*Dear people of faith,*

*This is an issue that I feel, more than any other, requires our attention today. "The UN Report on Climate Change" in August 2021 is startling. God is calling us to make decisions and prune our life in ways that will allow human life to continue to thrive on the planet. We need to follow God who engages decisive actions that will stop global warming. God is urging us to cut food waste, cut garbage, and cut the use of energy for* *heating and cooling, cut buildings that are inefficient and energy burning houses in the suburbs and cities, cut out our private car use, and much more besides!*

*This old Greek wisdom on pruning is so instructive to those of us living in the current climate crisis and ecological devastation.*

*Mark Carney, the former governor of both the bank of Canada and the bank of England, now a UN special envoy on Climate and Finance, gave the 2020 BBC Reith Lecture based on his book, Values: Building a Better World for All (Carney 2021). He identified three crises facing the world today, each starting with the letter "C": COVID-19, Credit, and Climate. The recovery from COVID-19 and the recovery of the economy are closely related to the restoration of the damaged planet earth. He said that the ultimate test of a fair economy will be how it addresses the growing climate crisis. What is valued is not always the same as what is profitable. In fact, we painfully learned during the pandemic that financial values have to be replaced with communal and social values. I would add that market values are not greater than the divine values, what God favors. And I say again, market values are not greater than the divine values.*)

*When the ecosystem is on the verge of collapse, many economic considerations need to be cut away. The sooner we act, the less costly it will be. Speed and scale will be critical. The goal of achieving net zero carbon emissions must be our priority. The good news is that 140 big countries have committed to achieve this goal and the numbers of the countries are increasing. The manufacture of certain cars that pollute the air will be pruned in Europe in 2030. The Canadian government also pledged that the sale of gas running cars will be purged by 2035. Cutting out the use of coal as fuel has yet to happen. There is lots to do, still.*

*Dear branches of the True Vine,*

*I invite you to look at your home, your workplace, and your congregation! What needs to be pruned in order to tackle the climate crisis? What decisive action do you as a community of faith need to make to allow life on earth to flourish? What pruning can you think of as a spiritual discipline to cut down waste and eliminate overconsumption? How shall we contribute to saving the earth as a daily Christian practice?*

*Let me suggest how we can join God in the work of pruning every day of the week individually and collectively.*

*Monday for Meditation. Think about, read about, learn about our planet and what we need to do to keep it healthy. Monday for Meditation includes simply delighting in the beauty of the life around you in creation while walking and biking or doing nothing else.*

*Tuesday for Turning off machines and lights. Try not to use cars or airplanes and look out for lights left on.*

*Wednesday for Waste free. Try not to make unnecessary waste, whether it is food, water or other waste.*

*Thursday for Thrift. Don't throw things out that can be used later or by others. Spend less. Borrow or lend something rather than buying something new.*

*Friday for Future. This motto is not my original idea but the international movement of young people that started by Greta Thunberg, August 2018, exactly 3 years ago. Millions of young people from over 150 countries are doing a prophetic act, demonstrating on Friday to demand action from political leaders to take action to prevent climate change and for the fossil fuel industry to transition to renewable energy.*

*Saturday for Sabbath. This is an ancient Jewish practice of resting. Resting can be good for you and I. It is also good for the Earth! We join this Jewish practice as a way of pruning our life and saving the earth, even if as Christian we celebrate Sunday as our sabbath.*

*Sunday for Sharing. As we gather as a congregation, let's find ways to share the work we have done to prune our lives for a thriving planet! Be with people that you love and who need your love. Encourage one another!*

*Monday for Meditation, Tuesday for Turning Off, Wednesday for Waste Free, Thursday for Thrift, Friday for the Future, Saturday for Sabbath and Sunday for Sharing. I will look forward to hearing how you have been doing regarding this matter next time when we meet in person.*

*These are some tips for pruning. The guiding principle of all these actions is to prune branches of despair and apathy so that branches of hope and renewal can flourish. Pruning is holy work. May God, the chief gardener, bless your gardening this day and always.*

*What happened to the vine we grew in Saskatoon? Well, let's just say we did not leave that house with a vineyard in the backyard! We did our best, but God is the real gardener. And sometimes God saves and gives life by pruning. God in Jesus can give you life–life abundant and free. A life that grows, a life that bears fruit, a life that takes root even in these troubled times. If we do our part, the divine gardener will do the gardener's part. And not only will the dead flowerpots on the street corner come back to life but the dead dreams, dead relationships, dead careers, and even this dying, nearly dead world will come back to life.*

*Amen and thanks be to God.*

## **5. Sermon Analysis: A Critical Reflection**

The main idea of the sermon is to invite the congregation to observe God as the pruning God, while drawing our attention to environmental crises. While we must admit that God as Father is still androcentric and anthropocentric, thus, a hermeneutic of suspicion is warranted as the Earth Bible Team pointed out (Habel 2000, p. 39), it is God in Jesus as the True Vine who embodies a community of interconnectedness, which is the second principle suggested by the Earth Bible Team. In embracing both an androcentric and plant-centered theology, the sermon focuses on John 15:2, and highlights the verb, *prune*. Here, this verse containing the particular verb serves as a resource of practicing theology that addresses the environmental crises, resonating with Ballard's first mode of Scripture. This verb is active, involving a human agency inviting a costly and vulnerable act, affirming the work of the Earth Bible Team. It further develops the idea of the original Greek word for pruning, *kathaíro¯*, which means purging and purifying, to address the current reality of the COVID-19 pandemic and urge concrete actions. The sermon taps into the ancient text in order to relate to the current context that calls for action addressing environmental crises, which is the third mode suggested by Ballard. Hermeneutically speaking, to name God as the pruning God is to interpret the biblical text by unearthing a divine activity that is not obvious. One may argue that not only is the agency of the Earth community is hidden, but also that of God is overlooked in our theological understanding. This draws on the insight of the Earth Bible Team regarding the retrieval of hidden traditions.

