“Mother Earth”
presented to Trinity UMC on Mother's Day, May 9, 2021
(All direct quotes are italicized and referenced.
Scripture references are taken from the Common English Bible - CEB)
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| Jane & Terri represent UMW which donated Alter Flowers in Honor of All of our Mothers |
Today we honor our mothers, those amazing women who loved us, nurtured us, provided for us, taught us right from wrong and chastised us when we didn't do right. We are not all mothers, but we all had a mother. Not all mothers were the same – some had that ideal “Norman Rockwell” mom and some had mothers who were overwhelmed with problems of their own and were not able to be the mother they might have wanted to be. Today, we honor them all for giving us life. We would not be.
But I want to pivot to a mother that we all share in common – Mother Earth. I never thought much about why we call the earth our mother, until I was preparing for today. But think about it. Earth is our Mother because the earth nurtures us, sustains us, provides for us. Earth is the land, the air and the water which sustain all life. Without our Good Mother Earth, there is no life as we know it. We would not be.
On this Mother's Day, I want us to think about how we treat and honor our common mother, Mother Earth. So let's start at the beginning:
Morning Scripture: Genesis 1:24-34 – The Sixth Day of Creation (CEB)
God said, "Let the earth produce every kind of living thing: livestock, crawling things, and wildlife." And that's what happened. God made every kind of wildlife, every kind of livestock, and every kind of creature that crawls on the ground. God saw how good it was. Then God said, "Let us make humanity in our image to resemble us so that they may take charge of the fish of the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the earth, and all the crawling things on earth." God created humanity in God's own image, in the divine image God created them, male and female God created them. God blessed them and said to them, "Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and master it. Take charge of the fish of the sea, the birds in the sky, and everything crawling on the ground." Then God said, "I now give to you all the plants on the earth that yield seeds and all the trees whose fruit produces its seeds within it. These will be your food. To all wildlife, to all the birds in the sky, and to everything crawling on the ground—to everything that breathes—I give all the green grasses for food." And that's what happened. God saw everything he had made: it was supremely good. There was evening and there was morning: the sixth day.
God's First Command
Every living thing in creation, animal and plant and all, was created to be good and declared to be good and created to abundantly provide for the needs of every living thing – a perfect balance and harmony.
We – humankind - are created in the image, in the very likeness, of God – to have a like spirit and a common bond with God.
God directed us to “take charge” of all creation and maintain it as God himself would – after all we were created in God's likeness to act on God's behalf. We weren't given ownership, we were given stewardship. The older word dominion that we remember from the King James has been replaced in newer translations as mastery. That old word has for centuries been an excuse for exploitation of our Mother Earth. But when we shift our thinking from “dominion” to “taking charge” we get a different sense of our responsibility as stewards. Just as our mother took charge of us even before we were born, and took care of us when we couldn't take care of ourselves, so we have been commanded by God - In the Beginning– His First Command – to take care of all his creation. And Creation, our Mother Earth, will, in turn, take care of all our needs.
UMC Social Principals – The Natural World: All creation is the Lord’s, and we are responsible for the ways in which we use and abuse it. Water, air, soil, minerals, energy resources, plants, animal life, and space are to be valued and conserved because they are God’s creation and not solely because they are useful to human beings. God has granted us stewardship of creation. We should meet these stewardship duties through acts of loving care and respect. (UMC Book of Discipline, 2012, Part 5, Sec I, P 160)
Jesus says Seek First the Kingdom of God
You might be thinking, 'That's Old Testament. Jesus came to bring a new covenant. What does Jesus have to say about creation care. Well, nothing specifically, but he has a lot to say about the Kingdom of God.
Jesus used imagery of nature throughout his teaching, especially in the parables. In today's gospel lesson from Luke Jesus talked about the “lilies of the field,” the beauty and harmony found in the natural world. When I was a child, this story was very confusing. It seemed to contradict the strong “Protestant Work Ethic” I was taught at home. But now I understand that Jesus doesn't mean that we shouldn't work to provide for ourselves and our families. He is telling us how to order our priorities.
Don't make our own personal material wealth our first priority - (vs 29-30 CEB) Don't chase after what you will eat and what you will drink. Stop worrying. All the nations of the world long for these things. Your Father knows that you need them.
