Have you ever read “The Tipping Point”, by Malcolm Gladwell? In this book, Gladwell looks at how little things can make a big difference, how small details turn a local fad into a national trend, or a single illness into an epidemic. Gladwell identifies the “tipping points” that create big changes, events that weight a trend or belief and create a large shift: what works in marketing, like how college officials got kids to get tetanus shots, and why children’s television programs work. One of the “Tipping Points” Gladwell describes in the book is the “sticky message.”
Sticky messages are memorable; sticky messages are useful and practical. They fit into our lives and make good sense. A “sticky message” stays with people, and compels them to respond and to act.
Gladwell looked at children’s television programs. Why, he wondered, do kids love Sesame Street and Blues Clues? Turns out that the people who created Sesame Street and Blues Clues
figured out how to make the message “sticky” with one simple idea: If you can hold the attention of children, you can educate them. The message on these programs is simple . It doesn’t have to be clever, but it does have to be literal and clear, and in the form of a story. Kids love to hear a story over and over again. They like stories to be repetitive, because the story is a new experience each time they hear it. “Sticky messages” show us that there is a simple way to package a message. So we have “stickies”.
Listen to words from John: “See what love God has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.”
In Romans 8, Paul says: "We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now--- creation awaits with eager longing the revealing of the children of God.”
"The whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now..creation awaits the revealing of the children of God." From its earliest days, the human race has sought to control the natural world, to bend it to whatever purpose we determine should be used for our benefit. Rather than being seen as a gift from God, in the last couple of centuries particularly, it has become nothing more than a commodity, something to be used as a means of profit. Every year thousands of species of God's creatures - all part of creation - have become extinct at the hands of the human race.
“As international corporations have moved into poor nations, the natural resources have been taken and the environment has often been poisoned in the process. The result is not just damage to the earth and the creatures of the earth, but to human beings as well. I believe that by the latest count of the United Nations, 12 million children under the age of six die every year over the world. Many are killed in conflicts - Afghanistan and the Middle East-- but most of them die from starvation, polluted water or other environmentally caused conditions and diseases. While this is happening, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. In 2009, the gap between the richest people in the world and the poorest has never been greater - and that gap is expanding.”
You cannot have healthy people on a sick earth-- and not only nature but the human race is groaning like a woman in labour. When I first went to Japan in 1970 - the city of Tokyo was approximately 16.5 million people. The bay was so full of sludge that there were bets as to what would happen if a plane taking off Haneda, which was the airport then - landed in the bay. It was ugly - there were lines of demarkation in the water as the sediment and pollution got thicker and thicker. Most days you could not see a block down the street - and I was introduced to allergies and smog. As of 2005, the population of the whole urban agglomeration which makes up greater Tokyo and environs is approximately 26.8 million. The population of all of Canada in the same year was approximately 32.6 million. Today, the bay in Tokyo is relatively clean, and so is the air. Smog days are rare; fishing in the rivers is again possible. Pollution in this huge city, has been cut dramatically. Garbage is incinerated, with zero emissions.
Let’s contrast this with Greater Toronto - a small city, just over 5 million. In 2004 we had 14 smog days. In 2005 we had 48. Of that, 50% is trans-border and trans-boundary pollution; but a huge 36% is caused by residential and commercial. April 19th, 2008 was the first warm day of the year, and interestingly enough was the first smog alert day in 2008. Now, of course, I am stringing a lot of things together - but for me it shows a trend.....and not a good one by the way. We don't want incinerators around, citing possible pollution, yet we send our garbage elsewhere to be dumped. And we think that's better?
I can never read the passage from Romans without thinking of the late Isaac Asimov. Asimov was a prolific writer, and a man who understood ecological responsibility long before the reset of us started to turn “green”. Asimov wrote a science fiction story about the planet as an organism in itself, and humans as a disease making the planet sick. Like all organisms, the planet’s immune system kicked in and it began to eliminate the diseased cells, in order to restore itself to health again. It isn’t that far out - as we make a mess of everything, in our own immediate interests - the reactions are coming more often. Asimov also wrote a non-fiction book called “Our Angry Earth”, in which he predicts that we have already gone too far, and now cannot reverse the damage.
What have we seen? Stronger and more frequent hurricanes, all over the world. Heavier snows in more unstable weather. More tornados and wild storms in the southern US. Tornado alley now in Ontario. Sea levels rising as the polar ice caps melt. And while there is some speculation that the sun has warmed a teeny bit, the data supports the conclusion that the bulk of carbon emissions causing this global warming are created by humans and our activities.
Indeed, the whole creation is groaning in labour pains. But what is to be born? A new generation of environmentalists? No. The Epistle to the Romans tells us that the creation awaits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God. Who is that? It's us, folks! The children of God are those who have been born of the spirit, and who honour God as parent and creation as the gift it was meant to be. The whole of creation awaits those who live not by the law of violence and greed, but by the law of love.
In the resurrection, new life as demonstrated in Jesus, God has also shown us that as children of creation, we have a role to play which is witness to the great love of God in creation. Jesus came as a witness to that love, and that creation. As Easter people we are called to no less.
We have a hymn in More Voices - Called by Earth and Sky.....
Called by earth and sky, promise of hope held high,
this is our sacred living trust, treasure of life sanctified.
Called by earth and sky.
Precious this gift, the air we breathe, wind born and free.
Breath of the Spirit, blow through this place, our gathering and our grace.
Called by earth and sky.
Precious these mountains, ancient sands; vast, fragile land.
Seeds of our wakening, rooted and strong, Creation’s faithful song.
Called by earth and sky.
Sources:
1. Sermon for Earth Day, by Rev. Franklin E. Vilas, Dmin. Preached on April 21, 2002 at St. Paul’s Church, Paterson, NJ.
2. Excerpts from “A Sticky Gospel”, by Rev. Christian Berry, First Presbyterian Church, Sterling Illinois.
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