“Let the Holy Waters Flow”

Cursed is the one who trusts in man,

Who depends on flesh for his strength

And whose heart turns away from the Lord.

He will be like a bush in the wastelands;

He will not see prosperity when it comes.

He will dwell in the parched places of the desert,

in a salt land, where no one lives.

Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD,

whose confidence is in him.

He will be like a tree planted by the water

that sends out its roots by the stream.

It does not fear when heat comes;

its leaves are always green.

It has not worries in a year of drought

and never fails to bear fruit.   Jer 17: 7-8

Fred, a strong young man, went to work in a factory when he was seventeen years old.  Although he dropped out of high school due to a learning disability, he felt an obligation to help support his family.  Fred had a sense of joy about life that was indomitable, and he infected others with it.  He worked hard at his job, shoveling coal from train cars and scraping out built up coal dust from the asbestos ovens.  His work was unsafe, but it gave him pride and used his boundless physical energy.  He would come home covered with this dust, with black soot over every exposed part of his body.  It lined every crevasse and crease, including his lungs.  Except for a short two year interruption when he joined the Army to fight in the war, Fred continued to work in that factory for over thirty seven years.  He never had health insurance; the union, which the workers voted in twenty years later, brought some limited benefits, but Fred’s wages remained below the poverty level, and his job was not secure.

Ruth was a quiet and shy beauty who lived in Fred’s neighborhood.  She loved books, and singing, and most of all, children.  They married in their early twenties, and their first child was born while Fred was still overseas. When he returned, they began their life together, working hard, filled with hopes for a simple and good life.  They were religious people, who trusted in God, worshipped at their church, and taught their children to be kind, and to love life.  Their early years together, although financially tough, were good, and happy and fruitful.  Soon more children filled their home, which was noisy and fun and busy.

In the early nineteen-sixties, Fred had a back injury. With no health insurance and no sick benefits, his wages ended when he did not go to work.  Hospitalized several times in severe pain, when his resources were used up, he returned home and lay in a bed in the living room, hooked up to traction.  This went on for months.  Ruth took in other people’s laundry, and watched others people’s children for a few extra dollars.  During this time, there was often no food in the house.  After a few months, Fred was slowly able to go back to work.  However, what he did not know was that his wife was noticing signs in her body that all was not well.  Already stressed with the family’s financial burdens and with caring for her children, and knowing there was no money to see a doctor, Ruth remained silent, with the knowledge that the lump she felt in her breast was getting bigger and bigger. Her youngest child was four years old, her oldest in his teens.  There was too much to do; she prayed and told no one of her concerns, except for God.

The two people described above, Fred and Ruth, although they began their life together over sixty years ago, are not very different from many families around the world and in our own country today whose livelihoods expose them to the dangers of coal dust, and who live in dangerously polluted communities: cities where the air and the drinking water are unsafe.

Such is the dirty business of coal mining.  For centuries it required miners to go deep underground to extract the coal. Now, more often than not, in the United States this underground drilling and mining process has been replaced by the landscape destroying practice of mountain top removal to facilitate access to the coal hundreds of feet below the ground.  Mountaintop removal coal mining does exactly what it says: it removes entire mountaintops to extract the coal within.  Though there are less invasive ways to mine coal, this is the least expensive form.

In addition to the disruption to the horizon that occurs when whole mountain tops are removed, mountaintop mining creates another problem, and that is what to do with the remaining debris of the excavated mountaintop.  Mining companies currently use the 300 million year old hollows and valleys of the Appalachian mountains, where most mountaintop removal coal mining happens in North America, to dump the debris, polluting waterways and streams and entire ecosystems virtually overnight.

Under the Bush administration, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency repealed a long-standing Clean Water Act regulation, allowing waste from mountaintop removal coal mining to be dumped into nearby streams and other waters. Over 500 square miles of mountaintops have been removed and up to 2,000 streams have been buried in debris. [1]

In our country the poor and communities of color bear a disproportionate burden of the toxic side effects of our dependence upon coal as a fuel source.  According to testimony by Lisa Evans, an attorney for the nonprofit, public interest law firm EarthJustice, “The poverty rate of people living within one mile of coal combustion waste disposal sites is twice as high as the national average, and the percentage of non-white populations within one mile is 30 percent higher than the national average.” [2]

Worldwide, our dependence on coal as the main source of fuel to spur development in countries such as China has increased air pollution and exacerbated the global warming already caused by the burning of fossil fuel for gas guzzling vehicles.  Coal mining in rural China, estimated to have increased over 66 percent in the past six years, [3] is changing the eco-climates across vast landscapes of the continent of Asia, not only sickening and killing the workers involved in its extraction, but polluting the waterways and creating water shortages, permanently altering arable land into desert like conditions.  It is estimated that approximately eight percent of China’s territory is now affected by this process called desertification.

