Reflectionsbyourdeacons - St. David's Episcopal Church -- Spokane, Washington

Still waiting -- February, 2012
by The Rev. Finn Pond

Ours is a God of love. We tell this to ourselves, to our children, to people questioning our faith. We declare it in Sunday sermons. We whisper it in times of crisis. We repeat it again and again as if in the saying we make it true. Whom are we trying to convince? Are the poor and outcasts of our society, people living in misery and grappling with the cruel realities of their lives, uplifted by our words? Are the lonely and isolated comforted to hear that God loves them? To only speak of the love and peace of God does little to assuage their tears and ease their anguish. Despair and suffering silences the voice of God. Hollow platitudes make the church impotent. How is God’s love reconciled with the harsh realities of the world?

The Christian message of love goes unheard too often because the church does not speak the language understood by the poor in spirit, the sorrowful, the persecuted, and those who hunger for justice—the physical language of compassion. We make God’s love tangible by our actions toward others. We carry the love of God into the world by binding up the broken-hearted, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, embracing the ‘lepers.’ We bring light to the darkness when we carry Christ into shelters, hospitals, and nursing homes, into prisons and soup kitchens and all the corners of our city. We declare God’s love for people by living that love. Too often, however, we do not go far enough – we stop short.

A friend recently related to me the story of his sister, born with fetal alcohol syndrome, living on the street, victimized repeatedly, sad, alone, afraid, and desolate. Can God’s love extend even to her or her parents? I know of a young man estranged from his family because of his sexual orientation. Can God’s love extend to him and his family? And what of the single mother unable to pay her monthly rent, the mentally ill adolescent confused and homeless, or the elderly woman fading away in isolation? Does God’s love seek something more for these individuals? Can God’s love empower society to care for the lost and forgotten—to create justice and peace in a hurting world?

Many people live estranged from God. Jaded, disillusioned, angered by the harsh, sometimes cruel realities of the worlds in which they live, they do not experience God’s presence, God’s love. They encounter only cold silence from the more fortunate, from those holding power and wealth, from the happy and self-satisfied—from the winners in life. How will our neighbors know God’s love if we are silent, distant, and apathetic, if we do nothing to change their worlds—if we do not manifest God’s love? How can we truly know God’s love in our own lives if we turn away from the needs of our community?

To live within God’s love is to seek justice, to create a world where all can flourish, where one person’s success and happiness are not achieved on the sorrow of another. To live within God’s love is to move from complacency to caring— to make a difference. Our actions reveal either God’s love or our indifference. Jesus manifested God’s love, and challenged the leaders of his day to do the same—challenges us to do the same. Multitudes of people still await a manifestation of God’s love in their lives; still wait for us to respond.

Walking on Wall Street -- November, 2011
by The Rev. Finn Pond

Hers was the first face I noticed after logging onto Facebook. Her gentle smile peeking out from a crowd of people drew my attention. My niece, a thirty-something homemaker and mother of three, periodically posts photos of family trips and adventures, but this was different. She stood placard in hand, at an “Occupy Wall Street” rally, protesting with hundreds of others, part of a disparate assemblage of individuals linked by shared concerns. Her sympathies to the movement did not surprise me—she had recently posted links to ‘pro-Occupy’ websites—but I did not appreciate her level of frustration, nor did I anticipate that she would be moved to action. Stories in the media and comments from Wall Street suggest that others also had dismissed too quickly the concerns of a great many people like my niece.

The “Occupy Wall Street” movement is attracting people of various political stripes, reflected in a diversity of rally cries and slogans. I sense, however, a common focus emerging—a focus on economic justice and societal well-being. It appears less an attack on the wealthy than a response to the greed and avarice that motivates so many, a response to the fear that financial and economic systems no longer work for average citizens, a response to looming economic uncertainties. It is understandable that people are exasperated, feeling that regardless of how fast they run, they have already lost the race.

Of course, not everyone recognizes what some call economic injustice; not everyone looks around and sees a system that has failed the homeless, the unemployed, the underemployed, the poor and undereducated, the sick and hungry, the mentally ill. Some paint them not as victims of the system, but as casualties of their own personal weakness and poor choices. Some see in the movement — the chanting, marching, camping out, and protesting — evidence of a spoiled multitude raised on entitlements. Some ask, “What is expected of us anyway?” The reality, however, is that more and more people find themselves falling through cracks in the system and pushed to the margins of the "American Dream."

