Saugatuck Congregational Church, UCC
© Rev. Alison J. Buttrick Patton
April 24, 2016 – Earth Day
Scripture: Psalm 96: 1, 10-13 & Acts 11:1-18
Earlier this week, I discovered an eruption of tiny white flowers that have softened the brick outline of our labyrinth (out front), covering it all with a white and green haze – as though to dress it up for spring! On Thursday night, I noticed that the moon had been painted ginger, as it rose round and full over the baseball park. I saw that the geese are flying about in pairs these days, courting, I presume. And the children at Saugatuck Elementary School report that the mother duck that nests in their courtyard every spring has laid her eggs.
This is the world around us – countless creatures in conversation with each other, with soil, water and air; flora and fauna responding to the shifts in light and temperature that accompany every change in season. Violets peak out between the roots of the great maple; grass and dandelions share space on our Great Lawn. It’s as if the earth has come alive again, we say. Or perhaps it always was alive. Robin Wall Kimmerer, a botanist and citizen of the Potawatomi nation, observes that plants, like people, have intelligence and act with intention. We just don’t notice, because, she says, “they behave slowly.”[1] I love this: They behave slowly. What lessons could we learn from the unhurried pace at which some of God’s creatures move through the world?
What many lessons could we learn if we apprenticed ourselves to God’s non-human creation? Even to ask that question is to imply a dialogue in which we rarely engage. Although we may talk about God’s creation, maybe even admire its beauty – that moon, this bed of moss… many, perhaps most of our words and actions imply an I-it relationship with creation. A subject-object interaction. We have needs; the land provides. We make the decisions; the land benefits or suffers in response. Even the words we use to talk about conservation betray the way we separate ourselves from the rest of God’s green earth: we want to reduce our ‘impact’ – a word that itself implies that we are outside the ecosystem, with the power to interact with it for good or for ill, instead of being bound up in the system, an integral part of it. What would it mean to exchange that I-it perspective for an I-Thou relationship with all God’s creatures?
German Jewish Philosopher Martin Buber, who lived in the first half of the 20th century, wrote about the difference between an I-Thou and an I-it relationship. An I-it interaction is really more of a monologue: me imposing my own needs and assumptions on another, me regarding you in terms of what I want or know or imagine. In an I-it encounter, we never really meet; I only meet my idea of you.
But when we meet another without judgement or demand, when we acknowledge the inherent worth of the other, entirely apart from our own needs, preconceptions, or expectations, then an I-Thou relationship unfolds. We enter into mutual dialogue. I see you as fully you, not because I need you to be this or that, but because you came that way. I honor you as whole and holy.
In that vision that Peter had, up on the roof, the Voice was prodding Peter to consider the possibility that his Gentile (ie, non-Jewish) neighbors were as whole and holy as his own Jewish sisters and brothers, as worthy of an I-Thou relationship – with Peter, and also with God. The voice made this point by invoking and then overriding the kosher laws, rules set down way back during the Israelites’ 40 year journey through the wilderness, rules designed to governed how and what they ate – and with whom.
According to kosher law, certain animals – including the birds and reptiles that appeared in Peter’s vision – were considered unclean, forbidden. This explains Peter’s objection, and his insistence that nothing unclean had ever passed his lips. He assumed that his adherence to the law was being tested. But then that Voice from Heaven threw him for a loop, saying, “Never mind all that, Peter. What I have made pure, you shall not call unclean.” The voice was referring to all those questionable dinner ingredients laid out on the blanket, but also to Peter’s soon-to-be hosts, that Gentile man in Caesarea and his whole household. “What I have made pure, you shall not call unclean.”
This may be one of the most astonishing, mind-bending, maddening, heart-opening scenes in all of scripture. For here we encounter God-Godself changing the rules to widen the welcome. “Did I say all Jews are welcomed? Well, I meant Gentiles, too.” It took Peter awhile to register just what God meant, but once he realized that the Holy Spirit that had changed his life had touched their lives, too, he got it. And Paul, who declared that there’s no longer Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male and female, he got it. And the Jesus Movement, which included house churches led by women – they got it. And St. Augustine, who wrote: ‘In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity.’ …he got it. And early Congregationalists, who arrived on these shores announcing, “There is yet more truth and light to break forth from God’s holy Word.…” they got it… And 21st Century members of the United Church of Christ, who declare ourselves Open and Affirming, entering into I-Thou relationship with our gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered sisters and brothers… we are getting it. We are getting the idea that God’s table is wide, and God’s welcome wider. Only our getting it keeps getting stretched. Our best intentions turn out to be inadequate; and our view of God’s world remains limited by our tendency to put ourselves and our needs at the center of it all.
But is that how God sees it?
