Tag Archives: non-human creation

Lectionary Commentaries, Preaching Resources, Worship

Resurrection of Our Lord (Easter Day) in Year A (Schade)

How does creation participate in this new life? – Leah Schade reflects on Christ’s passion and resurrection through an ecological hermeneutic.

Care for Creation Commentary on the Common Lectionary 

Readings for Easter Day, Year A (2014, 2017, 2020, 2023)

Jeremiah 31:1-6
Psalm 118:102, 14-24
Acts 10:34-43
Matthew 38:1-10

What a wonderful coincidence that the celebration of Easter is the same week as the secular celebration of Earth Day this year. Peter reminded the Gentiles in Cornelius’ house: “Jesus’ commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead” (Acts 10:42). Thus the preacher might consider taking a cue from St. Francis of Assisi, preacher of sermons to his Brothers and Sisters in Creation, and address the “congregation” of the other-than-human members of God’s Earth-cathedral.[1] The Earth-congregation can be directly addressed and the humans told that they can “listen in.” Thus anthropocentrism would be de-centered from the outset.

Moreover, the members of the other-than-human community could be identified by their role within the Passion and Resurrection narratives. The ecological hermeneutic can be woven throughout the sermon by seeing the events from the nature characters’ points-of-view. They were, in fact, witnesses to the events from Palm Sunday through Good Friday and were co-sufferers in Jesus’ crucifixion. The voice of the stones echoed the ringing “hosannas” along the road to Jerusalem. The Palm leaves waved from trees and human hands as the donkey’s hooves carried Jesus into the city. Olive Grove stood sentry over Jesus as he prayed at Gethsemane. The sun hid its face during the torturous hours Jesus hung on the cross, as Nephesh, the Breath of Life, was forced from his lungs with each passing hour. And two Trees—both felled in the prime of their lives after having housed countless birds, insects, and children’s playtimes—were lashed together and forced to become the scaffolding of death for Jesus. Even the Rocks trembled and shook, fractured and split as Jesus breathed his last.

By the same token, Creation witnessed the resurrection. Earth essentially took Jesus’ body into herself and birthed him from her womb as the Resurrected One, the earthquake reminiscent of the “labor pangs” Paul mentions in Romans 8:22. Imagine the elements of Creation providing a unique witness to the resurrection, allowing us to see that morning from a fly’s eye, stone’s eye, and birds’ eye view of the risen Christ. The Greek chorus of Creation is set in relief against the reaction of the women at the tomb on Easter morning. The description of what they see is echoed by Catherine Keller’s description of an ecological resurrection:

Only by locating the renewed body within the larger ecologies in which it dwells—of which it is a shifting configural space—do we allow renewed powers of desire and of healing to release themselves into feedback loops large enough to ’embrace’ us, to feed us back to ourselves more animate. . . [T]he old creation will remain, marred and scarred, to be mourned, healed, teased, its lonely phallic signifiers danced around like ancient maypoles (Catherine Keller, Apocalypse Now and Then: A Feminist Guide to the End of the World, Boston: Beacon Press, 1996, pp. 179, 180).

Thus the sermon, through both its form and content, could enact a creative actualization of the biblical story from Earth’s perspective and situate the other-than-human characters as equals in the theo-drama of the Passion and Resurrection.

The sermon might remind Creation of its continued suffering of ecological-crucifixions such as clear-cutting and deforestation, oil and gas drilling, air pollution and children’s asthma, global warming and climate change. Mark Wallace makes the connection between the cruciform Spirit and “the continual debasement of the earth and its inhabitants . . . [T]he Spirit bears the cross of a planet under siege as she lives under the burden of humankind’s ecological sin” (Mark I. Wallace, Finding God in the Singing River: Christianity, Spirit, Nature; Philadelphia: Fortress, 2005, pp. 23-4).

But even while recognizing that we are in the midst of “an environmental Good Friday,” the sermon proclaims the Cosmic Christ resurrected and Earth’s creatures as witnesses to the miracle. In this way, the Lutheran concept of Deus Absconditus, the hiddenness of God under the form of opposites, can be invoked and listeners given hope in the midst of the darkest hour of our modern-day Easter vigil. Further, the sermon must emphasize that Christ appears to us and calms our fears: “Do not be afraid” (Matthew 28:10). At the same time we are given instruction to “go” and announce to the world the one whom we have seen, the miracle of the resurrection that Creation itself announces to us. Concretizations of Earth-renewal and community restoration would be helpful in enabling the congregation to visualize what eco-resurrection might look like. What are examples of the local community “preaching” that Christ’s resurrection is for the whole Earth? Where are waterways being cleaned up, brownfields being reclaimed, churches being revived by their attention to Earth-care, conservation, and investments in renewable energy?

