Lutherans Restoring Creation Blog

March 2012 Creation Corner Column

2012-03-01T14:29:00.005-08:00

2012 Stewardship Week theme is "Soil to Spoon: Connecting Food Back to Soil"

"Soil to Spoon", the theme for the 57th Soil and Water Stewardship Week, Sunday April 29---Sunday May 6, 2012, sponsored by the National Association of Conservation Districts (NACD), heralds the ethic of personal and social responsibility to be good stewards of land, water and natural resources. Thus stewardship "is essentially a synonym for conservation," so as to leave a "rich legacy for future generations."

Especially helpful materials from the NACD, besides the PDF Educators Guide, is the PDF "Church Leaders Guide." Over fifty biblical scriptural passages are woven through the Guide to lift up the narrative concept of being in HARMONY with God and His creation. The letters in HARMONY are used as an acronym (Humble yourself; Act; Reconcile; Mercy extended; Own your tongue; Never hold a grudge; Yield to others).

A homily on world hunger, a farmer's point-of-view, hymn suggestions and a litany are also proposed.

The NACD "Soil to Spoon" education materials for children would be good for those in an urban context---those who are most separated from "the land." Four levels of objectives, vocabulary, activities, worksheets and standards are appropriately informative for grades K-6 and up. Churches from farming communities will also benefit from the materials in their VBS or Sunday School curriculum, and secular classrooms will also appreciate the recommended book list devoted to raising our agricultural literacy.

Other resources include Soil to Spoon bookmarks,posters, clip art, placemat/activity sheets, PSAs, bulletin inserts, etc. Future upcoming yearly themes are Water/Watersheds (2013), Soil (2014), Wildlife/Habitat (2015) and Forestry (2016).

Because the origin of Stewardship Week preceded the founding of Earth Day, and because it follows the annual April 22 observance of Earth Day, and also occurs at the same time as National Arbor Day (the last Saturday of April), people of faith have many opportunities at this time of year to emphasize their caring for creation.

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web: www.nacdnet.org/stewardship/2012
NACD marketplace: http://www.nacdstore.org/
E-mail: stewardship@nacdnet.org
NACD, 509 Capitol Court, NE Washington DC 20002-4937
P 202.547.6223
F 202.547.6450
Or contact one of the 3000 U.S.A conservation district offices nearest you.
The mission of the NACD is "conserving natural resources for our future." It is one of the rare secular organizations that has outreach materials for churches.

Feb. 2012 Creation Corner Column

2012-02-08T14:33:00.000-08:00

Religious Responses in Confronting the Challenge of our Climate Crisis

"Climate change is perhaps the gravest calamity our species has ever encountered. Its impact could dwarf that of any war, any plague, any famine we have confronted so far. It could make genocide and ethnic cleansing look like sideshows at the circus of human suffering." -- George Monbiot*

Engaging efforts with the secular scientific community, religious approaches to the global issue of climate change are many and varied. The February 10-12, 2012 "National Preach-In on Global Warming" is one. Coordinated by Interfaith Power & Light (IPL), many resources are available from www.InterfaithPowerandLight.org and their usefulness extends beyond their mid-winter religious response to global warming.

Examples include denomination-specific sermon preparation notes and guides for reflections, devotionals, Bible studies and youth activities. Hand-outs explain what global warming is, why we should care, and how it is a faith issue. Putting faith into action by encouraging safeguards for clean air quality receives a high priority of social commitment.

Of especial interest is the IPL 30-minute DVD, "Preaching for the Planet: Interfaith Messages on Global Warming," with narrators from the Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Buddhist and Islamic faith communities.

This is another visual media example in the tradition of earlier efforts, such as the DVD, "Blessed Earth: Serving God, Saving the Planet" that was a simulcast on the April 21, 2010 eve of the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, featuring Dr. Matthew Sleeth (www.blessedearth.org) .

Prior to that were the 2006 DVDs named "ReVision: What If?" and "The Great Warming" (www.thegreatwarming.com) narrated by Alanis Morissette and Keanu Reeves, produced in association with the National Association of Evangelicals.

Documentary films originating in the secular community include "The 11th Hour", produced and narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio, 2007 (www.11thhourfilm.com) and, of course, the 2007 Academy Oscar Award for Best Documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth" based on Al Gore's book by the same title.

No matter what your source of information on climate change, be it The Union of Concerned Scientists, the leading science-based nonprofit working for a healthy environment and a safer world (www.ucsusa.org; also see www.climatehotmap.org), or the church and climate resources from the ecojustice program of the National Council of Churches (www.nccecojustice.org/resources) and their upcoming Earth Day 2012 emphasis on "The Ethics of Energy", it seems imperative that our faith communities have much to offer and apply in providing a dialogue toward a solution in confronting the challenge of our climate crisis.

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*George Monbiot quote taken from the liner notes of the music CD "Rhythms Del Mundo/Cuba" produced in cooperation with Artists' Project Earth (APE), that "aims to help create a better world by bringing the power of music and other arts to 21st century challenges. It will bring appropriate action, raise funds and facilitate awareness with regard to environmental disasters, climate change and related challenges." See www.apeuk.org . The Music Rising Foundation received donations from the sale of the CD (www.musicrising.org) .

January 2012 Creation Corner Column

2012-01-09T16:23:00.001-08:00

Secular Environmental Groups

To follow up with the theme from last month, planting seeds of hope and action for the integrity of God's creation ("As you sow, so shall you reap," Gal. 6:7), we now look at investing in secular environmental organizations. Earlier columns listed Christian faith-based groups as cited in The Green Bible (NRSV, Harper Collins, 2008: http://www.greenletterbible.com/). See "Creation Corner Column" for Dec. 2008, Jan. 2009, Feb. 2009 at www.uclc.org/content/Newsletters .

There are many not-for-profit environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs). Some, such as the National Audubon Society and Sierra Club, have local affiliates. Some are international in scope, such as the World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace. You may have received solicitations to join others: Defenders of Wildlife, Environmental Defense Fund, EcoTrust, National Wildlife Federation, Natural Resources Defense Council, The Nature Conservancy, The Ocean Conservancy, Oceana, The Wilderness Society and others. These are some of the "Big Green" ENGOs (see http://sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Big_Green ).

One challenge to the "Big Green" groups from 1994, that apparently has not been adequately responded to, can be found at http://mikeferner.org/activists-should-focus-on-corporations .

Other national/state/regional/local secular efforts exist, and they also "compete" for your charitable dollar. When you decide to give to a group because of your biblical-based motivation to care for creation, and know what goal you hope to achieve with your financial contribution, how do you decide what to support? Some guidance can be gained by seeking answers to such questions as:

1. What impact does each have (read an annual statement)?
2. Is there a voting membership?
3. To whom is the group accountable?
4. What are the programs (activism, lobbying education, etc.) and how effective are they?
5. What are their ties with corporations, such as funding or representation on their board of directors?
6. What are their partnerships with grass-roots environmental efforts?
7. How large are the salaries paid to their CEOs (be wary of 7-figure incomes; see http://noyonews.net/?p=2328) ?
8. Are they officially registered, and is their financial information available, at a state consumer service (in PA, call the PA Dept. of State, 1-800-732-0999) ?
9. Has it met standards of the Better Business Bureau Wise Giving Alliance, which evaluates national charities based on comprehensive standards for charitable accountability (www.bbb.org/us/Wise-Giving/ )?
10. Is the group really pro-environmental, or does it merely have a green-sounding name (see http://www.dailyfinance.com/2011/03/08/12-anti-environmental-groups-with-green-names/ )?
11. Is it rated by The Charity Navigator, which has a "Guide to Intelligent Giving" and looks at 225 environmental protection and conservation organizations (http://www.charitynavigator.org/) ?

To see an example of a "charity of the week" that has earned the highest ranking (four-star) from The Charity Navigator, the largest independent evaluator of charities in the U.S.A., see any current issue of "The Week" magazine (http://www.theweek.com/, click on "charity of the week" in the selection box). Charity Navigator ranks not-for-profit organizations on their financial strength, the effectiveness of their programs, the control of administrative and fund-raising expenses, and the transparency of their operations.

Some recent environmental examples from the 2011 issues of The Week are:

4/8 http://www.treeswaterpeople.org/
4/29 www.returntofreedom.org/sanctuary/sanctuary.html (American Wild Horse Sanctuary)
11/18 http://www.awf.org/ (African Wildlife Foundation)
12/23 http://www.wildlifeconservationnetwork.org/

Examples of groups doing work on natural and built environmental restoration following natural or human-induced disasters, such as Katrina, British Petroleum (BP), Haiti, post-earthquake/tsunami Fukushima, are:

3/25 http://www.convoyofhope.org/
4/1 http://www.pih.org/ (Partners in Health)
5/6 http://www.gnof.org/ (Greater New Orleans Foundation)
7/29 http://www.architectureforhumanity.org/
8/19-26 http://www.rescue.org/ (International Rescue Committee)
12/9 http://www.irteams.org/ (International Relief Teams)

Other evaluators of non-profits include:
http://www2.guidestar.org/
http://www.nonprofittechblog.org/givewell-releases-reviews-of-nonprofit-organizations-on-the-web
http://greatnonprofits.org/

Readers searching for directories of environmental organizations might see
http://www.ourearth.org/ click on activism in menu bar, then Environmental Organization directory and search by state
http://web.goddard.edu/ESresources/default_directory_of_resources.htm click on organizations in side bar
http://www.envirolink.org/

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Thanks to the staff of the Madigan Library at the Pennsylvania College of Technology in Williamsport, PA for their on-going assistance to me in compiling information for this column and in helping to post it to this blog.

Creation Corner Column for December 2011: Creation and Consumers with a Conscience

2011-12-05T16:26:00.000-08:00

"As you sow, so shall you reap." Galatians 6:7

How do we plant seeds of hope for the environment with the money we spend? What kind of world are we buying? Is our institutional investing "environmentally responsible"?

We know that consumers can influence corporate behavior by what they purchase, and what they avoid. Boycotts influence policy (e.g., against apartheid, or on behalf of migrant farmworkers). We increasingly look beyond what is inside canned food by reading the label (amount of sugar, salt, fat, cholesterol, additives, etc.) and ask questions about what is inside a company---its corporate social responsibility (e.g., charitable giving and community outreach, women's and minority advancement, defense contracts, nuclear or renewable power, etc.).

Opposite "mindless consumerism" many people are conscious consumers, or consumers with a conscience. They look for a "made in the USA" and/or union label, to gain some level of confidence that workers producing the product do so in an environment that meets health and safety requirements. Some products meet standards, such as cruelty-free certification (companies that do not test on animals) or certified as sustainable forestry (or farming or fishing) derived products.

Looking at the web site of a company or by calling their toll-free phone number, can help us assess their effort to reduce their environmental impact, from their responsible stewardship of natural resources as raw materials, to the externalities (emissions from production and transportation to market, packaging waste, etc.).

For investors, either as individuals or as religious institutions, "socially" or "environmentally" responsible investing ("s-r-i"or "e-r-i") is the key search tool phrase for one to "Google" to begin to educate oneself on this issue. Just as churches historically have avoided investing in alcohol, tobacco and gambling, today we can look at an annual corporate report to shareholders to help us understand the environmental impact of our investments. What is the company environmental policy about risks and opportunities; energy efficiency efforts; what its products and services do to improve the environment; is their clarification/disclosure about greenhouse gas emissions; has it been sued in any lawsuit about environmental crimes, etc.?

In addition to choosing an "sri" or "eri" stock/mutual fund investment portfolio, another way to promote a social good, to earn a financial return on an investment that is compatible with ones moral/ethical values, is by using shareholder rights. Proxy votes can prompt companies to make changes. "As You Sow" (www.asyousow.org) publishes an annual "proxy preview" that compiles shareholder resolutions for major corporations. "According to Moxy Vote (www.moxyvote.com) a web site that lets shareholders vote on issues they care about, the most supported proxies in 2011 focused on hydraulic fracturing and coal combustion waste and sustainability reporting." (See "E" magazine, www.emagazine.com for Sept/Oct 2011, "Money Matters" column by Carrie Madren, p. 40).

Note: I was inspired to focus on this issue by having heard Green Earth Book Award Honor author Mara Rockliff at the late summer 7th annual Renewable Energy & Sustainable Living Festival (www.paenergyfest.com) sponsored by the Mid-Atlantic Renewable Energy Association (www.themarea.org). Ms. Rockliff's book is: Get Real. What Kind of World are you Buying? Running Press, 2010. It has an excellent bibliography of print, video and Online resources. See http://mararockliff.com/getreal/html .

Other Resources:
See web sites for Dow Jones Sustainability Index; Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility; and www.ceres.org as examples of efforts in this field.

Creation Corner Column, Nov. 2011: The Marcellus Shale: Where Would Jesus Drill? What Would Jesus Frack?

2011-11-09T16:16:00.000-08:00

"The earth is the Lord's" (Psalm 24:1) we are told. "The whole earth is filled with God's glory" (Isaiah 6:3). Our responsibility, as tenants on his property, is to "tend and keep it" (Genesis 2:15). What is expected of us is to "do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God" (Micah 6:8). Inasmuch as Christ came to serve all creation, how are we to follow in His direction? As one hymnal offertory prayer puts it:"...we dedicate our lives to the care and redemption of all that you have made...".

So how do we redeem that which has been drilled and fracked? How do we make whole that which has been broken? But wait: perhaps these are the wrong questions to ask, for as one secular quotation reminds us: "If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers" (attributed to Thomas Pynchon).

Maybe the more basic question is: Should we drill and frack the Marcellus Shale geologic deposits to exploit the natural gas that it holds? Do we need to?

A concept from the social sciences, that of "cultural lag" might explain why, in nearby states and watersheds, there is a temporary ban, a moratorium, on drilling. While the advertisements appearing in nationally-circulated periodicals and locally in our newspapers, from privately-held to transnational corporations with publicly-traded stock tout the supposed benefits from their efforts, less well-known perhaps are the efforts of underfunded environmental groups that alert us to the alleged dysfunctional consequences of the industrialization of our landscape.

Cultural lag proposes that there is a lag, a gap, between the introduction of new material culture (such as the unconventional drilling technology of hydraulic fracturing) and the surrounding non-material culture (the regulations for it, the infrastructure needed and affected by it, the social customs etc.). In our present case, we have seen debate occur after the natural gas industry has been in our midst for years as to if and how any severance tax and/or impact fee should be levied on the industry, to be returned to the affected communities. Also there are subsequent questions about the applicability of regulations against polluting emissions to the air and water. There are outcomes on the host communities as a result of the influx of employees from afar that need to be responded to. This is a mere sample of the examples of culture lag from the extractive industry coming into rural/forested northern Appalachia.

Such considerations have given rise to the aforesaid moratoriums (temporary bans) so that research and study and better preparations might be made in those places. A more basic question is: What is the county/state/national energy policy, and how does the extraction of a fossil fuel fit into that? For example, does it increase or decrease our "carbon footprint"?---a most pressing global concern.

One senses there is no policy, and in our state the latter-day "gold rush" supersedes all else, and "all else" needs to play "catch up" with the industrial technology that lures profit-seeking corporations here and lures the regional propertied class to lease their land for the royalties they can derive.

Lost in all this are more basic questions. Are we not to emphasize a more benign technology to secure and provide energy? Shouldn't we be developing renewable sources of wind, sun (solar) and water (hydro) to create less-polluting energy? What is the rush to promote gas?---it isn't going anywhere. If we are the conservationists we claim to be, (and don't we agree that we've all been environmentalists since the first Earth Day, April 22, 1970, during the Republican administration of Richard Nixon?), shouldn't there be a plan, akin to the Marshall Plan or Apollo Project, to weatherize all buildings with Pennsylvania-sourced insulation materials, installed by PA workers, so as to prevent the loss of energy in buildings that leak as sieves? Do we not want to equip our built environment with energy-efficient appliances, so that whatever our energy source is, it is used efficiently. Are we pushing a natural gas source of energy to a peak of such abundance that we will waste it, and sell it abroad, thus depriving future American generations of its availability to them?

We as humans are given a creative nature, cognitive brains, rational minds. We could employ our air, water and sun, conservation and efficiency toward a brighter non-polluting energy source future, one that does not jeopardize a sustainable future for generations to come. Dependence on a non-renewable fossil fuel with all its attendant negative consequences (see notes below), seems to be the wrong policy direction to take. Is it greed (the rush to profit) and hubris (our "we've got it right" attitude) that prevents our state from placing at least a temporary ban, a moratorium, on this industry, so we might consider the issues raised above? To learn from Paul in his letter to the Romans 8:19-23, the whole creation has been groaning in travail, waiting to be set free from its bondage.

Notes: From the Pennsylvania Interfaith Power and Light group comes principles for considering an ethical analysis of Marcellus Shale drilling, September, 2011. See http://paipl.org/index_files/marcellus.htm.

From the (Pennsylvania) Citizens Marcellus Shale Commission (not the Governor's commission) comes "Marcellus Shale: A Citizens View" of October 2011. See http://pennbpc.org/sites/pennbpc.org/files/CMSC-Final-Report.pdf
Testimony from over 100 persons in five statewide hearings attended by over 400 people explored the following issues, and the commission made findings and recommendations in the following areas:
Frackwater Disposal
Air Pollution
Marcellus Shale and our Public Lands
Regulations Governing Natural Gas Drilling in Pennsylvania
Property Rights, Pooling, & Eminent Domain
Aquifer Contamination
Water Withdrawal
Create Revenue Sources from Gas Extraction
Health Issues
Job Creation & Employment
Pipeline & Compressor Stations
Quality of Life
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Mr. Ochs first wrote about Marcellus Shale natural gas drilling and horizontal hydraulic fracking in the "Creation Corner" column for the 11/2009, 12/2009 and 1/2010 issues of the monthly newsletter published by the 65-year old ecumenical United Churches of Lycoming County, Williamsport, PA . A condensed version of the above will be found on the UCLC web site(www.uclc.org) , and/or www.uclc.org/content/Newsletters .

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Creation Corner Column blog, October 2011: Green Conferences and Festivals

2011-10-10T17:56:00.000-07:00

Upcoming and recent festivals & conferences upholding God's Green Earth are plentiful. Here are some examples (note that although some are not within commuting distance for you, or have already been held, web sites allow for your on-going on-line educational participation):

Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Farming 21st Annual Farming for the Future Conference theme is "Breaking Ground for a New Agriculture: Cultivating Versatility and Resilience", Feb. 1-4, 2012, State College PA. http://www.pasafarming.org/

Green Festival, ten years as the nation's premier sustainability event, one million attendees (themes are: sustainable economy, ecological balance, social justice), sponsored by Green America and Global Exchange, six festivals, five cities: San Francisco (Nov. 12/13 & 4/9-10), Los Angeles 10/29-30 , New York 10/1-2, Seattle 5/21-22, Chicago 5/14-15. http://www.greenfestivals.org/

Carbon Smarts Conference: Learning Climate Change Science Anytime, Anywhere, October 20-21, www.uml.edu/carbonsmarts Univ. of Massachusetts, Lowell MA

http://www.greenbuildingexpo.org/ re: LEED and GBCs(Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, Green Building Councils). Toronto 10/5-6

Holistic Moms Network's Natural Living Conference theme: Holistic Parenting: Mind, Body, and Spirit. 10/1/11 Long Beach, CA http://annualconference.holisticmoms.org/

http://www.motherearthnews.com/fair/home.aspx Held in Seven Springs, PA on Sept. 24-25, will be held there again Sept. 22-23, 2012, and in Puyallup, WA, on June 2-3, 2012.

5th Annual Natural Living Expo, 9/24-25, Sturbridge, MA http://www.naturalexpo.org/

Rootstalk Festival, a Benefit for Cascadia Wildlands, Salem, OR 9/22-25, http://www.rootstalkfest.com/

Pennsylvania Renewable Energy and Sustainable Living Festival (http://www.paenergyfest.com/) was Sept. 16-18 in Kempton, PA, sponsored by the Mid-Atlantic Renewable Energy Association (www.themarea.org) This is an annual event.

23rd annual EcoFest, by the Hudson River 8/29/11 http://www.ecofest.com/

Animal Rights 2011 National Conference, 7/21-25, Los Angeles, http://www.arconference.org/

7th Annual Alive: Expo Atlanta, The Natural Products and Green Living Expo., Georgia World Congress Center 5/21-22, http://www.aliveexpo.com/

"Doof-a-Palooza", (note: "doof" is "food" spelled backwards), a Family Food and Fun Festival, Oakland, CA 5/22/11 http://www.foodbackwards.com/ (a green and sustainable event)

Better Living Show: Home, Garden & Lifestyle. Portland OR 3/25-27, http://www.betterlivingshow.org/ also 3/23-25, 2012

Environmental Film Festival in the Nation's Capital, 3/15-27, 140 films, 50+ venues, special focus on energy and the environment, discussions with filmmakers and scientists, most events are free . http://www.dceff.org/ also 3/13-25, 2012

Building Energy 11 Conference & Trade Show (Renewable Energy and Green Buildings) 3/8-10, Boston MA Northeast Sustainable Energy Association www.nesea.org/buildingenergy

BioCycle conferences: Renewable Energy (http://www.biocycleenergy.com/) 10/31-11/2 2011;
26th annual west coast conference BioCycle theme: Community Sustainability in the 21st century 4/16-19, (http://www.biocycle.net/) ; http://www.biocycleglobal.com/ conference San Diego 4/11-14, 2011 .

Note: Mr. Ochs was part of the Susquehanna River West Branch Bioregional Project that gave birth to the Pa. Association for Sustainable Agriculture noted above (http://www.pasafarming.org/), and recently attended the event cited above as http://www.paenergyfest.com/ .

PA Interfaith Power and Light Conference, Sept. 18, 2011: Creation Corner Column for Sept. 2011

2011-09-07T13:58:00.000-07:00

The Pennsylvania Interfaith Power and Light (PA-IPL) will hold its second annual conference Sept. 18 in State College, PA. "The Human Face of Climate Change: Food, Faith and other necessities of life" is the theme. See www.paipl.org for details. It is free and open to the public, and includes lectures, workshops and a Green Fair.

PA-IPL is the Pennsylvania affiliate of the national www.InterfaithPowerandLight.org , which is 10,000 congregations strong. It is a national movement of communities of faith responding to climate change as a moral issue, through advocacy, energy conservation, energy efficiency, and the use of clean, renewable energy.

Resources are available to help congregations and individual homes become more energy efficient. Energy assessments are available to member congregations at a reduced cost.

An education clearinghouse lists films, books, speakers, monthly newsletter, blog, Facebook page and archival newsletters.

Advocacy for local, state and national legislation levels by PA-IPL focuses on energy efficiency (and preserving EPA funding) so as to reduce our contribution to climate change.

Conference speakers include Prof. Bill Easterling, Dean of Penn State University's College of Earth and Mineral Sciences as well as Rev. Jim Deming, Minister for Environmental Justice for the United Church of Christ and author of "From Southern Fried Guilt to Spiritual Responsibility in IPL founder Rev. Sally Bingham's book Love God Heal Earth.

Reminder: The Constitution of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Article 1, section 27 reads as follows: "The people have a right to clean air, pure water, and to the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic and esthetic values of the environment. Pennsylvania's public natural resources are the common property of all the people, including generations to come. As trustee of these resources, the Commonwealth shall conserve and maintain them for the benefit of all the people."

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Michael Ochs chaired the Lutheran environmental task force for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) Upper Susquehanna Synod's Committee for Church in Society for much of its existence from the late 1980s to 2007, and during that time Lutheran churches in the synod were encouraged to do energy audits and to re-lamp with energy efficient lighting (compact fluorescent lamps, or "cfl's") with a revolving no-interest loan fund made possible from the national ELCA and its then director of environmental stewardship, Dr. Job Ebenezer.

Creation Restoring Lutherans? Creation Corner Column, August 2011

2011-08-25T15:40:00.000-07:00

An article in the September 2011 issue of ODE: for intelligent optimists (http://www.odemagazine.com/) piqued my interest. Its title is "Take a Hike." The subtitle, "How attention restoration theory shows that nature sharpens the mind" and the pull-quote on p. 25 ("...exposure to nature restores our cognitive functions, enabling us to concentrate better") seemed to be ancient biblical wisdom that we all have experience with (see examples in The Green Bible: NRSV). And now it is being put to the scientific test.

