"Restoring Relationships"
The First United Presbyterian Church of Loveland
“Restoring Relationships:”
Rev. Amy Morgan
October 17, 2021
Genesis 1:26-31
Then God said, "Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth."
27 So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
28 God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth."
29 God said, "See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food.
30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food." And it was so.
31 God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
Colossians 1:11-20
May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully
12 giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light.
13 He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son,
14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation;
16 for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers-- all things have been created through him and for him.
17 He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
18 He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything.
19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell,
20 and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.
There were no chestnut trees on Chestnut Lane. And no elms on Elm Street. There are also no caribou in Caribou, Maine, nor anywhere else in that state, though there have been two failed attempts to reintroduce them. And, of course, there are no buffalo in Buffalo, NY, because they prefer grassland to chicken wings.
These observations, and many others, led Dr. Matthew Sleeth to conclude that “the world is dying.” He saw patients in his emergency room every day with ailments that either didn’t exist or were much less prevalent even a few decades ago. The death of trees and animals, the pollution of rivers and air, was not just a problem for the planet. It was a problem for the human beings who wound up in his emergency room.
Dr. Sleeth didn’t read the Bible at the time he came to these conclusions. In fact, he didn’t believe in God at the time. But in his search for answers to the enormous question of how the world might be saved, he found his way to the Christian scriptures, and eventually, to belief in Jesus Christ.
In the Christian scriptures, Sleeth discovered that the relationship between humanity and creation is one of mutual support, cultivation and care, and divinely ordained responsibility and blessing. The theology of the Bible supported the scientific studies he’d poured over, and the truth of both faith and ecology pointed him toward a new way of life. He left medical practice, radically changed his living habits, and became an evangelist for God’s desire to restore the relationship between humanity and the creation.
He also contributed to the creation of this – The Green Bible. It is printed with soy-based ink on recycled paper. It has a linen cover and is produced in a green-friendly environment, meaning all the air is purified before exhausting it into the atmosphere and all the water used in production is purified and recycled.
But that is not why it is called the Green Bible. Many of you may be familiar with red-letter Bibles. Those are bibles where all the words spoken by Jesus are printed in red. In the Green Bible, a community of scholars, ecologists, theologians, and environmental advocates highlighted verses that speak to the relationships between God, creation, and humanity. These verses are printed in green, and a lot of this Bible is green.
Some verses, like the one we read today from Genesis, are pretty straightforward and obvious in their connection to green theology. But you might be surprised to see that most of the reading from Colossians is also printed in green.
Both of these passages invoke the image of God. In Genesis, the image of God is imbued on humanity, and humans are given dominion over the creation. In Colossians, Jesus is said to be the image of the invisible God and the firstborn of all creation – before humans, or cows or soil or sunlight. And putting these texts in conversation helps us to see both the brokenness of our relationship with creation and the path to restoring that relationship.
The passage from Genesis has been much-maligned by those who critique Christian apathy toward creation care. The assumption is that dominion over creation means we are to beat it into submission, or abuse it for our own gain. While some Christians may have neglected our divinely-ordained stewardship of the earth, this is not the verse that has set them on that path. The dominion that God gives humans over the creation is that of a shepherd over sheep, or as a king over a kingdom. Not being shepherds or monarchists, these comparisons may not be terribly helpful to us. So let’s maybe compare it something really simple. Like caring for a houseplant.
I have been gifted several houseplants throughout my life. And, once they come into my possession, from whatever lovely person has given them to me, you could say I have dominion over them. I get to decide where to put them, when to re-pot them, how much to water them.
What I don’t get to do is decide how the plant will respond to my actions, or, as is more often the case, my inaction. So when, in my divine right, I place it too close to the window or in a shadowy corner, or neglect to water it for weeks and then drown it, the plant can, and does, shrivel up and die. And then I no longer have a houseplant. Which has been the case with 100% of the house plants entrusted to my care thus far.
The lovely people who give me houseplants are, I imagine, very good at taking care of them. They look like me, have the same number of limbs and a brain with access to Google to figure out how to take care of a houseplant. You could say we are made in the same image. But when they give me dominion over a houseplant, it tends to go poorly. But not because I am given dominion over the houseplant. The word dominion does not encourage me to neglect these plants or misplace them. It is my abuse or neglect of that care-taking role that causes the problem.
Likewise, humans are created in the image of God. And God placed the creation in our care. But we are about as good at caring for creation as I am at caring for houseplants. And the earth is shriveling up and dying in our dominion.
Dominion also does not imply that humans are of any higher status than the rest of creation. Many folks in the congregation just finished reading Robin Wall Kimmerer’s beautiful book, “Braiding Sweetgrass.” Jeannie Stuntz kept sending me quotes for this sermon, and I highlighted enough passages myself to fill pages and pages. But Kimmerer asserts that “In the Western tradition there is a recognized hierarchy of beings, with, of course, the human being on top—the pinnacle of evolution, the darling of Creation—and the plants at the bottom. But in Native ways of knowing, human people are often referred to as ‘the younger brothers of Creation.’ We say that humans have the least experience with how to live and thus the most to learn—we must look to our teachers among the other species for guidance…They’ve been on the earth far longer than we have been, and have had time to figure things out.”
