Rev. Lisa Heilig Sermon 9.13.2015 at Our Hope MCC, Athens, GA The Beauty of... All Creation/Pride Sunday
And God stepped out on space,
And he looked around and said:
I'm lonely--
I'll make me a world.
And far as the eye of God could see
Darkness covered everything,
Blacker than a hundred midnights
Down in a cypress swamp.
Then God smiled,
And the light broke,
And the darkness rolled up on one side,
And the light stood shining on the other,
And God said: That's good!
Then God reached out and took the light in his hands,
And God rolled the light around in his hands
Until he made the sun;
And he set that sun a-blazing in the heavens.
And the light that was left from making the sun
God gathered it up in a shining ball
And flung it against the darkness,
Spangling the night with the moon and stars.
Then down between
The darkness and the light
He hurled the world;
And God said: That's good!
Then God himself stepped down--
And the sun was on his right hand,
And the moon was on his left;
The stars were clustered about his head,
And the earth was under his feet.
And God walked, and where he trod
His footsteps hollowed the valleys out
And bulged the mountains up.
Then he stopped and looked and saw
That the earth was hot and barren.
So God stepped over to the edge of the world
And he spat out the seven seas--
He batted his eyes, and the lightnings flashed--
He clapped his hands, and the thunders rolled--
And the waters above the earth came down,
The cooling waters came down.
Then the green grass sprouted,
And the little red flowers blossomed,
The pine tree pointed his finger to the sky,
And the oak spread out his arms,
The lakes cuddled down in the hollows of the ground,
And the rivers ran down to the sea;
And God smiled again,
And the rainbow appeared,
And curled itself around his shoulder.
Then God raised his arm and he waved his hand
Over the sea and over the land,
And he said: Bring forth! Bring forth!
And quicker than God could drop his hand,
Fishes and fowls
And beasts and birds
Swam the rivers and the seas,
Roamed the forests and the woods,
And split the air with their wings.
And God said: That's good![1]
When he wrote this in 1927, James Weldon Johnson – you probably know him best as the writer of Lift Every Voice and Sing – told the story of The Creation in poetic form, based on, and much like the writer of Genesis did. Now, we are in a university town in a congregation full of smart people who have been taught well by your pastor, so though it is surprising to some, I know it is not surprising to you all for me to proclaim that though the Bible tells a story of creation, it was never intended as a science textbook.
To be clear, science and religion are not in competition, but are complementary. No less a scientist than Albert Einstein said: science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion. [2]
The story in Genesis is a poetic, artistic telling of how God created the world. It is much more about pointing to the Creator than the exact mechanism used to create the world. Science is the field concerned with understanding and explaining the mechanism of creation.
Scientists describe the mechanism for the appearance of life that billions of years ago, on the face of the Earth existed a warm body of water... full of chemicals that were energized by lightning... and rain... by the atmosphere to form amino acids, which then became proteins, the building blocks of life. This they call “Primordial Soup.”
In Genesis, the writer says that God looked at Creation and saw that it was good. In James Weldon Johnson's poem, God created and said, “That's good!” And so, I don't think it's a stretch to imagine God looking over the primordial soup of life's creation and saying that it's... “M'm M'm good!” God created this soup of creation Mm Mm Good.... God Made all creation interconnected... In 1853, in signing a treaty to hand land over to the United Sates, Chief Seattle is purported to have said this: Teach your children what we have taught our children - that the Earth is our Mother...This we know. The Earth does not belong to us, we belong to the Earth. This we know. All things are connected like the blood that unites one family. All things are connected.... We did not weave the web of life; We are merely a strand in it. Whatever we do to the Web, We do to ourselves.[3]
God created the world Mm Mm Good....
God Made all creation interconnected...
And God Mixed up all the diversity... Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa has said: We inhabit a universe that is characterized by diversity. There is not just one planet or one star; there are galaxies of all different sorts, a plethora of animal species, different kinds of plants, and different races and ethnic groups... We are all of equal worth, born equal in dignity... deserving of respect whatever our circumstances… We belong in a world whose very structure, whose essence, is diversity... [We] live in fool's paradise to ignore this...fact.[4]
God created the world Mm Mm Good....
God Made all creation interconnected...
God Mixed up all the diversity...
But, we've mucked up the soup...
We've mucked it up because we've removed ourselves from nature, often failed to see the interconnected web... I grew up in Florida and I miss standing next to the ocean with no one else around, sights and sounds and smells making that connection alive to me...
We've mucked it up because we've marginalized those different from ourselves and too often have not celebrated God's diversity... Now, I will confess one of the things I do not miss much about Florida are the creepy crawly critters, but I know they have their place – outside!
Again, speaking to a smart group of people, we know that climate change is real. Our use of fossil fuels is warming the Earth, harming God's creation, causing changes in weather patterns and drought and flooding. We are endangering our planet, every part of it, all the land, all the water, all the wildlife. It impacts all the people of the planet.
Most especially, it impacts the poor, women, children, minorities and the marginalized, who are least able to escape environmental damage and have the least power to advocate for change.
And, have no doubt, climate change is an issue for the GLBT community. As self-proclaimed quirky, queer, Quaker activist Peterson Toscano says: We are in a funny time in history, a time when LGBTQ people in the developed world have more rights...than ever before.
We also live in a time in which we have altered the chemistry of the planet to such an extreme extent that if we don’t act immediately to stop the insanity, we are looking at a dire, perhaps impossible future.
Great, I can get gay married just in time for the end of the world...[5]
God created the world and it was Mm Mm Good..
We are not too late, friends. We can, and must, work together with others around the world to hold companies and governments accountable, to unify in a concentrated, concerted effort to stop climate change from destroying God's good and beautiful creation.
As very own global Moderator of MCC, Rev. Elder Dr. Nancy Wilson – who will be meeting with key leaders, including the Pope, on climate change at the White House later this month – has said: we have a proud tradition of being on the edge of prophetic, social change. We have tackled huge social issues – human rights for LGBT people, justice for those with HIV/AIDS, marriage equality. We know a lot about what it takes to change hearts and minds, to galvanize, to put ourselves on the line.[6]
Our Hope MCC, I am proud to say, is committed to being part of this change, along with the Athens community. So, on this Pride Sunday, as we marvel at the beauty of God's creation made interconnected and are moved by the Spirit to celebrate the mixed, diverse ways we can know God in the beauty of all creation, as we commit to work against climate change, I leave you with this thought:
God created the world and it was Mm Mm Good.
We are part of the world, we are mm mm good, so be proud!
Be proud of being part of God's beautiful and good creation!
Show your pride by caring about creation – ALL of God's creation, until all of creation is indeed Mm Mm good again!
And then, God will look around and say: That's good! Amen.
[1]“The Creation” by James Weldon Johnson, written in 1927 as part of the collection, God's Trombones
[2] from an address at Princeton Theological Seminary, May 19, 1939
[3]This is actually a paraphrase from Baptist screenwriter Ted Perry written in 1972, itself based on a recollection of Chief Seattle's speech written down nearly 30 years after the signing of the 1853 Treaty
[4]Bishop Desmond Tutu, “Our Glorious Diversity: Why We Should Celebrate” posted in Huffington Post, 6/21/2011
[5]Peterson Toscano, “Does This Climate Change Make Me Look Straight?” posted at PetersonToscano.com, 4/17/2014
[6]Rev. Elder Dr. Nancy Wilson, “Abundant Life and the Care of Creation” posted mccchurch.org, 8/28/2015