus the Christ.

I want to call us as a Conference to stand with transgendered folks as they are scapegoated in a phenomenon called by sociologists “panics.” I was introduced to the notion of sex panics in the 20^th century by gay historian Allan Berube. Berube describes sex panic as “a moral crusade that leads to crackdown on sexual outsiders.” I experienced the sex panics of the Moral Majority and other Christians who targeted and scapegoated gay and stigmatized them as “diseased,” “degenerate,” and “dangerous” Cardinal Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI, labelled us as “intrinsically evil, objectively disordered.” There are so many horror stories of violence and exclusion during that period. Violent rhetoric leads us to increased violence and hated crimes.

There are increased violence and xenophobic targets: Jews, Asians, asylum seekers, people of color, and LGBTQI+ folks. We are in another sex panic that has been widened to include gender variance panic. Such moral panics play upon irrational feelings of fear that some person or group of persons, whose values, skin color, or lifestyles threatens the well-being and safety of society.

The UCC, in various conferences including Florida, have passed resolutions in support of trans and non-binary folks. The General Synod will consider a resolution to affirm the dignity of transgender and non-binary dignity amid legislative attacks. https://www.ucc.org/synod-is-asked-to-affirm-commitment-to-transgender-nonbinary-dignity-amid-legislative-attacks/

I want to propose some resources for congregations and actions in compassion solidarity with trans and non-binary youth and people”

Biblical Support for Preaching:

There are three passages we might want to reflect upon: Isaiah 56: 1-5, Mt. 19:12, and Acts 8:26-40. Take a look at the Queer Bible Commentary for further reference; Justin Sabia Tanis, Trans-Gender: Theology, Ministry, and Communities of Faith, and Sean D. Burke, Queering the Ethiopian Eunuch, and Halvor Moxnes, Putting Jesus in Place: A Radical Vision of Household and Kingdom are good sources for preaching. Justin Sabia-Tanis and Sean Burke are seminary professors and contributors to the Queer Bible Commentary, and Melissa and Melissa-Harl Sellew & Joshua Reno write on Galatians from a transsexual perspective.in the QBC. I would add the work Trans/Formation co-edited by two colleagues and friends that I have worked with Lisa Isherwood and the late Marcella Althaus-Reid. The essay give insight into the deep and profound spiritual lives amidst struggle against religious and cultural prejudices. There are many more books by trans Christian authors.

Eunuchs are gender variant or proto-trans folks in the Bible. I want to address three passages briefly.

Isaiah 56:5 declares, “To the eunuch notes how eunuchs, who keep my Sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons and daughters, I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.” This Isaian prophecy speaks of inclusion and the diversity of gender variant peoples.

The context for Jesus’ eunuch saying in Matthew 19:11-12 is a slur against Jesus. Jesus identifies with the third category of eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for God’s kin-dom. Jesus stands in solidarity with eunuchs, and I have personally met a number of eunuchs dedicated to Jesus’ kin-dom practice, and they are included in our congregations as lay and ordained members.

Let me now focus on the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8: 26-ff. The Ethiopian eunuch embodies intersectionality as a man, African, non-Jew God fearer, and a eunuch in the court of the Queen of Ethiopia, and he is the first non-Jewish convert to the Jesus movement. Eunuchs have been proto-transgendered individuals in the ancient world and even in the modern world as Hijras, religious eunuchs in Hinduism. The eunuch was not religiously acceptable in the ancient world as transgendered folks are not acceptable to many conservative Christians today. The post Easter Jesus movement reflected Jesus’ radical inclusive practices of inviting outsiders and marginalized into his table fellowship. If God in the Isaiah scripture, Jesus in the eunuch statement in Matthew, and Luke in Acts on the baptism of the Ethiopian eunuch is welcome into the body of Christ, then we can stand in solidarity.

UCC Response

I am proud of the UCC response: From the UCC website: The Rev. Paul Eknes-Tucker, pastor of Pilgrim Church UCC in Birmingham, Ala., joined a group of parents and medical providers in the state to file a lawsuit against it, and a judge blocked its enforcement while the case proceeds. In Alabama, Texas, Florida, there are may legislative attacks on trans children and youth and their families.

What can our churches do? Here are some of my suggestions as well UCC churches, Conferences, and eh denomination.

If you are not ONA, become ONA. Take the time to learn about LGLBTQ+ issues. Not going through says a lot about not caring enough to learn about us. The ONA has a process, and my husband Joe is a UCC clergy and recognized ONA trainer. He had 1600 clinical hours at LA Children’s Hospital, 400 hours as chaplain in the Transgendered Children’s Cinic. For his second MA in Pastoral Chaplaincy, his MA thesis is “Pastoral Care of Transgendered Youth.” I was the first pastoral writing on transgendered youth. An abbreviated version is included in Queering Christianity: Finding a Place at the Table LGBTQI Chrsitians. We were co-pastors of MCC United Church of Christ, North Hollywood, CA and worked with a number of trans women and men. Rev, Megan Moore a transgendered woman UCC clergy wrote a chapter on “The Transgendered Christ.”
Educate yourself. Read Justin Sabia -Tanis book Trans-Gender: Justin is a trans gay male, a UCC clergy, and seminary professor at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities. He has a number of talks and worship service on youtube. One talk. One is “When did we see you Lord,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNrzY5aVCaI&t=106s Justin has spoken to the North Hollywood Church that I and my husband co-pastored. I supervised his D. Ministry thesis that became the book Trans-Gendered: Theology, Ministry, and Communities of Faith, originally published by our own Pilgrim Press.

In addition, watch Call Me Malcolm. It is on the UCC youtube channel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sh4Pv10lFyc Malcom is an ordained UCC trans male clergy. I have shown it at churches and in the classroom for university students. It is quite good.

Network and find a trans local network. Invite a speaker to come share their biographical journey. Each semester, I invited a transgender person into my university class to speak about their journey and answer questions bout their journey. This had impact upon the students. Real people make the issue real for the congregation.

Include as part of your worship Trans Day of Remembrance, November 20^th. The recitation of names of trans folks murdered that year. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sh4Pv10lFyc

Action Items of UCC ONA on the Day of Trans Remembrance

https://www.ucc.org/what-we-do/justice-local-church-ministries/justice/health-and-wholeness-advocacy-ministries/lgbt/trans/transgender-day-of-remembrance/

Further UCC resources

Prayer for Transgender Day of Remembrance
– A Pastoral Letter and Prayer for Transgender Day of Remembrance
If you wish to name in your prayers the transgender victims of murder in the U.S. and worldwide, the current list is in the resources posted at Remembering Our Dead and the Trans Murder Monitoring (TMM) project.

UCC Resources for Transgender- Non-Binary Resources https://www.ucc.org/what-we-do/justice-local-church-ministries/justice/health-and-wholeness-advocacy-ministries/lgbt/trans/

Transgender and Nonbinary Dignity and Rights Under Attack

Transgender Non-Binary Bill of Rights, https://www.ucc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Transgender-Talking-Points-for-Faith-Leaders.pdf

These talking points are for use in general conversation, panel presentations, interviews, church legislative bodies, and other settings of engagement on the issues. Anti-trans political forces are trying to criminalize families and doctors as they work to address the trauma of being assigned a gender at birth that is incongruous with the child’s or adult’s actual gender identity. Children are being targeted by banning them from sports teams that match their gender. These attacks not only impact trans and nonbinary children and youth, but adults and seniors, as well, and are drivers of crimes against trans and nonbinary people that continue to escalate. These actions threaten the safety and well-being of the whole community. Please notice the talking Points are useful conversion and advocacy.

Join advocacy group or form advocacy group in the Florida Conference, We need to oppose vulnerable trans children/youth. They are being denied medical service, and the suicide rate of trans you four times that of LGB youth. Florida Transgender Resources Check for local resources and networking. These include social and legal resources. https://www.transgendermap.com/resources/usa/florida/

Be bold. Hang the modern rainbow flag outside on the church that includes trans colors. It makes a statement that you are in solidarity with trans and non-binary persons Your churches need to be places of solidarity and welcoming.

