![Picture](/uploads/5/3/1/4/53145165/published/img-20161019-110835736.jpg?1510082066)
A sermon offered by Peter JB Carman
Emmanuel Friedens Church, Schenectady New York
October 8, 2017
Psalm 19 NRSV adapted
19:1 The heavens are telling the glory of God;
and the firmament proclaims God’s handiwork.
19:2 Day to day pours forth speech,
and night to night declares knowledge.
19:3 There is no speech, nor are there words;
their voice is not heard;
19:4 yet their voice goes out through all the earth,
and their words to the end of the world.
In the heavens God has set a tent for the sun,
19:5 which comes out like a bridegroom from his wedding canopy,
And, like a strong person, runs its course with joy.
19:6 Its rising is from the end of the heavens,
and its circuit to the end of them;
and nothing is hid from its heat.
19:7 The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul;
the decrees of the LORD are sure, making wise the simple;
19:8 the precepts of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart;
the commandment of the LORD is clear, enlightening the eyes;
19:9 the fear of the LORD is pure, enduring forever;
the ordinances of the LORD are true and righteous altogether.
19:10 More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold;
sweeter also than honey, and drippings of the honeycomb.
19:11 Moreover by them is your servant warned;
in keeping them there is great reward.
19:12 But who can detect their errors?
Clear me from hidden faults.
19:13 Keep back your servant also from the insolent;
do not let them have dominion over me.
Then I shall be blameless, and innocent of great transgression.
19:14 Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
be acceptable to you, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer.
I.
I watched Seneca the young dog in the woods, feeling a forest new to her. She was all nerves and muscle, utterly at attention to every sound, every scent on the wind. She was all twitch and information and joy, this dog: attuned to the trees and the squirrels, the birds and the breeze. She made us look around. Her body, her bearing testified to God’s Word from the Creation story: This indeed was “very good.”
Our reading from the psalm this morning also makes us look around. We honor God’s creation, and we reflect on our relationship both with our maker and with the rest of creation; celebrating what is good, grieving and seeking for the restoration of that which is broken by how we relate to the natural world around us.
The ancient peoples believed there was an order, a balance in creation that must be respected. The poets and prophets and writers who composed what we refer to as Hebrew scripture shared this conviction. They perceived that God given order and beauty were written into creation itself.
The last six hundred years have created a crisis in that understanding. The colonizing powers of Europe and Britain and their North American emissaries picked up on one verse in Genesis, (God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.” Gn 1:28). The official state churches and others anxious to please their masters pushed the belief that they had a special divine appointment to do as they pleased with nature. They claimed license to subjugate in the name of subduing and in the name of God. They ignored the fact that the Hebrew—and even the King James Bible-- also called upon the first humans to replenish the earth.
Scripture is full of stories and songs that reflect the beauty of nature and the power of the maker that nature reveals. From Mount Zion, the sacred temple topped hill in the heart of Jerusalem, the psalmist looks out on the lovely world the creator has made, noticing the swallow that makes its home in a sacred house nonetheless built by human hands. In another psalm we are reminded of the One who waters the earth, who brings up new life where the wheel has ground into the earth, whose river provides water for the grain on which we humans depend for food.
“You crown the year with your bounty; your wagon tracks overflow with richness.
The pastures of the wilderness overflow, the hills gird themselves with joy,
the meadows clothe themselves with flocks, the valleys deck themselves with grain,
they shout and sing together for joy.” Ps 65:11-13 ESV
II.
For much of the last several centuries, western “civilization” has granted those with power almost unlimited permission to dominate, destroy, violate and “subdue” the earth—justifying the exploitation of God’s green goodness and living creatures. With the same sweeping hand, they justified enslavement and destruction of indigenous peoples, claiming divine appointment to do so, as though it were the will of a lawless and vengeful God. They used one verse in the creation story in Genesis to rationalize this exploitation. And they ignored a thousand other verses that tell us every human life is precious, and God’s justice is written into the sea and skies, and into every sacred herb and seed.
