St Paul’s United Church Sunday, April 3, 2005

Song of the Earth

Seeds, Soil and Soul – Rev. David Mundy

Genesis 1:1-25 Romans 8: 18-25

Many of us are looking these days, wondering when it will all begin again for another season. With the arrival of warmer weather we are eagerly anticipating the emergence of the harbingers of Spring, the crocuses and snowdrops and other hardly flowers. They assure us that other good things are on the way, and soon we will be stampeding to the nurseries and gardening supply centres to get ready for another season of growing

There is something about growing plants which appeals to the human soul and we will make the attempt even when the challenge is considerable. A few years ago we visited friends who were living near the top of a high-rise building almost at the corner of Yonge and Bloor streets in Toronto, surely one of the busiest intersections in the country and a concrete jungle if ever there was one. From their apartment window it was possible to look down on the flat rooftops of a number of other buildings. And what did I see there? Gardens! Gardens with flowers and vegetables. There may have been some illicit crops as well, but I couldn’t tell from my vantage point.

There are probably more people here today who share the hobby of gardening than any other physical pastime. Whether we enjoy flowers, or get satisfaction from producing vegetables, or both, we will get our hands dirty and enjoy the everyday miracle of watching things grow. We sense that there is a spiritual connection, that gardening is even a form of prayer. Centuries ago Francis Bacon observed that “God almighty first planted a garden. And indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures.”

Do you know that there is a patron saint of gardening? You may assume that it is St Francis because of his love of animals, but it is actually a seventh century Irish saint named Fiacre (Fee-ACK-ree.) Fiacre is the patron saint of gardeners, florists, potters and those suffering from haemorrhoids! Apparently the herbs he grew had miraculous healing properties, so he was a handy guy to have around. St. Fiacre is always portrayed holding a spade or shovel in his hand.

The garden is a good place to go as we begin a month of Sundays during which we consider God the creator and our role as those who love and tend creation. In recent years it has been suggested

that the liturgical year, the cycle of our worship life, needs to include a season of Creation. Along with Advent and Christmas and Lent and Easter and the others we would benefit from being mindful of the created order. In this season we could celebrate God’s gift of life, we could repent for the harm we do, and we could joyfully accept responsibility in caring and restoring what has been degraded and harmed.

Seeds, soil and soul do go together. During his ministry Jesus often demonstrated his awareness of the natural world and the important of seed-time and harvest. As Jean Malouf puts it:

Jesus was very earthy. He depended on earth stories, parables, to convey His message of the Kingdom of God. He observed seeds growing. He compared the Kingdom to the mustard plant in which birds nest and sing. He asked his followers to learn basic spiritual lessons from the plants. It is "by their fruits" that you will distinguish true spiritual people. He compared Himself to the vine and His disciples to its branches. They also must be the rich soil where God's seeds can grow.

Good thoughts. And while this is officially the season of Easter in the Christian calendar, the season of Resurrection, it is not so far off the mark to celebrate creation. We heard last Sunday morning that on the day of resurrection, Mary Magdalene mistook Jesus for a gardener before she recognized him as the risen Christ.

We didn’t quite get to the garden in our Old Testament reading this morning but we were reminded of the first five days of creation. The refrain,“God saw that it was good” is repeated over and over as a reminder that the created order is God’s loving intention, not just a backdrop for human life. If we had continued on, we would have heard that human beings were created on the sixth day and placed in the garden called Eden. Some would suggest that the neighbourhood went downhill once those humans showed up. Yet they too are creatures of the earth. The name Adam actually means “earth” in Hebrew. They are told that they will have dominion over the garden, but the implication is that they will be responsible stewards of the earth, not plunderers.

Have we really listened to the biblical message that we are to tend the garden with care and concern for the generations to come? Earlier this year the National Council of Churches in the U.S. issued an open letter which states that we have become Un-Creators rather than Co-Creators with God. The letter reminds us that we are to “serve and preserve” the Garden, with a capital “G.”