For Lutherans, and anyone else, having trouble concentrating, cannot focus, perhaps diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), being mentally restless, unable to problem-solve, having mild memory loss, having "brain-fade" as our brains are being overloaded with our "multi-tasking" amidst a glut of information (sensory overload) in a complex world, all leads to our being "stressed out."

The "take-a-hike" solution comes from the therapeutic application of "attention restoration theory" (ART): a walk in the woods, perhaps sitting at the seashore, gazing at clouds, tending a garden (horticultural therapy). Nursing homes provide an "Eden" setting, trying to replicate some of the outside nature, inside. Post-surgical improvement may be enhanced in natural scene settings.

Spending time in some environmental or natural settings (nature, God's creation) potentially restores us. Green space within urban environments, green housing, urban forests, "certified" tree cities, parks, provisions for bike lanes, the relationship between how neighborhoods are designed with walkability and obesity in mind, anti-noise ordinances, architecture that is "open" to the outdoors, et cetera, may all point to what the field of environmental psychology says are "conditions under which people are more reasonable and more environmentally responsible" and "where the influence of fatigue-producing environments are reduced."

Perhaps our experience of "flow", a psychological concept proposed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, "a mental state of operation in which a person in an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement and success in the process of the activity" can be facilitated by attention restoration therapy in nature.

Perhaps we are genetically "hard-wired", given our origin "in the garden," to seek and experience benefits that are stimulated by our exposure to, and involvement with, creation (aka nature, the natural environment).

More study is warranted, of course. One "ecopsychology project "seeks to unravel the factors that either enhance or detract from an individual's sense of feeling connected to nature." There is the biophilia hypothesis to explore: it posits, according to Edward O. Wilson, that there is an instinctive bond between humans and other living systems (a "love of life" that would lead us to protect what we love?).

What role does an environment have in prompting people to be more reasonable, effective and psychologically healthy? What are the implications of sprawl or non-sprawl on our psychological well-being and sense of community? How can the municipal planning process anticipate the consequences? What results from window-less environments, and does it make a difference to us what we see from a window? Is our identity improved through environmental stewardship?

Much of this work in the field was stimulated by Rachel and Stephen Kaplan in their 1989 book The Experience of Nature: A Psychological Perspective. Today there is the International Association for the Study of People and their Surroundings. And many readers are acquainted with the phrase popularized by Richard Louv, nature-deficit disorder.

Note: ODE magazine, is according to the publisher, "the first independent, international magazine for positive change. ODE reports on whatever works in our world. It may seem strange but that is an exceptional editorial mission in today's world where most media focus daily on whatever, wherever wrong. ODE presents itself as the magazine 'for intelligent optimists'---for the people who know that there is (the beginning of) a solution for every problem.

ODE was founded in The Netherlands in 1995 and launched its first English edition in the United States in 2003. ODE is currently published monthly (except February and August) in Dutch and English from offices in Rotterdam, The Netherlands and Mill Valley, California.
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The Creation Corner Column compiler, Michael Ochs, earned a B.A. degree from Gettysburg College in 1965.

Commentary on Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost

2011-08-22T11:28:00.000-07:00

Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost in Year A

Following Jesus as Servant of Creation is for more than Self-Centered Reasons. It is pure Altruism!!

Care for Creation Commentary on the Common Lectionary—Year A 2011

By Dennis Ormseth

Readings for:

Readings for Year A 2011

Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost Psalm 26:1-8 Jeremiah 15:15-21 Romans 12:9-21 Matthew 16:21-28

In our comment on the lections for the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost we presented an argument for the appropriateness of our identification of Jesus as “the Lord, the Servant of Creation.” Authorization for this new title, we suggested, grows out of Jesus’ promise that he would build his church on the basis of Peter’ confession and that it’s use constitutes a proper use of the powers vested in the church “to bind and loose” such matters as arise in the manifestation of God’s empire. The argument we have presented provides strong encouragement for the work of caring for creation on the part of the church, we believe, with the caution that this Sunday’s Gospel needs to be taken into consideration as one engages in such care.

What might “taking up one’s cross and following Jesus” mean for the care of creation?

Our concern is this: when ecological awareness and political action on environmental issues become part of the ethos of the Christian church, they should be governed by principles that Jesus laid down for his followers for their ministry. It follows, with respect to the Gospel reading, that just as Peter’s confidence in his confession of Jesus as Messiah is challenged in this Sunday’s Gospel by Jesus’ announcement that he “must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised,” so also does the authorization of care of creation entail an expectation that those who draw on Jesus for support and guidance for their care of creation will conform to the counsel set forth in his response to Peter’s rebuke:

If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life?” Or what will they give in return for their life? (16:24-26).

What, then, might “taking up one’s cross and following Jesus” mean for the care of creation?

“Jesus does for the creation what God knows the creation needs, not what Jesus as a human being might find more desirable and ‘wise.’”

Our answer will of course be shaped by what we understand it to have meant for Jesus to take up his cross. Warren Carter explains the necessity of Jesus’ suffering in terms of two broad themes. First, there is the political imperative: “He must suffer in Jerusalem because the center is always threatened by the margins and the empire strikes back at those who expose its injustice and who promote an alternative empire. His suffering is the inevitable consequence of this collision course with the political, socioeconomic, and religious elite.” (Carter, Matthew and the Margins: A Sociopolitical and Religious Reading, p. 341). To care for creation as Jesus cares for it, accordingly, carries an expectation of coming into conflict with the economic and political structures of our society, with an awareness that this conflict will be costly to one’s status and power in relationship to the community where one lives. As we suggested in our comment on the readings for Passion Sunday, Jesus, who serves God by faithfully serving creation, suffers precisely on account of that service. “Jesus does for the creation what God knows the creation needs, not what Jesus as a human being might find more desirable and ‘wise.’” In Jesus’ words from the Gospel, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” For, to follow Jesus, as Carter puts it, “is to renounce the practice of telling God and God’s agent how God’s purposes are best accomplished. It is to refuse to place oneself ahead of, or in the place of, the revealer.” It was in holding to this rule that Jesus came into conflict with the religious and political authorities. And so will we.

Will we face the cost?

At the same time, it is precisely this “cost” that can be expected to generate the spiritual power and churchly social capital needed to stand in steadfast opposition to the community’s disregard for creation, and the courage to await vindication. Coinciding with this first necessity is a second, more explicitly theological one: his suffering is “also inevitable because through Jesus’ suffering and death, God will expose the limits of the elite’s power to punish and control. God will raise him to show that while the political and religious elite trade in death, God’s sovereignty asserts life over death. They do not have the last word” (Ibid.).

The appeal to care for creation is here grounded in a radically altruistic regard for others, irrespective of the consequences for one’s self.

The difference of approach here, in comparison with standard appeals for action on environmental issues, is clear. The latter generally appeal to rationally calculated and/or emotionally awakened self-interest. Utilization of new technologies, it is urged, save a congregation money as well as reduce pollution; or, it is said, we must act so that our grandchildren can enjoy the same quality of life we enjoy, or better. Such appeals have their place, to be sure. But the appeal here is instead grounded in a radically altruistic regard for others, irrespective of consequences for one’s self. Again, in Jesus’ words, “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?” Or, as Carter puts it, “Jesus’ scandalous call . . . is a call to martyrdom, to die as Jesus does . . . . Such is the risk of continuing Jesus’ countercultural work of proclaiming and demonstrating God’s empire (10:7-8).” Because the calculation involved here is a matter of life and death, both one’s own and others, the action provides the occasion for the manifestation of the living God’s creative sovereignty over life and death; only so can one actually hope for defeat of the demonic powers operative in the oppressive systems of the social and political order, which—because they are deeply rooted in self-concern and presuppose the existence of the self in unbroken continuity and undiminished power—cannot otherwise be overcome.

Paul challenges us to oppose evil with goodness.

The second lesson, Romans 12:9-21, provides an illuminating comparison of different ways of developing an ethic of care for creation. The ethical counsels offered by Paul also express a degree of altruistic regard for the other, informed as they are by the quest “to discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect” offered in 12:2 as the basic principle of Christian life. Carol Dempsey appropriately characterizes the two main themes of the counsels as follows:

. . . first, the ways that Christians are to manifest genuine love (vv. 10-13), and second, the obligations that one has towards one’s enemies (vv. 14-20). The final verse summarizes Paul’s comments: Christians are not to succumb to evil and evil’s ways but are to deal with evil according to the ways of goodness (Dempsey, ‘Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost/ Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time, in New Proclamation Year A, 2002, p. 188).

However, notably missing from the counsels in this passage is the eschatological life and death thrust of Jesus’ teaching. David Horrell, Cherryl Hunt, and Christopher Southgate make the argument that while Paul’s ethical teaching represents (in this and other passages such as Romans 12:14-17; Galatians 6:10; Philippians 4:5; 1 Thessalonians 3:12, 5:15)

an ethic of universal human concern’ that offers the potential to undergird some forms of ecological reflection, since the injunction to love or do good to all (human) neighbors can promote action to mitigate the effects of environmental degradation or change where this influences human health or welfare, for example, in flooding exacerbated by global warming. But this remains a theological ethic that is essentially anthropocentric (Horrell, Hunt, and Southgate, Greening Paul: Rereading the Apostle in a Time of Ecological Crisis, pp. 195-95.)

Paul encompasses the whole creation in the story of redemption!

These authors propose to go beyond this exclusively anthropocentric concern by reading such passages in the light of Romans 8:19-23 and Colossians 1:15-20, where Paul more “clearly encompasses the whole creation” in his story of redemption. More helpful, as we look to developing a message for Christians gathered in worship, we suggest, is to read it in the light of today’s Gospel. This scripture supplies the missing kenotic and eschatological dimensions of the narrative of Jesus’ life that provide for the inclusion of the whole of creation as a proper object of Christian ethical concern.

What might “taking up one’s cross and following Jesus” mean for the care of creation?

“Jesus does for the creation what God knows the creation needs, not what Jesus as a human being might find more desirable and ‘wise.’”

Will we face the cost?

The appeal to care for creation is here grounded in a radically altruistic regard for others, irrespective of the consequences for one’s self.

Paul challenges us to oppose evil with goodness.

Paul encompasses the whole creation in the story of redemption!

Wolves not endangered?

2011-08-18T05:00:00.000-07:00

Under the radar, the recent Congressional deficit deal included a rider to de-list wolves from the endangered species list, that aims to exterminate most of the wolves left in the lower 48: http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2011/08/1/jvm.wolves.endangered.list.hln?iref=allsearch

Reflection for Eighth Sunday after Pentecost by Dr. Dennis Ormseth

2011-07-31T12:50:00.000-07:00

Eighth Sunday after Pentecost in Year A

Jesus calms the storm—not dominating nature but restoring a relationship of peace!

Care for Creation Commentary on the Common Lectionary—Year A 2011

By Dennis Ormseth

Readings for:

Eighth Sunday after Pentecost: Psalm 85:8-13 1 Kings 19:9-18 Romans 10:5-15 Matthew 14:22-33

Following “immediately” on the story of the “feeding the five thousand” as this Sunday’s Gospel does, the text provides opportunity for extending our consideration of the relationship between Jesus’ care of humans and the ecological contexts in which that care occurs. There we saw how placement of the story in “a deserted place” illuminates Jesus’ care for human well-being as part of his care for the whole of creation. And we made a few suggestions about how this relationship might be reflected in the life of a congregation. The narrative of today’s Gospel redoubles the learning, except that now it moves in the opposite direction. Here the movement of the story is from mountain wilderness to the disciples on the sea and it illuminates the significance of Jesus’ relationship to creation in his care for human creatures.

Jesus sends his disciples out on the sea to meet him on the other side, while he moves more deeply into wilderness and then ascends “the mountain by himself to pray” (Matthew 14:23). Jesus’ movement, Warren Carter suggests, “evokes Moses’ ascent of Sinai, where he prays (Exod 32:30-34; 34:8-9). It also alludes to worship on Mt Zion (Isa 2:2-3)” (Carter, Matthew and the Margins: A Sociopolitical and Religious Reading, p.309). Of course, this is not the first time Jesus ascends “the mountain.” Just as the story of the feeding of five thousand in “a deserted place” reminded us of his first temptation in the wilderness, so also does this ascent to a mountain recall the third temptation, in which Satan took Jesus “to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor.” Jesus’ faithfulness to God’s purposes for the creation, affirmed by that story, may be assumed here also, as the ascent recalls not only the mountain of temptation but also the introduction to the Sermon on the Mount (5:1). Indeed, as Carter notes, this is the first scene involving a mountain ever since Jesus’ descent in 8:1 at the end of the Sermon on the Mount (Carter, p. 309).

We have argued earlier in this series that Jesus’ frequent “return to the mountains” carries much significance for care of creation. Our comment on the introduction to the Sermon on the Mount is relevant here as well:

What exactly is it about mountains that renders them appropriate sites for divine epiphanies and revelations? Why does one expect to encounter God there and to obtain guidance as to how one should live? That the mountains manifestly transcend the plain where life is normally lived is obvious, as also is their seemingly eternal duration through time. . . . [S]tanding before them is an impressive experience; and awareness of their enduring presence greatly enhances their credibility as witnesses on God’s behalf. Additionally, their remoteness from human community is also surely significant. They are part of that “wild nature” that compels us to “quiet the thunder of our own ambitions, our own worship both of God and of idols” (in Christopher Southgate’s phrase), so that the mountains’ praise of God “can be itself without our distorting it.” Ideally, their witness can be counted upon to be free of human taint. Southgate comments: “We should long to hear that praise as the earliest humans heard it, and make space in our lives and our world to ensure that we do” (p. 114). (For Southgate’s observation that such places need to be protected as part of our responsibility for care of creation and the reference of this quotation, see our comment on the Third Sunday after the Epiphany).

Jesus joins in the mountains’ praise of God.

Jesus’ return to the mountain at this point thus underscores his intimate relationship with God, for which the remoteness of the mountain from daily life provides social space and psychological distance. Jesus, as it were, joins in the mountains’ praise of God.

In Matthew, the mountain stands for all creation

Jesus’ ascent of the mountain serves an additional purpose, however, in that it reintroduces the mountain to the narrative as a complex metaphor for creation, understood as an entire living system. As we noted in our comment on the assigned lessons for the Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany, for today’s readers of the Gospel,

a mountain constitutes a special, whole ecosystem that incorporates in a representative way many biotic subsystems—ranging in some instances from arctic to subtropical and tropical—into a life-giving and sustaining whole that passes through the several ranges and seasons of life. What one learns from reading that ecology is relevant not only to the immediate site under examination, but can be extended to other regions as well, indeed in some measure to the entire globe, for example, by the measurements taken by ecologists of the decline of mountain glaciers and the river systems that flow from them in their search for understanding the dynamics of global climate change. To those who know how to listen, the mountain speaks, as it were, about the well-being of the whole Earth.

What was Jesus praying on the mountain?

Jesus’ ascent of the mountain at this point in the narrative of the Gospel thus underscores his relationship not only to God but also to the mountain and the creation that it represents. Again Carter insightfully points to Jesus’ action as obedience to “his own teaching on secret prayer (6:5-6). Presumably from 6:7-15, he prays for the hallowing of God’s name, the coming of God’s empire, the doing of God’s will, the provision of food and forgiveness, and for trust that God will accomplish God’s purposes. The subsequent miracle derives from his relationship with God (cf. 11:25-27), hallows God’s name, and expresses God’s empire and will” (Carter, p. 309). We would sharpen the point, because we think Jesus’ prayer for the coming of God’s empire would specifically include the request that God’s “will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”—in conformity with his role as Servant of Creation. Indeed, his very presence on the mountain, understood as the representative of the entire creation, already represents something of a realization of that prayer. And the encounter that follows upon his descent does so even more dramatically.

God’s presence is in the silence.

The text admittedly says nothing of Jesus’ time on the mountain, other than emphasizing his solitude there. The reading from 1 Kings 19:9-18, however, suggests a pattern of action that is supportive of our interpretation. When Elijah, also alone, on the mountain of Horeb, encounters God in the silence after wind, earthquake, and fire, his conversation with God spells out God’s will for Israel. As Carol Dempsey points out, as Earth quiets itself, “God gives Elijah a series of directives that offer the prophet hope (vv. 15-18) and, more specifically, that deal with the problem of covenant infidelity” (Dempsey, New Proclamation, Year A, 2002, p. 160). What follows in the narrative of 1 Kings is a working out of those directives. Similarly, we would suggest that what happens upon Jesus’ descent also serves to respond to the problem of faithfulness (considered somewhat more generally than covenantal fidelity) as a crisis in the relationship between God as creator and human creatures.

In the Elijah narrative, we note that God’s presence is emphatically not identified with the wind, the earthquake, and the fire, but rather with the subsequent silence. So also, when Jesus rejoins his disciples and finds them in peril, the sea similarly quiets itself. In both narratives, the presence of God—for surely Jesus here stands in for God, as the disciples confess him to be “Son of God”—is signaled by the quieting of creation’s turbulence. So also, in both narratives, the resolution of the crisis comes as a restoration of faith.

The relationship of God to the creation is typically characterized by the quiet after the storm.

Why is this significant? It suggests that the relationship of God to the creation, in such moments of decisive significance as these epiphanies are, is typically characterized by the quiet after the storm, or a state of rest like that which followed God’s creative activity on the seventh day of creation, or like the peace that followed the raging of the storm in the narrative of the great flood. In the moment of that stillness, the people are freed from their fear of the God they encounter in the experience of creation’s awesome energies. Jesus’ approach breaks the power of the fear that so easily casts our relationship to nature in a conflicted, oppositional mode. Thus, in his descent from the mountain, Jesus brings with him the state of peace between himself, God, and the creation, a state of peace for which he might well have appealed in his prayer on the mountain.

It is important to emphasize that the storm and the quiet are complementary aspects of one experience of God’s presence. There is a tendency in the interpretation of this text to view the wind and the seas as representative of chaotic forces in opposition to God, which, because they endanger the humans in the narrative, Jesus must subdue. Carter, for example, writes that “walking on the sea is something God does, expressive of God’s sovereignty over the sea and creation. . . In walking on the sea, Jesus does what God does. He manifests God’s presence and demonstrates God’s reign over the sea and all the opposing forces it represents. He removes what impeded the disciples, enabling them to cross the sea” (Carter, p. 310). Carter emphasizes God’s power over the forces of nature and, so here, what will commonly be understood as the supernatural power of one who can “walk on water.”

We would stress Jesus’ calming of creation’s turbulence as a sign of his right relationship with all the forces of creation, . . . the dynamic harmony he knows from his visit to the mountain.

While Carter appropriately notes that Jesus’ “presence is responsible for the calm,” and acknowledges that the episode “is another in a series of references to restoring creation under God’s reign: the notion of rest in Matt 11:28, Sabbath (12:10), the abundant yield (13:8, 23, plentiful food (14:20), [and, alas!] the subdued sea,” the characterization of that presence as effective domination is typical: “For the fifth time in the scene (walking on water, talking as God, extending hand, saving from water, calming the storm), Jesus does a Godlike act, manifesting God’s reign over the sea. The sea is subdued and set in its place as God intended it (Gen 1:6-13)” (Ibid., p. 312; our emphasis). By contrast, we would rather stress his calming of creation’s turbulence as a sign of his right relationship with all the forces of creation, a relationship into which he would draw the disciples, even as he “rescues” them from their alienation from the sea into the dynamic harmony he knows from his visit to the mountain.

Jesus is not the controlling and dominating Savior who willfully alters creation for the sake of his own power.

In the era of climate change into which Earth is entering, it serves the cause of the Lord, the Servant of Creation, better, we are convinced, when we take care to present him as one whose relationship with the Creator serves to inspire a peaceful, cooperative relationship with the creation. He is not the controlling and dominating Savior who willfully alters creation for the sake of his own power or for the power of those who believe in him. Phrases from the Psalm for the day underline this interpretation:

Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; righteousness and peace will kiss each other. Faithfulness will spring up from the ground, and righteousness will look down from the sky. The Lord will give what is good, and our land will yield its increase (85:10-13).

Jesus the Lord, the Servant of Creation, restores a dynamic harmony to the creation.

The vision of Jesus walking on the sea at first terrified the disciples and then inspired Peter’s own boldly over-confident adventure out over the troubled waters. As such, the story therefore ought not be understood as a legitimation for faith to seek transcendence over nature. On the contrary, it serves to illustrate how faith contributes to the maintenance of the right relationship between human beings and the energies present within the creation. Jesus the Lord, the Servant of Creation, restores a dynamic harmony to the creation. Let the sea roar: it need not be destructive of faith in the Creator, whose voice is heard in the silence after the storm.

Commentary on Readings for Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

2011-07-28T10:43:00.001-07:00

Seventh Sunday after Pentecost in Year A

Care for Earth and Feed the Hungry—One and the Same!

Care for Creation Commentary on the Common Lectionary—Year A 2011

By Dennis Ormseth

Readings for:

Seventh Sunday after Pentecost Psalm 145:8-9, 14-21 Isaiah 55:1-5 Romans 9:1-5

Matthew 14:13-21

Jesus enacts God’s will to feed the hungry in the desert. Creation provides!

Matthew’s well-known story of the feeding of the five thousand has parallels in the other three Gospels, which, as Carol Dempsey rightly observes, “indicates its prominence and importance in the memory and life of the early church” (New Proclamation Year A, 2002, p. 157). The church has made important use of this story to communicate God’s steadfast love: as the text says, when Jesus “went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick” (14:14). The action embodies themes that have deep roots in the biblical witness and bear weighty social implications. Warren Carter summarizes these, citing texts too numerous to include here,

Jesus enacts God’s will that hungry people be fed. . . Through Jesus’ deed, God acts faithfully to sustain creation in anticipation of the new creation in which God’s reign is established in full and there is abundant food for all . . . Jesus’ act attacks the injustice of the sinful imperial system which ensures that the urban elite are well fed at the expense of the poor. . . Jesus enacts an alternative system marked by compassion, sufficiency and shared resources. His action imitates God’s action in saving the people from the tyrant Pharaoh and feeding them in the desert (Exod 16) (Carter, Matthew and the Margins: A Sociopolitical and Religious Reading, p. 305).

Feedings and Eucharist first and foremost meet the needs of the most vulnerable.

The story of the feeding was told against the background of hunger and food shortages, both natural and human-caused, which fell “hardest on those with limited access to resources, especially urban laborers, crafts workers, and traders” living in cities which “lacked institutions and laws to protect people from starvation” (Ibid., p. 264). The church’s interpreters often point to this story, on the other hand, as a foreshadowing of the Lord’s Supper. As they did in celebrating the Lord’s support then, so we are also now in the Eucharist compassionately welcome into the company of our host, Jesus, who in the “blessing and breaking” of the loaves and fish also gives himself to us, not in spirit only, but also in body (Carter, p. 307; cf. Dempsey, p. 157).

The feast to which we are invited is “the feast of all creation.”

The importance of the story for the church, both early and late, thus magnifies its significance for the church’s care of creation. Two aspects of the reading are particularly provocative. First is that the church has traditionally seen fit to set this story liturgically within worship that includes praise of God for taking this kind of care for “all living things,” indeed, for “all that he has made.” For this, says the Psalmist, “all your works shall give thanks to you, O Lord, and all your faithful shall bless you” (145:10; the verse is not included in the assigned reading, but can easily be added to verses 8 and 9). Here, we thus proclaim, Jesus does what Psalm 145 says God does: “The Lord is good to all, and his compassion is over all that he has made.” What Jesus exhibits here is God’s love for the entire creation: “You open you hand, satisfying the desire of every living thing” (145:14-16; emphasis added). The invitation of Isaiah 55 notwithstanding, with its clear call to human participants, the feast to which Jesus invites us is a feast in which all creation participates!

