Good morning everyone!
I am happy to share my thoughts with you today as we observe Earth Sunday. The Franciscan tradition is closely associated with love for God’s creation and the environment, which I will talk about more later.
Earth Sunday is an extension into church life and liturgy of the annual observance of Earth Day on April 22. It can be observed either the Sunday before or after Earth Day, and for us it is today.
Before we go any further, I’d like to invite you all to join me in a very brief moment of meditation. Please close your eyes.
Now imagine you are outside on a warm and sunny spring day.
There's a cool breeze.
But as you look up at the sun, you feel its warmth and brightness on your face.
Okay, you can open your eyes now. As you imagined the sun on your face, was it a happy feeling? Now here’s a question, whose answer may seem obvious but you might have never thought about before: isn’t this the same sun that would have shone down on Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden?
It is indeed the same sun that God calls good, in the same sky that God calls good, doing the very thing that God calls good. And we are seeing it from the same Earth that God calls good.
It seems to me that we have an interesting juxtaposition between our readings this morning for the 5th Sunday of Easter and our observance of Earth Sunday. Almost a conflict, with the ‘passing away’ of the old world being a good thing.
Elsewhere, St Paul tells us to be in the world but not of it. St John warns us not to love the world or we will lose our love for God. And in the Christian tradition, most of us are familiar with the term “fallen world”. The fact that we live in a fallen world is a typical explanation for why things are not the way they should be. Some Christians look forward to the end times when all things will be made new, viewing this world as just an evil fallen place that we have to put up with for a while.
I don’t think God is happy with such a low view of his creation. In the Genesis story, God repeatedly calls creation good.
The problem of course is interpretation of the word “world”. In one place we are cautioned against loving the world, and in another we are told that God loved the world so much that Jesus endured the cross for it. The world we should not too easily love is the “world” of humanity – the society that is formed of rigid hierarchies and imbalances that do not serve justice and mercy for everyone.
After all, according to the Biblical narrative, it is not all of Creation that fell. It was us. Just us.
The sun is the same sun. The sky is the same sky. The Earth is the same Earth. Whether you view the story of the Fall as a literal story or a metaphor doesn’t matter – there is no moral failure on the part of the Earth. And there is no immorality in nature that people do not bring by their interaction. Aside from the ongoing processes of evolution and shifting geography, it is essentially the same world it has always been.
And from today’s reading from the Book of Acts, we should remember the admonition to Peter: “what God has made clean, you must not call profane.” What God has called good, we should not call evil or worthless.
Jesus tells us in the Gospel reading today that we are to love as he loved. This is a present tense commandment, not reserved for some future paradise. As Bishop Terry said last week, we are called to be Resurrection people and Resurrection communities here and now.
And because our use of the world profoundly affects other people, I would suggest this includes our interaction with the environment. American author Wendell Berry puts it this way,
“The earth is what we all have in common. It is what we are made of and what we live from, and we cannot damage it without damaging those with whom we share it . . . It is impossible to care for each other more or differently than we care for the earth.”
Fortunately, while disdain for the present world has found its place in some theology, there have also always been Christian saints and mystics who resist that view with a love for creation, reminding us that the call to love as God loves includes the beautiful Earth that God has blessed us with.
Julian of Norwich says, “I know well that heaven and earth and all creation are great, generous and beautiful and good… God’s goodness fills all his creatures and all his blessed works full, and endlessly overflows in them.”
Again, Mechtild of Magdeburg writes, “The manifold delight I learn to take in earthly things can never drive me from my Love. For in the nobility of creatures, in their beauty and in their usefulness, I will love God – and not myself!”
And long before any of them, various Psalms also declare the beauty and majesty of God’s world. Our psalm today exalts God as the creator and ties all of creation into his glory and praise.
Of course, one of the best known saints relating to nature is St Francis of Assisi, whose spirituality strongly reflected a love for God through love for Creation. Francis came to see God's goodness at the heart of all matter. For him, all of creation is filled with the abundant goodness of God, manifests the presence of God, and deserves respect and care. Francis spent a lot of time in nature, and in one story we hear of him even preaching the Gospel to birds in the field. In his well known Canticle of the Sun, he praises God and thanks him for creation, affirming a theology that respects nature and referring to the rest of creation with terms such as brother, sister and mother. Of the Earth, he writes, “Be praised, my Lord, through our sister Mother Earth, who feeds us and rules us, and produces various fruits with colored flowers and herbs.”
So what does it mean for us as Christians in 2016 to love and care for creation as God does?
Certainly, not all of us are called to be full time environmental activists and educators. But it does mean we should give consideration to our lifestyle choices.
And we do face a hundred small choices and opportunities every day to lessen our negative impact on the environment around us. Many of them are little things, but can they add up quickly when we all take part. Even the smallest house is made up of many little bricks.
These opportunities include recycling and composting, and choosing products and packaging that reduce our waste. It could mean walking or biking to the store if we can, instead of driving, especially if we’re going for just one or two items we can easily carry. It might include washing our laundry in cold water as much as possible and using the old-fashioned laundry line to dry it when weather permits.
But one of the highest impacts at home is heating and air conditioning – heating alone counts for more than 50% of our overall energy use. Setting the thermostat a little lower in the winter and a little higher in the summer is a start. Then increasing efficiency by upgrading furnaces, insulation and windows can both reduce our energy use and save us money. At least until they raise the rates, but don’t even get me started on that.
As Bishop Terry mentioned earlier, the Ascension is launching a fundraising campaign to upgrade our heating system. The new furnaces will be more efficient and easier to maintain, making it a great opportunity for us to reduce our energy impact as a community and reduce expenses in the long term. I hope everyone will support the fundraising for this project as they are able.
I will leave you with those thoughts as a starting point for your own choices and reading, and encourage you to get outside as you are able to enjoy the blessing of nature a bit more. And as you do, consider that you walk, sing and play on the same Earth and under the very same sun as Adam and Eve and every person since or to come.
Let us pray together:
O GOD, we thank you for this earth, our home; for the wide sky and the blessed sun, for the ocean and streams, for the towering hills and the whispering wind, for the trees and green grass.
WE THANK YOU for our senses by which we hear the songs of birds, and see the splendor of fields of golden wheat, and taste autumn's fruit, and rejoice in the feel of snow, and smell the breath of spring flowers.
GRANT US a heart opened wide to all this beauty; and save us from being so blind that we pass unseeing when even the common thorn bush is aflame with your glory. Amen.
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