In the light of God’s unconditional love, we respect the dignity of every human being by welcoming and supporting all persons whatever their race, color, gender, age, sexual orientation, health status, marital status or stage of spiritual journeying. We invite you to explore, investigate, and grow in your faith and become a part of our shared journey with God.

-The Very Rev. Dr. Gordon Weller, Rector

That concern is this:  What — if anything — can we do about the continuing environmental and economic tragedy playing out in the Gulf of Mexico and about the other less dramatic tragedies which are also degrading our environment and exhausting its resources?

Of course, there is nothing in the Bible or in the teachings of the Church that speaks to the technical challenges faced when drilling for oil more than mile below the surface of the Gulf.  Those challenges are for engineers, scientists, and corporate managers to address and solve.

But I do find in the Bible, two points of view regarding our relationship with Nature, viewpoints which underlie and shape our interaction with the natural world.  One describes, for example, an attitude which seems to support the aggressive engagement of British Petroleum and other companies in deep water drilling.  The second point of view describes humanity’s relationship with Nature very differently.

As you are probably aware, there are two stories of creation in the Bible, side by side in the book of Genesis.

The first story says that God not only created humanity in the likeness of God but also gave us dominion over all of the created world and its resources.  In this story, God says, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea . . . the birds . . . the cattle . . . in fact . . . over all the . . . animals of the earth.”  And, again, a few verses later, humankind is told: “Be fruitful and multiply . . . fill the earth and subdue it. . . .”

About the only earthly resource not explicitly placed under our dominion are earth’s mineral resources, but humankind has seldom doubted that these, too, were intended to be ours to mine, blast, and pump out of the earth, as we see fit.

The second creation story is very different.  This is the story of Adam and Eve, who represent the beginning of all human life.

In this version of creation, there is no mention of giving Adam and Eve dominion over anything.  They and the plants, birds, and animals are all described as being created by God from the same stuff: dust— the soil of the earth — and, in the end, having the same destiny: mortality.

After creating Adam and Eve, God also created a garden in Eden and placed them in it, not to dominate and subdue it, but to “till and keep it.”  That is, God intended Adam and Eve to farm his garden . . . to benefit from it, of course, but most importantly to care for it wisely and well. This second story of creation pictures a much more communal relationship among God’s creatures than the first story.

In addition, Adam and Eve’s tilling and keeping of God’s garden were to be done within God-given limits. This is signified by God’s prohibition that they not eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.   Without limits, as the serpent slyly pointed out to Eve, the door is opened to hubris — pride.  “God knows” the serpent said, “that when you eat of the fruit your eyes will be opened and you will be like God . . . .”   Without limits, we do begin to act as if we are like God.

After falling for the serpent’s pitch, Adam put the blame for disobeying God’s limits on Eve and Eve, in turn, on the serpent.  The undeniable fact, however, is that Adam and Eve were both distracted by the serpent’s marketing strategy and both chose to ignore the limit God had set on their activities in his garden.

Consequently, Adam and Eve were driven out of the innocent world of Eden into a flawed world fraught with toil and pain.  And God bluntly expressed his displeasure with their disobedience: “Cursed is the ground because of you.  In toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you . . . . By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust and to dust you shall return.”

So what are we to make of these two stories?   The first invites us to subdue and dominate the natural world God has given us.  The second asks us to care for God’s creation, cultivating and nurturing it, while respecting the boundary lines which come with this responsibility.

As I have reflected on the two stories and their relationship to each other, it seems to me that they both describe important and related truths.

Humankind’s response to the first story helped produce the agricultural, industrial, and, in our day, information revolutions.  The agricultural revolution took several millennia to move from family subsistence farming to today’s economically dominating corporate farms.  The industrial revolution took perhaps three centuries to move from the blacksmith’s modest shop to the General Motors Corporation and other industrial giants.  And the information revolution has taken a little over a hundred years to move from the telegraph to the internet.

The second story, however, not only redefines humanity’s proper relationship with the natural world as one of caring and nurturing, it follows immediately after the story it contradicts.

