“Gifts of The Sun” — A Sermon

Sermon by Rosaleen Xiong for Unitarian Universalist Metro Atlanta North on April 16, 2023.

The Sun

Have you ever seen

anything

in your life

more wonderful

than the way the sun,

every evening,

relaxed and easy,

floats toward the horizon

and into the clouds or the hills,

or the rumpled sea,

and is gone--

and how it slides again

out of the blackness,

every morning,

on the other side of the world,

like a red flower

streaming upward on its heavenly oils,

say, on a morning in early summer,

at its perfect imperial distance--

and have you ever felt for anything

such wild love--

do you think there is anywhere, in any language,

a word billowing enough

for the pleasure

that fills you,

as the sun

reaches out,

as it warms you

as you stand there,

empty-handed--

or have you too

turned from this world--

or have you too

gone crazy

for power,

for things?

—Mary Oliver

I was nine when I first learned about global warming. In fourth grade, I started reading my parents’ subscription to Time magazine, and I can still distinctly remember the article describing the effects of greenhouse gasses on the planet. To be honest, I understood maybe half of the article — I had to ask my dad what “carbon dioxide” was — but I can remember the fear and confusion I felt learning about the damage we were doing to the Earth. 

The carbon emissions that power our cars, our cities, and our lives have made the sun harmful to us by trapping its radiation in the atmosphere. We are seeing this manifest across the globe. Deserts are expanding as previously fertile areas dry up. Polar ice is melting and sea levels are rising. Weather disasters are becoming increasingly common as our climate changes in ways humans have never seen. But this warming is also affecting our individual, day-to-day lives by harming our homes, our neighbors, and our communities.

We are seeing all of this happen here in our own state of Georgia. Communities across the coast of Georgia are facing a huge uptick in natural disasters caused by Earth’s changing climate. As temperatures rise, Georgia Power, Georgia’s monopoly utility, is continuing to invest into fossil fuel infrastructure and natural gas power plants that will produce even more harmful greenhouse gasses. And as this is happening, the Public Service Commission, which is meant to regulate their activities and protect ratepayers, approved a proposal that will allow Georgia Power to raise their rates, increasing their income by about 1.8 billion dollars through 2025. Making it more expensive for people to cool their homes will disproportionately hurt Georgians with the least resources, making it more likely that they will suffer from heat-related illnesses. And the EPA predicts that a warmer Earth will lead to more droughts across Georgia, potentially leading to devastating crop failures. These stories make it so incredibly clear how much our disrespect of the sun’s power is hurting and killing those around us, especially the populations that are the most vulnerable.

So why do we as a society continue to choose to go down this path towards an increasingly dangerous and damaged Earth? Mary Oliver asks us if we have turned from this world — if we have gone crazy for power, for things — and as I look around at the disconnect between us and the natural world, I can’t help but answer yes. We know that the true perpetrators of climate change are greed and theft. Capitalism perpetuates ideals of unsustainable growth. It tries to make us believe that we can take and take and take from the Earth without consequence. This disregard for the Earth has manifested in a world where we have turned the divine power of the sun into something harmful, something dangerous.

This poem offers us a distinct challenge. Have we forsaken our connection to the divine, and gone crazy for power and for things? Or is there another way? What if we were to acknowledge how wonderful the constancy of the sun is — how it rises and sets every day? What if we took the time to appreciate how it feels to stand outside facing the sun, allowing its warmth to fill our bodies?

A decade after I first learned about global warming, when I was nineteen, I took a weekend trip with a friend to Big Bend National Park in West Texas. It was the first trip I had ever taken without my parents, and I marveled at the fact that I could just decide to go on a trip without asking anybody for permission. We arrived at the park two hours before nightfall and put together our tent as the sun was setting. We shared a dinner of Ritz crackers, peanut butter, and half a cucumber each as we watched the sun’s last rays paint the Texas sky hues of red, orange, and pink.

In the morning, we woke up at 4 am and groggily packed up our campsite. We drove to an overlook just outside of the Boquillas Canyon and watched the sun rise over the Rio Grande. As the sunlight crept over the desert landscape, I found that I could not help but cry from awe, from gratitude, from love. That sunrise was one of the most spiritual experiences of my life, and it was also the moment that I knew, from the depths of my heart, that our world is worth fighting for — that our world is worth saving.

What would it look like for us to honor our relationship with the sun? I think we would have to start as Mary Oliver suggests, by acknowledging what gifts the sun gives us with its consistency, its warmth, and its power. The sun’s warmth keeps our Earth warm enough to sustain life across the planet. Georgia’s native plants, which represent some of our best defenses against climate change, rely on the sun for nourishment, as do the crops we grow to feed our communities. And solar energy is one of our most reliable and accessible sources of renewable energy. These are the gifts that our faith communities call us to protect.

I know that this congregation has already started working towards this goal. Today, we heard from [congregation member] about the work that Unitarian Universalist Metro Atlanta North is doing with Mimosa House [figure out what they’re actually doing with Mimosa House — I think solar panels?]. And we’ve heard from [congregation member] about [native wildlife, I think?]. On top of all of that, just within this past year, this congregation has worked with us at Georgia Interfaith Power and Light to install solar panels on the roof above us right now.

But we can’t stop there. We have to fight the ways that we, as a society, have gone crazy for power and things. As spiritual people, we have the power to challenge these impulses both within ourselves and in the society we live in. The seventh Unitarian Universalist principle calls us to respect the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part. I think this call includes all of us who call Earth home. We must fight for justice for ourselves, our communities, and especially those among us who are most vulnerable.  But we must also fight for justice for every living thing on this planet — the birds, the trees, the fish — because we know that all living things depend on each other for survival.

This knowledge of the Earth and of the worthiness of all beings is sacred. And, as a community of faith, our work is to spread this sacred knowledge. By doing so, we can bring a uniquely moral voice to this conversation at large. As a collective, our voices have power that we lack as individuals, and to protect our Earth, we need to use that power to challenge systems of oppression and exploitation at every level. And we need to make sure that this conversation isn’t just confined to just this one service a year — this fight has to stay with us every week, both on Sundays and in between Sundays, because we are called to seek this justice for the Earth, for the sun, and for each other every day, and we are called to seek it in every aspect of our lives.

There are undeniable forces in our society that ask us to turn away from the world of nature towards the world of power and things. But I also know that we have another choice. When we come together as a community of faith, we can slow the progress of global warming. We can make the world around us a more equitable and just place. And we can stand together, basking in the sun’s warmth, and hold on to the glory of knowing that it will continue to nurture us tomorrow, the day after that, and forever.

Amen.