When, like the women on Easter morning, we stand at the tomb of the crucified Earth looking at the enormous stone blocking our way, might we look forward to the Resurrected One surprising us by calling our name and opening our eyes to Creation transformed to new life? Even as we do all we can to resist evil and teach our children to cherish and protect Earth, speak out against eco-injustice, and change hearts, minds, practices and laws, sometimes it seems all we see is Earth’s crucified body crumpled and dead all around us. An ecological homiletic urges us to return again and again to the biblical accounts of the resurrection to recover sacred memory and thus to renew hope.

What can we learn about resurrection from the biblical texts? The key is in how Jesus appeared: the same, yet different; transformed, yet with scars remaining. So, too, will be the resurrected Earth, which also bears the scars. Nevertheless, new life will emerge in ways that are sure to surprise us with God’s grace.

Originally written by Leah Schade in 2014. Read more by Leah Schade at www.patheos.com/blogs/ecopreacher/

[1] Francis’ first biographer, Thomas of Celano (1229) wrote: “When he found an abundance of flowers, he preached to them and invited them to praise the Lord as though they were endowed with reason. In the same way he exhorted with the sincerest purity cornfields and vineyards, stones and forests and all the beautiful things of the fields, fountains of water and the green things of the gardens, earth and fire, air and wind, to love God and serve him willingly. Finally, he called all creatures brother, and in a most extraordinary manner, a manner never experienced by others, he discerned the hidden things of nature with his sensitive heart, as one who had already escaped into the freedom of the glory of the sons of God.” (1 Celano, 81-82) [as cited in Leonardo Boff, Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1997). p. 210].)

Lectionary Commentaries, Preaching Resources, Worship

Reformation Sunday (October 27, 2019) in Year C

A reformation that recognizes God’s presence in all creation – Tom Mundahl reflects on Jeremiah 31:31-34 and Romans 3:19-28

Care for Creation Commentary on the Common Lectionary

Reformation Sunday in Year C (2013, 2016, 2019, 2022)

Jeremiah 31:31-34
Psalm 46
Romans 3:19-28
John 8:31-36

What can we preach faithfully on Reformation Sunday? Should we attempt to recapture the theologically correct “side” from old arguments in a post-denominational age? Ecumenical agreements, especially those on justification with the Roman Catholic communion (1999), must mean something! Or, might there be a way of learning from an ever-fresh Word what might be the meaning today of Paul’s cry, “for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23)?

This reality is echoed just as dramatically by Luther’s characterization of sin as cor curvatum in sei—”the heart turned in upon itself.” The results are not pretty. By elevating ourselves, we project fear and anxiety upon “the other.” Whether this “other” is the competing village, nation, racial group, gender, sexual preference, class, the results have been violent and destructive.  People of faith have been called to “sniff out ”the underlying pride and arrogance both in ourselves and in our groups.

But we have failed miserably at seeing the contempt we humans have shown for the vast chorus of non-human creation! Dealing with the results of this contempt will constitute our calling for the remainder of our lives. By adding “human species arrogance” to our definition of sin, we take a step toward refreshing the meaning of Reformation. We may even discover elements of this perspective “already there” in our texts.

The results of this arrogance were clearly visible to Jeremiah. As a prophet, called ‘kicking and screaming’ to deliver God’s ‘word’ to the people, he not only exposed this contempt; he experienced it. Yet, in the chronicle of his work, we suddenly come to a “Book of Consolation,” a statement of hope and reassurance even for those who live as refugees in Babylon. That word promises that the LORD will even bring the people back to the land of promise (Jeremiah 30:3).

As this second Exodus begins, Jeremiah describes a celebration of the richness of the land and its bounty:

They shall come and sing aloud on the height of Zion, and they shall be radiant over the goodness of the LORD, over the grain, the wine, and the oil, and over the young of the flock and the herd; their life shall become like a watered garden, and they shall never languish again (Jeremiah 31:12-14).

Perhaps the image of “a watered garden” is important for understanding the well-known text we consider this week. Jeremiah’s call, after all, was not only “to pluck up and pull down,” but “to build and to plant” (Jeremiah 1:10). But, in order to begin this ‘building’ process, apparently it is necessary for the people to have returned once more to the wilderness, this time the ‘wilderness’ of Babylon. As Jeremiah conveys, “Thus says the LORD: The people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness” (Jeremiah 31:2). Only in this “wilderness experience,” where dependency is total, can the “planting of vineyards on the mountains of Samaria” (Jeremiah 31:5) become a gift of God and not simply the results of human effort.

