Last April, a group of us from BMPC marked Earth Day standing on a beach in the Callao district of Lima, Peru. We stood hand in hand with residents and activists, who showed us the pollution still apparent—both by sight and touch—from the 2022 Repsol oil spill, which dumped over 10,000 barrels of crude oil into the ocean. Despite the government’s claims that the water and the beach are clean, these men and women continue to advocate for their own health and safety and the health of the earth.
We traveled there as a part of our relationship with Joining Hands Peru, an international faith-based organization created by the Presbyterian Church (USA) to equip and support activists in Peru and congregations in the U.S. to advocate and care for God’s creation. We work closely with JHP because, as a congregation, we have committed to working towards environmental justice for all people, especially vulnerable and marginal communities.
Because Earth Day falls so close to Easter this year, we are marking our commitment to these values and this work earlier in the month.
This Sunday morning, April 6, I hope that you will join us for a presentation by writer and naturalist Mike Weilbacher as he shares a presentation following worship, specifically on the growing issue of microplastics found everywhere, from the bottom of the ocean to our bloodstream.
Of course, on Monday evening, April 7, we are very excited to welcome Dr. Michael Mann, a renowned climate scientist and professor at the University of Pennsylvania. As always, the event will take place at 7:00 p.m. in the Sanctuary and will be available to livestream from our website.
Mann writes in his book Our Fragile Moment, “The greatest threat to meaningful climate action today is no longer denial, but despair and doomism, premised on the flawed notion that it is too late to do anything.” There was an element in our trip to Peru last year that could have easily led us to despair and especially to have led the local activists we spent our week with to despair.
If our Lenten work and the Easter promise teach us anything, even in the face of such opposition, neglect, and misinformation, it is that hope outlasts our despair, that community combats isolation, and that life has a boundless potential to restore even in the face of death and doom.
It reminds me of the first verse of my favorite Easter hymn – Now the green blade rises from the buried grave, wheat that in the dark earth many days has lain; love lives again, that with the dead has been; love has come again like wheat arising green.
As we walk these last days of Lent toward the promise of resurrection, may we also celebrate our calling and responsibility to care for God’s creation.
