The second car I ever owned was a white 1968 Rover 2000.
Lloyd George the great white whale I used to call it… and really if it was a
whale it would probably be that most kiwi of cartoon whales and be ‘beached as
bro”. Really it should have had another name… lemon… not because I painted it
pastel yellow but because it sucked as a car… it was always breaking down…. I
took it out to Piha one night and it broke down on the way back, in fact it did
it several times, this before cell phones so I left it to walk home and get
help. When we came back it had the window smashed and the stereo was gone. I took
a girl out on a date, and it broke down, and no it wasn’t one of those excuses
you give to the girl’s parents for having her home late… it broke down…
fortunately outside a mates house so I was able to borrow a car to get my date
home on time… The car spent as much time parked up on the lawn waiting for
repairs as it did on the road.
Anyway I created a story for this car. I decided that
probably it was the last car off the assembly line on a Friday afternoon.
Probably during industrial unrest in the factory, where the workers were upset
and contemplating industrial action, industrial sabotage. It was definitely after the workers had been out for
a liquid lunch or had their Christmas party and they were racing to get it
finished so they could head off for the weekend or the Christmas break. It was slap dash… it will do… last minute… no
good… a real lemon… and even worse by the time I got it, third or fourth hand. In
fact at the end of it sitting unused for several years while I was a poor Bible
College student I gave it away to a mechanic who at least could do the work on
it himself.
However as we’ve looked at the Genesis creation narrative we
see that … God never created a lemon… well he did… those wonderful tangy sour
fruit that help provide Zest and zing with the flavour they bring… maybe I
should get a job writing jingles… God does not make junk. God did not suffer
from Friday afternoon brain fade. As the high point of the creation narrative
on Friday after lunch it tells us that God created human beings, male and
female and made them in his image. There was something unique and special about
us. He blessed humanity to be fruitful and gave them a purpose in connection
with the rest of his creation.
Over the past three weeks we’ve been reflecting on the creation
narrative in Genesis 1 and what it has to say about the Creator, creation and
us. We’ve seen that genesis 1 speaks of the eternal nature of God, in the
beginning God, that God created all there is, that God is sovereign and not
only spoke and it came into being but is actively involved in an ongoing basis
with his creation: This narrative is viewed by its writer from the perspective
of this Creator God being in relationship with his people, We view the creation
narrative as the pointy end of the story of God which leads and finds it
fulfillment in Jesus Christ. WE saw that Genesis 1 speaks of creation, as being
temporal and physical, subject to time and space, That God provided for all his
creatures and established habitats for them and that God created it good, It is
valuable precious, in fact the wonder and marvel of creation is a form of
worship and praise to God. Today we are going to look at what it has to
say about us and in particular look at what it has to say about creation care
as part of our Christian faith and discipleship.
Genesis 1 tells us that human beings are made in the image
of God. What constitutes that image has been a matter of much conjecture.
People have seen it in our ability to reason, in particular our ethical
reasoning, our ability to love, to create, some commentators note that for the
early Jewish writers they didn’t philosophically differentiate between the more
spiritual aspects of humanity and the physical, there is something about the
whole of us that reflects God. Others focus on the fact that we were made in
God’s image male and female, note the equality of God’s plans, that it has to
do with our ability to love and have relationship, that enables us to have a
relationship with God, to know God and enjoy him always as the shorter
Westminster catechism says is the chief end of humanity.
In Daniel Quinn’s novel ‘Ishmael’, which is an attempt to
address the ecological problems we face,
Ishmael, a wise old talking gorilla, hey it’s a novel, challenges his
human protégée’s perspective that humanity is the centre of creation by telling
him the creation story from the perspective of a cockroach…(I think as it’s
been a long time since I’ve read it).. where the created order finishes with
the cockroach. It sees itself as the high point of all that is made… the very
pinnacle of the evolutionary process… and sees that the world is then theirs to
do with as they will… That is why they seem to think they have the right to
turn up in your cupboards. It was designed as a critique of the Genesis
narrative and its focus on humanity.
B
ut that is a miss reading of what Genesis has to say about
us. Yes humanity does come last in the created order, and yes Genesis tells us
that we were made for a special relationship with God. However, as a rabbi in Leon Uris’ novel ‘Mila 18’ about
the Warsaw ghetto says ‘We were created last to give us humility, as we
remember that even the flea and the tick came before us in the order of
creation’. It says that the created order was there before us and was made
good. It says that we are part of and connected with all creation. It is a miss
reading of the Genesis narrative also because creation does not finish as the
sun goes down on Friday night, remember for the Jews a day starts and finishes
at sunset. The high point of creation is the Sabbath, when God rested.
The writer of the genesis narrative is identified by
scholars as having a priestly liturgical understanding of creation, which
focuses on the Sabbath as the high point of creation, where God rested from his
work. The high point of creation is that we are designed for relationship with
God. You could say the creation narrative starts with God and finishes with God
as its central focal point.
Now one of the things people wrestle with when they come to
Genesis is a seven day literal creation.
If you’re a doctor who fan you’d probably call it ‘the timey-whimy thing’.
Again the writers focus is not on the mechanics of creation, and I simply have
to say I don’t know… It is mentioned elsewhere in scripture in the Ten
Commandments in Exodus 21, not as a scientific fact but as the basis for the
people of Israel having a day off. We forget for a slave population this was
revolutionary, this is the start of labour law reforms. Something we need to
remember and recapture in the face of the encroaching tyranny of our 24-7-365 world.
Elsewhere is scripture in the Psalms and Job and in John, the scripture writers
can speak of God’s creation without clinging to the literal week of creation.
