Today we are celebrating Earth Day here at St. Andrew’s. Every year when Earth Day arrives, I think the same thing, “How typical of us humans to celebrate the planet that allows for our very existence only one day a year. Every day should be earth day. Perhaps we wouldn’t be in the planetary emergency that we are in if we were to treat every single day as Earth Day and treat the earth with the respect and dignity it deserves.” But alas, we are not in that place yet, so here we are, our once-a-year celebration of the planet without whose existence we would not exist.
As I sat with our Gospel reading for today from Mark, a reading that comes from the propers for the care of creation, I first thought of the commission from Jesus that we are more familiar with, the one from Matthew (28:19) “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” We have heard this one a lot. It is the one that inspired countless missionaries over the centuries to go out into unknown lands to teach people about Jesus. It is the one that makes most modern-day Episcopalians uncomfortable because we have a sense that we both need to share our faith with others and respect their faith and worldview and we don’t quite know what to do with these seemingly contradictory ideas.
But this commission from Jesus in the Gospel of Mark (16:15) is not so familiar to us: “And Jesus said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation.” The whole creation? What on earth does that mean? Are we supposed to preach to the birds and the trees like St. Francis did? I don’t know about you but that makes me feel a little bit uncomfortable. I’d have to make sure that nobody could see me, because they might think I was crazy. And what good news would I share with the whole creation exactly? Do the daffodils in my yard really need to know that in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus love triumphed and death and evil did not have the final word? Do the trees by my driveway need to understand that God’s dream for the world is health, wholeness and enough for everyone? Somehow, I think the daffodils and the trees already know this. They already live as if this is so. Just as we are supposed to live as if this is already so.
I think I might need to take I moment to explain what I mean by this. The trees and daffodils and grass and all the plant life in my yard give back to the world around them as much as they take. The daffodils blooming outside my window take nutrients from the soil and carbon dioxide from the air and energy from the sun. In turn they release oxygen into the air, use the energy from the sun to grow themselves, and release nutrients into the soil. In turn other creatures use what the daffodils put back into the world to live. Bees use the daffodil’s pollen. Various insects, worms, and microbes use the nutrients the daffodil releases. We use the oxygen it expels. In miniature, the daffodils blooming in my yard are a perfect example of God’s dream for this world. They give as much as they take. They live as a part of a larger system and intuitively understand that they do not exist in isolation. They are not a unit of one that can survive on their own. They are entangled, enmeshed, and entwined with everything around them. They are living as God would have all of creation live. They are living in the only way that brings life, wholeness, happiness, and the peace of God that passes all understanding.
I’m not sure what more I have to teach them about God’s Good News. I suspect the daffodils have far more to teach me than I them. Indeed, as I reflected upon this verse from Mark, what repeatedly came into my mind was that we humans are really nothing but bad news to creation. We have completely lost the understanding that plants and animals know so well, which is that we cannot exist by ourselves. That we are connected to all of creation and unless we give as much as we take, we will only know disaster and never know enoughness, health, wholeness, and peace.
Unlike the plants and animals with whom we live and move and have our being, we see the earth as a backdrop to our own activities, a place that is provided only to advance our own agendas. We treat the earth as a store or a website from which we can take whatever we want to satisfy our own desires. We think not at all about how we might give back to the earth. We simply take what we want with no limits on our desires. We seek to control and tame the world around us with utter disregard for the effects of our actions on the creatures with whom we share this planet. Hardly God’s dream for this world. Hardly Good News.
So, what would it mean for us to proclaim Good News to the whole creation? Well, I think of something St. Francis once said, “Preach the Gospel at all times. Use words if necessary.” In other words, show the world God’s Good News through everything you do, not just in what you say. We can proclaim the Good News of God in Jesus to all of creation by what we do. We aren’t called to preach words to the birds and the trees. We are called to demonstrate the Good News through our very lives.
And what exactly does this mean? Do we need to stop buying plastics, buy an electric vehicle, put in heat pumps, solar panels and insulation, stop eating meat, shop locally, and vote for politicians who will take action on climate change? Well, probably. But I am really talking about something much deeper than all of these very good actions. At a very deep level we need to change the way we live and move and have our being. We need to come to a new, or perhaps very old, understanding of our place in this world. We need to see the world with different eyes. We need to be transformed.
