Sermon: God is Making a Way

The parting of the Red Sea: Children and youth have been pushed to the edge of the sea in this time of climate emergency. How is God making a way?

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Hi friends! Did you participate in the Global Climate Strike in your community last Friday? How did it make you feel? I hope that it left you with a feeling of commitment and hope. Yes, hope! We know that we are confronting massive powers-that-be that do not want to make the radical transformation to a new zero-carbon world. Yet, as people of faith, we have stories from our ancestors, and experiences in our own lives, about the power of the few or the small in the face of the many and the mighty to create change.

In the lectionary, the cycle of readings that many church denominations follow, the reading from the Hebrew Bible this past Sunday was the famous story of the parting of the Red Sea to allow the Israelites to escape the Egyptian army. It is the perfect story to encourage and motivate us at this critical time.

Scripture Reading

¹⁹ The angel of God who was going before the Israelite army moved and went behind them; and the pillar of cloud moved from in front of them and took its place behind them. ²⁰ It came between the army of Egypt and the army of Israel. And so the cloud was there with the darkness, and it lit up the night; one did not come near the other all night.

²¹ Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea. The Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night, and turned the sea into dry land; and the waters were divided. ²² The Israelites went into the sea on dry ground, the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left. ²³ The Egyptians pursued, and went into the sea after them, all of Pharaoh’s horses, chariots, and chariot drivers. ²⁴ At the morning watch the Lord in the pillar of fire and cloud looked down upon the Egyptian army, and threw the Egyptian army into panic. ²⁵ He clogged their chariot wheels so that they turned with difficulty. The Egyptians said, ‘Let us flee from the Israelites, for the Lord is fighting for them against Egypt.’

²⁶ Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Stretch out your hand over the sea, so that the water may come back upon the Egyptians, upon their chariots and chariot drivers.’ ²⁷ So Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and at dawn the sea returned to its normal depth. As the Egyptians fled before it, the Lord tossed the Egyptians into the sea. ²⁸ The waters returned and covered the chariots and the chariot drivers, the entire army of Pharaoh that had followed them into the sea; not one of them remained. ²⁹ But the Israelites walked on dry ground through the sea, the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left.

³⁰ Thus the Lord saved Israel that day from the Egyptians; and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. ³¹ Israel saw the great work that the Lord did against the Egyptians. So the people feared the Lord and believed in the Lord and in his servant Moses. (Exodus 14:19-31 NRSV)

God is Making a Way

Preached on September 17, 2023, at Rothwell United Church, Ottawa ON

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.

On Friday [September 15, 2023] was the annual Global Climate Strike, with hundreds of marches and protests held around the world. Some events are continuing today, as well. The Climate Strike was initiated by environmental activist Greta Thunberg in 2018. Then only 15 years old, she left school one Friday and planted herself outside of parliament in her home country of Sweden. Holding up a sign saying “School Strike for Climate,” she was seeking to pressure the Swedish government to meet carbon emissions targets. 

It did not take long for people to join her, and her action soon turned into a groundswell of youth-led activism around the world. Thunberg created the youth-led organization Fridays for Future, which is now active on every continent in the world, in more than 7500 cities, including more than 14 million people.

Youth are leading the way around the world, fighting for climate action, fighting for the radical reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, and fighting for the mitigation of global healing to less than 2 degrees Celsius. Youth are leading the way because they know what is coming if we don’t take climate action now. 

Youth are leading the way, and we non-youth are following. I attended the local Climate Strike here in Ottawa on Friday, taking two of my kids out of school to join me. We joined about 1000 or more people on Parliament Hill, people as young as 6 months old and as old as in their 90s. There were old-school activists and those for whom it was their first time at a protest. 

Organized by the Ottawa chapter of Fridays for Future, there was a lineup of musicians and speakers on the stage. The MCs were university students from Ottawa, and the key speakers were children aged 7 to 12 who led the strike by asking important questions of the federal government about the climate crisis. 

It was a warm, sunny day, and there was a certain festive energy to the crowd that you often get when like-minded people come together, especially when there are children - and dogs! - in the crowd. However, it wasn’t hard to remember why we were there. We are in a climate emergency, with wildfires and massive flooding all around us. We are in a climate emergency, and while governments make promises to meet certain emission reduction targets and to invest in renewable energy, those same governments give subsidies and benefits to the oil and gas industry to keep pulling oil and gas out of the ground and burning it. 

We are in a climate emergency, but the changes that we all know are necessary aren’t happening fast enough. Worse, they are being blocked by those who profit from the burning of fossil fuels, from corporate agriculture, and from the rampant consumerism that we are all, to a person, caught up in. The transformation that we need to our energy systems, to the way that we farm and what we farm, and to the reduction in how much we buy and use; all of this transformation is being intentionally stonewalled by big business, and sidestepped by governments here and elsewhere. 

We are in a climate emergency, and no one knows this better than the youth who are leading the way in the climate movement, here and around the world. No one knows better than them, because when we talk about the worsening of climate events as a result of global heating, we are talking about what is threatening both their present and most especially, their future. 

At our current rate of greenhouse gas emissions, we are likely to pass the threshold for constraining global heating within the next 10 years. Very soon, there will be a tipping point beyond which we will no longer be able to stop runaway global heating if we do not radically transform our entire way of life. The window to limit global heating to only 1.5 degrees Celsius is rapidly closing. 

At the current rate of things, the world is destined to be facing catastrophe by 2050. Whole parts of the world will be unlivable. Other places will be buffeted between extreme heat and devastating storms. Food systems will be under threat. The number of refugees will go up. Wars will be worsened. And more. 

Lest this still seem far away to us, or out of our control, I want us to think about the youth who are on the front lines of the global climate movement. Of the children and youth who spoke at the climate strike on Friday. Of the babies and school-age children who attended the strike on Parliament Hill, and the many, many more who were in daycare or school that day. 

By 2050, I will be 78. But my daughter? She will be 34 years old. She will be at the age when she should be building a career, raising a young family, etc. Yet the world - what kind of world will she be in? What about our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren?

What about them? They are like the Israelites being chased by the Egyptian army in the story of Moses and the Red Sea. They are being closed in by global heating, forced to the edge of what is survivable by global heating. They are at the edge of the sea, forced to the edge that is made up of wildfires and hurricanes, flash floods and species loss, displacement and destruction. They are at the edge of the sea, and they are being hemmed in by an army. 

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