April 5, 2005

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Our celebration of Easter Sunday 2005 has passed, but the power and promise of Easter continues to reverberate throughout the world- the whole world. According to Scripture, the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is the first fruits of the day when all things will be made new (Revelation 21:5). Easter is God’s promise to all humanity of new life in Christ, but Easter is for the Earth, too.

I am writing, first, to thank those of you who have made plans to remember God’s good Earth in your prayers, praise, and proclamation on the Sundays before and after Earth Day, April, 22, 2005. I encourage many more of you to do so as well. I also would like to urge each of you to translate your celebrations of Earth’s Easter hope into concrete acts of public witness and advocacy.

Our liturgical celebration of Earth Day is not a romantic rite of spring. It is a matter of life and death, as we proclaim the Risen Christ as Lord of the Earth and seek to reclaim the Earth for him. “Our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against spiritual forces of evil in high places.” (Ephesians 6:12). Reclaiming the Earth for Christ includes reclaiming it as the place where “the least of these,” Christ’s brothers and sisters (Matthew 25:40), can live in health and safety and enjoy the blessings of God’s good creation.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the ELCA’s northernmost congregation, Shishmaref Lutheran Church, located 20 miles south of the Arctic Circle on the Chukchi Sea, Alaska. The forces unleashed by global climate change are literally washing away the earth on which these 600 Inupiat Eskimos live. Due to increased storms, melting sea ice, thawing permafrost, and rising sea levels, their island home will soon be under water. They must uproot themselves and their 4000 year-old culture and find a new, yet to be determined, place to live.

In the meantime, how will the rest of us respond to global climate change and its threat to the well-being of all creatures and species around the earth? In the ELCA’s 1993 social statement, Caring for Creation: Vision, Hope, and Justice, this church recognized the threat of “dangerous global warming, caused by the buildup of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide” and announced that the idea of the Earth as a boundless warehouse, which lies behind such developments, has proven both false and dangerous.

More recently, theologians called together by the National Council of Churches have called all Americans to acknowledge our sinful complicity in producing one-quarter of the world’s carbon emissions, which exacerbate global warming, even though we are only five percent of the planet’s human population (“God’s Earth is Sacred: An Open Letter to Church and Society in the United States”). This is what distinguishes our Easter celebrations of the Earth from the many secular celebrations of Earth Day. We know that we are complicit in the evil we decry. We are committed to repent of our own sinful misuse and abuse of the Earth, direct and indirect, when we confess our sins. But we also are bold in our faith and hope, knowing that God calls and empowers us to confront these issues of life and death. We do this especially for the sake of the poor of the earth, working on their behalf, even as we contend with entrenched political, economic, and social forces.

God’s people of Shismaref Lutheran Church in Alaska, and all who suffer from our wasteful ways upon this graced and gifted Earth, should expect nothing less of us.

Living in God’s amazing grace,

Mark S. Hanson
Presiding Bishop