And what is this new way of living and moving and having our being that we must embrace? Well, we must come to understand that the world is not our stage. The world is not our shopping mall from which we can endlessly take and take and take without giving anything back. We do not exist as discrete individual beings separate from all other beings and things. We are limited, fragile, finite, and mortal. We are not God, and we cannot be God. God is God, and as such is the one that loved all of creation into being. We, who are made in the image of God, are to in turn give love to all of creation, as God gives love to all of creation.
Now, you may be thinking, “Suzannah that’s lovely and all, but what you are asking is impossible. Humans instinctively take without giving. We have always seen the world as our stage.” And I would reply, “It is true many humans have viewed the world this way, but not all.” We only have to look at indigenous people to see humans who understand that they are part of creation and not outside and above it. We have much to learn from indigenous cultures, those same cultures that our ancestors conquered and viewed as less than and barbarian. It turns out that it was our ancestors who were the barbarians, not the people they invaded.
It is our ancestors who treated God’s creation, the world to which they were inextricably bound as something to be used up and thrown away. Indigenous peoples were often known to remark about European settlers that they never planted both feet on the ground they came to occupy, but instead were forever restless and always seeking new adventures and greener pastures. As a result, our ancestors and we today were and are never quite connected to the land that is the source of our life. We never quite understand or allow ourselves to feel a part of the very world that is the source of and sustainer of our very being. We fail to see that we live within a world with limits and continually seek to push beyond the limits that contain us to our detriment and the detriment of all of creation. We continue to be bad news for the plants and animals with whom we are connected.
We cannot science our way out of the disaster we are living in. Science is important and will help us, but it is not the ultimate answer to our imperiled condition. Until we can come to accept that we are limited, fragile, and vulnerable beings who are connected to all the other limited, fragile, and vulnerable beings on this earth we will not get ourselves out of this crisis. Until we come to really see every creature on this earth as created by God and loved by God, we will continue to take more than we give and treat God’s creatures as objects to fulfill our individual desires. Until we can transform how we live and move and have our being, we will continue to be bad news for the creation around us.
And lest you feel overwhelmed by the idea of needing to transform the very way you see yourself and the entire world, I have some suggestions for you, a place to start. Start where you are in your own backyard, or if you don’t have a backyard or don’t yet like going out into it, start in your own home. Sit still. Close your eyes. Don’t worry, if sitting still is terrifying to you, you don’t have to do it forever. Start with whatever amount of time you can. Breathe in and breathe out. Notice your breath. That oxygen you are breathing in comes from the plant life around you. You are alive because they are alive. In turn they are breathing in the carbon dioxide you are breathing out. They are alive because you are alive. The plant life and you are connected to one another. Caring for the plants is caring for yourself and caring for yourself is caring for the plants. If you do this meditation for 5-10 minutes a day everyday for the next two weeks, I promise you that your view of the plants around you will begin to change. You will begin to change. What you do in the world will begin to change.
Or maybe the plant meditation didn’t work for you. Then try this one. Take a simple object from your kitchen, maybe it is the wooden spoon you use to stir your food when you cook every day. Hold it in front of you and gaze upon it. Consider all the resources it took to bring that spoon to you. First there was a tree that grew in a forest somewhere and gave its life to become that spoon. There were people who labored to cut the tree down, bring it to a lumberyard, cut it into pieces that could be carved by others into spoons. Others packaged the spoon up. Still others drove it to a ship on a truck or train and others steered that ship to our shores. Drivers brought that spoon to a warehouse and warehouse workers shipped that spoon to a store or directly to you. All this had to happen for you to have a spoon with which to cook your food. You are not an individual who exists without any relation or connection to anyone else. You cannot exist alone. You can only exist in relationship with others even if you don’t recognize those relationships.
May God give us the strength, wisdom, and courage to begin the work to transform the very way that we live and move and have our being in this world that we might indeed fulfill the commission Jesus gave us and proclaim the good news to all of creation as all of creation proclaims the good news to us. And happy earth day!
Amen.