Jesus is in the desert, outside of empire, benefitting the poor and marginalized

Secondly, Matthew tells us that this event took place in “a deserted place.” Jesus has crossed a body of water, a “withdrawal” that is occasioned by news of John the Baptist’s murder by Herod. This action signals, as William Carter comments, Jesus’ refusal

to play in the tyrant’s world and by the tyrant’s rules. It is to make space for a different reign, God’s empire, marked by life giving structures and compassionate practices such as healing and feeding. Such a space is not found in the urban center with their sharply differentiated society, carefully controlled power, and protected self-interest (cf. 13:53-58). It is found on the margins, in an insignificant place, a deserted place, or wilderness, a place of no use to the elite but of central importance to God’s purposes and very threatening to the center (cf. 2:3-6; 3:1). The beneficiaries are not the powerful but the poor and marginalized (Ibid., p. 305)

The reference to wilderness reminds us of Jesus’ own encounter with Satan at the beginning of his ministry when he, too, suffered from want of food for forty days. In actions that we found key to our understanding of Jesus as the Servant of God who serves God by serving creation (see our comment on the readings for the First Sunday of Lent), he not only refused the political dominion offered him, but also the associated violation of the creation’s integrity—he would not turn stones into bread, neither would he cast himself down to be born up by angels; he will persist in being Servant of God, who serves creation, and refuses to grasp equality with God.

No space in all creation lies outside the reach of God’s grace

Might the reading not then ground the interest of the church in preserving wilderness, first of all as a place set apart to experience God and God’s empire (see our comment on the readings for the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost)? Secondly,” wilderness” is a privileged metaphorical setting for the meal of the Eucharist, understood as an event that naturally takes place in “deserted space”—space for which the power elite will resist conservation, if for no other reason than that it provides sanctuary for those who live in opposition to its oppression. To be sure, the other meals that similarly foreshadow the Lord’s Supper take place in a variety of settings—no space lies outside the reach of God’s grace. But this first meal is notable for taking place where the imperial economy of Rome plays no part. When Jesus’ disciples suggest that they should send the people back to the villages from which they came to purchase food, he forbids them. But neither will he feed them by supernatural intervention, such as “turning bread into stones.” Without him resorting to imperial dominion or supernatural power, the people are fed by the simple act of sharing what was already at hand amongst the crowd, which, especially in the context of wilderness, exhibits a remarkable sufficiency of God’s provision.

The disciples join Jesus as servants of all creation

In other stories of miraculous surplus such as I Kings 17 (Elijah) and 2 Kings 4 (Elisha), Carter notes, God is “more than able to meet the needs of God’s people; here, significantly, the “disciples act as servants, a basic identity and praxis in the community of disciples (6:24; 10:24-25; 20:27)” (Ibid., p. 308). So it is in the empire of God. Jesus’ disciples are, as it were, “co-servants” of creation along with Jesus. Disciples play a significant role in both the redistribution of this bounty and in taking “up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full,” a remarkable remembrance of early care for the wilderness.

Care of earth and care of the poor go hand in hand as two aspects of the service of creation

So should it be with our celebration of the Eucharist: Jesus and his disciples share a small amount of bread amongst those who have been gathered, and all always share sufficiently in this abundance. But the community ought always to see that proper care is taken at the end of the meal, to show respect for the place in which it was served. The community that gathers for fellowship following the service should always be mindful that social ministry and care of the Earth are two aspects of the one service of creation. Let there be time for the enjoyment of the congregation’s gardens, prairie restoration, running water, and rain gardens.

Creation Corner column, July 2011: Hopeful messages

2011-07-25T12:18:00.000-07:00

Inasmuch as the Lutherans Restoring Creation web site (http://www.lutheransrestoringcreation.org/) sets out to offer some hope that the environmental crises might be responded to in a positive, restorative way, that, indeed, it is God's will and work that such be done, and that it is in our hands to accomplish the same, the focus in the Creation Corner column for July 2011 has that emphasis.

And because much can be learned by people of faith about the subject from the secular press, examples here will be cited from those sources.

Sandra Steingraber, in a piece from the June 2011 issue of In These Times wrote of something called the "well-informed futility" syndrome, a phrase coined in 1973 by Gerhart Wiebe, that suggests that when we are overwhelmed by information about a credible problem we may feel we haven't the personal resources to effectively respond to it. Thus we can become paralyzed by it, and that sense of futility prevents us from taking any action to solve the problem.

Her subject in that article, confronting climate change and overcoming our fossil fuel addiction, entitled "Despair Not" (http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/7352/despair_not/ has now been responded to by readers in the current August 2011 In These Times issue and on-line at http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/11637/to_despair_or_not_to_despair? .

Readers are urged to view that dialog. Steingraber, an Ithaca (NY) College biologist, is the author of Living Downstream: An Ecologist Looks at Cancer and the Environment (1997), Having Faith: An Ecologist's Journey to Motherhood (2001), and Raising Elijah: Protecting Our Children in an Age of Environmental Crisis (2011).

A second source providing hopeful encouragement is the July-August issue of the Utne Reader, which takes its articles from the "alternative" (not mainstream) press (http://www.utne.com/) .

Articles there, in the order they appear, include excerpts about

...elementary education environmental literacy (Governing) and the "greening" of public schools (Sustainable Industries), p. 15

...the "patron saints" (Wisconsin Benedictine sisters) of green living (Sojourners), p. 20-21

...landscape architecture and wildlife crossings (Landscape Architecture), p. 23

...predictive models of climate change (OnEarth), p. 27

...human shelters in wilderness (Colors of Nature), p. 35, 37

...four excerpts on our complicated relationships with animals, including articles from the book Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat; the book The Bond: Our Kinship with Animals, Our Call to Defend Them; the magazine The Believer; and the book Beautiful and Abundant: Building the World We Want pgs. 50-59

...being "grounded" ("earthing") as an aid for overcoming chronic pain and insomnia (Spirituality & Health), pgs. 70-71

Even the advertisements in the current Utne Reader issue offer some helpful advice, such as for an eco-friendly auto club, an advanced degree in ecological psychology, a water bottle not made of plastic, green festivals, and the new book by Richard Louv, The Nature Principle: Human Restoration and the End of Nature-Deficit Disorder (also reviewed in the August issue of The Lutheran, http://www.thelutheran.org/ p. 42) and available from www.workman.com/algonquin .

And, thirdly, from a foreign source, The Guardian Weekly (http://www.guardianweekly.co.uk/) comes these pieces:

...an editorial from May 27, "At war over climate", notes that the USA military is "taking on global warming skeptics", and cites several sources.

...Greenpeace, perhaps the world's most recognizable and sophisticated global eco-charity, is to launch its Rainbow Warrior III from Bremen shipyards in northern Germany(July 15). Greenpeace has helped to "bear witness to some of the more blatant acts of ecological destruction--- from whaling and oil exploration to nuclear testing and industrial fishing---that were occurring in the remote oceans." Doing climate-change research in Greenland, monitoring the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and trying to stop Arctic off-shore drilling have been other pursuits. In the coming year the maiden campaign will be to sail up the Amazon as part of a protest against deforestation.

...In Australia, a carbon emission-cutting tax plan targets the nation's 500 worst polluters (July 15)

...an international court for crimes against the environment is being proposed by a candidate for the French presidency (July 22). Eva Joly won the primary race for the environmentalist party, Greens-Europe-Ecology. She is the fraud prosecutor who successfully brought charges in the 1990s corruption scandal of the oil company Elf.

Note: Michael Ochs writes this column from Williamsport PA.

Commentary for Readings on the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

2011-07-20T07:34:00.000-07:00

Sixth Sunday after Pentecost in Year A

Feast on these Parables from Nature! The Kingdom is Messy Business Indeed!

Care for Creation Commentary on the Common Lectionary—Year A 2011

By Dennis Ormseth

Readings for:

Sixth Sunday after Pentecost. Psalm 119:129-136; I Kings 3:5-12; Romans 8:26-39;

Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

Our reflection on the teaching of Jesus, the Lord, the Servant of Creation, continues to explore themes significant for caring for creation days in a medley of new parables: the Mustard Seed; the Yeast, Treasure Hidden in a Field; A Merchant in Search of Fine Pearls; and a Net Thrown into the Sea. As with the parables from the previous two Sundays, our reading brings out new treasures along with the old treasures (Matthew 13:51). Similarly, the reading from Romans continues from where we left off last Sunday, in considering life in the Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life. We turn first to the teaching of Jesus the Servant of Creation.

The mustard seed: What a strange mess is this kingdom! The parable begins with signs of the unclean, a planting in a garden, and will not meet grandiose expectations. Yet. . . the birds will find shelter in its shade.

The Mustard Seed. Again we encounter a sower planting seed, and, again, like the sowers who cast the seed wildly and forgot to protect the field from alien intruders, the action of the sower strikes us as unlikely. A farmer in the ancient world would normally not sow a mustard seed in the midst of his field. As Bernard Brandon Scott point out, “the mustard, a common plant in the eastern world, grew and spread quickly. Consequently, a farmer sought to control its seeds.” The plant, this comment suggests, was regarded somewhat as we would an evasive species. More importantly, in Jewish tradition, the action of sowing depicted here could be seen as a violation of the “rules of diverse kinds.” These rules “had as their purpose to bring order into the disorderly world, and the creation of order in this world replicates the division between the sacred and the profane. Where things could or could not be planted and what could be planted or mixed together were important for the maintenance of purity boundaries.” Following other commentators, Scott notes that “a mustard seed could not be planted in a garden,” where vegetables would be the usual planting. And it could be planted in a field only in carefully proscribed spaces. The parable thus begins with “a metaphor of impurity.” The sower “has risked breaking the law of diverse kinds by mixing what should not be mixed. . .” (Scott, Hear Then the Parable: A Commentary on the Parables of Jesus, pp. 374-76, 381). How is the kingdom of heaven like a sower who proceeds in such a disordered, unholy manner?

The focus of interpretation, of course, is usually more on the seed than the sower, precisely because the seed is very small, and the tree that grows from it, at least in the parable, is “the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree.” The parable is about astonishing growth, this suggests: the kingdom, though small and hidden, will become very large and impressive, thus confirming its divine character. This perhaps makes good sense for us, for whom growth is culturally taken to be a nearly unmitigated good. However, that would not have been true for the ancient farmer, for whom the growth of an invasive species like the mustard seed had to be seen as an agricultural disaster! Nor is it true for an ecologically aware reader, who would appreciate the possible harm to be done to the field. As Scott notes: “The seed’s planting and its growth create a conflict for a hearer. Is this growth a divine blessing or a violation? Is it clean or unclean? How is one to decide?” (Ibid., p. 383).

To make things worse, in a sense, the parable’s shrub outgrows the normal limits of its “kind,” to become a tree. No anticipation of Darwinian evolution, this; on the contrary, this transformation is miraculous: the shrub is transformed into a “mixed allusion” familiar to the ancient hearer as the “eschatological tree of Ezekiel and Daniel,” which, like the great cedar of Lebanon, shelters not only birds in its branches, but underneath them, gathers “all the creatures of the earth.” Scott concludes: ‘A hearer is left to make sense, to fit together a mustard plant that has pretensions to the grandeur of a cedar of Lebanon. How that resolution takes place leads from story to kingdom” (Ibid., p. 385-86).

The parable makes a light-hearted burlesque of the noble cedar as a metaphor for the Kingdom of God by substituting the mustard shrub.

Scott concludes: the parable “makes a light-hearted burlesque of the noble cedar as a metaphor for the Kingdom of God by substituting the mustard shrub.” Although a symbol of both strength and protection, the cedar also represents pride: “A Grain of Mustard Seed extends the logic of Ezekiel [17]. All cedars and trees, even Israel, will be brought low.” It is the lowly mustard bush, scandalously planted in the field of the world that both political and religious authorities seek to keep well-ordered according to a static conception of the creation, that “will ‘bear Israel’s true destiny’” (Ibid., p. 386; Scott cites Robert W Funk, Jesus as Precursor, for this point). Still, significantly, the mustard bush does what the cedar would do: provide shelter for the birds of the air. “The parable begins with signs of the unclean, a planting in a garden, and will not meet grandiose expectations. Yet. . . the birds will find shelter in the shrub’s shade. Many have preferred the mustard tree, this unnatural malformity of mythical botany, to the recognition that God’s mighty works are among the unclean and insignificant” (Ibid., p. 387).

A tree does not exist for itself alone, but for others. So it is with those who are part of the kingdom of God!

The sower, we note, might well have his own purposes: to provide a niche for creatures that do not easily fit into the economic calculations of our agricultural, “growth” obsessive, economy. A field on the University of Minnesota agricultural campus in St. Paul had for years several large cages to trap birds that disrupted the research conducted in it. A sower who deliberately seeds a tree to host birds in the midst of his field is of a different mind-set, a servant of all creation, perhaps, who meets the needs all creatures (sometimes by creative adaptation, even!), and not only those of human beings. In good ecological form, whether mighty cedar or lowly mustard, the tree does not exist for itself alone, but for others. So it is with those who are part of the kingdom of God!

The Yeast. The parable of the yeast begins in a way similar to the Mustard Seed, with a highly ambiguous image of growth. Scott calls the parable “one rotten apple.” The yeast, a woman, and her kneading the dough, combine to offer an image of impurity. As Scott notes, yeast (leaven) “is made by taking a piece of bread and storing it in a damp, dark place until mold forms. The bread rots and decays, unlike modern yeast, which is domesticated.” Leavened bread was for everyday use; only unleavened bread was appropriate for holy days (Ibid., p. 324). The negative connotations of “leaven” are familiar: “the involvement with even a little evil can corrupt the whole,” and Matthew elsewhere associates leaven with the “teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees (16:12).” How, the hearer must ask, “can the kingdom be like leaven?” (Scott, pp. 324-25) As to the woman, Scott quotes Albrecht Oepke: “Characteristic of the traditional position and estimation of woman is a saying current in different forms among the Persians, Greeks and Jews in which man gives thanks that he is not an unbeliever or uncivilized, that he is not a woman and that he is not a slave.”

Three measures of flour is a metaphor for divine largess.

By way of contrast, the three measures of flour is a metaphor for divine largess. The large amount is evocative of the story of Abraham’s reception of three visitors, Gideon’s preparation for the visitation of the angel of the lord, and Hannah’s gift for the dedication of the temple. Thus the parable suggests, “not only are three measures much more than normal but that the amount is connected with an epiphany,” an image that coheres with the “kingdom of God.” “Yet how is a hearer to combine three measures with the preceding negative terms?” (Ibid., p. 326-27) Scott refuses to dodge the strikingly messy implications:

The kingdom (the holy and good) is pictured in terms of an epiphany of corruption. How radical is the parable’s intention? Does it mean to state that good is evil in an ethics of absurdity? Or is its function to subvert a hearer’s ready dependency on the rule of the sacred, the predictability of what is good, and warn that instead the expected evil that corrupts may indeed turn out to be the kingdom.

Would not a teacher who is the Servant of all Creation, who indeed saves the whole creation by dying on a cross, be entirely at home in a kingdom of God that embraces the awful messiness of life on the earth?

Or again, we would add, would not a teacher who is the Servant of all Creation, who indeed saves the whole creation by dying on a cross, be entirely at home in a kingdom of God that embraces the awful messiness of life on the earth?

Treasure Hidden in a Field. Once more we are confronted by a dilemma, the problem, as Scott names it, of “Finders Keepers:”

“If the treasure belongs to the finder, buying the land is unnecessary. But, if the treasure does not belong to the finder, buying the land is unjust.” If the dayworker has claim to the treasure, he has no need to rehide the treasure and buy the land. He can simply claim the treasure. That he does rehide the treasure and buy the land indicates that he does not believe he can make such a claim. Also, from the point of view of narrative structure, a hearer discovers that the finder is not the landowner only when he buys the field, thus concentrating narrative attention on the buying. The structure of the line involves finding and joy/selling and buying. But because buying signifies that he does not own, does not owning call into question the joy of finding? (Ibid., pp. 399-400; the quotation in italics is from Dominic Crossan, Finding is the First Act, with his emphasis).

Treasure receives its value, its joy, because it appears outside the bounds of the everyday. It is an occurrence that breaks expectations and interrupts the everyday.

The kingdom of God is like finding the treasure, suggests Scott, in that “treasure receives its value, its joy, because it appears outside the bounds of the everyday. It is an occurrence that breaks expectations and interrupts the everyday. Because it is not something earned or labored for but something found, it is lawless. Its joy is precisely in its lawlessness, its unearned, not worked for character” (Scott, pp. 401-02).

What if the kingdom of God is like a person who walking in the woods and discovers an endangered spotted owl?

We can suggest a contemporary analogy: A person walking in the woods discovers a creature, a spotted owl, say, in any case, an individual animal belonging to an endangered species. In his joy, he resolves to buy or otherwise get control of that patch of woods; for only by preserving that habitat does the owl have a chance of survival. But who owns the woods? In order to “save” the owl, he has to sue the owner to limit his control over use of the woods. Is this a proper action driven by great joy? Only by keeping the owl hidden in the woods is there a chance of sustaining that experience of joy in the presence of the beautiful creature. Or is the action an unjust transgression of property rights, sanctioned by environmental laws that the owner has to regard as an unconstitutional deprivation of his property rights? What if the kingdom of God is like a person, who walking in the woods, discovers a spotted owl?

That is the kingdom’s corrupting power—the desire to possess it!!

A Merchant in Search of Fine Pearls. The dilemma of this parable builds on an aspect of the parable of the treasure hidden in a field. As ownership of the field and the treasure within it calls into question the possibility of sustaining the joy of discovery, so does ownership of the pearl of great value complicate the life of the merchant. Scott captures the point succinctly: “If to buy the pearl he has sold off his capital, whether all he owns or his merchandise, he will again have to sell the pearl, or else he will be broke, because the pearl only generates in being sold. Thus the thing of value, the pearl, has no ultimate value.” The kingdom of God is like that, Scott suggests, in that it “cannot be possessed as a value in itself . . . for the merchant will sooner or later have to sell his pearl. And that is the kingdom’s corrupting power—the desire to possess it” (Ibid., p. 319). Might one not say the same for God’s creation?

A Net Thrown into the Sea. Has the hearer been caught within the net of these parables, the teaching of Jesus, the Servant of Creation? Are those caught up in his net—members of his church—good fish or rotten fish? Which side of the parable’s various dilemmas do they fall out on? The sorting out into baskets is indeed something to be reserved for the end, when the angels of God will bring final clarity to our relationship with the creation and our relationship with the creation’s creator. Until then, we swim with all the rest of the fish, utterly dependent for our very lives on the environing sea, chaotic as it may sometimes appear to be. For to be taken out of water is for fish or for any species to die.

The creation is bound up with humanity—and the Spirit is in a solidarity of shared groaning and, similarly, a shared hope.

An ear for the groaning of creation. The parable of “A Net Thrown into the Sea’ thus returns us, we would suggest, to the narrative about creation which David Horrell, Cherryl Hunt and Christopher Southgate construct on the basis of the “ecotheological mantra text,” namely, Romans 8:18-25. As we argued in our comment on that reading a week ago, the parables of Jesus share a narrative of creation that is strikingly similar to the one these scholars identify as key to understanding Paul’s view of the relationship between “the children of God” and the non-human creation (See our comment on the readings for the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost). As we summarized their argument,

Paul teaches that a creation “enslaved-to-decay has been subjected to futility by God.” But that it was “subjected in hope” means “that the focus, from the subjection onwards, is entirely forward-looking; there is no description of the act of creation, no indication as to what (if anything) preceded its subjection to futility.” The “co- groaning” and “co-travailing” has been the state of creation since its subjection; the creation is “bound up with humanity and the Spirit in a solidarity of shared groaning and, similarly, a shared hope.”

In terms of the parable of the Net Thrown into the Sea, for the time being, we swim in the sea while drawn toward the light of the final judgment of God regarding our relationship with God and God’s creation. But as “children of God,” we do not swim aimlessly, or alone. The Spirit of God, the Lord, the Giver of Life, present at creation, sustainer of all of life, accompanies us on this great migration. As Paul writes, “the Spirit helps us in our weakness.” In our “co-groaning and “co-travailing,” the Spirit “intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God” (8:26-27). It is on this account, and this only, that “we know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.” And if we give “all things” a strong reading as intending the fullness of creation, as it does elsewhere in Paul’s writings, rather than simply the particular occasions of trial and suffering for which we usually appropriate it, we are indeed encouraged to look and to live forward in hope for the full realization of the purposes of God and for the complete restoration of creation.

Reflection on Readings for Fifth Sunday after Pentecost by Dr. Dennis Ormseth

2011-07-13T08:16:00.000-07:00

Fifth Sunday after Pentecost in Year A

Listen to true prophets! Righteousness and Justice for All Creation!

Care for Creation Commentary on the Common Lectionary—Year A 2011

By Dennis Ormseth

Readings for:

Fifth Sunday after Pentecost. Psalm 86:11-17; Isaiah 44:6-8 or Wisdom 12 :13, 16-19; Romans 8:12-25; Matthew 13:24-30, 3-43

Notice the ecology of these parables!

The Parable of Weeds among the Wheat follows immediately on the reading of the Parable of the Sower and its explanation, both in Matthew’s narrative and in the lectionary last Sunday and this Sunday. Comparison of the two parables is instructive. The parables share important elements of interest to the reader concerned with care of creation. Although Jesus’ purpose in telling the story is to instruct the disciples concerning the growth of their community, the story locates that community in relationship to Earth. The parables share a narrative structure that moves from sowing to sprouting to harvest. They both have a very simple, relational, if not explicitly ecological, perspective, namely, seeds need to be matched to soil, and roots hidden beneath the soil are intertwined and cannot be separated without killing the plant. Finally, in both parables, the seed represents the potential growth of the community of Jesus’ followers. The kingdom of heaven on earth, we might conclude, conforms in important ways to the regular processes of creation. Like the parable of the Sower, the parable of weeds among the wheat is a story that the Lord, the Servant of Creation, would have loved to tell.

There are significant contrasts between the parables as well. Here the parable of the Weeds among the Wheat is explicitly introduced as a means to understanding the kingdom of heaven, a point that was only an unspoken assumption in relation to the parable from last Sunday. Warren Carter plausibly suggests that the aim is “to direct the audience to think about the story in relation to God’s empire, but leaves it to the audience to discern connections” (Carter, Matthew and the Margins: A Sociopolitical and Religious Reading, p. 288). Here the seed is declared good, and the field is the sower’s own property—both factors unmentioned in the first story. The new parable involves more human characters: a lone sower in the first parable, here a landowner with his household slaves, and also the unidentified “enemy” who comes in the night to sow weeds among the wheat and then disappears. The more complex operation of the household economy contrasts significantly with the simple agrarian image of the solitary peasant sower.

This comparison illumines an important feature of the context implied by this Sunday’s parable. It is a context in which considerable control over the land is presupposed: it is land that is owned as part of an estate with slaves. The land is under regular, organized cultivation, where care is taken to see that the seed is good quality, and slaves or servants appropriately share the landowner’s concern about the yield. One suspects that the careless sower of last Sunday’s parable might not last long in this company. And, notably, the slaves expect to be directed into the field to violently uproot the weeds. Carter’s point about empire is well taken: the social location is an organized economy, which is being disrupted by an alien agent, in a conflicted cultural environment.

In contrast to the Roman Empire, the Empire of God is creative and life-giving.

Yet the empire of God is different: evocative of a highly organized economy though the narrative might be, the images remain agrarian. As Carter observes, “The scene of growing wheat suggests that God’s empire is creative and life-giving in providing food to sustain life, in anticipation of the abundance that will mark its full establishment” (Ibid., p.288-9). Furthermore, when the weeds sown by the enemy are discovered, the landowner restrains the slaves, saying “let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn” (13: 30). The point is clearly to keep the plants in the earth until they are ripe, well beyond the time their true character has been revealed, so that the harvest of the yield of the good seed can be as full and complete as possible.

