This summer I had the opportunity to read G. K. Chesterton’s brief but delightful biography of St. Francis of Assisi. The prayer of St. Francis has been one of my life’s “theme prayers,” ever since I heard it back when I was a teen. One of my favorite hymns, too, is “All Creatures of Our God and King,” a musically and lyrically stunning piece of hymnody based loosely on Francis of Assisi’s “The Canticle of the Sun.” In these small ways, then, the thought and spirituality of this 12th century Italian Saint has colored my imagination for a long time, but I’d never really known his story—at least not in its entirety—until I’d met him in the pages of Chesterton’s book.
There’s no end of fascinating details I learned about this radical and passionate follower of Jesus Christ—a man who, in Chesterton’s opinion, is surpassed only by Christ himself when it comes to his spiritual impact on the course of Christian history—but the detail that stood out to me especially was his profound sense of brotherhood with the Creator’s world.
I’d already gleaned hints of this from the lyrics of “All Creatures of Our God and King,” but the picture became more clear and more compelling as I read the saint’s life story. St. Francis is often called the “Patron Saint of Ecology,” because he was so insistent on our duty to love and care for God’s green earth (this, coupled with his vows of mendicancy and his call to simplicity, suggests that leaving as small an ecological footprint as possible is certainly a corollary of the Christian life, even possibly an urgent responsibility). In his account of the Saint, though, Chesterton emphasizes how this was not “mere” stewardship of the creation for St Francis. It was a deep sense of kinship and a profound sense of love that overflowed from his joyful recognition that the Sun, the moon, the beasts of the earth and the grass of the field, all, are created creatures like we are. Since the creator himself is, in his very essence, love personified, and since Francis was so swept up in reciprocal love for his Lord, a deep love for all the works of that Lord’s hands—from the flowing water pure and clear, to the Brother Sun, who brings the day—was just the spontaneous, altogether natural, deeply joyful welling up of his spirituality.
I am thinking about St. Francis of Assisi’s profound awareness of his kinship with the created world today, though, as I continue to reflect on the recent encounter a delegation from our church recently had visiting the Pelican Lake First Nation’s Reserve, which we had partnered with last Christmas in a “Bring Back the Buffalo” initiative.
Our trip was, in one sense, an opportunity to witness the impact that the Buffalo herd we’d contributed was having on the Pelican Lake community. In another sense, and deeper, though, it was an opportunity to encounter and learn about the Indigenous culture of the people who call Pelican Lake home, a chance to grow in our understanding of what truth and reconciliation really means, by growing in our understanding of the culture and worldviews of the First Nations people.
Our First Nations hosts were very gracious towards us, and deeply hospitable, teaching us about the special place the buffalo have in Indigenous culture, inviting us to participate with them in a sweat lodge, and leading us in a water ceremony, among the many other ways they showed us welcome. I was deeply impacted by this encounter, but I was saddened to learn from the leaders of the Christian group that we had traveled to Pelican Lake with, that not every church across the country is as warm or open to these kinds of cultural learning encounters as we had been.
Some Christians, I was told, have great difficulty seeing the Indigenous culture’s deep respect for the creation, their veneration of it, even, for what it is: a deep-down conviction that Creator’s world is alive and all of it is spiritual, and we human beings are part of it, but only part—we are kin, so to speak, with all that is. Speaking to the water and asking it to cleanse and rejuvenate you is just too much like worshiping the creature rather than the creation, it seems, for some believers to see past it to the conviction underlying it: that the whole world is alive to One who Made It, and so long as we can’t see that, some small part of ourselves will remain dead inside to the creator who Made Us.
It might be helpful one day to trace the theological lines of thought that lead to this, what is, in my opinion, a gross misunderstanding of First Nations culture. We could explore, for instance, the historical connections between the Enlightenment’s disenchantment of the world, liberal Protestantism’s demythologizing of the Faith, and the contemporary, evangelical tendency to reject as idolatry anything that is too open to the spiritual aliveness of the Creator’s world, to show that our worldview is, in many ways, far more philosophical than it is Christian. That will have to wait for another day and a different venue than a blog, though.
