“The Whole World in Our Hands”

November 9, 2008

Genesis 1:20-31

Romans 8:18-25

There’s kind of a running joke at Board meetings here. When we’re looking for someone to do something, we pick the person who isn’t there. That way she can’t say, “No.” That way he can’t say, “I’ve got other, more pressing commitments right now.” So when the Board of Christian Education is meeting the conversation might be: “She’s out of town, let’s have her do it.” Or a member of the Trustees will say: “Let’s give that to him.”

This is one reason I try to attend most meetings.

I wasn’t able to be at the Green Committee meeting in October, however, because I was leading a new member class at the same time that they met. Among other things, the Green Committee was planning the two session Adult Education series that concluded this morning.

The day after the meeting that I missed, I received this email from the chair of the Green Committee: “We were wondering if you had any sermons planned on taking care of the environment...say, around Nov 2 or 9?”

Note to self: Attendance at Board or Committee meetings is essential.

Well, I wrote back saying that, while, no, I hadn’t planned such a sermon, I always leave some “open space” in my sermon planning calendar to be able to address issues that might arise.

And it seemed especially appropriate to reflect on “taking care of the environment” during November because this is the month in which we as a congregation focus on stewardship—our wise use of the resources God has entrusted to us. Unfortunately, when we use the word “Stewardship” in churches we usually end up just talking about money—and don’t worry, I’ll preach about that later this month. We need to expand our sense of stewardship, however, so that it includes our care of the greatest resource given to us, the earth, our home.

Land, water, air, every creeping and flying thing—we’ve got the whole world in our hands. Our stewardship of the earth must be informed by the best contemporary science. Our stewardship of the earth will mean engagement with today’s tumultuous economic realities. Our stewardship of the earth will require our best skills in the current political world. We need to be up to date in our thinking and our acting.

For us as people of faith, however, ancient stories shape our response as well. Stories of creation, though far from scientific, give us a vision of our place on earth and our responsibility for the earth.

The authors of Genesis lead us into a deep, religious understanding that the earth has been given to humankind by the One who created all things. And it was given to us so that we might care for it. This beautiful and broken world is our home. Our decisions and our actions determine the kind of dwelling place we have.

As Creation comes to its fulfillment, the creator God speaks to those creatures made of dust and spirit: “Fill the earth and subdue it . . . and have dominion over every living thing.”

Over time, we’ve found ourselves in a lot of trouble because of that word, “dominion.” We’ve taken it as a license to trample down, plunder, and kill. We’ve heard it as an invitation to abuse and pollute in the present with no regard for the future.

Rightly understood, however, the Hebrew word that we translate as “have dominion” leads us to sharing in the exercise of power. It is a word that speaks of the creative ability to act. We can think of dominion in terms of care-giving, even nurturing, rather than exploitation.[1] Reading through the account of creation in Genesis, we discover that God is not the only one who has or exercises creative ability. As those created in the image of God, human beings are to relate to the nonhuman as God relates to them—with love, with care, in a way that fosters life.

Subduing the earth refers to the difficult task of cultivation, to the further development of the created order. As those given the tasks of subduing and having dominion over the earth, we are called to be stewards of the earth.

In the biblical account of creation birds, fish, and all manner of “creeping things” are blessed by God and told to be fruitful and multiply; human beings are charged with the stewardship, the wise care, of plants and animals and earth. Human beings are placed over the rest of creation for its well-being, profit, and enhancement.

And God saw that it was “very good,” that is, lovely, pleasing, beautiful. There is the sense here that the God who creates finds satisfaction and delight in the creation.[2] Should we not do the same?

The Psalmist speaks to God of human beings: “You have given them dominion over the

works of your hands; you have put all things under their feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas.”

In a certain sense, the psalms that praise the created order may be said to glorify the status quo. Those who sing or pray them seem to find satisfaction in the way things are. At the same time, however, such psalms of “well being” may also recognize that God's orderly universe makes some demands on those who seem to have a secure place in it.

