Sunday Eucharist 8:30 a.m. - Spoken Word 10:00 a.m. - Music & Live Stream
Sunday Eucharist 8:30 a.m. - Spoken Word 10:00 a.m. - Music & Live Stream
April 21, 2024
Christ the King-Epiphany Church
Fourth Sunday of Easter
Psalm 23; John 10:11-18
He leads me beside still waters. That’s my favorite line from the 23rd Psalm. Visualizing Jesus, our Good Shepherd, leading me beside still waters calls forth in me a great sense of peace. And actually being beside those waters never fails to soothe my soul. Truth be told, I prefer sparkling to still water – not to drink, but to sit beside. I much prefer to sit beside the ocean, which is not really still at all. But for me, and I suspect for many of you, being beside water brings peace.
But, as I suspect most of you already know to some degree, those still waters which mean so much to so many of us are in trouble. Not just oceans, but also lakes and ponds and rivers and streams as well as oceans are all in trouble because of plastic. The peril of plastic seems to be the main focus of Earth Day planners this year. There is a wealth of information at the website earthday.org which I encourage to take a look at, and from which website I have gathered the information that I am sharing with you today.
Did you know that by 2050, there will be more plastic in the oceans than there are fish (by weight)? 11 million tons of plastic end up in oceans every year. That’s the equivalent of a garbage truck full of plastic being dumped in the ocean every minute. It’s not necessarily dumped right in the ocean, though. It’s not at all inconceivable to think that the trash that our volunteers helped to pick up along Tinkham Rd. yesterday, had it not been picked up, could have washed into a storm drain, which would have run off eventually into the Connecticut River, which empties into the Atlantic. What is happening to the beauty and peace of our still waters?
But this is not just a problem of optics. Plastics aren’t just ugly. They’re dangerous. Sea turtles mistake plastic bags for jellyfish, and starve as their stomachs fill with undigestible trash. The 7000 species of fishes, invertebrates, plants, sea turtles, birds, and marine mammals which inhabit the coral reef ecosystem are becoming endangered because plastics increase the chances of disease on the reefs. Scientists are saying the marine animals are now colonizing the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which is now twice the size of the state of Texas. Lord, what is happening to our refreshing still waters?
Just as plastics are not just a problem of optics, neither are they just a problem for marine life. Plastics don’t biodegrade – they don’t decompose in a way that is not harmful. They just degrade into tiny pieces called microplastics, or the even smaller nanoplastics. Many animals at the base of the foodchain eat microplastics. And then as larger animals eat the smaller ones, they too ingest the microplastics . . . as do we. Microplastics are also found in our drinking water supply, both because they are too small to be cleaned out by our filtration systems. The effects of humans ingesting microplastics are still being studied, but already scientists are pointing toward higher rates of developmental disorders, endocrine disruption, reproductive anomalies, and cancer. Lord, lead us to clean, safe, still water.
So how do we, as people of faith, respond to the peril of plastics? How can we, as people who believe that God’s creation is not something to be used and abused but rather cherished and protected, how can we make a difference?
I very much like the four-fold response that is being developed in the emerging Episcopal Path to Creation Justice: We pray. We learn. We act. And we advocate.
+ We can pray. Today and every day. In gratitude for the wonder of clean and still waters; in confession for our dependence upon plastics; and for the leading of the Spirit to bring about needed changes.
+ We can learn. I pray that this sermon has educated you in some small way, or at least raised your awareness about the issue of plastics. But like all of the enormous cultural issues that we face, we all need to continue to do our own homework.
+ We can act. There are so many things that we, as lovers of God’s world can do, like curbing the use of plastic straws, 500 million of which are used by Americans every single day, and decreasing our consumption of single-serving bottles of water, which the average American drinks 13 of each month.
+ We can advocate. While it is important that each of us does our part in decreasing plastic usage, the truth is that individual actions alone will not solve the problem. Again, I point you toward the earthday.org website where you can sign petitions to end our overuse of plastics; I remind you that we can all contact our elected officials and urge them toward better stewardship of creation; and of course with an election on the horizon, we can pay attention to how candidates talk about these issues.
We can pray, we can learn, we can act, and we can advocate. But still, it’s all pretty overwhelming: this enormous problem with so many wide-ranging repercussions. Sometimes the more I learn, the more I’m tempted to throw up my hands in despair. But that’s when I circle back to where we started: the Good Shepherd leading us beside still waters that restore our souls. And so, I’d like to add a fifth response to this and all environmental stewardship issues: yes we can pray, learn, act, and advocate . . . but we can also trust. We can trust that there are no issues so complex, so intractable that the one who laid down his life and then took it up again cannot overcome. We can trust that the still waters of baptism do both call us into working for the good of all creation AND give us the gifts we need to do that work. And we can trust that, no matter what happens to the waters of the earth, these waters, in this font, will always give us peace.
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