Photo credit: Benjamin Voros, used with permission via Unsplash
In the fall, the Church & Society team will be inviting us to join in a community read of Brian McLaren’s book – Life After Doom – Wisdom and Courage for a World Falling Apart[1]. We’ll read it together, and – over the course of 4 weeks, I think – we’ll have time for conversation in Sunday Seminars. I’ve started to read it, and it’s really good.
In Life After Doom, Brian McLaren enters the conversation about climate unravelling, pretty much where we have been in our community. From the opening chapters, McLaren takes as a given the climate unravelling and collapse that is already underway – he begins by acknowledging that there are some changes that can’t be undone at this point. He does that, so that we can be honest and aware about the reality of now, so that we can find life in that reality – and live meaningfully and lovingly there – and find together the possibilities that still might remain.
As McLaren puts it: “There is life after doom, but to get there, you have to face the doom.”[2] McLaren names the reality of what’s coming to an end, so that we can talk then – out of that reality – about what might come to life.
That’s what the prophets do. In the Hebrew Scriptures. We’ve talked about that before – it’s fundamental to understanding how prophets work and what they have to say. Prophets do two things (1) they come and announce to the people the things that must come to an end – all the ways of oppression, and exploitation, and harm. And then – and only then – (2) prophets proclaim the new thing that is coming to life – the new thing that God is doing, even in the mess we have made of the world.[3]
And sometimes, the prophets do that with a good courtroom scene. As a matter of fact, it’s a pretty standard way that prophets speak out of and into reality. Courtroom scenes bring real life into focus. Prophetic courtroom scenes do it big. In these prophetic courtroom scenes – like this morning’s Scriptures – God summons the people, and the heavens, and the earth – “Hear ye, hear ye – Come O Heavens, Come O Earth. I, God have a case to bring, against you people – against the way the world is going now – I will speak, and you will answer, let us argue this out.” And... we know there are several things to look for in a good courtroom scene – (1) there’s a charge; (2) there’s a response; (3) there’s testimony; and then (4) there’s a verdict, that (5) becomes the operative reality for those involved.
Look how that plays out in this morning’s scriptures.[4] In this morning’s Scripture God brings the charges; God convenes the court. And God does do it big: “Come, O Heavens! Come, O Earth!” It’s a cosmic court where nothing less than all the heavens and all the earth are called to gather and bear witness.
And then, there in Isaiah 1, God lays out the case. The people have forgotten whose they are. They’ve forgotten God. The charge starts off pretty general – “the people have rebelled.”[5] But what is not general or vague – is the damage that’s been done. The land lies desolate; their cities burned to the ground; the people wander through a vineyard left to ruin. God uses the metaphor of a broken and bruised body – from head to toe there is no health – only bruises and open sores.[6] Such is the destruction the people have wrought.
And then God gets more specific with the charges. The people have abandoned justice. Now, they put on a good show – but their worship is disconnected from the lives they live – from the damage they do – “O, how I hate solemn assemblies with iniquity.” Their worship may be pretty, but their ways are corrupt. They’re oppressing the poor – harming and failing to defend the most vulnerable in their midst.
God brings the charges, and then in chapter 5 (our second scripture), God takes the stand and testifies. And God testifies by singing – singing this lament over the vineyard. It’s powerful lovely. “My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He dug through the dirt, cleared away the stones, planted choice vines.” He built a watchtower and kept watch – oh my beloved loved that vineyard so. He expected it to produce fruit, but what came forth were only rotten grapes – a bitter harvest. And now, the vineyard lies trampled down, overgrown with briers and with thorns. And God wails in lament, “O, what more could I have done than what I did?”
God convenes the court – calls the heavens and the earth to bear witness. God brings the case, and God takes the stands and testifies with this lament. We’ve got (1) charges and (3) testimony, what we’d expect next is (2) a response, and then (4) a verdict that becomes (5) the operative reality moving forward.
But God does a remarkable thing. Maybe, after all that, we would expect God’s gavel to hammer down. Enough. I’m done with you. Or, maybe we’re expecting God to relent. God gets all this out of their system, and then says, “Oh, don’t worry, I’ll fix things again for you.”