For today, I’d simply point out that Psalm 148—with its glorious acknowledgement that the whole of the Creator’s world is alive and responsive to him—and its thrilling invitation to the entire creation to praise him—the words of Psalm 148 are closer in spirit to the prayer our Cree host prayed at the water ceremony we attended in Pelican Lake than it is to pretty much anything else I’ve come across. Do we really believe it, when the Scriptures teach us that the hills will rejoice and the trees of field clap their hands, that all things look to their creator to give them their food in the proper time, that when He sends his Spirit, they are created?
As the story of St. Francis reminds us, some Christians, at some points in the history of our Faith, have answered a humble, pious, deeply faithful “yes” to those questions. They have taken the Word of God at its word, I mean, and tried to live into our kinship with the rest of the Creator’s world, with full appreciation and great love.
St. Francis lived some 800 years ago now, of course, and even “All Creatures of Our God and King” is a pretty deep-cut, when it comes to the kind of music that gets sung in church these days. But if we wanted a place to start, to relearn some of the lessons he taught us, reworked and reframed for the modern world, I suppose that having more authentic, respectful conversations with our Indigenous neighbours, to understand how their sense of kinship with Creator’s world impacts their worldview, would be a good place to start.
Bring Back the Buffalo (II): All Creatures of Our God and King
The Thursday Review: 5 Ways Riding Your Bike is a Spiritual Act
My older brother inspires me in a number of ways, but lately it's been to cycle more. He recently completed a cycling tour of epic (by my definition of epic, anyways) proportions. So inspired was I that a few weeks ago I lowered my bike from the rafters of my garage, replaced an inner tube or two (yes it's been that long), and made a personal commitment to start biking to work. ("I'm a cyclist now!" is how I announced this decision to my wife, to which she lovingly replied: "Why is it always all or nothing with you?" I was sporting a bright red cycling jersey and an aerodynamic helmet at the time.)
Anyways, on the ride to work this morning I was mulling all this over and it occurred to me that, even though we don't normally group it with the regular spiritual disciplines, there are a number of ways in which cycling is actually spiritual act. Consider the following:
1. Spirit-Body Connectedness. I know this sounds a bit new-age-y, but hear me out. Most biblical scholars would agree that biblical anthropology tends to eschew dualism when it comes to the body/spirit relationship. In other words, the way the Bible sees you, you don't have a body, you are a body; neither do you have a spirit, you are a spirit. One of the curious things about the technological world we inhabit, I think, is that this unity has become obscured-- reality has become "virtual," communication disembodied, and travel (hint, hint) disconnected from the body we once used to get there. But because we are embodied spirits and en-spirited bodies, this disconnect has significant, (though often unnoticed) implications for our spiritual health. By requiring the body to do the actual work of getting around again, cycling helps to re-connect that disconnect, reminding the spirit that the body is far more than just the disposable cup it got poured into.
2. Stewardship. Stewardship is the theological word we use to underline the fact that all we have and all we are really belongs to God, and we will give an account to him in the end for what we did with it. Usually it's used in reference to our money, not cycling, but again, hear me out. A) cycling is good exercise and B) regular exercise keeps us healthy and C) as a rule you tend to be more productive with your time and energy when you're healthy. Ergo, cycling is good stewardship.
3. Social De-fragmentation. We don't always notice it in the individualistic west, but the Bible places a premium value on healthy, well-connected community. Car culture, by contrast, places a low value on healthy well-connected community. Garages that gobble up front-porches and highways crammed with single-passenger vehicles all roaring along at break-neck speeds by themselves together make for fragmented communities. But I noticed on the ride to work today: the kids waiting for the school bus with mom waved at me, the other cyclist I passed gave me a nod, I was going slow enough to notice the senior out walking her dog, and in all this I felt like the disk-drive of my soul was being defragmented. Community starts, it occurred to me, when we're going slow enough to notice each other.