We heard a similar message this past week on a different front. An international study called the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment was released, the biggest review of the health of the planet ever done. It involved almost 1400 scientists from 95 countries around the world and it warned that we are “living beyond our means” in virtually way possible.

In our other scripture reading today the apostle Paul speaks of the groaning of creation and the report tells us that this is true. The forests and the coral are disappearing at an alarming rate. Fish stocks are in danger of collapse and we are using twice as much fresh water as forty years ago. The report says that we have entered into “an unprecedented period of spending of Earth’s natural bounty” – that is their term.

In other words, we are doing a lousy job of tending the garden and we need to change our habits. The trouble is, we have been hearing this for years and somehow we manage to ignore what we are told and stick with the same destructive habits.

So what can we do? We hear of the ecological problems which abound on this planet and it is hard not to be overwhelmed. Sometimes it feels as though we are given far more doom and gloom information than we can possibly process and we are almost paralysed in knowing how to respond. What we can do is go back to the garden, metaphorically, not as some idyllic landscape but as the place where we work in partnership with God for the health of all creation. Those of us who enjoy our gardens understand that for all the satisfaction there is plenty of hard work and there is always a cost involved. We contend with the bugs and the blights and the critters and the weeds, but we persevere because whether we are admiring a row of turnips or a profusion of poppies we look upon our efforts and see that it is good.

There are many places in scripture where we are told that God’s desire is to bring us back to spiritual health and to restore the physical well-being of the entire planet. In the back of the prophet Ezekiel there is a vision of a renewed Earth: “The desolate land will be cultivated instead of lying desolate in the sight of all who pass through it. They will say, "This land that was laid waste has become like the garden of Eden . . . ” Ezekiel 36:34-35. And after Paul says that all creation is groaning in labour he encourages to wait patiently in hope.

Someone has suggested that ecology, the care of the natural environment, is just gardening on a bigger scale. The metaphor of the garden encourages us to do what we are able to do with an appreciation for the goodness of creation and with an understanding that our efforts will make a difference, however small.

Actually the place we can begin is with some active listening. We need to listen for the stories of hope and restoration as well as those of degradation because the good news is out there if we are listening and looking for it. The story which fascinates me at the moment comes out of war-torn Iraq. During the past two years we have constantly been made aware of the violence in that country and the negative effects of the war. One of the positive stories has to do with the restoration of the garden of Eden. It has been suggested that the reference to the confluence of four rivers in Genesis refers to an area in southern Iraq. The marshes of this region were rich in bio-diversity until Saddam Hussein had them drained to punish the people who lived there and were opposed to his regime. Since Saddam was deposed, work has begun to restore those marshes and the effect has been immediate. Wildlife, including fish and birds have returned, as have the people who made a living from these waters.

We can be involved in our own corner of the world as well. I am convinced that every Christian needs to choose a project in the home or beyond which will help to reverse our consumptive and ultimately destructive patterns. Years ago when Earth Day first became popular many people earnestly vowed to change their habits and live simpler, more earth-friendly lives. We were all going to make the world a better place. Honestly, we don’t hear about that nearly as much these days, but I think it is within the Christian community that we encourage one another to do just that. We might even choose to walk to church this month rather than drive, if that is possible!

When you return to your gardens this Spring give thanks and praise to the God of creation who looked on it all and saw that it was very good. Say a prayer and hum a hymn and make a promise to be a co-creator. What you see around you is the marvellous gift of the God who creates and redeems and sustains and it is only right that we express our gratitude and pleasure.

Whatever we do, we shouldn’t be afraid to get our hands dirty in the cause! The message of scripture is that there is dirt under God’s fingernails and God is proud of it. Abraham Heschel, a great Jewish theologian of the twentieth century paraphrased psalm 78 in this way, with God as the speaker:

I don’t want you to sit down at the table.

I don’t want you just to eat, and be content.

I want you to walk out into the fields

where the water is shining, and the rice has risen.

I want you to stand there, far from the white tablecloth.

I want you to fill your hands with the mud, like a blessing.

Seeds, soil, and soul do go together and for this we can say, thanks be to God! Amen.