Jesus calls us to live justly in the world, to live compassionately, and to live in a spirit of generosity and cooperation, concerned for the well-being of all, especially the least in society. When societies fail to do so, we, as Jesus’ followers, should speak out with prophetic voice, speak to those in power, and speak on behalf of those who cannot — those fallen through the cracks. We should speak of justice for all, and we should welcome just action wherever we find it, for all justice is God’s justice, all grace is God’s grace, and all truth is God’s truth.

My niece and her family are not well off by some standards, but they enjoy a relatively comfortable and secure life. She chose, nevertheless, to speak out for a different way of living as community, a way of concern for her neighbors, a way of hope for her children. The “Occupy Wall Street” movement did not begin as a movement of Jesus’ followers, and we may not want to embrace many aspects of the movement, but it is an opportunity for us to speak with a prophetic voice, to speak for the way of Christ.

The seven-billionth person -- October 2011
by The Rev. Finn Pond

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself . . . . And who is my neighbor? Luke 10:25-29

Humans have been fruitful and multiplied . . . and multiplied . . . and multiplied. I was born into a world of about two-and-a-half billion people, but soon I will be one of seven billion. The United Nations predicted several months ago that the seventh-billionth person would be born on October 31, only a month from now. I have been pondering this milestone, wondering what it will mean to my children and me to be one of so many, and what the prospects are for ‘Number Seven-billion.’ Of course, we will never know which child is number seven-billion since the prediction comes from mathematical models and not actual counts—he or she may already have been born. It does not matter, however, that we identify the child, the fact of the matter is that the world into which I was born does not exist anymore, and the world of today will be different in another generation.

Many of the coming changes will be welcomed—digital technology will continue to astound, medical science will make tremendous strides, green technologies will advance. Many people will live longer, happier, richer lives—many, but not all. While population growth has flattened out in developed countries, even decreased in some, another billion people will arrive within twelve years and the world population will exceed nine billion by mid-century. The growth is happening in developing countries and in the poorest countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean according to the Population Reference Bureau’s "2011 World Population Data Sheet" — areas in which already over one billion people live in extreme poverty.

In a recent Science article, "7 Billion and Counting," David Bloom states that with foresight and early action we have considerable potential to promote human well-being, but, even so, many countries will face “unprecedented and daunting challenges related to the supply and distribution of food, water, housing, and energy.” What is a Christian response to this changing world—to a growing chasm between rich and poor, to economic and social inequities, to poverty and illness? Does God call us to be Good Samaritans to all people beaten down by the changes and chances of life, to all populations left half-dead along the road of life? Is that even possible?

What happens elsewhere has consequences for us, but the issues we face are not simply pragmatic ones. These are moral and spiritual issues as well. Jesus said, “Feed my sheep.” Jesus said, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.” Can we do that with words alone? No, we manifest the transforming power of the gospel in action—when we speak with flesh and blood. Whatever we do to the least in the world—giving water to the thirsty, food to the hungry, clothing to the naked—we do to Christ. The seven-billionth person will likely be born into poverty. What world are we passing on to that child?

Will our children and grandchildren in fifty years judge us harshly because we did not allocate resources to care for the poorest and most marginalized people in our communities and on the planet today? God calls us to lives of compassion and generosity, lives that acknowledge God’s presence in all people, calling every person "neighbor." But we as a corporate body must go further to shape a just society, to reveal God’s Kingdom. Martin Luther King, Jr., said it well:

“On the one hand we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”

Deacon's reflection -- September 2011
by The Rev. Finn Pond

Sometimes old songs from my youth make surprise visits, dancing around in my head for a while before wandering off. Last week it was from Woodstock — “Well I came upon a child of God . . .” One phrase lingered longer than the others did: “We are stardust, we are golden, we are billion-year-old carbon.” Apart from the serious underestimation of when carbon first came into the universe, I like the phrase. It is a poetic reminder that we are linked to the universe—the matter in us originating during the evolution of the universe, in the formation and death of galaxies and stars. We are star stuff, as the astronomer Carl Sagan once said in his television program "Cosmos," waxing rhapsodic about our link to one another and the cosmos, about our privileged place in the universe. There is indeed grandeur in the image of the universe birthing stars, planets, and life itself, the idea that we are the stuff of stars, but for me there is something lacking.

