God's Open Hand
A Sermon by Nada Sellers
August 9, 2006
Psalm 104:24-30
"O Lord, How manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all; the earth is full of your creatures." (v.24)
One of the interesting events which children in Pasadena got involved with for Earth Day one year, was a butterfly project, in which the kids were given caterpillars which became chrysalis, which then hatched out into beautiful butterflies. Together, in a community-wide program, free to the public, children and parents learned the hows and whys of such a transformation, and then at a pre-arranged time and location, everyone took part in a huge celebration in which the butterflies were released out into the wilds of Southern California.
These sorts of celebrations and other awareness events, always get me thinking about the earth, about the fine balance of creation and about the role we humans have as caretakers ... Or should I say, the role we used to be aware we have. Sometimes I wonder if we've lost touch with the earth in our semi-suburban surroundings where things are shaped to suit or even anticipate all of our needs? Just what does God expect of us as to our part in caring for this cosmos, here on this planet? Al Gore's re-energizing discussion about global warming is actually another way of asking this same question.
Today, against the backdrop of Psalm 104, I want us to reflect upon what it means in God's ecology to be a Christian earth creature ... As a part of the vast creation, as one among the many of God's creative works, in an environment where teaming life is increasingly on the brink of disappearing forever, how shall we live? In light of the redemption achieved in the cross and empty tomb, and the Spirit's living presence, has anything changed in the natural world? Many Christians are willing to concede that the Hebrew Scriptures give clear guidance about the way in which humanity and the fullness of creation are part and parcel of God's design for the world ... but what about Christian stewardship? What is Christian about environmental stewardship and why should it matter to a New Testament, post-modern people?
If we look back into First Testament affirmations about God and God's creation, we are quickly reminded that the biblical tradition contains rich assurances about the importance of the natural world and God's activity in it. In faith we affirm that God is Creator of the whole universe (Gen. 1), a universe that speaks eloquently of the Creator (Ps. 19), and which asserts that God is owner and keeper of God's universe (Deut. 10:14; Ps. 24:1). As reminded by my text in Psalm 104, we celebrate that God is a God who sustains and loves what God has created, giving water and food to all creatures, supporting and renewing the earth and its inhabitants in the rhythm of life and death, providing nourishment and breath. And too, this psalm reminds us that the Lord blesses and keeps us, as part of the natural balance of creatures relying upon our Creator. (Ps. 104; Num. 6:24-26).
But we are also challenged in the course of our biblical exploration. We find that we, too, are expected to keep the earth (Gen. 2:15)... As the Lord keeps us, so are we to keep God's creation. In Exodus and Leviticus, we are to give ourselves, other creatures, and the land, their Sabbath rests for times of restoration and appreciation of the fruits of God's creation. (Ex. 20,23; Lev. 25, 26). As God provides for the creatures, so must we -- allowing them also to "be fruitful and increase in number." (Gen. 1:22, 28; 8:17; 9:1,7). We are challenged not to defile or pollute God's gifts in creation -- we are to be responsible in our enjoyment of the earth's blessings, and not diminish its fruitfulness. (Ezek. 34:18-19)
As part of the special place in creation humankind enjoys, as the only creatures created in the image of God, given dominion over other creatures (Gen. 1:26,28), and made a little lower than angels (Ps. 8), are there some essential features of being human creatures in a natural environment full of all sorts of other living things? I think so. Yet all too often, the sorts of affirmations found in Scripture, which we've just reviewed, are interpreted so as to view the rest of creation as "resources" for human use or worse, as giving license for abuse and exploitation in pursuit of wealth and power. Old Testament scholar, Walter Brueggemann, offers a corrective to this sort of interpretation as to dominion:
The dominion here mandated is with reference to the animals. The dominance is that of a shepherd who cares for, tends, and feeds the animals... Thus the task of 'dominion' does not have to do with exploitation and abuse. It has to do with securing the well being of every other creature and bringing the promise of each to full fruition... The role of the human person is to see to it that the creation becomes fully the creation willed by God.
