As a Lutheran teenager living among so many evangelicals, I was always wary of the transactional and conditional (what I later learned to call) decision theology of my peers. Using unfamiliar language, I had been asked many times if I had accepted Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior or made a decision to follow him. Good Lutheran preaching and teaching had worked its way into my mind and heart without me even realizing it, but when I arrived at the seminary, the grace-centered theology that I had memorized from the Catechism was affirmed: “I believe that by my own understanding or strength I cannot believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him, but instead the Holy Spirit has called me through the gospel . . .” “We don’t make a decision for Christ,” my pastor once told me, “but Christ made a decision for you, and about you.” Good stuff.
But today the scriptures do invite us to make some decisions, and to take some responsibility for our actions and their consequences. It may be uncomfortable territory for Lutherans, but the reading from Deuteronomy lays out two choices: life or death. Which one will it be? “If you obey the commandments . . . then you shall live;” “If your hearts turn away . . . you shall certainly perish.”
In the appointed gospel, Jesus tells us there is a cost to discipleship. To follow him whole-heartedly will require of us some deliberate sacrifice or at least the willingness to let go of comforts, and even relationships, that keep us from answering this call.
If we continue to talk about the climate crisis as we talk about so many other issues in our time — the refugees, the poor, the hungry, etc. — we offer ourselves a slight comfort in the distance or disconnect we assume with our language. The climate crisis sounds like someone else’s issue, and if it is, someone else certainly should and hopefully will handle it. But when we reframe this as our climate crisis we claim not only blame, but responsibility.
We own our choices and are confronted with decisions about how we will move forward. Will we repent and amend our ways, or deny complicity and continue on as if? As if the crisis is not ours, and the resulting damage to the creatures and creation itself, lived out now in the refugees, the poor, the hungry — are these not in fact our refugees, our poor, and our hungry people? The ones we are called to welcome, care for, and feed?
Ilio Delio, O.S.F., in the book “Care for Creation: a Franciscan Spirituality of the Earth” writes plainly: “Human beings are the cause of our planet’s environmental crises. We have no one else to blame. We are all responsible to some degree in this unfolding tragedy, and we are all bearing some of the negative effects.” It isn’t someone else’s problem. It’s ours — collectively and individually. And in the book, she continues to demonstrate how Westerners, and Americans in particular, are responsible for more of the unrestrained consumption of the earth and its resources than any other peoples or species on this planet. And we need to in humility recognize that, and beyond accepting blame, accept responsibility for how we address this crisis in our own lives.
Accepting responsibility for one’s actions does not seem to be in vogue these days in America. Where the leaders of culture tell us to deny, deflect, and destroy, Jesus says, “Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” You can claim to be a lot of things, but without a cross, you can’t claim to be a follower of the incarnate and crucified Christ. You might believe in him, admire him, and even preach about him — but he calls us to follow him. And this includes anticipating and accepting the necessary and sometimes difficult realities of cross-bearing which is marked by personal sacrifice intended for the common good.
Ten years ago, Pope Francis established September 1 as the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, at the same time issuing the encyclical, “Laudato si’: On Care for Our Common Home.” In the Orthodox tradition, this has been observed as the Feast of Creation since 1989. Growing consensus has September 1 or the Sunday closest to it marking the beginning of the Season of Creation, an ecumenical initiative extending until October 4, the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi. As we pray for creation and all creatures, today we hear and take to heart the scriptures: “Today . . . I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live.”
Ilia Delio, Keith Douglass Warner, Pamela Wood; Care for Creation: a Franciscan Spirituality of the Earth; Franciscan Media; © 2008.
