April 21, 2024

by | Apr 21, 2024 | Sermons

  1. The first time I visited the Soo Line Community Garden, I thought it would be a good place to gather for Good Friday.
    1. It was February, so the garden wasn’t pretty
    2. It was a tangle of dead plant material, separated into little muddy plots
    3. Last summer’s gardeners had left a few yard ornaments and old pots laying around
    4. It’s a community garden, not perfectly coifed; a little unkept.
    5. But I’m a gardener and I knew there are roots under the soil that will grow again,
      1. so I could see a promise of resurrection there.
    6. I was also aware that there’s an ongoing threat to the garden:
      1. Hennepin County for years has planned to create an ADA path through it help people with disabilities to access the Greenway,
    7. This is a worthy goal!
    8. But it would eliminate about 25% of the garden’s growing space.
    9. The Soo Line volunteers have asked the County to find another place for the ADA  path. And this conversation has been arguing about this for about 6 years.
    10. But on Good Friday, when we gathered at the Soo Line Garden, a kind stranger who volunteers there told us the Minneapolis Park Board, who owns the property, had  just formally voted against allowing the County to create the ADA path.
    11. For a minute, it seemed like an Easter miracle! The garden was saved!
    12. But of course, there’s still the problem of where the ADA path should go!
    13. And now there’s a new wrinkle:
      1. It was discovered in March that the garden soil is contaminated with pollutants from the days when the site housed a grain elevator.
      2. These pollutants are at a level that “exceeds state pollution control thresholds.”
    14. So sadly, the garden has been closed to public use for 2024.
    15. This is so sad! Minneapolis is one of the most eco-friendly cities in the country; and yet, for every problem solved, a new ethical dilemma surfaces.
  2. The biblical story of creation tells that God entrusted all of creation– humans, animals,  plant life, water, minerals—all shared resources with the human as caretaker.
    1. It seemed like a good plan on paper! The humans could just harvest free food, as long as they took care of the garden!
    2. But it only took 2 people and one snake to mess up the plan
    3. So God adapted, kicked the humans out of Eden and sent them to plant and till their own garden, grow their own olives and wrestle with their own weeds
    4. But later (around 600 BC), the prophet Isaiah could see how human sin was  widening the gap between a healthy planet and an unfaithful people
    5. the earth was already back then entering a state of mourning The earth is under a curse; its people are dying out because of their sins.
    6. Biblical writers like Isaiah saw natural disasters and drought as signs that humans were breaking their original covenant with God
    7. And they saw experiences of natural beauty and fertility as signs that God was still actively pouring love and grace into the arms of the world
    8. These faith expressions from biblical writers remind us that, when we make a covenant with God, it’s not just to treat other humans justly;
      1. It’s also to honor the earth itself.
  3. This challenge of living in right relationship with both human and non-human is  expressed in the concept of climate justice.
    1. I had to study this a little this week; you all might be more familiar with it
    2. In short, climate justice asserts that what we plan for the good of humans must also be good for the earth; and vice versa 
    3. Most of you may apply climate justice principles to an urban setting.
    4. But as I read an overview of the Climate Justice pillars, I read them through the  lens of someone who lives on a farm, where we have stewardship of a bigger land base than the average American.
  4. So, for example, Climate justice considers how a particular local economy is affected by making transitions away from fossil fuel dependence to renewable resources.
    1. In my world, that means farm owners need time and tools to change the way they store manure, preserve topsoil, diversify their crops; in some cases, changing their whole business plans to become more environmentally sustainable.
      1. Allan’s family actually did this in Wisconsin with their family farm when they shifted to an organic farming model;
      2. My husband Charles is continually evolving his rotational grazing model over the years to be more eco-friendly
      3. But it takes time and capital to change the way we do business;
      4. Farms also have to be economically sustainable
      5. As farmers adjust to new ways of doing business and new regulations, farms are disappearing at a rate of 2,500 a month in this country; and they’re mostly small family farms.
      6. Climate justice principles encourage us to be sensitive to the economic costs alongside the environmental benefits.
    2. Another consideration in the pillars of climate justice is the use of wisdom from  indigenous communities
      1. In the region where I live, a lot of our farmland was created in the 19th century by clearcutting woods.
      2. But there’s one county, Menomonie, that looks completely different.
        1. It is completely tribal owned, and has a long history over centuries of learning how to manage its forests so well that people come from all over the world to learn about their forestry management practices.
      3. When you drive through Menomonie County, you see what Wisconsin would look like if we had managed our woodlands better 100 years ago
        1. But, ironically, you see a lot of deep poverty
        2. So, there’s another ethical dilemma
        3. They do forestry so well, but get so little financial reward for it
  5. Climate justice looks for natural climate solutions; ways to use the resources we already have around us to mitigate climate change
    1. So farmers like my husband Charles can be helped to maintain contiguous open land and contiguous forested areas to benefit wildlife by working with planning and zoning policies to keep development from cutting up farmland
    2. We can help protect wetlands and participate in reforestation
    3. Charles spends a lot of his free time cleaning bluebird boxes, planting trees, fencing off nesting areas for the Bob-o-links who nest on the ground, and cultivating bees.
    4. But it’s hard to expect much cooperation from farmers when so many are on the brink of their labor load and their financial capacity.
  6. All these challenges are teaching us just how ethically complex it is to move toward environmentally sustainable practices
    1. But the good news is that we are learning more all the time
    2. We know now what effect the HERC incinerator has on air quality, and who is hurt by that (next week’s adult study)
    3. We are learning some of the limits of new green technologies.
    4. We are learning that every solution runs the risk of creating a new problem
    5. And how the vulnerable and voiceless are often left out.
    6. The complexity of this planet is beyond human ability to fix everything we’ve messed up! We can’t do it without God’s help.
  7. It is tempting to push climate policy up the chain to our leaders and let them make the tough decisions;
    1. It’s also tempting to put all this out of our minds and go back to our usual lifestyles without really being affected
    2. But Christians should put ourselves in the position of the first humans, who were called to be caretakers,
    3. Each person can look for ways to honor the covenant God made with us;
      1. By learning how to separate your trash today in the Earth Day challenge;
      2. Or caring for the SpringHouse garden and grounds
      3. Or washing dishes after coffee hour so we don’t have to use paper
      4. Or garbage walking in your neighborhood:
  8. We are in stewardship season at Lyndale
    1. Stewardship for Christians involves acknowledging that God is the Source of all our gifts;
    2. And expressing our gratitude to God by taking care of those gifts, so they can be shared today and entrusted to future generations tomorrow
    3. That’s true whether the gifts are
      1. Money and wealth
      2. Or other humans God sends us to take care of
      3. Care for the gifts and resources of the Church
      4. And the created order, in all its glorious complexity!
      5. We can’t do it alone, but God will help us if we each find our plot in the garden to tend.