Scripture Text
Genesis 1:26-31
Psalm 24
Philippians 2:5-11
Sermon
There once was a three-year-old girl who was the firstborn and only child in her family. Her mother, however, was pregnant, and the little girl was very excited about having a new little brother or sister. Within a few hours of her parents bringing a new baby boy home from the hospital, the little girl made a request: she wanted to be alone with her new brother in his room with the door closed. Her insistence about being alone with the baby with the door shut made her parents a bit uneasy, but then they remembered that they had installed an intercom system in anticipation of the baby’s arrival. They realized they could let their daughter do this, and if they heard the slightest indication that anything strange was happening, they could be in the baby’s room in an instant.
So they let the little girl go into the baby’s room, shut the door, and raced to the intercom listening station. They heard their daughter’s footsteps moving across the baby’s room, imagined her standing over the baby’s crib, and then they heard her saying to her three-day-old brother, "Tell me about God – I’ve almost forgotten."
This story is told by Marcus Borg in his book, The Heart of Christianity. He goes on to say:
"The story is both haunting and evocative, for it suggests that we come from God, and that when we are very young, we still remember this, still know this. But the process of growing up, of learning about this world, is a process of increasingly forgetting the one from whom we came and in whom we live."
"Tell me about God – I’ve almost forgotten." Since reading that story that line has stuck in my head, perhaps because as a new father I have in the last year spent long moments standing over my son’s crib, gazing down at the tiny miracle sleeping there. I’ve also spent time watching him gaze up at the immense bright blue sky in complete and utter bewilderment. I’ve seen him immersed in sheer wonder as he clenched sand between his toes and felt the tiny remnants of the ocean’s waves tickling his legs. I watched his expression change to a mixture of excitement and fear as we all ventured out to the breakers. I’ve seen the peace of deep, contented sleep and the unbridled joy of seeing new people or new animals. I’ve marveled at his fascination with simple things, like leaves on trees, raindrops clinging to windows, or the shape the sunlight coming through the window makes on the floor. I’ve actually caught myself thinking, "He’s just a baby. He hasn’t learned yet that these are just ordinary things." But then again, maybe I’ve forgotten that all these things are really wonderful, marvelous, extraordinary gifts from God. What I really should be saying to my son is, "Teach me about God. I have forgotten."
What I’ve forgotten, and what we all forget, is our smallness, our helplessness, and our complete dependence upon God. We get so preoccupied with ourselves, with the decisions we make, and with our own plans that we immunize ourselves against the wonder, glory, and mystery of God’s creation. We barely notice the clouds floating in a tranquil blue sky or the spider’s web adorned with gems of morning dew. Frost in the yard comes and goes. Flowers burst forth from the fields and then wither. We fail to notice as we proceed through the seasons of the year with an almost mechanical consistency, merely content to pass through the warmth of summer or the snows of winter as fast as we can. We maintain climate-controlled buffers of seventy-two degree comfort, encasing ourselves in artificial, non-threatening environments that shelter us from nature’s extremes.
We are so good at maintaining the illusion that we control our own surroundings that we lose our connection with God’s providence. We are so accustomed to thinking that "natural" is only a label in a supermarket, so used to the bounty of nature arranged in piles on store shelves, that we never think about the mystery and wonder of God’s creation. We grow up learning how to be better and better consumers, and at some point it becomes apparent to us that just about everything can be bought and sold as commodity. The result of all this is that we miss the experience of awe, reverence, and wonder for the world in which we live. We fail to see the connection between creation and its Creator, divorcing God from God’s world. We forget that out of grace and love God caused all of this - and all of us - to be.
