Sermon: Thomas Place
Theme: The Environment-Does God Care if we Don’t?
Text: Genesis 1:26-31
Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they
may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all
the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
27
So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
28
God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the
earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over
every living creature that moves on the ground.”
29 Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole
earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.
30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures
that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give
every green plant for food.” And it was so.
31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and
there was morning—the sixth day.
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I felt a pang of guilt as I was preparing for my sermon at 36,000 feet, on my way to
Adelaide for a meeting. Here I was in a carbon creating metal capsule, being part of
the problem, and not the solution. It hadn’t even entered my mind, to that point, that
there was a choice to be made for or against the environment. Could the meeting
have been via Skype? Was it necessary to fly all that way for an hour and a half?
How many choices like this do I face each and every day?
We are living into a time where ecological issues will
dominate our lives, not just personally but globally.
We live on one planet which has finite resources, and
human beings are going have to work out what it
means to live a sustainable life. And individual
Christians, and the church, are part of this, in part
because a misreading of our tradition has contributed
to this problem, but mostly because a core
component of Christian teaching is that “God has
created me and all that exists.”
The first two chapters of Genesis deal with origins:
human origins, animals, birds, fish, land and sea, planets and stars, the cosmos. All
of it was spoken into being by God. “At his command they were created, and he
established them for ever and ever,” we read in Psalm 148.
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The creation of human beings was not independent of creation, but interdependent
with it. “The Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed
into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” This
creation story confirms that we belong to earth, as well as heaven. The name of the
first man, Adam, comes from the Hebrew word Adamah, which means soil or arable
land. Adam is an earth man.
But he, and Eve, are also God’s man, God’s woman. And they are given a
commission by God that binds them to creation. In the first creation account we hear
God’s reasoning: “Let us make human beings in our image, in our likeness, so that
they may rule over the fish of the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock
and all the wild animals, over all the creatures that move along the ground.” It’s
the word ‘rule’ that has got us into conflict with creation. God has extended to us his
dominion, his creative care of the world. But we have confused this with
domination. A ruler has
dominion over his people, that is,
he knows that under God’s
authority he is called to care and
protect his citizens. Domination
is the action of a tyrant, who
doesn’t care for his God-given
responsibilities. And so human
beings have either turned
creation itself into an idol, as in
the case of many ancient cultures,
or the things that creation
provides us, and hence exploited
and degraded creation itself.
In every wedding service I conduct I read this promise: “God said...Be fruitful and
multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it.” Human beings have done very well at
the first half of the command, but we have lost the original meaning of subdue,
which is to restrain that which would bring harm, both to ourselves and to creation.
Note how God took Adam and placed him in the garden to work (literally till it) and
keep (take care of it).
It’s not just the Biblical teaching about creation, the First Article of the Creed, that
should inform our attitude toward the environment, but also the Second. God
became a human being, taking on our flesh and blood. God moved toward us, to
recreate what had been fatally damaged in the fall. Incarnation is an affirmation of
all creation, not just human beings. We see Jesus interacting with the natural world,
teaching about it, exercising power over it, in the stilling of the storm, but also
dependent on what it provided: bread, fish and wine. In the account of the
temptation Mark tells us that Jesus was “with the wild animals...” a glimpse of the
cosmic future when human beings will no longer be out of sorts with nature, and
“creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay, and brought into the
freedom and glory of the children of God.” What Jesus accomplished in his death
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and resurrection isn’t just about us, and forget the world, it’s actually all about God’s
recreation of the heavens and the earth. Paul says in Colossians that through Jesus
God reconciled “all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by
making peace through Jesus’ blood, shed through the cross.”
This doesn’t mean, as some Christians have plainly misunderstood, that we can
write off the environment this side of heaven, and wait for what is to come. We must
celebrate what God has done, and continues to do, moment by moment, creating,
upholding, preserving, and what he will do in a new heaven and a new earth, with a
new, restored humanity.
And there’s yet another reason, I believe, that we are called to care for this creation.
It is part of the command we are given by God to love our neighbour. As people
who have been made right with God through Jesus’ life and death work, we are fully
free servants of all, renewed in the call given to Adam to “till the earth and keep it.”
We do this both for the sake of the planet itself, in acknowledgment of the way it
reflects God’s glory, but also because doing so allows the earth to provide for the
needs of all people. Climate
change promises to ravage those
who are already living on the
margins, in sub-Saharan Africa,
in the river deltas and low-lying
coastal regions, even in this
country where we want for
nothing. Caring for the earth is at
the same time caring for its
people. Honouring creation is
both honouring the God who
made it, and the human beings he
made to be supported by it.
There’s one other thing that we as Lutherans can bring to a respect for creation, and
that’s our sacramental theology. God gives his grace to us through created means:
water, bread and wine. Creation is imbued with holiness. God binds himself to the
created order, to these simple, elemental things, to bless us, body and soul. In
receiving created matter, we receive God. In a wider sense, all creation brings the
blessing of God, and his provision, through the resources for life that we receive
from it. I believe this poem from Judith Morley expresses this beautifully:
By what miracle
does this cracker
made from Kansas wheat
the cheese ripened from French caves,
this fig, dried and grown near
Ephesus,
turn into me?
My eyes,
my hands,
my cells, organs, juices, thoughts?
Am I not then Kansas wheat
and French cheese
and Smyrna figs?
Figs, no doubt, the ancient prophets
ate?
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Humans beings and creation are co-partners in the greatest activity of all: we both
exist to praise God.
“Praise the Lord from the
earth, you great sea
creatures and all ocean
depths,
8 lightning and hail, snow
and clouds, stormy winds
that do his bidding,
9 you mountains and all
hills, fruit trees and all
cedars,
10 wild animals and all
cattle, small creatures and
flying birds,
11 kings of the earth and all nations, you princes and all rulers on earth,
12 young men and women, old men and children.”
When we ride roughshod over nature in all its forms, we diminish what God has
made it to be, a mirror of his glory and an active you of praise. When we fail to
delight in it, it is more difficult for us to delight also in creation’s maker.
I don’t think the English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins would have thought of
himself as an environmentalist, but in his poem God’s Grandeur he captures both
our human failing and the grace of God’s continual sustaining of his creation, as the
Spirit works toward the renewal of all things in Christ
“The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs -Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast |&| with ah! bright wings.”
Peace in Christ
Pastor Andrew Brook
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