“THE LORD OF CREATION”

Earth Day Sunday/Easter 2000

The Rev. Dr. Mark Trotter

Senior Pastor, San Diego First United Methodist Church

Colossians 1:14-20

John 20:1-18

            It bothered me that when our adult children would visit us they would bring their own bottled water.  Was there something wrong with our water?  I have drunk tap water all my life, and nothing untoward has happened.  My wife tried to explain to me that it’s a generational thing.  “Designer water” is what everybody is “doing” now.  To me it was a matter of civic pride.  Tap water is our water.  It is an insult to visit a city and tote your own water.  I could understand it in third world underdeveloped countries.  In fact, I have been careful to drink only bottled water in those countries.  But this is America!

            Then, last week, I read in the newspaper that there is a nuclear waste dump site in Utah, at a place called Moab, that has been leaking nuclear waste into the Colorado River for years.  The Department of the Interior has finally started a process of getting the waste removed and re-buried at another site.

            The picture accompanying the article showed a man taking samples of water from the river, and under the picture the caption announced that the radioactive pollution was still below levels considered to be dangerous to human life.  However, the article disclosed that 60% of the water consumed by my city is from the Colorado River.  I’m now drinking bottled water!

            Earth Day celebration 2000 falls fortuitously on Easter weekend, providing an opportunity for the Church to consider the Creation in light of the Resurrection.  The Resurrection of our Lord is commonly interpreted in a narrowly human perspective, emphasizing that Christ is the “first fruits of them that sleep.”  Because he lives, we also shall live.

            Christ’s Resurrection is a promise of our victory over death, but as seen in our texts for this Easter, it is much more.  The Colossians passage uses some of the most exalted prose in the Bible to describe Christ’s Resurrection as nothing less than a cosmic victory, a restoration of Christ as Lord over the whole universe, the image of God, through whom all things were created, and through whom all things are reconciled and restored to their intended place in creation.

            Christ’s Resurrection not only means that someday I am going to heaven, it means someday all creation will be like the Garden of Eden.  In biblical thought, the earth began as a garden which God declared good.  And, the Bible proclaims, the end will be like the beginning, and the earth will be a garden once again.

            Some of the most beautiful passages in the Old Testament look forward to the end time as a Peaceable Kingdom, a restoration of harmony and community, when...

The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the lion and the fatling together and a little child shall lead them.  The cow and the bear shall feed; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.  The suckling child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den.  They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

            And I am sure John knew what he was doing in pointing out that the first encounter with the Resurrected Lord, this lovely scene with Mary Magdelene, is in a garden.  Biblical writers employed images to proclaim theology.  The technical word is “typology,” which means the image used, such as “garden,” is a type of an earlier scene.  In that case, with John’s use of the word “garden,” there is a powerful suggestion that the Resurrection is a type of creation, and there is now a new humanity, with Christ the second Adam, and a new creation.

            Brian Wren’s Easter hymn, “Christ Is Risen,” captures this:

                                    Christ is risen! Shout hosanna!

                                    Celebrate this day of days.

                                    Christ is risen! Hush in wonder;

                                    All creation is amazed.

                                    In the desert all surrounding,

                                    See, a spreading tree has grown.

                                    Healing leaves of grace abounding

                                    Bring a taste of love unknown.

            But lest our celebration be too facile and thoughtless, and to acknowledge the concerns of Earth Day, we should recall those things we have done, or not done, that have placed the Creation in peril.

            I mentioned the fortuitousness of Earth Day falling on an Easter weekend, perhaps it is of even greater significance for people of faith to note that it falls specifically on Holy Saturday, a day of somber observance, recalling that on this day, Jesus lay in the grave, and to the faithful, it appeared that the forces of evil, the powers that seek to destroy God’s creation, were victorious.

            Ecologists warn us that there are still forces that threaten the future of the planet, particularly from the employment of technology to satisfy the insatiable appetite of human consumption.  With the exponential rise in population, and the spread of technologies to exploit the remaining undeveloped resources, the future of the planet is bleak.

            What ought to concern Christians is that some analysts link the lack of ecological conscience to the way Christianity has been taught.  In a famous essay published nearly thirty years ago, Lynn White asserted that Christianity teaches that nature has no purpose other than to serve human needs.  He traced the problem to the Genesis creation story’s declaration that we are created to have “dominion” over the plants and animals.

