I Will Give You Words
A sermon on false prophets at COP27, the call to climate action, and Jesus' promise to give us the words to speak up and out.
Today, I offer you a sermon that I preached at North Gower United Church, North Gower ON, on November 13, 2022. The text has been updated to reflect more accurate data and events as of today, April 25, 2023.
If you’d like, you can listen to a podcast of this sermon:
Scripture Reading
Luke 21:5-19 (NRSV)
5 When some were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, he said, 6 ‘As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.’
7 They asked him, ‘Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the sign that this is about to take place?’ 8 And he said, ‘Beware that you are not led astray; for many will come in my name and say, “I am he!” and, “The time is near!” Do not go after them.
9 ‘When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for these things must take place first, but the end will not follow immediately.’ 10 Then he said to them, ‘Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; 11 there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven.
12 ‘But before all this occurs, they will arrest you and persecute you; they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name. 13 This will give you an opportunity to testify. 14 So make up your minds not to prepare your defence in advance; 15 for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict. 16 You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, by relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to death. 17 You will be hated by all because of my name. 18 But not a hair of your head will perish. 19 By your endurance you will gain your souls.
Let us pray:
God of Life,
May the words of my mouth
And the meditations of all our minds and hearts
Lead us to deeper understanding of you
And the love you call us to live. AMEN.
The world is burning. The world is burning, and it is flooding. Climate change is now the defining crisis of our time. Saying this is not to dismiss any other issue facing human communities around the world; it is to point out that, as UN Secretary-General António Guterres says, “climate change is on a different timeline, and a different scale,”[1] than anything else we are facing.
The world is currently burning fossil fuels emissions at a level that has us on track for global warming of 3.2° Celsius. We are currently at a level of 1.2°, and with that we are seeing massive forest fires, much more intense and destructive hurricanes, and widespread flooding, such as what Pakistan has endured. In Pakistan, 33 million people have been displaced as a result of the flood in June 2022.
The world is burning, and it is flooding. Impacts are being felt around the world; we are seeing it right here in the Ottawa area, with an intense ice storm at the beginning of April, a heat wave a little over a week later. And we recall the derecho last May. While these events seem relatively minor, we can also recall Hurricane Fiona on the east coast, and the forest fires on the west coast. We recall Lytton, BC, that had a heatwave that saw the highest temperatures ever recorded in Canada, reaching 49.6°C in June 2021, followed by a forest fire that destroyed the town.
People living in the global South have been far more hard-hit than in Canada, with people losing their homes and livelihoods due to climate change. In addition to what has happened in Pakistan, low-lying places have become submerged from rising sea levels. Prolonged drought has led to starvation for many in Kenya, and there are currently an estimated average of 21.5 million environmental migrants or refugees every year, displaced as a result of extreme weather-related events. It is estimated that there will be 1.2 billion climate refugees by 2050.
The world is burning, and it is flooding. This is what climate change looks like now, at only 1.2° of warming. Can you imagine what it will look like if we reach the current trajectory of 3.2°? Utter catastrophe.
It makes me think of the Gospel reading that we heard this morning. Jesus is predicting the destruction of the Temple, and of the wars, insurrections, famine, and plagues, that will come. Jesus is predicting the chaos and destruction that is due to come, and advising his disciples on how they are to respond to such chaos and destruction.
Is Jesus speaking of first-century Jerusalem, or is he speaking about now?
For surely, we are in a world in which there is chaos and destruction; there is war and plague, and our world is burning, it is flooding. We are in a scary time, no less scary than what the disciples were being told to expect. Jesus says, “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven” (Luke 21.10-11).
All we have to add in are the rising of the sea levels, forest fires and extreme storms, and the list is pretty complete.
So, what are we to do, now? What are we to do, in this time of climate crisis? In this time when the world is facing utter catastrophe if we do not immediately and radically reduce the level of fossil fuel gases being emitted through the burning of oil and gas, the production of livestock, and the razing of forests around the world?
Well, the global community is trying to do something about it. Last November in Egypt, people from around the world met to discuss the climate crisis, at COP27. COP27 stands for the 27th “Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.” At COP27, governments, civil society organizations, scientists, Indigenous leaders, youth delegates, environmental organizations, and activists came together to seek agreement on how we can work to limit global warming to no more than 1.5°C by 2030, and to reach a rate of net zero emissions by 2050. These are the limits established by climate scientists, as our best hope at this point.
COP27, however, was not an uncontroversial meeting. Leaders of the world’s greatest emitters of fossil fuel emissions were given the stage to speak, while human rights abuses, such as those of the host country, Egypt, were being ignored, and the oil and gas industry, which has a declared interest in continuing to burn oil and gas, had a shockingly large presence and voice. As well, German climate activist Luisa Neubauer testified that there were “shocking protest restrictions at COP27. …Campaigners [were] banned for criticizing specific countries and [placed] under disproportionate surveillance.”
Governments have been attending the COP meetings for years, and making promises to get fossil fuel emissions reduced in their countries, for years. The rate of global warming is as high as it is because governments have not followed through on the commitments they have made over the years, at various COP meetings and at the landmark Paris Agreement of 2015.
