"Knowing Our Place in God's Good Creation"
Luke 24:36b-48; Genesis 2:4-15
Earth Day was this past Monday. If you turned on the news or gone online this
week, you’ve been hearing some 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—this week--we are challenged to
reflect on how we are called to live in relationship with God’s good creation.
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 Genesis chapter one, the scriptures
tell us that when God created the world, God blessed it and called it very good.[1] 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 chapter 2: 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.
We don’t all agree on the
environmental problem, or the scope or cause of the problem, much less the solutions. But there is science and 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 recycling and efforts by individual and volunteer
organizations to recycle will not save the planet.
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?”[2]
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.
There was a time when we’d sing
some hymns to celebrate the glories of creation on Earth Sunday and maybe give
out packets of seeds. But I agree with
Leah Schade when she writes in The
Christian Century:
“Now
is not the time for feel-good “green” hymns and ecological tokenism in our
churches.” Not when the government has been implementing anti-environmental
policies, giving coal mining companies free rein to pollute waterways. Not when
air pollution, pesticides, poor diets, and radiation have led to a sharp increase in cancer diagnoses among
children. Not when fracking and drilling are
poisoning the air, water, and land of our communities.”[3]
And not when people like Waldomiro
Costa Pereira are being murdered for trying to protect their land from
rapacious corporations and wealthy landowners.
Conflicts over land are common in
Brazil, where 1 percent of the population owns nearly half of the nation’s
land. According to
the Guardian, Brazil saw 61 killings
of land rights activists in 2016, and 150 in the several preceding years.
Pereira was affiliated with the Landless
Workers Movement and had been standing up for the rights for poor farmers, in a heroic act that cost him
his life.[4]
Latin America has a long history of
struggles over land and resources, with the rural poor trying to eke out a
living while those in control of the land extract riches from its bounty. The
murder of environmental activists is not a new development. But, as Leah Schade
points out, there’s a new layer of urgency in recent years, with the
exacerbation of climate change and the increased desperation of people fighting
for their communities and their very lives. When people are dying for God’s
earth and for indigenous and marginalized communities, we can’t ignore the evil
that reigns with impunity against people working for environmental justice.[5]
There is a life-and-death struggle
being waged against corrupt governments, corporations, and criminal gangs that
are seizing land from people in order to exploit the land for minerals, timber,
fossil fuels, or corporate agriculture.
We in developed countries may
condemn these injustices, but the demand for many of these products comes from
us. We need to be mindful of how, in the
words of our Presbyterian “Brief Statement of Faith,” we have ignored God’s commandments,
like the command to be faithful stewards of the earth… We have violated the
image of God in others and ourselves, accepted lies as truth, exploited
neighbor and nature, and threatened death to the planet entrusted to our care.[6]
Since the earliest days, the church,
has honored the martyrs who have died for their faith. “From Stephen to
Perpetua to Ignatius of Antioch, martyrs are models of courage in the face of
hatred, fear, and evil.” As Leah Schade points out, martyrs have been models of
courage in the face of hatred, fear, and evil. They refuse to cower to violent regimes, and they
face their deaths knowing they have fought the good fight.
Theologian Robert Costanza states
the stewardship 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.”[7]
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!
Amen!
Rev. Fran Hayes, Pastor
Littlefield Presbyterian Church
Dearborn, Michigan
April 28, 2019
[1] Genesis
1:1-31
[2] P.C.
Enniss, “Holy Ground.” My notes say that I read this at an old website, at www.goodpreacher.com
[3] Leah D.
Schade, “Let’s Make Earth Day about the Earth martyrs,” in The Christian Century. https://www.christiancentury.org/blog-post/lets-make-earth-day-about-earth-martyrs
[4] “Land
rights activist shot dead in Brazilian Amazon hospital.” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/21/brazil-land-rights-activist-shot-dead-amazon-hospital
[5] Schade,
in The Christian Century.
[6]
Presbyterian Church (USA), “Brief Statement of Faith,” 1990. https://www.presbyterianmission.org/what-we-believe/brief-statement-of-faith/
[7] Robert
Costanza et al, An Introduction to Ecological Economics (1979), quoted in
Sallie McFague, Life Abundant.
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