CREATION S RELATIONSHIPS

Transcription

1 1 CREATION S RELATIONSHIPS PP CARETAKERS I. Read the St. Francis/God dialogue Conversation between GOD and St. Francis about Suburbanites GOD: St. Francis, you know all about gardens and nature. What in the World is going on down there in the USA? What happened to the dandelions, violets, thistle and stuff I started eons ago? I had a perfect, no-maintenance garden plan. Those plants grow in any type of soil, withstand drought and multiply with abandon. The nectar from the long lasting blossoms attracts butterflies, honeybees and flocks of songbirds. I expected to see a vast garden of colors by now. But all I see are these green rectangles. ST. FRANCIS: It's the tribes that settled there, Lord. The Suburbanites. They started calling your flowers weeds and went to great lengths to kill them and replace them with grass. GOD: Grass? But it's so boring. It's not colorful. It doesn't attract butterflies, birds and bees, only grubs and sod worms. It's temperamental with temperatures. Do these Suburbanites really want all that grass growing there? ST. FRANCIS: Apparently so, Lord. They go to great pains to grow it and keep it green. They begin each spring by fertilizing grass and poisoning any other plant that crops up in the lawn.

2 2 GOD: The spring rains and warm weather probably make grass grow really fast. That must make the Suburbanites happy. ST. FRANCIS: Apparently not, Lord. As soon as it grows a little, they cut it, sometimes twice a week. GOD: They cut it? Do they then bale it like hay? ST. FRANCIS: Not exactly Lord. Most of them rake it up and put it in bags. GOD: They bag it? Why? Is it a cash crop? Do they sell it? ST. FRANCIS: No, sir -- just the opposite. They pay to throw it away. GOD: Now, let me get this straight. They fertilize grass so it will grow. And when it does grow, they cut it off and pay to throw it away? ST. FRANCIS: Yes, sir. GOD: These Suburbanites must be relieved in the summer when we cut back On the rain and turn up the heat. That surely slows the growth and saves them a lot of work. ST. FRANCIS: You aren't going to believe this, Lord. When the grass stops growing so fast, they drag out hoses and pay more money to water it so they can continue to mow it and pay to get rid of it.

3 3 GOD: What nonsense. At least they kept some of the trees. That was a Sheer stoke of genius, if I do say so myself. The trees grow leaves in the spring to provide beauty and shade in the summer. In the autumn they fall to the ground and form a natural blanket to keep moisture in the soil and protect the trees and bushes. Plus, as they rot, the leaves form compost to enhance the soil. It's a natural circle of life. ST. FRANCIS: You'd better sit down, Lord. The Suburbanites have drawn a new circle. As soon as the leaves fall, they rake them into great piles and pay to have them hauled away. GOD: No. What do they do to protect the shrub and tree roots in the winter and to keep the soil moist and loose? ST. FRANCIS: After throwing away the leaves, they go out and buy something which they call mulch. They haul it home and spread it around in place of the leaves. GOD: And where do they get this mulch? ST. FRANCIS: They cut down trees and grind them up to make the mulch. GOD: Enough! I don't want to think about this anymore. St. Catherine, you're in charge of the arts. What movie have you scheduled for us tonight? ST. CATHERINE: Dumb and Dumber, Lord. It's a real stupid movie about... GOD: Never mind, I think I just heard the whole story from St. Francis.

4 4 (PAT) I m Pat Watkins, the ED of Caretakers of God's Creation. The most important thing I want you to know about me is that it is 100% my faith as a Christian that motivates me to take care of God s creation. It is not GW; it is not the fact that we re blowing up mountains in SW VA to find coal; it is not the condition of the Chesapeake Bay; those issues are crucially important and I believe the church should be addressing them; but the issues are not what motivate me. If I believe in a God who created the universe and who created it out of a sense of love and compassion and called it very good, a God who even made a covenant with the earth itself; if I believe in that kind of a God, then how can I, as a child of that God, do anything other than everything in my power to care for and to heal all that God has made. So what all that means for me is that the church has to look at the issues from a faith perspective, and when we do our voice is different from other voices talking about the environment; our voice is not better than the other voices but it is unique, and I believe with all my heart that it is a voice that has to be spoken or we will not solve our problems. That s why we re here; to be educated and motivated and equipped and empowered to know that voice and to be able to speak it as well as we can speak our own names. (Denise) My name is Denise Honeycutt and I am married to Pat. I am the Conference Director of Mission and Global Justice. I believe that all day long God is working for good in the world and that God invites us to be a part of that mission. I am here because our theology o mission as Christians and in particular as UM s calls us to move beyond charity to real acts of justice. That being a part of God s mission invites us even demands a lifestyle change. I am here because I believe that in God s we are called to include creation and all people in it. (PAT) Who ever would have imagined that there could be a connection between a suburban lawn and God? What s up with that? I don t think God created it the way St. Francis has experienced it; I don t think that s what God had in mind when God gave us dominion. Denise

