The Ecology of Grace

There are two approaches to ecological questions in our day: panic and delight. Today, in the spirit of Francis of Assisi, I want to make a case for the second. God invites us, when it comes to the environment, to approach with awe and reverence, God asks us to delight in creation.

I know the case I hope to make this morning is countercultural. The other morning, after an early yoga class, I overheard a conversation between a couple of UNM PhD types at the studio. One said something like, “every year the climate is getting more unpredictable. We’re not far from a tipping point of total climate chaos.” It sure can feel that way. Certainly, more of our fellow humans are suffering from climate disaster than when I was a kid. I drove away from yoga that morning a little more nervous than when I entered the studio.

We are living in the Anthropocene, scientists name for the new age of the earth, where human activity drives the climate more than any other factor. By almost every measure, our collective management of our environment is a disaster. But the responses we are offered, generally, leave a great deal to be desired.

So many of the so-called responses offered to human-driven climate change are insufficient, because they are about consumption. Buy an electric car. Purchase solar panels for your house. Get a new more energy efficient washer and dryer. The truth is, we won’t consume our way to a new ecological reality. I’m concerned some of the marketers are exploiting our societal panic about the environment. We can’t consume our way out. But in a consumer society, what other choices do we make?

My friends, the choices we can make are many, varied, and wide. But the kind of choices we can make which could make an impact on our planet and on our souls, they’re not easy choices today. The choices which could make a difference don’t come with marketing campaigns. The are subtle and slow. In the spiritual life, the best choices are often subtle and slow.

In today’s Gospel Jesus thanks God, “because you’ve hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have shown them to babies.” Spirituality is about recovering a childlike capacity, for wonder, for awe, for hope. Faith is about letting go of all we think we know, all the doomsaying around us. Religion is meant to be about listening and watching, really attending to the environment in which we find ourselves.

In this, we have a companion and teacher in Francis of Assisi. My spiritual director in college once gave me an assignment. A Catholic priest, specifically a Holy Ghost Father named Father Mike (the reason I won’t ever ask anyone to call me Father Mike. That character is already cast for me.) Fr. Mike handed me a VHS copy of Zeffirelli’s “Brother Sun and Sister Moon.” I had to borrow a VHS player to watch it, and truth be told it was a little cheesy.

But there’s a scene where young Francesco stands before an angry bishop. He’s in trouble for giving away his father’s possessions, expensive fabric the manufacture of which had made Francesco’s family wealthy. As his father and the bishop accuse him, Francesco begins to remove his clothes, handing them to his father. The bishop tries to cover him with his own vestment, but Francesco passes it to a poor man. Quoting Jesus in the Gospels again and again, Francesco walks away from the symbols of wealth and power. He walks away from the expectations of family and church.

Francis’ early biographers recount almost exactly this story. Our Franciscan neighbor here in Albuquerque, Richard Rohr, says that most of the people who consider themselves to be Biblical literalists simply aren’t. Richard says he only knows of one Biblical literalist in church history, Francis of Assisi.

Francis didn’t find his path in the ready-made ways of his society. Francis chose a different way of being in the world, not what could be purchased by his parents, not the glory of a soldier’s exploit, not even the known path within the church. Francis felt God calling him out in nature and down among those who had been cast out. Francis spent time with lepers and beggars, and out in creation.

Built into Francis’ spirituality was an intentional humility and simplicity. Deciding to give up on the ways of the world might seem hopelessly complex. Even trying to live a bit more ecologically in our society today can seem nearly impossible. Francis not only made it look easy, he insisted that it was easy.

Today we hear Jesus say, “Come to me, all who are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” For Francis, conversion wasn’t painful. Conversion was freeing. Francis understood Jesus’ yolk to be easy, Christ’s burden to be light.

Long before we had the word for it, Francis was an ecologist. Francis saw that all of life is “caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” Those words are Dr. King’s, about racial discrimination in Alabama, but they are words Francis might have used to describe his reality in 12th century Italy. We are all bound together. We can’t just think as individuals, about what is best for me. Our collective survival depends on learning to think together ecologically.

If you’ll permit me, I want to play with this idea of ecology and faith a bit more. I think part of the problem of the so called “literalist” or “fundamentalist” theology in recent centuries of Christianity is it, like so much in our culture, is overly individualistic. In this sort of faith I worry about MY salvation. I worry about MY individual sin.

In this case sin seems very small. Sin is about whether I curse too much or what my sex life looks like. Sin in this view is about whether I violate certain cultural taboos. But when Jesus talked about sin, he usually talked more ecologically. Jesus talked about religious authorities who used their power to oppress. Jesus invited the rich young rulers to give up their wealth and share with the poor. Jesus thinks about sin systemically. Jesus thinks about ways we buy into cultural norms that hurt whole groups of people and our planet. Jesus’ vision of sin has the capacity to actually confront our climate crisis.

I said at the outset of this sermon, there are two approaches to ecological questions in our day: panic and delight. I’d suggest to you that panic won’t get us very far. Panic is a function of our primordial lizard brain. Panic helps raise our heart rate and endorphins, prepares us for fight and flight.

But the planetary questions we are facing don’t work on that timescale. Panic doesn’t serve us well for the long haul. The kind of response we will need to muster isn’t just individual and it isn’t fast. We will have to make a whole series of slow collective societal shifts. Part of the vocation of being human is learning to see and to function on a higher level. We have the capacity to move beyond panic, to see whole systems to move slower and to notice patterns.

In order to make ecological change, more of us need to spend more time connected to nature. We need to spend time out on hikes, sleeping under the stars. We need to take time to delight in the purple asters blooming right now in the Bosque. We need to listen to the sound of the wind in the trees.

Francis of Assisi, like Jesus before him, was famous for escaping out to nature. He spoke of the Son as his Brother, the Moon as his sister. Francis wrote hymns to creation and performed miracles among the wild animals. Francis understood that his story was just a small part in the wider ecology of grace.

(Later) Today we’ll bless animals in Francis’ name. We’ll remember that the creatures we share our lives with are also part of the expansive work of God. We will remember that we are meant to be but a small part of this greater picture. So we can afford to take time to be grateful, to be generous, to delight.

None of us, individually, can make much change for the sake of planetary systems. We will have to share the burden. The work will be slow and subtle, and there will be time, there must be time, to find delight in creation. Yes there are reasons for lament, but don’t buy into societal panic. Creation is still God’s first language. If we listen, God is still speaking this world into being. God still invites us to lay down our heavy burdens, and to know that within us and all around us, there is something worth saving.