Don’t hesitate to contact me or Joe if you have questions or are in need of further resources

Rev. Dr. Bob Shore-Goss. revdrbobshoregoss@gmail.com

Rev. Dr. Joe Shore-Goss, revjshoregoss@gmail.com

Listen to the stories and start conversations: Let me end with a paraphrase of Gregory of Nyssa by womanist theologian M. Shawn Copeland. .

If my sister or brother is not at the table, we are not the flesh of Christ. If my sister’s mark of sexuality must be obscured, If my brother’s mark of race must be disguised if my sister’s mark of culture must be repressed. Then we are not the flesh of Christ. It is through and in Christ’s own flesh that the “other” is my sister.is my brother, indeed, the other is me… The establishment of the Church is re-creation of the world. But it is only in union of all particular members that the beauty of Christ’s body is complete. M. Copeland, Enfleshing Freedom, 82)

The Lineage of the Womb: The Path of Compassion

Jesus, Buddha, Martin Luther King Jr., Francis of Assisi, Dorothy Day, the 14^th Dalai Lama, Harriet Tubman, Mother Theresa, Thich Nhat Hanh, Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, Henri Nouwen, and many unnamed women and men in history: What do they have in common.

This morning I am focusing on two verses, Pslam 33:5, “Earth is filled with the compassion of the Lord,” and the other in Luke 6:36. “Be compassionate as Abba God is compassionate.” The usual English translation is usually translated “merciful.” For the Hebrews, the root word for compassion is the “womb-like (racham).” In Jeremiah, God speaks of care for a child,, “Therefore my womb trembles for the child; I will truly show motherly-compassion upon my child.” When the Hebrew scriptures speaks of God’s compassion, it denotes a “wombishness.” What does it mean to say God is like womb? Marcus Borg answers,

Like a womb, God is the one who gives birth to us — the mother who gives birth to us. As a mother loves the children of her womb and feels for the children of her womb, so God loves us and feels for us, for all of her children. In its sense of ‘like a womb,’ compassionate has nuances of giving life, nourishing, caring, perhaps embracing and encompassing. For Jesus, this is what God is like.(Marcus Borg)

In both testaments, the word compassion is used 145 times, mostly describing God or Jesus in the gospels. In the first three gospels, Jesus is described as having or feeling compassion (splagchnizomai) –literally, “moved so deeply that you feel it in the pit of your stomach.”

In his baptism and wilderness experience, Jesus was led by a Spirit Guide, the Holy Spirit in the image of a dove, into a vision quest in the wilderness. There he learned by listening and being attentive to life in the wilderness and the Spirit of God that resided there. There he learned the meaning of the prayer of Psalm 33:5: “Earth (the land) is filled with compassion of the Lord.” Jesus understood the central characteristic or feature of Abba God is compassion. He would encourage his disciples and audience to ‘be compassionate as God is compassionate. That he urged them to be like a womb as God is like a womb. To view and act like a womb to feel love and act caring as God acts. God has provided the Earth as a life-giving gift that nourishes and sustains our lives. The compassion of the earth is the gift of life, the nurturing gifts that make our lives possible: air we breathe, the land produces abundance and food, the water is that quenches our thirst and vital to all life, and the healing dynamics of the Earth for us. Earth is understood as maternal, a mother, who compassionately provides for all life. Jesus discovered that God’s compassion was deeply embedded in the natural world, created as sacred and gift for abundant life. He heard the voice of the Spirit within a world created as, sacred and beloved—within which all life belongs. Humans were integrally part of this sacred and beloved created world of life and gifts that sustain life. God’s Spirit was a primal force, a wild grace and impulse of God’s compassion in the world. Jesus called this kin-dom, not kingdom.

Jesus learned that all life and the Earth were interdependent upon each other for life and flourishing. The Earth and its components, all creatures, were “good” and beloved were God’s original gift we were born into live and relate as a beloved community. Compassion was the spiritual force, impulse embedded in our hearts and soul, and whose dynamics of mercy, love, and forgiveness the Spirit commissioned him to preach, heal, and practice in the social world that was broken and alienated. Jesus practiced a God’s fierce compassion that did not accept outsiders, it did not accept.

Rodney Stark a sociologist of religion, studied the growth of Christ community from its beginning. Te Christ community became an urban movement, spreading to the cities of the Roman Empire. He estimated that there 5000 about 50 CE, about 50,000 at 100 CE, 200,000 at 200 CE, and 4 million by 300 CE. What led to the exponential growth of the Christ community. There plague in the mid 2^nd and 3^rd centuries ….The Christians stayed in the cities and compassionately cared for their own members and for non-Chrsitians. Their witness led to that growth of the Christ community.

In my book, God is Green: An Eco-Spirituality of Incarnate Compassion, the first chapter is entitled, “Snakes, Worms, and Compassion.” It was strange title to me since I have a phobia of snakes, especially, poisonous snakes.

The chapter begins with a medieval historian at UCLA, Lynn White, who wrote an article for Science magazine in 1968, “The Origin of the Ecologic Crisis.” His article appeared two years before the first celebration of Earth Day in 1970. He argues that the Christian reading the text in Gen. 1:28 where God instructs humanity, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it and have dominion over the earth.” He observed that Christianity was the most anthropocentric religion, meaning human-centered or privileged. Over the centuries, this verse has led Christians to justify exploiting and recklessly dominating nature for greed, profit, and God.

Dr. White received a violent backlash from Christian leaders and many theological scholars for his article. He was called “godless, secular,” and, of course, a “junior antichrist in partnership with Communist Russia.” He was not godless atheist: he was a “PK,” a “preacher’s kid.” His father was Presbyterian minister. All sorts of biblical scholars played linguistic gymnastics to disprove that the Genesis instruction really meant “subjugating and dominating the earth.” Lynn White offered a solution to the ecological crisis with less insight than we now have about climate change and environmental destruction by humanity. He argued that a technological fix was not the solution, but he looked to the examples of St. Francis of Assisi and Albert Schweitzer. Almost everyone ignored his models for a solution. But White “believed in the Holy Spirit was still whispering to us,” and looked to a spiritual solution to the ecological crisis. Most critics ignored his examples.

This led me to play detective. I learned that as young man of sixteen he traveled to South Asia and recorded an experience then in Ceylon, now Sri Lanka. He reminisced about an event of a road construction with a Scottish Presbyterian manager and indigenous Buddhist laborers. The workers came to halt in the work. There were a series of large sand mounds, and they refused to destroy them to make way for highway construction. These mounds housed snakes, and they refused to destroy the homes of snakes. White writes, the workmen spared (these nests) not because they were afraid of snakes, but that the snakes had a right to their houses so long as they wanted to stay there. He notes, ”If the workers had been Presbyterian Christians, the snake nests would have been destroyed.” My Buddhist radar went off, the workers were Buddhists and were ingrained with notions of compassion not to harm or create suffering. I read his follow-up essays years later. He wrote, “I am searching for ways to regain a perception of spirituality of all creatures and demote man’s absolute monarchy over nature.” (God is Green) I want you hear his prophetic words of compassion:

Do people have the ethical obligations towards rocks? To almost all Americans saturated with ideas historically dominant in Christianity…the question makes no sense at all. If the time comes when any considerable group of us that the question is no longer ridiculous, we may be on the verge of a change of value structures that will make possible measure to cope with the growing ecological crisis. One hope that there is enough time left. (God is Green)

Bishop Stephen Charleston, a member of the Choctaw nation, looks at Jesus’ vision quest in the wilderness. He writes about the first challenge that Jesus faced:

He pays attention to the stones around him in the desert, And in his hunger, he imagines the stones as loaves of bread on the desert floor teach him? Are they physical nourishment for him or spiritual nourishment of a different kind? (God is Green)

Stones are the eldest of living things for the Choctaw. And Jesus listened to the stones who told him they embodied the divine. The stones led back to spiritual balance from temptation and thus Jesus professed “the people do not live by bread alone but every word that come from the mouth of God?”

