4.29.07 The Next 150 Years

 
WESTMINSTER PULPIT
 
    The Rev. Dr. David Thompson
 
 
April 29, 2007                                                 “The Next 150 Years”                                                    Mark 11:
                                                                                                                                                                                 
Text: “Everything you ask and pray for, believe that you have it already and it will be yours.” Jesus
Now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face… St Paul
 
A week ago last Friday I was on my way to San Francisco, that magical city with the Golden Gate to the ocean and the world. My destination was to a restaurant to meet with National US church leaders on Global Climate Change.   Seated behind me was Bob Edgar the General Secretary of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA, who I had longed to meet for some time. I spoke to him and he introduced me to Richard Cizaks head of the National Association of Evangelicals, both in their own way prominent in stewardship of the creation and thus concerned about Global warming. We were there to hear the visionary architect William McDonough, winner of three presidential awards on environmental design and advisor to the President of the USA and the leaders of China.
 
McDonough began his power point by asking the question: “What is the Human Intention?” He said, “If our intention was to destroy the earth that we had already done a pretty good job of it.” But was that our conscious intention? He thought not. But in order for us to get to where we ought to be we needed to ask this question; “What is the most loving thing to do for the children of all species for all time?” The answer to that question needed to form our intention as a species on earth. We needed to design everything we make from that intention, from our homes, our cities, our cars and transport networks, the way we grow things, even down to the light bulbs, appliances, and the showerheads we use. Our clothes needed to be either edible or recyclable or usable for humus as fertilizer and returned to the earth. He showed us a before and after picture of a place where a city was to be built on pastureland. The before and after pictures were the same. The landscape was just 100 feet up in the air with the city below it. He is doing this now in China.
 
If we look carefully at the Book of Genesis our original mandate was to look after the earth and all its creatures. So McDonough is “right on,” in his question. It is also the Jewish and Christian intention that until recently has been lost for the majority of us.
 
This last Wednesday I heard Matthew Sleeth M.D., here at Westminster. He had a fantastic life and a great job as Chief of Staff at a large hospital. He was living the American Dream until he saw an increasing number of his patients suffering from cancer, asthma and other chronic diseases. He began to suspect that the earth and its inhabitants were in deep trouble. He began to think that his medical practice was simply rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. Sleeth turned to the teachings of the Bible to discover how the principles of stewardship could be applied to modern life. He has sold his home and now lives in a space the size of his former garage. His electric bill is now $15.00 a month. He has sold his SUVs and now drives a hybrid. He has become, full time, an Environmentalist Evangelical Preacher. He will give up doctoring, though he loves the profession, until the time we humans have understood the urgency and necessity of environmental change. Sleeth realized that he had been asleep in a paradigm.
 
The first 150 years for Westminster have largely been spent in that same paradigm. But now we know that we need to change the paradigm in order to survive. For the next 150 years we need to design everything we do for love of the children of all species for all time. St Paul used what has become a well known phrase to describe the future; “Now we look through a glass darkly.” What do we know about the future?
 
A great deal of work has been done on future projection around climate change. What we know is this: We are already into major climate change and it will only get worse for a long time. Here in California the effects are well known from snow-pack loss, to steady water flow loss, to loss of agriculture and the wine industry, water shortages, forest fires, flash storms, levee breaks, increased disease, loss of species etc, etc. You can read all about it. It is literally all over the Internet. And all this will happen as human population continues to expand from 6 billion to 9 billion by 2050. What should our response be as a church? Prepare for the worst.   Do all we can to stop our Greenhouse Gas emissions simultaneously.
 
As Christians who have gone along with the global human world’s false intention for too long, we need to repent and along with others lead the world away from the abyss.
 
What is the good news? The good news is that now the tide has turned on climate change and people everywhere are looking for solutions. Our human ingenuity is great. There is a woman genius who is working on a battery that is organic and more powerful than today’s batteries. McDonough is one of many architects who are literally building green cities that preserve the earth. Industrial plants will automatically produce clean drinking water as a waste product.
 
