Rogation Sunday - May 10, 2015 - St. Stephen’s
Deuteronomy 8:7-18; Psalm 65; Philippians 4:4-7; Luke 8:4-8
My mom grew up on a farm. I imagine some of you probably did too. But today the closest most of us get to farming is picking out produce in the supermarket. If we grow anything at all it’s probably a few vegetables or herbs grown for the 'fresh taste' or as a hobby rather than as food to sustain us over the coming year. And many people, like myself, live in apartments or townhouses and don’t have a piece of ground that we can tend and watch, attentive to the cycles of the seasons and life. So you may wonder why we’re bothering to celebrate a day like Rogation – an ancient agricultural festival. But I believe that the reality that most of us don’t any longer participate in producing our own food is the very reason it’s more important than ever to find opportunities to honour our connection to the world we’re part of. The way our technological world allows us to be isolated from the rest of God's creation has allowed us, as a society, to become self-absorbed and self-centred. It allows us to ignore that great truth - God loves ALL of creation, and all life matters, not just our own.
Christians have long affirmed that we learn about God by observing God's creation. If humans had been brought into being on the moon, for example, we’d have a very different concept of God. On that dry, barren world, we wouldn't see the extravagance of God's love for life, and the diversity and exuberance of the divine creative impulse. God’s love for life shines through our fertile world.
I think most of us experience that instinctively, which is why we feel close to God when we’re immersed in the natural world. Our spirit is fed through being in nature in a way it isn’t when we’re in human created spaces no matter how beautiful they are.
In nature we experience God in the miracle of a tiny hard seed sprouting into the complexity of a plant. We delight in the delicate order of a spider’s web. We marvel at the homing instincts of a salmon that can return unerringly to the gravel bed in a stream where it started its life in order to spawn and start the next generation. Storms and earthquakes remind us that we are not in control. The beauty and sheer grandeur of mountains, seas and sky remind us that it was God, not we, who brought this world into being.
And so most of us feel some sense of sadness or guilt when we contemplate the destruction that we collectively are causing in the world just by living the way we do. Whether you believe that the world as we know it is threatened by human-caused climate change, or mourn the loss of a stand of trees near your home to more development, or just grieve at the idea of a world devoid of panda bears, we all know that human activity impacts the world around us. And as we develop more and more technology and our population increases, our impact on the world around us grows. It’s hardly possible to avoid being reminded that our activities are not always beneficial - either to ourselves, other humans or to non-human creation.
Some people have tried to claim that Christianity itself is the reason why we have environmental problems in the world today, insisting that the Bible shows little concern for nature and has perhaps even encouraged its exploitation.
This is often supported by making reference to Genesis where our traditional English translation has said that humans are to 'subdue' the earth and 'have dominion' over all living things. Which, to be honest, has been interpreted to mean the world was created for us to do with as we please at some points in the past and by some very conservative branches of our faith today. But this is a misunderstanding of what the Bible actually says, both in general, and specifically in that verse in Genesis. The idea that God made the world for our use was the result of reading the bible with that assumption already in place in order to justify our existing beliefs and actions, rather than seeing what the bible actually says. Biblical scholars affirm the Bible does clearly affirm the goodness and intrinsic value of all living things; it points out commonalities between human beings and other living things; and it contains the mandate that we treat the natural world with care and respect. The Bible affirms that God cares for all of creation, both human and non-human.
Increasingly we are beginning to rediscover the ancient truth that we are not a special case that is somehow separate from the earth - we are a part of it.
As Christians we affirm that in Jesus, God became incarnate - became a part of creation to redeem it. And science too affirms our connectedness to all life. When scientists started to study genetics they were shocked to find that we aren’t as unique as we think.
In fact we share a large proportion of our DNA with other creatures. DNA is the molecule is a molecule that encodes the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms is a molecule that encodes the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms is a molecule that encodes the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms that encodes the genetic instructions for the growth and functioning of all living organisms on earth.
Some of you will have read about studies that show that all despite our surface differences all humans have more than 99% of our DNA in common with each other. And that we share 98% of our DNA with our closest relatives the chimpanzees. But the connection is much deeper than that. For example you might not realize you share about half the DNA of fruit flies and cabbages. Obviously a different 50% in those two cases! When we take this scientific message seriously and let it sink in, it can deeply affect our image of ourselves.
We often like to think of our relation to the rest of nature as if it were a ‘home’ in which we’re living. And that metaphor suggests we should ‘clean up the mess’ we’re making in the world. But the rest of nature is not so much our house as our sibling. We are literally related to every living thing on this planet – every animal, plant, insect, fungus, bird, fish, bacteria. So it isn’t just that we need to perform appropriate ‘care and maintenance’ on the place. We need to be in loving relationship with the world around us.
So what does that mean for us? Firstly I think, we are called to awareness and appreciation of God’s creation and of the impact of our actions on it. We know God calls each of us to be aware of the impact our actions and words have on other people so that we treat them with love, and we are to judge our own actions by the standard of ‘love of neighbour’.
In the same way God calls us to be aware of the impact our actions have on non-human creation and to judge our actions in the light of God's love of creation. When we truly love the natural world in all its complexity, and accept that all living beings are our siblings in God’s family and are worthy of our regard, then change in our practices will naturally follow.
As James Hillman says in Re-Visioning Psychology “Ideas remain impractical when we have not grasped or been grasped by them. When we do not get an idea, we ask “how” to put it into practice, thereby trying to turn the insights of the soul into actions of the ego. But when an insight or idea has sunk in, practice invisibly changes. The idea has opened the eye of the soul. By seeing differently, we do differently… The only legitimate ‘How’ in regard to these psychological insights is: “how can I grasp an idea?”
Hillman is saying the question we need to ask ourselves is ‘How can I ‘grasp’ and be ‘grasped by’, this idea? How can I take this truth that we are siblings with every living thing on this world and make it part of who I am and how I relate to the world?’
So I invite each of you to contemplate how you can grasp - deeply grasp in the depth of your being - the truth of our deep connection with all creation, and God’s love for that creation.
And then, what can you do to nurture your relationship with the natural world? How can you nurture love of God’s creation in your heart and soul? Because if you are in loving relationship with another living being it affects how you respond to their needs. And since God loves creation - shouldn’t you love it too?