Seasons of Creation, not Humans!

Karen Sloan 01/09/2024

Readings - 3 readings, which were a little different!

Genesis : 1:1-3, 26-37

Six Days of Creation and the Sabbath

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light.

Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.’
So God created humankind in his image,
   in the image of God he created them;
   male and female he created them.
God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.’ God said, ‘See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.’ And it was so. God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.

Chief Seattle’s Speech  to All People - 1854  

"The President in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land. But how can you buy or sell the sky? The land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water how can you buy them? 

"Every part of this earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every meadow, every humming insect. All are holy in the memory and experience of my people. 

"We know the sap which courses through the trees as we know the blood that courses through our veins. We are part of the earth and it is part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters. The bear, the deer, the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the juices in the meadow, the body heat of the pony, and man, all belong to the same family. 

"The shining water that moves in the streams and rivers is not just water, but the blood of our ancestors. If we sell our land, you must remember that it is sacred. Each ghostly reflection in the clear waters of the lakes tells of events and memories in the life of my people. The water's murmur is the voice of my father's father. 

"The rivers are our brothers. They quench our thirst. They carry our canoes and feed our children. So you must give to the rivers the kindness you would give any brother. 

"If we sell you our land, remember that the air is precious to us, that the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports. The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also receives his last sigh. The wind also gives our children the spirit of life. So if we sell you our land, you must keep it apart and sacred, as a place where man can go to taste the wind that is sweetened by the meadow flowers. 

"Will you teach your children what we have taught our children? That the earth is our mother? What befalls the earth befalls all the sons of the earth. 

"This we know the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. 

"One thing we know our God is also your God. The earth is precious to him and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its creator. 

"Your destiny is a mystery to us. What will happen when the buffalo are all slaughtered? The wild horses tamed? What will happen when the secret corners of the forest are heavy with the scent of many men and the view of the ripe hills is blotted by talking wires? Where will the thicket be? Gone! Where will the eagle be? Gone! And what is it to say goodbye to the swift pony and the hunt? The end of living and the beginning of survival. 

"When the last Red Man has vanished with his wilderness, and his memory is only the shadow of a cloud moving across the prairie, will these shores and forests still be here? Will there be any of the spirits of my people left? 

"We love this earth as a newborn loves its mother's heartbeat. So, if we sell you our land, love it as we have loved it. Care for it as we have cared for it. Hold in your mind the memory of the land as it is when you receive it. Preserve the land for all children and love it, as God loves us all. 

"As we are part of the land, you too are part of the land. This earth is precious to us. It is also precious to you. One thing we know there is only one God. No man, be he Red Man or White Man, can be apart. We are brothers after all."

The Rainbow Serpent

Long ago in the Dreamtime when the earth lay sleeping and nothing moved or grew, lived the Rainbow Serpent. Then one day the Rainbow Serpent awoke and come out from beneath the earth. Refreshed from her long slumber she travelled far and wide leaving winding tracks from her huge body and then returning to the place she had first appeared.

On her return she called to the frogs "come out!" The frogs came out slowly as their bellies were full with water which they had stored during their long sleep. The Rainbow Serpent tickled their stomachs and when the frogs laughed, the water spilled out all over the earth to fill the tracks of the Rainbow Serpent. This is how the lakes and the rivers were first formed.

With water, grass and trees began to grow which woke all the animals who then followed the Rainbow Serpent across the land. They were happy on earth and each lived and gathered food with their own tribe. Some animals lived in rocks, some on the vast plains, and others in trees and in the sky. The Rainbow Serpent made laws that they were all to obey but some began to make trouble and argue. The Rainbow Serpent said "Those who keep my laws will be rewarded; I will give them human form. Those who break my laws will be punished and turned to stone & will never to walk the earth again". Those who broke the law became stone and were turned into mountains and hills and those who were obedient were turned into human form and were each given their own totem of the animal, bird or reptile from when they began. The tribes knew themselves by their totems - kangaroo, emu, carpet snake, and many, many more. So no one would starve, the Rainbow Serpent ruled that no man should eat of his totem, but only of other totems. This way there was food for everyone.

The tribes lived together on the land given to them by the Rainbow Serpent or Mother of Life and knew the land would always be theirs, and no one should ever take it from them.

Sermon

As I said previously this is the beginning of the season of creation for the uniting church, actually for lots of churches.  It used to be sustainable sept, but I think seasons of creation is a better name.

Why do we need a special month?

Well, we live at an amazing time in history.  A time when we can explore and marvel both ourselves and our universe at a level unheard of only a few years ago.  But we are also at a time when we consume more, pollute more and populate more than the planet itself can withstand. We have become, as David Suzuki points out, a super species.  So this time is also a time when a great transformation is required.  We have come to a junction in the road of life, where  it divides and we can go in either direction. And based on which direction we take hinges the future of our species and our earthly home. 

