Sacred Creation

By Pastor Marcia Sietstra

Crestwood UCC, Oct. 29, 2006

One of my favorite preachers—Barbara Brown Taylor—has left the church.  By that I mean she has chosen not to work as a pastor, but to write and teach instead.  Oh she still attends church, some of the time, and still preaches some of the time, but she says that these days she is choosing to learn about God through nature.  You see, she discovered in recent years that she felt more in touch with God on her farm in the foothills of Georgia than almost anyplace else. This summer at Chautauqua I heard her preach several times; she talked about wild turkeys, spindly legged deer, and birds.  When was it, she asked, that human beings decided a sacred book deserved our loyalty more than sacred creation? 

Let me tell you the quick story about her white Silkie hens.  Taylor told about bargaining when she bought her first two Silkies, one of which was a gray hen that she bought for $6.  Paying only $6 for that hen illustrated the difference between “price” and “worth,” she said, because that old hen became mother to an orphaned guinea chick.  She wasn’t sure it would work when she brought the hen home, put her in the pen with the orphan chick.  The chick cheeped at the Silkie hen but the hen didn’t move.  The baby cheeped again and took a few steps toward her…the seconds passed, but then the hen lifted her wings and the baby scooted right in through that open door.

Unfortunately a short time later some other country animal broke into the chickens’ pen and ate the new hen.  But the good news was that her sister hens picked up where she left off—hatching eggs and mothering chicks not their own.  Doesn’t matter what color or breed the chick is.  Those silkies let Taylor put eggs from the incubator in their nests at night.  In the morning they accept all comers and start teaching them the ropes—“Eat!  Come on!”  Sometimes they are a little hesitant but eventually they welcome the orphan chicks—it usually takes just a “cheep?  cheep?”  The hen will stare and finally raise her wing as if to say, “Come to momma”, taking in the stranger who becomes one of her own.  Everyone is gathered in.  What a great example for us humans. 

I was recalling Taylor’s story about the hens this week, and so many other poignant  lessons from nature that found their way into her sermons, when I was working on our Adult Forum subject, which is how global warming is threatening the destruction of nature. 

The vast majority of the world’s leading atmospheric scientists and scientific organizations agree that there is no longer any doubt that global warming having already reached extremely dangerous levels.  Here’s the simple version of what’s happening:  the world functions like a greenhouse.  Light from the sun enters the earth’s atmosphere, reaches the earth and is reflected back into the atmosphere as heat.  Small amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases trap some of this heat and keep the earth warm enough for life to thrive.  The rest of the heat escapes to space.

What happens when too much pollution causes too much heat to be trapped close to the earth, when not enough heat can escape into space?  The world warms up; glaciers melt, weather patterns change dramatically; the warm and cold currents of the ocean get messed up.  All of this triggers extreme weather, like severe hurricanes, droughts and deadly heat waves (already begun), and a rise in the sea level (as the polar caps melt) which causes severe flooding of coastal areas. 

Today, as I speak, global warming has reached such dangerous levels—putting human, animal and plant health at risk—that we have only a small window of time in which to turn things around.  That’s why 400,000 churches around the country are studying global warming this fall, believing this has become a moral issue.

Why a moral issue?  Because this is about more than self-preservation!  We Christians feel a responsibility to care for our brothers & sisters so we need to be concerned for our children and future generations.  There is another reason churches are taking this so seriously.  It is profoundly disrespectful to God, to destroy God’s creation by our abuse of it.

In Genesis we read,  “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till and keep it.” (Gen. 2:15)  Keep it is better translated as “to guard or to watch over.”  Even the ancient writers had a sense that we are to take care of, and safeguard the earth.

Nature was enormously inspirational to so many authors of the Bible—think of all the psalms about the mountains and skies.  Nature was enormously inspirational to Jesus.  He talked of sheep and the shepherds, of seeds and soils.  He talked about God’s care of the lilies of the field and the birds of the air; he likened us to the salt of the earth.  Remember how he wept as he looked out over the hills of Jerusalem: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem…how often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”

My challenge to you today is to become informed about the terrible things we are doing to nature, to think hard about how you can consume fewer resources from God’s good earth, and decide what you, personally can do especially to cut down on fuel usage, because that is the biggest cause of global warming. 

My other challenge is to this entire congregation—can we find the will to lead the way in doing something about this moral issue?  I believe we must, if we are to preserve it for ourselves and future generations, and if we are to show respect to our Creator.  I’d like you to consider volunteering to be on a task force who will study this and lead the rest of us.  That’s just one possibility among many.  I do hope some of you will feel led to take on this ministry in the near future.   And that the rest of you will take significant steps to curb your own energy use so you can help be part of saving God’s planet earth.  Amen.