Paying Attention

sermon by Torin Eikler
Luke 16:19-31             Amos 6:1-7

The parable we just heard comes at the end of an extended section of Luke that teach about the dangers of wealth and the challenge of using it wisely.  Jesus starts off by setting the stage with a story about a dishonest manager who spent his master’s money to meet his own desires, and who then forgives the debts of his master in order to build up good will for himself when he has been found out and fired.  Then it moves into the familiar section in which Jesus challenges the Pharisees with the words, “no [one] can serve two masters….  You cannot serve God and wealth.”  In the finale, Jesus pulls the curtain on the fate of those who enjoy the power and luxury of wealth at the expense of others with the story of the rich man and Lazarus, and we should probably pay close attention since this parable sums it up in pretty drastic terms.

As R. Alan Culpepper notes, this parable can be seen as a drama in three acts, the first two of which set the stage for the real show at the end.  In the first act, neither man moves or speaks.  The characters are simply introduced, and their way of life is described, and the rich man takes pride of place.  He wears purple (which may mean that he was a high-ranking official or royalty).  He lived in a house with gates to separate himself from the riffraff of the city.  He dressed in and slept in fine linen and feasted sumptuously every day.  He was “at ease in Zion” – basically he had everything a person could want.

Lazarus is a crippled beggar whose body is covered with running sores.  He is thrown before the rich man’s gate, and we are told that he would have gladly eaten the soiled bread from the rich man’s table.  The depth of Lazarus’ deprivation is described with one final detail: the dogs lick his sores as they pass by.

In the second act, the positions are reversed and Lazarus goes first.  He dies, which comes as no surprise, but the parable does not dwell on that fact.  It quickly moves on to the angels that come and take Lazarus to bosom of Abraham.  The Bosom of Abraham was one name used by the Jews of Jesus’ time for the place of highest bliss.  It might be the equivalent of saying that Lazarus was transported to the seventh heaven which makes the point that while the poor man was neglected by others during his lifetime, Lazarus is prized in the sight of God.

Meanwhile, the rich man also dies.  How he dies we never learn.  Though our society might choose to make the point that the rich food and decadent lifestyle may have come back to bite him in the end, the parable doesn’t seem to care what caused his death.  It simply says that he was buried – another nicety that Lazarus didn’t enjoy, and that he ended up being tormented in hell. 

In the third act we finally have some “action” in the form of a conversation between Father Abraham and the rich man.  During the course of the three exchanges, the rich man makes some real headway.  He starts just as he finished his life – concerned for himself: “send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue.”  Then he finally looks outside of himself for the first time: “I beg you, [then,] to send [Lazarus] to my father’s house … that he may warn [my five brothers], so that they will not also come to this place of torment.”  And then he goes even further.  He pleads with Abraham on their behalf: “but if someone goes to them form the dead, they will repent.”  In the end, his efforts still have no success, and his brothers’ only hope is to pay attention to the teachings they already know.

The first act showed us the way things tend to be: the poor appear to be poor and the rich appear to be rich.  The second act contains a reversal: the poor become rich and the rich become poor.  With Abraham’s final response, the third act underscores that reversal with a finality that offers no space for argument.  If one refuses to hear Moses and the prophets and repent, then they have chosen their fate.  There will be no further warning.[1]

 

And now we’ve set the stage to explore the parable, and I’d like to invite you into the process of dynamic analogy.  I invite you to put yourself into the story in place of one of the characters.  You can do it with any of the people in the parable and you might discover new ways of understanding what Jesus is trying to teach.  But, what I’d like you to do this morning is to match yourself with the character that best fits your situation so we can understand how this parable touches on our own lives and our experiences.

Are you more like Lazarus or is your life more like that of the rich man?  I’m just going to skip over Father Abraham and the angels; although if you do relate to them the most, please come and see me after worship.  We may have something else to talk about….