As before, Jesus is not instructing his followers in agronomy; he makes use of what would be largely common sense for most everyone in an agrarian culture, to set out what would be uncommon sense under an imperial regime. The powerful typically get rid of those in opposition to them by “rooting them out” without regard to collateral damage, in the phrase of our day. We have the technological means to do this now: well-designed herbicides can do precisely what mechanical row hoes have done clumsily. But political applications of the policy are still very costly of life. For example, some do it with no concern for collateral damage, like the well-intended but unthinking slaves in the parable, do the damage by incurring unintended consequences. Others heedlessly and deliberately “do what is necessary” to eliminate whatever threat the opposition poses, up to and including “scorched earth” warfare and genocide. The destruction of both human communities and their natural environment continues, the opposition seemingly ineffective against the newest juggernaut.

Things are different in the reign of the Son of Man, the parable promises. As Jesus’ subsequent explanation to his disciples makes clear, in what is now revealed to be a cosmic struggle between the powers of good and evil in the world, the good children of the empire are encouraged patiently to wait out the season of growth and the ultimate denouement of the children of the enemy (those who sowed weeds), in confidence that God’s purposes will prevail at the harvest. The imperial cycle of violence will stop. True, the image of that harvest is itself violent: “Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (13:42). As Carter observes, ‘the gospel borrows imperial and violent images to depict the final triumph of God’s purposes,” although we might suggest alternatively that as every good gardener or farmer knows, weeds need to be burned to prevent them from regenerating, and ashes help renew the soil. It is nature’s way.

The final judgment marks the end to imperial violence—not replication of it.

What is in view here, in any case, is a final end to imperial violence—not replication of it. As Carter explains, “The evil that is overcome includes all causes of sin, a cognate of the verb ‘cause to stumble/sin.’ These causes include anything that diverts or destroys disciples (5:29-30; 18:6-9) and anything that rejects Jesus rather than recognizing his identity as God’s commissioned agent” (Carter, p. 294). And whatever the implications of this violent image for the end of the ages beyond the triumph of God’s purposes, the mandate for time forward until God brings the world to fulfillment is to follow the policy of the wise landholder, or Son of Man, namely, to act so as to sustain and to fulfill life as fully as possible, even for those who oppose the purposes of God, and let God bring all things to their appropriate, God-determined end. And as the Son of Man, in our view, is also the Servant of Creation who does what God wills for the entire creation (see our comment in this series on the readings for The HolyTrinity), what God wills for the sake of the “children of the empire,” namely to “shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father,” (13:43) is more likely to be the final purpose of God’s creative activity on behalf of the rest of creation as well, and not its utter destruction, as a literalistic application of the parable’s conclusion might be taken to suggest.

This reading of the parable is strongly supported by the lessons that accompany it. Indeed, the lessons provide a basis for sketching out a theology of creation that fully grounds the reading we have given. The reading from Isaiah is an example of what Walter Brueggeman calls the Old Testament’s “rhetoric of incomparability:” “I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god; Who is like me?” (Is. 44:7). This kind of statement, he notes, comes early in the tradition “and yet is a most sweeping generalization,” so that “we may regard it as the most poignant spine and leitmotif of all of Israel’s testimony concerning Yahweh” (Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament, p. 139). The point is not so much that there is no other god like Yahweh (“Israel did not know or care that other peoples made similar claims for their gods.”), “but that Yahweh really is as said—in extreme form a God of astonishing power and reassuring solidarity” (Ibid., p. 143). Specifically, in this instance. the incomparability concerns God’s ability to know the future he has promised: “Who has announced from of old the things to come? Let them tell us what is yet to be.” This future, strikingly, is the renewal of the land and people together upon their return from exile: “For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour my spirit upon your descendents, and my blessing on your offspring. They shall spring up like a green tamarisk, like willows by flowing streams” (44:3-4; not included in the assigned verses). Yahweh is, according to this first lesson, the one to bring about the renewal and restoration of creation envisioned as the culmination of the narrative of the parable. God knows the future, because God creates it (Cf. Isaiah 40:28-31; 45:12-13.)

It is the second lesson, however, that draws our greatest interest here. The second half of the reading, Romans 8:18-25, is what David Horrell, Cherryl Hunt, and Christopher Southgate regard as an “ecotheological mantra text.” The text has come to be cited widely by writers on ecotheology, as they make their appeals for creation care and Christian environmental concern. But the text has received new attention from Pauline scholars without special environmental agendas as well. Horrell, Hunt and Southgate locate a significant change in the weight the passage is given in the interpretation of Romans and in the Pauline literature more generally. “The changing readings of this passage . . . give a clear indication of the way in which the issues and challenges of the contemporary context shape the questions brought to the text and in turn shape the interpretation on the meaning of the text.” The development is similar to what happened to the interpretation of Romans 9-11 when Jewish-Christian relations became a significant aspect of the interpretive context. “Under the influence of a context in which the magnitude of the ecological challenge is increasingly a point of public and political consensus,” these authors write, Romans 8:19-23 “may come to be seen as a (even the) theological climax of the letter.” In their recent book, Greening Paul: Rereading the Apostle in a Time of Ecological Crisis, they devote an entire chapter to the interpretation of this passage, and they carefully weigh the question of whether or not the text can sustain the importance that is being placed on it by ecotheologians (Horrell, Hunt and Southgate, pp. 69-70).

See the excellent book The Greening of Paul by Horrell, Hunt, and Southgate.

This book is absolutely essential for anyone engaged in our quest for biblical underpinnings for the care of creation, and we therefore present the argument of this chapter is some detail. The key steps in their argument are as follows:

1. The narrative approach to the interpretation of Paul’s theology, for which the authors present a strong argument in the opening chapters of the book, is particularly appropriate to interpretation of this passage. “While itself brief and frustratingly allusive,” the passage “depends on a certain story about the past, present , and future of creation in God’s saving purposes. Creation ‘is waiting with eager longing’. . , ‘was subjected to futility’. . , in hope that it ‘will be set free’ . . .” (Ibid., p.71; the elided words are the corresponding Greek terms, which we are not able to reproduce here.) The account has “a beginning, a middle, and an end, but it also entails a transformation,” which allows the authors “to construct the outlines of a narrative trajectory, while the employment of [gar] and [hoti] indicates causal links between the elements, thus constituting a plot.” Furthermore, they note, Paul introduced the comment about creation groaning, saying “we know that . . ,” thus apparently “appealing to knowledge that he can reasonably presume his readers share” (Ibid.).

2. The narrative’s “past” includes some event of “making/founding/creating” the object of which is in a condition of “current, and presumably prior . . . bondage to decay.” This “creation” has, additionally, “been subjected to futility, of an unspecified nature, not of its own choice, though the subjector is not named.” Bondage and subjection represent “the negative dimensions of its past and present experience, which are transformed with the resolution of the story” (Ibid., p. 72). The “present” is the co-groaning in co-travail of creation and Paul’s community. The “future” anticipated in the longing of creation for the revealing of the “sons of God,” the hearers “who have the ‘first fruits of the Spirit’ and “wait for adoption as God’s sons”, and the hope of creation to be “liberated from bondage to decay” and to “obtain the freedom of the children of God.” Thus, as the authors see it, “the plot looks forward to a final transformation which resolves and surpasses the negative state of decay and futility” (Ibid.).

3. Turning to a more detailed analysis of key phrases, Horrell, Hunt and Southgate argue that “creation” refers here to “nonhuman creation, whatever precisely is or is not included in Paul’s implicit definition” (Ibid., p. 73). “Bondage to decay” refers, they think, not to death as the consequence of the Adamic fall, but more comprehensively to the ‘unfolding story of Genesis 1-11, in which corruption affects all flesh. “Subjection to futility” refers, similarly, not to any specific act or cause, but to the fact that “the existence of creation (and of humanity) is futile and frustrated, since it is unable to achieve its purpose, or to emerge from the constant cycle of toil, suffering, and death” (Ibid., p. 77.)

4. With respect to the present, the creation’s groaning is “a co-groaning with Paul and other Christians and the Spirit, a shared travail that also represents a shared hope, though some aspects of that hope are distinctive to the ‘sons of God,’ who are described here as those who have ‘the first fruits of the Spirit’” (Ibid., p. 79.) The creation, specifically, is “awaiting the revelation of the Christian believers,” and this “unveiling is related to their adoption as sons spoken of in verse 23” (Ibid, pp. 79-80). The “adoption as sons” probably includes “redemption of their bodies” in a resurrection from the dead which in Pauline eschatology is “the initial event in a series that will eventually encompass all creation. . .” The adoption is “important not simply in itself, but insofar as it heralds a wider process of eschatological transformation. The hope that always accompanied the creation’s subjection to futility was and is the hope that the creation itself will be liberated” (Ibid., p. 80-81).

In summary, Horrell, Hunt, and Southgate hold that Paul teaches that an “enslave-too-decay creation has been subjected to futility by God.” But that it was “subjected in hope” means “that the focus, from the subjection onwards, is entirely forward-looking; there is no description of the act of creation, no indication as to what (if anything) preceded its subjection to futility.” The “co-groaning” and “co-travailing” has been the state of creation since its subjection; the creation is “bound up with humanity and the Spirit in a solidarity of shared groaning, and, similarly, a shared hope” (Ibid., p. 82).

The highlight in Romans is the moment when the groaning creation will welcome the revelation of the “children of God” who will care for creation.

Focused on the “moment of the revelation of the sons of God,” the passage presents “the sons/children of God” as “leading characters, since it is their liberation on which that of creation depends and onto which the hopes of creation are focused.” But of course the character of the story whose presence is “most crucial to the progress of the plot” is actually God, whose actions are “hidden within the force of the so-called divine passives” of the “creation was subjected . . . will be liberated” (Ibid, p. 82-83.) Romans 8, the authors conclude, “is a particularly developed and powerful depiction” of the Pauline narrative of “a process, decisively begun yet still to be worked out through suffering and struggle (e.g., Phil 3:10-14; cf. also Col 1:24)” with “its insistence that it is only in conformity to the sufferings of Christ that a sharing in his glory and inheritance is attained (8:17), a narrative in which verses 19-23 so enigmatically include the whole of creation as co-groaning” (Ibid., p. 83).

What strikes us so forcefully relative to the interpretation of the assigned texts for this Sunday is the parallel structure and themes between the narrative of the parable of the weeds among the wheat and this Pauline creation narrative. The unexpected and unexplained seeding of the weeds, the command of the landowner to the servants of the household to desist from destructive separation of the weeds from the wheat, the promised future rescue of the wheat at a future time when the Son of Man will act to end the competition for land by removing all causes of sin and evil; here in a “down to earth version is the narrative of bondage to decay, subjection in hope, and future redemption” in which “children of God” play an important if not a decisive role of bearing hope and assisting the (non-human) creation to its ultimate restoration in Christ. To be sure, the narratives differ in language and accents, appropriate to their narrative settings and social context. But it seems reasonable to suggest that when Paul wrote that this narrative is something that “we know,” it is not difficult to imagine that they knew because Jesus himself had told the story, in different words, at an earlier time.

At minimum, the texts urge us to desist from ecological destruction—now!

What this correspondence might mean for the practice of the Christian church in its care for creation is, of course, another whole discussion. While Horrell, Hunt, and Southgate caution their readers that “there are reasons to be more cautious and careful than much ecological appeal to this favorite text has been,” they find that there are “significant ethical implications” to be inferred from the passage “when its narrative genre is taken into account. . .and when it is related to the wider contours of Pauline theology and ethics,” as they do in the concluding chapters of their book (Ibid, p. 85). We would suggest, for starters, that following the command of the land-owning Son of Man, the ethic of the parable is to desist from the ecologically destructive action of “rooting out” our enemies. Or, expressed positively, we should maintain respect for the ecological integrity of all things. Expressed in positive terms, this conforms well to the ethics of “other-regard and corporate solidarity” as the authors envision it emerging from the Pauline literature (See their chapter 8, “Pauline Ethics through an Ecotheological Lens” pp. 189-220). But for the Apostle, it is more simply a matter of “by the Spirit” putting “to death the deeds of the body” so that one may live. “For all who are led by the Spirit of God—the Lord, the giver of Life”—are children of God . . and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ—if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him” (8:13-17).

2011-07-08T07:42:00.001-07:00

Reflection on Readings for Fourth Sunday after Pentecost in Year A

The Parable of the Sower as Sign of God’s Provision in Nature

Care for Creation Commentary on the Common Lectionary—Year A 2011

By Dennis Ormseth

Readings for:

4th Pentecost Psalm 65: [1-8] 9-13 Isaiah 55:10-13 Romans 8:1-11Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

Welcome righteous persons and we welcome Jesus the Servant of Creation!

Welcome and rejection: the lections for the Second and Third Sundays after Pentecost provided a basis for setting out implications for care of creation of welcoming or rejecting Jesus the Servant of Creation and his disciples. Those who welcome his disciples welcome him: to welcome him is akin to welcoming a prophet like Jeremiah, who rewards the congregation “with confidence in the restoration of the whole creation;” it is like welcoming a righteous person, who rewards the gathering with ‘redirection toward the purposes of God for God’s beloved creation;” it is like giving to vulnerable persons a cup of water, which beyond being a precious gift that sustains life, exemplifies the capacity of the creation to fulfill the purposes of God. Those who welcome the Servant of Creation do indeed receive their reward (see our comment on the readings for the Second Sunday after Pentecost).

Exploit creation and we reject Jesus the Servant of Creation!

Those who reject his disciples, on the other hand, also reject Jesus, the Servant of Creation. For what reason might we reject them? Mainly because we are too caught up in the business of the market place to share his concern for the gifts of creation. Or to put it somewhat differently, we are too deeply enthralled by the vision of a ruling power that can effectively dominate and control creation so that we secure and deliver the resources we need to sustain our lives (e.g., our industrial model of agriculture?). In other words, we completely fail to appreciate Jesus’ humble way of exercising dominion as care of creation, and we disregard his offer to provide the divine “rest” that encompasses all of creation.

Sowing seeds yields an abundant harvest.

The readings for the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost invite reflection on this dynamic of welcome and rejection at a deeper level; they provide additional perspective on the reasons for and the consequences of these responses. Jesus’ parable of the sower locates the responses in a narrative thick with ecological insight. The sower’s seemingly careless hand distributes seed without regard to the terrain into which it happens to fall: “some seeds fell on the path. . . Other seeds fell on rocky ground…Other seeds fell among thorns. . . Other seeds fell on good soil . . . .” Indeed, one might suspect that this sower is blind, so completely does he appear to abandon his rate of yield to chance. His purpose is accomplished nonetheless! The seeds that fell on good soil “brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty,” which, while not overly abundant, is sufficient for the sower’s purposes. Scholars argue whether or not the yield should be regarded as “superabundant.” Bernard Brandon Scott, for example, thinks the results “are well within the bounds of the believable. They are an average-to-good harvest.” See his discussion in Hear Then the Parable, pp. 355-58). In any case, it is an abundant harvest.

What good may come from sowing everywhere!

With respect to the seed that falls on path, rocky ground, or amongst thorns, the interpretive emphasis is commonly on the failed results. But if one reads with ecological perspective, there are possible advantages to the sower’s casual practice: birds are fed that otherwise might have gone hungry; no doubt stretches of good soil are utilized that might otherwise have been missed; and it is difficult to discriminate between good soil and poor, as one walks through the field. Indeed, could one really tell in advance which soil was really good and not just average, before it gave up its yield? And might there not also be some variation between seeds as well? From the same hand came seed that produced in some of the good soil “a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.” With a sowing so thoroughly characterized by indeterminacy, perhaps there was more purpose in the action of the sower than first meets the eye.

God’s purposes in the sowing will prevail in the harvest

That is Jesus’ point, in our perspective. He knows about seeds and soils, obviously, and he appreciates the complexities of their cooperation in producing the yield the sower wishes so devotedly to achieve. His purpose in telling the story, of course, was not to instruct the disciples in agronomy, but rather to give them insight concerning their outreach to others. Appropriate to their call as disciples of the Servant of Creation, their mission is like a planting. They are as seed cast from the hand of the sower—in some places they will meet welcome and in other places they will meet rejection. Even when they are at first well-received and on occasion drawn into deeply fertile relationships, they will produce responses of wildly differing magnitude. But if the yield is not superabundant, in larger perspective the will of the sower will still be accomplished, because the yield will come in sufficient quantities that the hungry bodies in the sower’s household will be fed. The presence of the Servant of Creation will become known, and the purposes of his Father with the creation will be accomplished, in and through the disciples’ encounters on their journey, however often they meet with rejection.

See how God creates the order of creation

So we are encouraged by this parable to have confidence in the results of our cooperation in the mission of the Servant of creation. And this encouragement is supported by the psalm and by the first lesson that accompanies it in the readings selected for this Sunday. The selected passage from Psalm 65 is all about the relationships God establishes in the world in the course of creating and sustaining it. The God that creates order out of chaos may seem more the forceful monarch who dominates and controls, rather than the relational creator of the Christian Trinity: “By your strength you established the mountains; you are girded with might. You silence the roaring of the seas, the roaring of their waves, the tumult of the peoples” (Psalm 65:6-8). But God is also praised because “you visit the earth and water it; you greatly enrich it; the river of God is full of water; you provide the people with grain, for so you have prepared it. You water its [i.e., the Earth’s] furrows abundantly, settling its ridges, softening it with showers, and blessing its growth” (Psalm 65:9-10).

The creative action of God is continuous!

Here is relevant background, indeed, for the parable of the sower: the soil is good because the Creator has taken care in preparing it! And anticipating the results of the sower’s action, the creation flourishes, whether aided by human hands or not: “the pastures of the wilderness overflow; the hills gird themselves with joy, the meadows clothe themselves with flocks, the valleys deck themselves with grain, they shout and sing together for joy” (65:12-13). Thus the creative action of God is continuous; the relational purposes of God are indeed accomplished, with respect to both the creation and its continuing care and development, even to the welcoming of the disciples as followers of the Servant of Creation.

Just look at God’s provision! Earth and people rejoice together!

A similar assertion of divine purpose that is successful over a continuum that includes both creation and salvation comes from Isaiah 55:10-11:

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

Stunningly, people and nature are in this instance seen to join together in rejoicing at the accomplishment of God’s purposes: “For you shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands” (Isaiah 55:12). And equally remarkably, those purposes include not only restoration of the people to the land but also rejuvenation of the land itself, even to the point of the generation of new kinds of vegetation: “Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress; instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle; and it shall be to the Lord for a memorial for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off” (Isaiah 55:13).

God the Sower will achieve God’s purposes for creation

Thus far, we note, the parable’s meaning is located entirely within the large frame of the relationship between Creator and creation. If the sower is God, humans are present within the narrative of the parable only as the seed and its yield for the household of God. So also psalmist and prophet rejoice in God’s works for the whole creation. This great frame was perhaps suggested by the author of the Gospel when he noted that Jesus told the parable as he “sat by the sea,” having gone “out of the house” where he had been meeting with his disciples. This is a message for everybody; indeed, it is of relevance for everything, for all creatures. So also, according to the parable, irrespective of the results of individual instances of human interaction, in the end, the seeding of the reign of God will produce yields sufficient to achieve God’s purposes for the creation.

Does the parable of the sower portray the theory of natural selection?

For the contemporary reader, it needs to be acknowledged that another meaning entirely might be drawn from the parable. We have suggested the possibility that the sower is blind and that his sowing is pervaded by indeterminacy. These are hints of an evolutionary reading of the process that would find no basis for attributing purpose in the sowing at all. The parable contains a good share of the elements needed for an argument for the theory of natural selection! The match between seed and soil is largely a matter of chance, and the variation in yields suggests the possibility of superior seed to be selected for the next generation. The yield is in any case readily explained as the result of a complex process governed from the beginning to end by natural process and contingent fact. If the intent was to tell about a ”supernatural” sower and account for the difficulties those who believe in such a being might have in being accepted, the outcome of the story is barely credible.

Especially problematic under such a reading would be the suggestion that so much seed should go to waste, the vexing question of an evolutionary theodicy: if its creator is the benevolent source of all good, worthy of praise by all creation, why is the process of nature so inherently wasteful of possible good? The occasional failure of the entire harvest, under such an indeterminate process, might easily result in famine throughout the land. The question, once raised, quickly escapes the bounds of reflection based on the parable. With respect to our focus on care of creation, we might ask: Why is the possibility of creation’s diminishment in any measure, seemingly built into its very structure?

Rejection of Jesus the Servant of Creation thwarts the harvest

We cannot pursue this discussion here; see Christopher Southgate’s extended analysis of the problem in his The Groaning of Creation: God, Evolution, and the Problem of Evil. We raise the question primarily to note that the lurking in the background of the telling of the parable is an anxiety about the success of God’s purposes in the ministry of Jesus the Servant of Creation, an anxiety that surfaces in the interpretation of the parable that Matthew presents as follow-up teaching of Jesus to his disciples. At fault in the failure to understand “the word of the kingdom,” is “the evil one” who comes and snatches away what is sown in the heart; this is what was sown on the path”; or alternately, weakness in the face of persecution causes the initially eager follower to fall away; and “cares of the world and the lure of wealth” choke the initially avid reception of the word.

God’s empire is an alternative to the Roman Empire

Rejection of the Servant of Creation has multiple sources, and their collective cultural power is strong. In this reading, it should be noted, a door is opened to introduce a variety of other factors: unmentioned, notes Warren Carter, but important for his interpretation of the parable as a critique of the imperial domination experienced by the sower who is “trying to eke out a living in generally inhospitable conditions,” are “other obstacles: rent, tithes, taxes and tolls, seed for the next year, a household to support. Crop failure meant borrowed money; indebtedness meant defaulting on the loan, loss of land, and virtual slavery as a laborer.” Carter clearly has in mind the oppressive culture of the Roman Empire, which sought to dominate and control all aspects of society, including, we need to add, its relationship to the creation that sustains it. The parable, Carter rightly suggests, “concerns socialization into an alternative culture constituted by God’s empire and in conflict with the dominant values and structures of the surrounding cultures” (Matthew and the Margins: A Sociopolitical and Religious Reading, p. 282, 286).

It is unfortunate, however, that in the context of the parable itself, the birds and the sun have been, retroactively as it were, turned into adversaries of God’s purposes: the bird that snatches away the seed is “the evil one who snatches away what is sown in the heart”; the withering sun is the “trouble or persecution” which “arises on account of the word.” While it may be true that in relatively unknown Hebrew texts there is precedent for viewing birds as ”agents of the devil” (because they are known to eat seeds important for human consumption) the view is heedlessly allegorical and anthropocentric. It leads too easily to the supposition that the creation itself, beyond the human being, has been turned against the will of its creator, an interpretation of the consequences of the “fall”—that is, in the view of recent interpreters of the Genesis text, no longer viable (See Terry Fretheim’s discussion in his God and World in the Old Testament: A Relational Theology of Creation, pp. 70-89; and Christopher Southgate, The Groaning of Creation, pp. 28-34).

Accordingly, we have double reason to rejoice with the “mountains and the hills before us” as they burst into song, and to clap our hands “with all the trees of the field,” when “good soil” turns up to rescue us, creatures of the dirt that we are, along with all the other creatures, including the birds (Genesis 1:7). If further reflection on the cause of rejection beyond what has been offered here and in our comment on the texts for the Third Sunday after Pentecost, the reading for the second lesson from Romans provides a basis for exploring the inner struggle that humans experience when humans are alienated from God’s creation and turn it into an enemy of the Spirit, the giver of life (an orientation to the creation referred to as “living according to the flesh”). Because the eighth chapter of Romans is listed for reading on the next two Sundays, however, we defer discussion of that possibility to our comments on those texts.

Our alienation from creation contributes to our rejection of Jesus as Servant of Creation.

In conclusion, we note that this parable of Jesus, drawn as it is from an agrarian experience of life, implies a culture that is deeply counter to our modern, industrialized orientation to nature. It is the tension between these two cultures that we encounter in every aspect of the environmental crisis of our times: do we live and work and have our being within God’s creation? Or do we seek domination and control of nature, in pursuit of entirely anthropocentric purposes? Naturally, this culture of ours is not receptive to the Servant of Creation or his disciples. We cannot expect it to be, nor can we simply be content to adapt to its destructive power; we must hope for a restoration of the creation by the God who knows and loves it, and be willing to be enlisted in that mission.

Reflection for Third Sunday after Pentecost by Dr. Dennis Ormseth

2011-06-29T07:07:00.000-07:00

Third Sunday after Pentecost in Year A

God’s Wisdom for Us is Cosmic in Scope!