John’s emphasis is on Jesus as the eternal creating word of God. But that seven
day narrative does point us to that relationship with God, the worship of God
as creations highpoint and purpose.
The creation narrative also speaks of God giving humanity
sovereignty over creation. I fear that has been misunderstood as well. It says
that we were to subdue the earth and rule over it. People have seen this as a
God given right for us to do what we want with creation, to exploit it and use
it for our benefit. They forget the historical political background to this
passage. All through the Genesis story God has been seen as sovereign, like the
kings of the Medes and the Persians, he speaks and it comes into being. In
giving us dominion over creation it is not giving us autonomy, but rather to
serve God as a lesser king might serve a greater king. To rule in a way that
reflects the ethics and purposes of that greater king. In New Zealand we have a
good understanding of this, in the news over the last month we’ve being saying
good bye to our governor general Sir Jerry
Mateparae and this week we are appointing a new one dame Patsy
Reddy. They are the representative in
our country of the head of state, the queen. They are not able to do what they
want, they must reflect the values and desires of Her Majesty. That is the same
here… we are invited to be God’s vice-regents. This means we treat and care for
creation because it is our Lord’s possession and we reflect his values and
purposes. In the other creation narrative in Genesis two you see that authority
manifested in God bring us all the animals to name.
The problem is that as we see as the story of our origins in
Genesis moves on is that relationship with God is broken. Humanity sins and as
a result of that the whole of creation is affected. The image if God in us is
marred, we find instead of a peaceful coexistence with creation trusting in
God’s providence that humanity and nature find themselves at loggerheads. We
have to work hard to grow food, we have to contend with weeds, our relationship
with each other is also broken; Adam blames Eve, Cain kills Able it escalates
from that.
Creation care and the restoration of creation becomes part
of God’s plan and purpose to restore right relationship. AS we saw in our New
Testament reading today from Romans 8: that creation groans in the pain of
childbirth as it awaits the children of God to be revealed. The restoration and
renewal of creation really looks for the restoration of that relationship with
God. It is a gospel matter. In the early 1970’s there was the first inklings of
ecological crisis and in trying to address it a collection of world leaders
called the club of Rome coined the term problematix, that the ecological crisis
was a matrix of interlocking problems. One of the issues they saw was that few
people were able to look forward and beyond the here and now and their own
sphere of living, that to solve the problematrix needed people who could do
that. The gospel actually gives us the ability to do that. To see God active
through history, and moving towards a conclusion, not that it’s a ticket out of
here when it gets to messed up, but that see we are here for the good of people
beyond ourselves. That God wants to
reconcile all things to himself.
Gus Speth, who helped
found the Natural resource defence council and was dean of the Yale school of
forestry and environmental studies agrees with that, he said this on a BBC
radio interview.
“ I used to think
that top global environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem
collapse, and climate change. I thought that with 30 years of good science we
could address these problems, but I was wrong. The top environmental problems
are selfishness, greed, and apathy, and to deal with these we need a spiritual
and cultural transformation. And we scientists don’t know how to do that.”
The Christian faith is able to tackle those issues. But to
do it we need to find ourselves seeing creation care as part of our
discipleship. That life transformation includes that. Sadly we have become
rather enslaved to our western materialistic life style. Our imaginations are
informed by our western world, our aspirations and expectations reflect not
gospel values but our society’s values. Sadly like the rest of our culture we
are addicted to our excess… and we need to repent. One of the ways that the
scriptures talk of that restored relationship with God is the word shalom
‘peace’ finding wholeness. Sadly that word has been hijacked by billy graham in
his little book ‘steps to peace with God which focuses on a making a decision
to follow Jesus, and does not go the whole way of seeing the word as being… In right
relationship… yes with God… but also with the spiritual realm… with each other…
with the created order… with our material possessions. At its most vibrant the
Christian faith has been lived counter culturally, you can see it in the Celtic
monks connection with the natural world, st Francis of Assisi, much of the
urban monastic movement, with a focus on simple living and closeness with
creation. William Wilberforce’s faith lead him to not only lead the move for
the abolition of slavery but to set up the RSPCA as well, to care for animals.
Here are some thoughts about what it means practically. It means recycling and all that stuff we are
encouraged to do. The church needs to have a voice in the ecological debate…
Pope Francis’s papal paper on creation is a completing step in that direction.
We need to put our money where our mouth is. Luke’s gospel says the depth of
faith is shown in how deep it impacts our pockets. It was good to see at the
last PCANZ general assembly that our denomination voted to divest itself of any
investment in the petrochemical industry.
I’m not a great gardener but it is good to see churches make commitments
to growing food locally. One of the ways we can serve our community is to make
the time to clean up parks and streets. Some churches meet together on a Sunday
to do just that and then have a meal together and worship afterwards, they
invite the community to join them. Eco-missionary work will be a growing trend
in the future as Christians are prepared to go to the places and people most
affected by pollution and climate change and be part of caring for those
affected and changing things. Dorothy Brockets son Garry is a pioneer in that
with his biofuel projects in Bangladesh. Using technology to help with
recycling and resolve poverty and sharing the gospel as you do it.
You know the world is not a 1968 rover 2000… it’s not a
lemon starting to break down all the time, it is a precious gift given to us by
its creator, who invites us as part of being his family through Jesus Christ,
to care for it and its people. Let me finish with the words of Columnist Paul
Harris… “there are many Christians around the world who are deeply engaged in
caring for creation. But we are still just beginning. Our worship and work
and witness will be incomplete until our responsibility to conserve the
glorious God-given diversity of earth’s creatures (and their and our habitat) becomes second nature.”
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