A sermon by Alison Sampson on Luke 21:25-36

Have you ever been to Venice? Such a beautiful city… But the combination of heavy buildings and rising sea levels mean that this beautiful city is regularly inundated by acqua alta. The water rises, the sirens sound, and out come the duckboards so the people of the city can walk around. Meanwhile, maps of the projected effects of rising sea levels make the long-term future of Venice look very bleak, indeed.

What about Tuvalu? Local population growth and the warming of the ocean surface are placing enormous pressure on the islands. In March of this year, storm surges destroyed or contaminated every fresh water source on the island of Nui. Warmer oceans have triggered the bleaching of four fifths of their coral reefs, which in turn has meant less reef protection and lower resilience for the islands during the increasing numbers of severe storms. The Prime Minister, Enele Sopoaga, is urging other nations to tackle climate change, since the changes which have already taken place are having a dramatic effect on his country. Like Venice, the long term future for Tuvalu, and its neighbour, Kiribati, look pretty grim.

Meanwhile, increasingly intense cycles of El Nino and El Nina are leading to bigger storms and greater storm surges around the Pacific, causing coastal erosion and flooding from Sydney to California. While in the Atlantic, warmer ocean surface temperatures are triggering higher hurricane wind speeds and more damaging storms, such as we saw in Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Sandy.

This Friday saw the largest climate rally in Australia’s history. An estimated 60,000 people marched through Melbourne calling for climate justice. All over the world, people are demanding that governments commit to reduced emissions targets, and limit the rise in global temperatures.

What on earth do these situations have to do with our faith, and with Advent? Well, tonight we heard Jesus say, “There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves…” These signs and portents form part of a longer sermon, in which Jesus says: “When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then you know that its desolation has come near. Those in Judea must flee to the mountains, and those inside the city must leave it, and those out in the country must not enter it; for these are days of vengeance… There will be great distress upon the earth and wrath against this people; they will fall by the edge of the sword and be taken away as captives among all the nations, and Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles…” And then he goes on to talk about the sun, the moon, the stars, the waves, and the seas.

So one way of hearing this sermon is to place them in their historical context. We know that Jesus was speaking to people whose city was dominated by Rome. He was describing in practical and poetic ways the catastrophic upheaval that was to come – and his advice was sound. Your rabble-rousing against Rome can only lead to your destruction; and the wrath of Rome is great. When this wrath is visited upon Jerusalem, it will be like the sun exploding. Get the hell out of there – run, run for the hills.

And we know that, sixty years later, this is exactly what happened. Rome became fed up with the constant agitation and revolts, and came down on Jerusalem with an iron fist. The temple was destroyed; the people were killed or scattered. And this dramatic upheaval happened as violently and decisively as Jesus had predicted.

If that is all that these words have to offer – a description of a far-off historical event, and proof of Jesus’ skills as soothsayer and poet – then I guess we can close our Bibles now and go home! But we have been given a living word, a word which continues to speak into our lives and our contexts, and it has plenty to say to us now. For we are a people facing catastrophic climate change, and we hear these words of Jesus on the eve of the United Nations Climate Change Conference which will be held in Paris this week.

Jesus says, “There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world…” And when I read about climate change, I feel faint. The destruction of New Orleans, or Venice, or Tuvalu; out-of-control wildfires in California and Indonesia; devastating droughts around the world; desertification of formerly arable land; melting of the polar ice caps; the sixth great extinction of species on this earth… How can I read about these things, and not feel completely overwhelmed?

For I am such a little person, and the powers are so big. The governments and disaster capitalists and environmental hoodlums keep chopping down trees and pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. They will not change, and there seems to be nothing I can do about it. Many believe that we have passed the global tipping point for a temperature rise of over 2 degrees, and that catastrophic climate change is inevitable. In despair, I keep living as I have always done, with my eyes closed tight against the impending doom. I drive when I could walk, buy food from far away, and bring home mountains of plastic packaging. I live in a city of sprawling suburbs and choked roads, dotted with McMansions which are cooled by electricity generated by burning brown coal: and I close my eyes. And in the evenings I pour myself another glass of wine and try not to think about the future. But every now and then I wake in the middle of the night frozen with fear for my children and my children’s children, and the world that they will inherit.

