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Earth Home
Scriptures: Gen. 9:8-17, Rev. 21:1-4
Hymns: All Things Bright and Beautiful
Morning Has Broken
This is My Father's World
Recently I watched a wonderful PBS film entitled “Voyage of the Lonely Turtle”
that told the story of a loggerhead turtle swimming across the Pacific from
Mexico to Japan to lay her eggs on the beach where her life began. The 9000
mile journey took her over a year. Along the way she dogged hammerhead sharks
and the nets of fishing boats, signaled by her posture in the water that it was
safe for small fish to clean her skin and shell, and swam through ocean debris
and violent storms — guided by the loggerhead DNA version of a global
positioning device that maps the earth’s magnetic field.
Shortly thereafter the astronauts of the Challenger repaired the Hubble
telescope, which allows us to see the edges of the known universe and thus to
look back in time more than 12 billion years. We’ve all probably seen some of
the wonderful photos taken with the Hubble telescope. They are not only
beautiful, but awesome.
Why begin a sermon with these comments about the natural world? Because science
gives us insight into nature that constrains our understanding of scripture.
The hymn, “All Things Bright and Beautiful,” suggests that God “made” every
creature, but our knowledge of science requires that we not take this language
literally. Our belief that God is the ultimate power behind all life does not
mean we should reject evolution. Nor does our faith contest the scientific fact
that every turtle and each person is made by the DNA in a fertilized egg, DNA
that reveals the descent of our species from earlier forms of life.
Science also constrains our understanding of the story of Noah and the flood.
The common notion that natural disasters are “acts of God” comes from this Bible
story, but science reveals that nature has its own laws. We can draw this same
meaning from the Genesis flood story, if we emphasize God’s promise not to
interfere with nature again. We should not confuse the natural order with God’s
will. Natural disasters are not “acts of God.” Death is natural and not God’s
punishment.
Science also shapes our understanding of “heaven and earth.” The Bible story
begins with the creation of heaven and earth out of nothing, and ends with a
heavenly city descending to the earth. The final words of “This is My Father’s
World” — “And earth and heaven be one” — affirm this hope. But the Hubble
telescope is circling the earth in what was once described as heaven, and its
photographs of the universe bring “the heavens” to earth.
Moreover, science offers an alternative understanding of the life-sustaining
relationship between the earth and “the heavens.” The sun provides warmth for
the earth and makes life possible. The moon creates the tides that move the
waters of the oceans and causes the winds that bring moisture to the land. The
atmosphere surrounding the earth maintains the oxygen and carbon dioxide that
animals and plants need, sustains the water cycle of evaporation and rainfall
that distributes water around the earth, and reflects heat back to the earth
keeping it temperate.
This natural order is not what the authors of scripture had in mind, when they
pondered the relationship between heaven and earth. Yet, surely the earth’s
ecology reflects God’s purpose.
Now, on earth, our way of life is destroying this natural order, this
life-giving and life-sustaining relationship between the earth and “the
heavens.” How are we to understand our ecological crisis? And how might we, in
faith, respond?
In my recent book, "Doing Environmental Ethics," I explain that our way of life
is unsustainable because we have ignored the natural cycles that enable the
biosphere of the earth to break down wastes, purify water, and maintain an
ecological balance of oxygen and carbon compounds in the atmosphere and the
oceans. We have sinned against heaven and earth. If we are to repent for this
sin, we must take steps to reduce our impact on the ecological cycles of the
earth.
What might this mean? We can repent by supporting public policies that require
greater energy efficiency for motor vehicles burning fossil fuels and a
reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from our power plants, and that provide
incentives for investing in solar, wind, geothermal, and other alternative
energy sources, which will help realize a sustainable way of life. We can drive
and fly less, walk and bike more, and use public transportation. We can reduce
our consumption of electricity, replace incandescent light bulbs in our homes
with more energy efficient bulbs, and allow the temperature indoors to be cooler
in the winter and warmer in the summer.
We can repent by not buying water (or soda) in plastic bottles. The sale of
bottled water and bottled “soft-drinks” increases the cost of water worldwide,
making life even more desperate for those who are poor, and studies have shown
that bottled water is often no more pure than water from the tap. Recycling
plastic bottles is better than discarding them, but recycling is never 100 per
cent efficient and requires energy. Many plastic bottles end up in streams, and
now plastic debris covers 40 percent of the earth’s oceans. We have a duty to
protect the human right to drinking water and the natural environment from waste
(like plastic) that nature has not yet evolved ways to absorb and recycle.
We can repent by eating less beef. Forests are being destroyed in South America
and Asia to graze cattle. The loss of forests means: fewer trees are absorbing
carbon dioxide and emitting oxygen into the atmosphere, a decline in
biodiversity due to the destruction of animal habitats, and less rainfall.
Cattle in the US are fed corn, which their stomachs did not evolve to digest,
and the methane gas these cattle emit into the atmosphere adds to the greenhouse
gases causing global warming. The urine and manure of cattle in US feedlots
pollute nearby streams and lakes.
Half the world’s grain is fed to cattle, but it takes seven pounds of grain and
over two thousand gallons of water to produce one pound of beef. The only
reason hamburger is cheap is because the costs of raising cattle are subsidized
or being passed on to future generations as environmental damage. We need to
eat less beef, so others will have sufficient grain for food at a cost they can
afford.
In many other ways we can repent of our ecological sin by
caring for the earth as our home. Jesus did not say much about nature during
his ministry, but he did teach us to pray to God: “Thy kingdom come, thy will be
done on earth as it is in heaven.” This prayer is about living faithfully, and
living faithfully now means reducing our devastating impact on the ecology of
the earth.
24 May 2009
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