Sermons for Life

PREACHING A SERMON on an issue debated in the public square: It’s complicated.

Make that issue the climate crisis, and it’s really, really complicated. Even in congregations where climate change is not broadly disputed, a pastor faces the challenge of crafting a gospel-informed message that doesn’t swing either to naïve ways we might “make it all better” or pessimistic apathy.

But there’s evidence it’s worth the work and risks: In terms of policy issues, climate is one where a clergy leader’s word has proven impact. According to a 2014 survey by the Public Religion Research Institute and the American Academy of Religion, Americans with a clergy leader who “speaks at least occasionally about climate change” are more likely to be concerned about the issue than those “who attend congregations where the issue is rarely or never raised.”

So where does a preacher begin and with what goals?

Leah D. Schade’s Creation-Crisis Preaching equips pastors to name the present crisis and preach a call to action and healing. She describes one theological path to sermons infused with both testimony of the sacredness of God’s creation and our call to be agents of the world’s healing. Schade is a Lutheran pastor and anti-fracking activist who has also done doctoral work focused on homiletics and ecological theology. Appropriately, in this book she explores both the theoretical underpinnings and the practicalities of climate-crisis preaching. Her approach is clear-eyed about the current dire situation of creation, but also committed to hope: “Because I am a Lutheran homiletician,” she writes, “I am compelled to find a way to preach the eco-resurrection, even when most signs indicate that Good Friday may be the fate of our planet.”

Schade sketches the sometimes contentious and damaging history of religion’s relationship to the environment, some different approaches to ecological theology, and a “‘green’ hermeneutic for interpreting scripture.” She explores briefly how social change theory can inform the vocation of preaching and the role sermons might play in a social movement.

Drawing on social change theory, Schade suggests three approaches to environmental preaching: “consciousness-raising, call for action, and sustainable change,” giving examples of each from others’ sermons and her own. Her passion for the power of preaching is contagious as she calls the reader to imagine sermons “in which, over time, lifestyles and cultures are changed, greened, and sustained by a long-term vision of God’s care for creation through our hearts, minds, and hands.”

Schade names commitment to the theology of the cross and resurrection as her starting point as she articulates what she calls a “Lutheran ecofeminist Christology.” And she argues that it is not only “possible to defend a commitment to preaching that is responsible to the gospel while also being responsive to ecofeminist theology,” but that attention to such theology “is a natural extension of...the gospel’s concern with ‘the least of these’ and the good news about the coming of God’s peaceable community.”

Nonetheless, perhaps some readers from more conservative theological traditions will be wary of the chapters that explore feminist ecotheology or assume they hold nothing of value for them. I’d encourage them to read all of this material anyway, both to learn more about the links that might be made between the oppression of women and the degradation of creation, and as inspiration to explore more deeply the theology and scriptural resources in their own traditions that they might tap to preach about the climate crisis.

As someone who has pastored several congregation, Schade notes the tension that can arise from preaching about tough issues, describing as an example a conversation with a congregation member who disagreed with one of her sermons. The preacher must also be a pastor, attentive to pastoral relationships and open to critique and follow-up conversations.

This is a book that is forthright about the crisis facing creation. But it is also committed to the belief that God is moving in this world and will guide us in being agents of healing and change.