3 Easter
18 Apr 2021
I am rejoicing in the Easter season, perhaps more so now than at any other Easter season of my life. There is much for which to be thankful, even as problems abound. I do not want you to think I am ignoring the litany of horrific events around us; there is always loss and pain and it is easy to become mired in a feeling of hopelessness.
Yet was it not Paul who said to rejoice at all times; he may have said that while he was in prison! So today I want to rejoice that Earth Day is approaching this week and I want to remind all of you that God designed the original Earth Day celebration when the act of creating the earth and the heavens and all the life on it was complete.
When I was a senior in high school the first Earth Day was celebrated as folks started to bring attention to the problems facing the planet. It was the spring of 1970 and I was all of 18, getting ready to graduate high school and head to Iowa State as a Fisheries and Wildlife major. This was extremely exciting that somehow enough people realized we had a problem and organized Earth Day to showcase the problems, and some of the solutions, for what ailed our planet. I thought it would be easy back then: make folks see what was wrong and they would jump to fix it. The naivety of youth. Sigh.
Time marches on and now it is the 51st Earth Day on the 22nd and, if anything, the earth is in far worse condition than it was 51 years ago.
Yet I have hope. I have hope because finally folks are God-talking about creation care and the plight of the planet. Creation care is one of the focuses of the Episcopal Church. Why? Because God told us to take care of the planet; it is in our charge and we have been doing a less than stellar job of it for some time. Those of us who are Christian and Jew have often latched on to the line in Genesis 1 that says we are given dominion over the earth and called that our permanent lease to extract resources, wherever and whenever we find them. This is nothing new; the forests of Lebanon were axed in ancient times. Lions were exterminated from Europe. What we did was put our needs, or at least the needs and wants of the wealthy, as the centerpiece of how we used and misused what was around us.
But God started putting some if, and, or buts on the Genesis verse pretty quickly. For instance: Sabbath rest (you cannot spend all your time or resources extracting or misusing what God has given); prohibition of the destruction of food bearing trees, even in war; provision for the feeding of those who are needy; and even the need to let your animals rest.
We are meant to be caretakers and tenders of the garden of God; not resource gluttons.
As I have grown older, and hopefully wiser, I see that Earth Day is not just about Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and about stopping strip mining: it is just as much about justice for the poor, who suffer the most from climate change and corporate greed. It is about the belief, which I feel has firm biblical support, that all of creation is God’s and not ours and that we are responsible for the care and welfare of every creature. Remember that God put humans in the garden to tend it and we blew it from the get-go. That does not mean we are irredeemable; otherwise there would be no Easter.
Through out the world, people have stood up against exploitation at the cost of their lives. Children like Greta Thunberg have more wisdom than the 45th president of the United States.
Science is good when it points us towards the care of creation; not good when it creates yet another substance to kill or alter life. Wendell Berry, one of those voices of sanity and wisdom, said:
If one accepts the 24th and 104th Psalms as scriptural norms, then surface mining and other forms of earth destruction are perversions. If we take the Gospels seriously, how can we not see industrial warfare - with its inevitable massacre of innocents - as a most shocking perversion? By the standard of all scriptures, neglect of the poor, of widows and orphans, of the sick, the homeless, the insane, is an abominable perversion.
And of course:
Let us pledge allegiance to the flag and to the national sacrifice areas for which it stands, garbage dumps and empty holes, sold out for a higher spire on the rich church, the safety of voyagers in golf carts, the better mood of the stock market. Let us feast today, though tomorrow we starve. Let us gorge upon the body of the Lord, consuming the earth for our greater joy in Heaven, that fair Vacationland. Let us wander forever in the labyrinths of our self-esteem. Let us evolve forever toward the higher consciousness of the machine. The spool of our engine-driven fate unwinds, our history now outspeeding thought, and the heart is a beatable tool.
Berry, Wendell. New Collected Poems (p. 322). Counterpoint. Kindle Edition.
Jesus is resurrected and he is doing his best to convince his followers that, yes, this really happened and yes this is me standing here!!
God dwells among us; pitches his tent with us. If we truly believe that, we will return to our tasks as caretakers, not owners, of the resources that are on the planet Earth. The pledge to care for creation starts in your homes and in your place of worship and is inextricably tied to racial justice and healing, economic justice, reigning in of the power of corporations, especially those who engage in resource extraction at the expense of the planet and its people, and justice for all who are marginalized.
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