But no, look at what God does. Even in the wreckage of that vineyard, God loves the people enough to trust them with the truth – the hard truth – and then to include them in the verdict, to invite them – standing in their own rubble – to be part of what will become the operative reality moving forward. God trusts them with the truth – lays it bare – laments – and then says: How will you change? How will you now live? Who will you be? Let us reason this out together.
As Brian McLaren begins his book, Life After Doom, he begins – and takes as a given – a lot of hard truth. Now, I’m not going go over the facts again. We’ve done that. I’ve done that in several sermons – and Royce and others have covered that so thoroughly and meaningfully in Sunday seminars. We know. We know that since the start of the Industrial Revolution in the early 1800s, we have extracted fuels from the earth and spewed carbon beyond what the earth can bear – we’ve overshot the Earth’s holding capacity. We’ve already passed 1.2 degrees Celsius warming, and we are experiencing climate disruptions – super storms, record high temperatures, an increase in climate refugees.[7] At 1.5 degrees, we can expect a number of ecosystems to reach their adaptive limits – more than they can bear. And somewhere between 2 and 3 degrees, we can expect the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets to disappear, accompanied by 2-10 meters rise in sea level.[8] A quarter of a billion people live on land less than 2 meters above sea level. And so on. We know.
We know we are in the midst of a climate unravelling. Climate collapse has begun. Some parts of that are irreversible, other parts not yet. (I’m not saying anything we haven’t already said here.) Brian McLaren begins with all that as the given, as the start of a conversation about life beyond doom. But he acknowledges and takes seriously, as we have, that all this can bring about a sense of doom – or what he calls a “pre-traumatic stress syndrome” – this sense that the old normal is disappearing, but no new normal has yet come into view.[9] We can keep denying it – until the point where “not facing reality is more draining than facing it.”
And so, McLaren starts there. Remember, this is how the prophetic word works. The prophets begin with the truth. They announce what is coming to an end, so that we can start to see what has the potential to come to life.
Taking the current situation as a given, still at the beginning of his book (chapter 2), McLaren offers four possible scenarios of how this all could go:[10]
1. There’s Total Collapse Avoidance. We could downward spiral enough that we will wake up to the dire urgency and radically change. Some of the unravelling can’t be undone, so it would likely be a turbulent transformation, but even so... we would begin the societal transformation that is needed.
2. There’s Collapse and Rebirth. We spiral down, and don’t respond in time, and hit rock bottom. Then, we undertake the daunting task of rebuilding from the rubble.
3. There’s Collapse and Survival. Same spiral down and crash, but what follows doesn’t come with any real change – it’s a remnant merely surviving.
4. And there’s Collapse and Extinction.
McLaren accepts as given the current reality, but points out that none of those possible futures is certain... yet. [11] For McLaren, that’s where Life After Doom begins. Now I can feel the despair. I want to honor that. Joanna Macy tells us we feel that despair because we love the Earth, because we delight in this world God has created – we love, and then we feel the pain when our beloved hurts.[12]
So look at these Isaiah texts. Look at this remarkable thing that God does. God loves us enough to tell us the truth – loves us enough not to let us go on harming each other and the world. God calls the heavens and the earth, and says: Look. Just look. And stop. God sings God’s lament – My beloved had a vineyard. What more could I have done than what I did? And after all that, after that deep and real lament – God loves us enough to invite us to continue to be part of the conversation – that’s the verdict: C’mon folks – change – stay with me here. Stop doing evil. Learn to do good. Seek justice. Rescue the oppressed. Defend the orphan. Plead for the widow. Come now, let us reason this out! C’mon – if you continue in your violent and destructive ways, what lies ahead is destruction. But if you are willing – if you transform – there is life beyond this doom. Come, let’s reason this out together.
