Caring for God’s Creation

A Sermon Based on Genesis 1:26-31

Rev. Deborah Troester, April 23, 2023, STHPC

Yesterday was Earth Day, an observance that began back in 1970, when we were starting to realize that the earth and its ecosystems needed our help. My husband Joe recalls that he and a friend got permission to leave school that day and go to a “teach-in” at the nearby university, where they attended various sessions on ecology, recycling, and so-on. They were both involved in high school theater, so they were intrigued by a session entitled “Play materials.” However, they were disappointed to find out that it involved how to make your own playdough and finger paints. Around that time I remember my mother reading Silent Spring by Rachel Carson and trying to explain to me that we were poisoning birds and other animals by overuse of pesticides. People were beginning to wake up to the environmental damage we were doing to our planet.

         Since that time, we have made great strides in cleaning up pollution, developing renewable energy, and so on, but we still have a long way to go.

So, you might ask, what does Earth Day have to do with our faith? That is what I want to talk about this morning. When I was little, I remember singing in Children’s Choir:

This is my Father's world,
And to my listening ears
All nature sings, and round me rings
The music of the spheres.

This is my Father's world:
He shines in all that's fair;
In the rustling grass I hear Him pass,
He speaks to me everywhere.

Seeing the beauty of nature is one of the ways we know God exists. We marvel at the endless variety of plants, animals, and landscapes. We gaze in wonder at the ocean or a sunset. Psalm 8 captures a bit of this awe:

“When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
    the moon and the stars that you have established;
what are humans that you are mindful of them,
    mortals that you care for them?

The wonders of creation can show us what God is like. In Romans 1:20 we read, “Ever since the creation of the world God’s eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been seen and understood through the things God has made.”

A friend of ours, Vince, was raised in Colorado, a state known for its scenic beauty. Before he could walk his parents took him camping and hiking. His family never attended church, but he wrote, “My whole growing up, camping and being outdoors in the mountains was a special, sacred time… [our] sanctuary was a mountain valley… All that time I worshipped while fishing at a stream, scrambling over rocks, or chasing the sun on a long hike, it was the Creator I was chasing. I sensed something bigger. And the wilderness showed me a glimpse of what that was…I was sensing the presence of a Creator, who turned out to be my Creator. Later on, I learned a few things about that Creator I was worshipping, I learned how deeply and completely our Creator, God, loves all people, that God is love. That God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son. When God created the flowers and the sunset, He left fingerprints of love all over His handiwork, and that's what I felt deep in my spirit when I was transported and filled with peace as I lay on the …ground…gazing through a frame of pine trees at the endless universe of stars. It was always God.” Vince later became a strong Christian, but it was nature that first drew him to God.

As Vince’s recollections suggest, we can come to know God through nature. The order of the seasons, the predictability of day and night, reflect God’s steadfast love and unchanging character. The provision for the young of each species reflects God’s tenderness and care for all of life. Jesus taught that not a sparrow falls from the sky without God’s awareness. The Psalmist declares, “The heavens are telling the glory of God.” Meister Eckhart, the medieval mystic, wrote, “Every creature is a word of God and a book about God.” Juana Ines de la Cruz, 17th century nun and poet, penned, “There is no creature, however lowly, in which one cannot recognize that [it says] ‘God made me.’” 

In Genesis 1, a beautiful, poetic account of God’s creation of the earth, one phrase is constantly repeated: “And God saw that it was good.”  At the end of creation, after God has made the sky, sea, land, sun, moon, stars, plants, animals, and finally humans, “God saw everything that He had made, and indeed, it was very good.”  God takes delight in what He has created.

Just a side note here: You can be a faithful Christian whether you think that the earth was created in six literal days, or that it took eons, through natural processes, such as evolution. But Genesis makes it clear that God is the source of all that exists, that we and all the universe belong to God, and that God sees the natural world as good.

Genesis also teaches that God put humanity in charge of taking care of this beautiful world that he loves so much. God says to Adam and Eve that they should have “dominion” over the animals and plants. This word “dominion” has been misunderstood to mean that nature is ours to be exploited, regardless of the ecological consequences. Richard Cartwright Austin, Presbyterian minister, theologian and environmentalist, reminds us that, unfortunately, “in the long history of Christian culture, some people…have read this commission as divine authorization to exploit the earth without thought for the welfare of other creatures or the landscape.”  Is this a correct interpretation of Genesis 1? 

