Tilling God’s
Garden
© by the Reverend Dr. Byron E.
Shafer
(Rutgers, April 29, 2001; 3rd
Sunday of Easter, Year C; Earth Sunday)
Psalm 148:3–10, 13, 14d (OT, pp. 645, 646);
Genesis 2:4b–9, 15 (OT, p. 2)
If
only that great 13th-century
friar Francis of Assisi were alive today to help reshape our nation’s
attitudes toward the environment!
Francis
loved Psalm 148, this morning’s First Lesson, in which so many different
voices are lifted up to God in praise. We
hear, one by one, the song of sun, moon, and shining stars, whales, fish, and
the waters above and below, fire, hale, snow, and stormy wind, mountains, hills,
shrubs, and towering trees, animals, insects, birds, and human beings—all
alike lifting their voices in praise of God, their Creator.
Indeed,
it was Psalm 148 that inspired Francis to compose his famous Canticle of the
Sun, in which he speaks of sun and wind and fire as his brother, of moon and
water as his sister, and of earth as his mother.
You
see, Francis also knew and cherished this morning’s Second Lesson, in which
God takes some earth, ’adamah, and shapes and forms it into a human person, ’adam.
God makes humankind from the earth.
’adam comes forth from ’adamah,
and in consequence, as Francis saw it, the earth is our mother.
Francis
understood intuitively that everything in the universe from shining star to
slithering snake—all of us alike are wondrous creations of God, all of us
alike embody the goodness of God’s creation, all of us alike are part of the
unity of being that is the universe, all of us alike belong to the family of
God. And it is the desire of God,
our Parent, that we should interact with each other in love and respect.
Francis,
living as he did in the 13th
century, did not enjoy the advantage
of being able to travel out into space or, by means of fossils, to journey back
into the time before time. He could
not probe the heart of the atom or map our genetic origins or walk on the moon
snapping photographs of God’s distant garden, the earth.
Yet he saw clearly the immensity of life’s expanse and the sacred
impulse within each and every form that existence takes.
How
ironic it is that we whose science and technology have led us to experience and
probe the mysteries of God at a level far deeper than any medieval monk like
Francis could have imagined—how ironic it is that we today have need, in order
to save ourselves and our planet, to recapture his medieval vision, to return to
the 800-year-old understanding by Francis that we are to live with a sense of
the unity of being and with love and respect for all of God’s creations.
We
need to recover Francis’s vision because never before in all of history have
we humans made use of earth’s resources with so little love and respect—in
effect, raping them, as we denude earth’s landscapes, drive countless species
into extinction, rupture the ozone layer that defends us, and honeycomb the
earth with toxic wastes.
Yes,
how ironic it is that the era in which we are most deeply and expansively
journeying into the awesome mysteries of the universe is also the era in which
we are most pridefully wreaking havoc on our native planet, destroying here the
delicate balance among animal and plant species, habitats and natural
resources—the delicate balance that has sustained life on this sphere for
longer than our human mind can imagine.
It
is a fact that our technology, our political and economic systems, and our
over-consumption of earth’s resources are endangering the health and
well-being of this planet to such a grave extent that our biosphere is actually
showing signs of failing. We are
using up and expending God’s good earth as if there were a spare one in
reserve. We are behaving as if the
garden that is this planet is really ours, to do with as we wish, rather than
God’s, to be lived in with limits.
I
grieve for earth’s loss of life and beauty and for our nation’s reluctance
to put environmental concerns atop our list of 21st-century
priorities.
And
if I am grieving, how much more must God
be grieving, as God observes the smoke rising from our offering up of the
world’s rain forests, and inhales
the odor of the waste and pollution that arises from our sacrificing of nature
on the altar of self-indulgence.
Like
Francis and the psalmist of old, we today need to listen—to listen to the
voices of air and water and soil and wetlands, to the voices of meadows and
forests and plains and deserts, to the voices of rain-bearing clouds and the
ozone layer, to the voices of birds and insects, of fish and all other animals.