Just as the return to the land and its fertility is seen as something granted, so also the congruence between God and people now can be experienced as gift. As Clements suggests, “The old covenant of the law is dead; instead there will be an inner power of motivation towards obedience on the part of Israel written on the very hearts of the people of God, not on tablets of stone. Although the word “spirit” is not used, the implication is certainly that God’s spirit will move the hearts of Israel to be obedient to the divine law” (R. E. Clements, Jeremiah, Atlanta: John Knox, 1988, p. 190).

Not only does this provide a new basis for forgiveness, it seems to portend a new harmony with the land, where not only will the city of Jerusalem be rebuilt and renewed, but even the fields that have served only as burial places for the dead will become fertile sources of food, “sacred to the LORD” (Jeremiah 31:40, see John Bright, Jeremiah, New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1965, p. 283). Clearly, when there is “new covenant” restoration, it includes not only humankind, but the whole of creation.

This broad perspective is also there in the reading from Romans, a reading which has become a kind of “Lutheran mantra” for Reformation Sunday. Paul restates his theme (Romans 1:17-18) with the dramatic “But now, apart from the law, the justice (righteousness) of God has been disclosed, and is attested to by the law and prophets, the justice (righteousness) of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe” (Romans 3:21-22). The very forcefulness of this verse should convince us, as Kasemann argues, “As surely as justification loses its reality unless it happens to the individual, just so surely it cannot remain an eschatological event unless it is the Creator’s grasping of his (sic) world and not of the individual alone” (E. Kasemann, Romans, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980, p. 93).

That this “grasping of the world” as a gift of God to be cared for and shared is necessary is made clear by the powerful description of human brokenness that follows: “For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift . . . .” (Romans 3:22b-24a).  Therefore, there is no room for claiming ‘special privileges,’ or, in Paul’s language, “boasting.” This is not only true of claims of religious groups—Jews and Gentiles, Catholics and Protestants—it is also the case when considering the relationship between humankind and ‘otherkind.’ No, it is not that ‘otherkind’ has sinned, but surely non-human creation suffers from the results of human arrogance, especially through climate change. The ‘Christ event’ and its continuation through new creation ‘grasps’ all together.

Anthropologist Gregory Bateson has described the results of contemporary “boasting” spot on.

If you put God outside and set him vis-a-vis his creation and if you have the idea that you are created in his image, you will logically and naturally see yourself as outside and against the things around you. And as you arrogate all mind to yourself, you will see the world around you as mindless and therefore not entitled to moral or ethical consideration. The environment will be yours to exploit (Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind, New York: Random House, 1972, p. 472),

“But now” (Romans 3:21) the new “justice–justification” brought in the Christ event frees us to see us ourselves as a partner species with all that is created with a special calling to comprehend and care (with great humility).

This Reformation “freedom” is at the core of our familiar Gospel reading. However, John only reveals this freedom by contrast. In this case, contrast is provided by “the Jews.” While there is extensive scholarly debate about who “the Jews” might be, it is clear that it does not mean all Jewish people of the time. That would have included Jesus and the disciples! It seems this incendiary term, “the Jews,” refers to hereditary Temple authorities. Their rejection and persecution of Jesus and his followers can be understood, then, as stemming from the fact that his teaching and healing lacks the pedigree and approval of the Temple elite (New Oxford Annotated Bible, NRSV, Third Edition, 2001, NT p. 147).

Because “the Jews” see their ‘place at the table’ ascribed by heredity and its perquisites, they do not “continue in my (Jesus’) word.” This denies them the gift of freedom, “freedom of the household.” The sheer exasperation of this new kind of affiliation based on “continuing in the word,” leads this group to the conclusion that Jesus must be “possessed” (John 8:52), and to launch an attempt to stone him summarily (John 8:59). Perhaps, as has been suggested, this conflict refers historically to the expulsion of “Jesus’-believing-Jews” from the synagogue.

Real freedom comes from “remaining in Jesus’ word” and opens the “freedom of the household” to all who believe, regardless of pedigree. While the contribution of Luther’s Reformation to the history of the new community is crucial and should never be forgotten, this “relational freedom” today needs to be re-imagined.