I am doing exactly what Jesus said we would do. He said that when people see these signs – rising floodwaters, raging storms, warming oceans, plastic seas, the sixth great extinction – then “people will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world…” People will be frozen with fear. They will feel paralysed and helpless. They will wake in the night and feel sick – and in their despair, they will do nothing.

But from Jesus I also hear a rebuke, because passivity and despair are not what Jesus demands of his people. “People will faint from fear… but when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

Melting polar ice caps, rising oceans, out-of-control wildfires, extreme weather events? They’re hardly something to celebrate. But they are signs. They should make us afraid, very afraid, but as followers of Jesus we should let these signs galvanize us into action.

“Be on guard,” he says, “so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life…” Don’t pour another glass of wine. Don’t stop yourself from thinking about these things. Don’t allow yourself to be paralysed by fear or crippled by anxiety. Don’t submit to the powers, which see the world only in terms of money, and tell you things are hopeless, and ask that you ignore everything that is happening. And don’t be lulled by a false sense of security, and by the lures of this age. Instead, stand up. Stay awake, be alert, and seek the reign of God which is at hand.

For we are a people not of despair, but of hope. We know that reversing climate change is impossible, but in the face of the impossible, we demand a miracle. We cannot heal the earth alone. But with God’s help, a million small changes may lead to radical change. With God’s help, a million small dreams may lead to a healing of the earth, and of our selves.

Remember the hole in the ozone layer? When I was in primary school, it was terrifying. We were all going to be burned up, and our children would never be able to play outside. Healing that hole seemed impossible, insoluble, a sign of the end times. But people campaigned, and scientists worked, and nations were lobbied. In 1996, developed countries stopped using non-essential ozone-depleting substances; in 2010, developing countries made the same commitment. And the hole is now shrinking. By the middle of this century, it is predicted to return to pre-1980 levels. Miracles happen; the apocalypse can be reversed.

With climate change, another apocalypse is at hand, and “it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth”. The waves are rising, the oceans are surging, and the temperature is going up. We are witnessing the first signs of the apocalypse, and we feel the fear, but as followers of Jesus, we do not live by this fear. Instead, we live by love. We love God’s good earth, and so we care for it. We love our children, and so we work for their future. We love all God’s children, especially those in the developing world whose lives will be most profoundly affected by climate change, and so we work for their future, too.

Climate change is bigger and more complicated than the hole in the ozone layer. There are more factors – but that means there are more things we can do. And as people of love and hope, we can all do small things. We can write to our politicians regarding Australia’s emissions, which are set to increase by 6% by 2020. We can eat less meat, and bring home less plastic, and drive fewer miles, than we did last month. We can buy less stuff. We can live locally, and grow a few veggies, and share tools. We can switch to green energy; we can use things until they wear out. We can lobby banks and superannuation funds and ask them to divest their carbon-heavy portfolios; we can host climate conversations at our kitchen tables. We can plant locally indigenous plants in our gardens.

By themselves, none of our small actions will fix the global problem; and none of these ideas are particularly radical or exciting. But like the first Christians, we are called to be steadfast. We must not give up. Instead, we patiently engage in the practices of faith: praying and hoping, reading the Scriptures, sharing the sacraments, seeking justice, loving kindness, and letting these things shape us as we seek to live in right relationship with each other and with God’s good earth. And we keep seeking the reign of God, the shalom which never fully arrives but which we glimpse again and again, here and now, in small ways and in small things.

And we must hold on to our hope: hope for the radical, impossible change that is necessary; hope for miracle upon miracle; hope that, when the time comes, we will be found to have been good and faithful stewards of the earth and can stand with our heads held high. And we hope for the coming of the One who is the root of all our hope; the One who seeks willing workers in the field; the One whose coming promises the healing of the earth, and with it, our redemption. Ω