“China’s huge coal mining sector is strikingly antiquated when compared to the industry in developed countries. Besides having old equipment, few Chinese mines use mechanized excavation and investments in scientific research and miner training are quite low” [4], making mining one of the most lethal of all industries in the country.  Nearly 80 percent of the world’s total deaths in coal mine accidents occur in China.

In the reading from Jeremiah this morning we heard about the tree that is planted by the water.  It has leaves that are always green; because it has been allowed to put down deep roots, it fears no drought, and never fails to bear fruit.  It can prosper and grow, fulfilling its purpose as a tree. It cannot be moved from its place.

A while ago I heard the Episcopal Bishop from the diocese of Alaska speak on the topic of eco-theology: the interrelationship of religion and nature.  He asked the following question: ”How is it, how has it come about, that we cannot drink the water from any stream or body of fresh water in our country without fear of becoming ill?”

Now, while Bishop MacDonald was literally speaking about the water that flows all around us but is unsafe to drink without chemical pretreatment, I began think about the metaphorical water of Jeremiah. If water is justice, if it represents a movement towards an ecologically sustainable earth, then what kind of trees will grow where justice has been impeded?  How is it we have arrived at this place in time, on our planet, where it is acceptable that millions of people work at physically dangerous and spiritually stripped workplaces, performing the difficult and dangerous work of mining coal, while its byproducts and waste materials pollute our most vital resource, our water?

Around the world and in our own country there are battles over the rights of water ownership and reduced access to safe drinking water by poor people.  In Boston Massachusetts the number of water shut offs occurring in poor neighborhoods has increased over threefold in just three years.  Although it is estimated that each human being requires ten to fifteen gallons of water per day, more people find potable and adequate water unavailable as privatization of water increases around the globe.

As a faith community, an eco-theology that reflects our seventh principle, respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part, calls us to action.  We have an obligation to use our voice to uncover and speak out when inequities are experienced on a daily basis by our fellow human beings.  We have an obligation to represent and support those who live without access to safe drinking water.  We have an obligation to find a way to bring about justice in the form of the living waters of sustainable working practices which support the life of all of our planet, its flora and fauna, its waters and air.

As citizens of the United States, we experience extraordinary privileges that many in the world covet, while here among us, we have great inequities which must also be addressed. As people of faith, we have entered into a covenant together that reminds us, as James Luther Adams says, that we must “make explicit through discussion the epochal thinking that the times demand”.  However, Fred Muir, another UU theologian warns “merely sitting by and watching, expecting our reverence for life to change the plight of the poor, (is) not … consistent with our prophetic tradition” (19) [1].

Ruth and Fred, the two people I told you about in the beginning of this sermon, you may not be surprised to know, were my parents.  Ruth, my mother, died of breast cancer, at age 44.  My father lost his job after 37 years when the factory he worked in closed after the workers struck for better wages.  He died of lung cancer a few years later.

Today’s workers who die from dangerous coal industry related working conditions and poverty may be more likely to be named Wei Ping or Lu Wang instead of Fred and Ruth, but their stories are eerily similar.

The Unitarian Universalist Association is partnering with the Unitarian Universalist Ministry for the Earth and the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee in naming Environmental Justice the Action for the Month of April.  It is an invitation to UUs to engage in environmental justice, to articulate “the interface between our understanding of our place in the natural world and the daunting political, social and economic issues of our time”, to build “a bridge between Nature and Society which pursues simultaneously the protection of natural systems and the ecological health of human communities” [5]

I am aware that we may feel we have too much to do, between work and family obligations, and pressing and depressing financial challenges.  But I also know that we each have a deeper need to “be like a tree planted by the water, that sends out its roots by the stream” to fully grow into our calling as people of faith.  Our world needs the fresh water of our prophetic voices to tell the truths of the dangers of mountaintop coal mining, to call for worldwide water justice.  Our children need to hear what we think about this; they need to know we are trying to make a difference.

Each of our contributions matters, not only to our own families, but to our neighbors, to our communities, and to our world.  What you do, matters.  Therefore, I ask you today to consider this: what better way can you choose to use your voice as a person of faith, than to become the holy water that helps the tree find its place, to put down deep roots, and to bear good fruit?  Do your part to find out more about mountaintop coal mining and its devastating effects upon our ecosystems waterways and air pollution.  Find out what is happening about water services in our very own community of Rochester.  What happens when someone in Rochester cannot pay their water bill- does their supply get turned off?  What is considered ‘safe’ levels of pollution in our water supply?  How do you know when our water is too unsafe to drink?  Are you still buying water in bottles?

On this Earth Day Sunday, can you think of a more beneficial way to deepen your own faith commitment to celebrate our interconnectedness?

May the holy waters flow, and may you be part of the ever flowing river of justice that makes it happen.

Blessed Be. Amen.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Source

[4] Ibid.

[5] Source