In Psalm 96, the psalmist says, “Sing to God ALL the earth…let the sea roar, and all that fills it; let the field exult, and everything in it…”
And in the book of Joel, God speaks directly to the land, saying, “Do not fear, O soil, be glad and rejoice, for the LORD has done great things! Do not fear, you animals of the field, for the pastures of the wilderness are green; the tree bears its fruit, the fig tree and vine give their full yield.” (Joel 2: 21-22)
These verses offer vivid examples of God in I-Thou relationship will all creation – with trees and fields and all the creatures that dwell therein. They are a necessary reminder that it is God (and not we) who has dominion over all things: the platypus and the blue-tailed skink, the playful vaquita, and the humble garden snail; the star-nosed mole and the three-toed sloth; sprawling coral reefs and towering redwood trees; 1,800 species of cacti and sixteen thousand species of moss… elephant calves and blinking fireflies… God created all these, delights in all these, formed it all in the palm of Her hand and made it all whole and holy.
So, what would it mean to follow God’s lead and enter into I-Thou relationship with the rest of creation, to regard it all as whole and holy? To ask ourselves, “What about the humpback whale – what does she need? Or the curling ivy – what gives him joy?” Maybe you already ask these questions; or maybe they sound silly – like the stuff of a child’s fairytale. I suggest that asking questions like these can be a kind of spiritual discipline, an exercise in remembering that everything touched by the hand of God is sacred– no exceptions. We are siblings, after all.
The Lakota peoples have a phrase for this: Mitakuye Oyasin, “we are all related.” We are not outside the web of relationships, but part of this diverse and God-beloved ecosystem. We feed each other – sometimes literally. We can teach each other; we also look out for each other’s flourishing. This is what it means to enter into an I-Thou relationship, to apprentice ourselves to non-human creation, it means acknowledging that there are ethical implications to embracing the truth that the Spirit of God is alive in all things. Remember those words in the psalm? The trees of the forest sing for joy before GOD, for GOD is coming to judge the earth. I wonder, how will God judge us, when it comes to the welfare of our brothers the trees, and our sisters the fields? How will God judge us, concerning the mountain tops and the mines, and the water in its courses? How will God judge us on behalf of countless extinct species (from the passenger pigeon to eastern cougar and the Japanese River Otter), or on behalf of countless more that are in peril: the sea turtle and the emperor penguin, the western gorilla and the lady slipper.
Throughout this Easter season, we have been reading stories about people in the early church who have experienced a conversion, a moment of turning back to God. Perhaps, today, we are being called to a conversion of perspective, a conversion to God’s way of seeing the world, and God’s way of treating it. Perhaps, every day, is a chance to rediscover the Spirit of God in this world teeming with life and to ask: What of the moss? What of the water? What of the creatures that wiggle through the soil and sour through the air? How might I honor these as God honors these? What might I learn from them? How might we engage in holy dialogue?
Julian of Norwich, a 14th century English mystic whose works are currently being explored by our Women’s Spirituality group (tonight at 5 pm, in fact), Julian once declared, “The day of my spiritual awakening was the day I saw and knew I saw God in all things and all things in God.”
May it be so.
Amen.
Scriptures
Psalm 96: 1, 10-13 – An Inclusive Language translation, adapted
O sing to GOD a new song; sing to GOD, all the earth…
11 Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice;
let the sea roar, and all that fills it;
12 let the field exult, and everything in it.
Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy
13 before GOD, for GOD is coming to judge the earth.
GOD will judge the world with righteousness,
and the peoples with truth.
Acts 11:1-18 Common English Bible translation
The apostles and the brothers and sisters throughout Judea heard that even the Gentiles had welcomed God’s word. 2 When Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him. 3 They accused him, “You went into the home of the uncircumcised and ate with them!”
4 Step-by-step, Peter explained what had happened. 5 “I was in the city of Joppa praying when I had a visionary experience. In my vision, I saw something like a large linen sheet being lowered from heaven by its four corners. It came all the way down to me. 6 As I stared at it, wondering what it was, I saw four-legged animals—including wild beasts—as well as reptiles and wild birds. 7 I heard a voice say, ‘Get up, Peter! Kill and eat!’ 8 I responded, ‘Absolutely not, Lord! Nothing impure or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’ 9 The voice from heaven spoke a second time, ‘Never consider unclean what God has made pure.’ 10 This happened three times, then everything was pulled back into heaven. 11 At that moment three men who had been sent to me from Caesarea arrived at the house where we were staying. 12 The Spirit told me to go with them even though they were Gentiles. These six brothers also went with me, and we entered that man’s house. 13 He reported to us how he had seen an angel standing in his house and saying, ‘Send to Joppa and summon Simon, who is known as Peter. 14 He will tell you how you and your entire household can be saved.’ 15 When I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell on them, just as the Spirit fell on us in the beginning. 16 I remembered the Lord’s words: ‘John will baptize with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ 17 If God gave them the same gift he gave us who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, then who am I? Could I stand in God’s way?”
18 Once the apostles and other believers heard this, they calmed down. They praised God and concluded, “So then God has enabled Gentiles to change their hearts and lives so that they might have new life.”
[1] Robin Wall Kimmerer, “Robin Wall Kimmerer On Scientific and Native American Views of the Natural World,” Sun magazine, April 2016.