Is this inadvertent?  Perhaps, but it might also be significant.  This sequential ordering of the two stories suggests that after centuries of dominating and subduing the natural world, as God commanded, we now need to face the fact that this world cannot be sustained if we continue our dominating ways.  It suggests that like Adam and Eve, we also face God-given limits that have ominous consequences.  Now we are on the spot:  Will we accept limits to our dominating ways, or will we continue listening to the sly marketing of the serpent who suggests, “Never mind all this talk about limits; keep on eating the forbidden fruit.”

So we come to a final question:  How might we reset our bearings, begin shedding our history of domination and start becoming more caring, more nurturing residents of God’s garden?

My response to this question is shaped by Larry Rasmussen’s book: Earth Community, Earth Ethics which our small parish reading group read and discussed at some length last winter.  Until his retirement, Rasmussen was the Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics at Union Theological Seminary, NYC.  In the mid-90’s, Rasmussen co-moderated a series of World Council of Churches meetings which addressed ethical issues relevant to environmental sustainability from a Christian perspective.

Instead of operating on the premise that it is OK to have anything we need or want without regard to environmental consequences, Rasmussen suggests we could reset our bearings by adopting a steward’s perspective toward our earthly garden.

“Steward” is used to translate several Hebrew words in the Bible which convey the idea of overseeing the possessions, business affairs, or property of an owner or master.  We could begin thinking of ourselves as stewards of the natural world rather than simply consumers.  The “earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it” the Psalmist said; that is, we humans truly own nothing.  As stewards, we would retain an element of “managerial authority” overseeing the Lord’s earth, but it would be with a sense of responsibility on behalf of our Lord, not arrogant domination of the resources of his garden.

Another way we might reset our bearings is to see ourselves as partners with the created world.  The partner perspective is similar to the steward’s, but with an important difference.  A steward has a limited measure of delegated authority to manage a property on behalf of the property’s owner.  A partner has a more humble role.   In Rasmussen’s words, a partner relationship with nature creates a kind of holy democracy of all creatures great and small.  Partnership implies an interconnectedness and interdependence among all things that must be respected when exercising our considerable power.  Other creatures, as well as the earth itself, become our brothers and sisters in the drama of our shared lives.  We must listen to them attentively, so we know what the created world is saying and what it requires.  I would nominate St. Francis to be the patron saint of those who see themselves as partners with creation.

A third way in which we might reset our bearings is to see our relationship with Nature in sacramental terms.  A sacrament, as anyone who went through confirmation instruction will probably remember, is an outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace.  The outward material sign is not God; it is the means by which God’s invisible grace is communicated to us.   To think in sacramental terms is to see the presence of our Creator God “in, with, and under” everything in God’s garden —- a real and contemporaneous presence in our everyday lives.

As Rasmussen notes, “the natural response to the sacramental in our midst is wonder, awe, amazement, fascination, astonishment, curiosity and surprise.  It is also a sense of being very small amidst a grand Reality.”

In summary:  What can we do about the continuing environmental and economic tragedy of the oil blow-out in the Gulf of Mexico and all the other, less dramatic, ways in which God’s creation is degraded?

In a few words:  We can begin by resetting our bearings away from dominating God’s garden and begin nurturing it.

I’ve described three models which can head us in this new direction:

Become a steward of creation — by managing earth’s resources within sustainable limits,
Become a partner with creation — by entering into a relationship with nature characterized by interconnectedness and interdependency, or
Begin to experience deeply and appreciatively the sacramental power of Nature — by seeing our creative God as a here and now presence “in, with, and under” the natural world in which we live — and upon which we depend for our lives.

May it be so.

Don’t miss an exciting time at St. Paul’s 2010 Vacation Bible School June 21 – 25th!

Participants will be visiting the Rain Forest!  “Follow Jesus on a life changing adventure!”Spend 5 days of discovery with 5 Bible verses including John 3:16.

We are delighted to welcome back Fr. Ron Byrd as our VBS leader. Time of VBS will be 9 AM to 12 noon.   Reserve your child’s (children’s) place now by completing the registration form here (a printed version is also available at church).

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View the premiere performance of “Psalm 100″, composed by Doug Austin in tribute to Dr. Lange’s anniversary.

View the entire 10am service.

View the full 10am service here.