The Proclaimed Word
Preached by the Right Reverend Grant Lynn Ford at
the Sunshine Cathedral on Sunday, March 9, 2008.
“It’s not that easy being green; / Having to spend each day the color of
the leaves. When I think it could be nicer being red, or yellow or gold... or
something much more colorful like that. It’s not easy being green...”[i]
Kermit the Frog found it difficult at first to own his “greenness”, if you
will. He continued, however, to sing:
“But green’s the color of spring. And green can be cool and friendly-like.
And green can be big like an ocean, or important like a mountain, or tall like
a tree.”
He begins to realize that being green isn’t all that bad after all. So I
suppose you’re wondering what all this has to do with our lessons today. You
might think I’m going to preach on global warming and the necessity for being
ecologically conscious. You’d be partly right on that, but there’s more.
Kermit found out that when you’re skin is the color of wilted spinach, you
stand out. And “standing out” is not always a safe place to live. But
sometimes we are called to “stand out”, to “take a stand”, as it were. In
fact, being a person of faith, standing up for what is right, being on the
side of justice and mercy can sometimes even be life-threatening. Ask the many
courageous people who marched alongside Dr. Martin Luther King — Christians,
Jews, black, white, brown.
Listen to the words of Dr. King: “…there comes a time when one must take a
position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but because conscience
tells one it is right.”
People who stood up against slavery knew all about that. People who have
stood up for the rights of minorities know that. Our church members in Jamaica
know it when they risk their lives to attend our worship services.
It’s not easy being green, says Kermit. And we’re reminded by Principle #8
of Progressive Christianity, that “being followers of Jesus is costly, and
entails selfless love, conscientious resistance to evil, and renunciation of
privilege.”
Why, if we were to take Kermit literally, I would suggest that being green
in this society takes enormous dedication and extreme sacrifice. When was the
last time you turned up the thermostat, shut off the water while brushing your
teeth, shortened the time in the shower? See what I mean? What about recycling
all those empty plastic bottles? Simple little things like that, and all too
often we just fail to do it.
But as people of faith the words of the Psalmist ring true with us: “The
earth is the Almighty’s, and the fullness thereof; the world, and they that
dwell therein.” [Psalm 24:1]
The Apostle Paul, in the midst of a debate on whether or not to eat meat
that had been offered to a foreign god, reminded his readers — by quoting
Psalm 24:10 — “The earth is the Almighty’s, and the fulness thereof.”
We know that God is expressing in all of creation. Ibn Al-'Arabi (1165 –
1240), a Spanish Sufi mystic poet, said: “God is essentially all things… God
sleeps in the rock, dreams in the plant, stirs in the animal, and awakens in
humanity.” It was he who inspired the famous Persian poet Rumi.
Earlier, Proclus (412-485), a Greek poet and philosopher, said: “...Nature
generates, augments and nourishes all things... What is…Nature? God is Nature,
and Nature is God. Understand it thus: out of God there arises something next
to him. Nature is therefore a certain invisible fire, by which Zoroaster
taught that all things were begotten, to whom Heraclitus the Ephesian seems to
give consent.”
If we know that all created order exists by the will of the Creator —
indeed, is an expression of Spirit — how can we treat our earth-home with
anything less than reverence and respect?
Lest I sound like an Oregon-born tree-hugger (which actually I am!), may I
remind you that this is only one facet of following Jesus. Remember our
Progressive Principle: “being followers of Jesus is costly, and entails
selfless love, conscientious resistance to evil, and renunciation of
privilege.”
It is the constant attention to these finer details of the life in Spirit
that makes it less than easy. Let’s break it down into three categories.
First, selfless love: Abdu'l-Baha, son of the founder of the
Bahá'í
faith, said: “Love is the cause of unfoldment to a searching mind,
of the secrets deposited in the universe by the Infinite! Love is the spirit
of life in the bountiful body of the world!” [Tablets of Abdu'l-Baha
v3, p. 525]
The Apostle Paul gave us a clear picture of love: “Love is patient; love is
kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it
is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects,
always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” [1 Corinthians 13:4–7 (NIV)]
The 20th-century rabbi
Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler
is frequently quoted as defining love as “giving
without expecting to take”. [Michtav me-Eliyahu, vol. I]
To which an anonymous pundit said: “Love is grand; divorce is a hundred
grand.”
So it’s not always easy to love. But Jesus summed it all up by saying:
“Love God with all your heart, your soul, your mind, and love your neighbor as
yourself. It’s it, in a nutshell!” [Matthew 22:37–40 my version!!]
Next, conscientious resistance to evil: It was Albert Einstein (1879
– 1955) who said: “The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do
evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.”
Irish statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke (1729 – 1797) agrees: “All
that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
And the Q’uran tells us: “…surely good deeds take away evil deeds.” [
The
Holy Prophet 11.114
]
Finally, renunciation of privilege: Jesus said: “Seek first the
kingdom of God, and everything shall be added unto you.”
“This is renunciation,” explains Vivekananda (1863 – 1902), who goes on to
say, “Live for an ideal, and leave no place in the mind for anything else.” He
further says: “‘Comfort’ is no test of truth; on the contrary, truth is often
far from being ‘comfortable’.”
Being a follower of Jesus, as we Progressive Christians understand it, is
not easy: it’s “costly, and entails selfless love, conscientious resistance to
evil, and renunciation of privilege.”
Then again, as Kermit will remind us, being green isn’t easy either. But we
as Progressive Christians can also echo his words when he says: “When green is
all there is to be, It could make you wonder why, but why wonder why? Wonder,
I am green and it’ll do fine, it’s beautiful! And I think it’s what I want to
be.”
Good for you, Kermit. When it comes to the cost of following Jesus, of
being a Progressive Christian, I think it’s what I want to be, too.
And that’s the truth!
[1] From "The Sesame Street Book
and Record". 'Green' is (c)1970 Jonico Music, Inc.