Care for Creation Commentary on the Common Lectionary—Year A 2011

By Dennis Ormseth

Readings for:

Third Sunday after Pentecost Psalm 145:8-14 Zechariah 9:9-12 Romans 7:15-25a

Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

How do we deal with rejection?

If Second Pentecost was about welcoming Jesus and his disciples, 3rd Pentecost is about their rejection and Jesus’ response. As Diane Jacobsen notes regarding the reading of this Gospel, we have moved into the section of Matthew in which the conflict “that points us to Jesus’ ultimate trial and death begins in earnest” (Jacobson, “The Season of Pentecost,” in New Proclamation, Year A, 2002, edited by Marshall D. Johnson, p. 124). Neither John the Baptist nor Jesus is welcomed by the powerful religious elite, who quickly label John’s call to repentance and his withdrawal to the wilderness as “demonic.” And they label Jesus’ eating with “tax collectors and sinners” as gluttonous and reprobate, in a phrase that indicated, according to Warren Carter, “‘a stubborn and rebellious son’ who does not obey his parents and should be put to death” (Deut 21:18-21)”

Jesus and the disciples challenge the hierarchy of the dominant culture.

There is rich irony here, as Carter notes:

From God’s point of view, Jesus is an obedient son or child with whom God is well pleased (see 2:15; 3:17; 17:5). They (unspecified) declare a verdict that is totally at odds with God’s. The second misinterpretation of Jesus as “a friend of tax collectors and sinners” evokes the meal scene (see 9:10-13) in which his demonstration of God’s mercy to all regardless of economic, social, political, gender, or religious status aggravated the religious leaders. This alternative community challenges normative hierarchical divisions (Warren Carter, Matthew and the Margins: A Sociopolitical and Religious Reading, pp. 254-55.)

We would add that there is apparently room in the way of Jesus as the Lord, the Servant of Creation for both mourning and celebration with regard to the condition of the God’s creation. However, that is not true for those unspecified persons who reject him. One can perhaps speculate that, as with those whom the children taunt, they are too caught up in the business of the market place to have anything other than a strictly utilitarian, self-serving orientation to the gifts of the Creator.

Jesus’ Father is Lord of heaven and Earth!

Jesus, on the contrary, has the creation very much in mind. This is obvious in what follows in our reading: Jesus prays to the “Father, Lord of heaven and earth.” Showing how strongly the phrase is tied into the understanding of Jesus’ identity in the Gospel, Carter summarizes the references to other parts of Matthew’s gospel as follows:

Jesus combines several familiar titles that underline God’s sovereign rule. On God s loving, life-giving Father with whom Jesus has close relationship, see 5:16, 45, 48; 6:9; 7:21 (“my father”); 16:17; 23:9. On God as Lord whose will is done on earth and in Jesus, see 1:20, 22, 24; 2:13, 15, 19; etc. The phrase heaven and earth (Jdt 9:12) acknowledges all of creation (Gen 1:1) to be subject to God’s reign (cf. 5:45; 28:18; so Philo, Gaium 115, God is “Father and Maker of the world”). Heaven is God’s dwelling place (5:16, 34; 6:9 [“our Father in heaven”]), disclosed by revelation (3:16), the place where God’s will is done (6:10), the origin of God’s empire manifested in Jesus (see 3:2; 4:17). Earth (cf. 2:6; 4:15) is the arena where God’s saving will is to be done (6:10; 9:6, 34)

Jesus challenges the domination mentality of the empire.

The point for Carter is that invoking God’s sovereignty contests rival claims for imperial power and “relativizes Rome’s rule (23:9)” (Carter, Matthew and the Margins: A Sociopolitical and Religious Reading, p. 257). In our view, equally significant is the claim that this Creator of all things is the Father of Jesus. The claim is concerned not merely with power relationships, but also with the familial values inherent in the creator/creation relationship, values on account of which one might mourn or dance and values that “infants” might more easily appreciate than the “wise and intelligent” members of the cultural elite.

Infants get it! The “wise and intelligent” do not!

Again Carter’s comment is helpful:

“Infants” is a metaphor for the lowly and teachable (Pss 116:6; 119:130), the beginner and pilgrim (Philo, Mig 29-31; Probus 160), the righteous (Ps 19:7). Frequently it denotes the vulnerable child, physically endangered by war, capable of being deceived, of wrong action and foolishness . . . . The metaphor recognizes both receptiveness to God’s revelation and the marginal and vulnerable social locations in which the desperate live (Ibid).

On the other hand, the phrase “the wise and intelligent” points to those leaders who refuse to recognize God’s ways and purposes.” They are “not humble before God and do not fear God.” They “are unreceptive to God’s revelation, protective of their own interests and control.” “Blessed are the meek,” Jesus preached in his Ssermon on the Mount; “they will inherit the earth.” These are not the meek. They constitute an elite “cocooned in power, comfort, and the arrogance of their own pretensions, [and so] do not discern God’s purposes.”

Jesus challenges the power structures of the elites

It is striking how insistently, in Carter’s view, Matthew emphasizes the importance of the power structure of society in these verses. Children taunt those preoccupied by buying and selling; marginal persons understand what escapes the powerful; God’s sovereignty outstretches Roman imperial authority; the cocoon of “power, comfort, and arrogance of their own presentions” isolates them from the reality of the divine presence in Jesus. Contrast then the image of the king “who comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey” (Zechariah 9:9-12). This lectionary lesson is also about the exercise of power. Jesus is presented as the messianic mediator of God’s presence.

Jesus, fulfiller of the Davidic hopes.

In Walter Breuggemans interpretation, this reading expresses a fourfold conviction regarding the Davidic monarchy, which we necessarily apply then also to Jesus:

1. The possibility of such a human agent is completely dependent on the fidelity of Yahweh to Yahweh’s own promise. In the end, the hope for messiah is hope based on Yahweh’s capacity to be fully faithful to Yahweh’s own promise.

2. The messiah is a human agent. . . Thus messianism is a hope for the affirmation of human agents who are to ‘have dominion,” and of the materiality of Yahweh’s intention. Yahweh intends something for the Earth.

3. The messiah is expected to exercise political power and leverage of a public kind, in order to transform and rehabilitate the public community. Thus messianism, in Old Testament testimony, is charged with justice and righteousness, with the restoration of viable communal practices in the real world.

4. The practice of human power for communal restoration is entrusted to the descendants of this particular human family, the heirs of David. (Brueggeman, Theology of the Old Testament, p. 618.)

How Jesus fulfills the Davidic hopes

It is often observed that the Jews expected the messiah to be a political leader and that Jesus disappointed that expectation because he wasn’t that kind of leader. If this were strictly true, then we probably should not be reading this lesson in Christian worship. We contend, on the contrary, (1) that he was indeed to “have dominion” in the creation as one who serves the creation; (2) that through him, God intended “something for the earth,” its restoration, even its completion as “good;” and (3) that “something” being restoration of justice and righteousness through “restoration of viable communal practices in the real world.” So Jesus was the messiah of Zechariah’s vision, with a difference: his mode of entry signals his fundamental character as agent of peace, of shalom. Matthew has Jesus himself emphasize this difference: “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (11:29).

Jesus offers rest to those burdened by Roman imperial control

It is important to underscore that what Jesus offers here is not “surface rest,” and neither is it the “deep rest,” as Diane Jacobsen argues, at least not if it is just “for our souls” (Jacobsen, p. 126). Nor is it the rest of release from the inner spiritual struggle that the coupling of this text with Romans 7:15-25a might suggest. While Carter reminds us that such rest is indeed found in “ancient . . . (but rejected) good ways which contrast with the current ‘greed for unjust gain’ and shameful actions, as in Jeremiah 6:16, the salient point is that those to whom rest is offered are ‘weary and are carrying heavy burdens.’” They are:

not those ‘oppressed’ by the law, as some argue, but those who are burdened by life under Roman imperial control and its unjust political and socioeconomic structure. They are afflicted by disease and demons . . . by hard labor, by payment of taxes, tolls, and debts to the political, economic, and religious elite, and by the control of social superiors (5:3-12. Jesus saves from the punishment of Roman rule (21:41; 22:7; 1:2) in establishing God’s empire, now in part and at his return in full (4:17; 24:27-31) (Carter, p. 259).

The promised rest is cosmic in scope! A new creation!

The promised rest must correspondingly have deep resonance in the lived reality of life in community. It consists, Carter suggests,

not of existential peace of mind but of God’s presence with a people who live according to God’s revealed will and free of tyranny from imperial powers (Deut 5:14; 12:9; 25; 19; Isa 14:3-4; 65:10; Ezek 34:15, 27). Rest cannot happen under imperial domination (Deut 28; 65; Lam 5:5) but means the removal of that power. Rome’s rule is fated (Ibid.).

It is God’s will be done on earth. But ultimately this promised rest is cosmic in scope: it is “the creation vision of Gen 2:2-3 in which God, after creating, rests with all creation in just relation with God and itself.” It is the new creation, which comes only with God’s transforming intervention.

God’s gift of rest involves care for creation

Much is at stake here for an ecological theology concerned to promote care of creation. As Norman Wirzba points out, in rabbinic interpretation, God’s creation of rest on the seventh day of creation, “far from being an interlude in the unfolding of creation is the climax of God’s creative life.” Thus, with Jesus’ gift of rest come conditions that foster a sense of life’s fullness and its promised complete restoration, the good creation that is the source of both God’s and our eternal enjoyment and delight (Wirzba, The Paradise of God, p. 36).

Jesus is God’s wisdom and we are called to do Wisdom’s deeds

Another way to take measure of the cosmic scope of what Jesus offers us in this text is to observe that Matthew links Jesus’ words with Wisdom, who in the face of rejection like that which Jesus encountered, is “vindicated by her deeds.” Diane Jabobson finds in Matthew’s chapter 11 “the center of comparison between Jesus and Wisdom” (Jacobsen, p. 125). In a passage that carries us far beyond the scope of this lectionary, but is relevant here for the manner in which it gives meaning to the rejection Jesus encounters, Elizabeth Johnson comments on “Wisdom’s deeds” as follows:

Christ crucified and risen, the Wisdom of God, manifests the truth that divine justice and renewing power leavens the world in a way different from the techniques of dominating violence. The victory of shalom is won not by the sword of the warrior god but by the awesome power of compassionate love, in and through solidarity with those who suffer. The unfathomable depths of evil and suffering are entered into in friendship with Sophia-God, in trust that this is the path to life. Guided by wisdom categories, the story of the cross, rejected as passive, penal victimization, is reappropriated as heartbreaking empowerment. The suffering accompanying such a life as Jesus led is neither passive, useless, nor divinely ordained, but is linked to the ways of Sophia forging justice and peace in an antagonistic world. As such, the cross is part of the larger mystery of pain-to-life, of that struggle for the new creation evocative of the rhythm of pregnancy, delivery, and birth so familiar to women of all times (She Who Is, p. 159.)

Christ’s Spirit is found where we tend God’s creation

Here, too, one notes how much is at stake for an ecological theology concerned to promote care of creation. As Johnson points out,

A relation to the whole cosmos is already built into the biblical wisdom tradition, and this orients Christology beyond the human world to the ecology of the earth, and indeed, to the universe, a vital move in this era of planetary crisis. As embodiment of Sophia which is fashioner of all that exists, Jesus the Christ’s redeeming care intends the flourishing of all creatures and the whole earth itself. The power of Christ’s Spirit is seen wherever human beings share in this love for the earth, tending its fruitfulness, attending to its limits, and guarding it from destruction (Ibid., pp. 165-66).

Early Summer Gleanings: The Creation Corner Column for June 2011

2011-06-23T14:18:00.000-07:00

GreenDeen: What Islam Teaches About Protecting the Planet by Ibrahim Abdul-Matin (Barrett-Koehler, 2010, 232 pages, $16.95).

"Go Green" U.S. postage stamps available according to USA Philatelic: The official source for stamp enthusiasts. 2011/vol. 16/quarter 2. See www.usps.com/green . For a Go Green Family Activity Kit, learn more at www.stampproducts.com/gogreen .

"Green: The Color and the Cause" is an exhibition (through September 11) that explores the techniques people have devised to create green textiles, the meanings that this color---traditionally associated with nature and its attributes, including life, fertility and rebirth---has held in cultures across time and place, and the ways that contemporary textile artists and designers are responding to concerns about the environment. Also, complementing this exhibition is one (through January 8, 2012) entitled "Second Lives: the Age-Old Art of Recycling Textiles" that highlights ways people in various cultures have ingeniously re-purposed worn but precious fabrics to create beautiful new textile forms. Both at the Textile Museum, Washington DC. http://www.textilemuseum.org/

"The Father, the Sun, and the Holy Spirit: Pope Benedict Plans a Greener Vatican" article by Stephan Faris in The Atlantic Magazine, April 2011, p. 19.

The Human Right to a Green Future: Environmental Rights and Intergenerational Justice. Richard P. Hiskes, Univ. of Connecticut. Cambridge Univ. Press, 2009, paperback. For free down-loadable environmental study guides to accompany this book, see http://www.coursehero.com/textbooks/232600-The-Human-Right-to-a-Green-Future-Environmental-Rights-and-Intergenerational-Justice/

"The Creation Care Radio Hour" has begun June 14, a service of the Evangelical Environmental Network. New programs each Tuesday with conversations about the Biblical mandate to care for creation with authors, writers, evangelists, ministers and others. See this at http://creationcare.org/blog.php?blog=15 .

Sermon Contest for St. Francis Celebration

2011-06-22T08:04:00.000-07:00

Earth Ministry invites you to enter your message of faith, hope, or action on behalf of creation! Four sermons will be selected for inclusion in the Celebration of St. Francis (sponsored by Earth Ministry) in Seattle, WA on October 1st. See the flyer here.

Reflection on Lectionary Readings by Dr. Dennis Ormseth: Second Sunday after Pentecost

2011-06-20T09:32:00.000-07:00

Second Sunday after Pentecost in Year A

Listen to true prophets! Righteousness and Justice for All Creation!

Care for Creation Commentary on the Common Lectionary—Year A 2011

By Dennis Ormseth

Readings for:

Second Sunday after Pentecost Psalm 89:1-4, 15-18 Jeremiah 28:5-9 Romans 6:12-23

Matthew 10:40-42

In 2011, the long “green season” of “Time after Pentecost” begins with lectionary thirteen in the sequence that begins with the Sundays after the Epiphany and ends with Christ the King. Accordingly, in the narrative of these comments on the lectionary, we resume the procession into the new creation by the power of the Holy Spirit given in Pentecost, moving forward in hope toward the fulfillment of the mission of the Lord, the Servant of Creation. In another year, we might have already considered several aspects of the formation of the body of Christian presence in the creation. And on previous Sundays in another year, we would have considered “the call to table fellowship” and “God’s desire for mercy,” along with Jesus’ teaching of his disciples “about the joys and burdens of following in his footsteps” and how “such following comes at a cost.” (The list is from Diane Jacobson, “The Season of Pentecost,” in New Proclamation, Year A, 2002, edited by Marshall D. Johnson, p. 118). But as it is, in this year’s lection, the disciples’ first movement forward is appropriately marked by a strong and encouraging word of welcome from those who are to receive them.

We disciples make present the Lord, the Servant of Creation.

Welcome is a warm word of hospitality, a word that offers place in which to dwell. Mindful of Jesus’ Easter promise in his Farewell Address to his disciples to “go and prepare a place for you,” we hear this anticipation of the disciples’ outreach with the joyful awareness that we, too, have been prepared to be able to be “home” for these witnesses to the Servant of Creation, in our place, and with them Jesus himself and his Father. That is indeed what Jesus promised them: “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me” (See our comment on the texts for the Fifth Sunday after Easter). With those who have been sent out in the power of the Spirit of Life, comes the Servant of Creation and the God of Creation.

Acclaiming Jesus as King may compromise his role as Servant.

Thus we find ourselves this Sunday gathered for our worship of the God of creation whose steadfast love, according to Psalm 89: 1-2, sustains all generations. What was promised in covenant with David, we are given to understand, is now being extended, through Christ, to all nations. Care must be taken, however, to note the ambiguity inherent in this use of the psalm, lest we welcome a view of God that is subversive for care of creation. In verses excluded from the assigned reading of the psalm, the Hebrew monarch is presented as mediator of God’s gracious presence in and through all creation. As Walter Breuggeman observes, the psalm reiterates an affirmation of the monarch expressed in 2 Sam 7:12-16, which may “be regarded as the beginning point for graciousness without qualification as a datum of Israel’s life and for the assertion of messianism wherein this particular human agent (and his family) is made constitutive for Yahweh’s way with Israel” (Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament, p. 605). But while efforts to qualify the absoluteness of this claim are made in the Old Testament by making the monarch subject to the Torah, Breuggemann suggests that the tension between these commitments is not easily maintained. If “the purposes of Yahweh have now been

entrusted to a human agent . . . what is from Yahweh’s side a singular intention becomes complicated both by high aggrandizing ideology and by uncurbed self-service.” For the church, he notes, there is a temptation to “take the high lyrical claims of oracle and royal psalm and ‘supersede’ the narratives of sordidness, so that kingship takes on a somewhat docetic flavor.” Christians appropriate “for Christology the highest claims of kingship and assign to Judaism the demands of the Torah,” which both distorts “the way in which Jewish interpretation kept Torah and messiah in fruitful tension,” and “overlooks the way in which this same tension continues to swirl around Jesus” (Ibid., pp. 609-10).

The Warrior God (Psalm 89) is opposite to the God who sustains creation (Psalm 104).

The selection of verses from Psalm 89 for this reading nicely illustrates this temptation. The implications of this ambiguity of the psalm’s images of God for our relationship to the creation are significant. The God who “rule[s] the raging of the sea” (89:8), the psalm proclaims, “set[s] the hand” of his servant David “on the sea and his right hand on the rivers” (89:25). As Arthur Walker-Jones points out in his book on The Green Psalter, the images here reflect the continuing influence in Israel of the ancient mythology of the warrior god, who creates by destroying Leviathan, the symbol of chaos, which will compete in the tradition with the more ecologically oriented images of God’s relationship with creation exemplified by Psalm 104 (Walker Jones, pp. 155-57). The relationship of the warrior god to creation is clearly one of domination and control, which, as we saw in connection with our comment on The Holy Trinity, is inconsistent with the Trinitarian view of God as relational (See our comment on Holy Trinity in this series; cf. Terry Fretheim, God and World in the old Testament, pp. 43-48). The selection of only versus 1-4 and 15-18, serves to conceal this concern from the congregation, but it does not manage to remove from the reading the triumphalist spirit of the monarchical ideology. It also hides the fact that the psalm, taken as a whole, is a lament for the failure of the monarchy to keep the covenant of David, the failure that itself manifests the brokenness of that ideology.

We welcome visitors who bring gifts—and “baggage”

The presence of Christ as the Servant of Creation, in any case, brings about a decisively different reality. The gospel lesson for this Sunday, we have suggested, is concerned with the extension of the Christian community out into the world, as gatherings of those drawn to Jesus welcome his disciples. We find ourselves amongst those so gathered, and are delighted by the company we share with them around the word of their testimony and we are delighted by the meal that they have taught us to share as a sign of our communion with Jesus in the presence of God. As a congregation, we are of course pleased to welcome newcomers of almost any kind. The growth of a congregation is naturally seen as a sign of success in meeting people’s needs, whether spiritual or social, and perhaps even material. The growth is likely to be credited to the spiritual gifts of the congregation’s leaders and those with whom they amply share these gifts, the local disciples, as it were. Such growth is typically rewarded by heightened confidence in the future of the congregation, greater pride of the members in their choice, and their collective prestige in the larger community, not to forget higher salaries for the staff. So, at least in a general way, we have some sense for what Jesus is talking about when he suggests that those who welcome a variety of newcomers into their gatherings receive the rewards associated with the arrival and welcome of assorted outsiders. Strangers bring gifts; the disciples bring gifts of word and sacrament, and the blessings that go with them. But sometimes strangers also bring “baggage,” in the metaphor of our times. They bring baggage of different kinds; and the congregation has to deal with that, as well. So we might often find ourselves asking, “what are we letting ourselves in

for, as we welcome these newcomers? What, specifically, are we letting ourselves in for, in welcoming these disciples of Jesus?”

If we welcome prophets, what is the reward?

Jesus suggests a few instructive analogies. First, of special interest to us in view of our discussion about of the character of the monarchy, he says “Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward” (Matthew 10:41a). The trick here is that, as our first reading from the prophet Jeremiah conveniently reminds us, prophets come in different kinds, with different agendas relating to the reigning powers in the land. There are prophets of a rosy future, like Hananiah; and there are prophets of doom, like Jeremiah, who wears the wooden yoke of obedience to Torah. As Diane Jacobsen puts it, it’s a “Case of the Dueling Prophets:”

Who are the true prophets and who are the false prophets?

At issue is: How can one distinguish true prophesy from false prophecy, a subject taken up in Deut. 18:9-22? Which of us, given a choice, would not choose good news over bad? We will want to believe the bearer of good tidings; and we will tend to dismiss the harbinger of woe. So it was throughout biblical history. The people were wont to choose Hananiah and to dismiss or even to kill Jeremiah. Jeremiah responds to Hananiah’s smug assurance with the same clear and obvious message as Deuteronomy—time will tell (Jacobsen, p. 115).

The rewards of the prophets vary, depending on the prophet!

The prophet’s rewards: Hananiah’s promise that the exiles in Babylon will return in two years, irrespective of the people’s disobedience, Jeremiah insists, is a lie; instead, he “has broken wooden bars only to forge iron bars in place of them;” Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon will continue in absolute control (Yahweh has “even given him the wild animals”) until the people turn and repent of their disobedience. The prophecy will end in death, in the first instance, Hananiah’s own. By way of contrast, Jeremiah foresees “days surely coming” when, Yahweh promises, “I will restore the fortunes of my people, Israel and Judah, and I will bring them back to the land that I gave to their ancestors and they shall take possession of it.” Before then, however, the nations will be convulsed with “warfare, famine and pestilence,” as the “fierce anger of the Lord” works itself out and “he has executed and accomplished the intents of his mind” (Jeremiah 30:24).

Prophecy always embraces all creation—animals, vegetation, land and people.

The prophet’s mention of “wild animals” reminds us that Jeremiah’s prophecy embraces the wide net of all creation. As Terry Fretheim writes in an illuminating essay on “The Earth Story in Jeremiah 12,”

God’s purposes in the world must be conceived in relation to the story of all of God’s creatures, including the land. Using Isaiah’s language (65.17-25; see 11.6-9), God is creating a new earth and it will be populated by animals, vegetation, and people (see Hos. 2.18-23). Comparably, the salvation oracles of Jeremiah are remarkably inclusive in their orientation, including non-Israelites (e.g. 3.17; 12.14-17; cf. 29.7) and the land itself (31.5, 12, 14, 27; 32.42-44; 33.10-13; 50.19).

When the trumpet sounds, and God rides the cloud chariots into a new heaven and a new earth, the children will come singing, leading wolves and leopards and playing among the snakes. They will not hurt or destroy, for God will, finally, ‘give rest to the earth’ (50.34; see Isa. 14.7; 51.3) (Fretheim, The Earth Story in Jeremiah 12,” in Readings from the perspective of Earth, ed. by Norman C. Habel, p. 110).

The reception of Jeremiah’s vision, in sort, will be rewarded with confidence in the restoration of the whole creation.

Who are the true and false prophets in climate change? Will we listen?