In recent times, we have started to see the terrible damage we are doing. We have taken the creator’s name in vain, citing biblical texts to make it ok to heat up the atmosphere, poison the waters, and make the air increasingly unbreathable.
We know the cost of claiming the right to do anything to the land, even if we don’t want to see. Surely pumping chemicals into the ground, and pumping particles of carbon and greenhouse gases galore into the atmosphere are part of a madness we too need to resist. Pumping crude oil across ancestral lands and risking the drinking water of local people is one way we have seen it recently in this land. Pumping chemicals from the factory into the air and groundwater is the way they have experienced it in Hoosick New York, where I went last week to the installation of a new pastor.
And yet some church leaders have even recently claimed that certain politicians were divinely chosen, and not subject to any criticism. They still talk as though we can do anything to the soil, the air, the water, with impunity. Some folks will say anything to please their masters. And some people will believe anything.
III.
How are we to live out the Psalms, and follow the teachings of Jesus about loving our neighbors—not destroying them? In the fall of 2013, I spent several days with Lynn in Connecticut, attending a series of lectures by one of the finest preachers in the US these days, Robin Meyers, of Oklahoma City. Robin reminded us that Christian Faith is a matter of resistance—learning together to resist the power of the ego; to resist the temptation to reduce faith to Orthodoxy; and last but surely not least, resistance to the political and cultural and economic empire in which we dwell.
The same conviction was reflected this past summer for me by a humble man you will never have heard of, a man named Eleazar Encino. Eleazar is an indigenous church leader from Chiapas Mexico, whom I am pleased to claim as a friend. I listened to Eleazar talking about his community’s experience of the incursion of European and North American mining companies, there in Chiapas, with the blessing and support of a Mexican government. Eleazar’s world, enslaved by the Spanish, and in more recent years exploited by their successors, experiences the hard edge of “progress”. Progress has left them high and dry, young women taken for human trafficking, ancestral land and homes left impoverished. They experience this invading presence as a faceless monster. They too must learn to embrace a faith that comes from God, not the Spanish, not the North Americans, faith that gives them strength to resist these powers, this faceless incursion.
Often, the most acute violations of nature’s laws and human rights take place in communities that are most vulnerable, in the US just as much as in Chiapas Mexico.
IV.
There is a sacred ground we need to find, that is necessary if we are to find the will to change or resist anything at all! There is something basic about remembering our place in this amazing gorgeous wild and unpredictable earth that God has made.
Unless we rediscover our place in this lovely creation, remember our utter dependence on this living gracious God who made us, and our dependence on all that is around us, we will continue to live in warped relationships with creation, with God, with our neighbors.
False ego says that we are the beginning and the end, the whole purpose for the world around us to be made.
Faith says that we are but parts of a bigger picture, an emerging love affair of the Divine Spirit with a gorgeous amazing world.
False Orthodoxy says that we are made to dominate, made to control, made to exploit “natural resources”- the word “resources” itself betrays a mindset that says it all exists only to be used.
Faith says that God made this beautiful earth, this sky, this universe, not for our exploitation, but because it is good—Faith invites us into a new kind of relationship that gives thanks, and adopts a caring stewardship, and gives back to that from which we are made.
A false Empire tells us, in glossy language and reassuring tones, that huge profits and unbridled industry must be fed, even at the expense of little people and little farms, lovely forests, little animals and even a little breathing.
Faith says that real power belongs first to God, and that this God cares as much for the swallow in the eves of a church, or for the asthmatic child, as for the profit margins of oil companies.
Faith says that we are part of something bigger than us, and more beautiful than we can dismantle. Faith provokes us to fall on our knees in the dirt to face the setting sun, to praise our maker, to touch the earth, and taste the air. From such a posture we can start over, find the strength to resist, to pray, to work, to rejoice openly and honestly before God. From this place on God’s good earth we can start over to find wholeness once again.