Make God's priorities Your Priorities - (vs 31, 34 CEB) Instead, desire his kingdom and these things will be given to you al well...Where your treasure is, there your heart will be too.
What was Jesus Vision of God's Kingdom? He revealed that when he stood in the synagogue in Nazareth and read from the scroll of Isaiah. Isaiah 61:1-2 (CEB) The LORD God's spirit is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me. He has sent me to bring good news to the poor, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim release for the captives, and liberation for prisoners, to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor.
None of these passages say anything specific about taking care of the earth, but they are about being in harmony with God's priorities. God's first priority is that we take care of all creation – other people as well as the earth and all that is in it. Growing up, I heard a lot about dominion, but not much about stewardship and certainly not stewardship of creation. Because it is not specifically mentioned, we Protestant Christians have a spiritual disconnect between God's priorities of taking care of those who can't take care of themselves and how we treat our Mother Earth. But I am here to say that these are intimately connected. We have to take care of our common home as part of taking care of each other. We can no longer separate the two. The earth is one small sphere.
John Wesley's Three Simple Rules
How can we bring this 'down to earth' so to speak? I think that John Wesley's three simple rules can be our guide.
Do No Harm – very hard in regard to the environment – because we are a consumer society. Beginning middle of last century planned obsolescence was built into the economy and our economy depends on ever increasing consumption and ever increasing discarding of used goods, creating mountains of trash on land and islands of plastic waste in the oceans and tons of pollutants in the air that are altering climate patterns around the world. We have cheap goods at the expense and exploitation of cheap labor and natural resources in other countries, and even in our own. It goes on & on. The ripple effect of our throw-away society has no end and is not getting better – the result is a degradation of our natural environment. We cannot help but cause harm. I'm most worried about the effects of changing climate on my grandchildren's future – of all of our grandchildren all over the world. The problem is much more vast than one person can comprehend or do anything about. I'm afraid we've already passed the tipping point.
UMC Social Principals – The Natural World: Economic, political, social and technological developments have increases our human numbers, and lengthened and enriched our lives. However, these developments have led to regional defoliation, dramatic extinction of species, massive human suffering, overpopulation, and misuse and overconsumption of natural and nonrenewable resources, particularly by industrialized societies. This continued course of action jeopardizes the natural heritage that God has entrusted to all generations. (UMC Book of Discipline, 2012, Part 5, Sec I, P 160).
Do All the Good You Can – God intended us to be stewards of our planet, to take care of God's creation, our home, our Mother Earth. I'm not here to give you a list of things to do. If you are interested, that information is easy to find. I'm here to get you interested enough to take the next step - To make the connection between a spiritual life and care of and for creation. There are lot of of good things we can do – such as, eliminating styrofoam, recyling paper & plastics, eating less beef. Reduce – Reuse - Recycle – These are the 3 R's of becoming more environmentally friendly. It is up to each one of us to decide what makes sense in our own life and family. We can't individually solve the problem, but we can do something that makes a difference! And by acting collectively we can make a bigger difference.
On Earth Day, April 22, 2021, The United Methodist Church (UMC) released a statement, "Our Climate Commitment to Net-Zero Emissions." The collaborative, multi-institution statement pledges to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions across the organizations' ministries, facilities, operations, and investments by 2050. "Net-zero" describes the process by which human-caused greenhouse gas emissions can be balanced, or "netted out" by removing emissions from the atmosphere. (https://www.umnews.org/en/news/agencies-set-greenhouse-gas-emissions-goal)
Love God with All Your Heart
We show that we Love God by caring for his Creation, by being the best stewards that we can of our Mother Earth.
Jesus said, whatever you do to the least of my children, you do to me. We love God by loving the other people with whom we share our Mother Earth, by working toward systems that lift them up rather than exploiting them for our own selfish benefit.
UMC Social Principals - The Natural World: There, let us recognize the responsibility of the church and its members to place a high priority on changes in economic, political, social and technological lifestyles to support a more ecologically equitable and sustainable world leading to a higher quality of life for all of God's creation. (UMC Book of Discipline, 2012, Part 5, Sec I, P 160).
