Want Not, Waste Not

sermon by Torin Eikler
Genesis 2:4b-9,15 Genesis 15:7-11,17-21

You may have heard of the small nation of Kiribati in the South Pacific. If you’ve seen pictures of it, you know that it’s made up of a lot of small atolls and one small island that are home to 103,000 people. They are not rich or powerful, but they’re not poor either. And they live in one of the more beautiful places on Earth. I wouldn’t mind visiting sometime, but I don’t think I’d want to live there.

You see, the average elevation of the entire country is just bit higher than 6 feet above sea level, and that has some not-so-beautiful consequences. They are, of course, subject to the power and unpredictability of storms, but they have learned how to deal with that in the hundreds of years they’ve been there. The more unfortunate problem they face is global warming, and while most of us have the luxury of arguing about whether that is a real threat or not, Kiribati has already lost some of its land to the rising tide. Before the end of the century, they expect to be completely underwater and have already arranged to buy part of neighboring Fiji so that they can move in 2062.


News like this seems to be coming out all the time. I don’t mean that islands are sinking or that the rising sea level will swallow us all up. (Certainly not here in West Virginia anyway). That’s actually old news. But there are all sorts of stories coming out every day about the shrinking polar ice caps or the three species (non-human species) that go extinct every day or some other environmental catastrophe. There are so many that sometimes it’s hard for me to actually pay attention to them all… let alone remember them. But I do remember the first story I heard that actually made me wonder about how we are treating the Earth.

It was 1988 or ’89, if memory serves, and the Fort Wayne newspaper ran an article about a man who was suing the city so that he wouldn’t have to pay garbage collection fees. It seems that he had somehow managed to cut his waste down to one small trash bag per month, and he was more than happy to run that to the dump himself rather than pay for weekly pickup that he didn’t need.

The article went on to talk about the growing confrontation between this man and the city, but I didn’t read all of that. I was stuck on a totally impossible idea - ONE SMALL BAG of garbage … PER MONTH! Even if I multiplied that by the five people living in my house, it wouldn’t come close to the 2 big garbage bags I lugged out to the end of the driveway each week. Just one small bag per month … how did he do it? Why did he do it? It got me thinking….


Five years later I was earning my degree in Environmental Studies when we were asked to do an analysis of the county and recommend a site for the new landfill that would have to come online in the next few years. (It wasn’t the county that asked us to do the study, and I’m confident they ignored it.) So we did the project, … and in the process, I learned more than really wanted to know about toxic seepage, water table contamination, and the slow build up gasses that can cause explosions … all of which were problems with the Wabash County Landfill. I realized that I was as much a part of that as anyone, and I decided to make some changes ... to become part of the solution instead of the problem.

For years, I have tried to hold on to that conviction. I have tried not to buy pre-packaged goods, and when I do, I have looked for recyclable packaging. I have gardened and preserved in order to have good vegetables to eat without having to buy produce shipped thousands of miles with all the fuel burned in the process. I dutifully recycle everything that I can. Carrie and I have used cloth diapers 70-80% of the time with our children. And yet I take out a can-full of garbage every week, and I have all but stopped even seeing the plastic bags and cans and bottles and other trash that line the streets of this neighborhood and the ones I regularly walk through. There’s just so much that needs to be done, and it’s easy to sit back and say that I have done enough to reduce my own footprint. It’s so easy to get caught up with pointing fingers at others rather than admit my own failings … even if it means that I have to hide from the God who walks in this garden every day.


Last week, Carrie said that scripture doesn’t tell us much about Jesus’ thoughts on spending even though it records a lot of his teachings on money and economics. Well, there is even less in the New Testament about waste or caring for creation. Nowhere at all do Jesus or the disciples or the letter-writers talk about recycling or deforestation or driving less, but John tells us that Jesus was there during creation – a part of the God who called it all good. And Jesus, himself, says that he has come to fulfill, rather than overturn, the law of the covenant.

That covenant has its roots in the beginning of creation when God brought forth the Earth with all its plants and animals and called it all good. Then, she created human beings and entrusted it to us. Not to “dominate” as the unfortunate translation that has taken root in our collective subconscious says, but to care for it. In point of fact, as Wendell Berry wrote:
The ecological teaching of the Bible is simply inescapable: God made the world because he wanted it made. He thinks the world is good, and He loves it. It is His world; He has never relinquished title to it. And He has never revoked the conditions, bearing on His gift of the use of it, that obliges us to take excellent care of it. If God loves the world, then how might any person of faith be excused for note loving it or justified in destroying it?

It was not given to us to do whatever we would like with creation. It is our calling to tend it so that it multiplies and bears fruit for all of its inhabitants. We humans are just a small fraction of that group. It’s past time that we take up our trowels, gloves, reusable bags, and rakes and clean up our mess even if it seems an impossible task, and when it does seem impossible, remember these words of encouragement:
If God is really at the center of things and God’s good future is the most certain reality, [as we claim,] then the truly realistic course of action is to buck the [ethic] of our age … and simply do the right thing. If we believe it is part of our task as earthkeepers to recycle, then we ought to recycle, whether or not it will change the world. Do the right thing. If we think it part and parcel of our ecological obedience to drive less and walk more, then that is what we ought to do. Do the right thing. We should fulfill our calling to be [caretakers] regardless of whether global warming is real or there are holes in the ozone layer or three nonhuman species become extinct each day. Our vocation is not contingent on results or the state of the planet. Our calling simply depends on our identity as God’s response-able human image-beareres.

So … rather than being discouraged, rather than just giving up, let’s do what’s right. Let’s step into our roles as stewards, clear away all the junk that comes between us and God, and open our eyes to the wonder around us.