Earth Day Sermon 2009: The Rev. Petra Bosse-Huber



/The Rev. Petra Bosse-Huber has served as Vice President of the

Evangelical Church in the Rhineland since 2003. Ordained in 1989, she

also serves as a member of the Committee for Theology of the Evangelical

Church in Germany (EKD) and as a delegate from the EKD to the dialogue

with the Russian Orthodox Church. Rev. Bosse-Huber was in Cleveland with

a delegation from the Rhineland, a regional church of the Union of

Evangelical Churches (UEK) which has a special partnership with the Penn

Central and Southern Conferences. The delegation spend Holy Week

visiting both conferences. The United Church of Christ has been in a

relationship of "Kirchengemeinschaft" (church fellowship) with the UEK

since 1981./



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*Weekly Worship in the Amistad Chapel

Cleveland, OH, USA

April 15, 2009

The Rev. Petra Bosse-Huber

Vice President, **Evangelical Church of the Rhineland, Germany*



Dear congregation,



"Jesus is risen - he is risen indeed! Hallelujah"



"Jesus ist auferstanden - er ist wahrhaftig auferstanden! Halleluja!"



Coming together this day, it is clear that we come here as "Easter

people", as people whose lives have been changed in the light of the

Easter morning. We have heard, we have proclaimed, we have sung: The

grave is empty, new life has begun, Jesus is the risen Christ.



The season of Lent and Easter is always very special for me, but this

year has been especially meaningful as I have walked the way to the

cross here in the US, celebrating worship services in UCC congregations,

singing and praying in English, not in my native tongue.



To hear bible words and to pray in a strange language often gives a new

spin to the words that are so familiar. And so this year, the message of

the cross and the resurrection touched me even deeper, and my joy in the

good news is even greater than usual.



When we celebrate a worship service today, here in the National Office

of the UCC, we do this as brothers and sisters in the church of Jesus

Christ. Here we are, we who want to be his disciples, we who have heard

the call to share the gospel in word and deed.



How can we do this in times that are challenging and often frightening

in so many ways?



In Germany we are trying - as well as you do - to cope with the outfall

of the great financial crisis we are in. The denominations and

congregations are trying to make ends meet and to deal with shrinking

financial resources. Also, the churches want to support those who are

suffering the most from the crisis: people who are unemployed, families

in poverty, children who go to school without breakfast.



As the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland we are trying to support not

only "our people" but to remind our congregations but also our

politicians of our wider mission, that means: of the responsibility we

have for our brothers and sisters in the developing countries.



In times when the financial resources are meager it becomes more

difficult to stick to the promises we have made - promises connected to

contributing to our wider mission, and promises connected to the

conciliar process of peace, justice and integrity of creation. This is

true for the decisions our politicians in the cities and federal states

have to make as well as it is true for the decisions congregations,

conferences and denominations are facing.



What is the right thing to do? This is a very difficult question; it

always has been, but the difficulties are more visible in times of crisis.



The right thing should be the just thing, as God has told us through the

prophets.



But what is just?



All things, all people, all areas of life are interconnected, this is

what we understand more and more clearly now.



Taking a closer look at the question of preserving the earth and

restoring the integrity of creation I have to admit, that the answers to

the questions of righteousness and justice are not easy to find.



Since last year, our church head office in Düsseldorf carries 8 big

solar panels on its roof. So far they have generated 20.842 Kilo-Watt-hours.



These solar panels show a financial investment as well as a political

statement: We want to be part of the movement for preserving our planet

by using renewable energies.



This is important in a country which still depends largely on oil and coal.



Some of the biggest coal mines of brown coal and of black coal in

Germany are located in several regions of our conference. Over the

course of the last 20 years the majority of the mines have been closed

and ten thousands of miners have lost their jobs. Big cities in our

conference that had prospered thanks to the coal and connected steel

industries (like Duisburg and Essen) had to totally change their identity.



But still the federal state that most of our congregations belong to

(Northrhine-Westphalia) stills about 25% of its energy need through the

regional coal.



Energy experts acknowledge the need to develop new energy resources but

are very skeptical if a country like Germany can generate enough

renewable energy from the resources we know and use today.



Although we are one of the leading countries in Europe in building and

using wind parks, the power production still is not sufficient.



Sun and wind and water force are helpful, but cannot produce enough for

the energy needs we have.



What is the right way?



Other ways to cut our dependency from oil lead into dead ends and global

problems. As you know, the great idea of using renewable fuel from

certain plants has already backfired, as - again - the German (and

European and US-American...) production numbers of this organic fuel are

not big enough. So now fuel from corn or sun-flowers or whatever comes

from big plantations in South America or Asia where rain forest is

destroyed, farm workers work in physically endangering situations, and

corn that is needed there as food for people is sold to us as food for cars.



