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Facing the Hard, the Bad, and the Worse
Seventh Sunday after Epiphany ● February 23, 2025
Rev. Jeff Wells © 2025
You can view the full worship video recording at:
Scripture Reading: Quotes from various writers on the ecological crisis,
the potential for collapse of civilization, and the possibility for hope for our future
The texts of the readings are in the worship bulletin linked here.
Click here for a list of resources on the ecological crisis and the vision of ecological civilization.
As you can guess from the powerful readings we just heard, I planned to focus my message today on the ecological crisis and our response to it as people who try to practice faith, hope, and love. And I will get to that, but my experience – and I would say our experience of the world – over the past two weeks compels me to begin with some reflections about other crises we face.
We are going to look at some very painful realities today. That can feel overwhelming and even traumatic. So, let me say right up front that we are having healing prayer today right after this message. So, there will be time to pray together or, if you need to talk or pray with someone individually, there will be prayer teams in the sanctuary and a pastor or minister of care on Zoom.
Today, we begin a new worship series titled, “Living Well Through Challenging Times.” That concept sounds good. The trouble is you have to be alive in order to live well. And one of the most hateful things done by the sadists in the MAGA administration is the across-the-board attacks on Transgender people. And one of the results of that, at least indirectly, is the murder of a trans man and two trans women just in the last two weeks. Their names are Sam Nordquist, Tahiry Broom, and Ariana Johnson. Their deaths and other expressions of violence and erasure affect every Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming person because they cause fear, and emotional, psychic, and spiritual harm. On Friday night, the Church of the Village partnered with PFLAG, the New Pride Agenda, and other pro-Trans organizations to hold a large, powerful, and deeply moving vigil to remember these 3 persons, grieve their deaths, and hold one another in love. If you did not get to attend in person or online, I encourage you to watch the video recording on the COTV YouTube channel. The vigil highlighted for me, once again, the importance of coming together in times of deep challenge, grief, and crisis. None of us can respond alone to what is happening. But many working together can have an impact. We help one another to be resilient, to have courage, and to feel loved and supported. Similar to what we experience in worship here every Sunday, a part of what made the vigil on Friday night so powerful was not just the words, but the music, the singing, the breathing together, the silence, the embraces happening around the room – literally holding one another – and the act of bringing flowers forward and laying them on the steps in front of the altar. I am so gratified to be part of a congregation that brings together Transgender, Gender Non-conforming, queer, bisexual, lesbian, gay, and straight and we commit ourselves to mutual love and support and to fighting for the thriving of all – and right now that means especially, the TGNC community. In this moment of history, this epitomizes who we are.
Now, let me take us back to the desire to live well through challenging times. I am sure no one hearing this message disputes that we are experiencing “challenging times.” In fact, I think the adjective “challenging” is far too mild. The reality is that we are in the midst of multiple related and worsening existential political, social, ecological crises. We cannot ignore or avoid them. We can’t go around, over, or under them. We have no choice but to go through them. A crisis calls for a moment or successive moments of decision until the crisis is resolved toward creative transformation or devastation. God is calling us to let go of our fear, confusion, and paralysis and to engage in determined, decisive action.
When I think of “living well,” I don’t necessarily mean “feeling well” or being “contented” or “happy.” To me, living well means living our lives with purpose and meaning. For me, living well requires that I commit my life to resisting the ways powerful, self-serving, or deluded people, corporations, and governments are contributing to the crises we face. This is deeply linked in my mind with committing to what our Jewish siblings call Tikkun Olam – “repairing the world.” And living well is integrally connected with loving well. Surely, that is part of what calls us to seek to build loving relationships and form loving communities and chosen families for mutual support. We need those to get us through each new day. And, finally, for me, living well means listening for where God is trying to lead me; how God is calling me forward.
The multiple crises we face are all related and we could ask similar questions around each of them. That includes the attempt to rapidly and violently dismantle the American government and overturn our nation’s very imperfect democracy. Perhaps that crisis is uppermost in your mind – and in your abdomen, as witnessing it feels like the definition of gut-wrenching. I am going to leave those other crises to other preachers in this series to address.
I care about all of these crises. I care about many other things too. I am passionate about Diane and our dog, Lexie. I am grateful for many good friends. I am deeply committed to helping assure a thriving future for this church. I get so much gratification and joy from writing, hiking, photography, birding watching, and clean flowing rivers.
