We Are Who Creation Is Waiting For
Colossians 1: 15-20
Much to the dismay of parents, children are often right. Jesus had to tell us that children know something about the Realm of God so we could not easily dismiss them. I remember my brother and me coming home to report boldly to our mom and dad that smoking was bad for their health. Those were the days when smoking was allowed on airplanes, in restaurants and was heralded as especially sexy in cinema. It was not as if our teachers encouraged us to bring our righteous health knowledge home as a means of torture, but we could not be silent about our newly discovered truths. We were prophets of good news again when the sweet talking, easy rolling recycling robot appeared to us at a school assembly announcing that the earth was in need of some love and care. He danced across our gymnasiums with songs about the three R’s. Reduce, Reuse, And Recycle. We joyfully carried the news home that we should now be in the business of crunching cans and sorting glass. But even with catchy slogans and environmental education and statistics showing us that the earth was changing, we couldn’t ask too much of ourselves. After all, this earth was given to us as a blessing to be used, to give us life. And like much of human history it is hard for us to change unless we have to, unless we decide that it is in our best interest to change. We human beings have a habit of more readily asking questions of God than of ourselves. We find a way to let ourselves off the hook. Despite the news we heard from our children, we told ourselves that the earth cycles on, that whatever unfolds is the earth just doing her dance. And for many years we hid our behavior behind the banner of what we do not understand. We told ourselves that whatever was happening was a part of how God works through creation instead of putting our energy into caring for that which God has entrusted to us.
And as we did with slavery and sexism, we validated our behavior biblically. We read God’s offer of dominion over the earth as an invitation to live as we pleased. You remember that in the first chapter of Genesis we read, “So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”
As Rabbi Jonathon Sacks observes, “one of the revolutions of biblical thought was to demythologize … nature. For the first time, people could see the condition of the world not as something given, sacrosanct and wrapped in mystery, but as something that could be rationally understood and improved upon.” And later manipulated for our own use.
Historians and theologians alike confirm that our views of the Genesis narratives in the mediaeval and early modern era furthered attitudes and behaviors that played a significant role in promoting an active and manipulative engagement with the natural world. We used our own sacred texts to validate our destructive behavior. We told ourselves that this earth was given, to give us life.
But in the late 1960’s and through the 80’s people of faith began to ask to questions. People like Sally McFague wondered whether the earth is God’s body or that creation is God’s very physical being. She wrote that, “The world is a body that must be carefully tended, that must be nurtured, protected, guided, loved, and befriended both as valuable in itself- for like us, it is an expression of God- and as necessary to the continuation of life.”
People of faith started to ask whether dominion required stewardship. If God’s aim is the continuation of life on earth, then dominion demands responsibility. At the very least if God longs for life for us, then we must have a creation in which to live and love. If God longs for life for us, we must have a creation in which our children can play and laugh and explore. If God longs for life for us, then we could no longer justify our life taking ways.
And as cultural and societal attitudes started to change, we turned again to our sacred texts to find new inspiration. We hear in the harsh words of Leviticus, “… if you defile the land, it will vomit you out as it vomited out the nations that were before you.” And we hear in Paul’s letter to Rome, “The creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption, the redemption of our bodies.”
And in Paul’s letter to the Colossians we read that in God “all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him…”
A few months ago I was in my office on a Sunday morning, completing my final preparations before church. And in walked Molly. It was a Sunday we were talking about water around the world and how to support those working to provide safe and clean water to those in need. “Did you know that the earth is warming?” she said. She went on to tell me of rising water and all that she was learning about how human beings are affecting the world in which we live. This generation is so aware of God’s creation because they have to be. They are the ones that will be charged with the task of fixing what we have spent years damaging. They are the ones who breathe the air and drink the water that we have taken for granted will always give us life. They are the ones who have heard the groans of creation. And they have shown us that in spite of our best efforts and undoing what God has done, we are who creation is waiting for.
Romans 8 speaks to us, “… creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed.” It isn’t up to God; God was the one who spun creation to life. We are the ones God blessed with the task of caring for this holy and splendid earth that is our home. Creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God. That means us.
I don’t believe that it is too late. The secular environmental movement proclaimed for years that we had to change, but it took people of faith a while to turn our hearts. And I believe that is in part because we needed to hear not just an articulation of what was happening to creation but why it matters. God gives humanity dominion over the earth and with it a sacred obligation to exercise conscious stewardship of the land, air, and water. This is God’s work we are talking about. I don’t believe that our faith can be separated from the air we breathe or the water we drink or the food we eat. Hope is the vocation of every Christian heart. And I believe that as God’s children, we are invited, no commanded to live as if God’s creation cannot thrive without us, we are commanded to live as people of the resurrection, as people of new life and of eternal hope.
In case we forget, we love a God who promises to be present even in death. That means that life proclaims victory, that all life, that all creation should thrive. For whatever reason, our God chooses to work through all creation, including us, so we are the ones God needs. With us, God can conquer the pollution of the oceans, the ravaging of the mountains, the dying of the species, the desiccation of the valleys, and the waning of the forests. Just as we were made to proclaim God’s victory over the grave to our human brothers and sisters, so too are we invited to sing of God’s presence with creation’s suffering. We need not wait any longer, now is the time to join God’s creation of life around us and in us and through us. We are the ones God has been waiting for, creation is calling us. What are we waiting for? Amen.
Harrison, Peter (2006) Having Dominion: Genesis and the Mastery of Nature is a chapter in Environmental Stewardship: Critical Perspectives - Past and Present, Berry, R.J. (Ed), T & T Clark International, Continuum Imprint, London, 2006, Chapter 1, pp. 17-30.
McFague, Sally. Models of God: Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987. Pp. 71