Sermon
Heathmont Uniting Church
26 July 2015
Season of Creation 1.
“What will you do with your one wild and precious life?”
The Summer Day, Mary Oliver
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
"We, the Heathmont Uniting Church Community, acknowledge the Wurundjeri People as the traditional owners and custodians of the land on which these buildings stand.”
Owners and custodians; people who care for, who love, who nurture the land.
Describe the pollution … A pollution smog haze covers Christchurch city on days like this, and sometimes lingers over Adelaide. In the ocean between Australia and other continents, rubbish has washed together to form islands. Vast tracts of land in India, USA, and parts of Australia cannot be built on for centuries because of the toxic waste that has been dumped as land-fill or industrial waste. Rivers are changing courses because of expansive tree-felling. Whole species’ of animal and birdlife have vanished – extinct – in the name of progress.
Christian theology has often been accused of contributing to the degradation of creation, often with a focus on the phrase used in Genesis 1 & Psalm 8 – that humans are to have dominion over creation.
Unfortunately that phrase – that Christian Theology is responsible for this degradation of creation – is another example of the arrogance of many western, and modern, views of the world and creation and history. The created order is no less in danger in China, in Indonesia, in India or in North Korea than it is in Australia, the USA, Germany or England. In places where Christianity is both the minor religion and suppressed, all the signs of a polluted, damaged earth - damaged and polluted by humanity - are evident.
The common element is not religion, its humanity.
But still, some engagements with Scripture and some theologies have not done us any favours in helping us to grapple with the complexities of how we live in this world.
The Season of Creation is one attempt to rectify that. So is Eco-Theology. Eco-Theology is an attempt to focus our attention on the connections between Faith, Religion or Spirituality and the created order. Eco-theology often starts from the idea that the ruining of creation is linked to the way we understand, think about or theologize the place of humanity in creation.
This link often begins in Genesis 1, where the human, created by God, is told to have dominion over all creation. That’s in the first Creation account – Genesis 1. In some cases this single phrase has pointed out as justifying doing whatever we want to creation - we are to subdue the land, the animals and the sea in any way we like.
I suspect, however, that this assertion has been less about a theology and more about human selfishness, since most humans know that, while we can plough a field and grow crops, the relationship between gardener or farmer and land is a mutual one.
Furthermore, we know that we cannot subdue the sea - a part of creation that is imaged and storied in many cultures and religions as wild and untamable. Indeed any current movie that is set on or in the sea is often based on this single fact that the sea is untamable (The Life of Pi, the Poseidon Adventure, Perfect Storm, etc)
So while I don’t believe that our theology has told us that we can do what we want, it hasn’t always helped us to understand the core relationships expressed in the creation stories.
Often our ‘doing’ has been based around our ability to make money, to be comfortable or to enjoy ourselves that has expressed itself in pollution from our many cars, the motorways laid down though delicate eco-systems, and the thinking that led us to take over and un-balance large tracts of land previously cared for by aboriginal peoples.
So what might be a better way of thinking about God, creation and our place in it?
I would suggest that the word Dominion has been overstated; and that Genesis 1, 2 and Psalm 8 lead us towards a theology expressed in Awe, Humility and Relationship. Or in the words of Mary Oliver – what we do with our one wild and precious life.
First some reminders:
- the two passages we heard today were first, and continue to be, Jewish texts which we have inherited.
- both passages are scripture - sacred text. We handle them with the reverence we would expect people of other faiths to handle any sacred text. This doesn’t mean we can’t question or argue or even disagree. But we do so with respect.
- They are both religious texts, seeking to understand the world in which we live in relation to God. Neither of these are seeking to describe a scientific world view.
Genesis 2 is the beginning of the second account of creation - the first being Genesis 1, which describes creation in a poetic and particular 7 days, culminating in the creation of humans and God’s day of rest.
We will return here on the first weekend in September when we touch more closely on the canon of scripture and the role of these creation stories in them – and the tools we need to engage with them.