When McDonough presented his ideas at the White House he was asked, “What about nuclear power?” He answered that he was “for it and for fusion and for no waste, eight minutes away and wireless. We already have it in the sun,” he said. “What’s our problem?” According to one Nobel Laureate there is enough power in the sun and photovoltaics if we were to cover just ten percent of the surface of the world’s deserts to power the world into the indefinite future. Power generation and transportation are the major contributors to Greenhouse Gas emissions. Power generation from the wind and the sun can be zero emissions. If we go electric in our cars we can be emission free. There is a muscle
electric car now available that goes 175 miles an hour. Some of us think that Arnold Schwarzenegger, who opined that a Prius was a feminine car, that even he would be impressed. For the heavy lifting we can create hydrogen from water, wind and sun, also with zero emissions.
 
The former head of S.M.U.D. told me last weekend that there is enough space on the top of existing buildings without using the deserts to power the world with solar. He said that the sun is hotter in space than here on earth and that there is satellite research that could focus the sun’s rays in a thermal steam generation from space to earth. McDonough says we produce millions of automobiles across the world every year with over 150,000 parts. Could we not in a very short period of time cover the necessary space on top of buildings with enough photovoltaics to power the world?. We could if that were our intention.
 
Now to the Scripture:
 
The story of the withered fig tree seems to get folks who love Jesus upset. It seems to be so out of character for Jesus to curse a tree. Many commentators agree. They think that this is a story which is used like a peg to hang some prayer sayings on that were delivered originally in another context. St Luke who had access to all the Gospels as sources leaves it out. He does include however a parable on a barren fig tree where the owner wants to cut it down because it has born no fruit. The man who looks after it says, “Let me dig around the roots and fertilize it and then if it bears no fruit you can cut it down.” This story is much more like Jesus.
 
But St. Luke also expresses the same thought as Mark, using however, a different tree and sea imagery instead of a mountain getting thrown into the sea it’s a tree! It goes like this: The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith.” The Lord replied “were your faith the size of a mustard seed you could say to this mulberry tree, Be uprooted and planted in the sea and it would obey you.”
 
Remember the story of Jonah where God causes a plant to grow up overnight to give Jonah shade and then causes the plant to wither? The next day the sun is hot and Jonah who had been grateful for the plant was furious that God had caused it to wither and God says: “Are you right to be angry about the castor oil plant?” Jonah says: “I have every right to be angry to the point of death!” And God replies: “You are only upset about a castor oil plant which cost you no labor, which you did not make grow, which sprouted in a night and died in a night. Am I not to feel sorry for Nineveh, the great city, in which there are more than one hundred twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, to say nothing of all the animals?” The castor oil plant was there for a teaching opportunity for a greater purpose.
 
Let’s suppose for a moment that Mark which is the first Gospel has got it right. Let’s suppose that Jesus is setting up a teachable moment. Is the fig tree a living parable about the temple which was to be a House of Prayer for all Nations? The tree like the temple had green leaves but bore no fruit. The temple like the tree had lost its intention. The next day the tree is withered from the roots up. Is this a parable for the fate of the temple which was destroyed in AD 45? Some commentators think so because Jesus enters the Temple immediately after this saying. For me I believe it is a teachable moment alright.   Remember the saying that follows? It happens the next day when Peter remembers. He says; “Look Rabbi, the fig tree you cursed has withered away!” and Jesus answers; “Have faith in God. I tell you solemnly, if anyone says to this mountain get up and throw yourself into the sea with no hesitation in his heart, but believing that what he says will happen, it will be done for him. I tell you therefore: everything you ask and pray for, believe that you have it already, and it will be yours.”
 
What grabs my attention is this: It is the phrase I tell you solemnly…Why solemnly?  This indicated that the saying that follows is going to be very important. This is one that Jesus does not want his followers to forget. It sticks in Peter’s mind because he is in a teachable moment. “When the student is ready the teacher appears.”
 
