I Have Seen The Lord!

A sermon delivered by the Rev. Roger Scott Powers at Light Street Presbyterian Church in Baltimore, on Sunday, April 22, 2007

Acts 9:1-20

The week after Easter, I spent a few days on the campus of Warren Wilson College, a Presbyterian-related school located in the mountains of Western North Carolina. I've begun serving on the college's Church Relations Council, a group of Presbyterian pastors and lay persons who are asked to help strengthen the relationship between the college and the Presbyterian Church (USA).

Warren Wilson College was founded in 1894 as the Asheville Farm School by Presbyterian missionaries who sought to bring educational opportunities to young men living in rural Appalachia. By 1966, it had grown to become a four-year liberal arts college. It is an unusual school in that its curriculum consists of three components: academic study, hands-on work, and service learning. In addition to their regular courses, Warren Wilson students work 15 hours a week on any one of more than 100 work crews, which are responsible for keeping the college in operation on a day-to-day basis. Students do everything from maintaining campus buildings to assisting with college administration to growing food on the college's organic farm. During their four years at Warren Wilson, students are also required to devote at least 100 hours to off-campus service learning projects, which may be in a nearby community or far away in another country.

What impressed me most about Warren Wilson College was its emphasis on environmental sustainability, which is why I wanted to tell you about it on this Earth Day Sunday. The college's 275-acre farm uses sustainable agriculture techniques, which have led to the farm being certified "river-friendly." The school has an extensive recycling program, including a "Free Store" offering all sorts of reusable items salvaged from trash. Students compost nearly all of the food waste from the dining hall, turning it into rich, organic fertilizer for the college's vegetable gardens, which are also pesticide free. Students also manage a 640-acre forest for multiple uses including growing mushrooms for food and harvesting trees for lumber using sustainable logging practices. Some students live in an EcoDorm, a green building constructed largely of recycled materials, and which uses solar energy, recycled rainwater, and composting toilets in its operation. Warren Wilson also boasts one of the first buildings on a college or university campus to achieve Gold Certification under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system. The Orr Cottage, which houses the college administration office, was built by Warren Wilson students using stone from nearby mountains and wood from the college's forest. It uses 50% less energy that a conventional building of the same size. Given this focus on environmental sustainability, you probably won't be surprised to hear that one quarter of the 800 students at Warren Wilson College are environmental studies major.

It was exciting to spend a few days at Warren Wilson College and to see all the things that can be done to better care for the earth, to lessen our impact on the earth's fragile ecosystem and its limited natural resources. I came away inspired, with a renewed commitment to go home and try my hand again at grown an organic vegetable garden.

Since returning home, I've begun to think more about how I live my life and to what extent my lifestyle is environmentally sustainable or unsustainable. What would it take, I wondered, for me to live in a way that was truly environmentally sustainable? What would I have to change about my lifestyle such that the earth could sustain everyone in the world at my new standard of living?

On the Internet I found a tool to help me answer this question. It's called the Ecological Footprint Quiz. You answer 15 questions and it estimates how much of the earth's resources are required to support your lifestyle. It also lets you compare your Ecological Footprint with that of others and with the total resources available on the planet. Earlier this week, I took the quiz. I tried to answer the questions as honestly as I could.

How often do you eat animal based products?
Very often, I answered

How much of the food that you eat is processed, packaged and not locally grown?
Most of it.

Compared to people in your neighborhood, how much waste do you generate?
About the same.

How many people live in your household?
Two.

What is the size of your home?
1,000-1,500 square feet

Which housing type best describes your home?
Free standing with running water.

Do you have electricity in your home?
Yes.

On average, how far do you travel on public transportation each week?
1-25 miles.

On average, how far do you go by motorbike each week?
0 miles.

On average, how far do you go by car each week?
200-300 miles.

Do you bicycle, walk, or use animal power to get around?
Seldom.

approximately how many hours do you spend flying each year?
10 hours.

How many miles per gallon does your car get?
15-25 miles per gallon.

How often do you drive in a car with someone else, rather than alone?
Occasionally.

End of quiz. The result? My current lifestyle requires 28 acres of biologically productive land and ocean area. That's a little more than the average Ecological Footprint in the United States, which is 24 acres per person. But worldwide, there exist only 4.5 biologically productive acres per person. That means that if everyone lived like I do, we would need 6.2 planets. Bottom line? My current lifestyle is very far from being environmentally sustainable. Putting out my recycling every other week and gradually replacing my incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescents may be helpful, but it's small potatoes compared to the drastic changes that are really needed.

What could I do to reduce my ecological footprint? I began changing my answers to the quiz to see what would happen. What if I gave up my car and bought a motorbike with which to get around, carpooling with others only when absolutely necessary? That would reduce the size of my footprint by 20%, but it would still require 5 earths to sustain everyone at that lifestyle. What if I followed Kelli's lead and shifted to a vegan diet, eating no more meat or dairy products? That would reduce my footprint a little more. What if I followed Curt's example, and not only gave up my car, but used a bicycle to get around instead of a motorbike? Together those changes would bring my ecological footprint down to 18 acres. But if everyone lived like that, we would still need the resources of 4 earths!

What would I have to do to reduce my ecological footprint to the point that our one earth could sustain everyone at the same level? I would have to become a vegan vegetarian and eat only locally grown foods with little or no processing or packaging. I would have to move into a green-design building incorporating energy conservation measures with less than 1,000 square feet of living area. And, I would have to travel exclusively by foot or bicycle. No cars, no motorbikes, no buses, trains, or planes. This may sound like an awfully Spartan way to live, but for many people in the world it would be a vast improvement over their current circumstances. In this scenario, I would still have a decent home in which to live, with clean, running water, electricity available 24 hours a day, and enough food to eat. That's more than many people have. But having grown up in an upper middle class family in the United States, it feels like an impossibly difficult lifestyle change to make.

This has been a very depressing exercise for me. I've been down all week. I consider myself to be very much aware of the environmental issues facing the world today. I am genuinely concerned about them. And, I claim that environmental values are important to me. But I am now forced to admit that there is a huge disconnect between the values I espouse and the consumer lifestyle I enjoy. And if that's true of me, what about the millions of people who don't even claim to care about the environment? What will it take to wake us all up, to change our way of thinking, and to change our way of living, in order to address the environmental crisis effectively?

Will it take a Damascus Road Experience like that of Saul to reorient our lives? Saul persecuted the early followers of Jesus. He threatened them with arrest and execution. But then Jesus appeared to him in a vision that left him blind for three days. With the help of fellow travelers and the disciple Ananias, Saul made it to Damascus and there regained his sight. The experience produced in Saul a radical transformation from being a persecutor of the early church to being one of its greatest advocates.

For some years now, this congregation has lifted up environmental sustainability as one of its core values. We have taken pride in maintaining the church's garden as precious green space in an urban setting. Some of the renovations to this building have incorporated principles of green architecture. Our annual flea market encourages people to reuse items others no longer want or need. We recycle paper and we try to conserve energy. But there is much more we could be doing as a church and as individuals. How about placing clearly marked recycling bins in the kitchen for metal, glass, and plastic? Or what about becoming a collection point for household batteries, so they don't end up in landfills? I hope we will challenge one another and support one another in taking further steps toward living more sustainably. Every step we take does make a difference.

Thanks be to God! Amen.