No wonder Dr. White turned to Francis of Assisi who imitated Jesus’ compassionate solidarity with the suffering: with the poor, the lepers, outsiders, and even with the more human life.

The saint understood human beings as creatures and a democracy of all nature and biokind because all of us children of the Creator. Francis in his Canticle, spoke of “Brother Sun and Sister Moon” and view all creatures as sibling creatures.

White takes up the notion that all nature are kin with a powerful understanding of compassion promoted by Jesus the Christ and the Buddha. He affirms,

…Today we have the creaturely companionship not only of the flowering trees that so enrapture…we can sense our comradeship with a glacier, a subatomic particle, or a spiritual nebula. Man must join the club of creatures. They may save us from ourselves. (God is Green)

Francis of Assisi was a perfect model in being “like a womb” for our times of climate crisis. He understood that to love is to be in relationship. He called the Earth “Mother.” And it was not any new ge spirituality or paganism. If we can love one person, one plant, one animal, one special place, there is no reason to that we extend that love to all creatures, all life, and the whole Earth. Francis taught a compassionate love for all creatures. If we can love our creaturely selves, then we can extend that love to our creaturely neighbors, both flora and fauna, and even to the Earth. We are creaturely siblings, and he viewed all creatures and all creation through the eyes of the Creator as “beloved.” His spirituality was viewed as too radical, then, and even now. But just a week ago was the feast day of Francis of Assisi. White may have drawn on Buddhist notions of compassion, but there are strong roots in Jesus’ womb-like compassion dnd Franics of Assisi.

Let me say a few words about the other example of womb-like compassion, Albert Schweitzer—a Lutheran clergy, theologian, musicologist and accomplished organist, went to medical school and became a doctor, and served the poor in the Congo. But he cared for not only humans but also animals. He wrote a book A Reverence for Life and won a Noble Peace Prize for his compassionate, womb-like medical care of indigenous Africans as well as non-human animals. He wrote, “The ethics of reverence for life is noting but Jesus’ great commandment to love…” He also observed,

Wherever you see life—that is, you! In everything, you recognize yourself again…a compassionate sharing of experience with all life. I can do no other than to have compassion for all that is called life…We are ethical if we abandon our selfishness, if we surrender our estrangement toward other creatures, and share in and empathies with that from their experience which surrounds us. (God is Green)

Lynn White draws upon his own Christian traditions of compassion—Jesus, Francis of Assisi, and Albert Schweitzer and taps into the Buddha and his path of compassion. The path of compassion is attentive to the suffering of the poor, vulnerable both human and the more human life. Jesus’ commandment to love your neighbor include the trees, the waters, the mountains, creatures, the snakes, worms, insects ,and the Earth herself. I applaud the work of David Houseal and Windsong in bridging indigenous spiritualities and lifeways that understand nature as kindred and Earth as Mother—all my relatives. The Lakota Sioux use the phrase mitakuy oyasin (all my relations) to refer to the interconnection of every member of creation. All my relatives sound similar to Francis’ Canticle of Creatures where speaks of nature and all creatures as siblings.

The challenge to imitate God’s womb-like compassion invites us to a path of compassion to alleviate the human harm and corporate destruction of life on Earth and all life. We are part of the web or community of life. The path of compassion is transformational by breaking down the barriers of self-centeredness and placing ourselves as fellow creatures in the web of life.

Blessing;

Praised be You, my Lord, with all Your creatures,
especially Brother Sun, Who is the day and through whom You give us light. And he is beautiful and radiant with great splendour;
and bears a likeness of You, Most High One.

Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars,
in heaven You formed them clear and precious and beautiful.Praised be You, my Lord, through Brother Wind,
and through the air, cloudy and serene, and every kind of weather,
through whom You give sustenance to Your creature

Pentecost: Seeking the missing Body of the ascended Christ

Pentecost is celebrated as the founding of the Church, when the Spirit descended upon the male and female disciples in the upper room. It occurs after Jesus ascends into the clouds and his disciples are no longer to see him. Traditionally, it is assumed the ascended risen Christ is in heaven. He sends the Spirit as his replacement for his disciples and what becomes the church. The ascended risen Christ is missing, but the church claims that it has his Spirit. Does it? In what way?

In the last few years, I have understood what the ascended or risen body of Christ means to Pentecost and all definitions of what church is. Churches have understood that the Spirit belongs to them; they think they control and own the Spirit. Jesus and the Spirit are reduced to presence controlled by ritual, sacrament and prayer, and actions within the church. But what if the Ascension, the disappearance of the risen body of Christ in the clouds, activates the commission of Pentecost. Churches think that they have locked up the Spirit of Christ as exclusively their own.

The ascended risen body of Christ is a “missing body” for churches. The ascended body of Christ is a way of speaking theologically that the ascended Christ is “everywhere”, even outside the institutional churches and even outside of Christianity. Creator, Christ, and the Spirit are not the exclusive property of any church. Divine presence constitutes the church. In early Christianity, thoughtful writers argued that the incarnational risen Christ and the Holy Spirit are the two hands of God active in the world, not just in the churches. The world and church are not one sphere.

Churches have restricted the Spirit and the ascended body of Christ within itself. They stand under a grand illusion that they actually control the incarnational presence of Christ rather than understand what the true disappearance of the risen Christ and his disappearance in the clouds means. In John 3:8, Jesus says, “the wind the Spirit) blows where she pleases.” There is a wildness to the Holy Spirit. She infuses Jesus at his baptism in the wilderness, and that Spirit actuates a “wild Christ” who brings a message of God’s compassion and presence in our midst. I have understood the Spirit as mischief maker, undomesticated and causing mischief. “By mischief, I mean what the late John Lewis described as “good trouble.”

Yale theologian Linn Marie Tonstad writes, “Ascension means the body of Jesus is, in a sense, lost to the church—the church does not have it, so the church cannot control who gets to be or who gets to eat Christ’s body.” (Queer Theology) In other words, the church should not exclude outsiders.
Churches often define the body of Christ, the church as the presence of the risen Christ through the Spirit, in word and sacrament, prayer and ritual, and compassionate action and love. Yes, of course, and even more. God, Christ, and Spirit are bigger than churches, bigger than the Bible, and bigger than Christianity. Hear me correctly, I am not saying God neither present in Christianity nor the church, but God is simply bigger and wider.

An ecological biologist, Chris Ubl, offers a description of inclusivity:

Inclusivity is grounded in relationship whereas exclusivity stems from separation. A consciousness rooted in inclusivity generates trust, one moored in exclusivity foments fear—especially, the fear of the other. When our goal is exclusivity, we silence those with whom we disagree, but when inclusivity becomes our goal, we create a world that works for all. (Developing)

Jesus practiced radical inclusive love and compassionate care to end suffering and exclusion. This practice was expressed at his open table. He did not exclude all sorts of suspect and wounded people and outcasts but welcomed them into a table fellowship of a disciples of equals, male and female. Quite radical, a table fellowship without hierarchy, a discipleship of equals, the greatest serving the rest, and open to all, celebrating God’s gracious hospitality and loving acceptance. The open table was radical then and can be again. It has been significant practice for me and my journey in discerning the presence of God. Ultimately, divine presence constitutes church.

Many churches, however, place all sorts of fences and exclusions around the table. They arrogantly control access to the presence of the incarnate Christ. They decide: Who are worthily admitted and who may be excluded to that presence. They fence out and exclude all those unlike themselves—the others. They place so many conditions and strings attached for admission.
The missing body of the ascended Christ in the clouds symbolizes that the churches have made little or no effort to understand their mission first not to exclude people from God’s presence in word and sacrament and secondly to search for the missing body of the risen Christ elsewhere, outside of themselves and even different folks.