That makes me concerned. Because I fear, and I think that I am right, that the false prophets that Jesus warns us about in today’s reading, were attending, and speaking, at COP27. Jesus warns us that we not be led astray by those who come in his name and say, “I am he! The time is near!”
There might not have been people claiming to be Jesus at COP27, but there were many who were claiming to have climate solutions that, quite frankly, fly in the face of what the world’s best climate scientists, through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, have said. The IPCC has told us, in no uncertain terms, that if we are to avoid further warming and destruction, then we must cease oil and gas production, and turn to alternative sources for energy that are clean and non-polluting. Such technologies exist now; we need the political will and action to put them into place more than they are already.
Yet, there were false prophets at COP27 who claimed that we can still burn oil and gas, and stop global warming! Oil and gas companies from Canada have an alarmingly high presence at COP27, such as the Pathways Alliance, made up of oilsands companies in Canada. They are intensively promoting carbon capture and storage as the way out of our problems, even though such technologies have a long track record of underperformance and failure, and do not address the 80-90% of the emissions that happen when “the oil and gas they pump out of the ground gets burned,” nor “the harm caused to Indigenous nations who are on the frontlines of oil and gas extraction.”[2] Pathways Alliance is a false prophet, promising solutions that are false. Countries that claim to want climate action but commit human rights abuses, and clamp down on peaceful protest, are false prophets. False prophets abounded at COP27.
So, what are we to do? Those of us here, those of us who are retired, or have young families, who aren’t climate scientists or activists, who feel overwhelmed by the enormity of the problem? Who feel like we don’t understand the complexity of climate change or its solutions? Who, perhaps, feel awful about the news headlines, and don’t want to know anymore?
Well, Jesus is calling us to action. Jesus is calling us to act, calling us to a discipleship of Earth healing, a discipleship of loving our neighbours through climate action. This is the defining issue of our time, and Jesus is calling us to pick up our cross and follow him. As he showed us in his time, that means concrete actions of love and mercy, of speaking out and speaking up, of compassion and healing and justice. In our time, these same concrete actions are to be taken up, this time in response to the climate crisis and the way it is harming people and the planet. We are to pick up our cross and follow Jesus. Jesus says that we must lose our lives in order to find them. In other words, we must follow the path of discipleship, the path of faith lived out in action.
My friends, that means that today, in our world that is burning and flooding, in our world that has already warmed by 1.2 degrees and is headed to 3.2 degree warming if we don’t stop living the way we are living, that we must act. We must act now.
And if you don’t know how? Jesus shows us the way. He shows us in the actions of his life and ministry in the Gospel, and he shows us, now, in the actions of the leaders on the frontlines of the climate crisis today. At COP27, we saw Indigenous leaders showing us how to act. We saw youth leaders, at COP27, showing us how to act. We saw environmental organizations and climate scientists showing us how to act. Whether we are retired or have young families at home, whether we know a lot about science or very little, whether we are old school activists or can’t stand the idea of activism, it is time to act, now.
Jesus is calling us to action. He is calling us to action in the Gospel reading for today. For he says, “they will arrest you and persecute you; they will hand you over…because of my name. This will give you an opportunity to testify” (Luke 21.12-13). We are each being given the opportunity to testify today. We are each being given the opportunity to speak up and out, in our communities, among our families and friends. We are being given the opportunity to write letters, join protests in our local areas, even to organize them. If you are interested in joining local protests or learning more, send myself an email, and I will get you connected with what is happening in this area.
And if you wonder what you could possibly say, if you worry about not having the right information, the right data or the right words, Jesus reassures us. “I will give you words,” he says, “and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict” (Luke 21.15).
I will give you words, Jesus says. He gave the words to so many at COP27, and elsewhere in the world. The wisdom of God is coming through so many, Christian and non-Christian, in the face of the climate crisis. Indigenous leaders are calling on countries to listen to them and their leadership, based on ancient wisdom of respect for the Earth. Youth leaders are calling on countries to listen to them and their leadership, based on their clear-eyed vision and passion for the future. And climate scientists like Dr. Peter Kalmus, who is calling this a climate emergency and has been arrested for civil disobedience, in an effort to make people understand just how bad things are, and what is possible if we act.
I will give you words. Jesus is calling us to act, to act now in the face of the climate crisis. Jesus tells us not to be terrified, because God is with us.
I will give you words. Jesus is calling us to act, and reminding us that in our endurance, in our endurance in the work of climate activism, of climate response, in our endurance as we push ourselves past our comfort levels and beyond what we saw ourselves doing in our retirement, or as parents or citizens, that in our endurance, we will gain our souls.
Jesus calls us to pick up our cross and follow him. In this time of climate crisis, speaking up and out is what picking up our cross means. He will give us words. By our endurance, we will gain our souls.
Thanks be to God.
[1] https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/statement/2022-11-07/secretary-generals-remarks-high-level-opening-of-cop27-delivered-scroll-down-for-all-english-version. Accessed November 12, 2022.
[2] “Open Letter to Canada’s Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault: Kick Polluters out of the Canada Pavilion,” https://environmentaldefence.ca/2022/11/10/open-letter-to-canadas-environment-minister-steven-guilbeault-kick-polluters-out-of-the-canada-pavilion/. Accessed November 12, 2022.