Creation Sunday Sermon
A sermon given by the Rev. Christine Gowdy-Jaehnig on October 20, 2024.
Deuteronomy 8:7-18 * Psalm 65 * 2 Corinthians 9:6-11 * Luke 6:6-9
My uncle David was the first to alert me to the perilous path our society and with us the world was –not walking along but-- running down. He spent a good part of the 1960s living a hippie’s life before heading back to the family farm. He and his wife joined my grandparents and the four of them farmed organically for two and half more decades. I remember him talking about tilth (the health of the soil) and lamenting that half the prairies’ rich top soil had been lost to poor farming practices since settlers had first broken the sod. He spoke of how humans needed to “live lightly on the earth.”
Fifty plus years later, millions more people are now cognizant of the dangers into which agribusiness and so much of our modern life has put the whole world. This is the deadly fruit of the work of the European architects of modernity. They sought to unravel the strands of human interdependence with nature. The goal was to objectify, instrumentalize and de-spiritualize nature, and they succeeded. Our modern industrial and consumer society has treated the Earth as a store, from which we can take anything we desire in as large a quantity as we want. We have also treated Creation as a trash can into which we can eject anything, fouling land, water and air. We have acted as kings of God’s creation, but ours is a secondary and dependent sovereignty.
The interpretation of Genesis as permission to engage in limitless exploitation and environmental destruction has been examined and found flawed. Digging into the Hebrew is a job for a Bible study, but there are a few things I want to point out. The world that the first two chapters of Genesis show us is one that is divinely beneficial and bountiful. It doesn’t need human genius to improve or control it. Other near east creation myths tell that humans were created as slaves to do the cosmic grunt world so the gods could live in leisure. But Genesis says that human beings are created in the image of God and given the divine job of “caretaker”: preserving the life-giving order of Creation that God has called “oh-so-very good.” The Covenant that God made with the Israelites as he brought them out of Egypt had a third partner: the land. And the law that God gave them stipulated that not only all the people but the animals and the land itself were to be given Sabbaths: every seventh year the fields were to lie fallow.
As Robert Louis Stevenson wrote: “Sooner or later, everyone sits down to a meal of consequences,” and it seems that we are there. We can’t say we haven’t been warned. There have been voices, ignored by the movers and shakers of industry, government, and Wall Street, including that of Christian apologist Dorothy Sayers. She wrote in mid 20th century, “A society in which consumption has to be artificially stimulated in order to keep production going is a society founded on trash and waste, and such a society is a house built upon sand.” Only recently have Christians in any significant numbers become alarmed and started to think theologically about and examine our relationship with Creation. What they have found has lead to calls for lamentation and confession of our destructive ways, and for conversion to lives as individuals and communities more congruent with God’s intentions for the world and humanity.
Our Indigenous sisters and brothers have Creation stories that differ significantly from ours. Their stories have lead to a different kind of relationship with Creation, and their wisdom may help reorient us. Episcopal Bishop and member of the Choctaw Nation, Stephen Charleston wrote in his book The Four Vision Quests of Jesus, “The intention of God in creating the Earth is so powerful, so extra-ordinarily holy, that the echo of that divine love remains present even after uncounted … [millennia] have passed.” Perhaps that echo is what we are responding to when we work in our gardens or take a hike and return home renewed in spirit. Perhaps when someone says they feel closer to God in the woods than in a church, they have heard the echo of divine love. We have forgotten that our spiritual and mental health is better when we are in touch with Creation.
Robin Kimmerer is a botanist, college professor, a member of the Pottawatomie Nation and a fantastic writer. I have not quite finished her book Braiding Sweetgrass, but the pages of my copy have numerous stars and highlighted passages. She teaches her students many things, but ultimately relies upon a better teacher –the plants themselves. Time spent in their company and immersed in the ecosystems they are a part of can help us hear not only the echo of God’s love, but can reveal more about the mind of their Maker, for God reveals something of the divine character in everything that exists. Here are some of the “lessons” I learned from Kimmerer’s book:
She writes in fascinating detail about the many gifts that have sustained her people over the centuries: pecans, wild strawberries and leeks, black ash trees, cattails, the spruce tree. We need to reject the commodity mind-set, and recognize and respond to the world as a gift from a loving parent, a gift which calls for humble gratitude, not entitlement and greed. God’s preferred way of relating is through a gift economy.