The search for the missing body of the ascended Christ has been a lifetime mission for me to look for and discover divine presence outside of its walls. It is a church without walls, a church wherever divine presence is found. As I discovered that presence is found in unexpected places and unimagined or even within “indecent” individuals and locations. You would be surprised where God’s presence may be residing and needs discovery.

There are two significant features of Jesus’ ministry that have equipped my search: 1) his compassionate action; 2) and his open table practice. They are interrelated and co-exist together.

Compassion is not just an emotional response to someone suffering; it includes a sense of identification with the suffering and attempts to alleviate suffering. Compassion is the recognition that the person suffering and in need could be me and what described as “the least of my family.” (Mt. 23:40) Compassion shatters barriers between people. We are open to outsiders. Diarmuid O’Murchu, in his book Inclusivity, writes,

Gospel based compassion tolerates no outsiders. It is embraces and seeks to bring in all who are marginalized, oppressed, and excluded into empowering fellowship. It evokes a double response requiring a reawakened heart that knows it cannot withhold the just action that liberates and empowers. The transformation of the heart which might also be described as the contemplative gaze, asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into the places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. (O’Murchu, Inclusivity)

In Luke 6:36, Jesus instructs, “Be compassionate as God is compassionate.” Gospel compassion allows us to see ourselves in those who are suffering and humbly reach out help and discover Christ’s presence.
Jesus practiced an open table of hospitality where all—in particularly, outcasts, tax collectors, prostitutes, the throw-away people– were welcome. Jesus practiced an inclusive vision of God’s compassionate and hospitable welcome. Let me use spiritual writer, Henri Nouwen definition: “Hospitality is the virtue which allows us to break through the narrowness of our fears and open our home to the stranger with the understanding that salvation comes to us in the form of a tired traveler” (Wounded Healer) His definition originate in Jesus’ ministry of hospitality: Hospes venit, Christus venit. “A guest comes, Christ comes.” The UCC welcome states, “no matter who you and where you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here.” This encapsulates the Jesus’ open table of grace. God’s hospitality has no exclusions. As he commands his disciples in sending them in proclaiming the good news: “Freely received, freely give.” (Mt. 10:8) We do not hoard grace; we give away. Indigenous peoples receive gifts, but a gift is not a gift until it is shared or given away. We named this disparagingly “Indian giver” and I name it not hoarding grace and freely giving it away.

I grew up Catholic, and we were taught: “There was no salvation outside of the Catholic Church.” The Catholic church had the real presence of Jesus at the table, the real Jesus. Few others did. That meant Protestants and non-Christians were not saved, but damned. Grace, salvation, and the open table of Christ cannot be hoarded and restrict. They are free given to us to freely share and give way. In my journey through life, with joys and suffering, I have found that broke down many of my barriers and prejudices of growing up in a small town in Connecticut. The Spirit has an uncanny ability when I would settle with new boundaries of pulling the rung from under me and expanding me even further.
In seminary, my boundaries expanded dramatically, working in India with Mother Teresa and her House of the dying Destitute in Calcutta, making a Zen Buddhist retreat with Joshu Sasaki Roshi at a Trappist monastery, and even in a graduate seminar for doctoral studies.

It is the outsiders who challenge us to live Jesus’s inclusive vision of a compassionate and hospitable community, to search outside and find the presence of the Spirit and the risen body of Christ. The open table reflects God’s hospitality, where there are no exclusions. There are no outsiders to Jesus and to God. For Jesus, freely sharing food signifies the abundant hospitality and inclusive love of God. With Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and the Gulf coast, there were many American organizations and faith communities that gave to those folks in need of the basics. The PEW Foundation studied giving among Christians for Katrina, and they discovered a reluctance among Evangelical Christians to give to anyone unlike themselves. This is not the compassionate action in Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan. I pastored a predominantly LGBTQ church and with several LGBTQ+ churches collected all sorts of relief goods for a black church not open and affirming of LGBTQ” folks. We collected and delivered a huge truck of goods to the church without any strings attached. “Freely received, freely given.” Mt. 10:8) No string attached to people different from ourselves.

My journey has led me to see and experience the wider God in various natural places and locations. As a child, I loved nature and its beauty, especially, trees changing color in the autumn. Mindful connecting with the natural world, the beauty and populated with biodiverse life. I intuited with my senses and my mind that God lives in places. The Bible claims that creation speaks. The language of creation, if we listen with our senses and awareness, elicits wonder, invites attentiveness to a divine presence. The whole universe, in particular the Earth, expresses a language of presence and communion, more complex and mysterious than any written religious text.

The open table I practiced, along with the meditation practices I learned from the Jesuits in finding God’s presence everywhere and the Buddhist meditative practice of paying attention to your senses prepared me to discover the epiphany of divine presence. I found the sense of communion with God in the eucharist was also present in wider manifestation. I experience what one translation of Psalm 33:5, “Earth is filled with the compassion of Lord.” The Christ, the incarnation of God’s compassion, was found in abundance. I discerned the presence of God’s compassion experienced at the open table. Compassion is another word for grace, and that grace surrounds us. We interbreather that grace with other life, we are intimately interconnected to a web of all life

Earth Sunday: Earth and Neighborly Love

“The radicalism of our time is compassion…”The Dalai Lama

And the second: “Be compassionate as God is compassionate.” Jesus, Luke 6:36

Compassion is an intentional practice to enter the pain and suffering of others, hear their cries, and act to alleviate their pain. Compassion means to “suffer with,” and in the Hebrew language and the Bible, it is linked to the word “womb.” In the gospels, the word for womb is replaced with “bowels.” Compassion arises from deep within ourselves; the practice of compassion has three movements: 1) deepening our awareness of God’s compassionate connection to us, 2) a connection to the suffering and pain of another, 3) restoration from the suffering to the community of creation or God’s kin-dom. I would describe it as “living with caring connection.” In the gospels, Jesus embarks on a path of radical compassion, intending to implement God’s compassionate care. This path equips him for the work of God’s justice and restoration of both human and the more than human to well-being.

The story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-37) is one of the most loved parable. On one occasion, religious lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?

“What is written in the scriptures?” he replied. “How do you understand and lie it?”
He answered, ” ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’ [c]; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.”

“You have answered correctly but only partially” Jesus replied.

So he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

In the 21st century, Jesus answers the question in a disturbing way for many.

“Who is my neighbor?” is a disturbing question that challenges us to reflect on whom we choose to be our’ neighbor.’ Jesus revolutionized the identity of ‘neighbor,’ restricted to tribe or ethnicity but now expanded to embrace all people, including those who were ethnic enemies of Judaism—the Samaritans and the Romans.
Let me first argue that we first understand as our neighbor in the parable, is he one mugged, abused, goods stolen, and left for dead. This neighbor is the Earth and its web of life in all the bioregions of the planet.
There was a time in when humans lived closely with the Earth and all life as partners, as kin or family. Earth and humankind were interconnected. Our story in Genesis 2 depicts that God made humans from the soil of the Earth. All plant, animal life, and humans lived with respect for each other and in partnership. We understood the land, water, air, and sky as divine gifts to us. When we shared our goods together in the wilderness of the Sinai, God taught us that there was always abundance. Or when Jesus went out into the wilderness, he reminded the 4,000 and the 5,000 who brought their own food that when he took the bread, blessed, and gave it to the crowds, he symbolized the miracle of God’s abundance in creation. He said, “Do this in memory of me.” They shared, remembering what God originally shared with them: the resources of the Earth, the air we breathe and interbreather with trees and flora. They embraced God as present in the Earth as gift, and the Earth and her resources as a gift of love, enfolding us as neighbor as well.
Do we really see Earth and all life as neighbors? Do we allow ourselves as neighbors to the Earth?
Our actions are not neighborly: here are some unneighborly human actions, carbon and plastic pollution, willful exploitation of resources, rampant consumerism of mining the resources of the planet, uncontrolled economic growth sparked by unbridled greed, the extinction of insects and birds who pollinate flowering plants and guarantee our food system, pollution of waters. We have changed the climate of the planet, and we, in Florida, are at the apogee of risk in the US for climate catastrophe. We are neither sustainably nor responsibly in using the pre-original gift of this planet bestowed upon us out of love.