So we are invited to enjoy the favored position we occupy in God's created order and to accept the responsibility that comes with this order and our place within it.[3]

Our purposes in life are many. But a primary one seems to be the stewardship of the earth.

In giving human beings the stewardship of the earth, God also gave us freedom enough to destroy ourselves and our world—though certainly such destruction is not the will of God.

Over the last forty years or so we have awakened to the reality that the progress that has made life better brings with it the threat of death to our planet. Words like “ozone depletion” and “greenhouse effect” are familiar parts of our early twenty-first century vocabulary.

By now we all know what an inconvenient truth global warming is. We have heard the projections of the melting of the polar ice caps which would lead to the rise of ocean levels, the disappearance of low-lying areas under the ocean waters, the migration of tropical diseases to temperate zones, the drastic alteration of ecosystems.[4] And most people, businesses and institutions have done nothing in response.

Our United Church of Christ tradition keeps calling us forward.

In 1959 our Second General Synod called for Christian action in society, including the “conservation and development of the Earth’s resources for the benefit of all people now and in the future.”

Nearly twenty-five years later, in 1982, the UCC published Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States, a groundbreaking report on the direct correlation between the placement of toxic waste facilities and communities of racial minorities and the poor.

This past April, the UCC released a pastoral letter on faith and the environment. It speaks of the many ways in which individuals and congregations are moving forward as good stewards. And our own Green Committee is just one example of congregations across the United States encouraging environmental stewardship.

Yes, we respond in various ways. We recycle. We conserve—turning off lights, turning down the heat, riding the bus or biking to work, and putting a brick in our toilet tanks. Yet no matter how green our attitudes or how theologically sound our environmental statements, the fact remains that we are living more heavily on earth that ever before. In a culture based on excessive consumption, even those who attempt to live lives of simplicity will cause at least three times the environmental impact of a rural villager in India or Africa.[5]

How do we reclaim our identity as stewards of the earth?

Perhaps we start with that word we discovered as we were beginning to read: “Look!”

Look so that you really see.

Look. Look at the land, the sky, the water.

Look. Let looking be a delight to your eyes. Look at trees no longer in autumnal glory but with the empty beauty of these days. Look at the fields after harvest. Look in the fleeting daylight that November brings.

Listen as well. Let hearing be a joy to your ears. Autumn has a sound all its own. The geese call out as they fly south. The wind blows through bare trees. The rain beats down. As Paul Tillich once encouraged us: “Listen to nature in quietness, and you will find its heart. It will sound forth the glory of the divine ground. It will speak of the indestructible hope of salvation!”[6]

We need to remember who we are—a little less than gods—and to remember who God is. Search the heavens, gaze at the earth. Stand in awe of all that you see and feel and smell. At that point, recall the One who created it all, who is above and beyond. Then we too can sing with that ancient poet: “O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”

After we have looked and listened, after we have touched and smelled and tasted—that is, after we have again opened ourselves to the wonder of God’s creation, perhaps we will be ready to once again take on our God-given role of stewards of creation, caretakers of the earth, our home.

And then our stewardship of the earth brings us round to money and what we treasure.

The theologian John Cobb put it this way: “Christians are called to worship God, not wealth. God cares for the earth. Surely we should put the long-term well being of the earth and all its inhabitants above the enrichment of the rich. If we did so, the solution to the problem of global warming would be far easier. [7]

Poet and farmer Wendel Berry writes: “All creatures live by God's spirit, portioned out to them, and breathe God’s breath. To 'lay up treasures in heaven,' then, can not mean to be spiritual at the earth's expense, or to despise or condemn the earth for the sake of heaven. It means exactly the opposite: do not desecrate or depreciate these gifts, which take part with us in the being of God, by turning them into worldly 'treasure'." [8]

This earth is our treasure, given to us by God. The challenge is still to be good stewards of what we have received, for our time and for future generations, faithful to the God of life.

Stewardship involves more than giving. It includes how we care for what we have received.

Remember your calling from creation: We are stewards of the earth.