4. Green footprints. I won't save the planet by cycling. I know this. But biblical scholar or not, you'd have to agree that a cyclist creates far less pollution than a motorist going the same distance. If you've read terra incognita enough, you'll know I've said a lot about the way Christianity should translate into a healed and healing relationship with the earth, but lately I've felt deeply convicted that I'm not actually walking the talk. Cycling is a small start, and if nothing else it renews my convictions.
5. Simplicity. Un-business, I'm beginning to believe, could become the radical new spiritual discipline of the 21st Century. Everyone is so maxed out with calendar-debt that items1-4 seem next to impossible to achieve. Who's got the time for healthy, connected, green community that stewards God's resources well? Cycling, I'm learning, requires me to slow down, and in this, too, it is a spiritual discipline.
Covenant, Creation and Ecology in Hosea
In Hosea 4:1-3, we read these heart–breaking lines: “There is no faithfulness or kindness or knowledge of God in the land ... therefore the land mourns and everyone who lives in it languishes, along with the beasts of the field and the birds of the sky, and also the fish of the sea.” With words that wouldn’t stand out too starkly at the next UNEP summit, Hosea describes the land itself withering as a direct result of human faithlessness.
This would be ominous enough to give us pause, but later in the book, Hosea details the sins of the people by saying: “Like Adam they have transgressed the covenant; there they have dealt treacherously with me” (6:7).
Like it did in Amos 1:9, the question of covenant arises again, this time in a way that connects environmental degradation with human sin. Among the other consequences of our covenant infidelity, we find, curiously, that the land itself is languishing. And more curious still, in violating the covenant like this, we are, Hosea declares, “like Adam.”
My Zondervan Study Bible is stumped. “The allusion is uncertain,” it explains, “since Scripture records no covenant with Adam.” This particular reference to a covenant with Adam, I suppose, doesn’t count as record of a covenant with Adam... but even if Hosea 6 here didn’t count, the creation story in Genesis is so packed with covenant imagery that, short of a post-it label on every verse saying “I’m making a covenant here!” God makes it pretty clear that when he created everything in the beginning, he was also covenanting to uphold it all by his life-giving spirit (see also Psalm 104:24-30). It’s not for nothing that in Genesis 9:9, when God “establishes” his covenant with Noah, he uses a word (qûm) which suggests a pre-existing covenant that God is simply now extending to Noah (i.e. if God had meant, “I’m creating a new covenant with you, Noah,” he would have used the verb kârat or natan). The Noahic covenant (that God will keep the creation going, summer and winter, springtime and harvest) is actually an extension of the covenant with all creation that God made in the beginning.
And with this in mind, the weight of Hosea 4-6 comes crashing down with ominous force: the Adamic covenant has to do with God’s commitment to sustain his creation, and it gave Adam a special responsibility to guard the creation (shamar) and tend it (‘abad), as the “image of God” in creation. No wonder, then, that our breaking of the Adamic covenant brings desolation on the land. It did in Genesis 3, it does in Leviticus 26, and it will in Micah 7:3. This is a theme woven like a green thread throughout the Old Testament: when the people reject the covenant, the land withers.
But I’m mulling it over today because I believe very strongly that the Christian faith has meaningful and relevant answers to the current global environmental crisis, and because I seldom hear Christians talking about it in meaningful ways, and because I think that, even more than the traditional “stewardship” paradigm (which tends toward deism and moralism), a Good-News answer to environmental issues will start with a robust understanding of God’s covenant commitment to his creation and the invitation into renewed covenant with him that he extends to us in Jesus Christ.
Musical Mondays (II)
As the Tree
As the rain in the springtime
As the summer sun
As the winds in the autumn bring change
As the mists in the winter turn to spring again
Let this land feel your mercy, let this land feel your mercy
Let this land feel your mercy once again
As the tree in the springtime puts forth her green
As the tree bears in summer her fruit
As the tree in the autumn bears crimson gold
Let this land bear salvation, let this land bear salvation
Let this land bear salvation once again
Let salvation spring up from the ground
Let the new grain of your love abound
Let the valleys and the hills resound
With echoes of rejoicing
Let the autumn rains of righteousness
Come and soothe us like a summer mist
Send the morning dew of holiness
To bring this land to life.
