"Nurture Me, Says the Earth"
Sept. 23, 2012
Creation Time: Week 3
Rev. Kathryn Ransdell
What is my purpose here on this earth? What on earth am I doing?
When historians look back on us in 500 years, will the great questions of our day define our shadow side: that we focused so much on my individual purpose here on this earth that we forgot that if it were not for this earth on which our purpose stood, we would not be?
Will history show that the disconnect between our purpose-driven lives and the Earth caused harm to this planet?
Today, I want you to play with your understanding of your relationship to the Earth. Where has the relationship been and where is it going? In dating terms, this is called a "DTR...define the relationship." Do you have a relationship with the Earth? (Sounds strange to say and I can just hear those conservative evangelicals get all their knickers in a twist that those liberal Protestant so-called Christians are asking whether they have a relationship with the Earth rather than with our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.)
You might have a relationship with the Earth that upon examination, is not the relationship you want. It is good every so often to bring out our deep beliefs about theology--sometimes beliefs we don't know that we hold, we simply inherited them in an embedded, systemic way. Nineteenth and 20th-century theology around texts in Genesis 1 and 2 have set-up a dynamic in our relationship to the earth that has caused us to act as if our relationship to this Earth is populator, subduer, tiller and keeper.
1. "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it." -- Genesis 1:28
from the Hebrew verb "to dominate." In other uses, same verb is translated as "deal harshly."
(Lev. 25:35-38, asking Israelites not to deal harshly with those who have fallen into debt slavery.)
2. "The Lord God put (hu)man in the Garden of Eden to till it and keep it." -- Genesis 2:15
3. Or a nice Christian word that has been given to us to describe our relationship to the earth is that we are to be "stewards" of this earth, and good ones at that, with the earth's many resources.
Our thinking on these texts has already evolved. We no longer consider Genesis 1 and 2 historical literalism. Instead, these texts area a way that a certain people had of looking back at the origins of all creation and defining those origins by what they know to be true of the God they now serve. As one theologian calls it, Genesis 1 and 2 is poetic theology. And poetry isn't meant to be tied to a chair and have a confession beat out of it as Billy Collins suggests in his poem, "Introduction to Poetry."
In like manner, just as our understanding of the historical nature of these texts has evolved, perhaps some of our readings of these texts needs to evolve.
If we perhaps could set aside our inherited relationship with the Earth, that of subduer, tiller and steward, I wonder what we might find instead?
Today, I humbly suggest that the Earth whispers, "Nurture Me."
1. "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it." -- Genesis 1:28
from the Hebrew verb "to dominate." In other uses, same verb is translated as "deal harshly."
(Lev. 25:35-38, asking Israelites not to deal harshly with those who have fallen into debt slavery.)
2. "The Lord God put (hu)man in the Garden of Eden to till it and keep it." -- Genesis 2:15
3. Or a nice Christian word that has been given to us to describe our relationship to the earth is that we are to be "stewards" of this earth, and good ones at that, with the earth's many resources.
Our thinking on these texts has already evolved. We no longer consider Genesis 1 and 2 historical literalism. Instead, these texts area a way that a certain people had of looking back at the origins of all creation and defining those origins by what they know to be true of the God they now serve. As one theologian calls it, Genesis 1 and 2 is poetic theology. And poetry isn't meant to be tied to a chair and have a confession beat out of it as Billy Collins suggests in his poem, "Introduction to Poetry."
In like manner, just as our understanding of the historical nature of these texts has evolved, perhaps some of our readings of these texts needs to evolve.
If we perhaps could set aside our inherited relationship with the Earth, that of subduer, tiller and steward, I wonder what we might find instead?
Today, I humbly suggest that the Earth whispers, "Nurture Me."
1. Let's begin by just going back to the text and looking at some of the things we thought it suggested:
1. In the beginning the earth was a formless void...primordial chaos. We have taken from this that God created the earth out of chaos. We serve a God who takes chaos and orders it. This is a God of ordering, structuring and designing. (I had no idea God was a good Presbyterian.) I admit that I've preached this before because there is something that preaches in this notion that God has control over chaos...the spoken word has the power to rein in chaos and make all things better, setting up a dualistic value on the chaos and what happened when God controlled the chaos.
It goes something like, "Thank goodness that God came in and spoke because what was before was inherently not of value." Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a chaotic earth like me..."it may be the substance of a very comforting theology, but it might not be what we believe about God. It ties a bit to that subduer theology...that we are to tame the wildness, do what we have to do to do so that people sit still and keep quiet and raise respectable middle-class families.
What we know to be true is that God is constantly creating, blessing and covenanting..a God who is consistently and constantly in love with this world. The love of the rainbow over us.
