|
Tied to the Land
Sermon by Catherine W. FitzGerald October 2, 2005, Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill
"Science has a useful set of insights and they depend on the rigorous adherence to fact and inferential reasoning. It has a certain power. It also has a certain narrowness because it cannot illuminate the larger question of beginning, end, and purpose," writes physicist Robert Jastrow. Jastrow is right: there are some questions that can only be answered within the theological realm. When presented with this first creation account from Genesis, our questions should not concern the veracity of evolution, but rather, the theological understanding of God as Creator, and the world as creation. After all, it was a theological question that this Genesis author sought to answer. The first creation account is generally attributed to the Priestly source (or P), and was likely written in the 6th century BCE. While there are undoubtedly traces of more ancient creation stories and cosmologies, the text transforms these older materials to serve a new purpose-"a purpose intimately related to Israel's covenantal experience," attests Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann. It was written as a refutation of Babylonian theological claims to those in exile at the time. To these long-suffering exiles, P has this to say: the God of Israel is the Lord of all life. Despite conflicting Babylonian assertions, YHWH is still God, "one who watches over his creation and will bring it to well-being." The poetic verse was not written as an abstract statement about the origin of the universe, but as a theological and pastoral statement addressing a real, historical problem. It is not a scientific description, but a theological affirmation. The affirmation is this: "God and God's creation are bound together in a distinctive and delicate way," writes Walter Brueggemann. "This is the presupposition for everything that follows in the Bible. It is the deepest premise from which the good news is possible. God and his creation are bound together by the powerful, gracious movement of God towards that creation." The binding is itself done through speech. God's distinguishing action is to speak. Over and over again in the text we hear the phrase, "God said"-God's speech is the creative catalyst. Brueggemann reflects, "Every part and moment of this creation, is like the freshness of the morning, like the blackbird which has sprung 'fresh from the Word.'" And so we are sprung, fresh from the Word, and in this account of our creation, we may know the God's will is to be with us. God's very creation is covenantal in nature. Creator and creation have to do with each other decisively…neither can be understood apart from one another. In his address of creation, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, "the God of the creation and of the real beginning is, at the same time, the God of the resurrection. From the beginning the world is placed in the sign of the resurrection of Christ from the dead. Indeed it is because we know of the resurrection that we know of God's creation in the beginning, of God's creation out of nothing." Bonhoeffer refers to two voids-the void before God created and the void left with Jesus Christ's death on Good Friday. As he puts it, "The fact that Christ was dead did not mean the possibility of the resurrection, but its impossibility; it was the void itself…." Our greatest hope lies in the impossible happening of Christ's resurrection-in God creating something out of nothing. By this we know that the God we understand in Jesus Christ, was with us at the beginning, and is with us at the end. As Christians, when we read this first chapter of Genesis, we may hear echoes of John's first chapter: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." John reminds us that Jesus Christ was there from the beginning. There was never a time in existence when the God we know in Jesus Christ did not exist. The gifts of the Incarnation and resurrection are the gifts of creation. By these gifts we better understand God's nature. The Genesis text, as Brueggemann describes it, is "a proclamation of God's decisive dealing with his creation." And the substance of the proclamation is this: "that God and God's creation are bound in a relation that is assured but at the same time is delicate and precarious…. The relation is grounded in a mystery of faithful commitment. Everything else depends on that commitment…." The mystery lies within God's will to have a faithful relationship with earth. God's creative acts were not careless, casual, or accidental matters. Today's pericope picks up at God's creation of humans. It can be argued that the author wished to focus on this particular act of creation. Of all the creatures of God's 8 creative acts, God speaks directly only to human creatures. God created them in his image, male and female, blessed them, and said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth." In God's image, humanity is given dominion over the rest of God's creation on earth. In effect, as Brueggemann writes, "The human creature attests to the Godness of God by exercising freedom with and authority over all the other creatures entrusted to its care. The image of God in the human person is a mandate of power and responsibility." But it is not any power-it is power as God exercises power. In God's image, we are to exercise power as God would. It is not an abusive power, but a power which "invites, evokes, and permits." The "dominion" here is with reference to the animals. The dominance is that of a shepherd who cares for, tends and feeds the animals. "The task of 'dominion' does not have to do with exploitation and abuse. It has to do with securing the well-being of every other creature and bringing the promise of each to full fruition." And our knowledge of Jesus of Nazareth should shed new light on this God-image and its responsibilities. This very one who rules is the same one who serves. His humility is as great as his divinity. Jesus Christ is the one who proclaimed, "I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep," reads the 10th chapter of John. But we have not been good shepherds in our dominion over the earth. Hear this statement from members of The