Meditation on Genesis 2:4b-10, 15
First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown, NY
Pastor Karen Crawford
April 21, 2024
Creation Care Sunday
We hosted a funeral at the church yesterday. The service was not for a member but for someone with Smithtown family connections. Everything went smoothly. Special thanks to our volunteers who helped behind the scenes!
After the funeral, I felt so happy that God had used me, relieved that the family, whom I had never met before yesterday except on the phone and on Zoom, was pleased, blessed, and grateful. But also, I was tired, after pouring myself into this very important aspect of our ministry together.
Today, I want to share with you how God always ministers to me after I minister to grieving families with funerals that we Presbyterians call “services to witness to the resurrection.”
The Lord draws me outside to breathe the air. I always take a walk, though it might be a short one, as it was yesterday, just around our yard. I admire all that is growing around me, and in my mind, I begin planning for the new thing that I will add to the garden. This has been my tradition since the pandemic—to plant a new flower, shrub, or tree after every funeral, to truly witness to the resurrection and bring new life into the world.
Yesterday, when the sun came out after the rain, I dreamed of the flowers and vegetables that I started from seed in the house and hope to plant this summer. I ordered some more coneflower seeds, as well—mixed colors—and a deep blue perennial salvia to plant with my scarlet red variety.
I can’t put into words the joy, comfort, and spiritual and emotional lifting up that I experience whenever my hands are in the soil with green growing things. I feel a closeness to the Lord God, our Creator, who formed the first human being— adam in Hebrew—in God’s own image, from the dust of the earth or adamah—and breathed God’s own Spirit—ruach—into his nostrils.
In today’s passage in Genesis chapter 2, we learn that the first job given to human beings in the Creation story is to be tillers and “keepers” of the Garden, with a capital G. The root of the Hebrew word for “keeper” is shamar. Shamar means keep, guard, preserve, protect, watch over, observe, treasure, retain, and wait for.
This word, shamar, is the same word Cain uses in Genesis 4 when God confronts him after he attacks and kills his brother in the field. “Where is your brother Abel?” God asks. “I don’t know,” Cain replies. “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
God doesn’t answer that question—and of course, we all know the answer. Yes, we are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers—shamar. To guard, preserve, protect, watch over, observe, treasure, retain, and wait for.
So, alongside today’s passage in Genesis 2, we read that we are keepers of all our human neighbors and keepers of all that God created and entrusted to us, for as long as we live on the earth.
On this day that we celebrate the gift of God’s Creation and remember our calling to care for our home that we share with every generation, I invite you to think about and pray for our beautiful yet fragile earth. What we might do as a church to be better stewards of that which the Lord has entrusted to us?
Prayer is powerful! Prayer will help bring about change! Prayer will open our hearts and minds to hear from the Holy Spirit and will lead to our transformation and our transforming work, right here in our community.
What has really convicted me of late is the problem of plastic pollution and how my buying products in plastic containers or wrapped in hard or soft plastic is adding to the problem. It seems so out of our control—so many products come in plastic!
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in its “Guide to Plastic in the Ocean,” [1] says it’s a problem that we can do something about it. The top 10 items of trash picked up in the ocean in 2017 were “food wrappers, beverage bottles, grocery bags, straws, and take out containers, all made of plastic.” [2] Scientists think that about 8 million metric tons of plastic entered the oceans in 2010. That’s the weight of nearly 90 aircraft carriers, and that was 14 years ago! The problem continues to grow. [3]
Unlike some other kinds of waste, plastic doesn’t decompose. It doesn’t break down or go away. (It) can stick around indefinitely, wreaking havoc on marine ecosystems. We have all seen pictures of wildlife entangled and trapped in plastic that makes its way to our oceans.
And, “as the plastic is tossed around, much of it breaks into tiny pieces, called microplastics… These fibers, beads, and microplastic fragments can all absorb harmful pollutants like pesticides, dyes, and flame retardants, only to later release them in the ocean.” [4]
We are urged to reduce our use of plastics, to reuse and recycle as much as possible, and to participate in a marine litter clean up in or near our community.
