The word from the whales

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The Wordfrom the Whales

Job 12:7-10

Daniel Coeperrider

Weybridge Congregational Church, Weybridge, Vermont

On day seven of the 2012 Eeumenieal Lenten Carbon Fast, Jim Antal, eonferenee minister for the United Church of Christ in Massaehusetts, issued a eall to worship leaders. His advice for preaehers in partieular was that within two to three years, every third or fourth sermon should address issues of ehmate ehange and eeology. Otherwise, as he surmised, in about ten to fifteen years, every sermon will have to foeusongrief^ Today we’ll be hearing from the Book of Job. Job’s story is familiar because it is a story about what it is to be human, the glory and the vulnerability of it, toe blessing and toe eurse, toe thin line between innoeenee and guilt, understanding and bewilderment , appreeiation for toe gift of life, and despair in toe faee of its incrutability. The eomedian Louis C.K. has a popular bit in which he points out the absurdity of how when we get off of an airplane, our first instinet seems to be to eomplain. Herc we arc, hurtling speetaeularly through toe atmosphere, suspended graeefully between heaven and earth, moving quieker than any other ereature ean move from one plaee to another, and yet still we’re eomplaining about not having enough leg room, about being ten minutes delayed, about having the internet erash momentarily, or even worse, being without it for a bit, and all toe while here we arc sitting safely, life vest under our seat. Oh and by the way, we’rc in toe sky! His puneh line: “Everything’s amazing and nobody’s happy.”^ The story of Job, however, begins just a step before that sentiment. For Job initially everything was amazing, and he was happy. “Blameless and upright” is what the text says, and so Cod blessed Job with “seven sons and torce daughters, with seven thousand sheep, torce thousand eamels, five hundred oxen, five hundred donkeys,” sueh that we’rc told how “this man was the greatest of all the people of toe east.” Well, soon enough Job would eount himself among toe “nobody’s happy” crowd, for it wasn’t long before all toe blessings that supported him started to disappear rapidly: the family, toe livestoek, toe land, his own body. Jt’s as if the environment that sustained him in a state of happiness disintegrated and eventually broke down. The bulk of the story then involves Job trying to make sense of the devastation that visited him. To this end, torce friends travel from afar to be with him. Eirst they sit together in silenee for seven days, sharing deeply in Job’s grief. Then Job deeides to break toe silence, cursing toe day of his birth and railing against toe indifference of toe universe. A series of theological dialogues ensues, first between Job and his friends and finally between Job and God as God speaks from out of the whirlwind. The friends view Job’s personal loss largely as a problem of moral reasoning, and like us when we’re faced with a problem, especially another person’s problem, they seek a quick solution. They attempt to explain away the enigma of Job’s situation. “It’s because you must have done something wrong,” they say. “Everything happens for a reason.” Eventually, under toe pressure of toe debate, Job and his friends fall into the ^1-too-familiar pattern of talking completely past one another, becoming further entrenched in their own myopic perspectives and ideologies.