So, Lazarus or the rich man….  If your life is anything like mine, you will probably see yourself most in the rich man.  We may not have linen sheets or royal clothing, but we do have more than enough to keep us comfortable.  We may not feast on rich food every day, but we are not often starving.  We may not live in a walled estate, but our homes are generously sized, and we have enough privacy that we don’t have to worry about people wandering in to surprise us.  We certainly are not laying in the street begging for food as we slowly waste away from illnesses because the only medical care we can get is stray dogs licking our wounds.

We could stop there, and there would be a strong warning for us to be careful of the wealth we have … to use what we have in unselfish ways or, at least, to make sure that we don’t have too much now so that we can have more later.  I think that would be a mistake.  That gets us into the realm of trying to manipulate God into getting us what we want, and if we pay closer attention to the parable we might discover that there is a deeper message that addresses exactly that self-centeredness.

I think a story told by John Stendahl in the Christian Century illustrates that

message quite well ….

“Years later I still feel the shame.  I was visiting a young man in a facility for people with severe brain injuries.  he was agitated and eager to walk, so I joined him as he went from room to room and looked in each room as if he were searching for someone.  Eventually we came to a big room that wan not in use.  AT the far end a couple of janitors were at work buffing the floor.  I saw that no one was sitting at any of the tables and said to the young man, “There’s nobody in here.”

Then, from the other side of the room, came the voice of one of the janitors.  “What do you mean, nobody?  We’re not nobody.”

I don’t recall what lame apology I offered, but I remember the heat risign in my cheeks.  I really hadn’t seen those two men, although of course I’d registered that there were janitors at work.  My mind was elsewhere. [I was just like the rich man who didn’t really see Lazarus either; although this poor man was right there at his door or right under his nose, as we say.  His mind was elsewhere too.]  He saw Lazarus, of course – enough so that he could step over him and not stumble.  Perhaps he thought about for a moment about the problem of the poor, or considered the difficult question of whether it’s good or bad policy to give money to beggars.  Maybe he even dropped a coin in the man’s hands as he moved past him.  But he didn’t really see Lazarus, [and so he didn’t see the chasm that existed between them until it was revealed when he found himself on the other side of it.”[2]

The more fundamental way that we are like the rich man is that we often simply don’t see.  We don’t see the people who ask us for change on the street.  We don’t see the people who are struggling to find shelter … be it from harsh weather or from the equally harsh climate of our society.  We don’t see the people who have neither the money or the insurance they need to get medical help when they need it.

It may be more accurate to say that we don’t pay attention.  We see individuals in exactly those situations a lot.  We just don’t notice … or worse, we choose to ignore.  Most of us are so caught up in our own lives – our needs … our plans – that we sail right on past the dramas unfolding right in front of us.  We prefer the romantic comedies or the heroic epics that we are writing for ourselves to the tragedies written by life and played out all around us.  In that way, we are exactly like the rich man.  We create the chasms that stand between us and our neighbors in this life just as surely as he created the chasm that divided him from Lazarus.

 

Now I have to admit that I have led you astray in this journey down the road of analogy.  I’m only a little sorry for that.  This is how parables work, after all.  Like every good mystery, they draw you down one path after another until the truth is finally revealed.  Each path you follow teaches you a little more, though, and we do need to see just how much we are like the rich man in order to understand the lesson that Jesus was trying to teach his audience.  We need to learn that lesson just as much as they did.  But the truth is that there is another character (characters really) that we are more like than the rich man.

So here’s the next twist….  We are most like the brothers, and that’s a blessing … sort of.  The brothers are no better than the rich man.  They are just as misguided – just as greedy and proud … just as self-centered and blind, and they are clearly headed in the same direction as their brother.  But there is one very big difference:  They are still alive.  They still have the chance to change.  If they just pay attention to the voices of the law and the prophets, then there is hope for them.  They can still rewrite their future.

And here’s the final reveal....  There’s even more hope for us.  Those brothers got no extra help despite the appeals of the rich man.  They will have no angels come to them.  There will be no Lazarus rising from the dead to get their attention.  But that’s exactly what we have been sent – a new voice calling us to change … the voice of one who has died and risen from the dead … the voice of the one who is telling this parable … the voice of Christ.

