Preaching PAST 7201 (Veronis)

Sermon 3 Bioethical Challenge 3 Dec 2014 Michael Odegaard

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart

be pleasing to you O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.
Did you know that ten known species of life became extinct
last week? Actually thats the conservative estimate, as some
scientists are saying the actual number is closer to 690 species, and
this rate has happened each week for the last decade.1 During that
time the Caribbean Monk Seal was officially certified extinct, and
there are now fewer than 500 remaining in the Mediterranean.
41% of marine life, which is 90% of the Earths life, is now
endangered.
How did you respond to the 2010 British Petroleum Oil Spill
in the Gulf of Mexico? In his response to this unprecedented
anthropogenic environmental disaster, His Holiness, the
Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew declared, to mistreat the
natural environment is to sin against humanity, against all living
things, and against our creator God. All of us individuals,

http://www.nature.com/polopoly_fs/1.16523!/menu/main/topColumns/topLeftColumn/pdf/
516158a.pdf. Last accessed December 15, 2014.

Preaching PAST 7201 (Veronis)

Sermon 3 Bioethical Challenge 3 Dec 2014 Michael Odegaard

institutions, and industries alike bear responsibility; all of us

are accountable for ignoring the global consequences of
environmental exploitation.2
Today it is widely acknowledged that the degradation of the
natural environment, in particular traditional habitats, also entails
a loss of indigenous cultural and linguistic diversity. Indigenous
language loss has a negative impact on biodiversity conservation.3
You see, there is a fundamental linkage between indigenous
language and traditional knowledge related to biodiversity. Local
and indigenous communities have elaborated over many hundreds
of years complex classification systems for the natural world,
reflecting a deep understanding of their local environment. This
environmental knowledge is embedded in indigenous names, oral
traditions and taxonomies which can be lost when an indigenous
community is either dislocated or shifts to another language. The
National Academy of Sciences in 2012 both announced that (1) the
2
3

http://www.goarch.org/news/patriarch-gulfoilspill%20-05102010. Accessed December 1, 2014.

http://www.unesco.org/new/en/culture/themes/endangered-languages/biodiversity-andlinguistic-diversity/. Accessed December 1, 2014.

Preaching PAST 7201 (Veronis)

Sermon 3 Bioethical Challenge 3 Dec 2014 Michael Odegaard

rate of extinction of species is now approaching 1000% faster than

historic rates as well as (2) predicted that 90% of the worlds
languages will disappear by the end of the 21st century.4
Why is biodiversity important to us? From a moral
standpoint, contributing to the destruction of living things goes
against what it means to be human, based on our understanding of
the Noahdic covenant and calling to preserve life.5 Practically,
humans benefit from biodiversity; plants, animals, bacteria and
fungi provide raw materials for human use. Half of all the
medicine we use depends on this biodiversity. Healthy biodiversity
also provides a number of natural services for everyone
ecosystem services, such as protection of water resources, soils
formation & protection, pollution breakdown and absorption.
The greatest of all threats to the Earths biodiversity is
deforestation, especially to tropical rainforests: though only
covering 7% of the Earth, tropical rainforests house more than half
4

http://www.pnas.org/content/109/21/8032.abstract. Accessed December 1, 2014.

Genesis 8:1 - 9:17

Preaching PAST 7201 (Veronis)

Sermon 3 Bioethical Challenge 3 Dec 2014 Michael Odegaard

of the worlds species. While scientists have already identified 2

million species, estimates indicate that there are 9 million more
that remain undiscovered,6 yet through logging, mining and
farming, humans destroy 2% of the Earths rainforests every year.
Thats 36 football fields every minute!7 In recent history,
deforestation has led to 36% of all extinctions, and as the habitat
loss accelerates the number will increase.8 And, in the last 100
years in Brazil, colonists eliminated 90 indigenous tribes.9
Prioritizing the topic of Biodiversity and Conservation in the
first chapter of Sacred Commerce: A Conversation on
Environment, Ethics, and Innovation, published this year by our
own Holy Cross Orthodox Press and documenting the 2012 Halki
Environmental Summit, Fr. John Chryssavgis presents zoologist
Jane Goodalls prescription: We will save some of the forest by

http://eol.org/info/about_biodiversity. Accessed December 1, 2014.

https://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/deforestation. Accessed December 1, 2014.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/conservation/issues/biggest-threat-tobiodiversity.htm. Accessed December 1, 2014.

9

http://www.rain-tree.com/facts.htm#.VIlu4IurKWU. Accessed December 1, 2014.

Preaching PAST 7201 (Veronis)

Sermon 3 Bioethical Challenge 3 Dec 2014 Michael Odegaard

working in partnership with the local peopleand show how all of

these things are interconnected and how contact between the
natural world and that of the spiritis ever so precious and all so
important.10
The international community recognized the importance of
working in partnership with indigenous communities in 2007 with
the United Nations adoption that year of the Declaration of Rights
of Indigenous Peoples. And biodiversity Specialist Claudia
Sobrevila titled her 2008 policy report to the World Bank, The
Role of Indigenous Peoples in Biodiversity Conservation: The
Natural but Often Forgotten Partners.11 The indigenous are often
forgotten for reasons related to colonial capitalism, including
either willful marginalization or unconscious ignorance of their
existence, either unintentionally by thoughtless consumers in the

10

Chryssavgis, John and Michele L. Goldsmith. Sacred Commerce: A Conversation on

Environment, Ethics, and Innovation. Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press. 2014, pp.
1-17.
11

http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2008/05/9633734/role-indigenous-peoplesbiodiversity-conservation-natural-often-forgotten-partners. Accessed December 1, 2014.