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The friends’ argnments are unhelpful ©اthe p©؛nt of testing Job’s faith in the goodness of life and in the Creator who makes all things, ©ur text for today eomes at a eritieal moment when Job finds his faith renewed, and interestingly, he finds it renewed by turning away from the terms of the human debate, away from toe human tendeney to argue about and eontrol and explain all things, and turning instead towards toe natural world, turning with reverence and humility towards toe ©ther-than-hu!nan and toe rare-than-human world of toe earth and the diversity (and wisdom) of its living things. And Job said, “But ask toe animals, and they wifi teaeh you; toe birds of the air, and they will tell you; speak to the earth, and it will teach you; and toe fish of the sea will declare to >©u. Wh© among all these does not know that toe hand of the L©RD has done all this? In c©d’s hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of every human being.” ?eople of faith thr©ugh©ut history have been quick to turn to toe Creator by turning first towards ereation, renewing faith in Cod thr©ugh renewing faith in toe goodness and beauty of life. Today, however, when s©meth؛ng like Job’s grief visits us and when like Job we turn to toe earth to be renewed, we ean find ourselves turning from one plaee of grief to an©ther. We turn to toe animals, and we hear about their rapid disappearanee during tois S i^ lr-^ lo een e e x ti^ tio n e v e m .W e s^ ^ to to e e ^ an d h e a ro fto e strain that W’e’re putting it under; we hear it sigh that so mu،:h beauty is departing fr©m its stage. We speak to toe sky, and it responds with a elimate toll of tumult and e©nfusi©n. When it comes to the grief that we should be feeling now about elimate change and toe state of the earth, we seem to be in s©mething like the position of Job and his friends, hedged in by toe threat ©fc’©llapse and smek in an endless quagmire of debate, our faith in ourselves and our future tested. A c©uple of summers ago, I spent a day in Madrid and visited toe ?rad©. The old cityseape, with its mixture of Renaissance, Ne©-C©thic, and Ne©classical design , eomplemented beautifully toe play of Mediterranean sun on white cl©uds and blue sky. I entered toe museum feeling rather optimistic, buoyed by toe energy of the people and inspired by toe awesome works of human nature fully on display in toe eity’s architecture. I had c©me especially to see toe paintings, and out of all toe masterpieees that are housed in toe ?rad©, there was one in particular that captivated me. Titled “Quarrel with Clubs,” it comes from toe bleak, haunting last series of paintings by Francisco c©y؛t, toe series kn©wn as his “Black ?aintings.” Seeing toe painting reminded me of a professor’s highlighting this image as a prophetic statement on where we stood in terms of the climate changeriebate.^ I looked deeply into the painting, trying to remember ٢٠imagine what he might have meant. The lesson is pretty straightforward. The painting depicts two men mid-swing about to pummel one another with clubs. We see that they’re both buried knee-deep in a type of sand pit, and we see that they seem to be sinking such that toe harder these two fight against one another, toe quicker they’ll sink int© toe pit. This is not a fight or flight s؛tuati©n. but a fight to toe death. In terms of color, toe foreground matches the tragic scene with its dark tones and cavernous shadows, but one of the most eerie and unsettling things is that the background appears far brighter and more optimistic. 11′ it weren’t for toe men in toe scene, this would appear to be a rather peaceful and attractive landscape, with a blue and white sky not unlike toe sky on that summer day in Madrid.

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When I look at the painting now, what I see is that we’¥e been plaeed amid a landscape of s^ggering beauty, but like the men fighting with elubs, like Job and his friends, we have this tendeney, perhaps espeeially in the eeologieal debate, to turn away from the rest of ereation and to free off, human vs. human, in an endless argument , ereating for ourselves a quagmire whieh, when foregrounded, has the ability to mar the entire landscape. When I look at the painting now, what I see is an honest representation of someone who has lost faith in the goodness of life. I see the eomie’s puneh line that “everything’s amazing and nobody’s happy.” When I look at it now, I see Job in that moment right before he says, “But ask the animals and they’ll tell you, and the fish of the sea will deelare to you.” A fow years ago The New York Times Magazine published an intriguing essay titled “Watehing Whales Watehing Us.” As the title implies, this piece explores the “ever-evolving relationship between humans and whales.”* The author had heard that sométhing interesting was happening between humans and gray whales in the San Ignacio lagoons off Baja’s western eoast, and so he traveled there with a marine biologist to see first hand what was going on. The San Ignacio lagoons are important as the winter and spring harbor for these whales ؛it’s where they give birth to and nurse their young for a fow months before heading north again towards the Bering Sea. This yearly pattern meant that these lagoons used to be prime whale-hunting grounds, so produetive in fret that as reeently as 75 years ago, the gray whale was nearly hunted out of existenee. These whales never aceepted the hunt without a fight, sueh that the grays once earned themselves the Leviathan-like nickname “hardheaded devil fish.” In 1937 an international ban was placed on hunting the gray whale. But since these mammals can live as long as 100 years, there are still whales swimming those waters with harpoon scars marking their backs, bearing a history of violence on their bodies. It turns out that it’s these very same whales with the harpoon scars that are now doing something new and quite extraordinary. These whales have not only stopped attacking human vessels, but are in fact seeking out connection with us, turning the tables and pursuing with curiosity the whale-watching boats instead of being curiously pursued ؛even entertaining the human onlookers with spectacular breeching displays, sending their impossibly huge bodies careening from water into sky with such gravity-defying grace ؛even shepherding their young and vulnerable calves right up next to the wh^e-watchers ؛ even gently holding their massive, harpoon-scared heads inches from these boats and looking up at these people, beholding us with their immense eyes ؛even letting or inviting us to extend a hand and touch them. A type ofblessing from one creature of extraordinary intelligence to another. Apparently, the word from the whales is that for us humans, something like ecological forgiveness is possible. Apparently, the word from the whales is that if we change our tune, if we relent from our attack on the things of nature, the things of nature will respond in turn, and even those places left most scarred will forgive us. Apparently, the word from the whales is that creation waits with eager longing for the day when we’ll seek communication and relationship with it rather than control and manipulation. Apparently, the word from the whales confirms the wisdom of Job when he says, “Ask the animals and they will teach y o u -th e fish of the sea, and they will declare to you ؛ask the birds of the air, and they wifi tell you…that the hand of the LORD has done all this.”