5 5 and I read to you a funny dialogue but it also points to the insanity of how we have come to relate to God s creation; in fact, I think it points to the complete dissolution of any sense of a relationship between us and God s creation at all. PP RELATIONSHIPS Throughout history, cultures and religion have told creation stories as a way to describe and explain the reality around them. The same is true for the two creation stories found in Genesis. The creation stories are not just one Biblical writer s interpretation of how the universe came to be; it is also a great story of the creation of relationships. Relationship with God, relationship with each other, and relationship with the earth are all fundamental to the creation story. In fact we would not even have a creation were it not for these relationships. Many of you have seen the three legged stool used as an illustration. For us the three legs are relationship with God, relationship with each other, and relationship with God s creation. If we neglect any one of these relationships, the stool does not stand.

6 6 (DENISE) Pat and I were a part of the UM church being in mission in Nigeria. Historically missionaries have focused on two things; introducing people to a relationship with God, and helping people with food, clothes, education, and medical services. So we focus on a relationship with God and a relationship with each other. What we discovered in our village in Nigeria was an erosion problem because the people there cut trees down for firewood in order to cook their food. The topsoil, which was really sandy and marginal at best anyway, washed away, making it even more difficult to grow food to feed their families. Relationships with each other and with God, taken in isolation from a relationship to God s creation, aren t enough. The seminary, where I taught, began to have tree planting days each year to reforest our village. The addition of this leg of the stool completed the circle. The people s lifestyle contributed to the problem; to love them and encourage them to love God did not adequately address their needs. Eventually, had trees not been planted, people would be forced to move to find more adequate farm land or they d at best have a very difficult job of feeding their families. What good does it do to introduce people to God and to love them with medical clinics and schools if they can t even provide food for themselves and their families due to neglect of their relationship to God s creation? If we expect to appropriately be in mission to anybody anywhere in the world, our mission has to incorporate all three of these relationships; if it doesn t, our mission is inadequate; it will not inaugurate the kingdom of God. What we want to do for our time this morning is to take a look at a few scriptures to give us a Biblical grounding in our work.

7 7 Exodus 16:2- ff Shortly after the Israelites made it through the Red Sea and started their wilderness adventure, Exodus reveals this to us, The whole congregation of the Israelites complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. The Israelites said to them, If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger. Doesn t that sound just like us? Then the Lord said to Moses, I am going to rain bread from heaven for you, and each day the people shall go out and gather enough for that day. In this way I will test them, whether they will follow my instruction or not. God provides our food; the manna story in Exodus connects food with a relationship with God. In fact the Israelites learned to be very dependent on God and on God s creation for their very survival. We ve lost that dependency, or maybe I should say, we ve lost the perception of that dependency. PP CHEESEBURGER (PAT) Just like a suburban lawn, we normally don t make any kind of a connection between a cheeseburger and God, except to thank God for our food when we say a blessing. But there are all kinds of connections that go far deeper than merely saying grace. In the wilderness story, all three relationships were at work; a relationship with God, God certainly had a plan for them, a relationship with each other, they needed some time in the wilderness to figure out how to get along with one other, and a relationship with God s creation, so they d have food and water. From Luke s gospel we hear these words, And taking the five loaves and the two fish, Jesus looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke them, and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd. And all ate and were filled. What was left over was gathered up, twelve baskets of broken pieces.

8 8 FOOD COMES FROM GOD!! (PP VEGETABLES) (DENISE) Today our global economy is such that many third world farmers grow coffee and cocoa in order to participate in the global marketplace. We often believe that is a good thing because it provides a source of income, but in some cases there s not enough land left over to grow rice for their families. And we seem to be the ones who really benefit by having access to cheap coffee and chocolate. We have hunger programs that send food all over the world, making us feel good about ourselves; in other words, because of a relationship with God, we have a relationship with people all over the world, so we feed them. But the stool is never going to stand up if that s all we do. Until we address the real intricacies of our relationships with each other and understand how our food choices affect people in other parts of the world, we will never do an adequate job of being in relationship with each other. And until we recognize how our food choices affect God s creation in terms of distribution, chemical fertilizers and pesticides, genetically modified food and seeds, and how far food has to travel before getting to our tables, we will never really make the change that we want to in our world that is sustainable and lasting and necessary for God s kingdom. PP FEEDLOT (PAT) God said to Noah in Genesis 9, As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark. Noah s relationships with God and with God s creation (the animals) were very much connected. Corporate, industrial farming, feedlots, growth hormones, antibiotics, chicken processing plants, pollution of waterways with animal waste; the way we do that now denies the

