Genesis 1:1-2:4a
Psalm 8
In the beginning when God created the heavens
and the earth, the green growth and the swimming fish, the soaring birds and
the running animals, humans foraged in the light and slept in the dark. They pulled fruit from the trees and fish
from the streams and captured the birds of the air and killed the beasts of the
land. And the flesh became food, and the
hide became cloth, and the living things on the land became tools. And
God looked down from heaven and saw it was Good. It was the first generation.
In this very first chapter of the very
first book in our Bible, we recite our narrative of how we came to be. How we humans, and the earth came to
co-exist. God, the Creator, seemed to be
in a good mood and went to work, breathing things into existence as the Holy
Ruach, the Holy Wind from God, swept across the waters. (If something feels missing… if you are looking for some additional
details, something more human-focused, perhaps something involving a rib and a
garden of paradise… that’s the other
creation story, the second one, which comes right after this one, starting in
Genesis 2:4.) Here, we recite the making of the world in 7 days. The creation
of something from nothing. The
transformation of chaos and darkness into meaningfulness and light. And God
proclaims it good. God’s first
pronouncement is the creation is good.
The goodness here is not an aesthetic or ethical proclamation about the
nature of light; God is not admiring the beauty of the morning sunrise, or
arguing that his creation is righteous and ethical in judgment; rather, God
proclaims it to be of good value. Of good worth. Of good use.
Goodness concerns the use to which it can be put for God’s intention –
it is of good purpose.
And in the second generation, when humans made
stronger tools, they captured the beasts for burden, and raised the fowl for
food, and tilled the land and cultivated the living things. They created homesteads and formed
communities that shared both labor and the fruits of that labor. And God looked down from heaven and saw it was Subsistence.
This scripture reciting the creation
story defines relationship. One clue to
God’s purpose is that in this text we are given an image of God’s own spirit, the Ruach, entering into a relationship with the the waters and the darkness – the
manifestations of chaos and, by entering into them – breathing on them, molding
them, shaping them, God is transforming them into a heaven and earth and an
ordered reality in which all things can thrive.
God is the Creator, the author of all things – the author of all
relationships. Heaven and Earth are related. Light and dark have a relationship. The waters, the earth, the plants, the animals, the birds, the fish, and
us; all these things are related, through God, the divine author.
And God says to the human, be fruitful
and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it, and gives humans dominion. Dominion – sovereignty over all things. Dominion, defined in the dictionary as the "Power to direct, control, use and
dispose of at pleasure; right of possession and use without being accountable;
as the private dominion of individuals." This creates not only a new order but also
a new reality.
In the third generation, when humans explored
the world, they found acres of forests, and mines of metals, and deposits of
oil and coal and stone. And they harvested
the forests, and coopted the copper and nickel and gold, and hauled the stone
for building, and burned the fuel, and laid strong foundations. And God looked
down from heaven and saw it was Industrious.
And in the fourth generation, when humans tamed
vast acres of land, and mass produced the animals, and built great structures,
and invented many engines, and transported their goods, and manipulated all
things for their productivity, God looked down from heaven and saw that it was Plentiful.
And in the fifth generation, when humans
consumed more goods than they needed, and drove their cars all the time, and
mass-produced everything so it could be made cheaper, faster and with more
abundance, and plastics began to be used to make everything packaged and
portable and disposable – everything from individual on-the-go yoghurt to miniature
water bottles to plastic bath sponges to disposable dental picks – when all
these things, in no way reusable or biodegradable, elevated convenience and
impermanence and now go into the trash, and humans amassed giant swaths of
landfills… God
looked down from heaven and saw that it was Easy.
And in the sixth generation, when humans saw
the destruction at their fingertips; when they saw the depletion of the Ozone
layer, and the clear-cutting of jungle forests, and the erosion of the soil,
and the extinction of the beasts of prey, and levels of pollution causing toxic
algea blooms in our rivers and ocean’s shores, and sea creatures disfigured
while miles and miles of floating trash collects where the ocean currents meet,
and wash up on the shore of developing nations; and glaciers melting so fast
that polar bears can’t find ice to float on to hunt for food; and weather
patterns so extreme that we a experience a frequency of tornadoes, devastating
forest fires, and then mudslides; powerful hurricanes, and repeated droughts
and floods that create havoc in the systems we are so proud of. And yet we keep digging, and drilling, and
fracking, and producing, and buying, and consuming, and deny-ing the
implications…
And God looked down from Heaven. And God saw Greed.