Thank goodness voices around the world are calling us to a new theology that acknowledges that the Earth and all its components have intrinsic worth/value. "The Earth Bible has been developed by a team of scholars from Adelaide, South Australia. In this significant new series, writers from around the world read the Bible from the perspective of justice for Earth. Ecojustice principles are used as guidelines as they ask questions of the text: Does a given text value or de-value Earth? Is the voice of Earth heard or suppressed? Are humans portrayed as 'rulers' over Earth or kin with Earth? Does Earth suffer unjustly?"
The Earth's value doesn't come from what it can give us only if we pry it open and dig deep enough. The earth has value in itself. In its very being. Living with this notion changes us...we no longer have to be in a consumer/consumed relationship with the Earth. We are changed by acknowledging the value of the Earth in the very beginning.
The Earth doesn't need a subduer.
2. Othertimes it is not what we thought the text suggested, it's that we overlooked part of what the text is saying. This comes from a rabbi friend of mine. When she told me this interpretation of the creation story, it affected--for the better--how I go to sleep at night.
1. Right after we get past this chaos-order stuff, God creates light and darkness.
God: "Whew! I just created a 24 hour period of alternating light and darkness on Earth."
Angel: "What are you going to do now?"
God: "I'm tired, let's just call it a day."
As many times as I had read Genesis 1, the definition of a day never caught my attention: evening first, and day second. If we believe this, our day begins by going to sleep. Our day begins by entering into a deep trusting relationship that the God of Israel neither sleeps nor slumbers. "I lift up my eyes to the mountains--where does my help come from? ...
"The Lord watches over you—
the Lord is your shade at your right hand;
the sun will not harm you by day,
nor the moon by night."
For all the "days" of my life when I have woken up and thought this is it, I'm beginning my day, I will set the agenda and do what I'm going to do, and I will be a good steward of the time God has given me. This whole notion of my day "starting" half-way through God's day, that I'm in effect waking to join God as a partner in this work of creating, blessing and covenanting, that I'm serving alongside God rather than serving my ego-agenda of what I think my day should hold...this whole notion of evening, then morning and that is a day...The world does not revolve around us our needs but around God. This change in relationship to the day digs up the roots of my me-ology...and anything that can dig up those roots, I'm all for.
No longer steward, but partner. And not just any partner. As the story tells us, we are a partner made in the image and likeness of God, the whole motley group that we are. We are a partner in being in the likeness of God, that which God is, we are too. That which God does, we do too.
Isaiah 45:18 says (The Message),
" God, Creator of the heavens—
he is, remember, God.
Maker of earth—
he put it on its foundations, built it from scratch.
He didn’t go to all that trouble
to just leave it empty, nothing in it.
He made it to be lived in.
If this is what God does, this is what we do to. We don't leave this earth empty with nothing in it because we've gotten ours and now we will leave the problems to our grandchildren, we are to make this earth to be lived in.
We are more than tillers of this earth, as God told them in the "King James English" because "to till" was the best English verb to describe the Hebrew word that is better understood as "to serve."ii We are servants of this earth.
No longer subduers, tillers and stewards. We are partners and servants to an Earth that in itself has intrinsic value.
My friend who wrote the book on Preaching Creation says it this way, "to change the way we speak about ourselves and nature we must change the way we speak and this will be nothing less than complete conversion."
To change our relationship to this Earth, we must change the way we speak about this Earth. It won't happen instantaneously; it happens slowly, just as a seed is planted, takes root and is nurtured by the soil and sun and rain.
When entering new territory like this, how do we even understand how it begins? I give thanks for a time in my life when I can clearly see my language change--evolve--as I was being confronted daily with a very real change in my life. I was pregnant with Ethan...first pregnancy...it's so lovely and beautiful and idealistic...you have no idea what's waiting for you...
In my first trimester, I journaled on this phrase, "I am pregnant." My relationship was to my changing body, sick every single day, shifting and expanding. It was about me.
In the second trimester, I journaled on this phrase, "I'm having a baby." A baby...a tiny little creature who will be dependent on me to show him or her the ways of this world. But it was still about me...what I'm doing...what I'm having...
In my third trimester, I journaled, "I'm a mother and this is my child." Relationship. Of course at this point in pregnancy, almost anything can make you cry, the mother and child, both with intrinsic value, both with something to teach and share with the other, both called to the role of nurture for as we all know, the one who was nurtured, one day, becomes the nurturer.
For me, this was a process of evolving from me-ology to living in relationship. Which brings me back to my beginning ask of you...have you had a DTR--define the relationship--with the Earth?
No longer subduer, tiller or steward
I am a partner with God and Earth.
I am a servant to God and to this Earth.
Both Earth and me have been granted intrinsic worth, not because we've earned it. No, God looked on both of us, Earth and Me, Earth and You, and called us good.
The church's task in this world is to nurture this goodness.
What is my purpose with this earth? What with earth am I doing?
i Introduction to Poetry by Billy Collins
I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.
But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.
Permissions information. Copyright 1988 by Billy Collins. All rights reserved. Reproduced with permission.
ii John C. Holbert. Preaching Creation.
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