Preaching takes place in worship and contributes to the strengthening of the spirituality of the people in the pew as well as of the preacher. As a central piece in the sermon, it can easily demonstrate Ballard's second mode of the use of Scripture for enhancing worship and spirituality. The sermon was preached during a Sunday in summer, intentionally celebrating the liturgical season of the creation. Congregations were invited to deeply encounter the natural world in this season, while hearing about the U.N. report on climate change and that of the COP 26 Conference was being organized in October 2021. Ballard's third mode of the use of Scripture, viewing the Bible as hermeneutical wisdom for theological reflection, is employed in this sermon. Following the Earth Bible Team's third principle, the scripture allows us to hear the cries of the creation (Habel 2000, pp. 46–48). Instead of allowing itself to be co-opted by a dominant reading, a reading that silences the language of the Earth, we are also able to hear the voice of the Earth, groaning and resisting, through the agony of God as a gardener who must cut the branch off and unroot

the plant that is not going to bear fruit. Using the words of the Earth Bible Team's fourth principle, the Earth has a purpose, which is to sustain life in all its diversity and beauty. Hence, the use of Scripture in this sermon helps preachers proclaim God who attends to the condition of the creation and invites humans to join in this work.

The writer of the Gospel of John uses the theological metaphor of chief gardener and True Vine. The sermon highlights this theological metaphor by evoking the congregation's capacity to imagine Jesus in a non-androcentric and non-anthropocentric way. This promotes ecological consciousness and interdependent perspectives. The very agenda of practical theology is found in the use of the theological metaphor. Bonnie Miller-McLemore proposed that the future of practical theology lies in the shift of the guiding metaphor from "living human document" to "living human web", with the recognition of interdependence between personal, political and public well-being (Miller-McLemore 1993). Yet, a decade later, she admitted that this shift did not observe the presence of the "non-human" natural world and noted the absent theme for pastoral theologians (Miller-McLemore 2020). The sermon, in this regard, reveals the interdependence of and inseparability between the Triune God, humans and non-human lives for the sake of addressing compounded by environmental crises.

The sermon presented here, entitled "The Pruning God," compels us to grapple with human greed to confess, expose, and resist our exploitation of nature in ways that reorient our priority to make decisive actions by pruning our life with a view to the Earth's purpose. The sermon has a confessional posture. This confessional posture meets the resistance of the Earth. The resistance of the Earth is what reveals sin and judgement in a way that is similar to how Hebrew Scripture relays God's judgements and calls to repentance (Jer. 12: 4, 7–11, Hos. 4:1–3). Canadian ecofeminist theologian Heather Eaton, commenting on the Earth Bible Team's principles, notes that the last principle, resistance, "requires imagining the Earth not only as a subject capable of agency, but one that has a sensitivity toward justice for the Earth and to the human community." (Eaton 2000, p. 69). The sermon shares the preacher's personal experience. It indirectly communicates the Earth's intrinsic agency and purpose. Yet, the sermon equally calls for an interdependent stance vis– vis human, creation, and Creator.

The sermon proclaims God's desire to mend the broken relationship between the non-human creation and that of humans, even if this mending requires pruning, a costly and uneasy reorientation, a radically different way of life. In this regard, the sermon moves to invite people to participate in concrete (and manageable) actions, highlighting the value of mutual custodianship as the fifth principle laid out by the Earth Bible Team. To follow and believe in the pruning God requires repentance involving a change of heart and habits. Repentance as truth-telling requires honesty. Repentance requires vulnerability. Repentance requires courage. It is hard work. That is why we need to seek the help of our ancestors in faith who have traveled the way of confession and repentance ahead of us. Tapping into the wisdom of the ancestors is similar to imagining that they are tapping on our shoulders, by encouraging us to see that we are not alone in performing the hard work of repentance. That is why repentance as an essential practice of Christianity is related to remembering the past. Confession as a part of repentance in this regard involves naming our own mistakes, complacency, and complicity and actively drawing wisdom from our ancestors guided by the work of the Holy Spirit, so that we can turn to God, a re-orientation toward the Earth and the Divine mystery, as a source of life.

Drawing wisdom from our ancestors in faith through the Book of Revelation, John Holbert argues that this particular biblical text exposes the horror of the economic and social monster of the Roman Empire in the first century, and that it can help us to repent of our complicity in similarly monstrous empires in the twenty-first century (Holbert 2011, p. 86). The same point can be made in the Gospel of John, the text for the sermon, because, arguably, it is the same author, John, or the community to which John belonged who wrote both the Gospel and Revelation. It is also important to note that the author, John, did not write the books specifically for us with our context in mind. Yet, we "overhear" what was

written and "tell" it to our own people in a confessional manner (Craddock 2002). This overhearing and telling is what it means to proclaim the Gospel in an age of environmental crises. This is the preaching act. It is about bearing public witness to the exposure of a sinful act, by owning our own complicity and complacency and inviting the hearers to take necessary action. Confession and repentance, in a homiletical sense, are not doctrinal but performative. John of Patmos himself, writing the book of Revelation, performed a funeral liturgy and delivered a sermon exposing the ugly face of the Roman Empire (Rev. 18). John the homilist helped his hearers envision the end of the world of the imperial economic system. We overhear his homily and it is our task to tell it to our people by addressing today's Empire (Keller 2005, p. 2), which threatens the ecosystem of the Earth.