This cannot be the right way, because this is not just - nor clever, by

the way.



Another example that is very close to people's hearts right now is the

question: What is happening to the motor industry? This question is

moving us as we look to our auto industry, to companies like Opel,

Volkswagen, Mercedes Benz, BMW that hold the same financial and

emotional value for the German identity like General Motors, Ford and

Chrysler do for your country.



Workers and their families, whole cities and regions are depending on

continued production and prosperity. A lot of the money of the financial

rescue plan of the German Bundestag (parliament) goes into projects

supporting this industry directly or indirectly.



Can we ask, in threatening times like these, how we can deal with the

financial crisis in an eco-friendly way? Can we use this crisis to say

good-bye to old ways of thinking and doing business, or are the old

lobbies still too powerful and important?



Is it allowed to demand that more money should be invested in

construction projects in the public transportation sector than in

projects that are re-building or even expanding the Autobahn- and

interstate network? Is it irresponsible to think or say that some of the

motor industry has to shrink or even die because the time of the big

production of big fuel-hungry cars has to be over - even if it means

unemployment and social decrease for so many families and cities?



In situations like these, what is right, and what is just, is not easy

to define.



I could go on with questions from my personal life:



Am I right in choosing organically (= bio) produced food as often as I

can? Am I standing on the side of the just and righteous with this decision?



The increasing organic food market in Europe is making organic food the

fastest growing segment in food production. This means that organic food

can no longer be produced in the small family farms for small organic

food stores and farmers' markets. The demand is so big that the organic

food production has become a big food industry like the conventional one.



What is better - buying conventionally produced potatoes from a local

farmer or organic potatoes from Spain or Israel, that need to be

transported to my home-town as far as the fruit and vegetables coming

from Florida or Mexico to Cleveland?



What is better - buying expensive organic goat milk cheese from a little

co-op in Germany, or buying much cheaper organic goat milk cheese in a

big supermarket chain - when I know that this milk comes from goat

shepherds in Romania (in Eastern Europe) who are earning twice as much

for their organic milk from the German supermarket chain than they would

if they sold it in Romania on the market?



What is right, what is just?



I could go on and on. You know the examples as well - T-shirts, shoes,

carpets, bananas, coffee, Christmas ornaments, outsourced services...



Our world is changing very fast. Everything is connected. Often we don't

know how and why. Sometimes, when we know it, we would rather not know,

because it makes our lives even more complicated.



Sometimes it seems as if the task is too big.



Sometimes I feel that we cannot manage to make this world a better

place, to care for human beings as well as for animals, plants,

mountains and oceans. We cannot find the ways how to act righteous and

just. It is too complicated. No matter what we do, we are always

connected to sin, sometimes personal, but more often structural sin.



How can we deal with this knowledge - and with the feeling of being

overwhelmed and the question if it would not be better for us, or at

least easier, to stop trying to fight this hopeless battle?



For me, my answer to these questions has to do with my faith.



God is the one who is righteous and just - not me.



God is the one who is powerful beyond measure - not me.



God is the one who is eternal - not me.



God is the one who has to understand and hold things together - not me.



This puts the conflict, my inner conflict, into the right perspective.



I cannot be perfect. I cannot have all the answers.



But of course I can answer to God's call, to walk with the Holy Spirit

on the ways of righteousness and justice.



These ways are not - or at least only very seldom - the ways of glory.

More often they are the ways of suffering, doubt and despair.



They are cross ways. And I need to hold on to my hope that God is

walking these cross ways with me, with us, just as Jesus walked the way

to Golgotha, carrying his cross, carrying the suffering of the world.



I can answer God's call to walk with the Holy Spirit the ways of

righteousness and justice because I have seen the light of the Easter

morning. In my heart, I have seen the grave empty - many times.



I do not know all the answers. I do not know what the future will hold

for me, for my church, for my country, for the world, but I trust that

after the darkness of Good Friday there will always be the dawn of the

Easter morning.



This is a promise, but also a secret. We will not live to see all that

God will do for this world, for the church, for our children.



I want to be faithful and hopeful, especially in the times of great

crisis and suffering and despair. The light will come.



In order not to forget this Easter faith in the Evangelical Church of

the Rhineland there is a special gift: An important document of

Christian confession in the risen Christ. Its origin is the resistance

of the Confessing Church, a protestant opposition against the attacks of

the so-called German Christians and the National Socialist Party of Hitler.



This Theological Declaration of Barmen, from the city where I am living

and where I was a pastor for a long, long time is a document of the

strength of union of different confessional powers. And so we thought

such a document of the theological and political power of confessional

union is the right gift for you here in the National Office of the UCC,

in a united and uniting church. So we brought a copy of the original to

your congregation here in Cleveland.



Thank you.