St. Paul’s United Church Sunday, April 17, 2005

Song of Healing

Making Peace with the Planet – Rev. David Mundy

Genesis 1:26-31 Revelation 22:1-4

At ten o’clock in the morning on August 27, 1883, the equatorial island of Krakatoa, or Krakatau as it also known, erupted in a volcanic explosion many times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on the cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima during the Second World War. The resulting sound wave could be head nearly 5,000 kilometres away and ships far away at sea were coated in ash that had to be shoveled from the decks. A wall of water forty metres high scoured the ocean and resulted in forty thousand deaths. It was the most devastating tsunami recorded in history terms of human deaths until the one last December. As we can all imagine, every living thing on this once lush island was destroyed. The intense heat sterilized what was left of Krakatau and nearby islands and even the topsoil and seeds disappeared.

Because this event is a relatively recent one, there is also a great deal written about it, including a fascinating book by the popular writer, Simon Winchester. There was also a considerable amount of scientific research about the effects of the eruption which began very soon after it occurred. An exploratory mission which arrived nine months later found one lonely spider spinning a web. But six years following the eruption there were surprising additions to the flora and fauna even though the island is forty kilometres from the nearest coastline. Scientists found more insects, including butterflies. They even spotted a large monitor lizard that had probably swum to the island. Within two decades there were trees forty feet tall draped in vines.

Today, one hundred and twenty years later, the island is green with plants competing for light in a tropical forest. There are many different birds and bats and reptiles. There has been a remarkable self-healing that one observer has called a “resurrection.” This revived Krakatau now lives with two significant threats. The volcano is threatening to erupt again as volcanoes are inclined to do. And there is considerable pressure to log the island’s forests even though it is supposed to be protected as a World Heritage site.

The term “resurrection” might be an unusual one to use to describe what has happened, but it is, after all, an extraordinary rebirth, an everyday miracle of new life. We have evidence that even after the most catastrophic of events God’s earth can be rejuvenated and restored.

We are continuing through this season of resurrection in the church year and our own season of celebrating creation which we began just after Easter. During the first two weeks we went to the garden and then to the sky to give God glory. Today we will consider how we might make peace with the earth and become active participants in the process of healing.

We listened to a passage of scripture from Genesis today which completes the story of creation we began to read two weeks ago. Finally, on the sixth day God creates human beings. According to this first chapter of Genesis we are the only creatures who are given instructions about how we are to live on this earth. There are two words in this passage which have got us into a mess of trouble. They are “dominion” and “subdue.” Through the centuries they have served as justification for taking whatever we wanted.

We got away with this when there were relatively few of us, but now we are everywhere and we have voracious appetites for just about everything. Bill McKibben, the environmental writer and Christian has suggested that the only commandment in the bible humans have actually fulfilled is to be fruitful and multiply and that we can stop now and concentrate on some of the others! We are aware that we are residents of a planet that is increasingly influenced for the worse by the one species that, ironically, is aware of a relationship with the Creator. Human beings are part of nature and unfortunately we are often the “natural disaster” which threatens the integrity of the ecosystems of the planet. There is a Native proverb which says that “the frog does not drink up the pond in which it lives” but we have not taken this to heart.

In recent years scholars have pointed out the original Hebrew for this passage in Genesis connote responsibility rather than domination. And these verses from Genesis and many others in the Old Testament remind us that the earth does not belong to us. It belongs to God. While we may enjoy its bounty, we are to tend and care for the land in ways that will sustain it for future generations. There are a couple of verses in the book of Leviticus which always startle me and challenge me when I read them. God is telling the people of Israel that they are to be good stewards and that Sabbath-keeping applies to the land. Regularly give the land a rest, God says, and then: “the land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine: with me you are but aliens and tenants. Throughout the land you hold, you shall provide for the redemption of the land.” Leviticus 25:23,24

Do we really want to live in right relationship with the planet, in a state of shalom, or peace? I would imagine that most of us would say “yes” but there is always the gap between our words and our actions. Eight years ago the patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church, Bartholomew, spoke to an audience in California against the backdrop of an oil-spill which threatened local beaches. He made an important assertion about our relationship with the earth and I quote a portion of it:

If human beings treated one another’s personal property the way they treat their environment, we would view that behaviour as antisocial . . . It follows that, to commit a crime against the natural world is a sin. For humans to cause species to become extinct and to destroy the biological diversity of God’s creation . . . for humans to degrade the integrity of Earth by causing changes in its climate . . . for humans to contaminate the Earth’s waters, its land, it’s air, with poisonous substances . . . these are sins.

