LAKEWOOD UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST
2601 54th Avenue South St. Petersburg, FL 33712
On land originally inhabited by the Tocabaga
727-867-7961
lakewooducc.org
lakewooducc@gmail.com
Date: July 16, 2023
Scripture Lessons: Genesis 1:20-31 and John 10:7-15
Sermon: What Is Pro Life?
Pastor: Rev. Kim P. Wells
Summer Sermons 2023 are based on topics suggested by the congregation.
While we were in Los Angeles this past week and a half, our son asked me to take his pick up truck into the shop for a repair. When I dropped the car off, I asked the technician if there was something to see near by, somewhere to go, while I waited for the car. He suggested going to the park with a lake a few blocks away. So that is what I did. I spent several hours enjoying Echo Park Lake, in the heart of Los Angeles. The park includes a small lake with a walking path around it. There are swan boats that can be rented. The ones that you pedal to paddle. It turns out that the lake began in the 1800’s as a reservoir for drinking water for the city of Los Angeles. In the 1890’s the decision was made to turn the area into a public park and the four owners of the land around the reservoir donated 33 acres to be used as the park.
Development of the park continued in the 1930’s as a Works Progress Administration project during the Depression. A beautiful fountain was added when the 1984 Olympics were held in Los Angeles.
Yes, Echo Park Lake is an attractive city park with a gorgeous view of the downtown skyline and lovely homes and apartments surrounding the lake. But what really got my attention when I visited was, well, the posted rules for the park. Among the rules for the park, along with things like no dumping and littering were:
No feeding of non-domesticated animals
Cruelty to any animal is a felony
Abandonment of animals is against the law
Harassment of animals is against the law
All migratory birds are state and federally protected
No injury to park property or plants
Frankly, I was surprised at the many rules that were intended for the safety of the wildlife and the trees and plants, as well as the water itself. The protections seemed very comprehensive and specific which probably explains why, here at this lake, in the middle of urban Los Angeles, there is a plethora of bird life including various species of ducks and geese and other water birds.
I was really glad to see the concern for nature conveyed in the rules for Echo Park Lake and I throughly enjoyed my afternoon at the lake while my son’s car was being fixed.
Concern for nature is at the heart of the purpose of the human species according to our faith tradition, as we heard from Genesis this morning. Humanity was created, in the image of God, to carry out God’s mission of caring for the wondrous creation. That includes human life as well as the life of plants and animals – all forms of life – and it involves protecting the health of the environment that supports all of the myriad forms of life that make up the natural world. So to be pro life is to be a supporter of all forms of life and of all of the habitat that is needed to support that life.
The rights of nature movement is a beautiful expression of being pro life in our time. This is a movement, worldwide, that seeks to get legal protection, rights, for land and water, as well as other than human species of life. The rights of nature movement seeks to gain legally recognized rights for animals and plants and waters as well as people. To me, this is a beautiful expression of our calling as a species to be pro life in all of its diversity, adaptation, abundance, balance, and interdependence. That is what it means to be pro life in the Christian tradition: To support the flourishing of all life, all of creation, by taking seriously our place in the vast system of creation to be caretakers entrusted with the stewardship of all that is.
And this faith-based conception of what it means to be pro life is manifested in the ministry of Jesus and his focus on what it means to fully support and protect human life. In the stories and teachings we have that are associated with Jesus, we see Jesus completely protecting the sacredness of human life. He offers not only material support for human life – food, water, wine, healing – but he offers spiritual support and the support of the community for all people. This is expressed through forgiveness, grace, egalitarian community, generosity, equal rights for all people, and the decrying of laws, practices, and attitudes that diminish the lives of some people and privilege others.
Jesus shows us what abundant life for everyone looks like. No one living at the expense of another. Everyone valued and cared for. No one demeaned or degraded. No one beyond redemption or transformation. No one.
I recently read a novel that takes place in Finland in 1946. One of the characters, a doctor, reflects on the treatment of the dead body of another character: “She weeps, too, for the care and attention she knows this body [the dead body] is being shown, in contrast to the countless labour-camp prisoners, her husband perhaps one of them, whose bodies are disposed of like so much offal.” [Ice by Ulla-Lena Lundberg, p. 400.] To be pro life to is to care at least as much for the living as for the dead.
When we are not pro life, fully supporting the life and habitat entrusted to our care and keeping, then we are denying and diminishing ourselves as human beings. In the verses from John, we hear of false teachers, those who will try to lead the flock astray. Well, we could spend until next Sunday discussing how we have gone astray when it comes to our calling to care for all of life; the ways that we have manipulated and dominated so that much of life is made subservient to the interests of a small portion of the human population.
Here in Florida, an environmental coalition wanted to protect the rights of the waterways of Florida so that they can provide suitable habitat supporting many species of life. But a ballot initiative to protect the rights of the waters of the state would never be supported. No industrial dumping, no agricultural run off, no dumping of sewage and waste water, no spewing of heated water. This kind of initiative would never gain widespread support here in Florida where people supposedly come first – which really means the economy comes first and that translates into rich people come first. People in Florida don’t care enough about nature to bear the cost of needed protections. BUT we do care about ourselves. Overall, we are a selfish, self-centered lot. And so these environmental groups came up with the idea of protecting not the rights of water or nature per se, but the rights of people, us, the inhabitants of Florida, to clean, safe water for consumption and recreation. Now, that is something which serves us, so we can get behind that. So that is the ballot initiative we have been promoting here at church and in the state. It’s watered down, but it is a way to make a step in the right direction. Oh, we know those thieves, marauders, and hired hands, that Jesus talks about, who are monopolized with serving what they see as their own personal interests.