Being ‘neighbor’ to the Earth is a challenge for every single person on the planet as well as all religious traditions. How might we be neighborly? Can we be neighborly to the Earth our neighbor?
The abused traveler on the side of the highway by the wayside in the parable of the Good Samaritan is the face of Amazon forest burned down and depleted for our addiction to beef, or the forests ravaged by apocalyptic fires, toxic chemical pollution and oil spills, species extinction, running pipelines of toxic oil sludge over sacred grounds of the Lakota Sioux at Standing Rock or pipeline three over indigenous lands and sacred waters in Minnesota. The Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change of the United Nations has just released a 3,000 plus page report how unneighborly to the Earth, its bioregions, and the web of life. We have 8 years to make dramatic changes to reduce our carbon footprint before the planet reaches a tipping point for severe damage.

Here are some good neighbors to the Earth. Swedish young activist Greta Thunberg has repeated the urgency of climate change when she boldly proclaims, “our house is on fire!” to the United Nations, our Congress and world leaders. The house is naturally the Earth! Our youth across the planet are demanding a sustainable world without climate change. In 2015, 21 youth filled a lawsuit against the US government in a case Juliana vs the United States for the right to live and breathe in a carbon free world. They have won case after case, even to the Supreme Court, and the Justice Department and the children have reached an impasse on a settlement agreement. A nine-year old boy Miles in St. Petersburg, and founder of Kids Saving Oceans (https://www.kidssavingoceans.com/pages/about-miles). He says, “I believe a polluted, empty, lifeless ocean shouldn’t be my generation’s inheritance.” His goal is to fundraise one million dollars by age 18 to save life in the oceans. All these are good Eco-Samaritans.

Who are the passerby folks in the parable? Rachel Carson, in Silent Spring, appears to be the first person to use the parable to describe the passerbys.

Like the priest and the Levite in the biblical story, the control men in the state and federal governments and, of course, the chemical manufacturers—choose to pass by on the other side and to see nothing.

We may characterize the first passerby folks as those who can’t be bothered by climate change and/or those who can’t be bothered by what is happening on the planets. It does not affect me. Yet!

The second passerby consists of those who willfully know better but are passing by because they are greedy for short term profit over the welfare of humanity, all life, and the planet. Many humans see themselves as exceptional and above nature and view nature. as thing to be used for our sole benefit. It is commodity, an object, that was created for our use and abuse.

Our beautiful lawns, public and private, form an ecological wasteland, killing valuable insects and birds which are pollinators for our food production. Every Sunday at worship, I witness the young children go up to the front of the church for their Sunday lesson, and I am overcome with heart-breaking concern for our unneighborly behaviors toward the Earth. What kind of Earth, damaged by climate change, will they inherit?

How might Christians be neighborly to the Earth and all life? The answer is embedded in Jesus’s question to the lawyer at the end of the parable. “Who is the neighbor?” The religious lawyer responds, “The one who is compassionate.”

Biblical scholar Norman Habel cites Psalm 33:5, “The Earth is filled with the compassion of the Lord.” He observes, “compassion, whether understood as cooperation or caring, or empathy or nurture, is integral to to the nature of the living planet.” (Rainbow of Mysteries) He continues,

Healing is also dynamic dimension of natures a vital expression of compassion. We can discern healing in everything from the way injured animals care for each other to the way of denuded landscapes are restored by the wind carrying seeds, by the soi that renews fertility, and by the rain that activates life. (Rainbow)

Jesus speaks of God’s providential compassion care for the lilies of the field, and the birds of the air, to the feeding the crowds in the wilderness.

There are two mentors we can turn to assume compassionate care for the Earth. The Creator did not retire after creating the universe. The Creator God remains present and active through the Spirit and the Incarnation, where the Word took on living DNA into God’s self. Both the Spirit and the Incarnate one express God’s fierce compassion for lie and well-being of life. They teach us, encourage us, or provoke us to be compassion in action.

The first is the Holy Spirit, who was at the Big Bang and since then has been ever present in all the Earth processes and evolving life. She is called the “Sustainer of Life.” The Holy Spirit is never controlled by an institution or religion, she mischievously colors outside the lines and creates a divine mischief to move us to what John Lewis calls “good trouble.” In college, when I was part of the college “God Squad,” I would never wish anyone the peace of Christ but the “unrest of the Holy Spirit.” The unrest of the Spirit moves us to love and compassion, and to care for those who are suffering, both human and more than human life.

What does the Spirit ask of us? In Job, she states, “”But ask the animals and they will teach you; the birds of the air, and they will tell you; ask the plants of the earth, and they will teach you” (Job 12:7-8). Plants, animals, bioregions, rivers, mountains, storms, and the Earth have become the primary media from which the Spirit speaks to us. Take the time every to listen to the natural world and discover the Spirit in life. All the great religious prophets were enlightened within nature. They discovered God’s revelation there.

Both the prophets in the scripture and indigenous peoples have told us for thousands of years that nature has much to teach us if we take the time to listen attentively. When we slow down and take several moments to experience nature, to be attentive to the trees and birds, feel the sun and wind on our face, listen to the sounds of nature. We hear the first revelation of God through the Spirit. We practice Sabbath, resting and experience the delight and wonder of nature. We realize that we are like all other creatures and are a part of interconnected web of life. We are not above nature but participating creatures in nature. The Hebrew scriptures are full of contradictions asserting human dominion and yet humans are made from the same dirt of the Earth as the animals and plants. They, likewise, occupy a position of “beloved” of God who cares for all.

Robin Hall Kimmerer, an Anishinaabe professor of ethno-botany, speaks of indigenous people as understanding generosity learned from the land.

Generosity is simultaneously a moral and material imperative, especially among people who live close to the land and know its wave of plenty and scarcity. When the well-being of one is linked to the well-being of all. Wealth among traditional people is measured by having enough to give away. Hoarding the gift, we become constipated with wealth, bloated with possessions, too heavy to join the dance.

This is similar to Jesus’ comment to his disciples. “Freely received, freely give.” Jesus spent forty days in the wilderness and learned we are part of the community of the ground soil, a community of original gift and grace, and we must recover our heritage of grounding our roots in the soil community or we become lost. The Spirit through indigenous peoples and the prophets and the Christ teach us to be neighborly to the land, the earth from which we arise.

The second is Jesus the Christ. Theologian Mark Wallace writes,

One of the best ways to rehabilitate Christianity’s earth identity is through a nature-based retrieval of Jesus as the green face of God. Recovering the Gospel narratives through environmental optics opens up Jesus’ ministry as a celebration of the beauty of the Earth and committed search for justice for all the denizens of the good creation. Jesus is a green prophet; he ministered to the poor and forgotten members of society and criticized extreme wealth based on a disregard of one’s neighbor and the exploitation of the gifts of creation

We proclaim that “the Word became flesh and lived among us.” (Jn. 1:14) God became flesh means that God became a Earth creature, became a complex creature with DNA, linking God to all life with DNA. We often neglect the fact that the DNA, the fleshliness assumed by Jesus the Christ. Connects himself with not only humanity, but all biological life, all material reality to it roots. This has bee call deep Incarnation or the cosmic Christ. Jesus becomes interconnected with all physical/spirit realities. Christ’s Incarnation, his life, death, and resurrection express God’s solidarity with or fierce compassionate with all life.