Preaching PAST 7201 (Veronis)

Sermon 3 Bioethical Challenge 3 Dec 2014 Michael Odegaard

global economy, or intentionally by those who profit by such

popular ignorance.12
It is critical that we recognize the groups most affected by
linguistic colonization are the same as those which have been
subjected to ongoing economic colonization over the past five
centuries: indigenous and minority populations. Chief among the
types of violence committed against these peoples over the last
500 years is linguistic genocide, in which indigenous culture is
destroyed as mega-languages such as English and Spanish become
the only legal languages of a particular region.
Indigenous peoples effectively serve as the planets
biodiversity guardians in that, while they manage only 20% of the
worlds land, they speak 60% of the worlds languages yet only
represent 4% of the total human population.13 You see, life on
Earth is seriously imperiled when its linguistic traditions are under
attack through linguistic genocide, which the UN says may include
12

The contemporary fair trade international commerce movement attempts to establish ethical
standards for non-exploitative third world trade.
13

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodiversity. Accessed December 1, 2014.

Preaching PAST 7201 (Veronis)

Sermon 3 Bioethical Challenge 3 Dec 2014 Michael Odegaard

prohibiting the use of the language of an indigenous group in

daily intercourse or in schools, or the printing and circulation of
publications in the language of the group, or even whereby
speakers of a minority language are made to feel ashamed of their
language and are overlooked by publishers and libraries
discriminating against literature in these languages.14
Over Thanksgiving break I was fortunate to join the
Archdiocesan Byzantine Choir in their pilgrimage to
Constantinople on the occasion of the Roman Popes visit with the
Ecumenical Patriarch at the Phanar. Part of the excitement of my
first flight across the Atlantic was for the opportunity to meet the
Green Patriarch Bartholomew whose environmental activism
confirmed for me the truth of Orthodoxy and inspired this
indigenous Hawaiian Christian to request his Orthodox
chrismation in 1997.

14

http://www.languageeducationpolicy.com/whatareleps/languagemarginalization.html.
Accessed December 1, 2014.

Preaching PAST 7201 (Veronis)

Sermon 3 Bioethical Challenge 3 Dec 2014 Michael Odegaard

While touring the Christian holy sites in modern Istanbul, I

was initiated into the tension felt by my Greek bretheren who were
nervous about spies and government observers among the gift
vendors and craftsmen who were eager to lure me into their stores.
My hosts paranoia seemed excessive, even making me to feel
uncomfortable, since these local vendors seemed to be so kind and
helpful. Nevertheless I heeded my guides advice and avoided
conversations with the local vendors. However, back at the hotel I
took the opportunity to interview a local, but European-educated,
concierge to find out if he was aware of the oppressed feelings
among the Greek, Armenian and Kurdish minority populations
caused by the homogenizing influences of the dominant Turks. I
then explained to him how Republics are supposed to protect their
minority community rights, as well as how the Turkish Republic is
similar to the American Republic, since the indigenous Greeks
apparently feel the pressure of Turkish assimilation in the same
way that many of the First Nations of America also feel it. I

Preaching PAST 7201 (Veronis)

Sermon 3 Bioethical Challenge 3 Dec 2014 Michael Odegaard

appealed to the concierges environmental sensibilities by

reminding him how important it is to preserve the ancient
indigenous cultures of ones society for the sake of the lands
biodiversity conservation. Fortunately, my new Turkish friend
agreed with me, and now were Facebook friends.
Our accord illustrates that agreeing about what has happened
to Turkeys indigenous Greeks, and recognizing this forced
assimilation as a crime, isn't admitting that he personally had a
hand in it. Likewise, African-Americans know that they can't
blame Anglo-Americans of today for the ills of their ancestors, but
we can expect them to admit to the truths of the injustice of racial
profiling and white privilege.15 However, not to do so, is to
continue the mindset of their ancestors and to share in their guilt.
Our easy access to information precludes us from being able to
claim ignorance of the global biodiversity problem. In his 1998
Pulitzer Prize award-winning contemporary classic Guns, Germs
and Steel Dr. Jared Diamond suggests a helpful means of
15

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_privilege. Accessed December 1, 2014.