Our faith teaches that we are created to be pro life. We were put here to be protectors and care takers of all that supports life, all life, not just human life. And Jesus shows us how to create human community that does just that: supports all of human life, through faith and community, and fulfills its role in the wider Divine plan by living simply and sustainably with generosity and compassion. To be pro life, in the human community is to support life in all of its diversity, adaptation, abundance, balance, and interdependence. ‘I am because you are’ as the African proverb puts it. We are in this together. And we are in it with the wider community of life around us and the habitat that supports all of life.
Now we all know that when we say ‘pro life’ these days, the phrase is usually associated with the issue of abortion and reproductive rights. The words ‘pro life’ are associated with protection of the life of an unborn fetus.
And, let’s be clear, there is no direct mention of abortion in the Bible. There is a reference to life before birth in Psalm 139: “It was you who formed my inward parts; you who knit me together in my mother’s womb. My form was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.” These verses are poetic professions of theology not biology. They speak of God, a God that knows us fully and completely and still loves us!
Interestingly, the roots of what we know as the pro life movement are in the 1800’s among doctors who were concerned about protecting the lives of women who were having abortions that were often fatal to the mother. They wanted to protect the lives of women. That is a far cry from the position associated with the pro life movement today. Today what is known as the pro life movement, is a movement that is centered on making abortion illegal and unobtainable. Period. It is supposedly protecting the life of those not yet born. It is definitely protecting patriarchy, privilege, and subjugation of the masses. What is called the pro life movement is not protecting life in the broader sense that encompasses the wellbeing and flourishing of creation as whole.
In fact, supposedly protecting an unborn life – is it really pro life? One of the speakers at the UCC General Synod in Indianapolis talked about “children born into a world of horrors.” And there are so many. Flooding. Heat. Houselessness. Famine. Censorship. Climate change. The school to prison pipeline leaving so many children without fathers and mothers to raise them. The addiction epidemic that prevents parents from providing adequate love and care for their children. Lack of access to health care and affordable child care. And what about, here we will touch on a real hot button, the ravages of extractive capitalism irreparably damaging the earth and the lives of people from whom labor is extracted for the gain of a few leaving children without the basic necessities of life? To be pro life is to dream and invest in a new economic system that provides for all. Not for a few at the expense of the many which is what we currently have in this country.
When we get sucked into capitalism and rugged individualism, we are perpetrating the thievery and marauding Jesus talks about. When we look out for number one, for ourselves, our family, our tribe, our kind, and allow the society around us to continue to privilege the rich and ensure their rights at the expense of those made poor, we are not pro life. And we cannot find our highest good, our true purpose, our deepest joy without honoring our place in the Divine plan to care for all of life and all of creation. To separate ourselves from that web is to cut ourselves off from our health and wholeness. It is to throw ourselves to the wolves, to that which is death dealing, instead of that which is life giving – the way of egalitarian community that we see among the followers of Jesus.
I want to close with another story from Los Angeles. When I was making my way home, we got to the airport a bit early. After checking my bag, I wanted to take a few minutes to repack my carry on bag. I looked for a place to sit down in the ticketing area. I didn’t see any seats. I went up a floor to the security and gate level of the airport. Again, I looked for somewhere to sit. There were no chairs to be seen. I went back down to ticketing, surely I missed seeing a seating area. Ah, there were some seats. An airport attendant was standing next to the row of 6 chairs. There was a sign indicating that this was the place to wait for wheel chair assistance. There was no one in any of the seats. I asked the attendant if I could sit there for a few minutes to repack my small backpack. She said no. That’s when an expletive which should not be repeated in church escaped my lips. The attendant, a middle aged Black woman, said, regretfully, “I’m sorry.” I told her, my home airport was Tampa and there were chairs and places to sit down everywhere you turn. That’s when I learned that there used to be a lot more seating in the Los Angeles airport. But it has been removed. To discourage houseless people from staying at the airport. There is a woman who has lived at the airport for the last 5 years, moving from bathroom to bathroom. And that would explain why there are repeated public service announcements at the airport saying that only people involved in traveling and employees of the airport are permitted on the airport premises.
After the tutorial about the issues relating to the houseless in the LA airport, the attendant told me to go down a floor, to baggage claim and ground transportation, and walk past the coffee and tea shop, down to the last carousel, and there were a few chairs there. Sure enough. So, I sat down and repacked my little carry on backpack. Then headed up two levels to airport security and the gates.
The houseless problem of LA prevented me from having a convenient place to sit down to repack my bag. Really? But that is how it is with the web of life, the web of reality, the web of creation. Everything is interconnected. Interdependent. To be pro life, is to be aware, to care about, and to make choices, that are for the benefit of the whole. And then what we find is that we are taken care of. We have what we need not only materially, but also spiritually and emotionally. When we are truly pro life, according to our faith tradition and the teachings of Jesus, we find that we have life. To the fullest. Amen.
A reasonable effort has been made to appropriately cite materials referenced in this sermon. For additional information, please contact Lakewood United Church of Christ.
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