For
in our time, too, all these voices are lifted up to God in prayer.
But today their prayers to God are not like Psalm 148.
Would that they were! No,
today their prayers are anguished outcries for deliverance from the assaults
made against them by the likes of us.
How
God must be grieving.
Today
we need so desperately to recapture Francis’s vision of the unity of being.
Yet we and our government in Washington seem to be not at all tuned in to
that vision. During this past week
I made a list of at least eleven major environmental actions now being
undertaken by our federal government that are absolutely non-Francislike in
spirit. Let me discuss just one as
an example.
In
1997, most of the world’s governments assembled in Kyoto, Japan, out of alarm
at the rapid increase in human-induced climate changes brought on by greenhouse
gas emissions. There these
governments negotiated a protocol in which the developed nations like our own
agreed over the next 15 years to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other
heat-trapping gases, cutting them, on average, by 5.2% from the levels emitted
in each developed nation back in the year 1990.
Although
President Clinton agreed to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the U.S. Senate has delayed
action on ratifying it. And now
President Bush has announced that he does not agree with the Kyoto Protocol and
that he will not implement it.
Now,
our nation’s cooperation is essential if the struggle to prevent further
human-induced climate changes is to succeed, for we Americans emit 25% of all
the world’s greenhouse gases even though we number only 4% of the world’s
population.
From
around the world, the outcry against President Bush’s announcement has been
loud and sustained, including protests registered by leaders of the World
Council of Churches and of the Conference on European Churches.
They see us as putting narrow national interests ahead of global
responsibility at a time when many places are already suffering from the
terrible droughts, sweltering heat, and rising sea levels brought on by global
warming.
Meanwhile,
here at home, a month ago five executives of major American Christian bodies and
one Jewish leader responded to President Bush’s announcement by sending a
joint letter stating their concern and requesting a meeting with the president
in June to discuss his environmental policies.
These leaders included a representative each from our own denomination,
the Presbyterian Church, and from President Bush’s denomination, the United
Methodist Church.
Let
me share with you a few paragraphs from their letter. They write:
“We
[are] eager to discuss with you[, Mr. President,] a challenge of paramount
religious significance: the condition of God’s creation at the hands of
God’s children, the climate of planet Earth as being altered by the activity
of the Earth’s people.”
“…
we are not scientists, policy-makers, leaders within the economic sector, or
architects of global treaties…. We
believe there is a point, however, at which scientific consensus is sufficiently
established.… We are persuaded
that this point … is now upon us. [The
p]rojected impacts of global warming on the most poor and vulnerable [in the
world] are ethically unacceptable. Domestic
and international action is urgently required.
The United States has a moral responsibility to lead the world’s
nations and to serve its people.
“In
recent days, we have been reading reports of what the administration is not
prepared to do to address climate change. We
are eager to learn what our government will enact here: in a credible, binding
program to honor international commitments, [to] successfully prevent
destructive impacts on humankind and habitat, and [to] embody equity.
Our scriptures are plain about the religious dimension of this
challenge.”
The
six American religious leaders who wrote this letter await the president’s
response.
Yes,
the scriptures are plain: we are to till and keep God’s garden, exercising
responsible care for all species and phenomena.
I
believe that answers to the problem of the survival of our planet lie as much in
the realm of spirituality as in the realm of politics, or science, or economics.
I
believe that were we but to listen to the voices of creation crying out to God
for deliverance from human abuse we would be moved to offer as our own prayer
these words from a Native American people: “Teach us love, compassion, and
honor, that we may heal the earth and heal each other.”
God
wants to work with us to heal the earth. And
here's the good news! If we will
but turn to God in penitence for the past, God will help us to recover the way
of life that Francis taught, the way of tilling God’s garden while living in
peace and joy with all of God’s creation.
Let
us pray:
O
God, our Creator, teach us, like Francis of Assisi, to love, respect, and honor
all that You have made so that by tilling Your garden in peace we may heal both
the earth and ourselves. Amen.
Return to Sermon Archive