The Reverend Dr. Lillian Daniel
April 27, 2008
First Congregational Church,
www.firstconge.org
630-469-3096
Scripture: Genesis 1:1-31; 2:1-3 (excerpted)
In the beginning when God created the heavens and the
earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep,
while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and
there was light. And God saw that the
light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he
called Night. And there was evening and
there was morning, the first day.
And God said, ‘Let there be a dome in the midst of the
waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.’ And it was so. God called the dome Sky. And there was evening and there was morning,
the second day.
And God said, ‘Let the waters under the sky be gathered
together into one place, and let the dry land appear.’ The earth brought forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind, and trees
of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning,
the third day.
God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the
day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning,
the fourth day.
And God said, ‘Let the waters bring forth swarms of
living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the
sky.’ God blessed them, saying, ‘Be
fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply
on the earth.’ And there was evening and
there was morning, the fifth day.
Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image,
according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea,
and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild
animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the
earth.’ So God created humankind in his
image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘See, I have
given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and
every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth, and to every
bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that
has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.’ And it was so. God saw everything that he had made, and
indeed, it was very good. And there was
evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
Thus the
heavens and the earth were finished, and all their multitude. And on the seventh day God finished the work
that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he
had done. So God blessed the seventh day
and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in
creation.
Sermon:
Many hours have been spent in the last century debating the meaning of this passage, mostly among those fundamentalist Christians who are obsessed with proving that this is a literal description of creation. In other words, it has been set up as a debate between two sides: those who think the world was actually created in six days, and those who have accepted the theory of evolution on the other. In it’s worst form, the debate gets set up as faith vs. science. But this is not my project. I see no need to defend either a literal interpretation of this scripture or evolutionary theory. I think such debates miss the point.
But to get to the point, let me say this. I see no conflict whatsoever between the Genesis account of creation and science. The Genesis story is clearly not meant to be taken literally, and I am certain the ancient Jews and early Christians did not take it literally either. The literal interpretation of scripture is a rather modern phenomenon of the last century, a phenomenon of this country, when the fundamentalist movement swept our nation and shifted the debate in Christianity, in my opinion, from things that mattered, to things that did not. We became a place where Christians debated one another about questions of belief, instead of the more important issues of how it is that we actually live.
So, to pull this passage, this beautiful creation story, away from those who want to debate doctrine and right thinking, the ones who want to define you as a Christian based upon what you believe about a Biblical text, we need to pull it into the more important question for Christians, “how does this Biblical text shape the way you live?”
That is why God gave us these passages. Not so that we could beat up on another as to their meaning. No, God wanted these passages to actually change the way we behave to make us better.
So, six days, or six centuries, or six millennia, walking fish, and monkeys remind us an awful lot of ourselves. These are not the main points of the creation narrative. The two key points in this passage from Genesis are as follows.
First, God created everything that exists, and secondly, for some reason, God left us in charge. God created everything, and left us in charge. What was God thinking?
It reminds me of my very first baby sitting job, when the children’s parents drove away, and I thought, “Shouldn’t someone else be here making these decisions?” But at the age of eleven, I had been left in charge. What did I do with this responsibility? I did what every new babysitter does. I immediately went searching in the pantry for potato chips and wrestled the remote control away from the children in my care. In other words, with this new responsibility, I thought first about my own needs, and not about the needs of my charges. I may have been in charge, and my charges were not first on my mind.
How has humanity taken care of being in charge of God’s Earth? Our first instinct has been to see what we can get from the earth, be it grain, gold or oil. In Genesis we are given dominion over the Earth not for what we can wring out of it, but because God thinks that this will be good.
Worrying about the environment is not a new and trendy concern. If you read Genesis, let’s be clear: caring for the Earth is not a political issue, it is a theological issue.
It was this theological assumption that led to the formation of the Environmental Ministry Team at our church. Here at First Congregational, we operate on a system of ministry teams, not committees, although we have a few of those. The work of ministry here is done by these teams. They simply spring up when people have a passion for a particular ministry; they die when people no longer feel the calling. That rather loose structure is how we do ministry around here. Anyone can join one, and anyone can start one, assuming you can get other people around you to share the calling.
The delicious food you eat around here – that’s a ministry team – the Kitchen Chix. The repairs and decorating that gets done around the church – that’s a couple of ministry teams – Handyman Ministry and Interior Design Ministry. The movie being shown after church today – that’s a ministry team – Open and Affirming Ministry. Now, the recycling containers inside and outside, the bike rack, the calls to do more to conserve the Earth – that’s the Environmental Ministry –you may join or simply be a part of by doing what they tell you to do. I advise you obey. They are a formidable group.
I even like the name, which is EMT for short. I’ll bet a lot of you are like me, and when you hear EMT, you think emergency medical technician, the people who come to our rescue when we are sick or in an accident. Well, this team has a sense of emergency to it, since some would say this planet is in crisis and needs some urgent care.
Having said all this, let me acknowledge that in these areas, I know I am the chief of sinners. I can identify the problem much more easily than I can make myself a part of the solution. Like most people in this country, when it comes to what I can consume and can eat, I am spoiled. My car sits occasionally in the church parking lot on days when I could have easily walked to church instead, had I organized my time a little better. But surely I am not alone in this type of sinning.