This was the first time a Christian leader had made a widely publicized statement about the sinfulness of doing harm to the environment. Traditionally we have understood sin to be our alienation or estrangement from God and other human beings. Here was someone saying that we can and do sin against other creatures, as well as the basic elements which sustain life. And it was reported in the Los Angeles Times and many other newspapers.

It is also part of our Christian tradition that when we recognize our sin or our wrongdoing the appropriate response is to repent. Repentance means to turn in a new direction, the direction which is God’s intention for our lives. When we are unrepentant, we know what we should do but refuse to do it.

This past week our federal government announced Project Green, the expenditure of ten billion dollars over the next few years to meet the Canadian commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in compliance with the Kyoto Protocol. While this is laudable in some respects, a significant amount of this money will be used to purchase “emission credits” from other countries that have already met their targets in reducing emissions. To put it another way, Canada will buy its way out of jail on the Greenhouse Gas monopoly board rather than actually taking action to make the air cleaner. This is not turning in a new direction! This is burying our heads in the tar sands. The argument always seems to be that doing what is best for the environment will be bad for the economy. It’s interesting that a country such as Great Britain has been meeting its Kyoto targets and the conclusion is that it is benefitting the economy to do so.

How do we go about making peace with the planet, if it is our sense that God is calling us to do so? It is possible through government initiatives and the lobbying of environmental groups. Maybe, though, we should simply begin with ourselves and trust in “the power of one” and in smaller “communities of conviction” such as churches and congregations.

You might recall my comment a couple of weeks ago that we often feel helpless and even paralysed as to what we can do in the face of problems which are global in scale. We need to remember that as people who live in one of the most affluent and stable nations on Earth we have resources and opportunities as individuals that are almost unprecedented in human history. And we see that persons who appear to have nothing have managed to bring about change which is nothing short of astonishing.

Last Fall a woman from Kenya named Wangari Maathai was awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize. Maathai is the first African woman to receive a Nobel Peace Prize, an accomplishment that is even more remarkable when her story is heard. Thirty years ago she began planting trees to counteract the effects of deforestation in her country. At the same time she spoke out against the injustices or resource mismanagement. For her courageous stance she was threatened and beaten. Her husband abandoned her for not knowing her place.

She began what is known as the Green Belt movement which has mobilised Kenyan women to plant thirty million trees. Thirty million trees! This from a loosely organized group of women who supposedly had no resources and no political clout. The Nobel Peace Prize has always been awarded to people who work toward an end to conflicts between nations or groups. This prize was given for making peace with the planet. Asked about awarding the Peace Prize to an environmentalist, Nobel committee chairman answered: "It is clear that with this award, we have expanded the term peace to encompass environmental questions related to our beloved earth."

Not only would God approve of this approach, we can believe that God was active by the Holy Spirit in the lives of these women. Wangari Maathai is a person of faith and she has been faithful.

God can work through us if we desire it and are willing to be Christ’s agents in our world. I would encourage you to consider what you can do, even if it is only one thing, to turn in a new direction and faithfully make the world a healthier place.

Our Old Testament passage today was from the first chapter of the bible. Our New Testament reading today came from the very last chapter of our Christian scriptures and it offers us the vision of a new heaven and a new earth. You may have noticed that those few verses take us back to paradise not as some distance place but as a world restored and renewed in Jesus Christ who makes all things new. In this restored garden there is the water of life and the tree of life and God is there.

We have he ability to make peace with the planet and for this we can thank God. Amen!