The fig tree and Peter’s astonishment over it got Peter ready to hear. But what does he hear? This incredible statement: lets hear it in the Matthew version; “I tell you solemnly, if you have faith and do not doubt at all, not only will you do what I have done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain Get up and throw yourself into the sea! It will be done.”
 
I will agree with the commentators that it is a peg to hang this saying on, but it seems to me that it is a memory peg in St. Peter’s mind. The tree then is the servant of a very important truth. What is that truth?   Christ is talking about the power of Intention. Our minds are incredibly powerful. Our intentions can manifest. Jesus teaches: “Everything you ask for in prayer you will receive.” Note no qualifications here, no caveats. Such is the power of intention. For Jesus it is a law of nature. Mind affects matter even down to the quantum level. This is therefore a solemn saying and also a saying revealing a source of great potential for good or evil. We are to choose the good, to choose life not death, salvation not annihilation. It is up to us. Such is the awesome power of our freedom. As William Sloan Coffin used to say, looking up at the gothic vaults of Riverside Church in New York, one of the great churches of America, “God you have given us too much freedom. We can’t handle it.” That is why this is such a solemn saying.
 
This saying is also in a context. The context of the Bible is that we are co-creators with God. We are made in God’s image and this creative power is ours for good or evil. We are to choose the good and when we will do that the future will return to us for whatever we sow we reap.  If we Christians cannot connect the creator with the Creation then we really are in trouble. We will have basically nothing to say to the world. But if we waken from the sleep of the first paradigm that has almost brought us to global disaster, if we change our intention to God’s intention for the creation which was the original mandate summed up by William McDonough, “to love the children of all species for all time,” if we return to stewardship of the earth and all its creatures for love, then, if that becomes our intention, then everything we ask for in prayer we will receive.
 
In the next 150 years, peering into a glass darkly, in the parking lot of Westminster there will arise a green building, state-of-the-art with parking for plug in hybrids and electric cars, with photovoltaics on the roof, energy positive. The large and thriving compassionate congregation of Westminster with contacts and missions around the globe as well as locally will still use the Historic Sanctuary of Westminster. The church building will have an extremely low carbon footprint and eventually will be zero emission, along with all the rest of the buildings in the world. Solar will power the future and fossil fuels will be left in the earth where they belong until they emit zero emissions. For everything is possible to those who believe says Jesus.
 
The solutions are already out there if we change and direct our intention. We will recover the earth as a home for all living things. And our children will have a future with no visible end in sight. We will through birth control, control world population and we will balance it. The seas will once again hold all the wonderful creatures that are now on the endangered list. Coral reefs will recover. The climate will stabilize, the rain forests recover, the snow will return and the glaciers will hang out in their old haunts.
 
Here are some of the predictions of Deepak Chopra that I like:
 
Here at Westminster we could do nothing better than to meditate on the intention of asking “What is the most loving thing we can do for all species for all time?” and the verse “If you have faith and do not doubt at all it will be done.” In the next 150 years we have the power as individuals to change the world and partner with God to heal the world. If we awaken, God who neither slumbers nor sleeps will be with us. Jesus said, “Lo I am with you even until the end of the world.” And that with our awakened intention and our awesome freedom and creativity will be enough for all time.
 
William McDonough said: “How can we support and perpetuate the rights of all living things to share in a world of abundance? How can we love the children of all species—not just our own—for all time? Imagine what a world of prosperity and health in the future will look like, and begin designing for it right now. What would it mean to become, once again, native to this place, the Earth—the home of all our relations? This is going to take us all, and it is going to take forever.  But then, that’s the point.”
 
Or, as Jesus said: “Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.”   One day it will be just plain hard for us to choose between those two realities. And that is just how it should be, how God originally intended us to welcome the future of everlasting life on earth and in heaven. That is the foundation on which we build with Christ for our next 150 years!. So be it!

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