We find ourselves in something of a similar contention between prophecies these days in the debate regarding climate change. Prophets on the right promise peace, with only modest adaptations needed to adjust to the more or less natural changes in climate they foresee taking place in the next half-century. Prophets on the left see instead a doomsday of sorts, climate changes that will engulf whole cities as well as alter habitat for uncounted species. Which prophets do we prefer? Politically it is clear that the American people are choosing the Hananiahs of our time, in spite of the weight of scientific evidence that the prophets of the left have tied around their necks. It is a choice for economic development, over against the restraints of ecologically disciplined policies of sustainable growth. Economic growth is, as we argued in our comment on Jesus Sermon on the Mount (Seventh Sunday after the Epiphany), the Earth-destroying idolatry of our age. And that choice makes, each year, more likely the results foreseen by the prophets of doom. Setting the reputed uncertainties of scientific prediction aside, the church of Jesus Christ, the Lord, the Servant of Creation, will have to decide on which basis the rule of that Servant will be upheld: Will we do what we want? Or will we instead look forward to what God the creator and Jesus the servant of creation will do, and so enlist in their cause? Will we choose a course that follows the imperative of economic growth, or will we turn around and re-vision our future? Those who welcome a prophet, receive a prophet’s reward.

If we welcome righteous people, what is the reward? Justice for the whole creation!

The second saying, “whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous,” broadens the scope of the discussion of rewards, but with the same results. “Righteousness,” in the Gospel of Matthew, we recall, refers to “actions that are faithful to commitments and relationships.” We welcome Jesus as the one chosen by God to “fulfill all righteousness” (Matthew 3:15). As we have shown in our narrative of the church year from Epiphany to Pentecost, Jesus’ mission embraces righteousness and justice for the whole creation (See our comment on Matthew 3 in “The Baptism of our Lord” in this series). The reward for those who receive Jesus as the Lord, the Servant of Creation, is re-direction toward the purposes of God for God’s beloved creation. Our second reading, Romans 6:12-23, is relevant here as well: the “righteous ones” are those who do “not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions.” They present themselves “to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present [their] members to God as instruments of righteousness.” In Christ, the Servant of Creation, they belong to the dominion of life for all creation. Those who receive a righteous person, receive a righteous person’s reward.

If we provide (a cup of) “water” to the poor, will it be polluted or pure?

And so, finally, the special relevance of the third saying: “and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple, truly I tell, you, none of these will lose their reward” (Matthew 10:42). The phrase “little ones” refers here to the disciples and points, Warren Carter suggests, to their “vulnerability and danger as a minority group. . . . It recalls the context of persecution and exhortation to persevere which is evident throughout the chapter” (Carter, Matthew and the Margins: A Sociopolitical and Religious Reading, p. 245). It suggests to us also those made vulnerable in society by the struggle with the conditions of poverty, for whom a mere cup of water is a precious gift of life. Jesus, we remember, is more than a little aware of the importance of water as necessary to the flourishing, not only of human beings, but also of all creatures. “Water,” as we put it in our comment in the story of Jesus’ encounter with

the Samaritan woman at the well of Jacob, (see our comment on Third Sunday in Lent; cf. John 4:5-42) is “the touchstone of the query concerning the presence of God.” It probably should go without saying, (but won’t) that to provide the stranger with a “cup of water’ that is beyond proverbial and therefore truly and completely righteous and life-giving, the water will be pure and safe for all to drink, whatever it takes to bring it to the scene. And with that availability, the congregation does indeed, at a minimum, have its reward. As metaphor for the source of all life, furthermore, the cup of water carries astonishingly greater significance: it represents the whole of the creation in its capacity to fulfill the purposes of God, so that all of creation might be freed to flourish in its time. It is indeed a sign of the presence of the Lord, the Servant of Creation. And those who give that cup in the name of Christ, truly, none of them will lose their reward.

Reflection on Trinity Sunday readings by Dr. Dennis Ormseth

2011-06-13T07:33:00.000-07:00

Holy Trinity Sunday Year A

Readings for Year A 2011

Care for Creation Commentary on the Common lectionary

By Dennis Ormseth

For Lutherans Restoring Creation

The Holy Trinity

Psalm 8

Genesis 1:1-2:4a

2 Corinthians 13:11-13

Matthew 28:16-20

As we noted in our commenting on Jesus Farewell Discourse (see the “Sixth Sunday of Easter” in this series), the issues at stake in the development of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity in the Church’s first four centuries are all adumbrated in the readings for the last four Sundays of Easter. Jaroslav Pelican summarizes them well:

“the question of unity of the God or monotheism that will be at issue in the church’s conflict with Judaism; the question of how best to define the relationship of the Father and the Son (Spirit or Logos?), which will shape the churches relationship with pagan thought; the status and role of the Holy Spirit, key to linkage with the prophetic tradition of the Hebrew Scriptures; and the bond between redemption and creation that the church will be called on to defend against Marcion and other Gnostics. (For the basis of this list, see Jaroslav Pelikan, The Emergence of the CatholicTradition (100-600), Vol.1 of The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, p. 172).

The doctrine of the Trinity, in the form of the Nicene Creed, serves to keep the church responsive to these issues. As we have seen, the issues are significant for understanding the Christian concern for care of creation. The bond between redemption and creation was part of our discussion on the readings for the Sixth Sunday of Easter. The Holy Spirit figured importantly, of course, in our comment on the Day of Pentecost. And we explored the relationship of the Father and the Son with respect to its significance for the ongoing life of the church in the post-Ascension period. It remains, then, to take up the issue of the unity of God or monotheism, as it also bears upon our concern for the care of creation.

The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is the tradition’s guarantee that the story of Jesus belongs as part and parcel of the story of Israel’s God, who, as our first reading reminds us, is confessed to be the creator of all things. Thus the Sunday of the Holy Trinity provides occasion for a recapitulation of the narrative of the Gospel of the Servant of Creation, whose life and mission we have followed through the readings for the seasons of Epiphany, Lent and Easter. Is Jesus recognizable as one who shares the will, the purposes, perhaps even the authority and power of this God of creation? And if so, what are we to make of the fact that this aspect of his life and mission has been so sorely neglected in the teaching of the church until very recent times?

The Gospel of the Servant of Creation which we have constructed on the foundation of lections from the Seasons of Epiphany, Lent and Easter begins with that “creational moment” of Jesus’ baptism, when the water “falls away from Jesus’ dripping body, the heavens open, and Jesus sees the Spirit of God descending and alighting upon him like a dove.” Rising from gently troubled waters, he hears “the voice of the Creator, speaking over the waters as at the beginning of creation.” This is the one God calls “my servant. . . my chosen,” the one who will bring forth justice to the nations. He will see waters far more violently troubled, including those of our time stirred up by the changing of Earth’s climate. If it is the church’s expectation that Jesus will bring justice to all the Earth, will he bring justice also to those troubled waters? (See Matthew 3:13-7; Isaiah 42:1-9; see our comment on The Baptism of our Lord. Subsequent references will be to comments in this series on texts for the designated Sunday).

So, from the outset, the story of Jesus is about this “trinity”: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and it is about the care for creation of this triune God. Instructed by the Spirit, John the Baptist hails this Son as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” His death, we have noted, will become “an icon of God’s redemptive co-suffering with all sentient life, as well as with the victims of social competition” (Second Sunday after the Epiphany). He will call as his first disciples fishermen who are experienced with life at the edge of the wilderness, who are familiar with imperial strategies to dominate the economies of the Earth’s lands and seas and who will be able to envision ‘new ways of living in and with the non-human creation,’ ways that bring ‘the necessity of breaking the body of creation for our own needs, and for the needs of the future, humbly into our priesthood’” of the creation (Third Sunday After the Epiphany). Following the way first taken by Moses, he will ascend a mountain to teach these disciples; as representative of the ecology of the earth, the mountain attends to that teaching with an ear for wisdom that “tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of a biotic community”—i.e. for a “land ethic” that might truly “constitute justice for the whole creation.”

The mountain is not disappointed, for here is teaching that buoys the spirit of people who, in our time, care passionately about an Earth in deep distress and who genuinely mourn its destruction. Jesus blesses those who give place to others, a fundamental principle of ecological awareness; and he also blesses those who live according to the purposes their Creator has installed within their very nature. The mountain rejoices to hear him reject the “bad religion in which ‘people commit sins and animals pay the price’ in favor of the sacrifice of love that overcomes the ‘pattern of sin endlessly repeated’ of taking ‘creation not as a gift but as a violence—either the violence of order or the violence of chaos—an aboriginal strife that must be governed; for to take violence as inescapable is to make of violence a moral and a civic duty” (Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany). As “salt for the earth” and “light of the world,” his followers will “carry out God’s dynamically unfolding purposes for the whole creation until the end of time” (Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany). With an ear for Moses’ admonition to “choose life,” Jesus prepares to descend the mountain of wisdom and walk the plains of Galilee with his disciples, whom he gathers as he goes; he will lead them in a “demonstration project of the power of God’s love” lived out in a community of relationships that include all that God loves, the whole creation (Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany). He steels them for what lies ahead by envisioning for them the possibility that they might not only love what God loves, but love as God loves: “without expectation of reciprocity, without self-interested conditions . . . without qualifying distinctions” (Seventh Sunday after the Epiphany).

With a full complement of eight Sundays, the extended season of Epiphany provided the occasion for an excursus at this last point, namely, on the real difficulties humans face in realizing such unconditioned, self-giving love for others, especially given our existential anxiety concerning the availability of the material resources we feel we need to sustain our lives. Noting that the texts implied a difference in the way God values human and non-human creatures, we asked, “Granted that God desires human flourishing . . . does this desire trump God’s concern for the flourishing of the non-human “other” creation?” Jesus would have us “not worry;” and so he assures us that God does indeed know that we need food, drink, clothes and shelter. Yet the creation provides for neither human nor other creatures’ flourishing consistently; our anxiety responds to a “deep insufficiency” that is “built into nature’s creative process.” Nevertheless, Jesus would have us refuse the master of wealth in favor of obedience to God—and for good reason from the perspective of the care of creation. For in its multiple aspects, the pursuit of wealth is easily the chief “driver of environmental deterioration,” in James Gustave Speth’s apt characterization.

This conversation about serving wealth, we noted, again took place in the presence of mountains, our ecological representative of the creation. Obviously, much is at stake in that conversation, for them and for their co-creatures. And indeed, it is fascinating to see how the struggle between these rival loyalties plays out in the culmination of Jesus’ story, to the benefit or to the adversity of the creation. The story from this point moves, as it were, from mountain to mountain: first to Tabor, the Mount of Transfiguration; then, by way of the observance of Ash Wednesday, to the ecologically provocative plague of locusts, “like blackness spread upon the mountains,” which attends the people’s abandonment of the covenant; to the mountain of temptation in the wilderness; and so eventually to the conflict with the religious and political leaders on Mount Zion. These earthly witnesses to Jesus’ passage through the land provide consistent testimony regarding the importance of this story for the creation. What happened to Jesus on Tabor, we noted, is, as the Orthodox tradition understands it, the “sign of things to come for the whole creation.” As the concerns of the disciples about status and power in the kingdom of God fall away, the Transfiguration draws us forward with a vision of the “as-yet-unrealized but promised transfigured glory of the entire material world” to which the mountain’s “landscape of accessible and gentle beauty” invites them (Transfiguration of our Lord). The “blackness upon the mountains” of the text from the prophet Joel read on Ash Wednesday, on the other hand, prompts a call for repentance in our contemporary situation for the environmental crisis of our time, in response to God’s promise to restore the people to “the life and well-being that God intended for the creation” (Ash Wednesday).

The issues at stake here are focused most sharply, however, when the Spirit, “the Lord, the giver of life,” leads Jesus “into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.” We summed up the significance of their confrontation this way:

considered from within our ecological framework, Jesus’ responses to the temptations exhibit: one, respect for the limits of human transformation of nature; two, refusal of transcendence over nature; and three, refusal to join in the pursuit of power and wealth that is so destructive of the Earth. These principles go a long way towards structuring a responsible relationship of humans to Earth. Wilderness is respected as a sanctuary for the non-human creation; the relationship of humans to non-human neighbors on the turf they share is characterized by self-limitation within the bounds of creation and regard for “otherkind.”

These eco-friendly decisions are not merely co-incidental bi-products of Jesus’ more obvious concern to be obedient to the will of God, we argued. When read in the context of the story of human temptation from Genesis 2 and 3, the account of the temptation shows that what Jesus does for God in his temptations is what God intended humans to do in and for the creation. “To serve God is to serve God’s creation, and the service of God’s creation is service of God.” In the struggle that is here joined between the dominion of life and the dominion of death, Jesus clearly chooses the dominion of life (First Sunday of Lent).

He will be faithful to that choice on his way to Mount Zion. As we saw in the readings for the Sundays of Lent, his words and actions on the way to Jerusalem fill out his role as Servant of Creation. In his conversation with the Pharisee Nicodemus, Jesus evoked the power of the Holy Spirit who makes God’s love for the cosmos worthy of trust. In his conversation with the woman from Samaria at the well of Jacob, Jesus “brought ‘living water,’ i.e. water with Spirit, to heal the alienation of the woman from her neighbors and of Samaritans from Jews, but also to show how water can serve as the means for reconciliation of all things everywhere on this blue planet.” And with his healing of the man born blind, Jesus practiced what humans are for, serving God by serving the creation, while exposing the blindness of the Pharisees, who refused to see in his healing a truly holy use of water that would contribute to the flourishing of all God’s creatures. And even in the face of the death of his dear friend Lazarus, his actions were governed by what we have come to call the rule of the servant of God’s creation: “What he does is always shaped and determined. . , not by his own very human desires and loves, but by what God knows the world needs, what God wants for the world God so loves” (Fifth Sunday in Lent). This is true to the end of Jesus’ life. Even in his confrontation with the powers of temple and empire, his actions are not about what he wants, but about “what God wants: the healing and restoration of creation” (Passion Sunday).

As we proclaimed on reading the lections for the Resurrection of Our Lord, this service to creation is vindicated by Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. The power of death’s dominion has been broken, even though not driven from Earth. So the meaning of the resurrection has to be about more than vindication. That is to say that the resurrection is also a first demonstration of the restoration of creation, of the “new creation.” A bulwark against all later attempts to “spiritualize” the meaning of the Resurrection, the readings for the Sundays of Easter consistently exhibit the conviction that Jesus’ service to the creation is for its restoration and perfection, not its abandonment. The new creation is already begun, and “is made manifest as the Risen Lord comes to the community of faith in the breaking of bread” (Fourth Sunday of Easter). As Risen Lord, Jesus provides sustenance in a meal that models human flourishing in the context of a restored creation, for which he will both locate place and provide way, truth and life in the company of his Father, the Creator of all things. As we wrote in summary comment on the readings for the post-ascension Seventh Sunday of Easter:

Jesus is the servant of Philippians 2 who did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself; now he is “highly exalted” so that, in the company of the creator God of Israel, at his name “every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth.” This is the Word who glorified the Father “on Earth by finishing the work” that the Father gave him to do; the glory he had “from before the world existed” has now been restored (John 17:5). And in light of our reading of the Lenten and Easter lectionary, it is the servant of God whose work was to do his Father’s will in faithful obedience to the rule of the servant of creation, who now ascends to his Father and regains access to the Father’s creative power. Nevertheless, their mutually shared glory and equality means that the exalted Jesus will still do for the creation what God knows the creation needs, not what Jesus might have found, from time to time, more desirable and “wise,” from a human point of view (Seventh Sunday of Easter).

It is the reality of this New Creation that the church experiences and continues to foster, as we enter more deeply into the communion of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In the weeks of the season of Pentecost to come, we will explore the fruits, both early and late, of this New Creation.

Is Jesus recognizable as one who shares the will, the purposes, and even the authority and power of this God of creation? On the basis of this narrative, we have to answer “yes”—decidedly so! And it is consistent with this judgment that in the Gospel reading assigned for this Sunday that the disciples went “to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them, to receive the great commission to “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you’” (Matthew 28:18). Again, the mountain is the ecologically responsible witness. And Jesus is the one to whom ‘all authority in heaven and on earth has been given,” meaning thereby that he is responsible for all thing contained within the cosmos. His is “the dominion,” which, in Greek, is the same word as “authority,” Warren Carter notes (in Matthew and the Margins: A Sociopolitical and Religious Reading, p. 551) that both the reading from Genesis and the reading from Psalm 8 remind us that what was granted to humankind in the beginning of creation was the responsibility to care for the needs of all the non-human creations, both wild and domestic, both on land and in the sea. Jesus is the human image of God, who, as we suggested in our comment on the readings for Name of Jesus in the Season of Christmas, “does what humans were created to do: care for Earth by exercising their God-given powers of mind and spirit to the benefit of all creation” (Name of Jesus).

Then what are we to make of the fact that this aspect of his life and mission has been so sorely neglected in the teaching of the church until very recent times? The text tells us that when the disciples saw him, some worshiped him, but others doubted. There is room in this story for those who have difficulty accepting Jesus as the Lord, the Servant of Creation. Certainly, misunderstandings and misapplications of the claim of “dominion” have contributed to a resistance to accept Jesus on the part of advocates for Earth. (For our brief discussion of this issue, as raised by cultural historian Lynn White, see our comment on the Name of Jesus.) Of deeper and more general significance, perhaps, is what Norman Wirzba describes as the “culture as denial of creation.” The problem, he suggests, is that in modern culture, we no longer share what he calls “the experience of creation:”

Though many people still profess a vague belief in a higher power that created the universe, there are almost no signs indicating that people have thought seriously about themselves as created being enmeshed in a common redemptive fate with the rest of the created order and that this belief should have any effect in practical, day-to-day decision-making. For the most part, our assumptions about reality, its ontological status, reflect modern scientific, economic, and technological views that place humanity and its interests over and against the natural world. Nature, rather than being the realm of God’s creative work and plan, the object of God’s good pleasure, is the foil for human technique and desire (Wirzba, The Paradise of God, p. 62).

Thus, it is important that we get “clear about how changing concrete and social conditions mitigate or promote our capacity for attention, care, and responsibility—all virtues central to the divinely mandated vocation that we till and keep the earth,” and seek understanding of “those features of modern life that compromise our experience of the world as creation and thus distort our vocations as servants of it” (Ibid., p. 64).

First on the list of Wirzba’s culprits is the demise in modern culture of the practice of an allegorical method for the interpretation of scripture. “Allegorical interpretation,” he observes, “reflected a mental milieu in which words, the world, and God together formed a whole through which meaning and sense could circulate.” Collapse of this approach was due, not to the influence of an alien force of secularization, as one might think, but rather to the efforts of faithful “Protestant reformers to “establish the authority of scripture in terms of its literal and historical sense.” Nonetheless, the loss to the faith was real. As Wirzba explains, “allegory presupposes that the whole of reality forms an organic unity in which humans, because they participate in the material and spiritual realms, play an important role. As creatures made in the image of God we are exemplars, a microcosm of the universe, and thus form a bridge or conduit that mediates this world and the divine intention.”

The combination of the readings from Genesis 1 and Psalm 8, we might note, provided authorization for this view. Faithful understanding is part of the dominion given, lost, and restored (Ibid., p. 66). When on nominalist epistemological grounds, this linkage no longer made sense, both God and the human being were liberated from its constraints and responsibilities: God becomes an “inscrutable, unpredictable being, massively large and powerful, that exists, if God exists at all, beyond this life and world.” Humanity was left to construct life’s meaning on its own, and the world of things was demoted to the status of objects for human manipulation. “Whereas premodern cultures understood value to be embedded within the world, the modern mind separated fact and value, housing the former in an objective world and the latter in a form-giving subject. The sense of the world as creation, as ordered in terms of a divine plan, is largely gone” (Ibid, p.68-70).

Other factors in this “loss of creation,” according to Wirzba, include the “eclipse of agrarian life,” which comes as a result of the fact that as the practice of farming has been industrialized. Technology more generally transforms our access to the reality of the world from one of participatory engagement to a spectator observer of “bits of data, which means that the context for understanding is limited to the moment of the glance” (Ibid., p. 79). “The modern technological mind, in short, destroys the sacred, divests the world of its sanctity or integrity, since its overriding goal is to transform the world into means for decidedly human ends” (Ibid., p. 81). Our culture has become abstract: “interdependencies are either forgotten, denied, or scorned, the assumption being that persons float above their life-giving context, dipping in and out as consumption patterns dictate” (Ibid., p. 85). The processes that sustain human life are increasingly severed from the processes of the earth, as money becomes the medium for all interaction between them.

And finally, the meaning of creation is made difficult by “the growing irrelevance of God:” As we have become controllers of our own fate, God has simply become an unnecessary hypothesis. We, rather than God, run the world. Talk of God as a creator who is intimately and concernfully involved in the daily affairs of existence is simply quaint, a reflection of the refusal to deal with the naturalistic assumptions of modern science. How, then, can we think of ourselves and the world as creation, when the idea of a creator has been so severely compromised? (Ibid., p. 91).

If there is still much “God-talk,” the reality to which the talk refers is seriously compromised:

Whereas the God of former times may have arisen in a context in which the feeling of our dependence was palpable and clear, the God of our consumer society is dependent upon us for its reality and significance” (Ibid., p. 91). . . . God is not so much dead, as absent: God has been banished by us in the drive to fashion a world according to our own liking or, failing that, the liking of corporate, global, economic forces. In this divine banishment, it is not surprising that the nature of the divine power as being-for-another should be entirely lost on us. We cannot be the caretakers of creation because the divine model for such care has been systematically denied or repressed by the dominant cultural trends of the last several centuries (Ibid., p. 92).

At best, God becomes our personal friend, and Jesus a ‘soul mate’ who feels our pain and encourages us in our distancing ourselves from engagement in the web of nature. The idea that God is the God of creation and Jesus the servant of creation would appear, in view of this cultural situation, to be excised from the teaching of the church simply because it no longer makes sense within a culture that has no experience of creation, and probably cannot have one, given the way our minds and our society are structured to interpret and interact with the world.

What then are we to do? Or more to the point here, does what we have done in constructing this narrative of Jesus the Servant of Creation address the situation at all effectively? Readers will have to judge this matter for themselves and, in doing so, will profitably draw on the many other interpreters of both scripture and culture that have become engaged in this conversation. But we would hope that we have at least made a good beginning, and we would point to several aspects of our commentary that give us hope in relationship to Wirzba’s analysis. In the first place, Wirzba argues for the difference that ecological science is making in our understanding of the world as fundamentally relational (Ibid., pp. 93-122). At several points we have been in conversation with ecological science and its foundational theory of evolutionary development and we have drawn on writers who are themselves in such conversations. That conversation with the science of ecology actually shapes our discussion at some depth.

Working back through Wirzba’s list, we may also note that biblical scholars are finding new insights on which to base a “relational theology of creation.” In particular, we have found the work of Terry Fretheim extremely helpful in this regard. For example, his interpretation of Genesis 1, which is of interest for this Sunday, pays attention to the multiple modes of God’s creative activity. God not only originates creation, but also continues creating, which “enables the becoming of the creation;” and God completes creation, by which action “something genuinely new will come to be” (God and World in the Old Testament, pp. 5-9). God is creator/maker, speaker, evaluator, and consultant of others; in interaction with one another. Fretheim suggests that “these images provide a more relational model of creation than has been traditionally presented.” On the other hand, he disallows imaging God as “victor” over the powers of chaos; while chaos is, to be sure, tamed in the process of creation, it remains an element in the creation that God considers to be “good;” and “a key human responsibility set out in the command of Gen 1:28 is to work creatively with that disorder,” as contrasted with authorization to dominate it and bring it under control. Neither does Fretheim hold in high regard the interpretation of God in this text as “king,” because a decisive argument against it is the “democratization that is inherent in the claim that every human being is created in the image of God. If royal language as been democratized, then royal links that may be present have been subverted and non-hierarchical perspectives prevail.” (God and World in the Old Testament, pp. 36-47.) Here is a God with whom people in contemporary culture informed by ecological and evolutionary science can much more easily relate!

Additionally, in the development of our narrative, we have worked to keep our discussion relevant to real world situations, where the interdependencies of “life-giving sources of food, energy, and water” are at stake” (Ibid., p. 85). We have emphasized the need for non-anthropocentric understandings of the human/nature relationship. We find the thought of agrarians such as Waldo Leopold and Wendell Berry helpful for translating the meaning of the story of Jesus into our context.

