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To Save or
to Savor?
by the Rev. Rich Smith
April 20, 2008
Deuteronomy 8:7-11, Isaiah 24:4-5, Psalm 104:26-30
A most unusual thing happened this
past week. I was on vacation, and the weather was perfect!
Usually, I am a living, breathing illustration of Murphy’s First Law of
Meteorology: It will always rain on your day off, and its corollary, If
you take a week off, there will be a hurricane. But not this
time. After we got back from visiting our daughter in Florida
last weekend, we had four picture perfects days right here in DC.
It was truly glorious! How could I have been so fortunate?
Well, I must give credit where credit is due: to the Pope! People
always assume that as a man of the cloth I must have some influence on
the weather - but obviously the Pope has more!
Anyway, I decided to spend as much time outside as
possible, just savoring the sunshine, since days like these don’t come
around all that often, especially when I’m free to enjoy them, but
first some spring chores beckoned. The garage needed to be
cleaned out, wedds pulled, and the lawn desperately cried out to be
mowed. It had responded quite well to the recent rains and
warming temperatures, and in some places, even though I do not use
chemical fertilizers, it was several inches high. Because we have
neighbors, I do try to keep it looking nice. But mowing the lawn
always presents me with an ethical dilemma. Mowing it may be good
for the neighborhood, but is it good for the environment?
Wouldn’t longer grass take in more greenhouse gasses? And doesn’t
using my gas powered mower produce as much pollution in one mowing as
my car would in a long road trip? Okay, it would be better, if
you do have to cut the grass, to use an old fashioned push mower – no
pollution, lots of exercise – but with the grass as thick as it
is, that would be difficult, and we do live on a hill. So I go
into high rationalization mode, and nearly talk myself out of the
chore. Maybe the best thing would be to buy a goat! How
would the neighbors like that?
And then my dithering over my small patch of grass
was put into perspective when I opened Thursday’s Washington Post, and
read of the President’s announcement of a “new national goal: to stop
the growth of U.S. Greenhouse gases by 2025.” I suppose that
means that my gas-guzzling pollution-producing lawn mower will be
illegal by then. If only it were that easy! According to
the President, this goal can be achieved through technological means
and mostly involves curbing power plant emissions. Never mind
that most scientists are calling for not merely stopping the growth but
reversing it, and not by 2025 but much sooner. And the Senate is
planning to vote on a bill in June that would move in that direction –
halt the growth in just four years. All three presidential candidates
are expected to back it, and one of them will have to give major
leadership to seeing that we comply, which will mean more change and
sacrifice than any of them are currently promising.
So, even on vacation, on a beautiful spring day, one
cannot avoid what is undoubtedly the most critical issue of our
time. I want to be outside, savoring the magnificent beauty of
creation, and I am confronted with the need to be about saving
it.
Of course, the same thing happens when I read the
Bible. Today we heard the description of a world savoring: “For
the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with flowing
streams, with springs and underground waters welling up in valleys and
hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and
pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land where you may eat
bread without scarcity, where you will lack nothing....” (Deuteronomy
8:7f)
But we also heard the stark picture drawn by Isaiah
(24:4-5): “The earth dries up and withers, the world languishes and
withers; the heavens languish together with the earth. The earth lies
polluted under its inhabitants; for they have transgressed laws,
violated the statutes, broken the everlasting covenant.”
But, finally, the Psalmist reminds us that
ultimately, God renews the face of the earth (104:24-30). And just as
we break the covenant that causes the first vision to become the
second, so we are God’s partners in earth’s renewal. So, do we
savor it or save it? It reminds me of what the poet E.B. White once
wrote, “Every morning I arise torn between the inclination to savor the
world and the desire to save the world. It makes it hard to plan
the day.”
Of course, we need to do both. Because we
enjoy the world, and appreciate the magnificent beauty of creation, we
are inspired to be about the work of saving it for future
generations. And today, the Sunday on which we celebrate “Earth
Day,” we gather to not only worship the God of Creation, but to confess
our part in spoiling creation, and to commit ourselves to doing
something about it.
While it is interesting to me that we have tied our
celebration to what is really a secular event – Earth Day began in 1970
and is celebrated by the religious and non-religious alike, this Sunday
has always been the church’s Earth Day. In the UCC Calendar, it
is called “Integrity of Creation Sunday.” When I began in
ministry over thirty years ago, the 5th Sunday of Easter was known as
“Rural Life Sunday,” which would tend to make it about farming, I
suppose, at least a day to recognize and pray for those whose labors
make our lives possible. If today were only “Rural Life Sunday”
we might spend time pondering the impact of using corn to make
ethanol. But even earlier, going back to the 16th century, this
day on the church’s calendar was known as “Rogation Sunday.” Ever
hear the word “rogation” before? (Former Episcopalian have.) It
comes from the Latin rogare, meaning, “to ask,” and in rural England,
it was a kind of reverse harvest festival. It involved the whole
parish going out into the fields that surrounded the towns, “beating
the bounds”, that is, walking in procession along the boundaries
between the fields, and offering special prayers, or “rogations,”
for the success of the crops about to be planted. This no doubt
had its roots among what we call the “pagan” practices of the people
before Christianity came along and baptized their festivals, though it
sound pretty civilized to me, the practice of recognizing a sort of
divine grace on the cycles of planting and growth and harvest, all of
which make life itself possible, at least for folks who aren’t
hunter-gatherers. So in a way, we’ve really come back to that
with Earth Day – the recognition that Earth belongs to more than
ourselves, that there is a power at work in creation, that we can and
must do something to work for creation’s health and harmony.
