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Texts:\u00a0Joel 1:1-12; 19-20 and\u00a0Matthew 3:13 \u2013 4:1<\/strong><\/p>\n Have you heard of the term \u201cThe Butterfly Effect<\/a>\u201d?\u00a0 It\u2019s a beautiful, poetic phrase describing a phenomenon in chaos theory. It\u2019s when a small change at one place can result in huge changes in another time or place.\u00a0 A seemingly inconsequential variable can alter the course of events in unexpected ways.\u00a0 So, in theory, the fluttering of a butterfly\u2019s wings can trigger a hurricane in a far distant time and place.<\/p>\n Scientists are understanding more and more about how the inhabitants of this planet are affected by \u2013 and contributing to \u2013 this \u201cbutterfly effect.\u201d\u00a0 We\u2019re seeing the results of countless little decisions on a tragic trajectory. They are the choices of sometimes mindless, sometimes intentional, human domination.\u00a0 Something seemingly harmless turns out to contribute to the greenhouse effect and global warming. Like driving our cars to the grocery store. Or eating hamburgers. Or drilling for methane gas.\u00a0 There is an undeniable interconnectedness of our consumption patterns, economic structures, and cultural habits.\u00a0 Combined, they have unintended consequences that affect our human and Earth communities in destructive ways.<\/p>\n To you, O LORD, I cry. <\/em><\/p>\n For fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness, and flames have burned all the trees of the field. <\/em><\/p>\n Even the wild animals cry to you because the watercourses are dried up, and fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n (Joel 1:19-20)<\/em><\/p>\n There is a book by Barbara Kingsolver called Flight Behavior<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>that\u00a0illustrates this \u201cbutterfly effect\u201d and how our choices can result in devastation for people halfway around the globe.\u00a0 Kingsolver\u2019s novel tells the story of a woman named Dellarobia Turnbow.\u00a0 She\u2019s a stay-at-home wife and mother of two young children living among the rural poor along the foothills of southern Appalachia in Tennessee. One day she has a seemingly miraculous encounter with a stunning colony of migrating monarch butterflies on a wilderness mountain owned by her in-laws.\u00a0 Her discovery of these wondrous undulating curtains of orange and black butterflies spread out over the mountain fills her with awe and mystery.<\/p>\n But, to her dismay, the \u201cbutterfly lady,\u201d as she comes to be known, learns that the presence of the butterflies is no miracle.<\/p>\n The monarchs have lost their habitat in South America because of humans destroying the forest wilderness in which they live. On top of this, climate change has skewed their internal homing patterns.\u00a0 That\u2019s how they end up on her family\u2019s mountain \u2013 a place they were never meant to be.<\/p>\n As tourists, environmentalists, and scientists flock to her family\u2019s mountain, the Turnbows are faced with their own loss of home and land.\u00a0 Dellarobia\u2019s father-in-law weighs whether or not to turn the mountain over to a logging company in order to pay off their crushing debt on his struggling farm.\u00a0 It\u2019s a double-bind. Do they kill the forests that sustains them in exchange for temporary financial relief? Or do they protect the resources of their land while being buried under the burdens heaped upon them by the financial Pharaohs of our time?<\/p>\n The answer to this question is a choice that benefits only those who hold the financial reigns over us all.\u00a0 The powers that control our global economy wreak economic \u2013 and ecological \u2013 violence. This has devastating effects on the poor around the world and the planet\u2019s biotic communities.\u00a0 In the wake of neoliberalism which came to prominence in the early 1980\u2019s under the Thatcher and Reagan administrations, radical capitalism has gained ascendency. This results in \u201c\u2018free trade,\u2019 financialization of economies, and the external debt of many impoverished nations.\u201d (Moe-Lobeda, 27).