[Note: Today’s guest blog is written by Paul Kane. Paul is a climate advocate and member of the Mother Earth Community at Spiritus. Thank you,Paul!]
Readings: Genesis 37:3-4, 12-13a, 17b-28a; Psalm 105:16-17, 18-19, 20-21; Matthew 21:33-43, 45-46
The day-by-day readings during Lent are all about the journey through Jesus’ ministry, leading up to the events of Holy Week. However, if you look at the flow of the gospel selections, they jump around a bit, even switching authors. Yesterday was Luke, today it’s Matthew, tomorrow it’s back to Luke. Today we hear from a portion of Matthew 21, and it may be helpful to look further at the whole chapter to better understand the flow of the story as he tells it.
A lot happens in Chapter 21 – it begins with Jesus parading into Jerusalem (the story we’ll hear on Palm Sunday), immediately goes to Jesus throwing the money changers out of the Temple, then a short (somewhat odd) incident in which Jesus curses a fig tree, and then Jesus really gets into it with the chief priests and elders. After Jesus’s confrontation with the money changers, he begins teaching and healing in the Temple, and people are loving it. But the chief priests and elders are not liking this one bit – their jealousy and anger is a direct parallel to that of Joseph’s brothers in today’s reading from the Hebrew Scriptures, in which Joseph is sold into slavery. The authorities demand to know what right Jesus has to say and do all these things, and Jesus answers them with parables. He tells a cautionary tale about tenants in a vineyard who violently reject the authority of the owner. Jesus tells his audience that the moral of the story is that the Kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to “a people that will produce its fruit”.
Let’s pause and remember that all this is happening in The Temple – the site of the Holy of Holies, containing the Ark of the Covenant and the Ten Commandments, THE place where the spirit of God appeared. In other words, Jesus went straight into the center of Jewish religious authority, and told the people in charge that they – the keepers of the Holy of Holies – would not be in charge for much longer. To put it mildly, there was going to be some pushback.
Nine years ago, I started volunteering with Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL), a grassroots organization that empowers everyday people to work together on climate policy. That’s our mission. CCL supporters are organized into 350+ chapters across the US, slowly but surely building support in Congress for national, bipartisan solutions to climate change. I never thought it would be easy. For nine years and counting, I’ve been writing blogs, submitting Letters to the Editor, making presentations, tabling at local events, and meeting members of Congress and their staffers virtually and in person. We’re making progress, but not quickly enough to protect all of us, especially the most vulnerable. And who are the most vulnerable? They are people without the resources to adapt to a fast changing planet – that is, the vast majority of humans, who are not wealthy. Not to mention the rest of creation. There is no getting around the fact that the ones who profit the most from the continued overheating of the globe have an extraordinary ability to block change. They are pushing back. Power does not give itself up easily.
I’m not giving up any time soon, and many other good people I know aren’t giving up either. I firmly believe the saying that “The power of the people is much stronger than the people in power”. Someday society will reach a tipping point when the people currently in charge will no longer be in charge. How long will this take? How many planetary tipping points will have passed in the meantime? Nobody has the answer. What we do know is that giving up is not a viable option. We the people need to bring about change – to produce the fruit of the Kingdom. We can’t wait another minute.
What can one person do? We all can, and should, change our own habits to reduce our consumption of fossil fuels, to whatever extent we can afford. Replacing furnaces with electric heat pumps, and gas-powered cars with hybrid or battery-only cars are two important examples. You’ll find other ideas in our monthly Green Spots and the Mother Earth page on the Spiritus website.
But there’s more. As environmental advocate Bill McKibben likes to say, the best thing an individual can do is to stop being such an individual! Citizens Climate Lobby (nationally) and Color Your Community Green (locally) are just two examples of organizations that empower everyday people to advocate for change. Mother Earth needs all of us to raise our voices. If you have any questions or ideas, you can always contact the Mother Earth Community by email at motherearth@spirituschristi.org.
0 Comments