First, this sense of “boasting,” or claiming “special privileges” because of religious heredity—even Lutheran—must be seen for what it is, and what Jesus calls it: evil (John  8:44). It is time to remember that homo sapiens is but one created species in the earth-household. Our uniqueness lies, as suggested earlier, only in a specific calling to love and care for each other—including the whole creation. As Dostoevsky in his last and greatest novel, The Brothers Karamazov, suggested “each is responsible to all for all” (New York: Modern Library, 1964, p. 317). It is both the “gift” and the “task” of being a daughter or son in the “household off faith” and “household earth.” It is what the Reformation tradition calls “the priesthood of all believers.”

This is freedom, even if it sounds like endless labor. It is a vocation that recognizes with Luther that God is present in all of creation, finitum capax infiniti, the finite bears the infinite. Not only does this stance move beyond “species arrogance,” it leads to reverence for all that is. As Larry Rasmussen has it:

The meaning of finitum capax infiniti is simple enough: God is pegged to earth. So if you would experience God, you must fall in love with earth. The infinite and transcendent are dimensions of what is intensely at hand. Don’t look “up”     for God, look around. The finite is all there is, because all that is, is there. This is earthbound theology (Earth Community Earth Ethics, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1996, p. 273).

Tom Mundahl, St. Paul, MN                                                 tmundahl@gmail.com

For additional care for creation reflections on the overall themes of the lectionary lessons for the month by Trisha K Tull, Professor Emerita of Old Testament, Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary and columnist for The Working Preacher, visit: http://www.workingpreacher.org/columnist_home.aspx?author_id=288

Lectionary Commentaries, Preaching Resources, Worship

Sunday August 28 – September 3 in Year C (Carr)

Ecojustice Commentary on the Revised Common Lectionary – Year C: Amy Carr reflects on Luke 14:7-14 and Hebrews 13

Readings for August 28 – September 3,  Series C (2019, 2022)

Proverbs 25:6-7 [or Sirach 10:12-18, alternate] Psalm 112
Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16
Luke 14:1, 7-14

In today’s gospel reading, Jesus uses the occasion of a high-status dinner party to provoke reflection about humility and about what company we value. It is an interesting story to ponder in a non-anthropocentric way, by extending our sense of company to include a wide range of creaturely life. Yet I wonder if the many-sidedness of Jesus’ message challenges us also to be aware of how we can royalize our encounters with the natural world—seeing ourselves as its awe-filled guests in a way that is good, but not in itself good enough to nourish God’s most vulnerable and neglected creatures. We are both guests and hosts with regard to non-human creation.

The setting of the gospel passage immediately draws hearers into a contemplation of their own search for place and the status of their belonging. We step into a Sabbath meal at “the house of a leader of the Pharisees,” who were “watching [Jesus] closely” (Luke 14:1). That Jesus was invited suggests he is regarded as a social equal by the host; that he is being closely watched suggests that he is being evaluated with regard to his precise status: Is he more opponent or ally? In what unfolds, Jesus speaks into this tense, attentive space by at once outing and redirecting the motivations of both guests and the host at the meal.

Let’s imagine how Jesus’ commanding observations might sound if we think about our relationship to non-human creation as guests and as hosts, respectively.

To the guests, Jesus echoes an old proverb about seeking places of honor not by scrambling to sit near the host, but by humbling oneself: “Do not put yourself forward in the king’s presence or stand in the palace of the great; for it is better to be told, ‘Come up here,’ than to be put lower in the presence of a noble” (Proverbs 25:6-7). The analogy Jesus uses in Luke 14:7-11 is of a wedding banquet rather than a royal meal, but Jesus does not deny that it is a privilege to dine in the presence of a host who is radiating splendor.

Here we might imagine a wilderness space itself as our host, and we the guests visiting it through a hike or a camping trip. In such settings, many human beings witness the splendor of the holy in the natural world; they long to visit repeatedly, to be near to majesty and grandeur. And because the non-natural world is not looking back at us, it may be easier to accept Jesus’ teaching that “all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted” (Luke 14:11). Even the most assertive of us are humbled by the transcendent vastness of the Grand Canyon; before such a royal host, joy and humility mingle together readily.

Conversion to environmental concern begins for many with a realization that wilderness spaces are endangered, and we are snapped into an awareness that we have a responsibility to them—that we are hosts as well as guests in relationship to the non-human natural world. It is not enough for us to enjoy the goodness of basking in the beauty of God’s creation, when we feel called also to protect it.

In Luke 14:12-14, Jesus deepens the teaching about humility by turning to address not the guests and their behavior, but the host. The host may be accustomed to inviting friends, family, and “rich neighbors” to a “luncheon or a dinner,” because of the expectation of a gift exchange in which the host will be invited in turn to be “repaid” by his or her guests with an invitation to a feast at their own homes (Luke 14:12). It is not as if the host is scheming, perhaps; more that when we host, we tend to invite peers who are our social equals, or relatives with whom we already share bonds of mutual obligation. “But when you give a banquet,” Jesus suggests, “invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous” (Luke 14:13-14).