Somehow, in our search for an understanding of what Christian people are to be teaching and doing when it comes to the environment, we have to pause and recognize the immense power we have to do damage in our pursuit of material comforts... These are the abuses and destructive patterns that have often been supported by supposedly Christian perspectives. It doesn't take much to recognize the enormity of the problem in our world today: Many scientists estimate that one quarter of the worlds' species could be lost within the next 50 years, as we continue to destroy habitats, and to develop and use chemicals for fertilizers and pesticides and herbicides. In the degradation of our soils, the contamination and increasing build-up of toxins and wastes which cannot be reduced or even safely stored without immense cost and long-lasting risk; in the alteration of our planet's climate and its atmosphere; in the mass production of agribusiness which displaces and replaces agriculture that used methods to refurbished the earth and allowed for life to be lived in balance with the land for generations... to use the words of the Old Testament to describe our arrogant assault on the fabric of our planet, "the earth dries up and withers ... The earth is defiled by its people." (Is 24)
In light of such large-scale problems, how are we to regain the perspective of faith, and to become reacquainted with the purposes of God for creation?
What a thing it is to sit absolutely alone, in the forest, at night, cherished by this wonderful, unintelligible, perfectly innocent speech, the most comforting speech in the world, the talk that rain makes by itself all over the ridges, and the talk of the watercourses everywhere in the hollows! Nobody started it, nobody is going to stop it. It will talk as long as its wants, this rain. As long as it talks I am going to listen. --- Thomas Merton
May all I say and all I think be in harmony with thee, God within me, God beyond me, maker of the trees... -- refrain from prayer of Chinook Psalter
Let me suggest, that we might begin by reclaiming an understanding of God's deep and continuing involvement in God's creation: For though we worship a holy and transcendent God, we also glorify God as one immanently and intimately invested in this world. This is affirmed in our text in Psalm 104:
All creatures look to God for provision, for the good things, which come from God's open hand.. And God's life-giving Spirit is identified as the source upon which all creatures depend: "...When you send forth your spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the earth." (v.30) Here you can begin to see the way in which our psalm parallels the creation account in Genesis 1, but it also departs by emphasizing continuing divine involvement in what has been created.
Creation is not so much something God did, as something God is doing: "He makes springs pour water into the ravines;... He waters the mountains... He makes the grass grow for the cattle," intones the singer in verses 10, 13 and 14. And in verse 30, all of this life-giving action of God is centered in the creating Spirit. Theologian Jurgen Moltmann has had a great deal to say about the Spirit of God in creation; this is an intimate connection between Creator and creation, one not properly conveyed by the notion of "cause" or effect:
Creating the world is something different from causing it. If the Creator is himself present in his creation by virtue of the Spirit, then his relationship to creation must rather be viewed as an intricate web of .. reciprocal and many-sided relationships.... In this network of relationship, 'making,' 'reserving,' 'maintaining' and 'perfecting' are certainly the great one-sided relationships, but 'indwelling,' 'sympathizing,' 'participating,' 'accompanying,' 'enduring,' 'delighting,' and 'glorifying,' are relationships of mutuality which describe a cosmic community of living between God the spirit and all [God's] created beings.
This immanence of God in community with God's created beings, is nowhere more apparent than in the coming of Jesus the Christ who lived, was crucified and then resurrected to redeem all of creation. It seems wonderfully appropriate to affirm that we dare not cheapen our understanding of what Jesus did for us on the cross, by seeing it just as a death for us personally, or as an example of moral fortitude, which we ought to recapitulate in some subjective way. What I mean, is that Jesus has done more than this: Jesus, as the Creator, the Word of God made flesh, the One who created all things, stooped down in order to suffer on the cross and so to redeem all of creation, confirming once for all time his complete rule over all things. The passage read to us from the first chapter of Colossians makes clear the involvement of Christ with nature: "... in him all things were created... in him all things hold together." We hear in this the echo of the well-known prologue of John: "... all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made." (3:3)
It must be said then, that the Bible clearly affirms a continual, creative and sustaining presence of God with God's creation. And that creative and sustaining presence is most fully understood and described as the second person of the Trinity, Jesus the Christ. It is Jesus, the Incarnate one who stands as the clearest example of God's willingness to create, sustain, delight in and sacrificially redeem all creation. Robert Capon puts this mystery of the sustaining presence of Christ like this:
Christ wins in every triumph and loses in every loss. Christ dies when a chicken dies, and rises when an egg hatches. He lies slain in the wreckage of all Aprils. He weeps in the ruins of all springs. This strange, savage, gorgeous world is the way it is because, incomprehensibly, that is his style. The Gospel of the Incarnation is preached, not so that we can tell [humankind] that the world now means something it didn't mean before, but so [people] may finally learn what it has been about all along.