[3]<\/p>\n Kingsolver\u2019s chapter, \u201cGlobal Exchange,\u201d ilustrates the entanglement of economic and ecological violence. While Christmas shopping at a dollar store for their children, Dellarobia and her husband Cub are arguing about whether or not he should oppose his father\u2019s intent to log their land.\u00a0 As they debate, Dellarobia sees the inextricable link between her cash-starved family and the plight of people halfway around the world:<\/p>\n \u201cHere\u2019s your Christmas stuff,\u201d Cub said, waving at the aisles.\u00a0 Nobody could argue that one.\u00a0 The store contained enough plastic baubles to cover a hayfield.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cGreat,\u201d she said.\u00a0 \u201cFamily heirlooms made by slave children in China.\u201d . . . She looked over the bins of tinselly junk and felt despair, trying to find one single thing that wouldn\u2019t fall apart before you got it home . . . [T]here had to be armies of factory workers making this slapdash stuff, underpaid people cranking out things for underpaid people to buy and use up, living their lives mostly to cancel each other out.\u00a0 A worldwide entrapment of bottom feeders,\u201d (Kingsolver, 157-9).<\/em><\/p>\n But here\u2019s the thing.\u00a0 Guilt in and of itself does not accomplish anything. What we need is action that leads to transformation.\u00a0 We need ways to reconcile humanity to the planet and the Earth-community.\u00a0 We need strategies of hope and narratives of action to enable us to see what living differently and restructuring a more just global society might look like.<\/p>\n Ecotheologian Cynthia Moe-Lobeda says that \u201ccorporate-and-finance-driven global capitalism is not an impenetrable fortress,\u201d (Moe-Lobeda, xix).\u00a0 She insists that ordinary citizens informed by what she calls \u201ccritical mystical vision\u201d and empowered by a \u201cjustice-making love\u201d can help bring about change.<\/p>\n In her book, Resisting Structural Evil: Love as Ecological-Economic Vocation<\/em><\/a>, Moe-Lobeda shares ideas for Christians to enact and live out the critical mystical vision she has in mind.\u00a0 These include conversations in church Bible study groups. Divesting from companies that impose atrocious working conditions on women, children and people in impoverished countries.\u00a0 And aligning with advocacy and justice groups working to change international policies and improve workers\u2019 lives and environmental conditions.<\/p>\n Moe-Lobeda\u2019s book gives readers an array of possibilities for changing their relationship with the goods they purchase (or not), the people who make them, and the Earth that produces the resources to create them.\u00a0 Most importantly, it changes our relationship with the Divine Source whose intention is for the healthy flourishing of all peoples and biotic systems.<\/p>\n Each of them offers pointed critiques of the way in which long-cherished beliefs can be excuses for inaction or co-opted by financial powers to ensure continued domination.\u00a0 Yet they see possibilities for the church and our faith to help us find innovative ways through the conundrum of unsatisfactory choices.\u00a0 There are ways in which religion and spirituality can build bridges of prophetic understanding and reconciliation on a personal, community, and planetary level.<\/p>\n For example, Moe-Lobeda offers an expanded understanding of salvation \u201cto include not only liberation from oppression but also liberation from committing or perpetrating it\u201d (Moe-Lobeda, 59).\u00a0 She states that \u201csalvation entails the restoration of the entire created world to one in which none flourish by degrading others or otherkind,\u201d (ibid).<\/p>\n This kind of salvation shows up in Kingsolver\u2019s book in various ways.\u00a0 For example, the pastor of the Turnbow\u2019s church becomes a surprisingly effective ally in Dellarobia\u2019s efforts to preserve her family\u2019s land.\u00a0 Pastor Bobby seamlessly and subtly weaves themes of Creation-care and grace into his preaching and pastoral care.<\/p>\n Learning and courage are the wings that lift Dellarobia out of her treadmill of poverty and disempowerment.\u00a0 This happens even as the world she knows \u2013 the world we all know \u2013 is changing, in many ways, for the worse.\u00a0 I won\u2019t give the ending away. But there is a kind of baptism that happens at the conclusion of the book.