9.25.22 Prayers of Church & Community, Westminster Presbyterian Church, Pasadena, CA

Eternal God, always our father, forever our mother … source of light, wellspring of love … alpha and omega, the beginning and the end … 

All glory, laud, and honor to you, dear God … our praise, thanksgiving, and hope … in the company of Christ, led by your Holy Spirit, we are your people, in this place, and for these times.

We take up our cross of care and service, with gratitude and with reluctance … bless our gratitude and deepen it, we pray … manage our reluctance that it not win the day.

In such times, O God, times of uncertainty … competing narratives, truth and lies commingled, power worshipped, glitz and glamour overwhelming our capacities to think.

By your Holy Spirit, dear God, help us to maintain our balance … keep up our spiritual health and that of our bodies … give to us , we pray, the discernment of the Prophets, the passion of Moses, the wisdom of Solomon, and the focus of Christ.

We pray for our Food Pantry … giving thanks that we can make a difference for people who are food insecure … for whom life is difficult and sometimes dangerous.

We pray for our communities, O LORD, our government leaders, our schools and teachers, our police forces and firefighters … a host of people who protect and guide us … public servants for the common good.

We pray for loved ones, dear God … keep them safe in their comings and goings … where there is illness, provide relief and healing … where there is death, grant the comfort of Christ … where there is despair, O God, grant the light of hope … where there is conflict and anger, give refreshment of spirit, and a new determination to build a better world.

Help us, O God, to fulfill our purpose, in this life, and for the life to come … to be servants of love, to create hope and peace, to seek what’s best in the human story, and that which is eternally true, and forever good.

In the name of our LORD Jesus Christ who taught us to pray, saying:

Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors; and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever. Amen. 

God and the Weather

God and the weather.

Various conservative pundits and preachers boldly announce that the latest weather catastrophe (whatever it might be at the moment) is of God, and likely related to God's displeasure and subsequent punishment. From hurricanes to drought, God is in the weather business.

Reading in Deuteronomy the last few mornings, weather was clearly a part of the god-story, vital to an agrarian society. Moses makes clear: love and serve God faithfully and the climate will be good for crops, with adequate rainfall, early and late, just right.

And should the people fail to honor God, then God will shut up the heavens and the crops will fail for want of rain.

Tit for tat ...

So when Rev. So-and-So decries the sins of some city, or nation, as the reason for the hurricane or flood or drought or earthquake, the Rev. is simply echoing what's in the Sacred Text: Morality and faith, or the lack thereof, are directly linked to the weather.

Hence, the denial of human-influenced global warning, and the affirmation that "only God can change the weather."

What do I do with this?

First off, the easy association of human behavior and God's manipulation of the weather is just "too easy." We know that the earth revolves around the sun, and the world isn't flat. We know that vast weather patterns and earthquakes are the result of a living planet and eco-systems. Dead planets neither shake nor have weather, either the pleasant kind or destructive.

So, simply to say, "the sin or New Orleans brought the hurricane," or the flooding in Texas the result of "witchcraft and sodomy" is simply a manipulative device to frighten people, even as it encourages spiritual smugness on the part of those "safe in the LORD."

What we know scientifically (God be praised) makes such simple and simplistic associations untenable.

Yet, in spite of themselves, conservatives have a point (contrary to their assertions): Human activity does influence the weather!

While their love of capitalism and money keeps them from seeing just how deeply influential on the environment is human activity, as in fracking and the use of fossil fuels, they've managed to hoist themselves on their own petard (sort of like the sermon illustration of finger-pointing - there may well be one finger pointing at someone else, but there are three pointing back at us). Indeed, Moses was right, not quite in the way Moses might have thought, but in the reminder to the people that human activity has a bearing on the weather and the earth.

What we know about our living planet and its vast weather systems no longer allows what I call a simple "punishment model." But the text does remind us, as scientists are telling us, that human behavior is connected to the weather and now we know to earthquakes, too.

Connected, not quite in the moralistic way that Moses might be suggesting, but in a way deeper and more profound and a whole lot more dangerous.