So, the real question for us is not who we are most like in this story.  It’s not, ultimately, what we can learn from it (though that is important).  The question is, will we pay attention.  Will we hear … really hear the warning Jesus has buried in this little drama?  Will we pay attention to the hope that he offers?  Will we accept the call to change?

 
I like to think that I will…?  How about you?

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[1] Culpepper, R. Alan. “The Gospel of Luke: Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections” in The New Interpreter’s Bible: A Commentary in Twelve Volumes, Volume IX (Abingdon Press, Nashville) 1995.  315-19.

[2] Stendahl, John.  “Reflections on the lectionary” in The Christian Century, September 18, 2013. 21.

Counting for Joy

Sermon by Torin Eikler
Luke 14:25-33             Deuteronomy 30:15-20

The beginning of this passage is one of the scriptures that I have a hard time with.  Jesus doesn’t seem like the kind of person who would demand that his followers turn against their families in the way it seems to imply.  It just doesn’t fit with the message of love for all people that he preached so consistently during his time with us, and it certainly isn’t in keeping with his last actions telling John to take Mary as his adopted mother and vice versa.  Quite frankly, if the cost of following Jesus is hating my family, I don’t know if I can live up to the demand, and a part of me recoils from the idea that it would even be asked of me.  But I respect the scriptures enough to wrestle with this one rather than dismissing out of hand, and I have unearthed a couple of insights that have helped me along the way.

The first has to do with the challenging process of translation.  The word we read as “hate” in this passage comes from the Greek word “misei.”  It was originally translated as hate by the monks who put the King James version of the Bible together, and has held on through the years despite other valid possibilities.  The root of “Misei” is miseo which literally means "to regard with less affection, to love less, or to esteem less". It doesn't mean animosity, ill will, or revenge, which our English word, "hate," suggests. Miseo doesn't mean that the object is detestable or repugnant. It just means that by comparison, someone or something is less important than someone or something else.[1]

The other insight comes from scholars’ interpretation of the culture in the Middle East two thousand years ago which I think is probably on target since it helps this passage dovetail with the parable Jesus shared just before this text – the parable of the banquet that was refused by the chosen guest and became a feast open to all who chose to attend.  This is what that perspective has to offer according to John Pilch….

The purpose of meals in the Middle East was to cement social relationships.  Kin and friends were, and continue to be, the basis of economic survival in this world, where economics was deeply embedded in kinship and politics.  You could always count on your family and friends to look after you.  A follower of Jesus who ceased "networking" by means of meals would jeopardize a family’s very existence.  That disciple would have to choose between allegiance to the family and allegiance to Jesus.

Also, in the Middle East the main rule for behavior is family first. A disciple who chose to cut ties with family and social network would have lost the ordinary means of making a living. That would qualify as an economic cross for anyone who made that choice.  It is true that by joining a new "family" consisting of the other disciples of Jesus, a "family-hating" person could have found a new source of livelihood.  But without being able to make claims based on blood ties and advantageous social networks, members of that new "family" would have to rely on hospitality, which would have been extended exclusively by strangers to strangers.[2]

 

That interpretation helps me relax and breathe a little more easily.  I don’t have to “hate” my family.  I simply need to be reminded from time to time that they are not necessarily the most important thing in the world.  That’s still a little hard to stomach, but I don’t believe that God often chooses to separate or break apart families if there is another option.  (And I suspect that … for God … there is almost always another option.)

It also seems to imply that the cost Jesus was asking his listeners to count was more or less strictly economic.  That makes sense given that somewhere around 60% of Jesus’ teachings were about money and the rearranging of wealth-based societies, including the parable just preceding this passage.  If that was the case, it was still a pretty big cost to accept.

So what was the benefit?

