Story: Baptism at Catfish Creek

1. A couple had planned to baptize their child in a local creek. The night before the baptism there was a big rainstorm that flooded the creek and washed a lot of muck and trash into the creek. The couple at first didn’t know what to do. They had imagined a beautiful, peaceful, clean creek as the place to baptize their child, not a dirty, stirred up creek. But they decided to go ahead with it knowing that God’s extraordinary promises to their child are made known through ordinary water and in ordinary places. 

2. The things of creation are so intimately and intricately woven into our faith. 

3. So what do we have to say about our call to care for the earth, especially in the midst of the climate crisis?

1. Background on Current Climate Crisis

1. United Nations Climate Crisis

2. Time Person of the Year 2019: Greta Thunberg

3. Reflection on Climate Crisis

1. What do you know about the climate crisis? 

2. What scares you about this crisis?

3. What gives you hope?

2. What do Christians have to say about care for creation in the midst of the climate crisis?

1. Biblical

1. Creation Story in Genesis 1 and 2

1. Creation is good and we are tasked with caring for it

2. Creation care in the giving of the Law

1. Leviticus 25: Sabbatical Year

3. Baptism of Jesus

4. Eschatological Vision of God’s Peaceable Reign

1. Isaiah 11

2. Christian Tradition

1. ELCA Social Statement on Caring for Creation (1993)

2. Laudato Si: Pope Francis’s Encyclical on the climate crisis

3. Reflection on Christian response to climate crisis

1. What resources do the authors of the ELCA Social Statement and the papal encyclical rely on to develop their arguments?

2. What do you hear being asked of individuals in these responses? What do you hear being asked of the Church as the body of Christ on earth in these responses? 

3. Do these responses reflect how you understand a Christian response to creation care and the climate crisis?

4. What gives you hope about these responses to the crisis? 

5. What more needs to be said or done? 

3. What does this mean?: Using A New Catechism to Formulate a response to the climate crisis 

1. An Incarnational Theology: Our whole humanity is valuable, so much so that God becomes human, too.

1. Our vision of incarnation is not merely that God becomes human but that God loves creation enough to become a part of it. 

2. Our love of neighbor is love for creation as well 

2. A Sacramental Expression: Extraordinary promises become tangible, tangled up with ordinary things.  

1. God’s sacramental presence in the ordinary emphasizes the value and importance of these ordinary elements for life and our life together. 

2. The sacraments call us to participate in restoring Creation to balance so all life can thrive: clean water is available to all who need it, food sources are accessible for all 

3. The Living God: God is revealed in ancient traditions and the evolution of human experience.

1. The living God is experienced outside the walls of churches as well, specifically in creation

2. What is our responsibility to care for the place where we know God? 

4. God and Human Suffering: God is deeply familiar with suffering and death, and stays in solidarity with us. 

1. We can understand our unity with creation through suffering: all life suffers and Christ came to redeem all of creation’s suffering. 

2. We need to name the truth about suffering in the world, particularly that our actions have caused suffering in creation, towards other humans and towards other parts of creation. 

5. Sin and Human Nature: God delights in our goodness, not our grind toward perfection. 

1. We believe that all  creation is caught up in systems of sin from which we cannot be freed without God’s saving work in Jesus Christ. 

2. We must confess our sin within the context of the climate crisis: name how we are caught up in ways of being that are destroying our planet.

3. We hear the call - inherent in our created goodness - to participate with God in the healing of creation. 

6. The Word: respect for scripture’s authority doesn’t discount other ways God is still speaking. 

1. Scripture affirms our call to see our place within and to care for creation

2. We encounter the presence of God in the world in diverse ways: the moving of the Spirit in our encounters with animal and plant creation. 

1. What does this teach us about God in the world? 

7. Mercy: God’s reputation for mercy before judgment inspires our systems for liberation and love.

1. A merciful world, filled with merciful relationships is God’s eschatological vision. 

2. This includes relationships between humans but also our relationships with non-human parts of creation. 

8. Summary: The foundational guiding principles of our faith tradition give us language to speak to the importance of a balanced, mutual, and life-giving relationship with creation that confesses the suffering of all of creation while working to end that suffering. And In the fullness of time, we believe that God will bring about a merciful world filled with merciful relationships.