Exodus 17: 1-7 & Matthew 21: 23-32
Last week we heard about the ancient Hebrews learning a new relationship with food. Today, we heard about their relationship with water.
Water is life. Our bodies are 50-60% water by weight. We’re pretty much water balloons over some bones. Water cushions our joints. Water allows our brains to think. Our blood is water. Our lungs need moist air to take in oxygen. Watery-mucus makes every part of our digestion work from our salvia in our mouths to the fluids in our stomachs to the kidney’s filtration and our bowels. We need water. We can go several days without food, we can go as little as 24 hours without drinking water. (Especially in high heat!) We need water. Mark Twain once quipped, “Whiskey is for drinking. Water is for fighting over.” There are conflicts over water in Egypt and Ethiopia; in Iraq and Syria; in the USA and Mexico; in Russia and Ukraine; and right here – here – in our little spot of the world.
The Straits of Mackinac are only about 6.5 kilometers wide. As you likely know, Enbridge’s Line 5 oil line crosses Canada into the USA at this place under the waves. This metal pipe line is 70 years old – 70 years of being under the water rusting. 70 years of being battered by waves and rocks; and dented by boat anchors. It is 20 years past its expected life expectancy… but it still is moving millions and millions of liters of oil every hour.
Whitney Gravelle, Anishinaabe-kwe of Bay Mills, says, “An oil spill would be catastrophic for all of North America, this place would become a toxic wasteland that would be contaminated for years… People often can’t even believe there is a pipeline going through the Great Lakes. It seems crazy that we just have this heart attack waiting to happen.”
And it IS a heart-attack waiting to happen. Enough so that 2 years ago Michigan State ordered the pipe closed. But our Canadian government refused. Indigenous peoples in both countries have gone to the United Nations begging for help. The UN has chastised Canada – saying we are hypocrites for claiming we care for indigenous people and for the environment… and then doing this to both.
Why is this place so special? The Straits are like a heart of the Great Lakes. Water is pumped from one lake to another. A spill here would rapidly spread across the Lakes. A spill here would within hours make the water undrinkable, kill fish and birds, turtles and shagflies. Within a month – we would see oil on the beaches of Manitoulin on the west end. And here on the middle and East side? We’d see oil in two months.
The Guardian news made a great graphic I share with you now. Here is the pipe, the Strait, and Manitoulin.
David Schwab is an oceanographer who has conducted modeling on potential spills from here. He found that, depending on the magnitude of a spill and weather conditions, oil would disperse quickly. More than 400 miles of the combined lakes’ shorelines would have oil slicks. The currents are particularly strong in the Straits of Mackinac, this turbulent environment makes it “the worst possible place for an oil spill” he found.
“A state-mandated risk analysis from 2018 calculated such an event could cause about $2bn in damages, with estimates that only 30% of an oil spill could be recovered. Such a spill would rival the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster, one of the worst environmental calamities in US history, the risk analysis found, although it noted that such “marine spills do not have the risk of contaminating drinking water supplies”, unlike a spill in the Great Lakes.
“It’s scary to think about a spill in this part of the lakes, it would be absolutely disastrous,” said Schwab. “The oil could spread for hundreds of miles as the currents are so strong there.””
But, it gets worse. The Straits of Mackinac are where muskrat dove to the lakebed and fetched dirt to place on turtle’s back. Mackinac Island is some of that soil- Mackinac means Turtle Island. And all of Great Turtle Island, this continent, spread from this naval. Gravelle says, “People may just see water here, but I see a living thing. This is our home, we have nowhere else to go. An oil spill here would be a sort of final act of colonization. If that spirit of what the lakes is dies, our culture dies with it. And if our culture dies, so do we… There is just this continuous pattern that Indigenous communities and communities of color bear all the risk when we have these sort of extractive projects”.
“Anything manmade breaks, and that pipeline will break,” said Jannan Cornstalk, an Odawa woman who has organized the Water is Life for the past five years. “And once it breaks, that’s it. Game over.”
We can’t drink oil.
Our faith ancestors knew this very well. There in the Sinai Desert, a long way from the drinkable and fresh waters of the Nile, our faith ancestors confront Moses about leading them to places without water. Moses is aggravated at first – but the people point out – “you are going to kill our children and animals.” Moses realizes they’re ready to stone him over water. They complained about hunger; but they’re ready to murder over water. They complained because of empty bellies, but for their kids? They’ll do murder to save their kids.
Water is life. Without it, without drinking water, we die. And the most vulnerable among us die first.
Moses goes to God and asks what to do. God doesn’t respond with anger or defensiveness. God responds with action – “Work with your elders, follow me to where you found the burning bush, the rock of Horeb, and there strike the rock and water shall come out.” Moses obeys. They drink the fresh spring water from the cracked rock. They live because they have living water. Living mean drinkable, fresh, sparkling – not stale, rotting, full of bacteria… or full of oil.
In our second story, Jesus asked his chief priests and elders a parable of a father and two sons. I hear it as asking us – is it more important to know God, or do God’s will? More important to attend church, or do church? More important to sing about justice, or live out justice? Is it more important to wear a cross, or pick up the cross? Jesus tells his elders and religious authorities that the people they dislike the most are going into heaven before them because these “lesser people” believe in God and do God’s will. Meanwhile the religious authorities speak the right words, but their actions don’t match.
We speak in Canada of loving the environment. Do our actions reflect love? We speak in Canada of hearing the hard truths of what Colonists have done to Indigenous peoples. Do we hear? We speak in Canada of reconciliation between Colonists and Indigenous peoples. Do our actions reflect our words?
Water is life. Living waters are found in Jesus; and are in God’s great creation. It is our responsibility to treat these waters preciously, tenderly, gratefully.
Amen.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/sep/26/line-5-pipeline-great-lakes-michigan-oil-water
Pastor Whitney Bruno Sermons 