As the tree in the springtime puts forth her green
As the tree bears in summer her fruit
As the tree in the autumn bears crimson gold
Let this land bear salvation, let this land bear salvation
Let this land bear salvation once again
Musical Monday (I)
A song I wrote a while ago as a musical reflection along the same lines of this post.
Dirty Jordan
Dirty Jordan, lying in the sun
with her grave shroud on
Crooked curves on broken banks,
what have we done?
Can you wash clean this dirty water
Can you drench down these thirsty lands
Can you wade through this holy river
Till you heal the hands of dirty Jordan?
Old man river crawling through the land
with his soul sucked dry
It's a long way home through stone and sand,
can you afford to cry?
Can you wash clean this dirty water
Can you drench down these thirsty lands
Can you wade through this holy river
Till you heal the hands of dirty Jordan?
Dirty Jordan, waiting for the Son
who wqas baptized by you
A drop of blood from his flowing veins
And he will baptize you
Can you wash clean this dirty water
Can you drench down these thirsty lands
Can you wade through this holy river
Till you heal the hands of dirty Jordan?
Teaching on Creation Care
This week I had the opportunity to teach some of the material on Christian Faith and Creation Care that I developed as a research project when I was doing my M.Div at Briercrest Seminary.
For anyone interested, I thought I'd make the seminar material available for download here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3057785/Heirs%20of%20the%20Earth.pdf
Or you can download the entire research project here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3057785/Research%20Project.pdf
He's got the whole world in his hands...
Happy Earth Day everyone. I'm not really all that sure how I feel about observing an "Earth Day"-- either as a red letter day (too pagan?) or as a way of addressing environmental issues themselves (too superficial?). But I do think a lot, as a Christian, about environmental issues and the way our Faith might speak to them. For my final research project at Briercrest I undertook a ministry related study on the intersections between ecology and Christian faith. 112 pages later, I was quite convinced that the Gospel speaks a powerful word of hope and healing to this issue, if Christians could but hear it and respond.
In keeping with the tenor of the day, I offer here some of the more erudite moments from my project.
On Gospel and Ecology:
...the over-arching Christological themes of incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection and ascension each address us with God’s fundamental claim on and affirmation of his creation. In these leitmotifs we hear strains of hope for the groanings of the creation: the Creator has indeed pitched his tent in the mire of its dust and clay (John 1:1-14); he has staked his reconciling claim on its most broken, man-forsaken sufferings (Col 1:20); he has comforted it with a fore-taste of its renewal (1 Cor 15:20ff); and he has given it an earnest pledge of consummation (Acts 1:8-11). There is no room at the stable for dualism—nor at the cross, nor in the empty-tomb, nor on the Mount of Olives—for to say that Jesus is truly “God-with-us” in any of these places is to say also that our matter fundamentally matters to God (1 Tim 4:1-6). Second, and further to this, we pause to hear again the Gospel of Jesus Christ—the good news about the Creator’s immanent reign through him over a newly-constituted humanity, about a reconciliation with God completed in his obedient life and atoning death, about the new-creation shalom and healing made possible through his poured-out Spirit—for in the rays of light refracted by the multi-faceted gem of the Apostolic kerygma, we find the motive, the impetus and the spiritual resources for a healed and healing relationship with the rest of the creation. To quote Francis Schaeffer: “[On] the basis of the work of Christ, Christianity… has in it the possibility of substantial healings now in every area where there are divisions because of the Fall. … God’s calling to the Christian now, and to the Christian community, in the area of nature—just as it is in the area of personal Christian living in true spirituality—is that we should exhibit a substantial healing here and now, between man and nature and nature and itself, as far as Christians can bring it to pass.”
