This past week a number of Joy folks with diverse backgrounds in energy, banking and engineering, and an interest in environmental stewardship, joined Bishop Mike and I in Zoom meetings with others from around Oklahoma as well as an ELCA Churchwide representative working on environmental issues both nationally and internationally.
It was a wide-ranging conversation, and the more we talked about the big picture, the more pessimistic I felt. The problems are too big and intractable, the proposed solutions mostly too little and too late, and the people with real power and influence seem willing to ride out looming environmental disasters, with plans to make money both creating the problems in the first place and then cleaning them up later.
But when we talked about the more individual and community level, there was cause for more optimism. University Lutheran Church in Norman would love to show off their latest project, which has enabled them to start recycling styrofoam into a commercially desirable renewed material. Folks at Joy wanted to talk about our solar panels as a statement to the surrounding community, but also about future projects at Joy: gardening, landscaping, and who knows, maybe composting?
Joy has had a Green Team for many years. The membership of that team and its energy have waxed and waned--mostly project-driven. I get the sense that as we emerge from our isolation, there may be more people-energy building around issues of environmental stewardship.
What does any of this have to do with Jesus? Well, as Psalm 24 has it: “The earth is the Lord’s, and all that is in it!” We have been placed here not as owners or those set to dominate, but as stewards, gardeners and caretakers, with an opportunity to care for what others have already handed over to us, in Jesus’ name.
- Pastor Jon