Preaching PAST 7201 (Veronis)

Sermon 3 Bioethical Challenge 3 Dec 2014 Michael Odegaard

reassessing what we understand civilization to be, using the

ecological ethic of biodiversity as its chief criterium, so that we
now understand the most civilized societies on Earth to be those
which sustain the most biodiversity.
The Good News I want you to know today is: in our Lords
Great Commission to make disciples in every nation in the spirit of
Pentecost, we can see that conservation of biodiversity is the
outcome our Merciful Creator has set into motion! As the Holy
Tradition has permeated the diverse ethnic societies throughout
history, the end result has consistently been the stabilization of the
same communities!
The Good News for you who are called to the mission field is
that the work of translating the Divine Liturgy into every tongue16
is our best hope of slowing down the accelerating rate of language
death among indigenous peoples and, therefore, of maximizing our
opportunities for biodiversity conservation. For the creation waits

16

https://www.facebook.com/TheLiturgyInEveryTongue. Accessed December 1, 2014.

Preaching PAST 7201 (Veronis)

Sermon 3 Bioethical Challenge 3 Dec 2014 Michael Odegaard

with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God.17 The day
of Pentecost taught us several relevant lessons: (1) that one
language is not to be exalted above other languages, since each
language is uniquely capable of expressing the Word of Salvation,
(2) that the Church cannot speak to people in languages that they
dont understand, and (3) that we must counsel those practitioners
of Social Darwinism who would subvert the Great Commission by
restricting the holy Apostolic Succession to the boundaries of one
ethnic group.
I have Good News for those of you to whom God has granted
the desire to embrace the indigenous peoples of your own
hometown: in his popular tract Mystery of Fidelity,18 Fr. Joseph
Allen has outlined what I believe is an Orthodox ethic of
indigeneity in his chapters titled Fidelity to the Earth and
Fidelity to Community. Fr. Allen explains not only how we
encounter the mystery of fidelity to the earth by cultivating,
17
18

Romans 8:19

Saliba, Met. Philip and Fr. Joseph Allen. Meeting the Incarnate God: From the Human Depths
to the Mystery of Fidelity. Brookline, MA. Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2009.

Preaching PAST 7201 (Veronis)

Sermon 3 Bioethical Challenge 3 Dec 2014 Michael Odegaard

protecting and transforming it, but that we must also learn to be

faithful in humility like the Earth is faithful to God: never
deceptive, the Earth surrenders itself to that intent which God
created, is vulnerable to abuse yet ever hopeful toward the future
with every rising dawn. Fr. Joseph reminds us that we have
nothing to say to one another in communion, even to God, unless
we are ready to do violence to ourselves with an earthlike
humility that Fr. John Meyendorff says acknowledges the right
of every nation to worship God in its own language.19 Our
linguistically pluralistic Eastern Christian ethic is historically
characterized our openness to integrated, multi-ethnic liturgical
worship that respects, by including, the indigenous language.20
Beholding the beauty this temple and landscape, I would ask
you to consider if God is calling you to learn the indigenous
language of your community, and if so, how doing so could

19

Meyendorff, John. Catholicity and the Church. Crestwood, NY: St. Valdimirs Seminary Press.
1983, p. 138.
20

Bouboutsis, Elias. Singing in a Strange Land: The Ancient Future of Orthodox Pluralism.
Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press. 2010, pp. 124-125.

Preaching PAST 7201 (Veronis)

Sermon 3 Bioethical Challenge 3 Dec 2014 Michael Odegaard

develop your appreciation and understanding of your communitys

deep ecology, history and future culture? A search on the internet
will reveal dozens of indigenous American language lessons that
you can begin to study online today. It is our Orthodox heritage
and destiny to reveal God in the context of the indigenous cultures
where we live. You already know Wampanoag words like squash,
skunk, moose, and moccasin; imagine how understanding the
meanings and historic significance of such place names as
Nantuket, Narraganset, Mashpee and Massachusetts will deepen
your appreciation of this beautiful place? I hope our school will
seize the present opportunity to partner with the local indigenous
community and assist them with their Wampanoag language
revitalization efforts.21 Fr. Luke Veronis identified reconciliatory
efforts like this as being among our best opportunities for
evangelism.22 Can you think of a better way we can respect the

21

http://www.wampanoagtribe.net/Pages/Wampanoag_Education/S004B1EF9. Accessed
December 1, 2014.
22

Veronis, Fr. Luke. Go Forth: Stories of Mission and Evangelism in Albania. Ben Lomond:
Conciliar Press, 2009. p. 210.

Preaching PAST 7201 (Veronis)

Sermon 3 Bioethical Challenge 3 Dec 2014 Michael Odegaard

faithfulness of those who have lived in this place for thousands of

years? How do you suppose they view us? Do they see the Greek
Orthodox Church as a Trojan Horse leading to environmental
degradation, genocide and their perpetual enslavement or as a
liberating icon of the Ark of Salvation that brings every nation into
the Kingdom of God?
Through the prayers of most holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin
Mary, Sts. Cyril & Methodios, Heiromartyr Juvenaly, Fr. Herman,
St. Innocent, St. Peter the Aleut and of all the saints, O you who
are the Redeemer of Nations: Lord Jesus Christ our God,
strengthen our fidelity to the Earth, to its every Community and
especially the indigenous poor, the guardians of its biodiversity;
have mercy on us, and save us, for you are good and love all
mankind, you with the Father and Holy Spirit, one God, now and
forever, and to the Ages of Ages! Amen.