9 9 covenant God made with all the animals and with the earth itself; we deny a relationship with God s creation. When we remain oblivious and turn our heads away from creation and God s creatures, the stool falls over. (DENISE) Let s turn now to the prophets. They were a wild bunch of folks who were always ranting and raving about how our actions and lifestyles matter and most especially how it effects the poor and most vulnerable of our world. Hosea 4:1 ff The prophet Hosea says, Hear the word of the Lord, O people of Israel: for the Lord has an indictment against the inhabitants of the land. There is no faithfulness or loyalty, and no knowledge of God in the land. Swearing, lying, and murder, and stealing and adultery break out; bloodshed follows bloodshed. Therefore the land mourns, and all who live in it languish; together with the wild animals and the birds of the air, even the fish of the sea are perishing. PP DEAD FISH (PAT) Whenever our relationships with God and each other are not right, then our relationship with God s creation suffers. So the suffering of the Chesapeake Bay could be evidence that there is a problem with our relationships with God and each other. When we use each other and God s creation only for our own pleasures and selfish ends, then there is a problem. That is precisely why the problems with the Bay are not only environmental, they are social and spiritual as well. The Bay is trying to tell us something; it s trying to say that if we can make right our relationships with God and each other, then the Bay will heal. If our relationship with the Bay is only focused on how many crabs, oysters, and fish it can provide; in other words, if we re only concerned with how much money we can make off the Bay, then we ve not adequately considered the two other legs of the stool; relationships with

10 10 other people and relationship with God. If we consider a relationship with God and each other, then our relationship with the Bay cannot be one of exploitation. If we focus on a relationship with God, then our relationship with the Bay has to be the same kind of relationship that God has with the Bay, which is one of amazing love and respect. God does not pollute the Chesapeake Bay; our relationship with God prohibits us from doing anything harmful to it. (DENISE) John 21:5 In John s gospel Jesus says to the disciples, Children you have no fish, have you? They answered him, No. He said to them, Cast the net to the right side of the boat, and you will find some. So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in because there were so many fish. This is a classic story for thinking about doing things differently from how we normally do them; it s a great example for the Conference emphasis on All Things New, but for Jesus listeners, they probably heard this story first and foremost about fishing, literally about fish, so maybe we can hear it that way today in relationship to the Bay. PP ARIAL BAY PICTURE Maybe casting our nets on the other side means living a whole new and different relationship with the Bay, a relationship that mirrors God s relationship with it. A healthy relationship with God compels us to relate to each other and to the Bay as God does, and if we could make that happen, I guarantee our nets would once again be so full we couldn t haul them in. And Jesus is the one who tells us to cast our nets on the other side. If we re disciples of Jesus Christ, how can we not do what he commands? (PAT) Our relationship with each other also impacts our relationship with the Bay. If we re truly concerned about future generations, then we need to be concerned about the Bay, not just from the standpoint of how much money we can make right now from the Bay, but how we can preserve the Bay and its resources indefinitely into the future. And while overharvesting of

11 11 crabs, for example, is a problem, we are still concerned about our relationship with those people who harvest crabs, who make their living from the Bay. At AC 2009 we passed a resolution supporting both the health of the Bay and the ability of the watermen to make a living on the Bay. But in order for that to happen, we have to have a healthy relationship with God, with each other, and with the Bay. That s the only way our values and God s values will ever be the same. God created a sustainable Bay. Our concern for the Bay and those who make their living from the Bay requires that we mandate a sustainable relationship with the Bay ourselves. It means the watermen, the consumers of the Bay s bounty, you and me, the farmers, the poultry industry, the developers, the individual landowners all have to commit to the same values God had when God created the Bay. That s why it is so crucial for the church to be involved! No other organization I know of can speak to a shift in values that will be absolutely necessary in order to make a real and lasting difference. Environmentalists have been about trying to clean up the Bay for decades, but until people of faith understand that this is not just about nitrogen and phosphorous and dead zones and overfishing and runoff; this is about God!, until we get that, we re not going to solve the problem. And nobody but the church can help the world get it The church may very well be the only organization around that can see the whole picture, that can look through the eyes of God and see the incredible complexity and inter-connectedness of all those relationships out there. It s up to you and I to make those connections! I know it s hard and complicated, but that doesn t let us off the hook. We can do it!