These words are thousands of years old, and yet hear how they come to life today. Isaiah writes, “Come, all you heavens! Come all you earth!” Come to bear witness. Brian McLaren writes: Listen. “The trees tell us all this, weeping. Water whispers to us... Forgotten forests, bulldozed [and burned], haunt us like ghosts.” Isaiah’s word and creation’s feel fresh and alive.
I think at the heart of the doom and despair we begin to feel is a growing sense of helplessness at the enormity of what is before us. What these scriptures tell us – after they tell us the truth – what all scripture tells us is that we are not alone. Scripture is the story of God accompanying people whose worlds are falling apart. The people face slavery with no end in sight, and God brings them out into freedom. They are thrust into the unknown of a wilderness, and God is there with them every step of the way. The people wreck their world, and they’re conquered and taken into exile. God goes with them, and then brings them back home – there with them as they crawl over the rubble, helping them to rebuild. The people stumble, bewildered in the trauma of crucifixion, and Christ comes in Resurrection, saying there is so much more life beyond all this. It’s that unshakeoffable love of God – even in the hard things – especially in the hard things. That’s what Scripture says to us, again and again.
We are not alone, and we have the tools to live through hard things – meaningfully and lovingly. What we are doing here – every Sunday – every day when we live out those words “Together We Serve” – we are building our spiritual muscle to live life faithfully and lovingly, with each other and with God – whatever the circumstances.
Just think about the things we’ve learned together over the past few weeks. We’ve celebrated how we all are created in the image of God – with equal dignity and unique gifts to bless and change the world. We’ve considered the ways we do that together – with the friendship of kindred spirits – with citizenship in Christ that empowers us to be more together than we can ever be alone. We’ve stood in awe of God – who is sovereign over all the nations – over the worst and the best that we can do and be. And with diligence and curiosity, we’re looking at these courtroom scenes – as we bring real life into focus, and see what God is doing there... here. We are building our spiritual muscle to live meaningfully and lovingly in the world. And don’t forget, we are a people who have lived through and thrived through a pandemic. Together.
God equips us, tells us the truth, and still invites us to persevere in doing good – to persevere and to labor on and to delight – in life with God and with each other and with all creation. And, as we live out the fullness of humanity – with our despair, and our love – as we write those postcards, and elect leaders who take climate unraveling seriously – as we gather in interfaith community and continue to ask how we will be – this fall – and well, right now – as we pick up that book – Life After Doom – we have the chance to be honest about what is a given – and to look and to live boldy and lovingly into what is real.
The verdict in this cosmic courtroom scene is an invitation to become the operative healing reality that rebuilds a world out of the rubble. The God who was faithful then is faithful now – singing into her vineyard – with all the heavens and all the earth – with the trees, and the waters, stop doing harm, learn to do good. Come, let’s reason this out together. God never stops loving every bit of all that God has created. God never stops saying to us, “C’mon – all this love, all this life – C’mon – let’s do this, together.”
© 2024 Scott Clark
[1] Brian McLaren, Life After Doom – Wisdom and Courage for a World Falling Apart (New York, NY: St Martin’s Publishing, 2024).
[2] Id. p. 22.
[3] See Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1978), pp. 13-14.
[4] For general background on these two Isaiah texts, see Gene M. Tucker, “The Book of Isaiah, 1-39,” New Interpreters’ Bible Commentary, vol. vi (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2001), pp. 50-90; David A. Garber, Jr., Commentary on Working Preacher, at https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-19-3/commentary-on-isaiah-11-10-20-3 ; Anathea Porter-Young, Commentary on Working Preacher, at https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-19-3/commentary-on-isaiah-11-10-20-4 ; Walter Brueggemann, Isaiah 1-39 (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1998), pp.13-20.
[5] See Tucker, p.52.
[6] See Brueggemann, p.16.
[7] See Joëlle Gergis, “A Climate Scientist’s Take on Hope, “ in Rebecca Solnit and Thelma Young Lutunatabua, Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility (Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books, 2023), pp. 38-44.
[8] See id. p.42.
[9] See McLaren, p.5.
[10] See McLaren, pp. 22-36.
[11] See id.
[12] See Macy’s book, Active Hope.
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