Loved back to life
Psalm 148; Revelation 21: 1-6
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
April 24, 2016 – Earth Sunday
The Bible is replete with the Creator’s love affair with the creation. “The heavens are telling the glory of God, and the sky proclaims God’s handiwork.” (Ps. 19) God renews the face of the ground. (Ps. 104) Mountains and hills break forth into singing; all trees in the field shall clap their hands. (Is. 55) God saw everything that was made, and behold, it was very good. (Gen. 1) And from this morning’s reading of Psalm 148: “Praise God, all the angels; praise God, all the heavenly host! Praise God, sun and moon; praise God, all you shining stars!”
But it’s not a perfect love relationship by any means. In Genesis 2, right from the beginning, the relationship between Creator and creation is conflicted. In the story of Noah and the ark, God is grieved by the evil of humankind, wipes the face of the earth with a flood, saves Noah and his family plus two of every creature, but then promises never to do it again. Paul writes of the whole creation groaning in labor pains. Jesus tells us we cannot worship, we cannot love both God and mammon—the greedy pursuit of gain. In the Hebrew scriptures particularly, God, the earth, and all its creatures, including us, are intertwined. When we injure one, we wound the bonds that knit us together.
Much of the harm that has been done to the earth has been done in the name of progress, but the harm continues because of the greedy pursuit of gain. We cannot speak of climate change without also speaking about wealth and money and how we spend it. Major faith traditions—Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, even evangelical Christians and also the United Church of Christ—have declared climate change a moral issue. Environmentalist Bill McKibben once said in regard to climate change, that this is a moment for which the Church was born. We cannot love the earth, love God, and our ease and convenience at the same time. Now more than ever, we need the Church’s message of repentance, of turning away from the path of destruction and turning toward the path of wholeness.
In John’s Revelation we hear the good news of a new heaven and a new earth. Marcus Borg, in his interpretation of Revelation, says that this is not about the end of the world but the end of the world as we know it: the end of empire. When the ways of empire come to an end, indeed there will be a new heaven and a new earth. In an empire, dirt, soil, the earth, is something to build cities and roads over; something to use up and move on; a resource to serve the interests of the empire, not everyone. And if we love the earth, truly love the earth, empire will come to an end. I believe the end of empire is indeed near, which accounts for a lot of the anxiety and violence present right now. We are witnessing the death throes of the old order. Yet in the language of faith, hope, and love, the end also means the beginning of something else.
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
April 24, 2016 – Earth Sunday
There’s not much that needs to be said and demands to be heard in this congregation about Earth Sunday. The New Ark has been an Earthwise congregation since 2010, and hopefully we will renew that commitment with a heartier, more robust Earthwise resolution at the quarterly meeting following worship. The United Church of Christ passed its first resolution on ecojustice in 2001. Our own Jane Schaefer participated in the People’s Climate March in 2014.
We
all try to recycle as much as we can, throw out as little as possible. When feasible, we compost. We strive to use more LED lights and other
low-energy lighting sources. Some of us
have vegetable gardens or solar panels, energy-efficient appliances or
geo-thermal systems. Many of us purchase
a share or half-share of community agriculture each year. Here at church we try to use china, flatware,
glasses, and ceramic mugs more than we do paper, plastic, and Styrofoam. We send our announcements and newsletters
electronically. We grab a bunch of
reusable grocery bags before we head off to the store. We turn off lights we’re not using, turn down
the thermostat, turn off the car engine at the drive thru or the ATM. Some of us drive a hybrid or other fuel
efficient vehicle.
At
first some of these lifestyle changes were not easy. Sometimes we still forget
to do them; there are other changes we still need to make or that we resist or
require a change in our culture. For
instance, how do we lessen our carbon footprint and yet fulfill our dreams of air
travel or use air travel for work? We depend
on ease and convenience, especially in our stress-filled lives. It can also cost more money and time to be
green. It requires some sacrifice and
doing more with less. If we think about
it, loving the earth is not all that different from loving another human being,
from having a family, from putting someone, something ahead of our own desires
and wants. And since saving the earth
involves all the love we can muster, it also has the power to save us too.
Diana
Butler Bass, in her book Grounded:
Finding God in the World; A Spiritual Revolution, writes in such a way as
to suggest, if there is such a thing as original sin, it would be that we live
apart from the land, from the dirt of the earth. We strayed from our first love, “the living
ground from which we come and to which we return”. The
story of Adam and Eve, whose names mean Soil and Life, is more about how we are
to care for the earth from which we came rather about two proto humans. Adam and Eve become consumers by eating that
which is forbidden, the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And indeed we are consuming the earth. Without dirt—good rich soil—we have no food, no
trees, no life. In essence we are
walking, talking, breathing dirt.
Sun is up a new day is before you
Sun is up wake up your sleepy soul
Sun is up hold onto what is whole
Take up your spade and break ground
How many of us played in
the dirt as children? I can remember
making concoctions of dirt and water, dandelions and some kind of red berry
that grew on the bushes in front of our house.
Nowadays, though, not so much.
