Sermons

---

Psalm 8

On September 1, U.S. Astronaut Frank Culbertson made his third trip into outer space. He had previously gone up in 1990 and 1993. One of his first observations this year was the markedly different appearance that the once-bright blue earth had. Smoke and dust from environmental destruction were increasingly visible.

“I have seen changes in what comes out of some of the rivers, in land usage…there is smoke and dust in wider-spread areas than we have seen before…We see areas of the world that are being burned to clear land, so we are losing lots of trees,” Culbertson commented. He was also struck by the number of lights glowing on the Earth at night. “It’s quite amazing to see how many people actually live down there and how much of an effect they are having on the environment and the land we live on,” he said.

The Psalmist says “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established… O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” And yet, the state of world, this earth we live on and the atmosphere around it…is far less than what it once was.

Today we continue a series on stewardship. Last week Lynne talked about our stewardship of time. Today I want to talk about the stewardship of the earth.

You may say, “Dan, why are you preaching on that? Is earth stewardship a spiritual issue?” Many of us don’t think of it that way. Some people get sidetracked on the word “dominion.” It appears in Genesis 1 and 3 as well as here in Psalm 8, verse 6. “You have given humans “dominion” over the works of your hands. “Dominion,” is often interpreted as “rule over,” or “subdue.” Dominion theory, pushed to the extreme, says that creation is here purely to serve us, and we should use it in any way we desire.

Others think a bit more highly about environmental protection, but have no concept that we have entered a time of limited resources. The days are long past when forest, rain forest, water, air, plants and animals are so abundant that no amount of human growth and interaction would affect them to any significant degree. In the last 40 years, we have lost one-third of our rain forests. In the last forty years, we have lost one-fifth of all the world’s topsoil. Spreading carbon dioxide emissions from cars and factories threatens global warming that can raise ocean levels, flood land areas and destroy coastal cities. The ozone layer has holes in it that is already playing havoc with exposed human skin. Resources ARE limited…yet we continue to consume or destroy them at an amazing rate.

Still others, Christians in particular, follow a school of thought that believes the second coming of Christ is imminent, and so there is no need to conserve, or limit ourselves. This thought is often linked with James Watt, former Secretary of the Interior. . . . Is the second coming of Christ just around the corner? It could well be, and in many ways we are called to live as though it is. Yet at the same time, every generation since the time of Jesus has had movements which believed that THEIRS would be the last generation before the return of Christ. All have proven to be mistaken. For the moment, at least, we remain on this earth as we know it.

Perhaps you say “Environmentalists give me the willies. I get scared of those tree-huggers who believe that the earth is our mother, espousing a sort of pantheism that says the earth IS God.” That can make me queasy as well. Some people DO confuse God’s creation with God. All of us would do well to listen to G.K. Chesterton, from 1924: “…Nature is not our mother. Nature is our sister. We can be proud of her beauty, since we have the same Father; but she has no authority over us…(as with St. Francis), “Nature is a sister, and even a younger sister: a little, dancing sister, to be laughed at as well as loved.” Earth is a part…of God’s creation.

I believe the care of the earth IS a spiritual issue. Not because nature is equivalent to God, not because animals are on a par with human beings, not because Jesus is coming in our lifetime…but because our role given by the Lord God Almighty…is the role of steward of His creation…not dominator, not abuser. A steward…is one who takes care of something that belongs to someone else. And there, for me, is what really matters on this topic: the earth is not ours…it is God’s.

“The earth is the Lord’s,” says Psalm 24 says, “and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it; for he has founded it on the seas, and established it on the rivers.” We are stewards, according to Genesis 1…given the earth for food, given the job of tilling and keeping the garden…and working the earth for food…but not for destruction. Yet so often we treat it not only like something which IS ours…but like a possession which we don’t particularly care about.

Imagine if a friend loaned you their car, and you took it four-wheeling in the mountains and returned it filthy, out of gas, and with McDonalds food and wrappers all over the inside. You wouldn’t THINK of doing that, because the car isn’t yours! (And if you did, they would never let you use it again!) Neither is the earth ours.