12 12 (DENISE) Let s take a look at another prophet Micah 6:1 ff According to the prophet Micah, the mountains are involved with God in God s relationship with God s people. Hear what the Lord says: Rise, plead your case before the mountains, and let the hills hear your voice. Hear, you mountains, the controversy of the Lord, and you enduring foundations of the earth; for the Lord has a controversy with his people, and he will contend with Israel. The controversy the Lord had with Israel was that Israel had instituted a centralized system of agriculture and had begun to grow crops for export. The problem was that the farmers surrounding the cities were forced to hand over as much as one half of their crops to the royal authorities as a tax, and they were forced to grow crops for export so the nation state of Israel could make money. The result was a system in which there were really rich city people and really poor farmers. And Micah had to holler about it. The Prophets were always connecting relationships with each other, especially the poor, relationship with God and relationship with the earth. And in Micah s case, God s creation, the mountains, sat in judgment. When God s people begin to use and abuse one another, then our relationship with God suffers, and, according to Micah s vision, the mountains even get involved. PP MOUNTAIN TOP REMOVAL (PAT) In SW Virginia, coal companies are literally blowing up the mountains in order to find coal. This process is known as Mountain Top Removal because that is precisely how it works. We remove the tops of mountains and push them into the valleys so as to expose the seams of coal, making it easier and cheaper to get at the coal.

13 13 MTR obliterates God s mountains and in the process our relationships with God and each other. It is the epitome of human greed and arrogance. The mountains disappear and in the wake of their disappearance lies rivers and streams that are dead to all life; tap water that is so polluted that some of the residents of SW Virginia have to drink bottled water exclusively, and there is a myriad of human health issues that goes along with it. And on top of all that the people who are affected the most are some of the poorest citizens of VA, those who are least powerful and least able to do anything about it. Our relationship with God s creation is destroyed as we destroy God s creation. Our relationship with each other is destroyed as we ask the most poor and vulnerable among us to suffer unbelievable consequences so we can enjoy relatively cheap electricity. And perhaps most incredible of all is the coal industry who makes us believe that they re doing those poor people a favor by giving them a job. It s all about the economy, says Mr. Coal. Those people need us. But what I don t understand is if coal has been so good to the economy of Southwest VA for over 100 years, why are these people still some of the poorest people in VA? I don t understand. When we destroy God s creation to make a dollar, when we destroy God s people to make a dollar, then we only have a relationship with the dollar, not God, not each other, and not with God s creation. And I know, just as Micah knew, that God has a controversy with us.

14 14 (DENISE) Revelation speaks to the destruction of the earth. Then the 24 elders who sit on their thrones before God fell on their faces and worshipped God, singing, We give you thanks, Lord God Almighty, who are and who were, for you have taken your great power and begun to reign. The nations raged, but your wrath has come, and the time for judging the dead, for rewarding your servants, the prophets and saints and all who fear your name, both small and great, and for destroying those who destroy the earth. These 24 elders seemed to have a vision of the reign of God, one in which God seems intolerant of those who destroy the earth. Destroying the earth is a problem for God; how could it not be? Manipulating God s people, particularly the poor, is a problem for God. When our relationships with God s creation and God s people are not right, then there is a problem in our relationship with God. (PAT) Perhaps the saddest part for me is my complicity in all of this. I speak out against injustices to God s creation and to God s people, but I m a consumer of electricity. There are even times when I know I could be using less but I enjoy what it provides for me and I realize it has to come from somewhere. We are all complicit. We know the status quo and we also know, just like the Biblical prophets, that there s something wrong with it. PP MARTIN LUTHER KING So what do we do? Well our call is to say something about it, to scream about it, to be prophetic. Our Bishops have just done that, and Bishop Kammerer is going to be our prophet in just a few minutes. So we re called to say something but also to live out those three relationships with integrity, with Biblical values.

15 15 So we yell about the injustice of it all, both the injustice to God s people and the injustice to the earth itself, and we seek to live the life, we seek to live more simply, we seek to live lives that leave behind a smaller footprint this year than we did last. In Luke s gospel, Jesus describes his ministry this way, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord s favor. PP PEACEABLE KINGDOM Jesus constantly proclaimed the injustices of his day and lived the life, a very simple life. In doing that he defined the kingdom of God. His job description is our job description. And therein lies our hope, because the Spirit of the Lord is upon you and me. We can do this. We have to do this. When we care for the poor and the earth then we are really worshiping and praising God. And the kingdom of God is made more real in the here and now. The future of God s creation depends on us. I thank you for responding to the call. And I look forward to living in the Kingdom of God that all of you will make possible. Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. PP LET EVERYTHING THAT HAS BREATH PRAISE THE LORD