When Jesus comes out of his wilderness vision quest, he links his mission to a holistic dream of God for us. “The time (kairos) has come: the kin-dom, not kingdom, of God is near.” I use kin-dom because it inclusive of human and all created life on Earth, and Earth herself as a living being. In the wilderness, Jesus understood that Abba God was not only compassionate, but fiercely compassionate. Marcus Borg, the late Jesus scholar observes, “The word Jesus most often identifies the quality of God is compassion.” (Jesus: A New Vision) Jesus instructs his disciples to love your neighbor as yourself. He broke the interpretative ethnic limitations on the commandment to love your neighbor that the lawyer was looking for. He included love of enemies, love of Samaritans, Gentiles, outcasts, sinners, tax collectors, prostitutes, and so on.

When I hear his response to the synagogue leader who criticizes the healing a woman with an illness on the Sabbath, Jesus responds, “Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead the animal away to give water?” (Mt. 13:15) Here we see in Jesus extending the warrant of neighborly compassion to animals. Becoming compassionate, Jesus feels the pain of people, moved to tears at their suffering, and acts to alleviate their pain, sorrow, and suffering. And his compassion is extended to all life, even God’s creation suffering and oppressed. John Philip Newell, claims, “when Jesus commands us to love our neighbors, he does not only mean our human neighbors; he means all the animals and birds, insects and plants, amongst whom we live.” (Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul)

Brian Patrick asks,

Who is our neighbor? The Samaritan? The outcast, the enemy? Yes, yes, of course. But it is also the whale, the dolphin, and the rain forest. Our neighbor is the entire community of life, the entire universe. We must love it all as our self because in fact it is our self. The universe is the primary subject. Earth Spirit)

For Jesus, neighborly love in the Good Samaritan is not about restriction and limitation of God’s compassion but an opportunity to realize the infinite expansiveness of that divine compassion. Extending compassion to God’s Earth and all life demonstrates our capabilities to live caring connected to all that God loves and realize that neighborly love has no limits.

Being ‘neighborly and loving’ to the Earth and more than human life creation is a profound recognition of God’s kin-dom, we see ourselves interrelated and interdependent with animate life, the bioregions of the planet, and Earth herself. Whatever diminishes and destroys life is ecological vandalism, the mugging of Earth or Earth creature that God views as loveable. We are neighbors when we see compassionately life around us and remember Jesus’s words, “when you do to theleast of my family, you do it to me.” Showing compassion for our neighbor the Earth and the web of life are Eco-Samaritans, Earth Keepers, and Water Protectors.

Intersection of Advent and Extinction Remembrance Day: A Eco-Reflection

If God should take back her spirit to herself, and gather to herself her breath, all flesh would perish together, and all mortals return to dust. Job 14:14-15

Advent started Sunday November 28th, and November 30th is Extinction Species Remembrance. I realize with auto-immune disease my own mortality and that I probably will not be alive in a decade from now. Why in a decade? That is the time where humanity has to turn around its lifestyle and develop a sense of urgency to deflect planetary temperature rise by 1.5 degree Celsius, marking a significant point in climate change’s irreversibility.
There is an urgency to examine what you can do deflect the consequences of human impacted climate change.
Advent looks to Christ’s return (parousia) by remembering four central virtues: peace, hope, joy, and love. We look to Christ’s arrival after his resurrection. This made sense when we viewed God transcendent to the world and not immanently present the world. I will suggest the arrival language needs to be applied to ourselves. The risen Christ and the Holy Spirit are already involved in creation and in particular, the Earth. What I will suggest that the four Advent virtues are intentional practices. Intentional practices are deliberate actions to improve yourself. In spirituality, it is the practice to consciously intend a way of behavior. I suggest in meditation/prayer each evening that I intend to be kind to every person I meet the next day. It begins to work as you practice kindness and eventually, this practice becomes a natural daily action. The Advent virtues—peace, hope, joy, and love—are intentional practices that allow to arrive at perceiving the presence of the risen Christ is in our midst and in the living world. We arrive rather than Christ returns.

I recommend that the meditation upon our scripture be reconnected with nature as also a location of wisdom and divine presence. Both are formative for seeing the risen Christ and the Spirit active in the Earth processes and all nature. Such intentional practices of the four virtues reconnects us to the organically living processes which Colossians 1:20 affirms that risen Christ is reconciling all things to God. I am arguing for reconnecting scripture with nature to assist to slow down, listen attentively, and meditatively discern that the risen Christ is present in nature.

First Week of Advent: Peace with Earth and the web of life.

Humanity, in general, does not live in peace with the Earth and the community of life. Actually, we aggressively wage war with nature and the Earth. Our mode is to conquer, dominate, and extract resources in pursuit of greed. War mentality includes entitlement, domination, ownership, and power. It involves incursions, invasions, and conquest against nature. Steven Chase notes that nature is “consummate conscientious objector.” (Nature as Spiritual Practice) Nature’s cries remain unheard in human war, rape, poisoning, and degrading bio-regions. Nature is objectified, impersonal, degraded, and disposable. From the Creator God’s perspective, nature is alive, persona, intrinsically valuable, and especially, beloved.

Second week of Advent: Hope.

Hope for the Earth community of life cannot be discussed without ecological heartbreak. Today is Extinction Remembrance Day where we remember the casualties and loses of this war: “Remembrance Day for Lost Species, November 30th, is a chance each year to explore the stories of extinct and critically endangered species, cultures, lifeways, and ecological communities.” (https://www.lostspeciesday.org/) These losses are directly the result of human social, economic, and political actions that impact climate change and exploit the resources of the planet without limit. We fail to realize that we part of continuum of life begin with the first cell billions of years ago. Many of us are even unaware of the loss of these species and the loss of biodiversity. November 30th is a day of ecological grief. We are neither attentive to loss nor do we hear the silent cries of the Earth.

Can we hope in the desecration of the planet for short term greed and profit at the expense of the vulnerable. The words of Mark Wallace are vividly remembered in the struggle for hope:

…we can imagine that the Spirit today is pleading with the human community to nurture and protect the fragile bioregions we all share…Because God as Spirit is enfleshed in creation, God experiences with the core of her deepest self the agony and suffering of an earth under siege. The Spirit then, as the green body of God in the world, has become in our time the wounded God. (Finding God in the Singing River)

Compassion literally means to “suffer with.” The choice for close intimacy with the natural world and the Spirit enfleshed in the world is the path of compassionate solidarity with the suffering. Mourning and heartbreak is accompanied with the loss. It s in the phoenix of ashes of environmental grief that the site of the both of resilience and resistance. We do not grieve for what is not related to us. Berta Caeres, environmental activist from Lenca indigenous people of Western Honduras was assassinated in 2016. She claimed “We come from the Earth, the water and the corn.” She continued:

Let us wake up, humankind. We’re out of time… We must answer their call (threatened rivers).. Our Mother is militarized. Fenced-in, poisoned. A place where basic rights are systematically violated, demands that we take action. Let us build societies that are able to co-exist in a dignified way, in a way that protects life. Let us come together and remain hopeful as we defend and car for the blood of the Earth and of its spirits. (quoted in John Dear, They Shall Inherit the Earth)

Thomas Berry writes,

We need to hear the creatures of the Earth before it is too late, before their voices are stilled forever through extinctions occurring at such rapid rte. Once gone, they will never exist again be available to us. (The Christian Future and the Fate of the Earth)

If we take the time to move away from our self-centeredness and become other centered, we will notice the growing silence or absence from extinct species. Several years, Sixty Minutes highlighted the photography project of Joel Sartore, a National Geographic photographer, developed a digital Photo Ark. He has photographed over ten thousand species. His purpose is to help us to look at these non-human animals and be inspired to care for them while there is still time. Sartore and Berry remind us of the heartbreak of loss of more than human life and poisoning of bio-regions for an extractive fossil economy of death. Let us find in our environmental mourning flashes hope that ignite resilience and resistance. I find this in our indigenous brothers and sisters who fought for the waters, the land, and life.