That’s part of why I feel so called to focus on the ecological crisis. Because I believe that if we do not find a way through it to a better, more sustainable world, we humans will not be around to solve any of the other, related crises we face. I want to live well by facing and trying to transform humanity’s continued devastation of our planet’s ecological systems. I want to answer the question, “How we can try to live well in response?”
For the foreseeable future, we will face the hard, bad, and worse effects of the ecological crisis. If you have followed my preaching for the past few years, you already know I am particularly passionate about this and the potential solutions to it. I feel particularly urgently the need to help spread the vision of ecological civilization. I want to do whatever I can do to help build its foundations. Because I believe if we do not stop or at least slow humanity’s destructive path, all the rest of our passions and dreams for a better world will be lost.
The crisis is not just about “climate change” or the warming of the planet. It is also the loss of topsoil, the rapid depletion or pollution of groundwater, habitat destruction, loss of biodiversity, and much more. So, a Green New Deal, which is promoted by progressives and Democratic Socialists, may slow climate change, but will not be nearly enough to solve the bigger, broader crisis.
An alternative path toward a human civilization that can coexist in love and harmony with the rest of the living earth will require a lot more than the greenwashing of global capitalism. It demands a complete bottom to top transformation of human social organization – especially, creating economic systems focused on equitable well-being and common thriving instead of “Gross Domestic Product” and wealth creation. And the elimination of poverty and all manner of oppression and class exploitation will necessarily accompany this transformation. They are inextricably linked with the devastation of the environment.
The question before us and all of humanity today is: “How can we face the hard realities of the ecological crisis, maintain our hope that a new way is possible, and do all we can to collaborate with God to move humanity in a healthy, life-sustaining direction for the common good?”
We are people who believe that God is in us and we are in God, who believe that, moment by moment, God seeks our well-being, and who call us and all creatures toward the best possible communal future. That future is necessarily circumscribed by the realities created by our past and present decisions and actions. We have already done irreversible damage to the ecological systems of our planet. So, it is not that “anything is still possible,” but some things are still possible – some amelioration of the worst possible outcomes. It may still ber possible to create the foundations for a new kind of civilization grounded in love.
We cannot deny what is happening before our eyes. Neither can we afford to fall into nihilism that says, “Give up. It’s too late. Just grab what you can and party until the end.” Instead, we have to practice, perhaps against all odds, a “responsible realism.” This attitude and practice makes no claim that our efforts are guaranteed to succeed. We have to acknowledge that the situation looks bleak, yet hold onto the faith-filled and faithful reality that God is all-loving, creative, and a God of possibilities. If anything can save us from complete ecological collapse it will be our collaborating with the loving intentions and creative possibilities offered to us by God.
In our planning meeting for this worship two weeks ago, Linda Lowry said, “This is all so overwhelming. It is one thing to understand it intellectually and another to figure out how to change your life to address the ecological collapse. The big question is, ‘What do we do?’” I believe that many transformative possibilities are still available to us. Yet, they will not materialize unless we act. So, what can we do? Let’s just focus on the “we” of our relatively small congregation. We do not appear to have much power or resources or a big platform from which to address the world. Yet, we can talk with people we know – family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, folks we know in other faith communities. We can each do our homework and read up on the problems and potential solutions. Tomorrow, I will include a list of good basic resources for that online with this sermon and the video recording. Please share those with everyone you can – in person or on social media. I am planning to put together a book of resources for bringing these ideas to local faith communities. As the effects of the ecological crisis are increasingly visible and impacting the lives of billions of people, more and more humans are waking up to the reality of the crisis and the lack of urgent and massive response from most of the world’s national and international leaders. What if each of us did all that we can do and what if our efforts were joined with those of millions, perhaps billions of others across the globe? Our God of possibilities is working in and through them as well as us. Let’s be people of responsible realism: let us hold on to hope, let us hold one another in love, and let us do all we can in whatever ways we can to contribute to the creative, loving transformation of the world.
1 Catherine Keller, No Matter What: Crisis and the Spirit of Planetary Possibility (New York: Fordham University Press, 2025). Kindle Edition, pp. 11-12.
2 Keller, pp. 12-13.