Sermon: "God's Earth Keepers"

Delivered August 20, 2006 by Rev. John Schmidt.

Theme: When God created the heavens and earth, He put us right in the center of this part of it and said, 'fill it, subdue it, rule it, care for it.' This creation that is good can be great! Care of creation is part of our responsibility as humans and as Christians.

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Sermon Notes are at the end.

God, we thank you for your word. We thank you for a few moments to think together about what it means to be your people in the creation that you have put us within. So open our minds and open our hearts, particularly speak through your word and anything that is said that does not honor your word and honor Jesus Christ, those are the things that we want you to take away and leave us with what glorifies him, for we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.

I grew up in the 1960s. I can't remember much of the 50s, but I do remember the 60s and that's a time a lot of people get all nostalgic about, because that was a time when family life seemed a little bit simpler. That was also a time that kids could get on their bicycles and ride through the neighborhood and play ball there and your whole life would be in your neighborhood so your parents didn't have four hours of commuting to drive the kids around to all the activities every afternoon. It was a time that it seemed like there was less problems with drugs. It seems like in general we felt safer.

But I don't get all nostalgic about that time because there were a lot of things that were wrong during that period. I can remember particularly the issue of litter. They had the big, "Don't Be a Litter Bug" campaign going on all over the nation and I can remember driving along and you would ride behind somebody and you would see cigarettes packs go out the window. Then a little while later you would see a cup fly out the window with ice in it and stuff like that. I can remember times when our windshield was covered with some liquid from a car in front of us that they were just tossing out the window as they went along. You would see on the side of the road all kinds of things. I remember driving through the Louisiana swamps when we were taking a ride together as a family and it seemed like every time you turned a corner on these beautiful rides with rivers and swamplands around you, you would find mattresses and refrigerators laying on the side of the road; all kinds of furniture and garbage. People just use any available place to collect furniture. Now I know that now we still have all kinds of trash on the street, but believe me at least in my opinion, it's a lot better than it used to be. And so some things have actually improved, because there is a greater sense of awareness about our impact on the environment.

Now I am glad that that change has happened. I am glad that we are more aware and more careful in some ways about our environment and I think God is glad too and that's what I would like to think about a little bit together as a congregation. God is glad when we take care of the environment around us and to do that I would like to begin with the very first verse in the entire bible. Genesis 1, Verse 1:

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." Right from the start of the scriptures we know that the environment that we are living in isn't an accident. It's not by chance and so that means that since it was created, it was created with a purpose by a God who has a purpose for creation. And if God created it, it means that he created it for his own pleasure. God has an intention for creation and that intention if it were fulfilled will please God and if it's not fulfilled it displeases God. That's all packed in to the meaning of God created the heavens and the earth. That also means that there is a right way to live in this creation and there's a wrong way; that there is clearly bad choices, choices that not only harm the environment or harm us, but choices that actually bother God, because it's not the way that he intended it to be.

It tells us something else. God created the heavens and the earth and that means that there is nothing inheritably sinful about material things, about physical things and that has a certain number of impacts on the church as well. This reminds us that creation is important. It reminds us that God doesn't make any sacred or secular distinctions; that all of creation is his, all things that happen in creation belong to God and so that also means that Christians can't talk about spiritual things as if spiritual things are the only important things. Yes they are extremely important, but it's not the only important thing. God is also pleased when we live in ways that in the material world, the physical world, honor him and respect him. So that's the first thing, God created the heavens and the earth.

I want to go to another passage that reminds us that the creator still owns the world, not us. It comes up in Psalm 24.

"The earth is the Lord's and everything in it; the world and all who live in it, for he founded it upon the seas and established it upon the waters."

Okay, this reminds us that God created everything, but it also says that the earth is the Lord's right now. So any conception that we have that God created things gave it over to us and has somehow distanced himself from creation is not biblical. God is still intimately involved in what happens in creation. He still sustains things. He still works through things. He still uses creation for his purposes of blessing and judgment. That's all still happening. The earth is the Lord's and everything in it. The creator owns the world, not us. So that leads us to the third point. Well, let me first do a quote. It comes from John Stott and it says this,

"It would be ludicrous to suppose that God first created the earth and then handed it over to us to be destroyed."