Conclusion:
I would like to end by sharing with you the Epilogue of a book I recently read, A Hopeful Earth: Faith, Science and the Message of Jesus by Sally Bishop Dyck who is residing Bishop of Norther Illinois Conference of the UMC, in collaboration with her niece Sally Erhmann, an environmental science teacher. She begins the Epilogue by quoting Isaiah 1:17 from the Message translation.
“Say no to wrong. Learn to do good. Work for justice. Help the down-and-out. Stand up for the homeless. Go to bat for the defenseless.” —Isaiah 1: 17 THE MESSAGE
Her words: It is our hope that this book will help all of us as Christians make the connections with what Jesus has taught us in his parables with the practices that care for God's earth. How we live on earth—how we "Work for justice. / Help the down-and-out. / Stand up for the homeless./ Go to bat for the defenseless," as the prophet Isaiah says—are practices that God desires from people who seek to be in relationship with God. We can attend seminars about the environment and we can make all kinds of statements, but we need to practice the ways of caring for the earth and the people of the earth as a sign of loving God. Doing no harm, learning to do good, and staying in love with God are a repeating cycle. As we seek to do no harm, learn about and do good, and experience a closer relationship with God, we are encouraged to go to the next level of doing no harm, learning to do good, and again find ourselves being in closer relationship with God. And the cycle goes on. We must bring our whole selves—minds, bodies, spirits, communities, and wills—to live as Jesus taught us. We can't do it by ourselves; we need one another. We call on communities of faith to come together in small groups and as congregations to support and encourage one another as they do no harm, do good, and stay in love with God in regard to caring for the earth.”
May it be so and AMEN.
I hope you will join hearts with me in our Closing Prayer from last paragraph of Social Affirmation:
We commit ourselves individually and as a community
to the way of Christ:
to take up the cross;
to seek abundant life for all humanity;
to struggle for peace with justice and freedom;
to risk ourselves in faith, hope, and love,
praying that God's kingdom may come.
The kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.
Amen.
Gospel Reading: Luke 12:22-34 – Common English Bible
Lilies of the Field
Then Jesus said to his disciples, "Therefore, I say to you, don't worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. There is more to life than food and more to the body than clothing. Consider the ravens: they neither plant nor harvest, they have no silo or barn, yet God feeds them. You are worth so much more than birds! Who among you by worrying can add a single moment to your life? If you can't do such a small thing, why worry about the rest? Notice how the lilies grow. They don't wear themselves out with work, and they don't spin cloth. But I say to you that even Solomon in all his splendor wasn't dressed like one of these. If God dresses grass in the field so beautifully, even though it's alive today and tomorrow it's thrown into the furnace, how much more will God do for you, you people of weak faith!
Don't chase after what you will eat and what you will drink. Stop worrying. All the nations of the world long for these things. Your Father knows that you need them. Instead, desire his kingdom and these things will be given to you as well. “Don't be afraid, little flock, because your Father delights in giving you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give to those in need. Make for yourselves wallets that don't wear out—a treasure in heaven that never runs out. No thief comes near there, and no moth destroys. Where your treasure is, there your heart will be too.
Affirmation of Faith – The World Methodist Social Affirmation #886
We believe in God, creator of the world and of all people;
and in Jesus Christ, incarnate among us,
who died and rose again;
and in the Holy Spirit,
present with us to guide, strengthen, and comfort.
We believe;
God, help our unbelief.
We rejoice in every sign of God's Kingdom;
in the upholding of human dignity and community;
in every expression of love, justice and reconciliation;
in each act of self-giving on behalf of others;
in the abundance of God's gifts
entrusted to us that all may have enough;
in all responsible use of the earth's resources.
Glory be to God on high;
and on earth, be peace.
We confess our sin, individual and collective,
by silence or action:
through the violation of human dignity
based on race, class, age, sex, nation, or faith;
through the exploitation of people
because of greed and indifference
through the misuse of power
in personal, communal, national, and international life;
through the search for security
by those military and economic forces
that threaten human existence;
through the abuse of technology
which endangers the earth and all life upon it.
Lord, have mercy;
Christ, have mercy;
Lord, have mercy.
We commit ourselves individually and as a community
to the way of Christ:
to take up the cross;
to seek abundant life for all humanity;
to struggle for peace with justice and freedom;
to risk ourselves in faith, hope, and love,
praying that God's kingdom may come.
The kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.
Amen.
