Equipping Pastors with Preaching Tools for Climate Change

After years of preaching and working on The Canterbury Earth Justice Lectionary, I want to prepare clergy and leaders for what will be happening in the next two decades. There are reports that 70% of the global population will be impacted by severe climate events and escalating changes.  What do you need for preaching to churches at risk on the Second Testament. Here is what I suggest that you have on hand: 

• The Earth Bible Project had a series of books published that were distributed in the U.S. by Pilgrim Press. The Earth Bible Project is an international scholarly initiative that reinterprets biblical texts from an eco-justice perspective, giving a voice to Earth and all living creatures within scripture. 
• There are several excellent commentaries on the gospels and Acts of the Apostles. I would start with Habitat, Human, and Holy: An Eco-Rhetorical Reading of the Gospel of Matthew by Elaine Wainwright, an Australian Catholic nun and ecofeminist. She brings ecological thinking to the text and gives attention to all the Earth constituents within the gospel. Her reconstructions of habitat of first century Palestine and Jesus are detailed and useful in preaching most texts in Matthew. For any scripture text in Mark, google her name and “Gospel of Mark,” and you will discover valuable ecological resources.
• Another book I would have on my desk is by another Australian biblical scholar, Michael Trainor. He wrote “About Earth’s Child: An Ecological Listening to the Gospel of Luke” and a companion volume on Acts. His eco-justice perspective sheds light on Luke’s themes on hospitality, the poor, and our planet. He argues that Luke understands Jesus the Christ as Earth’s Child. Popular, creation-centered Jewish wisdom traditions help us understand Jesus as a prophet of Wisdom and the Spirit.
• Finally, the Irish scholar named Margaret Daly-Denton wrote John: An Earth Bible Commentary: Supposing Him to Be the Gardener. She considers Jesus as a gardener with detailed explorations of this embodied, incarnational symbol of the Gospel. At the end of each chapter, she invites us to deepen our connection to Scripture by returning to the question the crowd asks Jesus in John 6:28, “What must we do to do the works God requires?”

Let me conclude with this idea inspired by biblical scholarship. In a time when many of our lakes, rivers, and wetlands are polluted with toxic chemicals and plastics, let us see ancient practices related to water in a new light. John’s community celebrated the Eucharist with a cup of water on the table. Those gathered would drink and taste the living water of the Spirit. Might we add this to our altar tables to remind us of water justice and of the Standing Rock defiant and resistant mantra: “Water is life” (Mni Wiconi)?