Extinction Rebellion, a global environmental activist, is born of environmental grief at loss. Environmental heartbreak inspires hopeful actions to fight against climate change.

Third Week of Advent: Joy in Reconnection to the risen Christ in nature.

There is a profound joy in reintegrating ourselves into the goodness of the Earth an aliveness that God pronounced good. Daniel Spencer, UCC eco-ethicist describes, the “the act of restoration—of restoring our place within the Earth community, of restoring the ecological and divine integrity of the community itself.” (Spencer, “Restoring Earth, Restored to Earth”) Earth restoration is mutual presencing of ourselves and the Earth community of all life. Indigenous botanist Robin Kimmerer writes,

What if we could fashion a restoration plan that grew from understanding multiple meanings of the land? Land as sustainers, Land as identity. Las grocery and pharmacy. Land as connection to our ancestors. Lad as moral obligation. Lad as self. (Braiding Sweetgrass)

By mutual restoration, we are entangled God’s original grace, restoring our spirit to an earthen identity, repairing damaged environments, slow-down rapid extinction of species and the elimination of biodiversity. In looking carefully to the land as teacher, healing, and creativity, Earth-loving Christians may develop novel eco-systems to counter destructive human impact and destruction of the environment. We realize that our spirit, imagination, and embodied sensory actions do not belong to ourselves but belong to the Earth and ensouled Spirit. This is the joy of belonging and creating the kinship of God’s kin-dom.

Fourth Week of Advent: Love.

In God is Green, I explore the question that Jesus asks of the lawyer in story of the Good Samaritan. “Who is my Neighbor?” Neighbor indicated a nearness and/or a proximity. When Jesus argues for compassion and love for neighbor. Daniel Miller argues that Jesus’ intention is to upturn the exclusiveness and restrictions of the lawyer’s question. Miller extends the parable to nonhuman animals. He writes. “The Parable of the Good Samaritan embraces nonhuman animals as neighbors because it focuses on the action rather than the recipient of neighborly love.” (Animal Ethics and Theology) Miller continues,

By taking humanity’s earthly human nature, Christ becomes a neighbor not only to human but also to creatures of the earth…Because has become our neighbor, we can then be neighbors to others…Because Christ drew near as neighbor to all earthly creatures, we are able to do the same. (ibid)

Miller argues for a “taxonomy of nearness” in our evolutionary history to become human animals. He expands the definition of neighbor as Jesus expanded the Leviticus definition of neighbor but to extend the notion of neighbor to nonhuman animal species. I recommend reading chapter 8 of God is Green for the full argument.

I end off with a quotation of Rev. Jim Antal, former UCC Conference Minister)

No longer can we claim the moral high ground when we treat only our nearby human neighbors as ourselves. No longer is it morally adequate to expand our understanding of justice to include in the circle of neighborly treatment more distant neighbors. We must recognize that all people, indeed all creatures alive and all those yet to be born are our neighbors. As Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr said, ‘We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied to in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” (Climate Church, Climate World

In summary, Jesus’s words in the Gospel, answers the question of the return of Christ.. “Truly I tell you, just as did it to the least of those who the least of my family, you did it to me.”(Mt. 25:39) The least of my family is the most vulnerable Earth and the web of interconnected life. The body and presence of Jesus the Christ is resurrected in all life.
When we intentional practice the four Advent virtues together, we may participate in the ecological grace of Christ multiple forms of presence.

The Vandals Assault Books with a Cancel Culture of Amnesia: How Dangerous Memories are Vital for Human Freedom

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The GOP candidate for Governor Glenn Youngkin in Virginia has attempted to censor Toni Morrison’s wonderful and Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Beloved. This is coupled with a national GOP effort to suppress the teaching Critical Race Theory in school systems. Actually, what the GOP was objecting to was the teaching of American History, inclusive of black experience of slavery, Jim Crow, some 20 white massacres of black Americans in our history. I was aware of the Tulsa massacre but moving down to Florida, I have become aware of Ocoee massacre (1920) of black residents some 4 or 5 miles where we live. Cancel culture creates genocide an silences its memory..

This “cancel culture become genocide,” is reminiscent of the Nazi practice in 1930s of burning books because they were “un-German,” opposed to authoritarian ideology. This was a prelude to the German holocaust and genocide.
On personal level, I have had some direct experience in cancel culture as a gay professor. For some reason, in my high school year, there was a prediction that my publications would be “banned in Boston.” It was predictive of silencing, not in Boston but several other locations. My first book, Jesus ACTED UP, had several backlashes. The first was from Dignity/Boston where my husband Frank served as President for two years and I as chaplain for six years, prohibited a memorial service for Frank, who died of HIV/AIDS. The reason given for the denial was the blasphemy of placing Jesus and ACT UP in the title. The book has been taught by Dr. Mark Jordan as part of his Queer Theology at Harvard Divinity School.

The same book was vandalized in a hate crime at Webster University when I was chair of the Religious Studies Department by a security officer. He vandalized my office, but took the time to search for Jesus ACTED UP in my bookshelf of hundreds of books and carve out the pages and inserted rotten meet. There was a rotten smell in the office, and the maintenance personnel felt that a rat may have died behind the walls. One maintenance person found the book was reshelved and became the source of the rotten odor in my office. The event was covered up by the Security Office Director as well as with tow Vice Presidents. I had the “dubious honor” to be the first hate crime at the university. It had repercussions for my tenure petition as it became known of the coverup and the need for the administration had to hire a consultant to investigate.

Then the same book was vandalized in the LGBTQ section of the San Francisco library. I replaced the copy at the request my colleague and friend Jim Mitulski. I understand the danger of suppressing and attacking writings that are considered by authoritarianism. What was sad when a student in a theology department of a Jesuit university received an “F” in a paper by his Jesuit professor because he quoted from the book and used it as a source. This is emblematic of cancel culture but minor in comparisons of cancel culture to other targeted peoples.

One of my favorite postcolonial feminist theologians, Kwok Pui Lan, writes “Memory is a powerful tool in resisting institutionally sanctioned forgetfulness.” (Postcolonial Imagination, p. 37) Her quotation on institutionally promoted amnesia used to suppress dangerous memories reminded of my own attraction to the French postcolonial culture critic Michel Foucault during doctoral studies. Foucault described how metanarratives are institutionally sanctioned at the expense of eliding the knowledge and experience of oppressed groups. He argues for a “battle for truth” (which I considered as a possible title for Jesus ACTED UP, by a strategy of the “insurrection of subjugated knowledges.” It reminded me of the German Catholic priest and theologian Johannes Baptist Metz, who uses the dangerous memory of the passion of Jesus. He argues that the dangerous memory of the terrible passion and death of Jesus are not forgotten but remembered as empowered action against cancel culture and the suppression of the memories of suffering. Metz quotes the theologian Origen (184-253 CE) in an extracanonical saying of Jesus: “Who is close to me is close to the fire; who is far from me is far from the kingdom.” (Love’s Strategy, p. 143) Metz claims this as an authentic saying of Jesus. Metz continues,

It is dangerous to be close to Jesus; it is to be inflammable, to risk caching fire. Yet only in the face of danger does there shine the vision of the kingdom of God, which through him has come closer. Danger apparently is the basic category for self-understanding of the new life in the New Testament. (Love’s Strategy, p. 143)

Some of my favorite contextual and liberation theologians (Diarmuid O’Murchu, John Caputo, Leonardo Boff, Elizabeth Johnson, Shawn Copeland. James Cone and others) develop the notion of dangerous remembering and many oppressed groups (indigenous and LGBTQ+ peoples, migrants, and climate refugees) create narratives that remember their history of passion and death to empower resistance and pursuit of freedom.

