Sermon delivered by the Rt. Reverend William E. Swing at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Burlingame, CA. Sunday, September 15, 2024.
I’d like to preach about dinosaurs today. The last of them died – perhaps – 66 million years ago. How did they die? Perhaps, by an asteroid, about the size of Mt. Everest. This asteroid hit here with an impact that released energy equivalent to 10 billion Hiroshima sized bombs. That raised a cloud of deadly gases that hung around for years, radically changing the environment and making life unsustainable. The dinosaurs, the biggest, most powerful species on earth, the dinosaurs, were no match for the asteroid.
We come to St. Paul’s today and listen to Jesus saying, “What will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?” Perhaps these words apply to dinosaurs, but certainly they apply to us.
Today, nine nations of the world are creating enough asteroids – nuclear weapons – to guarantee that humans become extinct. The promise of nuclear weapons is to “gain the whole world.” “To gain security.” “To gain leverage over other nations. “And make a lot of money in the meantime.”
How much money was spent this past year on nuclear weapons? $91.4 billion dollars. A New York Times article this past week said that China and North Korea are catching up to us. We need to hurry up and spend more money. “What will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?”
How much damage do our bombs, our human-made asteroids intend? With nukes coming from silos, from submarines, from airplanes – perhaps soon from space – if the United States and Russian engage in a nuclear war, 360,000 million people will be dead in 24 hours, according to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.. 5 billion human beings will be dead in two years. From? Well like the dinosaurs, from a cloud of deadly gases that radically change our environment and make human life unsustainable. Move over dinosaurs! We’re moving in!
In the recent presidential debate, eating dogs was mentioned but neither candidate talked about nuclear weapons. One of them will soon have his/her finger poised over the button that could launch the world into an earth- cancelling catastrophe. Isn’t that important enough to debate? The candidates don’t want to talk about this consequential reality, and we don’t want to listen . .or think . . . or accept the moral responsibility that accompanies possession of ultimate power.
We just want the power. So we tolerate a conspiracy of silence about nukes.
But aren’t we a lot smarter than dinosaurs? Maybe not. Dinosaurs were around for about 165 billion years. Human beings have only been around for 300,000 years. Dinosaurs made it a thousand times longer than humans, to date! And we are dumb enough today to create weapons to kill us all. All of us. All of our grandchildren. All of our great-grandchildren, forever.
Nevertheless, nobody, no nation is pulling back from asteroid creation. On August 6, 1945, in Hiroshima, human life on this planet was given as expiration date.
Already, 99.9% of all species that have ever existed on earth are now extinct. “Forfeit their lives.” And now we are throwing the nuclear dice on behalf of the life of the remaining survivors. We are no longer the “masters of our fate.” We are temporary tenders of our small earth garden. This planet is not a bottomless boon for our exploitation.
Earth is our first, last and only chance of sustaining human life on a little planet floating around in a vest universe.
Jesus’ few words quoted today amount only to a proverb. “What will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?” But his actions go much further and speak more eloquently. He didn’t sit on the sidelines. He walked directly into the crucifixion. The cross road. The intersection between life and death.
He did not want to gain the world; He wanted to sustain the world. He didn’t come to enslave life on earth but to save life on earth. He said to his followers, “Take up your cross and follow me.”
I can almost hear him speaking to us at St. Pual’s today, saying “Come on you dinosaurs, you can do better. You’d better do better. Amen.
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