This is not a question just for scientists to solve, but for people of faith to engage and help determine.  To do this there are some hard questions to face, and some remodeling to do.  Christianity is only 2,000 years old, while the earth is 14 billion years old, the question is, can we bridge the gap and come back to a spirituality for all the ages and all earths creatures?  I think we can but we have to start at the beginning, get down to the basics and go from there..

It was interesting that on Monday, in the last session of the progressive living the questions series we also focused on creation.  The title was ”reclaiming the world”, looking at how we humans are supposed to be at one with creation and therefore looing after it, and instead we are destroying it. 

Let me read the intro….

“while human beings have been gifted with a beautiful and complex world in which to live, its systems and resources are being stressed by our behaviours, lifestyles, and arrogance.  Care for the environment is not only deeply biblical and practical, but increasingly critical – for both the present spiritual life and for our collective future. 

But is it deeply biblical? I think part of our problem is our tradition and the scriptures.

On Monday we talked about how Christianity is and has been very anthropocentric, and that for many it’s only about  the human race and getting to heaven.  in other worlds leaving this earthly place for somewhere better, somewhere more godly and holy. As though earth isn’t Godly and holy!

So how did we get it so wrong!!!

There is a wonderful Australian author called Norman Habel , a theologian and writer, who examined this in a book some years ago, called “ An Inconvenient Text”.…

He focused initially on creation stories, and how they influence our connection with the natural world.  We heard 3 this morning.

Creation stories are based on  an age old process where by people determine in myth and stories where they have come from and why they are here.  In the pre-scientific world many arose from places like Babylonia, Egypt and Mesopotamia, the cradles of western civilization.  They are found in the traditions of indigenous people everywhere, like the creation story from the Dreamtime of the Australian aboriginals we heard earlier.  And from evolutionary science.

We find an example of a creation story in today’s reading from the Old Testament book of Genesis.   This reading is quite different, however, from many of the other traditional creation myths, where there is harmony and guardianship reflected in the words and images.

The problem is that much of this tradition, our tradition, is grey not green, and very human centered rather than creation centered.  This is according to Norman Habel. He classifies grey texts as texts that view nature as a resource for humans to exploit because humans are superior to the rest of nature.   This is what we find in the passages today.  In verse 1:26-28 there is the mandate to dominate nature, giving humans a God given right to harness it for their own purposes.  It is reinforced in other verses (9:2), and persists post the flood, where the world of new beginnings is still calling for humans to be superior over all animal life.  And we find it in Psalm 8 where the mandate to dominate nature is celebrated.

Habel does not suggest the whole bible is grey, and he sees many green texts as well, texts that affirm earth and all of creation as having intrinsic value.  Genesis Chapter 2, verse 15 points out that humans are to serve and guard creation rather than dominate.

“The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it”.

Or we could look at passages which recognize the groaning of the earth, like in Romans (Rom 8-17-27). 

“We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, “

or Psalm 19
The heavens are telling the glory of God;
   and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours forth speech,
   and night to night declares knowledge.
There is no speech, nor are there words;
   their voice is not heard;
yet their voice goes out through all the earth,
   and their words to the end of the world.

Yet we cannot deny that the many passages that concentrate on humans rule over the earth have been used over the centuries to justify the destruction of the natural order. And have been reinforced by the church.

So what do we do?  Well, Habel suggests it is the words of Jesus we should be listening too.  We hear clearly the call from him to serve (Mark 10:42-45)  not dominate, although it is not specifically being applied to the earth and he often looked to nature to illustrate his teachings. 

“So Jesus called them and said to them, ‘whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve”

But I think we need to be slightly more radical than that.  We need to accept that the bible was written a long time ago, when culturally and scientifically the world was a completely different place.  Many, many things were not understood, so a mighty God who controlled the world and intervened regularly, became the default position.  Humans were seen as God’s ultimate creation, and the rest of nature something used to support the human endeavor. So the texts are very human centered.  Many people have tried to make the bible green.  But even people like Habel who produced a whole book looking at the bible with green eyes cannot deny it is an inconvenient, and contradictory text at times.

So I ask again, what are we to do?  Maybe it’s to acknowledge that there are 2 scriptures, the scripture of the natural world and the scripture of the bible. 

The bible has to be read with eyes focused on a different beginning story and a different view of the God/human relationship. For many generations it has been us and the natural world, radically separated.  Now we need a different approach, adopting an “all in together” story that takes our interdependence seriously.

But is it so new, or something we have lost along the way?

it’s not that we don’t have voices from the past that call us to explore both, and who were radically different from the mainstream. 

