Year C Advent 3 (sermon) environmental variant

http://www.io.com/~kellywp/YearA_RCL/Advent/AAdv3_RCL.html

Isaiah said:
The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad,
the desert shall rejoice and blossom;
like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly,
and rejoice with joy and singing.
The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it,
the majesty of Carmel and Sharon.
They shall see the glory of the LORD,
the majesty of our God.

The passage from Isaiah foretells a homecoming and a restoration, and as it echoes down the centuries to our ears, all the way to us listening this Sunday, it sheds various meanings. A way is being prepared for someone, it seems, but for whom, and what does it mean? To the people to whom the prophet originally spoke, it foretold the triumphant return of a remnant of the Exiles to promised land, to Israel. Centuries later, Christians recognized in it a prophesy about Christ’s coming; Jesus answered John’s disciples by citing many of its promises, ‘Go and tell your master, “The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, and lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear.”’ And after Christ’s resurrection, the early Church saw, as we still do today, an eschatological meaning in this passage—a meaning that stretches forward to Christ’s return.

One thing that really amazes me about this passage is its natural imagery. Apparently, this long-foretold coming isn’t just good news for God’s people, or for people in general. It’s good news for the earth. We hear that

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad,
the desert shall rejoice and blossom;
like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly,
and rejoice with joy and singing.

What an amazing, lovely image: that the land itself can be glad! That an abundance of growth and blooming is actually like the voice of the wilderness singing! Isaiah goes on to say that formerly dry, dusty places will be as lush as foreign lands known for their greenery:

The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it,
the majesty of Carmel and Sharon.
They shall see the glory of the LORD,
the majesty of our God.

What’s interesting here is that the word “They” – as in, “They shall see the glory of the Lord,” doesn’t actually have any person as a referent in vvs. 1-2 or this passage. Either it refers to some people that Isaiah hasn’t been talking about yet, or, -- more likely – they refer to the “dry land,” the “wilderness” the “desert” which is about to be transformed as part of Christ’s coming. The very earth will share in witnessing the glory of God, and rejoice in its way—by becoming fertile, lush, and full of abundant water. For those living in the arid climate of Palestine, the promise of water transforming the land must have been an amazing expression of how God would redeem not only his people, the but whole earth:

“For waters shall break forth in the wilderness,
and streams in the desert;
the burning sand shall become a pool,
and the thirsty ground springs of water;”

What an amazing thought—that the earth itself is waiting for Christ’s coming, is just waiting to be redeemed, to rejoice, to be saved.

In the news this week, I’ve been following the stories about the UN-sponsored environmental conference being held in Bali. In Tuesday’s papers, there were three articles on one page— One about Al Gore’s joint acceptance of their Nobel Peace Prize with the UN panel for Climate Change; a second article, in which former White house employees reported that administration officials and scientists have been intentionally downplaying the impact of global warming in their releases and interviews. (Incidentally, A White House official, commenting in that article, said that the leak was a bald-faced attempt to draw attention away from the real progress being made at the Bali environmental Conferences.) And, as if on cue, the third article on the page was about the UN-sponsored environmental conference in Bali—where, it turns out, the U.S. was adamantly resisting setting numerical guidelines for the lessening of carbon emissions—a move which the EU and many other nations were pushing for.

Wednesday, an article entitled “Arctic may have melted past the tipping point”—complete with an alarming map of how much glacial ice mass Greenland has lost from melting since 1992, shared the page with the article “U.N. climate conference struggles on standards” – which, if you read it, was again largely about the U.S.’s unwillingness to set specific emissions reductions.

And late yesterday, after the Bali conference had gone into exhausting extra innings, they achieved some modest “success” – agreeing to meet in 2009 for another round of talks, and with no emissions reductions guidelines in the meantime.

In Al Gore’s nobel prize acceptance speech, he said: "Without realizing it, we have begun to wage war on the Earth itself, Now, we and the Earth's climate are locked in a relationship familiar to war planners: 'Mutually assured destruction.' It is time to make peace with the planet."

I do not think it out of keeping with Isaiah’s message that, as people making way for the coming of our Lord, it is high time to make peace with the planet. Luke says “all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” Isaiah describes a world in which nature itself is witness to the Glory of God, and in which the world is restored and made whole by God’s coming. As Advent people, we need to live into that vision. God has pronounced the created world good, and appointed us its custodians.

It’s really not such a radical idea. In the mid-first century, in his letter to the Romans, Paul wrote: “the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves.”

The revealing of the children of God is supposed to be good news for creation itself, which groans alongside them for the coming of Christ. But all too often, we’ve abused that creation instead. Which brings us to our Collect of the Day. We need God’s help to live into God’s vision for the world. And so we pray:

Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us; and, because we are sorely hindered by our sins, let your bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit, be honor and glory, now and for ever. Amen.