By Annette Andrews-Lux, preached at Earth Ministry’s 16th Annual Celebration of St. Francis: Creation-Care Sermon Contest on October 4, 2008.
Originally given in honor of Earth Day, April 13, 2008 Edited for length from original; audio available on-line at www.trinitylutheranfreeland.org)
Last April, just prior to Earth Day, I facilitated a Sunday morning adult forum to reflect on the theme of our relationship with the earth community by exploring the vision expressed in the international document known as the Earth Charter. This document offers a concise and compelling call to the world concerning the choices we have before us as a global community as we move into the 21st century. A key theme that is stressed in that document is our need to move towards greater inter-dependence.
I had a beautifully synchronistic meeting that happened that morning after the forum. A parishioner came up to me, talked with me for a bit and then offered me an unexpected gift. The gift was a monk’s begging bowl, which she had brought home from Bangkok many years ago. She talked about the powerful effect it made upon her to see the Buddhist monks moving among the people, holding their bowls out in a simple gesture of request, knowing that the people would provide for their needs. Part of a long-standing tradition, there is a web that connects the monks to their community, a community that seems to innately know the importance of the presence of these spiritual teachers among them, and so they support them with gifts of sustenance. She shared with me how she came to view this begging bowl as a sacred vessel, a sign of God’s providence, a powerful image of a community that is shaped by a deep sense of inter-dependence.
Multiple strands of inter-dependence seem to be woven into the very fabric of creation that flows forth from our Creator. It is engrained into the very nature of earth’s eco-systems. As I look at the begging bowl, it is so clear to me that the earth itself is like the sacred vessel that God hold forth to us, that contains all the gifts that flow from God’s generosity and from every aspect of creation itself. Earth is the vessel that holds our sustenance, and we are completely dependent upon it. We are like a beggar, holding forth our begging bowl before creation, receiving all that we need to sustain us, each and every day of our lives. God places it before us as gift. The question that we are challenged with is: have we humans failed in returning the gift of providing the sustenance that the earth community requires from us?
During Easter time the church lectionary shares with us stories from the Book of Acts, which tells us of the experiences of those first followers of the Risen Christ. This book describes the community life of the early church- a life marked by a sharing of resources according to need, a common care for all, good will and generosity, a joyful and grateful spirit. It is important for us to remember that behind the often utopian scenes painted for us in Acts, was a series of tremendous challenges that demanded difficult transformations of both hearts and minds. In many ways, all the familiar rules about community had changed, and the early followers of Jesus had to forge a new path together. Men and women, slaves and free, Jews and Gentiles- divisions of gender, race and creed were all washed away in the waters of baptism, and the walls that had kept them apart now were to be formed into a welcoming vessel that could hold them all together in God’s embrace.
Like those first Christians, the challenge I believe we are currently facing is at its heart the need to expand our deep-felt sense of community. We must open our hearts to the call of the Spirit to expand beyond those with whom we share a cultural or religious identity to embrace a far more global vision. We must indeed move beyond limiting our sense of community to just the human species, in order to truly embrace all living beings and elements on the planet. We cannot continue to look at the earth as merely “resource”- stuff that we given to use and then discard. I once read somewhere the intriguing comment that there is no talk about nature in the Scriptures- there is only words about creation. Never does it separate the Earth from its source- the Creator. Everything and every being around us is an integral part of the inter-woven community of creation of which we are also an integral part. All of life flows from God’s hands, as the psalmist sings. The eco-theologian Thomas Berry said it well; “Earth is not a collection of objects, but rather a communion of subjects.” This statement recalls the deep wisdom of St. Francis in his addressing the elements of water and air, the animals and birds as “ brother and sister”.
What might it mean to care about the vitality of our rivers and soils and trees as we care for our own family? To understand that the diversity of species is as important to the life of the planet as the diversity of human culture? How do we break down the destructive barriers that still stand not only between human beings, but also between the human species and the rest of creation? What might it mean to return to the vision of the psalmist who understood the world as a sacred vessel, fashioned by the hand of God from which all beings draw their sustenance and receive life as gift from a Gracious Giver?
These are questions which challenge us to the core, and from which we cannot escape, if we want to move forward together into a sustainable future. There are no easy, quick answers. Like in that early Christian community, there is uncertainty and disagreement and risk and even danger. It will likely involve sacrifice and trials and suffering- as it did for those early disciples. There is no clearly defined path forward. Like our ancestors in faith, we can only move forward with prayers for guidance to the Spirit, praying that we might find the way towards healing and reconciliation, towards sharing common resources in a way that honors a diversity of needs.
This much is clear. We have learned that lip service a few times a year is not enough. We must open our hearts to a deep transformation of our sense of community. We must actively re-engage in the practice of inter-dependence. Much is at risk, and our future hangs in the balance. Again, Thomas Berry says it well: “We will go forward together as one sacred community, or we will perish together in the desert.”
Perhaps if one by one we choose to take up the vision- and the work-, than the earth might truly become once more the sacred vessel that God intended it to be. Perhaps we might weave together once more the web of interdependence and go forward together as one sacred community.