Emmanuel Friedens Church, Schenectady New York
October 8, 2017
Psalm 19 NRSV adapted
19:1 The heavens are telling the glory of God;
and the firmament proclaims God’s handiwork.
19:2 Day to day pours forth speech,
and night to night declares knowledge.
19:3 There is no speech, nor are there words;
their voice is not heard;
19:4 yet their voice goes out through all the earth,
and their words to the end of the world.
In the heavens God has set a tent for the sun,
19:5 which comes out like a bridegroom from his wedding canopy,
And, like a strong person, runs its course with joy.
19:6 Its rising is from the end of the heavens,
and its circuit to the end of them;
and nothing is hid from its heat.
19:7 The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul;
the decrees of the LORD are sure, making wise the simple;
19:8 the precepts of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart;
the commandment of the LORD is clear, enlightening the eyes;
19:9 the fear of the LORD is pure, enduring forever;
the ordinances of the LORD are true and righteous altogether.
19:10 More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold;
sweeter also than honey, and drippings of the honeycomb.
19:11 Moreover by them is your servant warned;
in keeping them there is great reward.
19:12 But who can detect their errors?
Clear me from hidden faults.
19:13 Keep back your servant also from the insolent;
do not let them have dominion over me.
Then I shall be blameless, and innocent of great transgression.
19:14 Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
be acceptable to you, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer.
I.
I watched Seneca the young dog in the woods, feeling a forest new to her. She was all nerves and muscle, utterly at attention to every sound, every scent on the wind. She was all twitch and information and joy, this dog: attuned to the trees and the squirrels, the birds and the breeze. She made us look around. Her body, her bearing testified to God’s Word from the Creation story: This indeed was “very good.”
Our reading from the psalm this morning also makes us look around. We honor God’s creation, and we reflect on our relationship both with our maker and with the rest of creation; celebrating what is good, grieving and seeking for the restoration of that which is broken by how we relate to the natural world around us.
The ancient peoples believed there was an order, a balance in creation that must be respected. The poets and prophets and writers who composed what we refer to as Hebrew scripture shared this conviction. They perceived that God given order and beauty were written into creation itself.
The last six hundred years have created a crisis in that understanding. The colonizing powers of Europe and Britain and their North American emissaries picked up on one verse in Genesis, (God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.” Gn 1:28). The official state churches and others anxious to please their masters pushed the belief that they had a special divine appointment to do as they pleased with nature. They claimed license to subjugate in the name of subduing and in the name of God. They ignored the fact that the Hebrew—and even the King James Bible-- also called upon the first humans to replenish the earth.
Scripture is full of stories and songs that reflect the beauty of nature and the power of the maker that nature reveals. From Mount Zion, the sacred temple topped hill in the heart of Jerusalem, the psalmist looks out on the lovely world the creator has made, noticing the swallow that makes its home in a sacred house nonetheless built by human hands. In another psalm we are reminded of the One who waters the earth, who brings up new life where the wheel has ground into the earth, whose river provides water for the grain on which we humans depend for food.
“You crown the year with your bounty; your wagon tracks overflow with richness.
The pastures of the wilderness overflow, the hills gird themselves with joy,
the meadows clothe themselves with flocks, the valleys deck themselves with grain,
they shout and sing together for joy.” Ps 65:11-13 ESV
II.
For much of the last several centuries, western “civilization” has granted those with power almost unlimited permission to dominate, destroy, violate and “subdue” the earth—justifying the exploitation of God’s green goodness and living creatures. With the same sweeping hand, they justified enslavement and destruction of indigenous peoples, claiming divine appointment to do so, as though it were the will of a lawless and vengeful God. They used one verse in the creation story in Genesis to rationalize this exploitation. And they ignored a thousand other verses that tell us every human life is precious, and God’s justice is written into the sea and skies, and into every sacred herb and seed.