On Ecology and the Kingdom Ethic:
‘Blessed are the meek,’ Jesus said, ‘for they shall inherit the earth’ (Matt. 5:5).” Resisting the tendency to over-spiritualize the earth-inheritance that Jesus promises his meek followers here, we listen instead for 5:5’s allusive reference to Psalm 37, with its promise that the hopeful, the meek and the righteous will inherit Israel’s promised land of covenant blessing. And in sympathetic harmony with these echoes, we hear the reverberating strains of Israel’s ancient prophetic tradition, which insisted that when Israel dwells in the land of her inheritance, the whole creation will flourish as the Creator intends (e.g. Lev 26:1-13; Amos 9:11-15, Joel 2:20-27, esp. Isaiah 41:17-20, 51:1-4, etc.). Thus the call of loving, neighbourly meekness that echoes throughout the Sermon on the Mount brings with it an implied promise of blessing on the land. And by our authentic, humble response to that call, as it is extended, perfected and made available to us in the life of Jesus Christ, we truly become future heirs of a healed earth, participating now with Christ in the Creator’s covenant promise to bless and renew it.
...it is here—in the concrete Kingdom ethic of neighborly shalom—that Christology speaks most practically to ecology. Indeed, this summons to neighbourliness both implies and requires a transformed environmental responsibility, for, as Stephen Rand points out—and this cannot be over-stressed—“Concern for the environment is inseparable from true and authentic love for our neighbours.” I cannot genuinely love my neighbors, local or global, without seriously considering the impact of my actions on the environment which supports their way of life: “We read of global warming, then turn up the thermostat and drive to the supermarket … Meanwhile, millions build their homes on land vulnerable to flooding, work in an atmosphere filled with chemical pollution, or stare at the sky searching for the sign of rain that will bring life back to their land and their families.” Here we observe, too, the cyclical relationship between poverty and the environmental crisis, where poverty is caused by environmental degradation, and environmental degradation is exacerbated by poverty. Thus, whatever else our response to Jesus’ call for mercy to the poor includes (cf. Matt 6:2-4; Luke 6:20=Matt 5:3), it must include an environmental ethic. In this regard we might recall the very Law that Jesus claims to have radically fulfilled: Deuteronomy 24:19-21 prohibits overtaxing and exploiting the land precisely because it is un-neighbourly to the poor, the oppressed and the alien. Likewise the Sermon on the Mount: we answer the call of 7:12 (in part) by being environmentally responsible, and in answering its call we will inevitably become environmentally responsible.
On Resurrection and Ecology:
The implications of the resurrection become clear as we trace the “groaning in travail” motif that haunts this text [Romans 8:18-30]. The creation travails (sustenazō), Paul tells us in v. 22, because its own redemption from decay is dependent on the full redemption of the human creature (the glory of the children of God, v. 21); and the human creature, having glimpsed its inheritance in the resurrected body of Jesus, and having received the living pledge of the Holy Spirit, travails (stenazō, v.23) in anticipation of its own bodily redemption; but where our endurance in travail fails, the Spirit itself travails unspeakably (stenagmois alalētois) on our behalf, longing in us, through us and with us (vv. 24-27) for our transformation into the likeness of the resurrected Son, “labouring” for the full restoration of the image of God (eikonos tou huiou autou v. 29) and thus for the full liberation of the decaying creation. And here—in the promise of a liberated creation that God makes us in the resurrected Christ—we discover the necessary spiritual resources for a genuine response to the groanings of the earth, for the Spirit that leads us and “groans” in us, groans not just for our own redemption, but for the redemption of the whole creation. To the extent that Romans 8:18-30 binds the ultimate redemption of creation to our own redemption in the resurrected Christ, our present (albeit limited) experience of that redemption must translate into hope and healing for the creation.
Rodos, or Where have all the Salmon gone?
The other day I heard a report about the disastrous failure of this summer's sockeye salmon run in BC. In what is being described as an ecological catastrophe, more than 9 million sockeye failed to return to their spawning grounds on the Fraser River this July.
For what they're worth, I've shared some words before about how followers of Jesus might let their faith inform their response to ecological isues like these. For what they're worth. Our words alone won't recreate 9 million sockeye salmon ex nihilio. (Though my faith assures me that there's One whose Word can. Come Lord Jesus, come.)
How do 9 million fish simply vanish? No one really knows, though all the usual suspects- water contamination, global warming, human encroachment- are standing in the police line up.