Iroquois Confederacy, among the most ancient continuously operating governments in the world. They plea for a return to a connection with the earth that once existed and has been lost, if not warred against in modern times. "Brothers and Sisters: When the Europeans first invaded our lands, they found a world filled with the bountiful gifts of creation…. Everywhere the game was plentiful, and sometimes the birds darkened the sky like great clouds, so great were their numbers…. Brothers and Sisters: Our Mother the Earth is growing old now. No longer does she support upon her breast the teeming herds of wildlife who once shared this place with us, and most of the great forest which is our home is gone today…. We are alarmed at the evidence that is before us…. The people who plant the lands that we have occupied for thousands of years display no love for the life of this place. Brothers and Sisters: We cannot adequately express our feelings of horror and repulsion as we view the policies of industry and government in North America which threaten to destroy all life. Our forefathers predicted that the European Way of Life would bring a Spiritual imbalance to the world, that the Earth would grow old as a result of that imbalance. Now it is before all the world to see-that the life-producing forces are being reversed, and that the life-potential is leaving this land. Only a people whose minds are twisted beyond an ability to perceive truth could act in ways which will threaten the future generations of humanity." Are our minds "twisted beyond an ability to perceive truth"? Surely, as Christians who claim to know the truth in Jesus Christ we would answer "no!" But friends, have we honestly regarded the treatment of the remainder of God's creation as part of the truth in Jesus Christ? Have we truly understood and taken seriously the call to have "dominion"? the answer is likely, "no". The 21st century world is a small one by many standards. Technology moves us closer and closer to one another-connecting people across the globe in ways that previously seemed unfathomable. It may mean that as we celebrate "World Communion Sunday", you feel a little more connected to this world in which we live. Or maybe not. The tragedy before us is that even as the world becomes smaller in leaps and bounds, the earth, the entirety of God's creation becomes more and more distant. In this area, most of us have lost connection with the earth. We do not immediately understand our need for its well-being. We have not exercised our dominion properly. I was prepared to say to you that we've perhaps taken the call to dominion too seriously-using and abusing our lands and endangering animals at every corner of the earth. While I still feel this has truth, I would like us to turn to an argument put forth by Bonhoeffer. It is his claim that we have not ruled the earth-we are being ruled by it! Hear his words: "We do not rule, we are ruled. The thing, the world, rules man. Man is prisoner, a slave of the world, and his rule is illusion. Technology is the power with which the earth grips man and subdues him. And because we rule no more, we lose the ground, and then the earth is no longer our earth, and then we become strangers on earth. We do not rule because we do not know the world as God's creation, and because we do not receive our dominion as God-given but grasp it for ourselves." Imagine what he would have thought if he had lived to see these days…. Friends, we have not followed the call to have dominion. We were given the entirety of God's earthly creation and asked to care for it-to keep it in mind-as our Creator keeps us in mind and care for us. We have been asked to live out the image of God in us. In God's image we were made, and with it comes great responsibility. As Christians, we seem to have a good grasp on our responsibility for the rest of humanity (or, at least we think that we should, in some way, be responsible). However, our response to the call to care for the entirety of God's creation has fallen short. We get angry when our oil prices rise, but we do not take seriously the need to find alternate fuel sources, or the need to use public transportation (or fight for better public transportation). We see the need for preventative military strikes, but seem to have little time or funding to promote better care of the earth and subsequently its people. How difficult is it to understand that in caring for our environment and the creatures that inhabit it, that we are caring for humanity? If we, as Christians, do not join in the efforts to restore the earth, to care for the earth, and in turn, for its people, we have fallen short of God's hope for us. The efforts of one person are too little to make a difference, you may argue. It is true, no individual can be the world's messiah-we've already had one. If I recycle, take public transportation, or write a letter to government officials, I don't really do much of anything. But God did not call us to live in a vacuum-he called us to community. And to tend to the earth, we need to act as a community and as individuals within that community. "Human beings are a part of the whole we call the Universe, a small region in time and space," wrote Albert Einstein. "They regard themselves, their ideas and their feelings as separate and apart from all the rest. It is something like an optical illusion in their consciousness. This illusion is a sort of prison; it restricts us to our personal aspirations and limits our affective life to a few people very close to us. Our task should be to free ourselves from this prison, opening up our circle of compassion in order to embrace all living creatures and all of nature in its beauty." Today, we celebrate communion with our Christian brothers and sisters throughout the world. We remember Jesus Christ's sacrifice for us. We remember the promise and fulfillment of God's care. As we partake of the earthly elements of wine and bread, we remember the good shepherd-the one who loved us, even unto the cross. Brothers and sisters in Christ, so too should we love all of God's creation. "God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good." Let us remember this day, our call to care, as humble shepherds, for God's good creation. Thanks be to God. |