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Back to Sermon Index Earth Day Sermon April 20, 2008 In the Beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth. This is the place where we begin to think about the creation...God created the heavens and the Earth. How did God create? Well, I think that the debate between evolution and science and the Bible is narrow-minded on both sides. The Bible says that God said, "Let the earth bring forth life...Let the Sea team with life...Let the Land produce living creatures..." Let the Land produce living creatures seems to allow a lot of room for how things came to be as they are. There is really no direct conflict between evolution and the Christian view of the world. The book of Romans says that "From the creation of the world God's invisible qualities — his eternal power and divine nature — have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made." Creation teaches us about the God we serve. It clearly shows God's eternal power. The vastness of the universe is beyond our understanding. The distances and the time involved are nearly infinite and therefore certainly beyond our experience. The more we learn of the creation, the more in awe we become. The hubble telescope has shown us pictures of the universe that are as amazing as they are beautiful. The scientific view of the universe's vastness and age has been doubled with the placement of this space telescope. One experiment, taking two days time, doubled the age that we understood the universe to be. They pointed the hubble telescope at a place that was dark, where no stars were visible. They did a very long exposure on the camera...24 hours...and what they found on the film rocked their world, or to be more exact, rocked their universe. They found this, it is called the deep field shot. It contains not millions of stars, but millions of galaxies, with billions of starts. They had believed the universe was 3 billion years old, and in that moment they realized it was about twice as big and twice as old as they had thought. Not just stars, but galaxies! God is awesome, God asks Job, "where were you when I set the galaxies spinning and the constellations to dance.'' But the opposite view of the world/universe also produces a sense of wonder and awe. I heard a scientist describe the present view of the single cell. It has an amazing number of things going on in it...and he described it as a galaxy within. It is certainly much more complex than we had imagined a few years ago, and its workings would make a nano-technologist drool with envy. What God is like...knowing these things about our universe or ourselves does not diminish our faith but makes it even more wonderful: that God so loved the world..this one, small planet in all the billions of solar systems in the universe with billions of galaxies. That God knows your name and knows the number of hairs upon your head...and cares about you...knowing your hopes and hurts. Amazing. So, our view of the universe encourages our faith and we have nothing to fear from science. The earth and science have, however, often had much to fear from the church. The Church has not had a good record when it comes to facing science...nor when it comes to the environment. The story of creation has God plant a garden and put human beings in it...as care takers. They are given dominion over the earth and all that it in it...but they have taken the word for caretaking and used it instead to mean dominate. To use and abuse the earth and its resources, thinking that all this exists just for our use and pleasure rather than seeing that the Earth is the Lord's and all the fullness there-in. The church has not understood or lived out its call to stewardship...to carefully shepherding and preserving the Earth's beauty and bounty...because it belongs to God. We must begin with a moment of confession...that we have sinned against God and one another in our use and abuse of God's creation. We have failed to see that we and it are always connected; and our actions have consequences for those "downstream" of us...literally and figuratively. We must change the way people think about our world and its resources. People will not do things differently until they think differently. We must teach it and live it...that God knows the fall of a single sparrow. How much more does He note and mourn the destruction of a whole species? We are connected to our world and to every person in it. This is concept is not new. I believe you can find it in the bible and in the wisdom of those around us. The native Americans had a tradition that the Earth belonged to God. Chief Seattle, spoke at a tribal assembly in Washington in 1854: "All things are connected like the blood which unites one family. How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land?" He asked. "if we do not own the freshness of the air, the sparkle of the water, how can we buy and sell them?" The chief went on to say, "Teach your children what we have taught our children, that the earth s our mother. Whatever befalls the earth, befalls the children of the earth. If we spit upon the ground, we spit upon ourselves. This earth is precious to God, and to harm the earth is to heap contempt upon its creator. So, if we sell you our land, Chief Seattle continued, "love it as we loved it, care for it as we've cared for it, hold in your mind the memory of the land as it is when you take it, and with all your strength, with all your mind, and with all your heart preserve it for your children and love it — as God loves us all." Just as we change the way we think and feel about the earth and its resources, we must also change what we do. To hear some environmentalists, you would think the solution is just to abandon the land and let it become a wilderness again, untouched by humans. But God's plan calls for us to nurture and manage the earth and it's resources, not to abandon them. We can and must change our behavior. This is beginning to happen, and we all can participate...in recycling our waste...think of our gas use and miles per gallon...become energy efficient and use the little "ice cream cone" light bulbs! We can work at having simpler lives and at using things until they can't be repaired or turned into something else. I am excited to see a new fashion of restored clothing...where they take an old suit and make a new shirt or pair of pants out of the usable cloth.... And finally, we can do more to cooperate with others. Our country, especially, needs to see the whole world and remember that we are part of it. that our use of resources...at a rate much greater than the rest of the world, can not be sustained as it is today. We need to know that we are connected and that the terrible air in China blows across the pacific and pollutes our air quality. And that our acid rain blows north across the border into Canada and the Arctic. These solutions are beyond our individual control...but we as citizens need to be aware of these and other problems so we can influence our society and its leaders to work cooperatively with the world. Remembering that the Earth is the Lord's, and we just rent it...and our actions have consequences for our children and grandchildren and all who follow. Back to Sermon Index |