Earth
Day is approaching this week, and—if you turn on the news or go online, you’re
sure to hear challenging ideas about caring for the environment. So this Sunday seemed like a good day to
celebrate God’s Creation and to ponder our place in it. It’s a day to reflect on what our faith
says to us about how we are called to live on the earth.
In
this season of Eastertide, we are celebrating good news: in raising Jesus
from the dead, God has broken the power of sin and evil and delivered us from
the way of death-- to life eternal and abundant. We
ponder what it means to live as Easter people… and what it means to
live in the ways of God here and now, in a world where hunger, poverty, poor
health, fear, violence, and injustice are daily realities for many of God’s
people. And today, especially, we are
challenged to reflect on how we are called to live in relationship with God’s
good creation.
The
text of the first hymn we sang this morning, “The Canticle of the Sun,” was composed by St. Francis of Assisi. Francis is known as one of the earliest
Christian environmentalist and the patron saint of ecology. Those of you who were in our book group a few
years ago, Chasing Francis, may
remember one of the characters saying the Francis “was a nature mystic. His love for the earth shaped his whole
theology…. Franciscans call it a spirituality of creation.”[1]
St.
Francis believed everything we see in creation is a reflection of the Creator--
just as we are. He treated
everything in creation as if it were his brother or sister, because we all have
the same parent.
For
Francis, the world was a prayer book where the footprints of God,[2]
could be found everywhere.
When
you ask people about God—and where they feel close to God—for many
people one of their first responses would be “Nature.”
I
know that I feel close to God when I work in the garden, working with God
to cultivate my vegetable crops and planting
flowers to create a place of beauty. I find joy in sharing a place on earth with
Sister Robin and Brother Monarch Butterfly.
But
for many of us, even those who feel close to God in nature, there’s a disconnect. Susan
Andrews puts it this way: “If God is in
Nature, if God is the designer of the complexity and intricacy and inter-dependability
of Nature, then shouldn’t we honor and worship and glorify this God by protecting
that same natural world? And yet only
50% of Presbyterians consider themselves environmentalists…
and only 51% of us have ever voted for a candidate based on his or her
environmental positions. It seems that
we ‘discover’ God in nature, but then ignore God when we are called to put
the well-being of nature before our own personal agenda.”[3]
In
the Sufi tradition of Islam, there’s a story that tells of a priest who walks
into an empty sanctuary and finds a young man sitting in a chair, with his feet
propped up on the communion table. “Take
your feet off that table. That is a holy
table!”
“Where
shall I put them?” asked the young man.[4]
In
other words, where should he put his feet that wasn’t holy?
In
an ancient story in the Hebrew scriptures, Moses is minding
his father-in-law’s flocks in the wilderness beneath Mount Horeb when he encounters
an angel of the Lord who appears in a flame from a bush that is burning but not
being consumed.
Moses
hears the voice of God instructing him, “Remove the sandals from your feet, for
the ground you are standing on is holy ground.”
The
ground on which Moses was standing was wilderness. The name of the mountain, “Horeb,” simply
means “wasteland.” There was
no sanctuary
there, no religious shrine, nothing to make it seem extraordinary in any way. And yet it was “holy ground.” So I hope that, during Earth Week, we’ll all
think and pray about what makes ground “holy.”
We
can argue about the politics of environmental justice. There are those who see the environment as
another aspect of the “culture wars,” who would like to label and dismiss
people who care about the environment as “liberal” or “tree huggers” or
“naïve,” and who say it’s about being “politically correct.”
But
those of us who call ourselves Christians need to take seriously what
our faith
says about Creation.
The
Bible is a powerful witness to the sovereignty and providence and creativity of
God—the Holy One who is the Source of all life. In Psalm 104, which we read responsively
today, we have an amazing picture of Creation as the work of God’s love, in
which each part is inextricably bound
with each other part. Everything is both
dependent on and responsible for every other part.
Human
beings don’t even show up in this psalm until verse 14, and
then our role is limited. We are
described as one of the creatures that receives bounty—bread and wine to
gladden our hearts, and oil to make our faces shine. The only other
place we show up is toward the end, where the only appropriate response
to the wonder of creation is described.
We are to sing praises… to meditate on the exquisite
gift
of creation… and to rejoice in God’s abundant
providing.
In
Genesis chapter one, the scriptures tell us that when God created the world,
God blessed
it and called it very good.[5] God is revealed through the beauty, power,
abundance, and mystery of the natural world.
Through wind and flame, water and wilderness, creatures and seasons, God
is continually present and active in the world.
Human
beings are endowed with reason and given the responsibility to celebrate
and care
for Creation. God’s first command
to humanity was given to Adam in Genesis 2:15: to care for the earth. “Cultivate” and “protect” it.”