Thomas Aquinas has said that a mistake in our understanding of God will necessarily cause a mistake in our understanding of creation.  In other words, putting God outside of creation leads us to dismiss creation. And what about Frances of Assisi or our Christian mystics, particularly Hildegarde of Bingin, a scientist and a theologian from the 12th century.  People, mainly women, who held on to the idea that God is part of who we are, the sacred heart of each of us, when it was being written over by the church.

But there is also part of our tradition that I have become so much more aware of in the last few years, that has had a resurgence as we grapple with the environmental disaster we have created for ourselves.

That tradition is Celtic Christianity, started by Pelaguis, a 5th century monk  and Celtic Christian from Britain but going back further than that.

And so I want to spend a few moments talking about this.

In this tradition the whole world is a revelation of God, and that the difference between secular and sacred is artificial.  God is seen as the life within all life, and not just the creator but the sustainer and life giving element to it.  It’s a spirituality that seeks God by looking towards the heart of life, not away from it.  There is no fear of science, because science describes creation and creation is good. God is in science as much as in faith.

Now for someone like me who has always felt and been drawn to that understanding, it’s been so good to find a stream of our tradition, that holds that closely.  And that from the early times before Christianity arrived in Scotland and Ireland in particularly it existed in people who were called the Celts.  But as I mentioned, it also existed in the Christian mystics right back to Jesus day. 

So who were the Celts.  They were first referred to historically around 500 BCE.  Today we think primarily of Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Cornwall as Celtic territory, yet in 500 BCE it was  a lot of Europe as well. They were a loose set of tribes, but with a common voice and thought, worshipping without temples, holding creation and the feminine sacred, believing there was a deep truth in the human soul that could be listened to. 

As Christianity spread to the Celtic areas, the Celts, and the early Christian missionaries seem to have gotten along alright.  Devotion to Christ did not mean  abandoning the spiritual wisdom they had inherited from the pre-Christian tradition, which celebrated as I said, the sacredness of the earth, harmony of the spheres and the wisdom of the human soul.

Slide

But ultimately there was going to be  a clash, as Christianity became part of the Roman empire and the clash was between the teachings of Pelagius and the teachings of Augustine in the 4th century.  Augustine  considered the church to be the main arbiter of all things divine, and that humans are born sinful and in need of rescuing.  Pelagius on the other hand believed that the image of God can be seen in every newborn child, and that although we are diverted by sin, our deepest desires come from God and they are good, not bad. God exists at the heart of every person, whether they be part of the church or not.  Original sin or original blessing if you want to put it that way, thinking of Matthew Fox.

While there were other major differences that lead the church to follow one way over the other around this time, it’s easy to see which way it went.  A Synod conference in Whitby in 664 set it in stone. God was removed from the everyday and humans required a major restoration to be right with God. We know this is how many Christians see their faith today.

From then on Celtic spirituality took a back seat and Pelagius was regarded as a heretic and banished.  Augustin’s way ruled.

But the premise and beauty of this spirituality, from well before Pelagius and carried on by so many has been kept alive and today is having a new life.  For if we are to look after each other and all of creation we need to see ourselves as part of it all,  and that we are connected to the life of God in all things.

Slide

People  in the twentieth century like Teilhard De Chardin, who is regarded as the first modern prophet of the sacredness of the universe, Thomas Berry, George Macleod and more recently Ilia Delio and of course John Phillip Newell, who has written numerous books on the subject,  and the beautiful poetry of John O’Donohue. remind us of this stream. A stream that was once lost but is now found.  

If you want a more technical term, then it is not pantheism but panentheism.  If God was to stop speaking the whole created universe would cease to exist.  God is in all things, the essence of life, but greater than all things..

As Charles Birch has said “The universe is a happening of happenings.  Stop the happenings and the universe collapses.  God is necessary for the world.  God is not the world and the world is not God.  God is not before all creation but with all creation.  The world includes God and God perfects the world.  There is no world apart from God.”

So when I think about our discussion on Monday, or any discussion when we bring faith into it, it’s not just a change in words but a change in heart.

We have to see that the spirit, God, whatever you want to call this extra bit that gives and promotes life and love, is in all things.  A power within rather than over. God is not a magical figure intervening at regular intervals in order that humans can somehow have it easy.  No, God is far, far bigger than that.  God is the God of the universe, of the stars and planets, and galaxies, of the forests and trees, streams, rivers  and oceans bacteria, and amoebas, of lions tigers, elephants,  crickets, frogs, and of course humans. And has been there from the start.  

For as George McCloud said, a minister who restored Iona as a center of Celtic spirituality and Christianity said,

Matter matters.

All matter!!!

Amen