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In Love with All Creation
“In Love with All
Creation”
by
the Rev. Dr. Rodney R. Romney
(Seattle First Baptist Church, "Earth Sunday," 1995.)
A few weeks ago while attending a retreat on Vashon Island, I found myself with a few hours of free time and nothing to read. Usually on such occasions, I take along some books that have been waiting to be read but this time had neglected to do so. Remembering there was a bookstore in the village near the camp, I drove there and found a book of essays by Wendell Berry with a rather strange title, “Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community.” I have only known Berry as a poet who left the world of academia and returned to his family farm in the Kentucky River region, where he lives and writes today. Having admired his poetry, I decided to sample his essays. So I bought the book, parked my car under a tree and sat there for the next two hours enthralled with the words of Wendell Berry.
He begins one of his essays by saying, “I confess I have seldom been
comfortable in front of a pulpit and never comfortable behind one…. Preachers
must resign themselves to being either right or wrong; an essayist, when proved
wrong, may claim to have been ‘just practicing’ or, at the very least
dissenting.” No such privilege is
granted to the preacher, who speaks only by institutional authorization, and who
can't afford to be wrong too many times.
Most congregations prefer their preachers to be cautious and be neither
dissenter or explorer, at least in sermons.
Today's sermon is both a dissent and an exploration, as well as a rehash
of some of the ideas Berry stirred within my mind on a spring day under a maple
tree. Running through his writings
is a strong plea for the survival of creation, doing the good work of
conservation, and, insofar as possible, living peaceably with all things.
I echo his plea today on this Sunday we have designated as Earth Sunday,
for I am convinced if we want to be at peace on this earth sojourn, we must be
less greedy, less wasteful, and less destructive of our wonderful earth and its
many resources.
The Bible begins and ends on a note of conservation.
The Book of Genesis talks about God giving creation a final blessing by
saying to the humans that have been placed here, “Be fruitful, fill the earth
and subdue it, have dominion over the sea, the birds of the air, and every
living thing that moves on the earth.”
The problem is we think being fruitful means we can overpopulate, that subduing
the earth means we can trample and waste it, and that having dominion means we
can rule creation according to our own selfish, shortsighted whims.
At the end of a literary trek through sixty-six books and thousands of
years of human struggle, the Bible ends with the Book of Revelation promising a
new heaven and a new earth ….
The
vision of the writer of Revelation brings heaven and earth together, making
them one by the indwelling presence of God, who frees us from sorrow and is with
us forever.
We are somewhere between those two gardens, the Garden of Alpha where life began, and the Garden of Omega where life is renewed and the earth and its creatures are healed. A curious connection exists between the mother who birthed us and Mother Nature who sustains us on our journey between those two gardens. Hence, Earth Sunday and Mothers Day are not incompatible. Somehow in the honoring of our earthly mothers we need to honor the mother earth who makes this life possible.
Most of us gathered here today claim Christianity as our native religion.
We must begin by admitting that Christianity stands indicted for not
loving all creation. The complicity
of Christian missionaries, preachers, and priests in tile cultural destruction
and the economic exploitation of the primary peoples of the Western Hemisphere
is well-
documented. Evangelists walked
beside conquerors and merchants subduing and exploiting whatever or whoever was
in the way. Christianity to this
day remains largely indifferent to and sometimes supportive of this ongoing
murder of Creation.
The problem begins with a misunderstanding of the Bible. Our present crisis requires that we reread and understand the Bible in the light of the present fact of Creation. The Bible calls us to be stewards of the earth. We humans do not own the world or any part of it. “The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein,” said the psalmist. The early writer of Leviticus heard God saying, “The land is mine; for you are strangers and sojourners with me.” We humans are guests and stewards here, not owners.
The Bible tells us that God made not only those parts of creation that we
understand and approve, but all of it.
“All things were made by God, and without God was not anything made that was
made,” said the writer of the Fourth Gospel.