God created the earth. God owns it. God still owns it. God uses it and there is no intention at anytime ever-ever that God gave it over to us to tear it apart. It's no place in Christian theology. So that means that we are responsible to God in the way we use creation, so that means that we are stewards. We are managers of creation and we get that in Genesis 1, Verses 26 to 28.

"Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground." So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground."

God creates humanity in his image, so that means we have rationality, morality, spirituality, capacity for loving relationships, but it also means that we have a capacity for responsible stewardship, to manage things responsibly, to manage on behalf of an owner, to not only use creation, but to plan on how to use it, to care, to tend, to redirect, to reshape, to strengthen. These are all things that are in that idea of managing. And this is something that is commanded to us and so if God commanded this for us then it's a good thing. Creation that is good could have been great under humanity's management.

But instead we turn our backs on God and that is what we call the fall, where God has set up clear limits and said, "Don't do this. This is the one thing not to do, eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil", don't to that. All the other trees belong to you. We rebel against that and in that rebellion things start to get twisted. Creation isn't what it should be. We aren't what we should be. So we find ourselves in a situation where creation now works against us and then we on our side misuse creation. And so we get a rightful authority over creation, but it has now become something that has become an excuse for us to abuse, use up and destroy things.

Now it's easy to see evidence of stuff like this. No matter where we look we see frightening things now in the world that should concern us, really should. There are animals that have been used for food by people since the dawn of human history that are now being seriously depleted. It doesn't matter whether we are talking about oysters or cod or crabs or other kinds of animals, in every case there is a very real danger that we might kill off part of our food supply. That's a real problem.

Pollution is affecting cities all over the world. There is acid rain, greenhouse gases, agricultural run-off, mercury and heavy metals, lead in the pain, asbestos in the air, antibiotics in our meat and there are all kinds of other things that in the news. We hear about these things constantly. There are serious scientists that call out an alarm over the condition of rain forests, coral reefs, estuaries, lakes. We got Exxon Valdez, Bhopal and Chernobyl. All kinds of things have happened in the lifetimes of the people who are sitting here.

So that means that there are decisions that come our way. If we want to obey God in all of what he has commanded us to do it means that part of what we need to do is think about our environment, because there is all kinds of decisions we face. I mean, let's face it; everybody who sits here, everybody who lives in Maryland has some choices. Should we recycle? If we recycle, does it really matter or are they taking all this paper and just burying it somewhere? I mean that's a concern to go through all that trouble and nothing happens.

What about pollution? If God is making a new heaven and a new earth and we believe that, does it even matter to care for this creation? That's a question that Christians ask. There was a person in our congregation who talked to a relative and said, "How do you recycle here?" And they said, "Recycle, we don't recycle, because we are waiting for Jesus and the rapture." People really think that way, maybe you do as well. If God is creating something new, does it matter what we do right now? Are we taking energy away from something more important if we get all concerned about things like this? And I guess another concern that maybe a few people have is if you actually get involved in concern for the environment, does that make you a New Age whacko, you know? What does that mean for you theologically?

Part of Christian stewardship is fighting a selfish way of using creation, to rule for creation's good and for everyone's good and to manage the resources that we have for all humanity. So that means that as Christians we really have a two-fold mandate from God. We have an evangelistic mandate where we are supposed to understand something about Jesus Christ and live it out and proclaim it to other people. That is called the evangelistic mandate. But we also have a mandate to live as a transforming presence inside of whatever society we are a part of. And that means to be a transforming presence in science, in politics, in social services, in all of what our society is, because there is nothing in all creation that doesn't interest God. God is intensely interested in all things. Abraham Keifer said this,

"There is not one square inch of the entire creation about which Jesus Christ does not cry out, this is mine."

So the creation that we are using right now is something that Jesus cries out, this is mine. Your garden is God's. The trash dump is God's. The lakes are God's. All of creation is something that Jesus Christ is drawing together under his lordship and we have to remember that as we live out right now as God's people.