As both Creator and Redeemer, we now see that God is deeply invested in all parts of creation. And in resurrecting to a new and renewing life, Christ Jesus brings about a new order of living which will one day be complete, free of the struggle and travail creation remains embroiled in (Romans 8:19-22). As New Testament Christians, desiring to be disciples of the risen Christ, we proclaim with the elders around the throne in chapter 4 of John's Apocalypse: "You are worthy, O Lord our God, to receive glory and honor and power, because you created all things; by your will they were created and have their being."(Rev. 4:11)
Creation is a gift; it is fraught with God's blessing and love and provision: 'O Lord, how manifold are your works!' And just as we understand God's intention to return again in Christ's second coming, when he will complete the work which he began with a cross and an empty tomb, creation also has a goal, an end which lies in God's final future purpose for the entire world. (Rev. 4:8b) Ephesians 1:10 states this purpose grandly, as God purposing "to bring all things in heaven and on earth together, under one head, even Christ."
Be like a tree in pursuit of your cause. Stand firm, grip hard, thrust upward, bend to the winds of heaven, and learn tranquility.
-- dedication to R. St. Barbe Baker, Father of the Trees.
How lovely are thy holy groves, God of heaven and earth. My soul longs and faints for the circle of thy trees. My heart and my flesh sing with joy to thee, O God of life.
-- Chinook psalter
What then shall we say about our own situation, as ecologically concerned disciples of a risen Savior, living in a battered creation? Again, the New Testament teaches that Christ graciously calls us and enables us to share both in God's intimate closeness and God's wholly otherness when it comes to our relationship to nature: You and I as heirs with Christ, as sons and daughters, are called to be agents of healing and renewal, to take on the redemptive role of those who care for, speak out in justice for, and preserve what we have been entrusted with -- this is what stewardship means. As the church is now Christ's body on earth, his visible presence in this world, the place where God's open hand continues to be sought and praised and experienced, it is the church's job to continue the reconciling, recreating work of Christ until he comes again. When it comes to the natural environment, we need to be living lives in harmony with the Creator and the creation. This is what righteousness means: the state of being at peace with the Creator and in a right relationship with the creation, including our fellow humans. If you and I claim to share in Christ's resurrection righteousness, we are responsible for the care of creation.
O Holy One, I ran through the fields and gathered flowers of a thousand colors -- And now I pour them out at Your feet. Their beauty and their brightness shout for joy at Your Presence. You created the flowers of the fields and made each one far more lovely that all the skill [any person] could design. Accept my joy alone with theirs, this field of blossoms at Your feet.
Holy One, as the wind blows through these flowers till they dance in the ecstasy of creation, send Your Spirit to blow through my being till I too, bloom and dance with the fullness of Your life. ---Ishpriya R.S.C.J.
In closing, let us finally notice that Psalm 104 gives us a way to talk about God in the world, to speak of God as creative force and as providence behind all living things. It puts us in the presence of the One of whom we must speak if we are to realize in heart and language the profound truths about the world. It also puts us in our place as one of the many living things made by the Lord and utterly dependent on God for life. We are unable as people of limited sight to see much beyond our current identities as creatures, unless we also learn to speak to God about the world. And that can be done only in the language of praise, which is beautifully demonstrated by the joyful, even playful language of our psalm.
To be the earth-keepers on behalf of the Christ we seek to serve and to follow, let us learn this language of praise; let us come to see the open hand of God in our natural environment; let us learn to point this out to others; and let us learn to be renewed and sustained by the Spirit of Christ who calls us to defend and preserve and recreate in the love which we share as God's people.
Notes
. C. DeWitt, ed. The Environment & the Christian (Baker Book House, 1991):7-8.
. W. Brueggemann Genesis (JKP, 1982):32-33 as cited in comments by J. Paarlberg in brochure entitled "A Call to Defend God's Creation" (Ministry of God's Creation, Wash. D.C.)
. E. Roberts & E. Amidon eds. Earth Prayers (Harper Collins, 1991):165.
. DeWitt, p. 30-32; quote on 31-32.
. Loren Wilkinson, ed. Earth Keeping; Xn Stewardship of Natural Resources. (Eerdman's, 1980):218.
. J. McClendon Doctrine in Systematics, Vol 2 (Abingdon, 1994):148-149.
. from Earth Prayers this p. 364 and just above, p. 362.
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