Jesus here addresses us insofar as we ourselves are royalty, seeking not the adulation of economic social equals, but the deeper calling of all with the power of royalty: to utilize our resources to expand who belongs at the banquet that satisfies both our physical need for nourishment and our social need for connection. And once again, Jesus doesn’t deny the goodness of the gift-exchange that is expected from invited guests who are peers; instead, Jesus redirects the desire of the royal host to a longer-term gift exchange—one in which we sacrifice for a future fulfillment that is beyond our immediate glimpse.

As royal stewards of God’s creation, we might widen our hosting responsibilities in a couple of directions. The first flows (with an odd comfort) from the recognition of our own mortality, in a way that is familiar to every homeowner and gardener. At the end of his poem “Planting Trees,” Wendell Berry writes of practicing hospitable attention to the non-human life that will outlive him:

“Let me desire and wish well the life
these trees may live when I
no longer rise in the mornings
to be pleased by the green of them
shining, and their shadows on the ground,
and the sound of the wind in them.“

In planting trees we expect to survive us, we tap once more into the sense of being guests of the wider creation, with whose future flourishing we are identifying.

A second way to widen our hosting responsibilities with regard to the natural world is to engage in the hard work of going out to discover how—and why—creation is rendered poor, crippled, lame, and blind by all the threats not only to wilderness spaces, but also to the sustainability of all the lands our species populates. This calls for us to move beyond amazement at the natural world to the labor of protecting it with activism and political action; only then can we invite limping and wounded plant and animal species to continue to persist as part of earth’s banquet.

The equation of being good hosts with engaging in political action is particularly apparent in countries, like the US under Trump and Brazil under Jair Bolsonaro, where denial of climate change goes hand and hand with policies that increase the production and use of fossil fuels and open tropical forests to increased deforestation.

“Nowhere are the stakes higher than in the Amazon basin—and not just because it contains 40% of Earth’s rainforests and harbors 10-15% of the world’s terrestrial species. South America’s natural wonder may be perilously close to the tipping-point beyond which its gradual transformation into something closer to steppe cannot be stopped or reversed, even if people lay down their axes. Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, is hastening the process—in the name, he claims, of ‘development’” (“Deathwatch for the Amazon: Brazil has the power to save Earth’s greatest rainforest—or destroy it,” The Economist, 8-1-19, https://www.economist.com/leaders/2019/08/01/deathwatch-for-the-amazon ). Part of the proposed action is not only a domestic policy in Brazil of reforestation while it still matters, but of global consumer pressure on food companies to “spurn soybeans and beef produced on illegally logged Amazonian land, as they did in the mid-2000s.” More broadly, we are starting to hear how much it could slow global warming if we each shifted to a largely vegetarian diet, eating meat only once a week.

The exhortations in Hebrews 13 are like cheerleaders urging on those running the marathon of individual and collective efforts to avert catastrophic climate change (and respond to the climate crises already emerging). “Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers,” who may be angels of God (Hebrews 13:1-2). “Remember those who are . . . being tortured, as if you yourselves were being tortured” (Hebrews 13:3). Instead of loving money, “be content with what you have,” for God will “never leave you or forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5): what we most need we already have, at the heart of things; thinking otherwise leads us to scar the earth and its inhabitants in our grasping for more.

It is hard also not to think of Swedish teenager climate activist Greta Thunberg, when we ponder Hebrews 13:8: “Remember your leaders, those who spoke the word of God to you; consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith.” She models the kind of humility—of knowing one’s place—that is grounded in facts rather than prideful presumption that it does not matter what we do to or draw from the earth. She leads by asking everyone to start with knowing and heeding the scientific facts: to read the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (“16-Year-Old Activist Greta Thunberg on Climate Crisis: ‘Please Listen To The Scientists,” Here and Now, July 25, 2019, https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2019/07/26/greta-thunberg-climate-crisis ).

Great Thunberg shares the vision of the psalmist: “It is well with those who . . . conduct their affairs with justice” (Psalm 112:5). Well-being and prosperity are bound up with obedient responsiveness to ineluctable facts. Here the old-fashioned spirit of obedience, of Deuteronomy’s theme of “if you obey, then you will flourish,” very much has its place as our generation takes its turn in hosting a planetary banquet of secure belonging for all earth’s species.