Creation contains far reaching and complex webs of relationships. Salmon have been challenged by the dams built in the 20th century. A number of these dams are coming down now and the rivers are being restored. Some of the salmon are now able to return to and spawn in their historic streams. There are 190 species dependent upon the salmon. God does not make anything to exist in isolation from others.
The great cedar trees in the temperate rain forests of the Pacific northwest were nearly logged into extinction to feed our appetite for lumber. Before people with axes and saws arrived, when the trees could complete their natural cycle of life, the enormous logs and snags would foster more life after their death than before. God wastes nothing and death leads to life.
Lichen is not actually one plant, but a symbiotic relationship between an algae and a fungus. The fungus helps the algae remain moist and supplies it with minerals extracted from rocks, while the algae manufactures food through photosynthesis which it shares with the fungus. These very ancient beings show us of the enduring power of mutualism; in God’s economy cooperation leads to greater benefits than competition.
A study done by Kimmerer and a student revealed that Black Ash trees thrive near communities of basket weavers. Where there are no basket makers to harvest trees, the seedlings do not live to become saplings because the mature trees cut out the sunlight. Another study revealed that the judicious picking of sweet grass also stimulated the grasses’ growth. We are part of Creation and God has an important role for us to play in its health.
The knowledge and wisdom of Indigenous people can help us understand the earth. But, in the case of the Windigo, it can also hold a mirror up to us and show us our worst selves and the inner work we must do if we hope to change our relationship with and restore Creation. The Windigo is the name of an Indigenous “Boogie Man” that is invoked to teach children something that many in our society have never learned. The Windigo’s essence is a hunger that will never be satisfied; the more the Windigo eats, the more ravenous it becomes. Consumed by consumption it lays waste to humankind. It is the name for that in each of us which cares more for its own survival and satisfying its cravings than for anything else. This obsession leads to uncontrolled consumption. We have become Windigos, and creation has been damaged by our unrelenting efforts to satisfy unrealistic selfish desires. The Windigo tricks us into believing that things-- belongings --will satisfy our hunger, when it is really belonging that we crave. The tale teaches children to develop self-control, to interrogate their ego and its desires for more, asking, “Will that damage the community and leave others hungry?” Alas, In a consumer society, contentment is a radical proposition.
Margaret Atwood is best known for her dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale in which fundamentalist Christians have established a militarized, patriarchal theocracy. She has also written another book: The Year of the Flood. In it a group of Christians known as God’s Gardeners reject the power of biotech corporations and survive a mass extinction event brought on by global warning and DNA tampering. Dian Fossey and Edmund O. Wilson are their saints. Atwood is not a professing Christian, but she wants good religion to exist, religion that does not seek to dominate other people nor creation itself. She said, “You can not save what you do not love.”
I would like to add that you can not love what you do not know. Our culture/society makes it possible for us to avoid contact with anything completely natural. Our yards and gardens and parks are all the result of careful curation and manipulation of nature, and simplified ecosystems. We can isolate ourselves very completely from the rest of Creation. (Except when there is a hurricane or tornado passing by!) And the virtual worlds we can create with our amazing technology is yet another step further away. Robin Kimmerer’s teaching experience showed her what intimate knowledge and experience in God’s Creation brings. As she and her students hiked back to their cars after a hands-on, in-the-dirt four day field trip spent in the Smoky Mountains in springtime, one of them began to sing Amazing Grace. Others took it up and added harmonies as they walked. Kimmerer heard in it an outpouring of love and gratitude. She had lead them into the forest and brought to their attention many secrets of Creation and they had received the gifts of Creation with open eyes and open hearts.
Loving the earth changes one; it motivates one to protect and restore and celebrate. But when you feel the earth loves you in return, that feeling transforms the relationship from a one-way street into a sacred bond.
Let us pray:
Creating God, you made the earth that we might know you and enjoy your glory;
Heal your stricken Creation that groans for deliverance;
Teach us how to repair what we have broken;
And uphold those who unfairly bear the brunt of our damaged world
That we may one day sit down to a meal of joy.
This we pray through Jesus Christ. Amen.