I wouldn’t argue with Kimmerer’s assessment of Western culture, but the Christian scriptures are more aligned with Native theology than Western culture might reflect. Humans are last in the creation story in Genesis, making us the “younger brothers of Creation,” as Kimmerer says. Old Testament scholar Ellen Davis concludes from reading the Hebrew scriptures that “We belong to the fertile earth more than it can ever belong to us. Because we have no life apart from the health of soil and water, we must care for it as one would care for a beloved family member.” Christian author Barbara Brown Taylor points out that humans were created on the same day as cows and creeping things and every wild animal. We are no crown jewel or darling of Creation. We didn’t even get our own dedicated day in the creation story. We are siblings of heifers and hyenas, given the same commandment to “be fruitful and multiply” and the same plants for food.
Dominion of the earth is paired in Genesis with subduing the earth. This word does carry the connotation of bringing into submission or conquering. But again, the only way I can get a houseplant to submit to my desires, meaning, my desire for it to be alive and be delightful to look at and transform carbon into oxygen, is for me to treat it well, give it what it needs, put it in a happy place. Bossing it around and snipping off dead branches will not have the desired effect. Trust me, I’ve tried.
The way we really learn what it means for humans to have dominion over the earth and subdue it is to look to the one in whose image humans are created. God, the creator of all things, clearly has dominion over everything. And while we might sometimes feel like the commandments border on bossy, they are really the water and sunlight we need to grow and thrive. There are certainly stories in the bible that seem to indicate God is angrily snapping off the dead branches of humanity, but appropriate pruning is required for the health of a plant from time to time, I’m told.
Ultimately, the best place for us to look for the model of what God’s dominion looks like, the model for us to imitate, is Jesus. Colossians tells us that the image of God in Jesus is one of unity with the whole creation, holding all things together. Jesus did not come swinging a sword, conquering the world one city at a time like a Roman regiment. He died on a cross. He watered the earth with his blood and fed it with his body. He reconciled all things to God and made peace.
That is what it means to have dominion over the earth and subdue it. That is what those who are made in the image of called are commanded to do. Sacrifice. Love. Feed, water, care. Make peace. Be reconciled.
This is not a new-fangled notion. It’s in the Bible. And Christians saw this in our scriptures from the very beginning. Irenaeus, a 2nd century priest, wrote that “The initial step for a soul to come to knowledge of God is contemplation of nature.” The 11th-century abbess Hildegard of Bingen had a vision that “We shall awaken from our dullness and rise vigorously toward justice. If we fall in love with creation deeper and deeper, we will respond to its endangerment with passion.” Martin Luther believed that “God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone, but also on trees, and in the flowers and clouds and stars.” Even John Calvin, who no one would accuse of being a tree-hugger, wrote in his commentary on Genesis: “Let everyone regard himself as the steward of God in all things which he possesses. Then he will neither conduct himself dissolutely, nor corrupt by abuse those things which God requires to be preserved.”
Christians have understood for centuries that our work is to follow the image of God in Jesus Christ in restoring our relationship with all of creation.
And that is work that continues here at 1st on 4th. It was once at the forefront of our identity and mission, as folks like Bob Worrall and Don Ellis and many others championed this work. But that work has continued in many ways. In youth group hikes and in maintaining our church gardens. In not printing bulletins on Sundays and in folks biking and walking to church or worshipping at home. We may not even think about these things as stewardship of the earth, but sometimes we accidentally do the right things.
And in the coming year, I’m going to invite us to deepen our work on this by exploring the possibility of become an Earth Care Congregation. Our denomination is inviting congregations to deepen our commitment to earth care with activities and projects in the fields of worship, education, facilities and outreach. Some folks have already expressed an interest in pursuing this certification, and if you’d like to join in this effort, please let me know.
These efforts will require time, energy, commitment, creativity, and – yes – funding. We have an historic building, which is a gift and also a challenge. If we want to look at reducing our carbon footprint and increasing our energy efficiency, or developing more greenspace, or even educating our congregation and community about how we can restore our relationship with creation, we will need the support of everyone in this family of faith.
Restoring our relationship with creation is in the DNA of this congregation. You all talk about it and practice it in your daily lives. You’ve told me stories about things we used to do and shared your dreams about how we might do more. So let’s do it.
In “Braiding Sweetgrass,” Kimmerer writes that “We need acts of restoration, not only for polluted waters and degraded lands, but also for our relationship to the world. We need to restore honor to the way we live, so that when we walk through the world we don’t have to avert our eyes with shame, so that we can hold our heads up high and receive the respectful acknowledgment of the rest of the earth’s beings.”
We will know that we are living into God’s image in us, living out God’s commandment to have dominion over the earth, living in restored relationship with our siblings in the creation, when there is a feeling of mutual respect between us. Dominion is not superiority. It is the respect given when something is well cared-for.
The Green Bible shows us that our faith is saturated with wisdom about how the world might be saved. Not just human souls. The whole creation. The dying earth is crying out for us to live into our responsibility as God’s image-bearers, Christ’s disciples, and good shepherds. As people of this book, as a community of Christ-followers, may we have loving, sacrificial, compassionate responsibility – yes, dominion – over the earth, so that all things may be reconciled to God.
To whom be all glory forever and ever. Amen.
Comments
Post a Comment