Finally, and perhaps most significantly, we think that this commentary’s search for the Servant of Creation amidst the appointed texts for the Sunday’s worship services serves to bring us back into something like that allegorical imagination that allows for a sense of creation to be part of a congregation's shared experience. It is within the conversation between the texts—in the presence of water that can be the bearer of Spirit, and of bread and wine that are acknowledged as gifts of the Creator, even as they are also nature transformed by human hands—that we find the God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the One who invites the community into the experience of creation and moves it toward assuming responsibility for its care. The story of the Servant of Creation becomes our story, even as our story of the abandonment of creation has become his. And he is with us, to the end of the age.

Reflection on Pentecost Readings from Dr. Dennis Ormseth

2011-06-09T08:33:00.000-07:00

The Birthday of the Church! The Spirit Renews all Creation!

Care for Creation Commentary on the Common Lectionary—Year A 2011

By Dennis Ormseth

Readings for:

Day of Pentecost Psalm 104:24-34, 35b Acts 2:1-21 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13 John 20:19-23

Pentecost is the “Birthday of the Church.”

The Day of Pentecost is commonly celebrated as “the birthday of the church.” Emphasis will be placed on the communal nature of the experience of the Holy Spirit. That so many people heard their native tongue being spoken, and yet understood a common message, will be “demonstrated” as individuals talented in diverse languages simulate the cacophony of a United Nations social gathering and the preacher is called on to set out the shared meaning. Spiritual seekers will be encouraged by pastors who are alert to our contemporary cultural context to abandon their suspicions of established religious communities. As Diane Jacobson would put it to them, “You are not in this alone; the Spirit is with you. You are not alone—this is God’s promise and invitation. But know as well that you cannot experience this gift in isolation. The Spirit is also with all those around you joined by Christ’s name as one. The Spirit is God’s communal gift” (“The Day of Pentecost,” in New Proclamation Year A, 2002, ed. by Marshall D. Johnson, p. 76)’

Celebrate the Spirit as a renewal of the whole creation

All of which certainly belongs to the meaning of the Day of Pentecost, and yet it represents a many faceted “opportunity missed” to celebrate the renewal in the Spirit of the whole creation and to characterize the mission of the church as a newly energized care of creation. The community created and renewed by the Spirit of God, these texts allow, includes all creation. It is “Earth community.” As is typically pointed out by way of explaining why a multitude of languages was heard, there were “devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem” (Acts 2:5). They were there because Pentecost is another name for the Jewish Feast of Weeks, one of the three great festivals of the Jewish calendar for which Jews from the Diaspora return to the city. In Jesus day, the focus of this festival was on God’s gift of the covenant, which was given to Israel in the wilderness. Originally, however, the Feast of Weeks was observed as a harvest festival: thanks were given for the first fruits of the ground as a way of remembering the first harvest from the land after Israel returned from the Egypt (Leviticus 23:9-21).

Celebrate the first fruits of the Spirit as the first fruits of restored creation!

So now, also Christians give thanks for first fruits, but it is the first fruits of the Spirit—ironically “spiritualizing” a festival that in its origin had to do centrally with the flourishing of the people living in the land under the covenant God made with them at Sinai. We suggest an alternative understanding of the Christian Pentecost, namely, this: by the power of the Holy Spirit we enter into the new creation in which people of all nations begin to flourish anew under the Lordship of Jesus. As he promised, Jesus, God’s servant of all creation who has now been raised to live in glory with his heavenly Father, sends the Spirit upon the Church. In this understanding, Pentecost celebrates the first fruits of a restored creation.

Creation in wind, fire, tongues, the spirit on all flesh, marks in hands and side.

The lectionary lessons for the Day of Pentecost firmly support this alternative reading. The famous signs of Pentecost, a violent wind and tongues of fire, are creational. Yes, they recall the theophanies of Sinai and the burning bush. But also, experientially, they say that “something new is happening here.” The wind is the primordial breath of the Spirit at creation. The fire marks off holy ground as the God of creation draws near. The “last days” of Joel, when the Spirit is poured out “upon all flesh” have begun (Acts 2:17). The resurrected Jesus is identified by the marks on his hands and side as the servant of creation whom the Father sent to save the beloved cosmos, and he breaths the breath of God’s Spirit upon the disciples who are to put aside their fears and go in peace into that creation (John 20:19-22; see our comment on the readings for the Second Sunday of Easter). And, in the words of Paul from the second lesson, the Spirit authorizes the proclamation of Jesus (who died on the cross as the servant of creation) as the Lord of the creation, along with granting the variety of gifts, services, and activities that are the Spirit’s means for bringing about the “common good” of the one, newly created “body of Christ” in the world (1 Corinthians 12:1-13).

Psalm 104 marks the ecological renewal of all creation

The text that authorizes this reading of the meaning of Pentecost most forcefully, however, is the psalm appointed for the Day of Pentecost, Psalm 104. The selection of this psalm was no doubt made because of the mention of the Spirit in v. 30: “When you send forth your spirit (or breath) . . . .” Psalms that speak so appropriately for this Feast of God sending the Spirit are exceedingly few. Astounding, however, is the serendipitous and theologically fortuitous statement of the reason for this sending: “they”—meaning all the extended list of earthly creatures named in the first 26 verses of the psalm –“are created; and you renew the face of the ground.” In point of fact, the psalm is a more perfect fit for the original Pentecost, the Festival of Weeks, than for the Pentecost that Christians typically celebrate. God is praised as the provider for all creatures of whom the psalmist speaks in saying: “These all look to you to give them their food in due season.” But the truly remarkable thing is that the Psalm also exhibits a powerfully ecological understanding of the creation; and, quite by itself, provides sufficient grounding for our reading of the Christian festival.

Psalm 104 as “ecological doxology”!

The ecological character of Psalm 140 was highlighted by Joseph Sittler throughout the development of his theology of creation. He commonly described it as an “ecological doxology” (Ecological Commitment as Theological Responsibility,” in Evocations of Grace, p. 83; cf. “Essays on Nature and Grace, Ibid, p. 183, and “Evangelism and the Care of the Earth,” Ibid., p. 204.) Early on, Sittler identified Psalm 104 as one of two primary texts (Romans 8:19 is the other) that support his conviction that responsibility for care of the earth is a contemporary theological imperative:

Beginning with the air, the sky, the little and then the great animals, the work that humans do upon the earth and the delight that they takes in it, the doxological hymn unfolds to celebrate both the mysterious fecundity that evermore flows from the fountain of all livingness, up to the great coda of the psalm in which the phrase occurs—“These all hang upon Thee.” The word “hang” is an English translation of a word that literally means to “depend,” to receive existence and life from another. These all hang together because they all hang upon Thee. “You give them their life, You send forth Your breath, they live.” Here is teaching of the divine redemption within the primal context of the divine Creation. Unless we fashion a relational doctrine of creation—which doctrine can rightly live with evolutionary theory—then we shall end up with a reduction, a perversion, and ultimately an irrelevance as regards the doctrine of redemption (Ibid., p. 83).

The reading of Psalm 104 on the Day of Pentecost is an opportunity not to be missed for lifting up God’s love and care for creation as an essential part of the church’s Spirit—driven mission. The limited verses appointed for the reading will suffice to make the main points of this message, while a reading of the entire Psalm would provide a basis for exploring the ecological theology of the psalm in greater detail.

The psalmist praises the God who cares for all creation.

In his recent book, The Green Psalter: Resources for an Ecological Spirituality, Arthur Walker Jones provides helpful insights that deepen Sittler’s appreciation. Jones couples Psalm 103, which celebrates the “steadfast love and compassion” of the Creator that “is experienced in the life of the individual in healing, salvation, and justice,” with Psalm 104, which praises “the God who cares for all creature.” “The same Creator has acted through nature in the exodus and wilderness wandering. After this extensive praise of God’s wonders and works as Creator, they confess that Israel had forgotten the Creator, and pray for a return from exile” (The Green Psalter, p.99).

Psalm 104 imagines a world of social and ecological justice

Psalm 104, Jones notes, is “one of the longest creation passages in the Bible,” and it is subversively lacking in reference to king or temple, as compared with other creation texts: “Verses 27 to 30 portray the direct, unmediated, and intimate relationship of God with all creatures. . . .God is the spirit of life in all creation. Therefore, God’s presence is not mediated by king or temple but is as close to every creature as the air they breathe” (Ibid., p. 119-20). Written in the context of the great suffering of the exile, Jones suggests, Psalm 104 reflects an awareness of the steadfast love and power of God in the goodness and reliability of creation. Israel has experienced national chaos; and, on the other side of chaos, Israel is able to see that such chaos (Leviathan) has a place in creation. They recognize humans as an integral part of a creation cared for by the Creator. They recognize the dangers of identifying God with king. And they have an understanding of their relationship to God as Creator apart from and perhaps in opposition to human empires. Similarly, in contemporary contexts of empire, Psalm 104 may have the potential for imagining a world of social and ecological justice (Ibid., p. 123).

We are all interrelated and interdependent in God’s creation.

Jones profoundly agrees with Sittler’s assessment: the Psalm, Jones writes, is far more ecological than Genesis 1-3. Its “depiction of the role of humanity in creation is less anthropocentric,” and “creatures and parts of creation . . . seem to have intrinsic value independent of humans” (Ibid, p. 140). Jones traces the web of ecological relation through the verses of the Psalm:

This ancient celebration of Creator and creation has similarities to modern ecology’s understanding of the interrelationship and inter-dependence of all species in the web of life. While the number of species named is limited, the passage does, by the species it chooses to mention, represent in symbolic, poetic form the abundance and diversity of species and their interdependence. The species represented move from mountains to valleys, up into the mountains again, and then out to sea. They include domestic animals that humans need and animals that are of no use—like wild goats and rock coneys—or are dangerous to humans—like lions. Thus habitats and species are chosen to represent a world of diverse habitats teeming with creatures or, in the language of praise and awe, “How manifold are your works . . , earth is full of your creatures” (Ps 104:24). While all the complex interrelationships are not portrayed, enough chains of life are traced in poetic form to indicate the interrelationship and interdependence of various species and their habitats. Springs provide water for wild animals and wild asses (verses 10-12). Springs flow into streams that water trees (verses 12, 16), which, in turn, provide habitat for storks and other birds (verses 12, 17). Mountains provide habitat for wild goats and the rocks for wild coneys (verse 18). The poetry portrays a world similar to that described by modern ecology—abundant, diverse, interrelated, and interdependent (Ibid., pp. 140-41).

The goodness of the creation is celebrated without reservation. Creation is unmarred by the “fall” of Genesis 2 and 3. ”Far from being cursed, creation has goodness and blessing that includes a sense of beauty and joy,” without setting aside an awareness of nature that is “red in tooth and claw”—an understanding so essential to the modern theory of evolution (Ibid., p. 142).

Creation is juice and joy and sinful human beings.

Amidst all this “juice and joy” in creation, Psalm 104 presents a final reminder that, on account of the presence of humans within it, not all is well with it (as expressed at verse 35): “Let sinners be consumed from the earth, and let the wicked be no more.” Sinful humans are also part of the beloved creation. Again, the verse is unfortunately omitted from the reading. Coupling this psalm with Jesus’ gift of the Spirit as told in John 20:23 will serve to provide one more reason for us to broaden the focus of Pentecost from church to creation—for it is in the power of the Spirit that the church forgives, or takes away, the sin of the world, including all the sin that bears so destructively on the creation.

The Spirit is “the Lord and Giver of Life”!

And here is one final encouragement to engage the texts for Pentecost in this manner. We recall that the ecumenical church confesses in the Nicene Creed that the Spirit is “‘the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.” A theology that is adequate to this triune relationship is one that lifts up for the faithful the eternal love God has in the Spirit for the whole creation in Christ Jesus. Along the way in this extraordinary journey from the First Sundays of Advent through to the Day of Pentecost, we have had several occasions to lift up the importance of the Holy Spirit as a driver of ecological awareness and of care of creation, not only inside the church, but out in the world as well. Elizabeth Johnson aptly notes that, although the Spirit has been badly neglected in the history of the church’s teaching, the world will tell of the glory of God. Anyone who has ever resisted or mourned the destruction of the earth or the demise of one of its living species, or has wondered at the beauty of a sunrise, the awesome power of a storm, the vastness of prairie or mountain or ocean, the greening of the earth after period of dryness or cold, the fruitfulness of a harvest, the unique ways of wild or domesticated animals, or any of the other myriad phenomena of this planet and its skies has potentially brushed up against an experience of the creative power of the mystery of God, Creator Spirit. (She Who Is, p. 125).

First fruits of the spirit and the first fruits of Earth—in springtime.

And, accordingly, I offer a suggestion. In the northern hemisphere, let us celebrate Pentecost as a season of the “first fruits” of the Earth. Farmers markets are newly reopened; gardeners rejoice in the harvest of asparagus and rhubarb, young lettuce and spinach; gatherers hunt for the elusive morel mushrooms. We easily miss the joy of first harvest in an age when we permit supermarkets—the retail outlets for our fossil fuel driven—industrialized food system, to provide us with their year-round supply of every season’s produce. And we probably miss a good deal of that sense of divinely dependent flourishing for which the Psalmist gave thanks. Might not the church do well to help recover this joy by including within the symbolism of Pentecost an offering of the first fruits of the season as among the important gifts of the “Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life?

Check out:

Joseph Sittler, Evocations of Grace (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000)

Arthur Walker Jones, The Green Psalter (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009).

Elizabeth Johnson, She Who Is (Crossroad Publishing, 1992)

Summer 2011: The Environment Outside and Inside the House for Children and Families

2011-05-31T11:14:00.000-07:00

With summer approaching opportunities abound outside for us to reduce our "nature deficit-disorder" (see the work by Richard Louv), and on rainy days films about the "out-of-doors" can be appropriate too.

Kids can be inspired to "go green" by visiting websites such as http://www.blogger.com/www.kidsbegreen.org and www.epa.gov/kids.

Ministers might learn from Church on Earth: Grounding Your Ministry in a Sense of Place by Jeff Wild (Augsburg Fortress, 2009).

Families could take a look at the children's picture book about grandparents, prayer, and the wonders and enchantment of the natural world in Grandad's Prayers of the Earth by Douglas Wood, (Candlewick Press).

Nature's influence on children's health and development is appreciated in the film by Camilla Rockwell, Mother Nature's Child: Growing Outdoors in the Media Age (www.mothernaturesmovie.com).

The Children and Nature Network (C&NN) aims to build a movement to reconnect children and nature. See www.childrenandnature.org .

Outdoor camping sites such as that of the American Camp Association (www.acacamps.org) and the Family Adventure Program of REI (www.rei.com/family-adventure), or www.outdoors.org/recreation/family can offer leads for outdoor camping.

Indoor family films for a rainy day might include Furry Vengeance, starring Brandan Fraser and Brooke Shields, about what woodland creatures do when their habitat is threatened, or the effort of Colin Beaven to reduce his environmental impact in No Impact Man (also a book and blog).

Film Festivals offer other ideas: see ReelHeart International Film Festival, Redemptive Film Festival, and the Peace on Earth Film Festival.

When Heaven Meets Earth: How a Faithful Few Inspired Change, a film (and study guide)by Susan Emmerich, looks at an effort to improve the Chesapeake Bay. Other socially relevant films that entertain and inspire can be seen at www.participantmedia.com and www.takepart.com is a website on socially conscious media and issues.

Other adult DVDs include

Manufactured Landscapes which looks at our impact on the planet via the eyes of Edward Burtynsky (Zeitgeist Films);

www.JourneyoftheUniverse.com explains the 50-minute HD film by that title, its companion book and 13-part educational DVD series produced by Brian Thomas Swimme and Mary Evelyn Tucker (the latter formerly chair of the Religion Department at nearby Bucknell University in Lewisburg, PA). The website www.emergingearthcommunity.org is that of Dr. Tucker and her husband Dr. John Grim (now both at Yale U.) and explains more of the film, the Forum on Religion and Ecology and the Earth Charter.

Examining new paradigms of how interconnectedness can be lived in today's complex world are short films, other media and educational materials at www.globalonenessproject.org .

Also worthy of note:

World Environment Day, June 5 (Environmental Sabbath), sponsored by the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP); the 2011 theme is "Forests: Nature at Your Service". www.unep.org/wed .

Free download of Lester Brown's latest book, World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse, from www.earth-policy.org .

Daily reflection on God's creation, and excerpts of quotations from notable observers of nature, are posted by Dean Ohlman, the web site/blog host of "The Wonder of Creation." He has twenty years of experience in the creation care movement. www.wonderofcreation.org .

For environmental tool kits and resources from the US EPA Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships (FBNP), see http://www.epa.gov/fbnpartnerships .

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Note: This column, entitled "Creation Corner", is compiled monthly under the auspices of an ecumenical organization, the United Churches of Lycoming County (UCLC), 202 E. Third St., Williamsport PA 17701, by Michael Ochs, Lutheran layman and a member of its Christian Social Concerns committee. It is published monthly, Sept. to May, in the UCLC print newsletter and mailed to over 1000 recipients. It may also be found on-line at www.uclc.org .

New book on worship and ecology

2011-05-12T09:14:00.000-07:00

A Watered Garden: Christian Worship and Earth's Ecology

Watered Garden begins with the classic, ecumenically held patterns of Christian worship and explores them for their deep connections to ecological wisdom, for their sacramental approaches to creation, and for a renewed relationship to the earth now itself in need of God's healing. This book is written especially for North Americans: people who live in a specific ecological region, and who play a particular role in the world's ecology. And of course it is written for Christians, especially those who are part of the Lutheran movement. Available July 2011! Pre-order your copy at the Augsburg Fortress website.

The Rev. Dr. Benjamin Stewart is the Gordon A. Braatz Assistant Professor of Worship and Dean of the Chapel at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago.

Networking event in MA

2011-05-09T09:11:00.000-07:00

Celebrating & Sharing our Abundance

Networking & Training for Creation Care

Saturday, May 21^st

10am – 4pm

Trinity Lutheran Church

73 Lancaster Street, Worcester MA

For all those congregational leaders, lay people and volunteers who have integrated creation care into their Lutheran worship inside and outside of the church (or those who hope to!). We are gathering to share information, resources, insight and congratulations with one another. The unique theological foundation given through the “Lutherans Restoring Creation” curriculum, along with the strength of fellowship will enable us all to keep the momentum of our efforts moving and bind our hearts to actions which are sometimes easy to avoid.

Agenda
10 - 11: Opening Devotions & Introductions

11 - 12:30: Status Reports on Actions Taken

12:30 – 1:30 LUNCH Discussion groups

1:30 – 3:30 Challenges/Opportunities & Next Steps

3:30-4pm: Closing Devotion & Sending Hymn

PLEASE RSVP ASAP & SHARE THIS EVENT WITH ALL!
Call Phoebe Morad, 617-599-2722 or email: pheebscongo@yahoo.com

A suggested donation of $5 is requested to help with coffee & lunch.

PBS Video "The Unforeseen"

2011-04-18T10:28:00.000-07:00

Janice Heidelberger, a student at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, has called our attention to this powerful PBS presentation. The video, titled "The Unforeseen," is about 26 minutes long. Enjoy!

A reflection from Dr. Jim Martin-Schramm

2011-04-16T16:21:00.000-07:00

The following is a reflection from Dr. Jim Martin-Schramm, associate professor of religion at Luther College in Iowa.

Iowa IPL’s Lenten Carbon Fast: Real Stories from Real Iowans, Saving Energy as an Act of Faith

The disasters in Japan are pervading our reflection about Lent this year. The suffering caused by the record-setting earthquake and tsunami has been heart-breaking. The fear associated with the nuclear reactor crises has been overwhelming. My wife and I marvel, however, at the resilience of the Japanese people and their capacity to endure such hardship with grace and fortitude.

As an environmentalist and as a Christian ethicist, I have significant concerns about nuclear power and fossil fuels. I am co-teaching a course right now at Luther College on “Ethics, Energy, and Climate Policy.” Out of a desire to “walk the talk,” my wife and I have been making investments over the past few years to make our home more energy efficient. In addition, we have been setting aside money to purchase and install a grid-tied solar photovoltaic (PV) system that would produce about 80 percent of the electricity our home uses in a particular year. The one thing that has been holding us back is that installing the system would require cutting down a large, mature walnut tree on the south side of our neighbor’s property.

Recently Luther College established a Sustainability House where students can live together and collaborate on various projects related to sustainability. As it turns out, this house has a fabulous solar window to the south. After some prayer and reflection, my wife and I have decided to donate to Luther the funds we have been saving to install a 4 kilowatt PV system on our own home so that the system can be installed this summer at the Luther College Sustainability House. With a more optimal southern orientation the same number of PV panels will produce more electricity and reduce more greenhouse gas emissions than they would have on our home which faces west. In addition, the panels will produce 100 percent of the house’s electricity and they will have a greater educational impact at Luther.

Could these funds do more good in Japan right now? We wrestle with this question but we made our gift about one week before the earthquake and tsunami struck northern Japan. We have made other gifts to relief and development organizations doing work there. All of our contributions, however, feel like a drop in the bucket given the enormity of the problems in Japan and the level of the world’s dependence on fossil fuels and nuclear power. But this is what we can do, and it is clear from those pulling together in Japan, that the collective efforts of individuals can make a world of difference.

Peace,

Jim Martin-Schramm
IIPL Board Member

Where We Live: Creation Corner Column, April 2011

2011-04-07T13:17:00.000-07:00

Stand For What You Stand On: Where We Live
As this is being written we are mindful of (1) our nation's worst coalfield disaster since 1970, a year ago, April 5, 2010, at the West Virginia Massey Energy Co. Upper Big Branch Mine; (2) the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear power station explosion in the Ukraine, April 26, 1986; and (3) the most recent Tokyo Japan Electric Power Company Fukushima nuclear power complex catastrophe following an earthquake and tsunami there.

And of course the first anniversary of the 2010 BP (British Petroleum) oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico occurs this coming Easter weekend, and the world will focus on lessons learned from that tragic event.

This year that same weekend is Earth Day and Earth Day Sunday. Our April monthly column focus for that is not global, but instead is local: "Where Two or More are Gathered" (www.nccecojustice.org/earthday), and raises up concerns we here are acquainted with, yet need to be reminded of so we may take action on behalf of all of creation.

As we "think globally" we also "act locally" in our Susquehanna River bioregion, especially the west branch of it, and more specifically along the various watersheds locally. Helping to steward water resources is an action that people of faith can do, and the Lycoming County PA Conservation District Watershed Notes e-newsletter (http://www.lyco.org/) provides information about each of our nine local watershed associations (Loyalsock Creek, Lycoming Creek, Muncy Creek, Greater Nippenose Valley, Black Hole Creek, Pine Creek Preservation Association, Rose Valley/Mill Creek, Pine Creek Watershed Council, and Larry's Creek Watershed Association).

Other watershed efforts include Trout Unlimited (Susquehanna Chapter: http://www.sqtu.org/); Northcentral PA Conservancy (http://www.npcweb.org/); Otzinachson region of the PA Chapter of the Sierra Club (www.pennsylvania.sierraclub.org/otzinachson); and the Susquehanna River Heartland Coalition for Environmental Studies (http://www.srhces.org/).

There is also, from the perspective of the humanities, the print and on-line "Watershed: The Journal of the Susquehanna" (see http://org.bloomu.edu/watershed/index.html).

Also see "Water Stewards: A Toolkit for Congregational Care of Local Watersheds" (www.nccecojustice.org/resources).

Regarding watershed food issues, studies about "food miles" (the average number of miles it reportedly takes for your dinner to get to your table), show that many factors determine whether a food item is "environmentally friendly." In order to shrink the fossil fuel (greenhouse gas emissions) in our diets, we need to consider not just what transportation accounts for, but also how the food is produced. Eating lower on the food chain is a key (switching from red meat and dairy products to chicken, fish, eggs, or a vegetable-based diet).

Eating locally also has its place, according to an article in the current March/April "E" magazine. "Local food builds community, poses a smaller risk for food-borne contaminants and tastes a lot better. It doesn't require the refrigeration for long-distance hauling, and is often free from packaging waste."

Also, on watershed food issues, see the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture (http://www.pasafarming.org/) and http://www.localharvest.org/ and other examples of community supported agriculture (CSA).

Simple ways to act on behalf of local food production include purchasing food at a farmer's market, hosting a church "bioregional meal" (food taken from no more than 25 miles away), or growing a "garden of eatin'" on church land.