So we must credit God with the making of poisonous snakes, noxious weeds,
stinging wasps, ferocious beasts, and disease-causing microorganisms. We may not
fully understand why these things are here, but we should not assume that God
made an error or that part of creation was deeded over to Satan.
Everything that is here is here for a reason.
We often quote John 3:16 as a quick and easy formula for getting to
heaven: “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that
whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.”
We sometimes overlook the importance of those first five words: “God so
loved the world.” [The Greek
translation of “world” here is “cosmos,” not just humankind.]
The advent of Christ emerged from God's love for the world, not God's
love for a new world, a perfect world, or a redeemed world, but the world as it
was and is. Belief in Christ should
thus be dependent on belief in the
inherent goodness, precious value and lovability of the world.
So when we destroy nature, as we have done, we are committing what Wendell Berry calls the most horrid blasphemy of all. We are flinging God's gifts into God's face. The Bible gives us entitlement to use the gifts of nature but not to ruin or waste them. The Bible forbids usury or great accumulations of property. In the biblical view we are holy creatures living among holy creatures in a world that is holy…. How then can Christianity solemnly fold its hands while so much of the work of God is being destroyed?
Many Christians are at peace with our military-industrial economy and its “scientific” destruction of life.
Many Christians utterly disconnect their religion from an exploitative
economy, even though economic practices daily destroy life and diminish its
possibilities. Berry points out
that organized Christianity has not a single clue of the kind of economy that
would be responsible to the holiness of life, for Christianity has too long been
a respecter and participant in economies that are systematically destroying us
and our world.
Where and what is a holy place for you?
Traditional Christianity has nurtured the idea that the only holy place
is the church. We think of the
church building as God's house. But
this idea is wildly incompatible with what Jesus taught, that God is present in
all places to hear our prayers and accept our worship.
Solomon knew after he had built the Temple that it was not and never
could be a dwelling place for God, for he said, “Behold, heaven and the highest
heavens cannot contain thee, how much less this house that I have built.”
Years later, Paul preaching in Athens, said, “God that made the world and all
living things dwells not in temples made with hands.” God lives in the heart of
all creation.
Most people frankly admit they more often have a religious experience of
God's presence in the wilderness of creation than in a house of worship.
This is partly because the presence of God's spirit in us is our
wildness, our wilderness, if you will.
That is why destroying our wilderness areas is so dangerous to our souls, and
why it so often results in evil, in separation and desecration.
It is why the poets have so often given nature the role not only of
mother or grandmother, but of the highest earthly judge and teacher, a figure of
mystery and great power. Why would
we want to kill the one who is our very best teacher?
The great visionary encounters in the Bible seldom took place in temples,
but in sheep pastures, in the deserts, on the mountains, in the middle of the
sea. The Bible is an all outdoor
book, and in a true sense so is life.
Nature is our teacher if we will but listen.
Religion, said Wendell Berry, is less to be celebrated in rituals than
practiced in the world. In the
Bible we find none of our modern contempt or hatred for nature.
Instead we find a poetry of awe, reverence and profound cherishing, as in
these verses from Moses' valedictory blessings of the twelve tribes:
And of Joseph he said, “Blessed by the Lord be his land, with choicest gifts of
heaven above, and of the deep reaches that couches beneath, with the choicest
fruits of the sun, and the rich yield of the moon, with the finest produce of
the ancient mountains, and the abundance of the everlasting hills, with the best
gifts of the earth and its fullness, and the favor of him that dwelt in the
bush.” (Deuteronomy 33:1316)
A new way of doing theology has arisen in our time called Creation
Spirituality. It is a way of affirming the blessings of God in all
creation, the earth and all her children.
It is a way of recognizing God as imminent as well as transcendent.
It is a way of returning to nature for the healing she is always
offering.
Nature is healing. I
remember visiting two patients in two different hospitals one day.
One had a room that faced a brick wall.
The woman in that room was lonely and discouraged.
She asked what the weather was like outside, since she could not see out.
She expressed immense gratitude for the flowers the church had sent and
said, “If only I could get back to my garden I think I would get well faster.