Over
the years, we allowed the biblical texts to be twisted so that “dominion”
came to mean “domination,” and stewardship
came to mean “exploitation.”
Too
many Christians think that we are the center of the universe and have twisted the gospel of Jesus Christ to
mean that God is only interested in saving individual human souls-- rather than all of creation.
Sociologists
like Robert Bellah and theologians like Sally McFague keep reminding us of the
degree to which the strong sense of community and the priority of “the common good” that was
foundational in the biblical and republican traditions are no longer shaping
life in our society today. McFague says
that, although we continue to live in communities, our motto of “life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” is usually interpreted these days in
personal, individualistic ways, as, for instance, the right to carry a
gun or the right to do as you choose, rather than our responsibilities for the
welfare of the community.[6]
We
don’t all agree on the environmental problem, or the scope or cause
of the problem, much less the solution. But there seems to be a growing consensus
that current trends in growth and consumption are not sustainable.
When
it comes to the environment, we need an alternative worldview. We need alternative, faithful ways to know our
place in Creation that are not naïve or simplistic. For instance, recycling is a good thing to
do, but efforts by individual and volunteer organizations to recycle will not
save the planet.
As
one of my colleagues has said, the issue is too global, too political, too economically driven to be resolved
by personal piety or individual good intentions. The issue is ultimately theological—a matter of faith—because
it raises the question, “Who owns this place?”[7]
As
persons of faith and as a faith community, our task is to imagine how the world
would look if God really is ruling, and then to implement that vision—put
it into action.
Theologian
Robert Costanza states the challenge
this
way: “The creation of a shared vision of
a sustainable and desirable society, one that can provide permanent prosperity
within the biophysical constraints of the real world in a way that is fair and
equitable to all humanity, to other species, and to future generations.”[8]
The
key elements here are sustainability and justice. Sustainability is about recognizing
that the earth’s resources are not unlimited, and that any global
life-style created on the model of American consumption is suicidal. Justice demands that we recognize
the huge gap—which widens every year—between the haves
and have-nots of the earth.
Sally
McFague observes that the Greek word for “house” is oikos, which is the root
word for “economics” … for “ecology” …and for “ecumenicity.” Thus she suggests that caring for the earth
is simply a matter of household economics, which leads her to offer
three simple rules for our global household.
The
first rule, as in any household, is take
only your share. All the cookies
are not for you. My
share-- as your share-- is what is needed for a decent life: food, shelter, medical care, and
education. There is enough for all--
if everybody would share.
Second,
clean
up after yourself. The ring in
the bathtub is yours. That’s simple
fairness.
The
third rule is: keep the house in good repair for
the children and grandchildren who will come after you.
Take
only your share, clean up your own mess, and keep the house in good
repair. It’s a simple vision on a
global scale.
But
we can’t be simplistic and think this can happen through our good intentions as
individuals. We need a renewed worldview-- because the current one is not working.
We
need a world in which nations have the humility to confer
and compromise... and to sign and honor treaties to work together
for global cooperation to work together on environmental and justice
issues. We need national leaders who
have a vision for the common good-- in their own nations and
beyond their borders… and who are courageous
enough to risk their political popularity for the promise of a viable global future. We need economists and business leaders who are smart
enough to know that it takes more than money to create a harmonious global
household.
We
need faith
communities—people like us—who know the earth is the Lord’s
and that all the earth is holy ground. We need to commit ourselves to living and proclaiming
that alternative vision to our communities and the world.
We
live in a broken and fearful world, but we are Easter people who follow
the Risen Christ. We know that we can trust in the power of the
Holy Spirit to give us the courage we need to unmask idolatries
and to work with others for justice, freedom and peace, for the welfare of all.
So…
let us commit ourselves to live more lightly and faithfully on this holy
ground, and to care for the earth as a way of worshipping and serving our
gracious Creator God!
May
it be so for you and for me.
Amen!
[1] Ian
Morgan Cron, Chasing Francis: A Pilgrim’s
Tale (NavPress, 2006), p. 75.
[2] “Vestigia Dei”
[3] Ibid.,
p. 2
[4] Quoted
by P.C. Enniss in “Holy Ground” at www.goodpreacher.com
[5] Genesis
1:1-31
[6] Sally
McFague, Life Abundant: Rethinking Theology and Economy for a Planet
in Peril (Fortress, 2001).
[7] P.C.
Enniss, “Holy Ground,” in www.goodpreacher.com
[8] Robert
Costanza et al, An Introduction to Ecological Economics (1979), quoted in
Sallie McFague, Life Abundant.
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