Rev. Kathryn Ransdell
Earth Day, April 22, 2012
Have you ever heard someone say: Be careful what you ask for, because it might just happen? Or, this one: God laughs when you make plans.
I have to bring you into a bit of Holy Humour... on the Sunday after Easter in April 2009, I preached at First United Methodist Church, Dallas. What were you doing in April 2009? Ethan was just learning to walk. We had found the little cottage of my dreams and were in the final stages of negotiating.
And I gave a sermon where I made two jokes, which is a liberal use of the word because I'm not really all that funny.
1. Here's the first joke I made in that sermon: "I must admit, I have become a little lax in my kingdom-thinking. It’s easy to let go of this part of our Christian vision, life gets complicated, hectic, illnesses set in, babies keep you up at night." Now, I just had one baby that kept me up at night, but for some reason, I used the word "babies." Well, be careful what you ask for, because God did give me two babies to keep me up at night.
2. Here's the second statement I made in that same sermon: "I probably am the least of these to give an Earth Day sermon…I’m really bad about being green. I tried this week to be a little greener but kept finding myself falling short. On the day that I ordered a small tater tots from Sonic, the 8 tater tots came out in a paper boat wrapped in a paper bag included in a larger paper bag that enclosed ketchup and mustard enclosed in plastic pouches with a plastic fork enclosed in plastic wrap and a whole handful of napkins stuffed in making it look like I was digging into 80 tater tots. There was more trash than food."
If I asked to learn more about being green, it would be God who would say about one month later, well, I'm moving you to Vancouver, BC, where you will learn to reduce-reuse-recycle. I have learned more about caring for the Earth in my past 3 years in Canada than I ever even knew was possible. Really. This is my confessional statement. I recall my first month here in Canada. Tim and I sponsored an after-church lunch and we had the sandwich trays from IGA. The session was over; we were all cleaning up; and I put the trays in the trash because that's what I've done for more than a decade. And I don't remember who it was, but one of you were quite offended by that action and took it out of the trash and said, this can be recycled.
We all wish we were greener, which is why I want a sermon with more than this one-liner, “Brothers and sisters in Christ, let’s all try to be Greener.”
I’m reminded of a lecture by Laura Yordy, a student of Stanley Hauerwas’ and one of the teaching assistants in my class on Christian Ethics. Dr. Yordy has gone on to earn her PhD, teach, and recently published a book, “Green Witness: Ecology, Ethics, and the Kingdom of God.”
Dr. Yordy began her lecture by opening a box of bugs. She asked people to describe what they saw:
Bug/insect/caterpillar/centipede/yukk/varmint/food
Then she went on:
If I said this produced a component of an AIDS drug when crushed, what would you call it? Resource, raw material, cure?
Or, If I said there were only 25 left in the world and they all lived in the path of the new highway what would you call it? Endangered, road kill, tragic victim?
Or, If I said that they lived in gardens and ate root vegetables what would you call them? Pests…
Or, If you could buy them through the Nature Company catalog with their own plexiglass bug house, what would you call them? Commodity, product
And then she asked us: How did you learn the names: bug, centipede, pest, commodity? What language are those words? What story are you standing in to use that language?
Then she asked us to notice what language did not arise:
Creature, Gift, Manifestation of God’s wisdom, Praise of God, Kin, Covenant partner
Then she reminded us of what Stanley Hauerwas had taught us: “For us to be able to see the world as it is requires that we must be able to speak a very particular kind of language.” For our language shapes our bodies, our actions and even our desires.
Someone who calls a bug a Covenant Partner is, well, normal in BC and a little bit strange in Texas. But someone who calls a bug a covenant partner is going to think in different ways when it comes to policies about irrigation and insecticides.
Imagine--what if what we did with our bodies and what we desired with our emotions had nothing to do with our own addictions and egos and need to stay ever-youthful, but instead, our bodies and actions and desires were formed by our words that are based on what we see…In today’s gospel, what we see is the Lord here on earth.
Our faith is not separate from this planet Earth. Our theology and our ecology must be interconnected. We must see this Earth for what it is--God's kingdom--which will require us to use a different language from those around us who see this same earth from a completely different perspective.
Let me say this in another way: We live in a world that tells us to consume more, and more, and more. And to consume more, means more than just packaging...it means for us to get more, there is some part of this world that is crucified via manufacturing.
Being from Texas, the landscape I'm familiar with is a landscape of taking from the earth...whether it is oil rigs or natural gas rigs, I'm used to seeing machines working to extract resources.
But it's more than just oil and gas; it's things that I have a hard-time even fathoming...From Popular Mechanics: "Sir William Crookes, a 19th century British chemist, once wrote that, "rare earth elements perplex us in our researches, baffle us in our speculations and haunt us in our very dreams." These weren't easy elements to isolate or to understand, and so there was a very long lag time between the discovery of the rare earths, and the discovery of practical uses for them. Rare earth elements—a set of 17 related metals, mostly shunted off to a tacked-on lower line of the periodic table—are crucial to the way we live now; responsible for miniaturizing computers and headphones, powering hybrid cars and more."
[Read more: 4 Rare Earth Elements That Will Only Get More Important - Popular Mechanics]
Going back to the world that wants us to be faithful disciples that purchase without thought and desire more and more and more...We have been very faithful...these rare earth elements...they are crucial to the kind of technology we have come to rely on...(ex. this past week, the internet wasn't working in the office for one day and I thought we might as well call it a day...)
These rare earth elements are key ingredients in apple's products, who has created a purchasing phenomenon since the first iPhone was released in 2007, and the first iPod in 2001. It's amazing how brief a time it has been and how these things have changed our lives.
And we really don't know, or want to know, their impact on this earth because the impact on us is pleasurable. Doesn't matter about the earth...
Oh wait...that's the issue...you see, God's kingdom teaches us not to worry about what we will eat or what we will wear, not to be anxious in anything...
It's not that iPads are "bad," it's just all about trade-offs...what we give up to get something else.
For us to be able to see this world as it is—God’s kingdom—it will require us to speak a different kind of language from this world which looks at the earth from a completely different perspective.
Again, I don't want this to be a "let's all be a little greener" kind of sermon; or a surface-level talk on the quality of the 17 rare earth materials; and, I don't want this to be a long sermon...so let me just get to this last part...
The part I call "feel your feet." This has been my mantra for some time now. The mantra first came to me when I began yoga and entered into a deep practice of cultivating awareness in my body. For me, intutition is more than a mental reality; it's a physical reality.
Feel your feet is a mantra that calls us
...to be present in the moment...
...to gain awareness at this very moment of what it feels like to have our feet come in contact with the earth...
...to realize who has stepped here before us and who comes after us...
...to learn what it means that we are the connection between heaven and earth...
We are called to plant seeds of new life in this world.
...of new possibilities of ways of being together...
...of new ways of engaging our food needs...
...of reduce, reuse, recycle...
...of treading lightly on this earth for it's the only one we have...
Feel your feet
No comments:
Post a Comment