Sermon by Pr. Sharai Jacob on the Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost + September 14, 2024
I just came back from Hawaii! I was there for a friend’s bachelorette party. We explored the island of Oahu. Then I stayed a few days after the party on the Big Island of Hawaii. I expected that while I was there I would learn to connect with nature and appreciate the Earth in new ways. I expected to be around indigenous Hawaiian people who would share their culture with me. And that I would leave feeling refreshed and renewed!
I booked a tour of the island including the Kīlauea volcano - I was so excited to see the volcano! Our tour guide was Hawaiian and he told us all about the Island’s history, the land, and the spirituality and culture of his people. Kilauea is known as the resting place of the goddess Pele, who is worshiped as both creator and destroyer. One of Pele’s forms is the actual lava from the volcano - which is why it’s important that people don’t take any rocks from the island. Our tour guide explained that when the volcano erupts, it’s usually interpreted as Pele’s wrath or unhappiness. I imagine Pele’s tears carving into the land burning through trees and rocks and buildings – finally making their way to the ocean to sizzle and steam and harden. Those tears create the most fertile, nutrient rich soil. It can grow anything!
As we took pictures of the volcano, we were standing right beside offerings that worshippers had left for Pele at the summit. I felt my stomach turn. How did it become commonplace to treat a sacred place like a tourist destination? How did Creator become commercialized? I spent the rest of the tour trying my best to return to the excitement and joy of sightseeing. Trying to connect with nature the way I had planned to, but there were other things brewing in my heart and mind. How far removed are we from the great respect people used to have for the Earth? Ancient tribes of Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia and the Americas had deep connections with and gratitude toward the Earth which nurtures us. This trip was supposed to be fun and lighthearted, but there I was in paradise, wrestling with humanity’s capacity for destruction and disrespect towards the Earth.
I imagine Peter went through a similar experience - his expectations of what following Jesus would look like were not being met in the ways he would’ve liked. I imagine that Peter’s idea of a messiah was someone who would lead his people to freedom by conquering their enemies and taking power. But Jesus doesn’t work that way.
Jesus explains that his way is perilous, and it requires that we give our lives up. “Those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” Living as followers of Christ requires that we let go of our control, our own ideas of the right way for things to happen. When I finally accepted that my trip to the Big Island was meant to be something more than a run of the mill vacation, I actually found the things I was hoping for in the first place. I felt connected to nature more than ever, and I was able to receive wisdom from indigenous Hawaiian culture.
Huge forests of indigenous Hawaiian trees have been completely destroyed to create cattle ranches, roads, and housing. Many of Hawaii’s original trees are extinct and the islands are often referred to as the Endangered Species Capital of the World. As I read our text for this week on my way back from Hawaii, I wondered, in a world that has been cut up and destroyed by our own hands, what does it mean for us to take up our cross?
Peter’s idea of who Jesus should be was based in a thirst not just for freedom, but for power - the same power that his oppressors had over him. But Jesus is offering freedom in a different way. Jesus’ freedom comes through connection - through drawing close to one another. Jesus calls us into loving relationship with God, not just so that we can understand a different way of life, but so that we can experience and be transformed by God’s love. Instead of going out and conquering the problems of the world for us, Jesus sought to free our minds and hearts to equip us to resolve conflicts and bring healing to the world for ourselves.
The wounds we’ve carved into the Earth do not happen in a vacuum, the wounds leech into issues of global politics, gender, and race. The pollution of water and air in the United States often coincides with red-lined neighborhoods - those are neighborhoods which the American government designated to be ghettos for black and brown people. The genocides in Palestine and Congo are rooted in a desire to tear minerals like Cobalt from the Earth, to possess or destroy or pillage land. Hawaiians call the land the ʻāina. And their connection to the land, just like all indigenous peoples, is essential to their culture, spirituality, and freedom movements.
Drawing close to where the wounds of the world are, will always be painful. But that is the journey we are called to when we choose to follow Jesus. A journey of drawing close to pain and holding painful truths, a journey where we let go of our expectations of what healing should look like, a journey of sacrificing our comfort for the sake of the Earth. The ʻāina connects us all and so each destructive act is connected to all others, pollution from the bombs dropped in Ukraine and Palestine will reach us all. One extinct species on one end of the Earth shakes the whole ecosystem. But each healing act is connected through the ʻāina too, each tree planted, each species saved, each decision to compost or to make do with your current phone instead of buying a new one.
God’s Grace gives us the hope and the freedom we need to embark on this journey, so let us pick up our cross and follow Christ into healing, not just for humanity, but for the whole world.