To live in the world God created
Clare L. Hickman
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church
October 20, 2024--Proper 24B
Job 38:1-7, 34-41; Psalm 104:1-9, 25, 37b; Mark 10:35-45
“You have set the earth upon its foundations, so that it never shall move at any time.
You covered it with the Deep as with a mantle;
the waters stood higher than the mountains.
At your rebuke they fled; at the voice of your thunder they hastened away.
You set the limits that they should not pass;
they shall not again cover the earth” (Ps. 104:5-7,9).
Striking verses to hear, in the weeks following Hurricanes Helene and Milton …
when we have seen Ashville NC, said to be climate-proof, underwater
when we have seen tornadoes precede the storm surge, ravaging Florida
when hundreds of people have died, and countless homes destroyed
when there has been an estimated 50 BILLION dollars in damage
Striking verses to hear, in a world in which rising ocean temperatures
promise more and more violent storm seasons.
God has set the sea within its bounds
and God will never again send the waters to destroy us
We hear that in the stories of Creation and the Flood,
and echoed in today’s psalm
But it turns out that WE are still more than capable
of sending them after ourselves.
It’s not enough that God has sworn not to destroy us in this way
In the wake of yet another record-breaking storm season,
We must look to our own actions
our own responsibilities
our own place and role in this world
Reminded at Diocesan Convention that the first question in the Episcopal Catechism is:
What are we by nature?
the answer: We are part of God’s Creation, made in the image of God
We are part of God’s creation.
We live in God’s creation.
We are God’s creatures.
But as the Catechism goes on to note:
what it means to be made in God’s image is that we are free to make choices
We are free to make choices.
So we are God’s creatures,
but we are NOT God’s puppets!
We are free to love and share and create.
But we are also free to hoard, to dominate, and to destroy.
Our Creator has gifted us the ability
not only to cooperate with the ways of God’s kingdom,
but also,
should we choose,
to thumb our noses at them.
And then …
to bear the consequences,
to live in the world we have co-created in such a manner.
As it stands, that’s a world with fiercer winds,
higher storm surges,
worse droughts and more devastating floods.
Not to mention the pollution.
Not to mention the microplastics and forever chemicals
(in our products, in our oceans, in our blood)
We are free to make the choices
And then to bear the consequences
the consequences in the world around
and those when we come face to face with the One
whose World we have at best neglected, if not abused.
In that moment, remembering that while God gave us the task of co-creating the world,
the world is not actually OUR creation.
WE did not wrap ourselves in light and spread the heavens out like a curtain.
It was not me who laid the beams of heaven in the waters above.
Not you who made the clouds your chariot and rode on the wings of the wind.
And NONE of us set the earth upon its foundations. (Ps 104:2-3,5)
We live in God’s world.
In a Creation far beyond our capacity and our imagination….
Our job, in the midst of that, is an amazing privilege.
An honor … And a huge responsibility.
Our job is no more and no less than to live in this world
in such a way as reflects that reality
To live as though we KNOW that the world is God’s creation.
Our relationship with the rest of Creation is so complicated
In Genesis, it is generally translated that God gave us dominion over the earth
which post-industrial peoples have basically interpreted as:
we can take it and use it however we want
And again, we do have that ability
God gave us that much freedom
Which means we have to be our own guard rails
must pay attention to the fruits of our actions
and be guided by what we see:
does this look like the world God dreams of?
does it look like a world we are treating as GOD’s creation,
rather than our own possession?
Many have suggested that stewardship would be a better model than dominion:
the world is ours to care for …
to watch over …
to tend and aid in its thriving
I might also suggest a larger dose of AWE.
To ground ourselves in a sense of wonder
at the world’s beauty and its marvelous complexity.
A sense of fearful humility in the face of its power.
And a breathtaking concern at the ways in which it can be fragile.
Have you ever been handed something extremely precious
and thought to yourself, “Hoo, boy, I’d better be careful with THIS!’?
Like, for instance, a baby …
someone else’s, in which case there’s this innate extra caution
or your own, which, as it turns out, makes for the same caution
because a baby is not a possession
it’s not yours to neglect or abuse or be careless with
a baby is its own person
and it is God’s creation
it belongs, in fact, to God
It is so very precious
And in many ways, as it turns out, a baby is incredibly resilient
babies can handle a lot
But in other ways, if we are too careless,
or if we actually mistreat a child,
we can do terrible damage
This world is the same:
given into our care;
Ours to enjoy and explore;
a source of food and shelter and so many marvelous things!
But the world is not our possession
not ours to neglect and abuse and simply use up
And each and every day we stand in the presence of the One it truly belongs to
And what might that One say about the ways in which we have treated
His beautiful, powerful, and sometimes terrifying Creation
Each and every day,
we can see evidence of that treatment
evidence that God may have promised never again to destroy the earth with water
but we have the ability to break that balance
We have the ability to bring about greater and greater destruction
Unless we can relinquish the idea of dominion over the earth
which clearly turned out about as well as “don’t eat the fruit of that one tree”
and enter more deeply into awe
more fully into stewardship
Remembering that this world has been placed into our arms
like a baby:
resilient, fragile and precious
and it is ours, OURS, to care for.
Oh Bless the Lord, my soul.
May it be so, Amen