During
my recent visit to the Black Hills and the Nebraska Sandhills, I got caught in
a discussion about climate change with a man you might call a skeptic. This man owned land in the Sandhills, and
lives in close relationship to the land – much closer than I ever have. His land – which holds the remains of ancient
sea creatures – is cattle pasture for Black Angus Cows. It’s covered with the remains of burnt trees,
because in 2012 a fire burned so strong that they were forced to evacuate their
home. He said he’s lived through earthquakes
that will swallow up earth as if it was never there. His recognition of the power of nature, which
he sees every day of his life, leads him to both be skeptical that anything
humans do could make any difference, and to be antagonistic toward the urban
populations who are by far bigger producers of carbon dioxide that he
himself. He referenced how one eruption
from the geyser beneath Yellowstone would eradicate any need to measure human
impact.
Through
our conversation, I began to understand some of the differing opinions on
climate change. The question is not whether the climate is changing, it is at
what rate, how humans are involved. Have
we accelerated it? Is it even possible to slow it down? Faced with the magnificence of God’s
creation, what are we humans in comparison?
The
Psalmist seemed to share this view. He
says, O LORD, how majestic is your name in all the earth! …When I look at your heavens, the work of your
fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; 4 what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you
care for them? 5 Yet you have made them
a little lower than God, and given them dominion over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under their feet, 7
all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, 8 the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea,
whatever passes along the paths of the seas.
And yet, God pronounced it good – to be of good purpose, to be of good use. And we turned it into good use, and then we turned it into profit, and then we turned it into excess, and then we turned it into waste. If indeed God gave us charge to care for all creation, to care for the earth – God certainly gave us charge to care for each other. And that’s the thing about climate change – whether there is disagreement on how it happens, how fast it’s going, or how much we will be able to fix it – what can’t be questioned is who will be effected. The people who will be most affected by climate change is not you and me. It is not the relatively wealthy, safe and privileged people living comfortably in the middle of the wealthiest country in the world.
And yet, God pronounced it good – to be of good purpose, to be of good use. And we turned it into good use, and then we turned it into profit, and then we turned it into excess, and then we turned it into waste. If indeed God gave us charge to care for all creation, to care for the earth – God certainly gave us charge to care for each other. And that’s the thing about climate change – whether there is disagreement on how it happens, how fast it’s going, or how much we will be able to fix it – what can’t be questioned is who will be effected. The people who will be most affected by climate change is not you and me. It is not the relatively wealthy, safe and privileged people living comfortably in the middle of the wealthiest country in the world.
It’s
everyone else. The rising seas, extreme
weather, gale force winds, extra-powerful hurricanes, droughts and floods and
famines that are already happening and are likely to only increase may not
impact us in our lifetimes. No, those
things will impact the people of Haiti. It will crush the poverty-encrusted islands in
the Caribbean and the developing countries in Latin America. It will further
cripple the drought-laden people of Africa.
It will swallow up Pacific Islanders with rising seas. In fact, the island nation of Kiribati – 33
coral reef Islands holding 110,000 people - is already planning the demise of
its nation within the next 35 years.
At the
Annual Meeting of the Nebraska Conference this weekend, Reverend John Dorhauer,
the General Minister and President of the United Church of Christ, called
Climate Change “the justice issue to end all justice issues.” We won’t be asked to support women’s
empowerment, or help get medical care to rural Africans, or bring teachers
to Malawi when the seas and storms, and lack of food and water have taken their
effect. As the nation with the longest
history of the heaviest pollution, we will have comfortably shifted the
implications of our dominion of the world onto the people of the world who are
least equipped to fight it.
And in
the seventh generation, when the people of all nations came together to try
recover the goodness of their dominion over the earth, the most powerful nation
on God’s creation refused to cooperate in their own redemption. With fear that other nations were applauding
our demise – when in fact they were applauding the noble intent to care for
other nations - the President of the most powerful nation in the world turned
away. And God looked down from heaven,
and saw Ego.
In the
words of Reverend Penny Greer, a Nebraska conference attendee who studies
geology on the side, we are now living in a Grand Experiment. There’s no question that climate change is
happening, or that it has always happened through millennia. It’s the fact that changes that used to be
measured in geologic time – measured in rock sediment formed over thousands of
years – is now happening in historical time – in a way that the human mind can
measure it and record it. And no one
knows what will happen next.
I wonder if God met us today, would God still
grant us dominion over his precious and good creation?