As I hear daily about GOP and white supremacist, patriarchal, queer phobic, and ethno-phobic cancel culture and correlative increase of hate crimes and violence against women’s reproductive freedom, I realize that dangerous memories are critically vital part of our education and knowledge because there will be no resolution of the trauma of violence and oppression experienced black folks and others. Their historical trauma and oppression will be refigured in new strategies of cancel culture and amnesia to keep people oppressed, fearful, silenced and disempowered in their place.

Jesus’ Vision Quest and Wilderness Challenges (Mt. 3:1-11) from an Indigenous Context

Sermon to Acworth Congregational Church (note: I deliver sermons and generally follow the script but add to the sermon with examples).

Today’s gospel is the Q tradition of the temptation stories in the wilderness that appear in Matthew and Luke. It is chosen to begin the church’s season of Lent, a time of testing and spiritual growth. I want to present Jesus’ wilderness ordeals from Episcopal Bishop Steven Charleston, who is also a member of the Choctaw nation. He, like a number of American indigenous people, who have converted to Christianity but also carried over their religious culture Into Christianity. Bishop Charleston understands Jesus’ baptism experience as a vision quest wherein Jesus emerged from the waters of his baptism experience a visionary experience of Spirit as Mother Dove landing on him and hearing God affirming, “You are my beloved child, in whom I am well-pleased.”

Then Jesus is led by the Spirit into the wilderness, the place of dried bones and deep mystery. Here the wilderness expresses the fragility of life. Both modern and ancient seekers have experienced the wilderness as the terrain of the soul, a place of solitude between oneself and God. For indigenous peoples, natural places of solitude reveal identity and mission of your life. The Spirit leads Jesus into the wilderness to forge his future ministry of God’s kin-dom and test Jesus for his struggle against empire

The wilderness was a place of trial where Jesus would confront the central issues of empire and domination. It is easy to contextualize the Q temptations as counter-narratives of Jesus’ ministry of God’s reign as alternatives to the oppressive Roman Empire and the coopted Temple. The wilderness was outside of imperial rule; it was not taxable as land asset. The three ordeals depict the diabolical nature of imperial Roman rule, which is committed to an oppressive rule to benefit the elite and to stress Jesus’ resistance to the empire.

In his own vision quest, Steven Charleston struggled with his own Choctaw spiritual heritage of his tribe’s assimilation into colonizing Euro-American Christianity with his tribal spirituality, and the horrific tribal history of the forced relocation from Mississippi to Oklahoma– the “Trail of Tears.” The colonial decisions of President Andrew Jackson led to deaths of thousands of Choctaw children, men and women. Their burial customs involved burial of their bones in a common tribal grave. Many who died on the “Trail of Tears” were unable to bury the dead appropriately. This is the legacy of colonial empires.

Through an inner spiritual voice, Steven Charleston was instructed to read the Matthew’s Q tradition of the wilderness temptations of Jesus to understand his two spiritual paths that he was interweaving, his own Native American spirituality and the American legacy of colonial Christianity. He blends his vision quest with Jesus’ temptation experience in the wilderness.

This is a fruitful interpretative context to explore Jesus’ vision quest and American Christian empire. He notes how spiritual power can be transmitted through elements of nature. Matthew presents Jesus going out into a lonely wilderness “in the spirit of lament, open to being tested and tempted in his weakness.” He is attended by others—prayers of the Baptist and his disciples, the beasts, and spirits, angels and demons. Charleston notes that the purpose of a vision quest is spiritual challenge and transformation, but his Choctaw Christianity does not hold to Christian notions of original sin and demonic spirits.

The three challenges are struggles for choosing self over the needs of others—the heart of Jesus’ notion of God’s kin-dom as compassionate love of others, not the violence of the Roman Empire. Indigenous people pay attention to the Earth, for the details of surroundings are full of the echoes of divine love and harmony.

In the first challenge, Jesus looked down to the ground.

He pays attention to the stones around him in the desert. And in his hunger, he imagines the stones as loaves of bread on the desert floor. What did the stones have to teach him? Are they physical nourishment for him alone or spiritual nourishment of a different kind? (Charleston, Four Visions)

According to indigenous culture, stones are the “oldest of living things,” and Jesus listened to his eldest stone relatives who told him that they embodied the One. They were not there for him alone, but for all people. The stones led him back to spiritual balance from self to the needs of others, thus Jesus professed, “the people do not live by bread alone but every word that comes from the mouth of God.”

Charleston writes,

The vision of the stones establishes from outset of his quest that he will be true to the oldest principle of the Native covenant. He will be grounded in the faith of the One God. He will not let any sense of self lure him away from his calling to be one with the People. Spiritual unity will be maintained and, therefore, spiritual equilibrium.

The second challenge is the sky vision that takes place on a mountain top, where Jesus glanced downwards Charleston notes that for humans this is the expansive lure of ego-centeredness, and Jesus stood in a small circle at the top of the at the edge of the mount, connected to the limitless sky. The Devil asked him to throw himself off the edge so that God might save him through the angels, preventing him from falling down and smashing on the Earth. For Charleston, there is an alignment of Mother Earth, the human tribe, and God. The challenge here is not about right relationship with God but primarily right alignment between the Earth, humanity, and God. Jesus chose balanced alignment. This alignment is reflected in his prayer “your will be done on earth and heaven.” Earth reflects the heavens.

Finally, while humans imagine the sky as limitless, the third challenge examines that “everything out there is up for grabs…The open sky, the endless expanse of creation, becomes not an object of wonder, but an object of plunder.” Bishop Steven Charleston reflects that this sky vision reflects the European colonists and white supremacy under the guise of the Doctrine of Discovery) that envisioned the endless resources of the North American continent in terms of profit, Jesus decides a question: “Is the right relationship to all that there is a question of stewardship or of ownership? Which will it be?” Jesus chose kinship with the Earth. Charleston summarizes the choice of the third challenge:

We are not to insult God by claiming that we can use creation for our own purposes., much less for profit. We are not the masters of all we see. We cannot swallow the universe into the stomach of our greed. We do not need more. The ethic implicit in a culture that understands family as a vast matrix of kinship is an ethic of sharing. The sky vision shows Jesus the fundamental value of native life: it Is to be lived in a spirit of stewardship. Human beings are entrusted with everything that they see. They are responsible for it. They are to be in awe of it. They are to delight in it.(Charleston)

Jesus learned the wisdom of indigeneity of his Hebrew ancestors in the Sinai wilderness and many indigenous peoples’ lifeways: that we do not own the Spirit’s Earth, for Earth is an unconditional gift. Psalm 24:1 says “The earth belongs to the Lord and all that is in it, and those who live in it.” The Choctaw, as well as indigenous peoples of North America, claim that the Earth is the Spirit’s gift to us. The Hebrews and indigenous peoples share a revealed wisdom—that the Earth and all that dwells on the planet are an original divine gift.

Jesus experienced God’s wild grace in the wilderness as compassionate concern for life, with unexpected and expansive love, desiring wholeness and flourishing of Earth creatures, and ever-present to suffering and death. Jesus incarnated those wilderness values and wisdom into his kin-dom message and ministry. The wilderness challenges gave voice to Jesus’ pain, struggle, and emotional turmoil as he underwent in Gethsemane as he prepared to die at the hands of the Roman empire and colluded Temple priesthood. Jesus learned his kin-dom lifestyle and ministry in the wilderness. Similarly, a Christian animist website concludes, ”Jesus was a wilderness person. Wild places were where he went to find solitude, pray, grieve, rest, escape arrest and often to teach. Places energized by God’s free and feral Spirit. Being, ‘with the wild animals’, examples genuine ‘nature connection’, plus the biblical principle that truly spiritual people live in harmony with wild nature. Jesus’ wilderness spirituality always trusts God for provision and protection.” (Christian Animism, http://www.christiananimism.com/thinking-animism/jesus-and-wild-nature/

Rev. Dr. Robert E. Shore-Goss

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