One watershed air issue, that of the "perils of barrels", (pollution from backyard burner barrel burning) is being addressed by bans in some communities, and this "Creation Corner" column compiler can provide more information on that subject (e-mail Michael Ochs, billtownmike@yahoo.com . Carpooling can also help offset air pollution.

Bible study on water, food and air issues can be guided through environmental social statements of your church.

For further aid in taking action, see http://nccecojustice.org/takeaction/action.php. For more information, contact the Eco-Justice Program of the National Council of Churches.

Remember, a healthy watershed is harmonious with the needs of people, the land and natural resources. By giving back to our environment, by providing for the health of the soil, water, air, plants, and animals, we help to create a watershed that will sustain generations beyond ours. Watershed care guides help us in this our responsibility.

Environmental Film Festival, Earth Day Weekend, Williamsport PA

2011-03-21T14:56:00.000-07:00

We are in the final stage of preparations for the 2nd annual Billtown Film Festival in Williamsport PA, and the thematic focus this year, on Earth Day weekend, is the environment. We have a very eclectic mix of animation, live action, narrative and documentary styles. Please come and enjoy three wonderful evenings of creative, thought-provoking films.

In response to the heightened sensitivity of environmental issues facing our region, the Billtown Film Festival committee has selected films and videos that address the concerns of climate change, alternative energy technology, social and moral responsibility, and environmental sustainability. The films are artful, funny, poignant, profound, informative and entertaining.

While the audience is being seated the screenings will be preceded with 30 minutes of movie theme scores. Each night will be different, come out and enjoy all 3 shows!

While the audience is being seated the screenings will be preceded with 30 minutes of movie theme scores. Each night will be different. Admission is FREE! Donations welcomed.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

6:30pm Movie Music
7:00pm Short Films
Carbon Footprint
The Meatrix 1
Balancing Point
The Next 7 Generations
Garbage Angels

7:30pm Feature Film
Carbon Nation

Friday, April 22, 2011

6:30pm Movie Music
7:00pm Short Films
Child’s View of Recycling
Time Lapse Earth 1
The Meatrix 2
Corner Plot
The Cow Who Wanted to be a Hamburger

7:30pm Feature Film
Renewal – Stories from America’s Religious-Environmental Movement

Saturday, April 23, 2011

6:30pm Movie Music
7:00pm Short Films
Plastic Perils of the Pacific
Soil in Good Heart
An Environmental Restaurant
Gone Fishing
The Meatrix 2.5

7:30pm Feature Film
The Great Squeeze – Surviving the Human Project

Sponsors and Community Partners in Williamsport PA are:

The Community Arts Center (film festival site), First Community Foundation Partnership of Pennsylvania, RPA Inc., The James V. Brown Library, The Williamsport Sun Gazette, Mainstreet - Williamsport, The Graphic Hive.

Please Note: Due to the seriousness nature of the theme, some films may not be suitable for children. Parental supervision is advised.

Richard James is the guest columnist for this March 2011 column compiled by Michael Ochs, which appears as the "Creation Corner" column in the print and on-line newsletter of the United Churches of Lycoming County, PA (http://www.uclc.org/) .

Please be sure to check out the Billtown Film Festival Blog website, http://billtownfilmfestival.com/category/blog/ . It has much useful information for film makers, policy makers, average citizens and movie lovers.

"God is my Rock"

2011-03-18T08:44:00.000-07:00

Here's a stirring meditation from Fletcher Harper, Episcopal Priest and Executive Director of Greenfaith.

New Article from Derek Nelson: Disposability, Sustainability, and IKEA

2011-03-09T07:04:00.000-08:00

Disposability, Sustainability, and IKEA

Rev. Derek R. Nelson

Lutherans Restoring Creation Blog

February 25, 2011

Walking into an IKEA is a deeply ambivalent experience for me. I am a Swede by ancestry, and what little pockets of quasi-nationalistic pride I have in me come bubbling up as I see the blue and yellow building rising up out of the pavement like a Scandinavian beacon of modernity. The smells of roasting meatballs, dill potatoes and lingonberries take me back to a wonderful year spent studying (frankly, “studying” should be in quotations) in Karlstad, Sweden. I have been, for most of my life, living right at or below the poverty line (As I’m frequently reminding my employer, I’m still way underpaid, but I can’t now nor ever have I been able to honestly claim to be “poor”). IKEA has always been right around what my budget would allow. Some of their designs are so dang innovative, clever and funky that it’s hard not to love them. And some of their stuff is quite well made and will stand up to the test of time.

What’s not to love, you ask? Well, I’m also a furniture maker. That I don’t do so professionally, settling instead for being a lowly college professor, means that I have broken at least a six generation tradition in my family. But I still do make furniture, and I take a great deal of pride in that work. Much of what I make comes from wood logged from my family’s farm in Minnesota. I try to make things that I can give to people that will last for a very long time. That way if they like it, they can give it to their children or grandchildren, and if they don’t, my imperfect generosity in giving it to them will stick in their craw for years – a deeply satisfying thing.

It might just be me, but I just can’t imagine anyone proudly passing along their BJURSTA dresser to their grandkids, or lovingly restoring a LEKSVIK shelf. That’s where the ambivalence comes in. There are genuine concerns about whether a person with as hyperactive a conscience as I have can conscionably shop at big box stores. In fact a recent article on IKEA in The Atlantic asks just those kinds of questions. Wig Zamore, an environmental activist working with the store on some greening initiatives, calls IKEA “the least sustainable retailer on the planet.” That might be a bit of overstatement, but partly he has a point. In order to keep costs down, IKEA locations are often far from urban centers, to take advantage of lower taxes. The average IKEA customer drives 50 miles per visit. The store is the 3^rd largest consumer of wood in the world, and despite employing over a dozen “forestry monitors” there is certainly no guarantee that much of the wood is harvested sustainably.

IKEA’s products are meant to last for a while, at least, and all of them are designed quite intentionally, with an eye to both function and style. Yet one wonders if something is not lost in seeing our furniture as essentially a disposable item. When your FÖRHÖJA breaks, you buy a new FÖRHÖJA. Or you upgrade to a STENSTORP if you’re doing better than you were when you went lowball on the FÖRHÖJA. In addition to being wasteful, this default to replacement makes us less appreciative of quality workmanship, and inclines us to think that furniture built to last is way overpriced.

The mother of a friend of mine had a helpful rule of thumb when trying to make choices about buying items. She said that if you plan on having or using a product for seven years or more, you should buy the best one you can realistically afford. But if you plan to use it just for a little while, go cheap. That makes sense to me. And it might counsel us to buy our coffee cups and light bulbs from IKEA with a clear conscience, but our furniture elsewhere. There is often a very high cost to low prices, and that cost will be passed on to future generations if we continue to view big-ticket items like cabinets, dining room tables and sofas as fundamentally disposable products.

Dr. Derek Nelson is co-director of the Global Institute and Associate Professor of Religion at Thiel College in Greenville, PA.

New Commentary for Ash Wednesday readings

2011-03-03T08:52:00.000-08:00

A new, ecologically-themed commentary for the lectionary's Ash Wednesday readings by Dr. Dennis Ormseth is now up at the LRC site.

If you used Dr. Ormseth's commentaries for the Epiphany readings, then you already know that he brings a great deal of theological depth and nuance to these texts. Have you found the commentaries useful? Let us know in the comments section below.

2011 Soil and Water Stewardship Sunday and Week

2011-02-28T14:30:00.000-08:00

2011 Soil and Water Stewardship Sunday and Week

"Forests for People---More Than You Can Imagine" is the theme for the 2011 Stewardship Week sponsored by the National Association of Conservation Districts (NACD). A Forestry Stewardship church leaders guide is available for this the 56th year observance, April 24-May 1, 2011.

With a mission to provide leadership and a voice for natural resource conservation, and with community based outreach offices, the NACD offers down-loadable forestry education resources (energy, habitat, soil, water) such as are age-appropriate, colorful, in various formats (posters, bookmarks, place-mats, activity sheets, a compact disk with a PowerPoint presentation, clip art, etc.), e-links (Arbor Day, International Year of Forests, etc.), carbon calculators, and a series of publications on working trees (for agriculture, communities, water quality, wildlife, livestock, silvopasture, treating waste, carbon cycle balance, and windbreaks).

Some of us recall learning about the usefulness of trees as "food, fuel, fodder, etc." and the current materials, if not used in the Spring, would be adaptable for summer vacation Bible School programs, or any Sunday School efforts.

Here in northern Appalachia, with the debate about the appropriateness of natural gas drilling in state forests, one might consider what the NACD approach is in the issue of leaving wilderness alone, allowing what is pristine to continue to be so, the value of undisturbed state lands for tourism, with the consequences of exploiting a non-renewable fossil fuel in an extractive economy.

Nationally see http://www.nacdnet.org/stewardship/2011/index.phtml

Locally, see Carey Entz, Watershed Specialist, Lycoming County Conservation District, 524 County Farm Road, Suite 202, Montoursville PA 17754. 570-433-3003 E-mail centz@lyco.org .

A new essay from Dr. Derek Nelson

2011-02-28T11:29:00.000-08:00

Dr. Derek Nelson, professor of religion and co-director of The Global Institute at Thiel College, offers the following essay for our reflection:

Theology, Mission Style: Simplicity, Nature and Beauty in Wood and World

Rev. Derek R. Nelson

Lutherans Restoring Creation

February 25, 2011

My wife and I bought a Craftsman home about a year ago. You have almost certainly seen houses built in this style, even if you didn’t know the name. Here is a website with many pictures of similar homes and home décor . Among the characteristics of the style are an open floor plan (the absence of hallways facilitates gatherings and allows for larger rooms) and wide eaves above a deep porch. The roof’s rafter tails are usually exposed, and the interior of the house has numerous built-in cabinets, seats, and shelving. The interior beams of the house are often exposed and used as decorative elements. A bungalow is a one-story Craftsman home, and the “mission style” is the West-Coast incarnation of the Craftsman.

What does this have to do with theology and creation? Much, if you consider the context out of which the Craftsman home emerged. At the end of the 19^th Century, the predominant style of architecture was the Victorian. This style was highly ornate, and its principal virtue seemed to be its ability to call attention to itself. Towers or turrets frequently adorn the front of the home, and elaborate latticework is often incorporated. Victorian homes often look like gingerbread houses, with irregular exteriors and free-form, rambling floor plans.

The problem with the Victorian home is that its ascendancy coincided with the industrial revolution. Mass production meant that building supplies could be created and shipped with never-before-seen ease. Highly decorated wall coverings could be cranked out, and the patterns could be as elaborate and loud as possible. Anything that could be fabricated – posts, floor coverings, staircases, knobs, hearths, you name it – could just as easily as not have an intricate design. And if you can design it that way, so the Victorian-era logic went, you should design it that way. This led to a kind of hyper-ornate style that serves no purpose except to say, “Hey – look at me!” There is a kind of joy and frivolity that goes with “unnecessary” adornment, to be sure. In fact, a case can be made that art begins where function ends. But what is true of art – that its non-necessity is part of its beauty – is not necessarily true of home design.

The arts-and-crafts movement is the name given to the skilled artisans who objected to the tackiness and superficiality of the Victorian era. They valued not intricacy of mass-produced design, but quality of hand-made construction. The connection between form and function became central, where it is peripheral (if not absent) in the Victorian. Heroes of the movement are people like John Ruskin, William Morris and, in the U.S., Gustav Stickley, whose magazine, The Craftsman, did much to renew architectural design in America in the early 20^th century. The Victorian style highlights complexity, the Craftsman, simplicity. The Victorian wishes to stand out against its surroundings; the Craftsman sees human construction woven into the context of natural elements.

We who are concerned about the plight of God’s creation might learn something from this turning point in the history of architecture. As green building construction becomes more common (but far from widely accepted), its determinants seem primarily economic. Heating and cooling bills can go down if geo-thermal considerations are employed, for example, or recycled building materials can be used in green homes to some advantage or another. But the arts and crafts movement pointed to a deeper reason to consider the natural environment in which a home is located and how it is constructed: human being (and therefore, human living) is to be seen as continuous with, not transcendentally above, the material world. Humans are humus, soil.

The political philosopher Edward Carpenter (1844-1929) wrote an important book called England’s Ideal which contains a critique of Victorian opulence and hypocrisy. Some of Carpenter’s ideas were incorporated into Arts-and-Crafts design. In Gustav Stickley’s eyes, Carpenter’s chapter of that book entitled “The Simplification of Life” was key. Stickley wrote,

“By ‘simplicity’ here is not meant any foolish whimsical eccentricity of dress or manner or architecture, colonized and made conspicuous by useless wealth, for eccentricity is but an expression of individual egotism and as such must inevitably be short-lived. And what our formal, artificial world of today needs is not more of this sort of eccentricity and egotism, but less; not more conscious posing for picturesque reform, but greater and quieter achievement along lines of fearless honesty; not less beauty, but infinitely more of a beauty that is real and lasting because it is born out of use.”

The Victorian era was known for its formality, its highly structured way of personal inter-relating that shunned thoughts of human bodiliness and what it regarded as humanity’s “baser” desires. Horrified by Darwin’s suggestion that humans might have more in common with other animals than was previously thought, members of the “high culture” in the Victorian days needed to see themselves as having transcended the natural world. This attitude showed forth in the construction of their homes. The ornate, complex, and intricately patterned features of these homes was important to their occupants precisely because they were not useful. Such opulence confirmed them in their artificial hopes that humans did not have so much in common with other creatures whose material needs were more pressing.

What can we, who seek to recover humanity’s rightful place within, not above, the natural world, learn from the Craftsman home? I leave it to your comments to discern these lessons, but for the moment, at least the following may be said. First, church architecture might be re-thought along the lines of continuity with creation, rather than set-apart-ness. The famous church built into the rocks in Helsinki, the Temppeliaukio Kirkko, might be one example of this. Secondly, the church might be more fruitfully involved in advocacy work along the lines of sustainability in home design. The exact form this might take is not clear to me, nor is it clear to me that the church’s already diffuse social witness should be spread even thinner by engagement on this topic. But the Gospel enables Christian freedom, and the Law requires Christian moral action. And together law and freedom comprise the moral life. And life is, well, life! It’s broad, and all-encompassing, and lived largely inside the walls of dwellings that can be as informed by principles of Creation as can anything else.

Water in Worship

2011-02-25T09:38:00.001-08:00

Ben Stewart, who teaches worship at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, has an excellent article on the use of water in worship (and its ecological implications) in the Jan. 28th edition of the Christian Century.

A useful video from Larry Rasmussen on similar themes is available at the LRC web site.

Margins: Epiphany 7 Sermon, preached 2.23.11 at Gettysburg Lutheran Seminary Chapel

2011-02-23T12:39:00.000-08:00

I really like the picture in Lev. 19: 9-10.
When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien; I am the Lord your God.

If you would go out the doors of the chapel, turn left and walk two miles south on Seminary Ridge/Confederate Avenue, you’d come to a metal tower on the battlefield. And if you’d climb its many flights of stairs, you’d get a panoramic view of the land. From up there, you can see the outlines of what the rural farm fields were like, about 150 years ago, because you’d be looking at the park which keeps the land something like it was in 1863. The fields were smaller than they are now. They had boundaries. There used to be hedgerows, or edge areas, with trees and shrubs, vines and often a waterway or wetland through those borders. In Amish country the fields are still today set into strips and smaller patches, usually rectangular but sometimes oddly shaped to fit the contour of the land.

But most of the productive farm fields aren’t like that today. In the 1950s and 60s, when the big machinery came along, at the same time that petrochemical fertilizers and bold new hybrid crops were on the rise, American farmers began to plant hedgerow to hedgerow. The edges were disappearing. Then, in the 1970s, the Agriculture Secretary mounted a campaign: “Get big or get out,” he advised. That advice led, among other things, to larger fields. And fewer and fewer farmers work more and more land. Now, there are no hedgerows at all. The big machines cover huge distances, rolling over the old boundaries. The whole story was told by author Wendell Berry in his classic, The Unsettling of America.

Leviticus 19 stands in stark contrast. Leviticus 19 seems to be from a different world.

That author I just mentioned, Wendell Berry, was in the news recently. About 10 days ago, he left home to go visit the Governor’s office in Kentucky where he lives. He put a toothbrush in the inside breast pocket of his sport coat, because he didn’t know for sure if he’d be coming back home that evening, or if he’d have to spend the night in jail. He and thirteen others weren’t planning any sort of a crime, except that they were not going to leave the governor’s office until he would talk to them. You see, they wanted to discuss their concerns about coal mining in Kentucky. They had tried all the regular means: they wrote letters to their representatives, they mounted public campaigns, they tried to influence legislation, but none of those efforts stopped the abusive kind of mining that was tearing apart the mountains.

You see, there is a new kind of mining, which rolls over huge areas. With massive machines and with explosives, operators scrape off miles of rock and topsoil to expose coal seams that everybody used to think were impossible to get, because they were up inside the tops of the mountains. When they scrape off the tops of the mountains, the “debris,” as they call it, is simply plowed over the sides. That technique is called “valley fill.” Streams are clogged, and floods ensue. Mountaintop removal mining respects no natural boundaries. It plows over the former edges. Nature’s high and low places are little obstacle against today’s technological might. Reseeded in grass like golf courses, the plateaued heights of Kentucky, West Virginia and other places have lost their forests, their biotic communities, their waterways. The people who live there are suffering ill health, contaminated water and shattered culture.

And so Wendell Berry went with his toothbrush to the governor’s office, with thirteen others. They ended up staying three nights. They did talk to the governor, who is convinced that taking the tops off mountains to haul coal away does not damage the land and does not hurt the people. It is Kentucky’s best hope for economic prosperity he says. We might say the governor prefers a different kind of margin than the real, physical margin at the edges of the mountains.

Well, then, Leviticus 19 stands in stark contrast to the governor’s politics.

Margins are good places. In the fields that Leviticus 19 describes, the margins are places that the poor could find food, and the alien could get along. Modern ecologists tell us, too, that the edges are where interesting things happen. The old hedgerows, the old tree stands along waterways at the edges of fields, are great places for species diversity. The mountainsides and valleys with their streambeds are also great places for species diversity.

We recently got a little survey of the natural life on our campus here at LTSG, and nearby. There are over 10 species of concern living here—from a certain kind of little yellow warbler, to some different butterflies, to Shumard Oaks and Shellbark Hickories, and even one species that is of such concern that conservationists have advised us not to publicize it. We’re discussing how the campus could be a kind of an edge or margin that could help those species and others survive. It helps your species, too, O humans!, to have a healthy community around you.

The Holiness Code of Leviticus had something to say about living with margins. In the margins strangers get hospitality; aliens get some rights. And in our day we can add that in margins more species will survive, and maybe even human greed could be reined in at least a little bit? Leviticus is clear that people are to live simple, decent lives, and not take too much. The land is to be cared for. When the land was abused, Lev. 18 says, the land “vomited” the people out. And it very well may do so again, the Holiness Code says, in a rather prescient ecological insight.

Leviticus 19: 9 & 10 at times seems to be from another world, but I don’t think it is all done with us…. not just yet. It’s not that we’d ever go back to the world of the Priestly writers who drew out the old Holiness Code. No, but I believe that God Almighty is yet working an order of justice and righteousness in and for this earth. You see, the roar of the machines breaking the margins of the land, and governors and tycoons screaming about their spreadsheet margins, are not the only voices out there. I’ve heard mountaineers who got blasted off their mountains, say, “I still love this land, and this is where I belong.” I’ve seen the poor, gleaning from the edges of the modern food system, share the bounty better than the affluent. And I’ve read about toothbrush-toting dreamers who wear out their welcome in the governor’s office, and then obstinately write and speak and proclaim that there could be another way.

And I’ve seen something else. I’ve seen a table that was first set in the last hours before a generous person named Jesus was betrayed and taken away to die. At that table, Jesus welcomed the marginal, the Nobodys and aliens of this world who had no real power or place. The people with Jesus were the downstream, down-valley types, the type who get valley fill dumped on their heads, or get their homes ripped out from under them. The people with Jesus, at the table he spread, were the type that fish all night and catch nothing. The people of Jesus were the type that the Caesars and Herods and Pilates knew only as slaves or servants in their designs of power and wealth.

But God prefers margins. And so Jesus went to an edge called Golgotha, and laid down his blessing upon the margin. He dipped his hand with the one who betrayed him, but still fed the marginal ones, whom he loved.

You are only footsteps from the table that he alone sets. His table is the margin of the Lord’s field. Come and glean, and then go out with new eyes to see all the margins and edges that are still there, where God is still working love and forgiveness and righteousness, and hospitality to strangers, and reforestation for species of concern, and even—I daresay!—a chance for those who might climb down off their roaring machines, and lift their eyes to behold the real margins, that they thought they’d pushed away.

But, for the time being, keep your toothbrush in your pocket.

Sermon manuscript is © 2011 by Gilson Waldkoenig. Reproduce only with permission.

Facebook

2011-02-15T09:32:00.001-08:00

Just as a reminder, Lutherans Restoring Creation is also on Facebook.
Check us out!

Racine Green Congregations

2011-02-15T09:23:00.000-08:00

Folks who are interested in how community-based interfaith efforts on behalf of the environment might look like should check out Racine Green Congregations, an initiative in Racine, WI that might well serve as a model for how local faith communities can engage in contextually sound cooperation, mutual encouragement, and advocacy.

Are you aware of similar efforts in other areas of the country? What's working/not working, and why?

Theology "without nature."

2011-02-13T17:44:00.000-08:00

Here's another good book, especially for those interested in how destabilizing concepts of "nature" might affect our theologizing about ecology.

Tim Morton's Website

2011-02-13T17:03:00.000-08:00

Followers of the previous LRC blogs will recall that I am a huge fan of Timothy Morton, who teaches literary criticism and environmental studies at UC Davis. His books Ecology without Nature and The Ecological Thought are, I believe, essential reading for those who would like to speak about ecological concerns in ways that don't completely reify "Nature" as some idealized object "over there."

His blog is well worth following; find it here.

Why I Am "Green" - share YOUR story!

2011-02-08T10:25:00.000-08:00

Why am I green? Perhaps the deeper question for me is “How could I not be?”

The way that I relate to the natural world – God’s creation – seems to come from the very core of who I am and the ways in which my life experiences, and the Spirit working through them, have shaped and called me.

I’ve had a lifelong affinity for, and delight in, the natural world. I like to camp, birdwatch, hike, and spend time by lakes and mountains. Though I grew up in Michigan, I was born in Alaska; I believe I was “imprinted” by wild beauty early on!

As I matured, my ecological understanding increased, along with my deep concern for how humankind’s actions were destroying creation’s web of life and also having a huge impact upon “the least of these,” raising profound issues of justice.

Even before I began my theological training, during candidacy for diaconal ministry, I was gaining a powerful sense that texts like Psalm 24:1 – The earth is the LORD’s and the fullness thereof – were meant to be taken seriously and shape how we live as God's people.

Through it all, I’ve come to believe that caring for the Earth is an integral part of what it means to be a child of God. After all, it was because “God so loved the world [the cosmos, in the Greek] that he gave his only begotten Son” (John 3:16).

... Not just people, not just the “world” … the whole cosmos/creation.

If we love God and are called to love and serve our neighbor, how can we do any less than care for God’s Earth which sustains us all, and is, itself, deeply loved by God?

I also cherish the words of Mark 16:15, where Jesus instructs his disciples:

Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation.

I believe that is the call, to all of us, as God’s people.

Kim Winchell, Diaconal Minister
North/West Lower MI Synod

Welcome to the new Lutherans Restoring Creation blog!

2011-02-08T07:32:00.000-08:00

In response to user feedback, Lutherans Restoring Creation has decided to merge all of its previous blogs (related to synods, congregations, colleges/seminaries, etc.) into one unified blog. This will, we hope, provide a venue where people can blog and comment about what is interesting to them while "sitting in" on related conversations from people working in other areas of Earthkeeping.

We hope that this new, unified blog will prove to be an effective and enjoyable means for networking, sharing information, and creating bonds among ELCA Lutherans and others of good will as we work to restore God's good creation.