            There is some truth to White’s accusation, but the problem is not that the Bible supports the willful abuse of nature.  The problem is that our reading of the Bible has been distorted by the sin of egocentrism and greed.

            The science of ecology arose in the 20th century largely as a result of seeing the consequences of excessive consumption.  For the first time we began to talk about the interdependence of all creation.  For the first time we realized the finite nature of the creation.  When we use up certain resources, or destroy forms of life, they are gone forever.  For the first time we discovered the world as an ecosystem.  They way we live here effects the quality of life on faraway continents.  For many, the hardest reality to accept, and the most tragic symptom of our sin, is our alienation from the rest of the Creation, as evidenced by our unconcern that our behaviors result in the extinction of other life forms.

            It has been humbling for us in the so-called “advanced cultures” to discover that we can learn from those people whose societies have been called “primitive.”  It is especially humbling for Christians to realize that native religions preach the interdependence of humans with the rest of life, and that one’s spiritual well being depends on one’s being at home in nature.  Native American religions in particular have preserved what we have been blind to in our own tradition.

            In a novel, The River Why, by David Duncan, a boy stands on a cliff with his mother, overlooking a river in Oregon.  The salmon run is on.  They look at two drunken men, spearfishing from a platform constructed across the rapids.  Tourists line the shore with their cameras.  They have come to capture the miracle of the salmon, one of nature’s deepest mysteries.  But they are distracted by the two spearfishermen and their antics.  The men stagger out on the platform, risking their necks given their condition.  The water roaring over the boulders.  The salmon leaping in their ascent of the rapids.  The men use barbed spears.  They thrust the spears into the water, cursing when they miss, which is most of the time.  The salmon they take they rip off the end of the spear and throw in a gunny sack.  They miss twenty for every one they spear, and many they miss they maim.

            Downstream on another platform the boy saw an old Indian.  They boy’s mother said his name was Thomas Bigeater.  A huge man, he had been fishing at that spot all his life.  He was the best fisherman in his tribe.  It was said he fed five families with his fishing.

            The boy watched him through binoculars.  The Indian had a net and a club.  He lowered the net into the churning waters, and pulled up a Chinook salmon, laid it in the net on the platform.  Then he got on his knees and thanked God for the gift of a fish and for the river.  Then quickly used his club to kill the fish.

            The boy looked back at the two men in their drunken orgy.  He thought, “The thing I find offensive, the thing I hated about gill netters, poachers, whale hunters, strip miners, herbicide spewers, dam erectors, or anyone else who lusted after flesh, meat, minerals, trees, pelts, and dollars, including first and foremost myself, was the smug ingratitude.  The attitude that assumed the world and its creatures owed us everything, and we owed the world nothing in return.”

            The fact is the Bible sees the world the way that Indian saw his life on the river, as a gift.  The dominion given to us is not the dominion of a ruler, but of a steward, or a servant.  We are to manage the world according to the will of the Owner, not in order to serve our own selfish interests.  The Creation is good, and is to be enjoyed.  But its goodness and its enjoyment must be protected so that others may know its riches and beauty.

            The richest trove of scripture describing the earth as belonging to God is found not in the Genesis account of creation, but in the Book of Job.  In that magnificent 38th chapter, God speaks to Job, saying:

Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?  Tell me, if you have understanding...Have you commanded the morning since your days began, and caused the dawn to know its place, that it might take hold of the skirts of the earth, and the wicked be shaken out of it.

            The earth is the Lord’s, according to the Bible.  And it is given to us as a gift, to use according to the will of the Owner.  The Owner’s will is that this place be a garden, and all creation be reconciled, and live in peace, where there is abundance, and where there will be no more death.

            On Easter we give thanks that the first rays of the dawn of that glorious day broke the darkness of the world, and enabled us to see the way the world will be someday.  Christians who have seen that future time, are compelled to make it manifest in the present.  We will not bring it about by our own efforts.  It will come as an act of God in God’s time.  But as disciples of the Resurrected Lord, we are to proclaim his victory by witnessing in our words and deeds to its reality.  Paul described that vocation to the Corinthians in these words, “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, and calling us to be ministers of reconciliation.  God making his appeal through us.”

            As we enter the third millennium since the Resurrection, it is time that we realized that the world God saved through Christ is larger than “my world.”  It is in fact the whole of creation.  And we are called to proclaim his Resurrection by working toward the reconciliation and restoration of all life.  For he is the image of God, through whom all things were created, and through whom now all things are reconciled and restored to their place in the Creation.