Luckily I married someone who is a farmer at heart. David has started an orchard of sorts in our
house and in our yard: three citrus
trees (lime, lemon, and orange), two avocado trees grown from grocery store
avocado pits, one peach tree, four apple trees, plus a cherry bush hybrid, five
blueberry bushes, and four patches of strawberries. Then there’s the vegetable garden: broccoli,
spinach, tomatoes, garlic, beets, carrots, peas, beans, pumpkin, zucchini,
watermelon, acorn squash, and maybe a volunteer cantaloupe if we’re lucky. You have to love not only farming but also
the earth that food comes from to commit to such an effort.
The Bible is replete with the Creator’s love affair with the creation. “The heavens are telling the glory of God, and the sky proclaims God’s handiwork.” (Ps. 19) God renews the face of the ground. (Ps. 104) Mountains and hills break forth into singing; all trees in the field shall clap their hands. (Is. 55) God saw everything that was made, and behold, it was very good. (Gen. 1) And from this morning’s reading of Psalm 148: “Praise God, all the angels; praise God, all the heavenly host! Praise God, sun and moon; praise God, all you shining stars!”
But it’s not a perfect love relationship by any means. In Genesis 2, right from the beginning, the relationship between Creator and creation is conflicted. In the story of Noah and the ark, God is grieved by the evil of humankind, wipes the face of the earth with a flood, saves Noah and his family plus two of every creature, but then promises never to do it again. Paul writes of the whole creation groaning in labor pains. Jesus tells us we cannot worship, we cannot love both God and mammon—the greedy pursuit of gain. In the Hebrew scriptures particularly, God, the earth, and all its creatures, including us, are intertwined. When we injure one, we wound the bonds that knit us together.
Much of the harm that has been done to the earth has been done in the name of progress, but the harm continues because of the greedy pursuit of gain. We cannot speak of climate change without also speaking about wealth and money and how we spend it. Major faith traditions—Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, even evangelical Christians and also the United Church of Christ—have declared climate change a moral issue. Environmentalist Bill McKibben once said in regard to climate change, that this is a moment for which the Church was born. We cannot love the earth, love God, and our ease and convenience at the same time. Now more than ever, we need the Church’s message of repentance, of turning away from the path of destruction and turning toward the path of wholeness.
Shake off
your shoes leave yesterday behind you
Shake off
your shoes but forget not where you’ve been
Shake off
your shoes forgive and be forgiven
Take up your
spade and break ground
In John’s Revelation we hear the good news of a new heaven and a new earth. Marcus Borg, in his interpretation of Revelation, says that this is not about the end of the world but the end of the world as we know it: the end of empire. When the ways of empire come to an end, indeed there will be a new heaven and a new earth. In an empire, dirt, soil, the earth, is something to build cities and roads over; something to use up and move on; a resource to serve the interests of the empire, not everyone. And if we love the earth, truly love the earth, empire will come to an end. I believe the end of empire is indeed near, which accounts for a lot of the anxiety and violence present right now. We are witnessing the death throes of the old order. Yet in the language of faith, hope, and love, the end also means the beginning of something else.
So how can we not only begin but continue to love this earth back to life? There are lots of things we already do. How could we not only encourage each other but others in our communities to do likewise? This may sound too simple but what if we had a blog or other online presence where we posted what we do on a daily basis to love this earth back to life? The link to this online presence would be on our webpage and on our Facebook page and on Twitter and in our newsletter and weekly announcements. #LoveNotesToTheEarth.
We could post things like “Flushed my toilet with gray water”; “Started a small vegetable and herb garden”; “Biked to work or to school today”; “Parked in the church parking lot and walked downtown for dinner”; “Asked a local restaurant to stop using straws”; “Stopped buying water in plastic bottles”; “Picked up litter on my walk”; “Planted a tree”; “Cooked dinner with food I grew in my backyard”; “Volunteered at Bright Spot Ventures or the Newark Co-Op or at Brewer’s Hideaway Farm”; “Worshipped in a re-purposed building”; “Bought secondhand furniture”; “Spent less money today, bought fewer things”; “Continuing to slow down”; “Still believing that this all makes a difference”.
We could post things like “Flushed my toilet with gray water”; “Started a small vegetable and herb garden”; “Biked to work or to school today”; “Parked in the church parking lot and walked downtown for dinner”; “Asked a local restaurant to stop using straws”; “Stopped buying water in plastic bottles”; “Picked up litter on my walk”; “Planted a tree”; “Cooked dinner with food I grew in my backyard”; “Volunteered at Bright Spot Ventures or the Newark Co-Op or at Brewer’s Hideaway Farm”; “Worshipped in a re-purposed building”; “Bought secondhand furniture”; “Spent less money today, bought fewer things”; “Continuing to slow down”; “Still believing that this all makes a difference”.
If
we feel sheepish evangelizing for God, maybe instead we can evangelize for the
love of the earth. The earth is our
Church, the Body of God, the altar in which we live and move and have our
being.
Give thanks for all that you’ve been
given
Give thanks for who you can become
Give thanks for each moment and every
crumb
Take up your spade and break ground
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