But let me say this from the outset:
The focus of the creation accounts is on God, not creation. But also and particularly on God’s connection with this created world.
So what is God’s connection to the created world?
What is God’s connection to humanity in particular?
In the first chapters of the first chapters of this book of Jewish and Christian Scriptures, how is the ordering of the world and the ordering of relationships described?
In Genesis 2 we see a picture of God as creator, God as a gardener, almost a picture of God as a child - playing in the dust and water and mud.
In this book of Genesis (this book of beginnings) God isn’t the sit on the throne type, he is working the earth to form creation, and the hummus to form the human.
And this is key to answering our question about a better way of living in this world. The first relationship described in Genesis 2 is God the created order. It’s a physical, touching and ‘getting hands dirty’ relationship. It describes a connectedness and relationship that is, if not intimate, at least close and personal.
The next thing we notice is that God expects other relationships.
partnership - verse 5 - the Lord God had not cause it to rain AND there was no one to till the ground.
and then in verse 15, The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden to till it and keep it.
God created humanity for relationship - with God and with creation.
In Genesis 2 the language and description are to till and keep; or - the word in Hebrew is ‘avad - to serve or work for – the land / creation.
It’s a description that is far less about power and control than we might imagine – it is about a mutual relationship with creation and God. If, in Genesis 1, Dominion is what God does – and he does so (Genesis 2) by getting his hands into the mud and creating and being that connected – then we are called to do the same.
Genesis 2 describes a creation that is interconnected through relationships of God with creation and God with humanity and humanity with creation.This is an understanding that is often overlooked - that this idea of created priorities is more like a synthesis or network, and far less of a hierarchy.
So here we have this picture of a God who lovingly creates by hand. (Note that in Genesis 1 it is by a Word - it’s a different theology that is expressed, a different understanding of creation’s relationship with God). And who in creating things (plants and animals and earth and sea), also builds in relationships.
God serves and protects the creation, and humanity is expected to do the same.
Into this creation are limits - the famous "trees of life, and of the knowledge of good and evil." At this point, some theological brains start to lose perspective. The perspective to be held is that this story is about the relationships of God as creator, the created order and humanity. The perspective is lost when we treat this story as simply “how sin came about in the world”.
If we do that, if that is the only purpose in this story, then we didn’t need anything that came before. We didn’t need the breath of God - the spirit of God - blown into the human to give the human his unique life; we didn’t need God playing in the mud to form creation; and we certainly didn’t need any of this really uncomfortable stuff about keeping and tilling and serving creation.
But it is there in this story as a stark reminder that when we reach beyond limits in our selfishness, we will impinge on other relationships - with God, with each other, with creation.
There are two other aspects of how we see God, creation and our place - Awe, Humility.
At the beginning we noted reality of smog, rubbish, and toxic waste dumps: I don’t see these as acts of people acting in Awe and Humility in relation to Creation.
I do see them expressed in Psalm 8. This psalm is titled “Divine majesty and Human Dignity" It is a view both ways in this creation-relationship - first - how do we see ourselves in relation to God; then - how do we see ourselves in relation to creation.
Majestic God
Praised by babies.
Awesome skies
Underwhelming us?
Humans
Created for a purpose
given responsibility.
Majestic God.
Psalm 8 has been described as the third account of creation. It is a psalm of praise, a psalm of orientation towards God, showing the place of humanity in creation.
Not greater than God - It is arrogance to think that we can have control of creation; that dominion means control; that special means domination; that we can ignore the boundaries put in place by God; that what we do has no consequence on these fragile relationships.
Our understanding of God in Creation, through Genesis 2 and Psalm 8 forces us to think again about how our faith and living might express a Christian perspective on God, Creation, Humanity. A perspective that includes Relationship, Awe, Humility – and how we might live in our world.
God, our God, how majestic is your name in all the earth, in ALL the earth.
What is it that you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
How will you live in our world?
Amen
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