Create a climate of change.  That’s a tall order, but one that honors our fundamental unity with all of creation.  I’m sure that when some people hear that phrase, the initial reaction is going to be, “change?!  Who, me?  Why should I?”  Episcopalians are fond of the story that asks how many of them it takes to change a light bulb. The answer starts the same way.  “Change?  My grandmother gave that light bulb.  If it was good enough for her, it’s good enough for me.”  Well, most of us know that we need to change that light bulb, and a good many more of them as well.

Change is hard because part of our human condition is inertia – and that inertia certainly has contributed to our evolutionary success.  Conserving tendencies keep us in known territory, doing familiar things.  That’s not all bad.  It has a lot to do with how we learned what plants were good to eat and where and when we catch the fish to eat. 

But learning to change, or embracing appropriate change, is also fundamental to our evolutionary success.  If we had never changed, we’d still be a bag of organic molecules – probably not even protoplasm – in a sea much warmer than this one.  Evolution, whether the kind we think of when we invoke Darwin’s name, or the kind that comes to mind when we’re talking about building a more just and peaceful human society, depends on an appropriate balance between the sort of stationary, conservative inertia that lets us keep the best of what has come before us, and the kind of dynamic inertia that keeps us exploring the new possibilities all around us.  We would be things, rather than living beings, without that capacity for both innovative and conserving behavior.  As a noted theologian said, to be human is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.

We are being urgently asked to create a climate of change, to encourage others, and ourselves, to look for those new possibilities, and to explore them with the courage to try the untested and the unknown.  The future is not a place for the faint-hearted. 

But we’re not called to embrace change without a sense of where we’re going or intend to go.  That kind of unexamined behavior has brought us to this point of looming crisis.  We’re here today to encourage the kind of change that can offer a hopeful future for all of humanity and all of creation, so that all people may live an abundant life that does not do injustice to the rest of creation, and therefore to our neighbors.  For we are all connected, and the actions of one part of this ecosystem – or the body of God, as one theologian calls it – the actions of one part will ultimately affect the actions of all the other parts.

Renewing the earth is going to take significant and remarkable change.  This conversation about reducing the carbon footprint of our structures is one part of a sweeping change of habit being urged on all of us.  The conserving behavioral inertia of most human beings will only lead to a worsening future for all of us.  This change of a variety of habits is going to call us to creative initiative like learning to change how we buy groceries.  Things like taking our own recyclable bags to the store, buying locally grown food whenever possible, buying products in minimal packaging, eating lower on the food chain, and walking or biking to the store.  Those kinds of behavior also has an impact on the carbon emissions from our buildings, if we start thinking about what it takes to build the building, occupy it, and keep it operating – like buying locally and in minimal packaging.

The kind of creative change that this covenant calls for is probably more challenging because a lot of it is not as obvious as putting food on the table.  It is, however, just as urgent as eating three times a day, and if we don’t begin to move in prophetic ways toward that goal, we will find both tasks increasingly difficult if not impossible, within a few short years.

There are clear and evident ways to change our greenhouse gas output – beginning with replacing as many of those old incandescent light bulbs in our buildings as possible, and turning down the heat in the winter.  But a lot of the needed change is going to be more challenging – investing in wind or solar energy devices, insulating our buildings and improving their thermal inertia, calculating the optimal time lag for automatic light switches, adding green roofs and passive solar or earth-sheltered design elements. 

We’re going to have to work together as a community as well, to advocate for social policy that rewards green power generation rather than the old standard ways of producing power –like the ones that polluted this site. That advocacy work is going to need to extend to new building codes that require green construction methods – and rapid and effective results. 

We’re going to have to study – carefully – the tradeoffs in new modes of energy production, like wave-generated energy, wind farms, tapping tidal energy, heat pumps that tap oceanic thermal structures, and geothermal energy.  We didn’t do a very good job of studying and providing for the consequences of the development of nuclear energy, and we’re stuck with a very nasty pile of garbage as a result.  Most of us, particularly the people in Nevada, are less than eager to put that waste away and forget about it.

There are hopeful developments in the technical and scientific communities around energy production, developments that will need to be balanced with care-filled ethical conversations prompted by religious communities.  Will these new possibilities offer justice for all?  Or will they unfairly burden some segments of the community?  How are these possibilities likely to affect generations yet to come?  What about the rest of creation?  What are the costs of inaction in the face of uncertainties about those consequences? Lots and lots of questions.

Those of us who represent different faith communities might consider how the use of our buildings could be improved.  How many of those buildings sit empty most of the week?  How might we share our physical resources with each other and with the rest of the community, for the benefit of the whole?  Cutting our greenhouse gas output in half could almost be achieved simply by doubling up in our buildings!  Putting the land on which those unoccupied buildings stand back into service as a green zone would almost certainly do it.  Not unlike this park – or the Gasworks, which not too long ago were both toxic waste sites.

Creating a climate of change has deep roots in the prophetic strand of religion.  Prophets are the folks who stand up, stick their necks out, and cry, “this world is a long way from the way God intended it to be.  Shape up!”  In other words, ‘remember the dream, get with the program, and change.’  That kind of prophetic work has a lot to do with imagination, for it is about remembering a deep truth.  It is also a creative act, one that partners with the creator who originally dreamed all this up, and works to make that dream a reality.

Part of that prophetic work means imagining what seems unimaginable to our society.  Giving up half of our buildings is an example, particularly in the midst of a culture that is so obsessively focused on acquiring, and consuming, and possessing.  So might be imagining other uses for our buildings and other construction methods – a straw-bale temple?  There are growing numbers of inner-city faith communities thinking about how they might build upwards, with one or more floors for worship and gathering, some for teaching (schools during the week as well as for religious study on the weekend), and more floors for low-income housing, maybe with a greenhouse on the roof.  An Episcopal seminary in New York City is in the process of drilling geothermal wells all around its buildings to provide heat-pump cooling and heating. 

Faith traditions have a built-in way of encouraging and motivating change – that’s why it’s called “practicing the faith.”  It’s about developing new habits, so that we change the way we live on this earth and in relationship with those around us. 

You and I, and the traditions we represent, are meant to be leaders in building a world that looks more like that divine dream for that world of peace and justice.  We believe that that dream means that people live in right relationship with God and all their neighbors, including the non-human parts of creation.  Our task is to share that dream, to teach people about it, and encourage their participation in it.  And given that we don’t seem to have arrived at that dream just yet, that means change.  Part of the prophetic work of recounting the dream is to engender a sense of urgency.  We are blessed by the reality that growing numbers of people understand the urgency behind global climate change.  Part of that work has already been done.

The partner of urgency is hope, and prophets know something of hope as well.  We can give concrete examples of changed habits that contribute to achieving the dream – things like changing light bulbs and adding insulation, eating lower on the food chain and recycling bottles.  We can show people how small changes, spread over a large population, really do make a major difference.  And we can invite people into partnerships.  Sharing the work and the dream always generates hope.  That’s why communities can accomplish more than individuals alone.  That’s why Martin Luther King’s work helped to change this country’s attitudes and laws.  That’s why a small group of disciples two thousand years ago began to change the world.  That’s why so many people are turning out this weekend to hear the Dalai Lama speak about compassion.  It is indeed why people join communities of faith.

Hope is that thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all – as Emily Dickinson put it.  Hope gives people the courage to change.  We’re here because we know, deep in our soul, that a different world is possible – a world where human beings can live together and everyone has enough to eat, and dignified employment, and do it in a way that celebrates the diversity in which we are created.  We can build a world that’s sustainable, that will not leave our children or theirs worse off than we are.  We can heal this planet – with hope.