According to Rev. Austin, “The dominion that humans were instructed to establish was God’s; they received no authority to exhaust the earth’s life for exclusively human ends.” Rather, “God has given us the responsibility of dominion to maintain and to enhance the quality of life… If humanity is indeed created in the image of God, then we, too, must reflect God’s attributes of love and care for creation…Being created in the image of God means that we have intellect, will, and the ability to make choices. God has given us the privilege and the responsibility to make wise choices for the sake of all other living things – we have dominion in the sense that the choices we make affect all of creation. We can use this power of dominion wisely or unwisely.” 

Theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether explains, “The privilege of intelligence, then, is not a privilege to alienate and dominate the world without concern for the welfare of all other forms of life. On the contrary, it is the responsibility to become the caretaker and cultivator of the welfare of the whole ecological community upon which our own existence depends.” 

If we continue reading in Genesis 2, it becomes even more clear that humans are responsible to take care of the world God created. Genesis 2:15 reads: “The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to till it and keep it.” The Hebrew word for “keep” is shamar, meaning “to guard” or “to watch and protect.” The word “till” or “cultivate,” is from the Hebrew word abad meaning “to serve.” So, Genesis 2:15 would better be read as: “The Lord God took the human and put the human in the garden of Eden to serve it and to guard and protect it.” Serve. Guard. Protect. This is language that calls us to be restorers, not despoilers, of the earth.

Thus, according to Genesis 1 and 2, humans are to be stewards of the earth, caretakers of all that God has created. A steward is someone “entrusted with the management of estates or affairs not his own; an administrator.”  God has entrusted us with the management of the earth. “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof,” writes the Psalmist, but we are to care for it, to administer it. If God loves and values all He has created, then we, too, must respect that creation and do our best to take care of it. Not only that, but the people most likely to suffer from environmental degradation are the poor, who often live in places prone to flooding, drought, or near sources of pollution. God had given us a mandate in scripture to help the poor, as well as to care for the earth.

But how can we go about being good stewards of the earth? Mass extinctions and global warming seem like such overwhelming problems. Can one person, or even the church as a whole, do anything about it? To begin with, we can let people know we care – that the church cares – what happens to the earth. Too often the church has given the impression that since Christ is coming back soon, we do not need to worry about this world, which will someday pass away. While we Christians do live in the hope of Christ’s ultimate return, God still holds us responsible for what we do here and now. As long as people, creatures, and plants, which were all created by God, are suffering or in danger of extinction, we have the moral responsibility to try to do something to help.

No matter how small the action, it can make a difference. Garret Keizer, Christian author and environmentalist, wrote in Christian Century magazine, “A person of faith does not ask if it’s worth his while to take one child on a hike or…to turn off one unnecessary electric light or recycle one glass jar; that is indeed part of what defines him as a person of faith: the belief that little gestures are worth his while in spite of any evidence to the contrary.”  

And people, young and old, are doing things – big and little, to help our planet. Recently a New York Times Opinion Piece entitled, “Grandmothers of the World, Unite!” told how more than 2,000 Swiss women, most of them in their 70’s, are suing their government, arguing that Switzerland has violated their basic human rights by not doing enough to respond to climate change. It also told of a group called Guardians of the Aquifer, mostly composed of older women, which protested against the Keystone XL pipeline, a project which was discontinued in 2021. Young people are also leading the way: Greta Thunberg from Sweden sparked a global movement of school-age students demanding greater action from governments to fight climate change and Kelo Uchendu of Nigeria, founded the Gray2Green, an organization dedicated to mobilizing young people to advocate for sustainable climate policies, just to name two.

Here at Santa Teresa Hills we are also doing our part. The Session has given the go-ahead to two projects that will have a positive impact on the environment. We are making plans to install solar panels on the roof of the church so that we will no longer be dependent on electricity from local utilities, some of which is generated by fossil fuels. Installing solar panels will also save the church considerable money – funds which can be better spent on ministry to our community and world. We are thankful to our generous donors who have made this project possible.

Thanks also to some members who are avid gardeners, we will soon have beautiful drought-resistant landscaping around the church. These environmentally-friendly plantings will also save the church money on our water bill. Taking care of God’s earth doesn’t have to be expensive, although it may require doing things differently than we have done before.

As author and poet Wendell Berry expresses it, “The ecological teaching of the Bible is inescapable: God made the world because God wanted it made. God thinks the world is good, and God loves it.

It is God’s world; God has never relinquished title to it. And God has never revoked the conditions… that oblige us to take excellent care of it. If God loves the world, then how might any person of faith be excused from not loving it or caring for it? If God loves the world, then how might any person of faith be…justified in destroying it?” 

Let’s make every day Earth Day and celebrate the beautiful world God has given us. Let’s do all we can to be good stewards of this earth, to take care of it, instead of destroying it. As we enjoy the beauty of nature, let’s be thankful to God, who loves us, and all creatures, so much. Amen!

© Deborah Troester, 2023