\u00a0 Like Jesus\u2019s baptism at the Jordan River, it is cleansing and inaugurates a new life. But it also turns the world upside down.\u00a0 Jesus went to the wilderness after his baptism.\u00a0 Similarly, Dellarobia also faces a wilderness ahead.\u00a0 But there is something in her resolve that filled me with courage to face our wilderness here and now.<\/p>\n The current state of ecologic\/economic crisis is the result of the accumulation of tiny human decisions. Those decisions are guided by underlying values and intentions along the way.\u00a0 But this \u201cbutterfly-effect\u201d can be harnessed for good. It can help create a future guided along a different trajectory from what we have known thus far.\u00a0 Moe-Lobeda puts it this way. \u201cOne aspect of Christianity (and of some other religions) that breeds hope is the claim that we are called toward some form of union with the great power of life, the source of all, what many call God.\u00a0 We are destined to be with or fully a part of the Holy Source, and that union begins this side of death.\u201d (Moe-Lobeda, 138).<\/p>\n As we watch Dellarobia begin to think differently, she makes brave choices and practices alternatives in her own life.\u00a0 Of course, we know that these small things alone will not suddenly bring about the systemic changes that are needed.<\/p>\n They move \u201cus toward more viable, accountable, and ecologically healthy economies on a large scale.\u00a0 These alternatives signal that a different way is possible\u201d (Moe-Lobeda, 281).\u00a0 That\u2019s where we find the hope and optimism that characterize both Moe-Lobeda\u2019s and Kingsolver\u2019s books.<\/p>\n You see, we are part of the butterfly effect as well.<\/p>\n As individuals and communities living toward God\u2019s salvation of the planet, we are part of a \u201cbutterfly effect\u201d of neighbor-love that arises and moves across this planet.\u00a0 God can use even the fluttering of butterflies\u2019 wings to positively affect the patterns of this planet.\u00a0 Fellow butterflies \u2013 tender, tremulous, and tenacious \u2013 it\u2019s time to take flight!<\/p>\n Chaos Theory and the Butterfly Effect: Why Easter Still Matters<\/a><\/p>\n Leah D. Schade<\/strong>\u00a0is the Assistant Professor of Preaching and Worship at\u00a0<\/em>Lexington Theological Seminary<\/i><\/a>\u00a0in Kentucky and ordained in the ELCA. Dr. Schade does not speak for LTS or the ELCA; her opinions are her own. She is the author of\u00a0<\/em>Preaching in the Purple Zone: Ministry in the Red-Blue Divide<\/a>\u00a0(Rowman & Littlefield, 2019)<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0<\/em>Creation-Crisis Preaching: Ecology, Theology, and the Pulpit<\/a>\u00a0(Chalice Press, 2015). She is also the co-editor of\u00a0Rooted and Rising: Voices of Courage in a Time of Climate Crisis<\/a>\u00a0(Rowman & Littlefield, 2019).<\/em><\/p>\n Twitter<\/strong>:\u00a0<\/em>@LeahSchade<\/i><\/a><\/p>\nThe Butterfly Effect \u2013 unintended consequences<\/h2>\n
With that in mind, the prophet Joel\u2019s lament seems perfectly written for us today.<\/h3>\n
Flight Behavior<\/em><\/h2>\n
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<\/p>\nInstead, it\u2019s the result of a tragedy.<\/h3>\n
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When would you prefer your devastating loss: now or later?<\/h2>\n
Global exchange<\/h2>\n
If you\u2019re like me, thinking about these things may fill you with feelings of guilt, powerlessness, and hopelessness.<\/h3>\n
We need a more equitable society to avoid depleting the life-giving energies of this planet.<\/h3>\n
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<\/p>\nBoth Kingsolver\u2019s and Moe-Lobeda\u2019s books lead us to imagine new ways to reshape our individual and community patterns to bring about substantive equitable change.<\/h3>\n
The Butterfly Effect of salvation<\/h2>\n
Dellarobia herself finds salvation not just within her congregation. She finds salvation through the discipline of observation and hypothesis. Yes \u2014 science!<\/h3>\n
Harnessing the Butterfly Effect<\/h2>\n
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Yet, these little changes are crucial.<\/h3>\n
God is harnessing the wind of our tiny wings.<\/h2>\n
Read also:<\/h4>\n
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