In recent times, we have started to see the terrible damage we are doing. We have taken the creator’s name in vain, citing biblical texts to make it ok to heat up the atmosphere, poison the waters, and make the air increasingly unbreathable.
We know the cost of claiming the right to do anything to the land, even if we don’t want to see. Surely pumping chemicals into the ground, and pumping particles of carbon and greenhouse gases galore into the atmosphere are part of a madness we too need to resist. Pumping crude oil across ancestral lands and risking the drinking water of local people is one way we have seen it recently in this land. Pumping chemicals from the factory into the air and groundwater is the way they have experienced it in Hoosick New York, where I went last week to the installation of a new pastor.
And yet some church leaders have even recently claimed that certain politicians were divinely chosen, and not subject to any criticism. They still talk as though we can do anything to the soil, the air, the water, with impunity. Some folks will say anything to please their masters. And some people will believe anything.
III.
How are we to live out the Psalms, and follow the teachings of Jesus about loving our neighbors—not destroying them? In the fall of 2013, I spent several days with Lynn in Connecticut, attending a series of lectures by one of the finest preachers in the US these days, Robin Meyers, of Oklahoma City. Robin reminded us that Christian Faith is a matter of resistance—learning together to resist the power of the ego; to resist the temptation to reduce faith to Orthodoxy; and last but surely not least, resistance to the political and cultural and economic empire in which we dwell.
The same conviction was reflected this past summer for me by a humble man you will never have heard of, a man named Eleazar Encino. Eleazar is an indigenous church leader from Chiapas Mexico, whom I am pleased to claim as a friend. I listened to Eleazar talking about his community’s experience of the incursion of European and North American mining companies, there in Chiapas, with the blessing and support of a Mexican government. Eleazar’s world, enslaved by the Spanish, and in more recent years exploited by their successors, experiences the hard edge of “progress”. Progress has left them high and dry, young women taken for human trafficking, ancestral land and homes left impoverished. They experience this invading presence as a faceless monster. They too must learn to embrace a faith that comes from God, not the Spanish, not the North Americans, faith that gives them strength to resist these powers, this faceless incursion.
Often, the most acute violations of nature’s laws and human rights take place in communities that are most vulnerable, in the US just as much as in Chiapas Mexico.
IV.
There is a sacred ground we need to find, that is necessary if we are to find the will to change or resist anything at all! There is something basic about remembering our place in this amazing gorgeous wild and unpredictable earth that God has made.
Unless we rediscover our place in this lovely creation, remember our utter dependence on this living gracious God who made us, and our dependence on all that is around us, we will continue to live in warped relationships with creation, with God, with our neighbors.
False ego says that we are the beginning and the end, the whole purpose for the world around us to be made.
Faith says that we are but parts of a bigger picture, an emerging love affair of the Divine Spirit with a gorgeous amazing world.
False Orthodoxy says that we are made to dominate, made to control, made to exploit “natural resources”- the word “resources” itself betrays a mindset that says it all exists only to be used.
Faith says that God made this beautiful earth, this sky, this universe, not for our exploitation, but because it is good—Faith invites us into a new kind of relationship that gives thanks, and adopts a caring stewardship, and gives back to that from which we are made.
A false Empire tells us, in glossy language and reassuring tones, that huge profits and unbridled industry must be fed, even at the expense of little people and little farms, lovely forests, little animals and even a little breathing.
Faith says that real power belongs first to God, and that this God cares as much for the swallow in the eves of a church, or for the asthmatic child, as for the profit margins of oil companies.
Faith says that we are part of something bigger than us, and more beautiful than we can dismantle. Faith provokes us to fall on our knees in the dirt to face the setting sun, to praise our maker, to touch the earth, and taste the air. From such a posture we can start over, find the strength to resist, to pray, to work, to rejoice openly and honestly before God. From this place on God’s good earth we can start over to find wholeness once again.