But I think I've seen the perpetrator. I can point it out.
It was about 12 years ago. My wife and I were backpacking through Europe and we were waiting for a ferry in Rodos, Greece. While we waited I watched these two guys fish a squid out of the water kind of kick it back and forth between them. For no particular reason. A game. Bored. And bored, they wandered off leaving the squid drying out to die in the sun.
Human indiffence.
It was one of those weird (in the Anglo-Saxon sense) moments that somehow sear themselves into your imagination. A glimpse behind the veil of the every-day at the ache deep down in things that we're a part of. Years later I wrote this poem about that day. Thinking today about 9 million fish gone without a trace, I thought I'd post it here.
For what it's worth.
Rodos
And shining in our innocence we strolled among
That ancient Grecian heat and down
Along the chalky crusade walls that glower
Spiked and shaded on the greasy water
Of the bay at Rodos Town:
Saw wide-eyed tourists, fresh from yesterday
The ebony Santorini slopes, tomorrow then
Onto that monumental monastery,
At John of Patmos' prison--
Today they tumble groggy from the ferry:
Along the antique walls they wander,
Cameras shutter through the shaded labyrinth
Of ivied green and purple flowers,
Narrow cobbled streets and arching bowers
Snapping blushing postcard scenes of plunder.
I watch two night-eyed Grecians laughing
Plunge their hands into the greasy slick--
Still laughing fling from bay to cobbles,
A bulbous, rock-hued squid whose bubbles
Clear to black with fearful ink grow thick:
Vain clots of tar spread oozing
Fearful from the flitting gills--
In sport they nudge it through the dust, till loosing
Interest, leave it wheezing liquid spouts of night
To find another victim of their choosing:
The puddle of its dying flowing
Black across the cobbles from the blinking gills--
While winking camera eyes intent on seeing
Orange sunsets blushing the Aegean
Miss a gasping squid beneath their going.
And yet one lonely white clad tourist stops,
The eye of Helios, that ancient heat
Bright on his pristine shirt, he fingering
A hat in nervous hands, reaches lingering
Towards the dying squid beneath his feet:
A furtive glance along the pier,
His shiny, sunburned head dips down--
Oblivious the crowds rush on to leer
About the ancient sights at Rodos Town --
He plucks it from the stones with nervous fear:
And he: precarious between his thumb
And index finger hangs the squid, its ink
Like tears of oil shining through the air--
His squeamish arm extended, flings it where
The tender water lulls its death to numb.
And yet a stain of ink is left, a greasy blot--
Of spreading night, of human brutishness--
A dark and creeping stain of ink unseen--
Not over cobbles, dust or dirt
Alone but on the very stony knot
Of greed, indifference and hurt
That is our coursing heart-- a stain of brokenness
No single act compassionate could scour clean.
It's for the Birds
Just a little follow-up from my last post. Here's the traditional icon for the baptism of Jesus. Notice how the little fish are swimming up just to touch His feet, just to play in the presence of the One who is their Saviour, too.
And here's a fantastic stained glass detail of St. Francis preaching the gospel to the birds. I love how rapt and intent they all look.
You see: we haven't always pretended that the Gospel was only about the rescue of our own individual, non-corporeal souls from the flames. In some corners of Christendom, on some branches of our family tree, we've tried to take Paul seriously when he said it was a message of hope preached to all the creation under heaven (Col 1:23).
Clean Hands, Dirty Jordan
Apparently by the time the Jordan River reaches the Dead Sea these days--what with the nation of Israel diverting 60% of her flow, and the nation of Jordan allowing septic tanks to seep crap into her water basin, and the nation of Syria maintaining some 40 dams on her major tributary--by then there's little left but a putrid trickle of raw sewage.
Miles up stream, spiritual tourists still come to be baptized gloriously on the same banks where Jesus himself once fulfilled all righteousness; down stream, here, today, you couldn't enter the water without serious health risks.
Not that anyone would want to.
The stench, they say, is nauseating.
