Love Me, Love My Creation

 During a recent Servant Leader retreat at the Arocha Centre in the Pembina Valley, I was struck by the words of the Shema – Love the Lord your God with all your heart mind and soul and your neighbour as yourself. It was as if God was saying to us in that place – Love Me … Love my creation. It seems so trite that it is easy to quickly move on to other things.

But wait a minute – this isn’t just any old Bible passage. Remember when a Pharisee asked Jesus what is the most important commandment? Jesus’ answer was the Shema (O Hear) , he said that on this hang ALL THE LAWS AND PROPHETS. This is ‘a pearl of great price’ that we are tempted to skip over when we should be letting it penetrate our deepest parts … and our daily lives.

So I have set out to try to let these words sink deeply into my consciousness in the hope that a change in my actions will follow – particularly as it related to the care of creation. Over this Sunday and next I want to explore the teachings about creation in our Scriptures, both Old and New Testaments, to see if they can awaken in us what Bruggeman has called a prophetic imagination. A deep source of energy coming from God that will lead us to do something that is new and different. Many of us know about all the things we can do to ‘save the earth’ but they mostly come with lots of shoulds and oughts and, in many cases, require us to make big changes. It’s hard work and it’s made harder by the fact that very few around us seems to be travelling with us. Where can we find the courage and the commitment to really do something new and different?

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Norman Wirzba, last year’s CMU Winter Series lecturer, has written in his book, “The Paradise of God – renewing religion in an ecological age” that we need a new vision – not a list of things to do but an entirely new vision. He says that this vision will come from two places – the emerging insights of ecology and the Jewish/Christian theologies of creation. OK for the first part – most of us have begun to see that everything is connected and it is fatal not to see those connections. But theologies of creation??

I read essays years ago that said that the Genesis accounts of creation were responsible for the modern rape of the earth. That by following the commandment to dominate the earth, we have despoiled it. And many of us Christians secretly wondered if it wasn’t true, a kind of dark family secret.

At Easter I spoke about my own encounter with the account of Jesus’ resurrection. As others have written, these accounts, if taken as historical, leave us with two choices. Either Jesus and/or his disciples were crazy …. or Jesus really did, by conquering death in some way, signal something completely new. And if this was a dramatic symbol of God’s powerful love expressed in creation, then the current result of our despoiling the earth is NOT PART OF GOD’S PLAN.

So let’s take another look at our theology, the stories we tell ourselves. There are two stories of creation in the Old Testament. The first (and best known in modern times) is found in the first chapter of Genesis. We all know it well as the anti‐Darwin creation story. Paul has been interpreted as saying that this first creation was ruined by Adam’s disobedience and that Jesus is going to bring a second and new creation. The same folks that fixate on this story and object to Darwin’s ideas being taught in school are the ones who say, “it doesn’t matter what we do with this creation, God is going to make another one anyway”. But this story comes from what is called the Priestly Tradition and is younger than the second story. Some theologians point out that by focusing on bringing order out of chaos, the priests were underlining their role as God’s representatives by doing likewise by creating laws and rules to maintain that order.

But there’s another creation story right after the first one in Genesis 2‐3. It’s older and quite different. It doesn’t focus on HOW God created, but rather what was God’s INTENTION in creation. This is absolutely essential. If we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, we have to understand her intention in creation, including for humans, God’s most particular creation.

When the Hebrews came out of Egypt and entered Palestine, all the best land in the valleys was already occupied. So they had no choice but to settle in the hill country. This is not easy – farming in hill country is usually a formula for failure unless great care is taken to fit in with the land. And that is exactly what the early Hebrew did – and it doing so learned that if they practiced peace (shalom) on the land, it would reward them. If not, it would yield no fruit and they would starve.

So we have the second story of creation in which God places humans in a garden – not a forest, nor a glade but a garden. And the focus of the story is on the relationship between humans and that garden. We are to tend that garden – not to dominate it, not to tear it down and build a golf course – just to make it fruitful. If humans were righteous, the land would be productive. If we were unrighteous, the land would be sterile.

And there were limits. Limits which the first humans chose to ignore. And there were consequences as well all know.

So we have two stories – one that can be interpreted as making humans the ‘resource managers’ (stewards) of the earth. A second that has a very different focus – humans are to be the servants of creation just as Jesus calls us to be servant of each other. We are to love creation just as we love each other.

Does it matter? Most of us have long ago relegated Genesis to Sunday School lessons. It so clearly doesn’t fit with our scientific understandings that we tend to put it to one side.

But look where we are? Our scientific understandings on their own, unbridled by any clear sense of our place in creation other than at the centre of it, have created a witches brew. The only way we will gain any insight on where to go is by remembering God’s intention for us in the first place.

So the next time you run water down the drain needlessly, discard and replace something before it is used up, ask yourself – is this an act of love or something else. You will find yourself wearing a new pair of glasses and beginning to see a new vision.

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Stu Clark, 13 Sept 2009

Comments

[Wilfried Giesbrecht]

Love me, Love my creation: This homily teaches us, that we cannot say we love God and to scorn at the same time his creation. Dominate the earth focuses on a governourship as God would do: Firm, but with love and grace.
It's amaizing to see how the author of this homily starts on the first page of the bible, so that means we've to understand from the begining if we want to know how to act in creation care. We realy need a new vision, rather than just a list of things to do.
I found it good how God teached the Hebrews how they could practice "peace on the land": Settling them in hill country.
A very essential issue for humans is to find his place and enjoy his place (Creation Care by Luke Gascho). Also this homily brings us in mind that the relationship between humans and place is important from the begining (first humans and the garden). We as humans and Christians are willed to take care of our environment only if we know and love our place.
The author of this homily brings this lesson to the point by saying: God want's all, our mind, soul etc and we need an entire change of our vision and primarily ask: Is this an act of love or something else?
After reading this homily I can say: "A new learned lesson". Clear point of view.