During the trial scene in the final episode of the HBO drama series “Chernobyl”, Professor Valery Legasov, portrayed by Jared Harris, says in his testimony, “Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later that debt is paid.” Rather than follow the pressure to minimize the disaster and its ongoing consequences, he risks reputation and career as he details in his testimony the causes of the reactor explosion and the corners that were cut in the safety test that led to the disaster. Indeed, all that was hidden could not remain in the dark, for the effects were plain to see, from the workers and firefighters suffering from radiation sickness to radiation being detected as far away as Germany and Sweden, and the NASA Satellite photos. Perhaps one could say that the truth was like a sword that pierced the veil of complacency and willful ignorance. The effects and consequences of the disaster will not be so easily covered up or erased, remaining with us for centuries to come.

In the Gospel text, Jesus lays out for the disciple community that to follow him is not a weekend warrior endeavor. To follow him is to go where he goes with one’s own cross. To follow him is to be all-in, to give one’s allegiance to the Gospel, which is the Good News that comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable.  

When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die. With these words, young pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer began his book, “Discipleship”, published in the United States as “The Cost of Discipleship”.  He was writing in Germany in the 1930’s.  Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party, having taken complete power in 1933, were aggressively reshaping German culture and history as an “Aryan nation”.  This reshapiing included the German national church.  Jews were stripped of legal and economic rights and subjected to violence.  Those who spoke out against the regime’s ideology and practices were threatened and persecuted.  In his sermons and writings, Bonhoeffer spoke truth to power.  Fearing for his safety, his family and friends urged him to leave Germany and return to Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Upon arriving there, he soon decided he could not seek his own security by staying.  He chose to return to Germany to participate in the underground resistance to Hitler and the Nazi regime, risking the same persecutions as other resisters and his colleagues in the Confessing Church.

When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die. Bonhoeffer’s words still speak truth to us today and pierce our hearts because of the way he lived them, all the way to his imprisonment and execution. Indeed, perhaps his words are more alive to us than ever.  They call us to die to the ways of sin, that seeks domination and exploitation of our neighbors and the Earth rather than the way of love and stewardship.

The work of caring for Creation is divisive, for it calls us to change how we live in some fundamental ways. It calls us, as in the Chernobyl disaster, to lift the veil of complacency and willful ignorance.  It is threatening because it challenges the primary engine of the economy, which is continual growth. It challenges us to consider how our impact on the Earth now will affect the quality of life for future generations. It challenges our lingering notions of “Manifest Destiny” and colonialism, in which the Earth as a collection of resources to be extracted of a creation beloved by God, who takes delight in all life, from humans to sparrows.

“Not one sparrow falls outside the Father’s will”, says Jesus. We can look at the ‘Sparrows’, the birds, to tell the truth of Creation’s groaning. These ‘ordinary’ little birds are all known and loved by God, who loves and provides for them just as God loves and provides for us. In the song of the ‘sparrows’, we may hear the hope of Creation. In the absence of the song, we hear lament.

In my home area of western Wisconsin, I hear the lament of Creation in the silence of once familiar voices.  I cannot remember the last time I heard the Meadowlark and the Evening Grosbeak. The Bobwhite Quail’s voice is seldom heard now.  It has been a half a century or more since people in my area have heard the Prairie Chicken. These missing voices tell of loss; the loss of habitats, the loss of ecosystems, and the truth of the consequences of environmental degradation that cannot be hidden. Without their songs, the world is not as beautiful.

Not all birds are missing and silent, however.  Along with lament, there is hope.  I hear hope in the call of the Sandhill Cranes, once absent and now common, and a welcome sign of spring. I hear hope in the “peent” of the male Woodcock during his ‘sky dance’, and in the call of the Whippoorwill, a song I only occasionally heard as a child, but is now a regular evening occurrence on summer evenings. In their songs I hear Creation’s praise to God, and the hope that the missing songs may return; a hope and a call for us to remember the baptismal promise to care for all people and the world God made, where not one sparrow escapes the loving attention of God.

May this beautiful truth pierce our complacency and willful ignorance. Pierced by our baptismal promise, may we, with the unblinking courage of Valory Legasov and the faithfulness of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, face the truth of our collective responsibility for what is silencing bird songs and so much else.