I get that this crisis is shrouded with all sorts of political and social issues that defy a quick fix. Like a serious water shortage in the nation of Jordan. Like decades of political strife that have prevented these nations from cooperating on a solution. Like climate change, and economics, and a rapidly collapsing water table across the Middle East.
I get all that. And this morning, to be honest, I had a warmer, longer, more luxurious shower than I needed to. So who am I to blog?
But still, seeing the Jordan river pillaged and polluted like this should pierce us to the heart. Because some two millennia ago, the people of Judea came out to this river when they heard John's voice crying in the wilderness: "The promises of Isaiah 40 are now being fulfilled!" This is where they were drenched with the same water that Israel miraculously crossed when the nation first entered the land under Joshua. Here they enacted the burning cry of their hearts: "We want to be made new as the people of God."
And this is the river where we caught our first glimpse of the one in whom and through whom God would fulfill all the Messianic promises of Isaiah 40. Here we first saw the Beloved Son on whom the Spirit rests, who would provide comfort for the harried exiles, renewal of the covenant people, straight paths for the Creator's reign over his creation.
But if we read Isaiah to the end, we see that when the Messiah reigns in righteousness over his people, it will mean restoration and healing for the hurting creation. The desert will burst into fecund, verdant, joyous life. Isaiah 41-- the same Isaiah 41 that Jesus' baptism was somehow meant to fulfill--Isaiah 41 says it like this: "I will make the rivers flow on barren heights... I will turn the desert into pools of water."
Somewhere, I think, Christians forgot that when we saw Jesus emerge dripping from the Jordan, we were witnessing good news not just for us, but for the whole of the broken creation.
And we need to remember. Because the tragedy of this dying river is being played out all over the planet right now, as our greed, waste, materialism and idolatries continue to pillage the rivers and lakes and wetlands of our world. (After it's quenched Las Vegas' decadent water fountains and California's thirsty vegetable gardens, the Colorado River doesn't even make it to the Gulf of California anymore.)
May the stench of the dirty Jordan teach us to long once again for that promised day when God will restore all things under the reign of his Christ; but may it also convict us that our life together as the baptized people of the Creator can and should translate into healing shalom for his creation today, even as we hope for his future Coming.
Clean Hands, Dirty Oil
Tomorrow I'll present my recently completed research project on ecology and faith to a group of theology students at Briercrest Seminary. In many ways, this presentation marks the culmination of a half year of reading, thinking and writing about what a distinctly Christian position on the environment might look like. The specific question my project asked was: "To what extent should the local church's witness to the gospel include a biblically grounded response to contemporary ecological issues?"
After six months of studiously asking this question, my hopeful answer is: Certainly more than it currently does.
No doubt it’s tomorrow’s presentation that has me thinking so much these days about Bishop Luc Bouchard. He's the Catholic Bishop of
Alberta
In an online pastoral letter, he calls on the 55,000-some Catholics in his diocese to act on their faith in response to these environmental concerns. "The present pace and scale of development in the
The specific environmental and economic issues surrounding the oilsands are complex, but Bishop Bouchard's actions challenge me more generally. As I prepare to share my modest conviction with a group of Protestant/Evangelical theology students that the Faith actually includes some kind of ecological responsibility after all, here's a Catholic leader wading into controversy with his insistence that Christians simply cannot ignore the moral implications of the human exploitation of God's creation.
My own study of the Bible convinces me that as we say "Here I am" more and more deeply to the call of the gospel, we will naturally and inevitably become aligned to the environment in a way that promotes its good. In one of my most loquacious moments, I put it something like this: "We must see the Gospel of Jesus with renewed eyes-- the truly good news about the Creator's immanent reign through him over a redeemed humanity, the good news about the reconciliation between God and the world accomplished in his atoning death and victorious resurrection, the good news about the new-creation shalom and healing made possible through his poured-out Spirit-- for in the rays of light refracted by the multi-faceted gem of this gospel proclamation, we find the motive, the impetus and the spiritual resources for a healed and healing relationship with the rest of God's creation."
Wordy, but true.
May God renew our eyes.
And may he enable us to see the real answers to environmental crises that our faith in Jesus inevitably contains.