Blog on Earth
This Sunday’s worship at Immanuel Church will reflect the approach of Earth Day, April 22nd, now the most celebrated of our secular holidays. Founded in 1970 by former Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson, it is considered his best known achievement. His contributions are impressive! They include legislation for such worthwhile efforts as preserving the 2,000-mile Appalachian Trail, banning the use of DDT and Agent Orange, mandating fuel efficiency standards in automobiles and much more.
Earth Day is important. God instructs us to care for all Creation – for the Earth and its creatures and for our fellow humans; especially for those most vulnerable. Arising from this mandate, the United Church of Christ and the National Council of Churches have called for what is called “Eco-Justice.” But a simple reading of contemporary newspapers shows that judgments about environmental justice are exceedingly complex to make. For example, the news reported this week that thousands of our nation’s farmers are taking their fields out of our government’s biggest conservation program, a program that pays them not to cultivate. They spurn guaranteed annual payments because they have the opportunity to earn much more by growing wheat, soybeans, corn and other crops. And so land, equivalent to the size of Rhode Island and Delaware combined, was removed from conservation programs. Earth Day should remind us that this kind of dilemma or conflict between earning a livelihood and attempts to conserve the environment is world-wide and increasing. The answers are not simple. Yet they demand the involvement of all of us if the dangers of global warming have any chance of being resolved.
Some would say the Bible is a prime source of the destructive attitude that views land as a commodity and nature as a resource to be consumed. But it’s not that simple. As with many things, the Bible has differing points of view. For example, no sooner does God finish the Creation and take a well-deserved rest, than God starts all over again; which is to say that there are two creation stories in Genesis. The second has a gentler perception of our relationship to the land, to nature, and to the other species which share our earth home. In the first creation story (1:1-2, 4a) humans are the product of God’s mysterious and powerful word. “Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness…’” Humankind is created ex nihilo, out of nothing, in the image of God. But in the second story (2:4b-25) humankind is made from a glob of mud. God reaches into “the dust of the ground” and a human being, an “a-dam” which in Hebrew is literally the word for earth or soil, is fashioned. So the question becomes, who are we? Are we creatures of the Divine mind and will, made in the image and likeness of God and told to multiply and subdue the earth? Or are we rooted in the earth, with its cycles of soil and seasons, akin to the creatures of the forest and ocean? These two images stand side-by-side in the Book of Genesis. Which are we?
Personally, I believe we’re both. God placed us here in our earth home. We belong here. We’re not intruders. But we’re guests, or at best we’re stewards, and we’d better remember that and be good ones!
submitted by Rev. Dr. Ralph Ahlberg, who will be preaching at Immanuel on April 20th.
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