Rogation
Sunday Easter 7C
May 23, 2004
The Rev. Karen Siegfriedt
St. Jude the Apostle Episcopal Church, Cupertino,
CA
"Life on Earth is actually decreasing. (Not human life but collective life in general.) In the past 50 years, for the first time in 100 million years outside the ice age, the actual amount of living material has gone down by 4%. God made all those fowl of the air and fish of the sea and great whales and beasts of the fields and herbs and fruits and creeping things. By taking God's place and manipulating genes, we have turned around and subdued every one of them…God set it up, we knocked it down. We are the winners. But, why aren't we saying, This is good!" [David Helton, 1991]
Today is Rogation Sunday. It is the day on which an Episcopal parish walks around its boundaries, asking God's blessing on its people, grounds, buildings, and ministries. In a few minutes, we will process around our spiritual oasis, asking for God's blessings. Originally, in more agricultural times, Rogation days were set aside in the springtime, and became the time of year during which people asked God's blessings upon the crops, in hope of a fruitful harvest. In light of this earlier history, I would like to preach a sermon on the care of the environment. In particular, I want to focus on the theological imperative - "To be good stewards of the earth and of all the creatures who share space with us on this physical planet."
A steward is a person who is called to exercise responsible care over possessions entrusted to him. From a religious point of view, stewardship has to do with the individual's responsibility for sharing systematically and proportionately his time, talent, and material possessions in the service of God and for the benefit of all humankind. We are called to be stewards over our individual talents and gifts, our education, our children, our time, our money, and "this fragile earth, our island home." So how do we respect this earth, keeping in mind that God has given us the responsibility to care for creation in the service of God and for the benefit of all of humanity?
Perhaps one of the most helpful images to hold on to when it comes to taking care of this fragile earth, is this: We must leave a very light footprint on this earth during our lifetime. This means we must change the way we live, the choices we make, and the political policies that are legislated so that our footprint becomes very light. Unfortunately, the footprint of human societies is very heavy upon the Earth, especially the footprint of the United States. This heavy footprint has destroyed the natural fertility of the earth, the ozone layer, and has rendered the destruction of thousands of species of plants and animals. From a theological point of view, this is corporate sin. From a secular point of view, this is bad government. How did we forget about the goodness of all life and become so disconnected from the interconnectedness of all creation? Let's take a look at the book of Genesis and some principles from the so-called Age of Enlightenment.
The first creation story, which opens up our Holy Scriptures, is structured around the Creator's repeated pronouncements that each layer of the world is fantastic! God created the light and saw that it was good. God created the waters and the vegetation, the plants, seeds, and fruit trees and saw that it was good. God created the heavens, and the stars, and the planets, and saw that it was good. God created the birds, the fish, the animals, and all that creeps upon the earth and saw that it was good. And God created human beings. In God's image, God created us and saw that it was good. This translated Hebrew word, good, connotes intense delight. And if God delights in all creation, then we, who have been given the responsibility of being stewards of the creation, also need to develop such a delight. And when we begin to delight in the other creatures and aspects of our environment, our footprint will become lighter.
So what happened with humanity's respectful relationship with the rest of the created order? *All this began to change during the Age of Enlightenment, in the 17th century. The powerful ideologies of the Enlightenment preached positivism, capitalism, and rationalism. These principles first challenged, then deconstructed, and eventually eclipsed the biblical tradition, replacing it with the heroic myth of "Progress." People were taught that the human journey began in the wilderness world, dangerous and brutal, characterized only by struggle for survival. These "primitive" human beings were unproductive, uncivilized, and uninteresting. "Real History" finally began with the advent of concentrated populations of people, official religious cults, city-state organizations, standing armies, hierarchical politics, surplus economies, and separation from nature. In other words, real history means human progress.
The thinkers of the Enlightenment sought to unravel the last strands of human interdependence with nature. Nature was objectified, instrumentalized, and most important of all, de-spiritualized. By marginalizing and/or banishing God, and exalting an autonomous and ingenious humanity, the Enlightenment produced a compelling historical fable about the nobility of civilization and how it could save a deeply flawed natural world. This paved the way for the privatization of commonwealth lands, the intensive accumulation of wealth through more efficient resource exploitation, and the radical reshaping of both culture and nature through social, industrial, (and now) technical engineering. [*Sojourners Magazine, March 2004, pg. 28]
However, there is one fragment of the Genesis tradition that was preserved by the modern thinking of the Enlightenment. It was the passage from Genesis 1:28, giving humans "dominion" over creation and urging them to "fill and subdue the earth." This passage became a convenient text to help rationalize and even mandate ecological destruction in the name of civilization's sovereignty.
The mainstream churches went along with this misuse of scripture for almost two centuries. More recently however, the Church has become disillusioned with "dominion" theology as it begins to recognize the profound ecological crisis that we are in. As environmental protection laws are being rolled back in the name of economic progress, as the world population continues to explode, as resources are being exploited and depleted, and as thousands of species are becoming extinct, we need to recover a posture of interconnecting with the rest of life here on earth if we care about the quality of life for future generations. The Genesis stories are sharp reminders that human beings are not the only tenants on this earth and that all creatures and species are to be given the opportunity to be fruitful and multiply.
What are we to do? Well, I have a few suggestions and I am sure you have some of your own. The most important thing we must do is to commit ourselves to leaving only a light footprint on this earth. We need to delight in the full created order. Simplicity is one of the best ways to do this. Simplicity includes the following principles:
"Almighty God, accept our repentance for our self-indulgent appetites and ways, for our exploitation of other people and creatures of this earth, for our waste and pollution of your creation and our lack of concern for those who come after us. We have not been true to the mind of Christ. We have grieved your Holy Spirit. Good Lord, have mercy upon us." [BCP 268]
| Updated 5/25/04 |
|