Genesis 2:4b-22
Psalm 139:1-7
Acts 17:22-28
John 3:1-16
It can truly be an exciting and fascinating thing to incorporate Earth into worship, as we are doing today. I am presume that there has been some moment, some experience we have all had of being amazed by God’s Earth--whether it be an experience of the weather, or a particularly beautiful place we visited, or maybe an animal that we grew to love. There’s an aspect of appreciation and thanks to God for these moments and experiences that I think all of us can appreciate honoring in worship.
However, there is also an aspect of this drawing together of creation and ceremony in our worship that seems odd, strange and out of place. It seems so far removed from this insulated, brick and wood edifice. In many ways our discomfort stems from ways in which Creation has been taken out of and even segregated, we dare say, from Christian thought and practice. The Christian message, after all, is for us, isn’t it--for humans? The Christian story is a human story, not an Earth habitat story, isn't it? Nature is beautiful after all—God created it—but what could God possibly have to do now with the non-human world: trees, plants, animals, skies, mountains and all the rest? Don’t those all exist to serve us?
We can hear the roots of a human-centered worldview of Christianity through a story told by Wangaari Maathai, environmental activist and winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. Growing up in the highlands of Kenya, Christian missionaries came to her people and saw theses Kenyan natives’ deep reverence for fig trees, which were considered a place of worship. The missionaries cut these trees down because, they said, God was worshiped in a house called church, not under a tree. This was devastating not just for Ms. Maathai’s people but also for the trees themselves. Because they were worshiped with such reverence, the fig trees had never been cut down, and therefore their roots went down extremely deep into the ground. They went so deep they broke rock that then released water up into the below ground water system, providing irrigation for their local crops. These deep tree roots also prevented the soil from eroding—soil that grew their food. What was presumed to be “correct” Christian belief that separated God apart from the natural world only served to undercut these very trees, causing landslides and extensive damage to these locals’ ecosystem and livelihood, and eroding also the relationships to those whom these missionaries wanted to serve. (Speaking of Faith, April 30, 2009)
In recent years the Christian church has been awakening to the dangers of segregating Creation from our imagination and thinking about God. In no small way have the vast and urgent crises of the Earth’s degradation contributed to our awakening: from global inequalities, to climate change; from the loss of species as well as safe water, to urban growth; from resource depletion, to the loss of biodiversity, and many more. We are now beginning to reach back into the vast trove of resources in the Christian tradition and discover that there is a God who affirms humans and the created world together in an interdependent rather than exclusionary relationship.
One such resource that is only beginning to be untapped is the second account of creation heard in Genesis. Most of us are more familiar with the first account of creation in Genesis 1 that starts “in the beginning”, where God takes 6 days to form the earth, and where at the end of each day God declares “it is good.” That story, for all its grandeur, has for so long distanced us from the Earth, namely because of God’s command in it for humans to “have dominion” over Creation. This has more often been interpreted as reason for humans to exploit the earth rather than to be stewards, care takers and custodians of the world--which is truer to the original Hebrew word that was translated “dominion.”
The second creation story in Genesis--yes, there are two of them!--is being resurrected for the deep, connected relationship it places us in with God’s creation. Here God forms us out of the very “stuff” that the Earth is made out of--dirt. Adam, in fact, gets his name from the Hebrew word for topsoil, adamah. God places adamah-made Adam into God’s first garden, Eden, “to till it and keep it” (3:16)--to care and tend to this very ground--this very stuff from which he came.
This second creation story shows a God who is fond of the Earth, who longs for us to live in close relationship with Earth. This stood in stark contrast to other creation myths at the time that Gensis 2 was written. In one myth of that time, the junior dieties have to dig irrigation channels, and get so tired of it, they go on strike and create slave laborers so they can rest forever. The God of Genesis, however, gets involved with the earth. The second creation story begins with an earth that has nothing in its fields, but God gets busy by rolling up God’s sleeves and getting God’s hands dirty. God plants trees, irrigating them with four major rivers, and then supplies those trees with a full time steward to care for them: Adam, born of adamah. Adam, caretaker of that which he is made of and where he came from. Like Adam, trees are not just for us to care for. Because they are made of the same stuff we are, they also give us life.
There is another tree besides that one in God’s first garden that Christians have begun to reclaim from an Earth-perspective. It is something that we may not even think of as a “tree” at all, even though it was made of wood. Our tree of life, the tree that does not just give us redemption, but the tree that also gives birth to us as creatures who are forever interwoven with this Creation God has given us, is the tree of the cross of Christ. The cross does not just redeem us, it offers God’s forgiveness to us that restores us into a relationship with all the earth--all the adamah--that is not dead, but that lives. On the cross God transforms a tree that was full of death into a living tree for us, a tree supported by living adamah—a tree that has roots deep enough to defeat the power of death, and strong enough to uphold our tree of life as our source of protection, sustenance and steadfast love.
Today as God sends us from this place, I invite you to look at the trees that surround us on our streets, in a local park, or even the one planted right outside this wall of the church--a tree that was planted in honor of a deceased child of this congregation whose life was cut tragically short. As we look at these trees we do not just see them as nice decorations, or beautiful ornaments. God intends for them to come alive to us by the story they tell of Jesus‘ presence offering us life. As we look upon them we are drawn to trees because they reveal to us that God’s Creation is not dead, it is alive. We are made of the same, alive, redeemed stuff as these trees. We both have a common partner, Jesus, who has come in our form--we as a mammal, and trees as adamah.
As partners with these trees who speak of the life given to us through God’s tree of life, we tend them. We tend to trees just as we would to anything that is precious, and vulnerable. When we care for them, we care for the one who died to give life to all the Created world, the cosmic Christ. We join together in Creation care just as Nicodemus cared for the broken Christ; Nicodemus, a nighttime inquirer of Jesus who questioned him about why one must be born again by Jesus being “lifted up” on a tree for many; Nicodemus, who cradled the crucified Christ in his arms after Jesus' decent from his throne on a tree; Nicodemus, who like us was made of adamah and who like us found redemption in God’s grace working its way through the stuff we find in God’s created world, even stuff as simple as dirt and trees.
Today we do not just thank God for nature. Today we reconcile that which has been separated from Creation for too long. Christ transforms our relationship with Creation--a relationship that goes beyond just recycling paper, stopping junk mail and printing double sided copies, though those are are a part of that relationship. The gift of this relationship is that through Creation we are all drawn deeper to Christ--Christ whose home is the whole world; Christ whose wounds in Creation cry out to us for care; Christ whose resurrected adamah has turned him into a tree of life for each one of us.
Amen.
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