Morning Readings 12-22-10

Isaiah 28:9-22 Revelation 21:9-21 Luke 1:26-38

If we take the Isaiah reading out of historical context and apply it to our environmental situation today, it comes alive as both revealing and frightening. We also have leaders who scoff at scientific analyses of the environmental threats facing the world today. Like their forbearers in the time of Isaiah, they trust convenient lies that enable them to deny the dangers of our times. And like their forbearers, they also are shielded from negative environmental consequences (whatever their cause). The reading, however, warns that there is no protection; it implies that the threat reaches even those with the means to mitigate the worst effects of climate change.

It is easy to cast blame, but really, are we not all the same? Are we not all reluctant to accept (even perceive) news that disturbs our comfort and security, our perceived independence and freedom? What is it that those of us who genuinely do believe that our way of life threatens the very environmental foundations of life on earth? Do we not continually make small choices that deny that belief, choices that protect our comfort and convenience—and certainly our immediate and personal security.

What purpose is served by those who refuse to accept the verdict of the international Union of Concerned Scientists? By their own admission, they seek to prevent the economic consequences of taking anthropogenic climate change seriously. And what does economic prosperity really represent? I suspect it represents individual power to effect security and comfort. Yet, as the word of the Lord tells us, these are lies; there is no shelter, no security from the consequences of our economic/environmental/lifestyle choices. Not only the poor, the disaffected who ultimately must suffer from climate change, but we also, despite our imagined insulation--for we are not disconnected units, but members of a body.

I never really saw before how much the very foundations and structure of the holy city in Revelations is a communal vision. All twelve tribes are represented equally (despite historical tensions, invasions, exile, and return). Even the jewels--delicate crystal lattices grown over eons, cut, and polished--number twelve: the perfection of the tribes whose history was anything but polished or perfect. The diversity and strife that marked Israelite history is here resolved, sin purged, impurities transformed, all things present and transfigured. And more than Israelite history, for this is a Christian text, and the 12 jewels represent all, for they are "every" jewel.

Here none is lost to the Lake of Fire. We find rather the whole of humanity: the powerful and the weak, the socialist and the individualist, those whose humanity undermined by debilitating insecurity together with those whose compassion allows them to risk everything. For all our fears and all our just grievances, we are one in God.

In reading the Annunciation this time, I noticed the implicit contrast between the “kingdom” promised for Mary’s Son and those of our current day. The angel highlights that God’s kingdom will never pass away. Does that make us thing about our kingdom? Just what, effectively, is our “kingdom”? Is it our country, our economic system (which is now transnational)?

How do we conceive of our “kingdom”? Do we assume that it will “pass away” only at some divine culmination of history? In other words, do we invest in the political/economic status quo an ultimacy that it does not have? Even more, do we persist in the consumerist way of life in the (unconscious) false assumption that perpetuating its cult serves some transcendent good? Insofar as we do this—the stability—even the continued existence—of that status quo is endangered. It is precisely this threat that, for those with eyes to see, unmasks our collective, unconscious idolatry.

The message of the angel is more than an annunciation for Mary, or even for us to become inwardly as Mary. Today, the Annunciation, is a call to recognize and question the million in which we serve the “kingdom” of our Way of Life every day.