When I started the Doctor of Ministry program with Austin Seminary two years ago, I didn’t realize how passionate was my concern for God’s world, and that it truly is my faith that stirs my heart to compassion and love for all God’s creatures. I say that because not everyone who observes Earth Day, for example, is a Christian. This makes sense because the one thing we share with the diversity of people around the world is this planet we call home.
But I was surprised to learn through my reading that not all Christians are concerned for the earth and all that lives in it. Some have been taught that certain scriptures support the view that it doesn’t matter what happens to our world, it doesn’t matter how we treat the earth and its inhabitants, because our world is passing away! Some say that human destruction of the world might even hasten Christ’s return! He will come again and take us away from all our problems, many that we created. Loss of habitats for wildlife; extinction of native animals and plants; pollution of the air, water, and soil—they claim that none of these will matter, when we all get to heaven.
Christianity, itself, as it is lived out in the West, may be a root cause of our ecological crisis. This is according to Lynn White, a medieval historian, who wrote in 1967 that Christianity is the most anthropocentric or human centered religion the world has ever seen. Church Fathers, as early as the Second Century, have taught that human beings share, “in great measure, God’s transcendence of nature. Christianity, in contrast to (many other ancient religions) not only established a dualism of man and nature but also insisted that it is God’s will that man exploit nature for his proper ends.”
White believed that what we do about ecology depends on what we believe is the relationship between human beings and nature. He held up for our example someone whom he called the “greatest spiritual revolutionary in Western history”—Saint Francis of Assisi. [5] He praised his belief in the virtue of humility” [6]not just for individuals but for all people. Francis attempted to present an alternative Christian view of nature and humanity’s relation to it; he tried to substitute the idea of the equality of all creatures, including human beings, for the idea of humanity’s “limitless rule of creation.” [7] He tried, and he failed, at least he did in the 13th century, and was branded a heretic.
I believe that the way we live our lives—the way we treat ourselves, one another, all our neighbors and our world—reflects our belief in our connection to one another and all living creatures through Jesus Christ. Our liturgist read today in Colossians chapter 1, “for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him.He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” That phrase, “all things,” comes up again in 1:20 when we read how Christ’s suffering work wasn’t just to bring peace with God and human beings. “Through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.”
Stirred by the convictions of my faith, I asked our Session if the Confirmation class and I could host a speaker from Sweetbriar Nature Center after worship today. Sweetbriar serves our community by helping sick and injured wildlife and seeking to release them, when possible, back into the wild. Those who cannot be released because they would not be able to survive are cared for indefinitely by mostly volunteers at the center.
I am looking forward to the live animal program called, “Caring for Wildlife.” I hope that it will give us answers to the question, “What can we do to help wildlife in need?”
Thank you to all who bought our little succulents planted in church anniversary mugs. Thank you to Betty Deerfield and Peg Holthusen for helping us! We have a few more plants available. So far, we have raised more than $500 to help Sweetbriar and our church family in our labor of love…
Love for all creatures, that is. Human and nonhuman. All creatures, great and small.
Will you pray with me?
Let us pray.
God, our Creator of the world and all that is in it, thank you for your love for all creatures, including human beings. We praise you for our calling as Christ’s followers to care for one another and show your love and grace to all our neighbors. Reveal to us what we might be able to do as a church to be better stewards of the world you have entrusted to us. Forgive us when we haven’t paid enough attention to our daily habits, when we have thought and acted more like consumers than good stewards of your wonderful Creation. Transform our hearts and minds and the hearts and minds of all human beings so that we may understand our connection to the world around us in Jesus Christ. Help us to live as if we are equal to and not superior to plants and animals, all things in heaven and on earth, all that you have created in, with, through, and for your Son. Remind us often that your world was not given to us simply to satisfy human desires and exploit for our own purposes. Teach us how to be tillers and keepers, dear Lord. Keepers of the Garden with a capital G. Lead us to guard, preserve, protect, watch over, observe, treasure, retain, and wait for all creatures, great and small. Amen.
[1] https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/hazards/marinedebris/plastics-in-the-ocean.html
[2] https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/hazards/marinedebris/plastics-in-the-ocean.html
[3] https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/hazards/marinedebris/plastics-in-the-ocean.html
[4] https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/hazards/marinedebris/plastics-in-the-ocean.html
[5] Lynn White, “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis”in Science (V. 155, No. 3767, March 10, 1967), 1203-1207.