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A few days before Madrid and the Prado, I found myself in the Louvre in Paris, eaptivated by a different painting—the image o f“St. Francis Preaching to the Birds” by the Early Italian Renaissance artist 0اأ0ع ؛؛ .This painting, glowing vividly with its gold inlay, depicts perhaps the most celebrated event in the life of this celebrated saint of the church. Legend has it that after walking away from the life of wealth and power that awaited him as a merchant in Assisi and after turning towards a life of voluntary poverty and simplicity modeled on the life of Jesus, St. Francis became an itinerant preacher of the gospel, and famously, was want to wander from the road and preach to other creatures, as when he told his companions, “¥ ٧٠shall await me here on the road, and 1 will go preach to the birds, my sisters.” In this famous sermon, Francis called upon the birds to sing God’s praises at all times and in all places. Like Jesus did when he said to “consider the birds of the air,” St. Francis called upon his avian friends not to worry about the future, about reaping and sowing, but instead to trust in the abundance that God will provide. He reminded them that “clearly your Creator loves you,” and he called on them to beware of “the sin of ingratitude” and so to “be ever mindful to give praise to God.”5 What strikes me about Giotto’s painting is the way both St. Francis and the birds lean towards one another for this event. With this leaning, there seems to be a type of mutual communication happening between them, and indeed given how vocal birds are, it’s harder to imagine this bird-congregation remaining silent than it is to imagine them chirping and singing back to St Francis, a type of human-avian call and response. So here we have Goya’s “Quarrel with Clubs,” and we have Giotto’s “St. Francis ?reaching to the Birds.” Gn the one hand, we have a picture of what it’s like to lose faith in the goodness of life and what it’s like to mar the beauty of creation; but so too on the other, we have a picture of what it looks like to relate to the creatures of this earth in a beautiful, mutually enhancing way. As human beings it appears that we have a choice. We can either seek control, or we can seek communication with the other-than-human world. We can hunt the whales towards extinction, ٢٠we can watch them curiously as they watch us curiously . We can let the birds disappear into silence, ٢٠we can preach good news to them as they preach good news to us. Job says to “ask the animals and speak to the earth”; he says to “ask the fish and to speak to the birds.” From the whales, we hear a word about forgiveness. From St. Francis and the birds, we hear that gratitude is the beginning of wisdom and that praise is how we best respond to this reality of grace within which we stand. Forgiveness, gratitude, wisdom, praise—creation waits with eager longing.

Notes 1 This 2012 Ecumenical Lenten Carbon fast was a project of NEREM (New England Regional Environmental Ministries), c.f., ^cucc.org/carbonfast. 2 C.f., the 2009 Conan O ’Brien Show interview with Louis CK, http://www.criticalcommons.org/Members /fsustavros/clips/louis-ck-technology/view 3 Michael s. Hogue, “Global Warming and Religious Stiekfighting,’’ from a public lecture presented at the University of Chicago, 25 January 2007. 4 Charles Siebert, “Watching Whales Watching Us,” The New York Times Magazine, 8 July 2009. 5 Ugolino di Monte Santa Maria, The Little Flowers ofSt. Francis ofA ssisi, trans. w. Heywood, (New York: Vintage spiritual Classics, 1998), 36-37.

Lent 2014