by Rev. Mary Brown, preached at Earth Ministry’s 16th Annual Celebration of St. Francis: Creation-Care Sermon Contest on October 4, 2008.
Conservationist, Aldo Leopold, once said that in order to save a place, you must first love it! What places do you love! What places have nurtured you during your lifetime? Perhaps, your special place was a beloved tree in your backyard as a kid. You would climb up on a limb of that tree and sit and dream dreams. Was that tree an elm, an oak? Whatever kind it was, you loved that tree!
For a moment now, I invite you to conjure up in your mind’s eye the place you love best. See and hear and smell and taste that place in exquisite detail! Perhaps the place you love best is in a secret forest glen, where each fall you hunt for chanterelle mushrooms. Perhaps it’s some hiking trail where you get a fabulous view of Mt. Rainier. Perhaps your place is along a trout stream, where you go fly fishing. One of my favorite places is Second Beach at La Push. I love to walk along the sand and see the waves rolling in from the jagged rocks off shore.
All of us have places in nature that we love. And we would be filled with grief, if that tree were cut down, or that beach suffered an oil spill, or that trout stream became polluted. But as Christians, we are called to love so much more! More than just the places we have known and loved. We are called to love the whole earth that God created and called good! We are called to love places we will never see or know. We are called to advocate for the restoration of places that are no longer pristine and pretty because of human decisions. We are called to remember the words of scripture and the words of prophets down through the ages, who have spoken of the interconnectedness of all creation. We are called to remember the words of Chief Seattle, who said, “We did not create the web of life. We are only a strand in it. And whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.”
Since the start of the industrial revolution, we, human beings, have often forgotten or ignored the call of our various religious traditions to care for creation. We have fallen asleep. But today, prompted by worldwide concerns for climate change, we are waking up! We are waking up to the ancient truths of indigenous peoples and the modern truths of scientists, who say, we are all interconnected.
We are reawakening to the truths of such a whimsical, radical saint as St. Francis, who felt so deeply the joy of God’s Creation. We might also say that in his experience of Christ’s stigmata, Francis also felt in the depths of his being, the pain of Creation’s brokenness! As we awaken to the interconnectedness of all creation, we need a way to channel our awakened energies in our everyday lives.
Therefore, I would like to say “alleluia” for Earth Ministry! For Earth Ministry has aided my awakening by giving me practical ways to stay awake in the world. As I look back over the years, I can see an organic evolution in ways Earth Ministry has influenced my Christian journey. As I look back over the years, I see a kaleidoscope of interconnected people and events: talking with like-minded folk at colleague gatherings, hiking on Mt Rainier, attending a retreat on Celtic spirituality, visiting an organic farm on Lopez Island, helping my congregation become a “Greening Congregation”, attending Healthy Washington Advocacy days in Olympia.
Being involved in Earth Ministry can nurture your soul. It can help you to pick yourself up again and again, when life’s problems seem so overwhelming that you are inclined to give up in despair. The practicality of its programs and the graciousness of its gatherings are just too tantalizing! And so I testify to you tonight that being involved with Earth Ministry can help you stay awake! Can help you stay hopeful. Not hopeful in a Pollyannaish way, meaning that everything is going to turn out well for our planet. No one can say that with certainty. But hopeful in the sense expressed by Vascav Hazel, former President of the Czech Republic.
Last December, I received this Christmas card from Holden Village, the Lutheran Retreat Center, in the mountains above Lake Chelan. On one side are the words, “Resurgence of Hope.” On the opposite side of the card were Vaclav Havel’s words, “Hope is not the conviction that something will turn our well, but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out…Hope is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart; It transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons.” Scripture puts it this way in the 11th chapter of Hebrews, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
We cannot know the outcome of our actions. But we can be strengthened and empowered by God’s grace, as we choose to care for God’s creation. We can be buoyed up by working with like-minded people from so many faith traditions.
This past July, some of us went up to Holden Village for a few days to worship and hike and play and learn how to be better stewards of God’s Creation. At the end of the week, the Earth Ministry folk gathered together for our closing worship. Each of us had poured into a large basin, water we had brought to Holden from places we love. Then with Kaitlin Torgerson carrying the basin of water, we walked down to a bridge that crosses the river that runs through the village. As a symbol of our collective desire to bring the grace that we had received at Holden back into our daily lives, we poured the water from the basin into the river, knowing that those many waters would mingle with other waters, both pure and polluted, as they flowed down the river into Lake Chelan and beyond. Just as we knew that our pure and polluted lives would mingle with those of others when we went down into the world, and so we prayed that God’s grace and mercy would sustain us on our continuing journeys as caregivers for Creation.
So on this St. Francis Day Celebration evening, I pray to God that we will all stay awake! In closing, I offer this poem by the Sufi poet, Rumi, “The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don’t go back to sleep! You must ask for what you really want. Don’t go back to sleep! People are going back and forth across the doorsill, where the two worlds touch. The door is round and open—don’t go back to sleep!”