Environmental stewardship IS a spiritual issue. Why? What is it about nature that has to do with our relationship with God? I want to just mention four things. (Don’t worry, it’s not a four-point sermon. It’s a one-point sermon, and I just told you the point: The earth is not ours, it is God’s!) But with that being said, let me mention four things.

1. Nature shows us SOMETHING about God.

Romans says God’s power and divinity have been understood through the things he has made (Rom 1:18). . It does not show us everything. It doesn’t speak of the sacrificial, personal love God brought in the arrival of Jesus Christ. But it does reflect something of God. A creative, mighty, imaginative God. If you are anything like me, there is something wonderful about being outdoors, about hiking a mountain, about seeing the stars, about watching a field of wild grass sway in a breeze, or feeling salt water on your face. Sometimes it is enough to make us, too, shout out “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”

I took a retreat day a couple of weeks after September 11th. After two solid weeks of talking and praying with people, and facing my own fears raised on that day, I went up to Whidbey Island. I took our dog, Lucy, and went out on the beach. It was about 10 in the morning, and there was absolutely no one around. And it was one of those stunningly beautiful fall days, steam rising off of the water, the tip of Mt. Baker and most of Mt. Rainier visible through the fog, all of the foothills of the Olympics in full view.

And I hadn’t walked for five minutes when I stopped, and unexpectedly began to just weep. Uncontrollably, tears streaming down. For five minutes I cried. And then as I continued to walk, I tried to figure out why. It was something about the juxtaposition of the pain, evil and death of the previous two weeks, inflicted by human being upon human being…and then this unbelievably pristine nature, the handiwork of God in creation. And the jarring contrast made me cry out, asking God what kind of world this really was.

And that morning, I felt as though the waters of Puget Sound were waters of my own baptism, cleansing me and reminding me that I belonged to God in Christ.

Nature shows us something of God.

2. Why is our care of nature a spiritual issue?

It is because of this role of steward that God has given us. We are taking care of something that is not ours. It is not the only job we have been given. We are to spread the good news of Christ. We are to love God with everything we have. We are to live in this world, yet be apart from it as well. AND we are also stewards of creation. We don't get to choose which jobs we will accept.

And in the area of care of the world, we have (and I certainly include myself) by and large shirked our responsibility. The ozone IS depleting, land IS eroding, global temperatures ARE climbing, species ARE disappearing. These are weighty and difficult issues, and there are not simple answers. Yet they are issues which, if we will follow God…we dare not ignore. We are called to be stewards.

3. If we will stop and think for a moment…most of our struggles with stewardship of the earth are not because of life and death decisions. They are much more often life-STYLE decisions.

Rarely is it the case that to save a particular species, or stop a particularly destructive practice…means that human lives are at stake. If that was the case, the issues would become much more complicated. I believe that God values human life over other kinds. But usually, the bottom line in such a struggle is linked to our maintenance of a particular lifestyle. We cut rainforests or stripmine or go to war over things like petroleum, water, electricity…not because without them our human life is threatened, but because a certain level of lifestyle is. There is a big difference.

You probably noticed in yesterday’s paper that a key climate control treaty was tentatively reached among 160 countries…Great Britain, Japan, Russia. One hundred sixty countries setting mandatory targets to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide & other heat-trapping gasses. The U.S. (biggest emitter in world)…will not be among those 160 countries. The reason? “…it would harm the U.S. economy.”