We are special, not because of the nature of matter, but because of the nature of God. In the beginning God created, setting in motion the cosmic evolution that led to you and me, and God entered into creation to be present with us and with all of creation, permeating all that is in love. God is in creation and creation is in God. This perception runs deep in Christian thought, but few of us take time to appreciate the ramifications of that insight, to ask what the Spirit is saying to the Church.

Most of us perceive God’s presence only in certain areas of our lives. We easily acknowledge the image of God in other parishioners, but rarely look long enough upon the outcasts and aliens at the peripheries of our lives to see God in them. We assert the sanctity of life as long as we can relate to that life, but become strangely mute about lives outside our realm of concern, about lives too different from our own. What does that say about our mindfulness of God? God’s presence makes creation holy, but we seldom live in that awareness. Our ability to recognize God in creation is limited and so we conduct rituals to sanctify space and time and physical objects, setting apart as holy whatever allows us to encounter God more easily. God, however, is always and everywhere present and when we realize that God surrounds us, we begin to interact differently with the world.

In God’s presence, even stardust—the matter we manipulate every day—becomes sacred matter. To understand that God is in creation and creation exists in God is a call to think more carefully about how we reshape and repurpose star stuff—about how we exploit natural resources, about what we build and what we destroy. It is a call to put aside selfish and thoughtless exploitation of creation and begin to live in a way that honors and benefits creation itself. It is a call to utilize wisely, what God has created.

Yes, we are stardust, we are golden, and we are children of God, but we are only a small part of God’s creation, all of which is blessed—made special—by God’s presence.

The green dragon? -- July-August 2011
by The Rev. Finn Pond

My office is moving to a new building—a good time to unburden myself of those old papers tucked in file cabinets and those dusty books crammed together on shelves. The sorting and culling process, though sometimes painful, has been instructive and liberating, and a cause for reflection. As I tossed one textbook after another into the ‘give-away pile,’ I came across three small books that have traveled around the country with me for forty years, books I purchased as a young biology student. The books present Christian responses to environmental issues. I kept those books all these years, because they remind me that theology has real consequences for real people—what we believe about God and creation affects how we live in the world, and that how we respond to the needs of the world says something about the Christ we follow.

The 1960's witnessed a rising awareness of environmental pollution and degradation, but church leaders were largely silent about our ethical obligations as stewards of God’s creation. In 1967, Lynn White published a seminal paper in the journal Science, entitled “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis,” in which he argued that the Bible, in condoning human dominance over nature, advances an anthropocentrism detrimental to the long-term well-being of our ecosystems. His ideas sparked a debate about the role Christianity played in the uncritical exploitation of natural resources.

The books on my shelf were theological replies to White’s accusations. Over the past four decades, many Christian leaders have argued against the selfish and shortsighted exploitation and the rampant consumption of nature’s resources, developing a theology of creation. Still Christian communities are not all of one mind on environmental issues.

This past winter the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, in reaction to a growing environmental movement among evangelical Christians, released a twelve-part DVD series called Resisting the Green Dragon. The green dragon they strive to defeat is ‘environmental extremism,’ which they fear is a new religion, threatening to undermine a Biblical view of God, creation, sin, and salvation. They acknowledge a call to conservation and stewardship, but contend that scientists have exaggerated concerns about global climate change, over-population, and species extinction. They are holding on to the anthropocentrism criticized by White—the view that creation is simply the matrix in which a human salvation story is played out.

Is there a ‘green dragon’ undermining Christianity? Despite claims to the contrary, scientific evidence has accumulated and a widespread scientific consensus has emerged that detrimental climate change and environmental degradation are underway and that human activities are contributing to those changes, and concern for the state of the environment has emerged within all religious and secular communities. Uniting in a common cause does not undermine our Christian world views, and in fact allows us to share important insights with others regarding the creation and our relationship with it.

I believe that creation has intrinsic value apart from human beings—it is God’s creation—and we have a moral responsibility to interact with the natural world in ways that promote the well-being of all individuals and creatures now and in the future. I recognize that not all Christians agree with me, but our call to be stewards of creation is a starting point for dialog, an opportunity to explore what that means in theological as well as practical terms.

Those forty-year old books have encouraged me to continue the dialogue about how we should live in God’s creation with people of all faiths—even radical environmentalists. I do not fear the green dragon.