Now as we try to get involved in caring for the environment that God has put us in, we actually fulfill both mandates, the evangelistic and the cultural. For example, there is a church in Idaho that did some bags, some cloth bags that people could reuse when they went to the shopping center so they wouldn't have to use the plastic bags every time and they were standing in line with two or three bags in their hands that said the church's name on it and somebody came up and said, "Why do you have these bags?" They explained why they had it and that the church sold them and they said, "Well you are not supposed to be interested in this, because you are Christians." The assumption being that Christians can't be interested in the environment. They are the warriors against the environment. That's the impression that many people have of us. And so that became an opportunity for these people to actually share the gospel right there in a grocery line.

Another time a church was going around trying to collect cell phones for Katrina victims and so they figured if they collected some old cell phones they could sell them for $2.00 each and then send all that money down to New Orleans or the to Gulf Coast. And they put little door hangers to say this is what we are doing and this is why we are doing it. It gets rid of a form of trash that is hard to get rid off. It recycles it. It then provides for people down in Louisiana and Mississippi. That's a great thing. Well when they went back to collect the cell phones, they had better conversations with people about Jesus Christ than in any other thing they had done as a church. Again, because people were surprised at their interest. So this even provides evangelistic opportunities if we are careful about what we do.

So what can we do? Let me just go over a few things real quickly. We've got to learn things. We've got to learn what scripture says about the environment. If you can't pick off four or five verses that talk about how we should respond to creation, because God has created it. We ought to learn that. We ought to understand a biblical perspective on this. We also need to understand our context; the Chesapeake Bay, that is stuff we can learn about; green space in cities, coal, agricultural chemicals, invasive spaces, any kinds of things like that. It doesn't matter even which ones. We need to just be learning and not just say that it's not important, because it's not spiritual or it's not important because it's hard. We also can do little things like reusing things and recycling things. There are all kinds of suggestions out there. I don't have to make those suggestions. We can support ecological causes. We can speak out on issues. We can face some of the bigger choices eventually that affect our houses, our cars and things like that. There are all kinds of levels we can respond. But what I am trying to say today is that it is a spiritual issue, because spiritual and physical are tied together. It's part of our beings. It's part of our stewardship that God has entrusted to us as his people.

A long time ago my grandfather bought me a car. He saved up. He bought a used car. He put it in his backyard. He fixed it up. He cleaned it up and he gave it to me. And as I was thinking about this particular message, I thought about him and I thought about what his attitude must have been when after he saved up, fixed the car, cleaned the car and gave the car to me. When he saw a few weeks later me drive in to the driveway about waist deep in candy wrappers and old hamburger bags and things like that. And when he had to constantly remind me, it's time to change the oil. Have you checked your tires, because I wasn't yet motivated to care for all of these things myself. What must his emotions been as he saw me trash what he had given to me? I think sometimes God feels that way about us as he watches us trash what he has given to us. He put us right in the center of a good creation. He created the heavens and earth, put us in the middle and he said, "fill it, so do it, rule it, care for it. This creation is good and it can be great" and as a human race we haven't cared for what God has given and that hurts us and that hurts other people. It hurts creation itself and it disrespects God. And so, what I feel is that the church has to do better than that. As Christians when it comes to caring for the creation that God has given us, we at least have to try.

Let's pray. God, as we just think about this issue that we don't often think about and doesn't seem to be nearly as pressing, we do at least pray that we might have a biblical understanding of what our response should be. So help us, help us to learn more from your scripture and then whatever way is possible to begin to respond to what you teach us. For we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Sermon Outline Notes:

Texts: Genesis 1:1, Genesis 1:26-28, Psalms 24:1-2

• God created heaven and earth.
• The Creator owns the world, not us.
• We are stewards (managers)
• We have a two-fold mandate as God's people:
• Evangelistic mandate
• Cultural mandate
• "It would be ludicrous to suppose that God first created the earth and then handed it over to us to be destroyed." John Stott
• There is not one square inch of the entire creation about which Jesus Christ does not cry out "this is mine!" Abraham Kuyper
• How we can respond:
• Learn
• Start with little things
• Support ecological causes
• Speak out on the issues
• Face the bigger choices

© 2006, Rev. John Schmidt
Central Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD 21204 410/823-6145
www.centralpc.org