Have you ever looked at yourself in the mirror or studied the lines on the palm of your hand and simply allowed yourself to be overwhelmed by the wonderful mystery that God created you? Have you ever tried to find your place in the world – not by road maps or directions from the internet – but instead by your identity as a created being in a world full of God’s glory and splendor? It’s easy to read the Genesis creation narrative in the same way that we read our calendars or day-planners. Yet, the story of creation is not a mere schedule of daily events. It is how God’s relationship with us begins. It’s how we begin. Genesis 1 preserves what we so often overlook, namely that God is the foundation of all that is (including us). God created everything we know by God’s own gracious word. God spoke, and it was so. Light and darkness, deep waters and high mountains, deserts and plains, lush rain forests and rocky crags, sun, moon, and stars, creeping things and wild animals, living beings of every kind, you, me, and all of us – all were brought forth by God’s grace. As such, we and the entire world in which we live bear a fundamental connection with the Creator.
What this means for us is that when we forget that connection, when we fall into the habit of assuming that the world was created for us and is owned by us, we neglect the most fundamental part of who we were created to be. While it’s true that we human beings are given a special place in God’s creation, there is a certain responsibility that comes with our unique identity. We are the only living things capable of preserving and maintaining a sense of awe, wonder, and reverence for the created world. We are the only creatures on the planet that can connect our adoration and praise for the Creator with reverence and care for the creation.
Our uniqueness in being given "dominion" or "lordship" over God’s earth also carries with it a responsibility to connect our lordship with our Lord. It is God-with-us in Jesus Christ who teaches us that true lordship means serving another with love. It is He who loved outcasts and sinners simply because they were children of the Creator. As scripture tells us, it was He, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave. And yes, having dominion over the earth means carrying the responsibility of loving the created world with His love, serving it with His humility, and caring for it with his mercy and compassion. It is not enough for us to simply love the neighbor. We must also love the world and all that is in it simply because it was created by God and belongs to God alone.
So much in our culture will entice us to view the earth and its resources as just one more commodity to be consumed without limitations. Yet, it is clear that we cannot persist in that mindset, or else we place ourselves on a path toward the desecration of God’s world rather than reverence for it. We run the risk of becoming undertakers instead of caretakers, lords of a dying or even dead world. Worse yet, we may very well be the agents of our own destruction. While the human population of the world increases exponentially, the earth’s resources are being overused, overtaxed, and over-polluted on global, local, and personal levels. A cycle of entitlement persists in our culture, where the convenience of running water, working electricity, curbside trash pick-up, and one-vehicle-per-person have led us to believe that we are entitled to use or consume these things without limit. The problem with this is that it turns God’s creation into our warehouse. It places us, not God, at the center of creation. We ultimately become insatiable consumers instead of loving stewards.
I realize that this troubling news is not really news anymore. We’ve all heard the grim statistics and dire predictions over and over again. Obviously, we need something other than warnings to help us change our sinful behaviors in relationship to our home planet. I would suggest to you that any change in our behavior begins with confession. We must humble ourselves, recognizing our complicity in damaging God’s creation. We must also ask forgiveness, seeking God’s direction in our stewardship of our natural resources, and finally, we must remember God. Lying within our deepest roots as Christian believers is a formidable truth: Creation remains intimately connected to the loving Creator. It is a truth that governs everything we do on earth. I realize that the water coming out of the faucet seems like a commodity. After all, I paid for it and it is delivered to me at a precise 2.1 gallons per minute. But the fact remains that the water coming from the faucet is the same water that God spoke into being. The heap of dirt at the local landfill is the same dry land that God separated from the deep waters. The air becoming saturated with emissions from my car is the same air that God breathed into the nostrils of the first living creatures.
I think we’ve almost forgotten the deep truth that creation is inseparable from the Creator. As time goes by we may forget completely the One to whom we and this world belong, and the consequences of our forgetfulness will likely be severe. Of course, it’s not too late to remember. It’s not too late to practice reverence for God’s creation by doing things like recycling, using less water and electricity, conserving water, consuming less gasoline, and reducing our carbon dioxide emissions. It’s not too late to remember our place in creation, or that our pattern for dominion is found in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It’s not too late to respond to God’s creative grace with our wonder, our reverence, and our love.
God be praised. It’s not too late.
Amen.