4. When we are poor stewards, it is not only the earth which is affected, but people. Three kinds come to mind for me:

a) When we blindly consume vast quantities of resources, others go without. When global warming occurs, the repercussions affect MOST those who are closely attached to the land. And most often, those affected are people we are already supposed to be watching out for: the poor. Ron Sider correctly says that “many of the things we need to do for creation are identical with our responsibility to feed the hungry and empower the poor.” Our consumption destroys both earth and people.

b) There is another people group as well that we need to think about: our children. Proverbs 13:22 says “A good man leaves an inheritance for his children’s children…” That would be for your grandchildren. What will our children, and our grandchildren have? Will they enjoy forested mountains, clean rivers, pristine lakes? Will they even be able to breath clean air, or go out in the sunshine? Or will we just hand them these problems like global warming and say: “Sorry. We couldn’t do anything.”

c) There is one last group of people I want to mention. It concerns another role we have been given by God. We are to influence our world and the people of our culture with the good news of God’s love in Jesus Christ. We live today in a culture which is very interested in spiritual things. “Spirituality” is at an all-time high. Many are struggling to sort out the truth of New Age religions and philosophies. Many of these folks, especially here in the Northwest, are very aware of environmental issues. When we do a poor job of stewardship with the environment…we may be blocking them from seeing the living God. They may look at us incredulously and say “You want to talk about God…but you are unconcerned for the earth you say He made. You go to church and you pray and thank your God for the beauty of creation, for the seasons, for the coming of fall…yet you go out and consume and refuse to resist the destruction of this creation. I don’t understand.” We undermine our witness to God’s work in Christ by being poor stewards.

What is it then that we do? Today I’m not giving you a list of practical steps to take. (We will have a discussion group for that after second service.) We could talk about recycling, about the kind of cars we buy, about the companies we invest in. None of these are painless. Tackling something which costs us is good…and it is difficult. Quite honestly, I fully intended this week to park one of our two cars as a very small step in doing something that would change the way we live and consume. Sheepishly, I tell you that something came up every single day which made me say, “I just have to drive this car." But I’ll try again. There will always be barriers…always. It does not change the call to live as faithful stewards.

I have a different step I would encourage each of us to take this morning as we contemplate the stewardship of our environment. It is something very familiar. It is called confession.

It is a good place to start. When we confess our sin each week in worship, we do four things.

First we ADMIT those areas where we have fallen, where we have not been faithful to our call in Christ.

Second, we ask God to FORGIVE us.

Third, we ask for the power to STOP DOING those things which are destructive to our relationship with God and others.

And fourth, we ask for help in TURNING TOWARDS God in the future.

It struck me this week that this is perhaps the best place to start in our call as stewards. Admit to God our careless or ignorant care, ask His forgiveness for what it has done to the earth and to people, pledge to stop those things which consume/deplete, and ask for God’s help in positive steps to take. I started to think about what it might look like for each of us, or each couple, or each family to meet together for this confession…and talk about the future together as stewards.

I want to close this morning with a poem. It’s from a wonderful book called “Out Walking” by John Leax, and is called “My Delight.” It’s not a short poem, and I thought about printing it for you, but instead invite you to just hear the poem as it speaks to the mystery of God meeting His people in creation:

Though you have made the earth
for your delight,
I walk your woods and find
in hemlock, pine, and poplar
shelter
from the burning of your sun
and fuel to warm me
when your cold descends.

I find streaming from the hillside
clean water
that slakes my thirst,
and in the wildness of its flow,
trout that feed my hunger.

At your meadow’s edge,
I pluck raspberries from the cane
and wonder at the thrasher
in the briars.
With every turn I find
extravagance --
the unending revelation
of your joy’s abundance.

What other end should I imagine
for goldenrod and buttercup,
for bloodroot, trillium, and phlox,
for jack-in-the-pulpit
and Queen Anne’s lace, for coltsfoot,
mullein, vetch, and lily,
for loosestrife and forget-me-not?

I am confounded.
What harmony within yourself
led you to make your pleasure
and my needs be one?
What awful purpose then
led you to place
your pleasure in my keeping?
What discord now tempts me
to seize what you have made
and call it mine?

The fitness of this place
for my abode portends
a grace beyond
my strength to hold.
I must be held or fall.
With these words affirming
my delight, I yield
my inclination to name
my own what can be only yours.

Let my delight be as it must
yours and yours alone.

May God so overwhelm us with His majesty that we might be renewed as stewards of His creation. Amen.