The Role of the Church at COP
With the help of Paul’s letter to the Hebrews, I finally discerned our role at the COP meetings. Also: Advent is coming, a beached whale (?), and reaching 500 subscribers!
Earlier this week I achieved the milestone of having 500 subscribers to Faith. Climate Crisis. Action. Yay! To celebrate I will be baking a cake this weekend. I would give you each a piece if I could!
“So that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honoured, every part rejoices with it.” 1 Corinthians 12:25-26, NIV
We are truly a community here, part of a wider Earth community. We encourage and support one another in our desire for Earth healing and our efforts in climate action. Thank you to everyone for being here and being part of this community.
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Coming Soon: Advent Reflection Series
It is now late November when the days are shorter and the Earth is preparing to enter its winter season in the Northern hemisphere. In the Christian church we also begin a time of preparation, and mark the first Sunday of Advent on Sunday, December 1st. The season of Advent in the Christian tradition is a time of “holy waiting” for the coming of Jesus, the immanent God into our world. One of our names for God is Emmanuel, which means God-with-us. Although Christmas has become one of those most commercial, high-consumption and wasteful times, especially in the Global North, taking the time to observe Advent is a way to slow down and redirect the consumerist energy of the season. There are four Sundays in Advent, and each one usually has a theme and specific scripture passages connected with it.
Advent has always been one of my favourite times in the Christian calendar. In all of the stress and pain the Earth community is experiencing right now, I especially need the quiet of Advent this year to help me stop, breathe, reflect, and pray.
If you’re feeling the same way, I invite you to observe Advent with me and the community of Faith. Climate Crisis. Action right here. Beginning next Friday, November 29 and continuing for four weeks, I will be offering a weekly reflection on Advent, based on the Gospel reading and theme for the coming Sunday. I will also be offering reflection questions and a prayer that you may choose to pray at any time during that week of Advent.
If you need the quiet and pause that is the holy waiting of Advent, please join me here each week in lighting Advent candles, reflecting and praying.
Next week’s Reflection: Advent 1 – Luke 21:25-36 - “Gritty Hope”
(This will be available to paid subscribers, so if you need to upgrade, you can do so here.)
Art at COP 29
I subscribe to the blog The Ecological Disciple. In the post I received this week, Louise Connor describes a powerful piece of artwork at COP 29 designed to convey at a deeper level the trouble the world is facing. When I saw this photo, I couldn’t tell that it wasn’t a real whale:
It looked (and smelled) like a rotting whale, but was actually created by an Antwerp, Belgium group named the Captain Boomer Collective. For about ten years, this collective has been moving its beached whale exhibit across Europe and Australia, drawing people in with its sudden and realistic appearance.
Even just in my inbox, the power of the art comes through. Read the post here. This is your weekly nudge.
The Role of the Church at COP
On my heart and mind for the last month have been discerning the role of the church at Biodiversity COP 16 and other COP meetings. As I prepared to preach last Sunday, I thought I was going to preach on the Gospel reading in the church’s lectionary schedule. However, I finally realized that the Holy Spirit had a message for me in the epistle reading from Hebrews. Here is that sermon, preached on November 17, 2024, at Grace United Church, Chelsea Quebec.
Scripture Reading:
“And every priest stands day after day at his service, offering again and again the same sacrifices that can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, ‘he sat down at the right hand of God’, and since then has been waiting ‘until his enemies would be made a footstool for his feet.’ For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.
Therefore, my friends, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain (that is, through his flesh), and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” (Hebrews 10:11-14, 19-25 NRSV)
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.
I attended the UN’s Biodiversity COP 16 last month. Less well-known than the climate COPs, such as the one in Baku, Azerbaijan happening right now, the focus of COP 16 is on the preservation of what is left of Earth’s biodiversity and the prevention of further loss. COP 16 was held in Cali, Colombia, a small city of a little more than 2 million people, in a region that is one of the biodiversity hotspots of the world.
I was there as a delegate of the World Council of Churches; this was the WCC’s first year having representatives at a biodiversity COP. This was also my first COP of any kind, and I walked around on my first day a little stunned. It was very large – not as big as the climate COPs, but with 23,000 delegates, still quite big. A lot was going on, too. The goal for this COP was to work to put into action the Global Biodiversity Framework that had been approved at COP 15 in Montreal in 2022. This meant that, in small and large meeting rooms throughout the venue, representatives from 196 countries as well as delegates from business and civil society were negotiating various terms related to the 23 targets and four goals of the Framework.
As well, there was a hub for civil society, called Plaza Québec, where side events were going on all the time. The international non-profit organization “Faiths for Biodiversity” hosted a Faith Hub there, and I was part of a panel discussion on ethical imperatives and Indigenous perspectives on biodiversity loss and protection.
It was a lot! Throughout my time there my question and reflection were on this: Why was I there, and what role do we, as the church, have at COP 16 and other biodiversity and climate COPs?
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