{"id":1064,"date":"2019-09-30T16:07:02","date_gmt":"2019-09-30T16:07:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/new.brethren.org\/messenger\/?p=1064"},"modified":"2020-08-28T22:19:42","modified_gmt":"2020-08-28T22:19:42","slug":"who-is-my-neighbor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/climate-change\/who-is-my-neighbor\/","title":{"rendered":"Who is my neighbor when it comes to climate change?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Jesus knew how to tell a story.<\/strong> He understood that none of the people listening to his parable\u2014least of all the lawyer who asked, \u201cWho is my neighbor?\u201d\u2014would have considered a Samaritan fit for that description.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was the whole point. He was showing his audience how to think outside the box.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So who is my neighbor when it comes to climate change? To answer that question, I invite you to arrive at an understanding of neighborhood that goes beyond our street address, our church friends, our professional affiliations. I invite you to see the world in a communal rather than an individualistic way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A column by United Methodist writer Jeanne Finley pointed me to the words of Robert Penn Warren. In the novel All the King\u2019s Men<\/em>, Warren says, \u201cThe world is like an enormous spider web and if you touch it, however lightly, at any point, the vibration ripples to the remotest perimeter.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you begin to see the world this way, then you suddenly have many more neighbors than maybe you thought you had.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you see the world this way, then the raging fires now burning in the Amazon rain forest are not simply Brazil\u2019s problem. If you see the world this way, the rising temperature of the earth due to the burning of fossil fuels\u2014and the damage this does to our planet\u2014is not someone else\u2019s or a later generation\u2019s problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When it comes to the climate change crisis, the world is our neighborhood and all the people in it are our neighbors. And I would argue\u2014not just the people but all the animals, insects, fish and other creatures in it. Yes, in this view, even different species are our neighbors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Saint Francis knew this 800 years ago. While praying in a ruined chapel, he saw a vision of Jesus who told him: \u201cRepair my home.\u201d At first, Saint Francis thought Jesus meant the ruined church building; later he came to understand that the command was far broader. He discovered that it was important to care for all of creation. Today, he is the patron saint of animals\u2014and of ecologists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each year, several Christian denominations mark the \u201cSeason of Creation.\u201d We are in it now; it runs from September 1 to October 4 which is the day of the Feast of Saint Francis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This year\u2019s proclamation of the Season of Creation says, \u201cAs the environmental crisis deepens, we Christians are urgently called to witness to our faith by taking bold action to preserve the gift we share. . . . During the Season of Creation we ask ourselves: Do our actions honor the Lord as creator? Are there ways to deepen our faith by protecting \u2018the least of these\u2019 who are most vulnerable to the consequences of environmental degradation?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One gray afternoon last November, the well-known Christian climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe spoke to our congregation and made the same points. She told us how the dreadful conditions caused by climate change hurt our poorest neighbors first and most, leading to increased migration and food and economic insecurity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The key to mitigating the climate crisis lies in our definition of community. If we take a narrow view, then bigger troubles lie ahead. But if we think more broadly\u2014as Jesus urged the questioning lawyer to do\u2014then there is still time to make a positive difference in the neighborhood.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What if our understanding of ‘neighborhood’ expanded beyond our street address, church friends, or professional affiliations?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":1067,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[17,183,184],"class_list":["post-1064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-climate-change","tag-climate-change","tag-dick-jones","tag-global-citizenship"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1064"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1064\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1386,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1064\/revisions\/1386"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}