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18 November 2007 We have friends from college who live in a home they built themselves. It sits on the knoll of a hill overlooking orchards of apples, peaches, apricots, pears, plums, cherries, and grapes. Mt. Adams, Mt. Rainier’s lesser-known sibling, is framed in the living room window. It’s as bucolic, as picturesque a setting as you could ask. Roger was born and raised in the Yakima Valley, and although wife Mary came from the other side of the Cascade Mountains, she happily makes the valley her home. John and I often carve out time for a quick visit when we are in Spokane, and we have watched the valley change over the decades. Some of the changes seem minor. Tall forests of hops vines have given way to the more profitable grapes. Many of the Hispanic workers that migrated through the area following the crops have bought homes and settled. Their children’s children are now in the schools where Roger and Mary taught. The Yakima Nation has entered into timber farming as well as other ventures that utilize the abundant natural resources of the area. And on those rugged Cascade Mountains, Weyerhauser and other large corporate interests clear-cut mammoth swaths of timber. From the beginning, Roger and Mary reported a change in the weather patterns in the valley. At first almost as conversation, the kind of observation I’m told Westerners would make when they first saw the chimney of their nearest neighbor…”it’s beginning to get crowded out here.” Only it was, “Didn’t get as much rain this year. Must be the clear-cutting.” People tied to the land are quick to notice such things. More trees than Weyerhauser harvests in all of the Cascades were killed or severely damaged in the largest single forestry disaster this nation has recorded. That’s 320 million trees in Mississippi and Louisiana alone…not counting the damage in Alabama.[1] It’s been two years, and Katrina and Rita are still making headlines. The ecological impact of this catastrophe is only now being reported, even though the affected area is roughly the same size as the entire state of Maine. Researchers are using satellite technology and the same before and after pictures that document deforestation in the Amazon River basin. But the really unsettling news is that these dead and damaged trees will release about 100 million tons of carbon. That’s equal to the amount of carbon all of the trees in the United States take out of the atmosphere in a year. And that much carbon will add significantly to the greenhouse gases fueling global warming.[1] The new earth Isaiah writes of with such conviction looks nothing like the hurricane-devastated cities and forests of the Gulf Coast. Of course, Isaiah knew something about devastation. This writer is among the exiles who survive the total destruction of Jerusalem, plus decades of captivity in Babylon. Their return to Israel, as dreamed of and hoped for as it is, still comes with a daunting price. Everything has been destroyed; therefore, everything must be rebuilt, and as ineffective as FEMA was, it did manage to provide a significant portion of shelter. But for Israel’s refugees, even the homes needed to be rebuilt. Think of what we know of refugees returning to lands devastated by violence—whether by nature or by war; think of the tremendous spiritual resources they need to do that rebuilding. Yearning, longing for a time where “the former things shall not be remembered,” a time where the former things don’t even come to mind, is an ever-present temptation. And into the struggle of the present, Isaiah announces salvation. Not the apocalyptic, the entire-planet-will-come-to-an-end-so-your-troubles-really-will-be-over kind of vision, but the vision of a future that takes place right here on earth. It is here that the fruits of God’s transformation will be seen, here within human history, not beyond it.[2,222] And it is the task of the faith community to give witness to it. We do get glimpses of that future—sometimes by being reminded of our own past. Throughout this last week, it has been our privilege to host guests from South Africa. The other night at dinner, Ntokoza was wearing a new T-shirt, courtesy of the South African embassy. The graphics celebrate 10 years of independence. Ten years, following nearly fifty years of government-sponsored segregation and systematic discrimination, not to mention the years of degradation that preceded the official policy. But there was a time, even to those of us living outside of South Africa when those ten years seemed as far off as the wolf and the lamb feeding together. We celebrate with all of South Africa the gift of freedom. Last week I shared the story of the performance piece one minister did as his sermon, eating an apple in the pulpit, then silently placing the core in the offering plate. Tom Kimmell was the one who quietly observed that it’s the core that holds the seeds. During his long years of captivity and imprisonment, Nelson Mandela continued a discipline that began in the 1940’s and followed him into office: two hours of personal preparation before he faces the demands of the day. An early rising, breakfast and exercise, reading. That discipline was one of the seeds the bore fruit as Mandela left jail to become father to a nation. It is not a perfect nation, just as these United States, fruit of brutal hardships borne by a small band of pilgrims is hardly a perfect nation. So we recognize our imperfections on the one hand and in the other, hold the vision of living a full life in one’s own home, eating the fruit of one’s own labor in a blessed community marked by peace and stability. These twin perspectives cause the people of God to raise the question: What must happen for God’s realm to become reality? In one of the segments of the Saving Jesus series, I believe it is Margaret Mead who was asked to identify the first sign of civilization. Her response has nothing to do with tools or weapons or artistic accomplishments. Her response is: a mended femur. Because that mended femur meant that someone helped to set the broken bone of the injured person. It also meant that the injured person is cared for during the long period of convalescence, and that care shows compassion, the ability to empathize and extend kindness, to be in communion with one another. Isaiah voices that compassion in God’s attentiveness to the broken femurs of the city, and plants the seed that calls us into partnership with God. We are called to hear God’s voice in the words of the prophet, and bring the chicken soup of care to the ecologically-devastated regions of the Gulf. We are called to hear God’s voice in the words of the prophet, and provide safe and healing space for refugees of disaster, whether their exile is due to natural or human violence. We are called to testify to the living, still-speaking God through our own witness of compassion. As we do so, the songs of thanksgiving will rise from every quarter, and God’s name will truly be praised. * * * [1] Kaufman, Marc, “Katrina, Rita Caused Forestry Disaster,” The Washington Post, Friday, November 16, 2007, Page A1. |