Whether you call it Rogation Sunday, or Rural Life Sunday, or Integrity
of Creation Sunday, it’s really the same thing.
You’ll hear more from our Green Group in a bit,
about how we can do our part in practical ways, ways that will make a
difference; and they have planned a wonderful fair for after this
service where you can learn about all sorts of things we can do to live
greener lives, to become a greener church, and eventually, a green
nation. Will we make a difference? Will we turn things
around? Can climate change be reversed? Let me tell you of
just one sign of hope.
Since I got TIVO, I rarely watch TV commercials, but
as I was fast-forwarding over some the other night I glimpsed a scene
that made me stop and be sure my eyes were not playing tricks on
me. There in armchairs on a beach, their backs to the ocean
waves, sat the Revs. Al Sharpton and Pat Robertson, together. And
they weren’t yelling at each other. Instead they were
talking. There are a lot of things we don’t agree on, they said,
but there is one critical thing on which we do – the need to be better
stewards of the environment, and especially the need to address climate
change. Amazing, I thought, and not just because two preachers
who are so often diametrically opposed to each other were actually
talking cordially and in agreement. It was because they represent
two camps that until recently did not make environmentalism much of a
concern at all.
Even now, Richard Cizik, who preached here last
summer, is something of an anomaly among the conservative evangelicals
from which he comes. He’s telling them they need to take this
global warming stuff seriously, but he is still met with some
suspicion. For too long, a large number of Christians have viewed
environmentalism as antithetical to Christian faith. Either it
was too similar to pagan sun worshipers, or went against the idea that
the earth and its resources were God’s gift for us to use and exploit.
Didn’t God command, “Be fruitful and multiply!?” Isn’t our job saving
souls, not the planet? Or perhaps it was identified with liberal
government programs that cost money, hurt the economy, and limit what I
can do with my land. Or maybe, as one Secretary of the Interior
once famously said, Jesus is gonna come back soon anyway, so it really
doesn’t matter what we do, how many trees we cut down, and so on.
In any case, it’s only relatively recently that the term evangelical
environmentalist has not been an oxymoron. And even Pat
Robertson, never known for any environmentalist leanings has finally
seen the light about global warming. It’s a miracle!
As for Al Sharpton, he represents a strain of social
justice activism that has also been suspicious of the environmental
movement, seeing it as rather elitist, and taking away energies that
are needed to fight poverty, and bring about racial equality.
Poor people can’t afford to go trekking in the wilderness, or spend
time on mountain vacations, or eco-tourism. If my children are
going to bed hungry, and denied good education, or decent health care
or housing, that is, exist in a dangerous habitat, who cares
about the habitat for the spotted owl? “Rocky Mountain
High” may be fine for John Denver, but for millions living below the
poverty line, it’s just a fantasy. There’s something obscene
about your cabin in the woods when I am facing eviction. You get the
picture: We can’t savor the natural world, when there’s so much work to
do to save the human one.
But that view is changing as well. A connection is
being made. What environmentalism means is broadening. For
example: In 1982, residents of Warren County, North Carolina, mostly
poor African Americans, enlisted the UCC’s Commission on Racial Justice
to fight the state’s decision to place a toxic waste landfill of PCB’s
in their community. It turned out that these poisons had been
illegally dumped along roadways in fourteen different counties.
Peaceful protests ensued, and a ground breaking report was issued:
“Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States” – showing a direct
correlation between the placement of toxic waste facilities and
communities of racial minorities and the poor. And so ecology and
racial justice came together – it’s called “eco-justice!” And
now, we know that when the seas rise due to the melting of the polar
ice caps, and when climate change makes large portions of the earth
hotter and drier, it will be the poor of the earth who are
effected most. So, the connection is being made: the health is of
planet means the health of all!
Basically, we have begun to see that we are all in
this together. There may be two Americas, but there is only one
earth. Seeing Pat Robertson and Al Sharpton together, with the
same message, is a powerful statement of that reality, and gives me
hope! Remember what Chief Seattle said, “ Teach your children
what we have taught our children – that the earth is our mother.
Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons and daughters of the
earth. If we spit upon the ground, we spit on ourselves.
This we know: the earth does not belong to us; we belong to the
earth... All things are connected like blood which unites one
family.... We did not weave the web of life; we are merely a strand in
it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.”
And so here we are – Earth Sunday 2008 – in a world,
where as wee sang, “field and forest, vale and mountain, flowery
meadow, flashing sea, chanting bird and flowing fountain call us to
rejoice in (God).” We are called to savor the world that
God has made, and at the same time – because we don’t have to choose
between them – to save the world, to be God’s partners in renewing the
face of the earth.
“Let there be greening, birth from the burning,
water that blesses and air that us sweet,
Health in God’s garden, hope in God’s children,
regeneration that peace will complete.”
(Shirley Murray, New Century
Hymnal No. 569)
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Last updated Wednesday, Februrary 29, 2008
1
Westmoreland Circle
Bethesda, MD 20816
301-229-7766
Email the church office: churchinfo@westmorelanducc.org
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