Most of us are a mass of inconsistencies when it comes to our relationship to the earth God gave us. One person compulsively recycles while driving an SUV. Another refuses to eat meat but wears her mother’s old fur jacket like a hug on a cold day. Another drives to church for a meeting of the Environmental Ministry team, whose agenda that week is to get people to bike to church. There is no moral purity when it comes to being stewards of the Earth. It is as if we have been given a job at which we cannot possibly succeed – or can we? Perhaps success is in the striving. There’s still time to take care of the Earth. After all, that is the nature of God’s creation – always evolving, changing, and growing, just like we are.
As I get older, and consider that what I consume now will mean less for my children, it gives me pause. I recall that:
God said, ‘Let us make humankind
in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the
fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over
all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping
thing that creeps upon the earth.’
I am amazed that somehow God saw that it was
good.
Lately, we have
been hearing in the news more and more about the “silent tsunami,” a killer
that could wipe out many lives. What is the “silent tsunami?” It is not a tidal
wave, but as devastating. It is a
worldwide food crisis, which the World Food Program says already threatens 20
million of the poorest children. It’s the first such crisis since World War II.[1]
Here in the
The consequences of this food crisis in other countries are already much more serious, and to hear about them gives us a sense of perspective on how much it is that this nation has and consumes.
Recently, unrest over the food
crisis has led to deaths in
The cost of producing meat and cheese is not just a dollar amount. It takes so much more land to produce a cow than it does to grow crops. With a growing shortage of agricultural land, our appetite for large quantities of protein is not only costing us our grocery budget, it deprives the rest of the world of land that could be used to grow less appealing, less tasty, but more life saving crops, like rice.
Former U.N. Secretary-General, Kofi Annan said “We are going through a very serious crisis and we are going to see lots of food strikes and demonstrations,” in developing nations. Can you imagine how desperate you would have to be to protest for your meals here where we live? It’s impossible to imagine, unless we force ourselves to look outside our little world.
Consider this reality a journalist
brings to our attention. On streetside restaurants in
So as the American obesity rate rises, there are people around the world who are protesting in the streets for rice. It is a strange state of affairs, but one that people of faith have to pay attention to and care about, even if it makes us uncomfortable. And it makes me uncomfortable. I would rather pretend that I am leading a simple life, and do my part for the environment right here where I live – recycling my newspapers each week and leave it at that.
In Genesis, God created the whole world, not nations. We, as human beings, were given dominion over the created world, the beasts, the crops, but we were also called to share that world, and to care for each other. So, to isolate ourselves from these problems is sinful.
In American news these last months, we have been much more excited about the latest put down one political candidate delivers to another in a war of words. We do not devote nearly as much attention to a war against world hunger, that would do much more for our image around the world that any political candidate.
Rather than listening to the
talking heads, we should listen to Samuel Ebwelle, a 51 year old civil servant
in
The focus in American culture on Earth Day has led us, appropriately, to consider the ways in which we could reduce our consumption of fuel, namely oil. Today, we drive to church with others in a carpool, or bike or walk, but we should do that every Sunday, and I know that many of us will try to. For the hunger crisis is not unrelated to oil crisis.
First, given that Americans and people in many developed nations are now used to eating foods out of season, of eating fruits and vegetables flown in from all over the world, and given how many nations do not grow what they eat, the cost of oil has raised the cost of food. That’s one thing when you are debating buying an exotic piece of fruit at the grocery store, but another thing when you are waiting for a shipment of rice, to feed your family in a country where three meals have been replaced by two. Someone once suggested to me that one important thing we can do about the oil shortage is to buy locally grown food, from farmers markets and local growers, to support their difficult work, but also to say no to vegetables that are flown in to a nation whose taste has gotten too expensive for it’s own good..
Add to the complexity, the fact that bio-fuels, which we hope will reduce our dependence upon oil, require land to produce them, land that would otherwise be used to grow grains and rice. So, if we who use the most oil, think that bio-fuels are going to allow us to continue our exact same lifestyle, we should know that the production of bio-fuels means someone in another part of the world may not have enough to eat.
The answer here is that we simply have to consume less. We have to change the way we live. We don’t have to because someone is going to make us. But we should, and we should start by trying to control the behavior of the person over whom we have the most influence: me, myself and I.
Of all the moral issues of our day, and there are many, this is the one I am most nervous when answering to my imaginary grandchildren. I can picture conversations of generations who I will never meet, who will sit in their history classes scratching their heads saying, “What were they thinking? Why didn’t they take better care of things?”
I don’t want to be a bad textbook example, thank you very much. I’d rather be known as having been part of a faith-based movement that tackled the problem, took its head out of the sand, and did something about it. I’d like this church to be remembered for that as well, as a place where the hard questions were asked about how we live and how we can live better. That’s what scripture does best.
In Genesis, the first book of the Bible, we’re told right up front that God created the world, left us in charge, and that it was not a bad idea, but a good one. I think we were left with those words so that every time we read them, they would make us uncomfortable, and make us want to be worthy of that task.
It’s like the new babysitter who is awakened from her
television daze by the cry of a child who has fallen and is hurt. She drops the
potato chips and runs to the child’s aid, and as she wipes away her charge’s
little tears, she looks into those beautiful trusting eyes and says, “Wow, this
is really an important job.”