This room is so depressing.”
The woman in the other hospital had a room with large windows that brought in
the glory of the sky and the distant sweep of mountains. She was actually sicker than the previous woman I had
visited, but she was serene, almost radiant.
“Look at my room,” she exclaimed with a sweep of her hand towards the
window. “What a wonderful place for
getting well.”
Nature is food for the body, beauty for the eyes, and nourishment for the
spirit. Nature is the harmony of
silence and sound, from the first to the last forming a single whole.
As creatures of the earth we would be happier if we could recognize our
oneness in the unity of creation.
John Muir, the naturalist, said that when we try to pick out anything by itself,
we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.
We live in a web of unity.
All the world is full of the glory of God!
The fifteenth century mystic Meister Eckhart said, “If the only prayer you could
say in your whole life is ‘Thank You’ that would suffice.”
Someone once said, “I think that the dying pray at the last not ‘please,’
but ‘thank you’ as the guest thanks her host at the door.”
The universe was not made in jest nor as an experiment but in solemn
incomprehensible earnest expectation by a power that is secret, holy, and
loving. Then, wonder of wonders,
into our fragile hands this universe was placed.
There is nothing to be done about it but to accept it, ignore it, or
throw it back into the face of the one who gave it.
If we accept it and treasure it for the great gift it is, then we shall
be like Billy Bray, “I go my way and my left foot says ‘Glory,’ and my right
foot says ‘Amen,’ in and out of Shadow Creek, upstream mid down, exultant, in a
daze, dancing, to the twin silver trumpets of praise.” (From “Pilgrim at Tinker
Creek” by Annie Dillard, Bantam, 1982.)
I was at Linfield College this past week for a meeting of the board of
trustees. Linfield, as you know if
you have been on campus, was built around a grove of white oak trees, which are
around a hundred and fifty years old, and which have been carefully protected.
A major item of concern now is that many of these oaks are beginning to
die because of human error, even though we were careful in trying to preserve
them. Years of cleaning up the
leaves when they fell, robbed the trees of nourishment, as did planting a lawn
in the grove. Irrigation of the
lawns denied the trees something necessary for its survival, and that is a time
of dormancy and drought. As a
result the root systems of the trees have developed a fungus and slowly they are
dying. Whether we can save them is
yet uncertain.
It is a parable of how our well-intentioned efforts matched against our
ignorance often result in dooming nature rather than protecting it.
So much of what we have done to nature that was destructive has been more
from carelessness and ignorance than malicious intent. If we can only learn from our past mistakes, we may be able
to correct our behavior and rescue creation before we completely destroy it.
As the poet John Wright reminded us, “Let the trees be consulted before
you take any action, and every time you breathe in, thank a tree.”
And Wallace Stegner reminded us, “Something will have gone out of us as a
people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed, if we permit the
last virgin forests to be turned into comic books and plastic cigarette cases;
if we drive the few remaining members of the wild species into zoos or to
extinction; if we pollute the last clear air and dirty the last clean streams
and push our paved roads through the last of the silence.”
Something will have gone out of us as a people if we do not love and
protect creation, and that something will be our soul.
If our actions can destroy, so can they heal.
Knowing that we are not independent, self-enclosed entities, but rather
fields of energy integrated with and dependent upon the environment in which we
live, can transform and reshape the world, for it comes from the wisdom and
reverence of the soul. Christianity
has talked a lot about “saving souls.”
Saving our world is about saving souls.
It is time for us to talk about it.
This
prayer is from a contemporary Native American:
Great Spirit, I pray for myself in order that I may be healed.
Great Spirit, I pray for my friend who is sick that he may be healed.
Great Spirit, I pray for this world, so that all the bad things we have
done to it may be healed. Great
Spirit, I pray for the environment.
I pray for its cleansing, and the renewal of our Mother Earth. Amen.
Reprinted by permission from
the author. The Rev. Dr. Romney offered this sermon on Earth Sunday and
Mother's Day, 1995, at Seattle First Baptist Church