 

We don’t often stop to ask that question.  Instead we just hunch our shoulders and think, “well, I’ll have to accept the cost if I want to follow Jesus.”  And yet, it seems to be the natural question to ask.  If I would have been there listening to him speak, that would have been the first thing that came to mind.

For us, the answer might be eternal salvation by the power of the grace offered through Jesus’ obedient self-sacrifice.  For the crowd, that wouldn’t have entered the picture.  They didn’t know anything (or had only the slightest inkling at most).  For them, the other side of the equation would have been the new way of life that Jesus preached – a life where there was enough for everyone to eat and where people reached out across the boundaries of family and social class to take care of each other with love and compassion … a life where the prosperity, abundance, and length of days became a reality for everyone just as Moses had promised so long ago.

Was that worth the cost?  Is it worth the cost to you?

 

I’m not sure that “family” holds quite the same place in our lives today.  We don’t really need our families to survive in the same way that Pilch speaks of when he describes the ancient Jewish culture.  But it is still a powerful motivator and there are any number of other things that stand in the way of following Jesus including pride and the class divisions that have taken the place of family to some extent.  Those are still costly barriers to cross with very real social and economic consequences.

Consider these two stories from Paul Gaffney and Robert Baldwin, respectively.  Gaffney writes…

As a street chaplain in Marin County, California, I join with the street community in San Rafael, California, every Tuesday.  Our Wellness Group is made up of people who live in their cars, people who sleep in bushes and those who are newly housed.  Some drink before noon, some are in recovery.  We are joined by mental health consumers, retired clergy, lay monastics – and whoever else is moved to join us.  In less than an hour we move together through the ritual we’ve built over the last ten years:  we sit in silence, pray and discuss sacred and secular texts.  Recently, we have concluded the time with a meal organized by members of our community….

Initially we planned only simple meals – bread and soup, salad and pasta.  But the cooks were delighted with the host church’s commercial kitchen and could not contain their enthusiasm.  Spaghetti and meatballs led to pulled pork with led to coconut curry.  Our simple dinners had turned into elaborate feasts….

At first the participants in the Wellness Group were upset that some people came only for the meal, or ate more than their share, or critiqued the food.  But as group members talked about this friction, we smoothed off some of the rough edges of the practice.  Now we proudly feed everyone and anyone, not just ourselves….[3]

And Baldwin tells this story:
I will never forget the day I met Mother Teresa. More than that, I will never forget what she taught me about loving other people, especially the poor.

She wasn't nearly as famous in the late seventies as she is now, but she already had hundreds of thousands of admirers around the world. I was the editor of a Catholic newspaper in Rhode Island, and when I heard she would be speaking in Boston, I decided to go.  [As a member of the press, I was] ushered into a room where  a little old lady wrapped in a blue-and-white sari [she was preparing to speak].

I couldn't believe how tiny she was. But what I remember most is her smiling, wrinkled face and the way she bowed to me, as if I were royalty, when I was introduced. She greeted everyone that way. I thought that if Jesus Christ walked into the room, she would greet him in exactly the same manner. The way she did it conveyed a message that said, "You are holy".

But meeting her wasn't as memorable as what she taught me about loving people. Until that day, I had always thought of charity as simply being nice to people. For Mother Teresa it was much more.

During her talk, she told us …. a story of how one of the sisters had spent an entire day bathing the wounds of a dying beggar who was brought to them from the streets of Calcutta. Mother Teresa's voice dropped to a whisper as she told the hushed auditorium that, in reality, the nun had been bathing the wounds of Jesus.  She insisted that Christ tests the love of his followers by hiding in grotesque disguises to see if we can still see him.

A few nights later, I was leaving my office after dark when a drunk accosted me.  He was dirty and ragged and smelled bad.  "Did the bus leave yet?" he asked.   The only bus that ever stopped on that corner was a van that carried street people to a soup kitchen.

"You've missed it," I told him.  Then I thought about Mother Teresa.  I didn't exactly buy the idea that this old bum was God in disguise, but I could see a person in front of me who needed a meal.  The soup kitchen wasn't very far out of my way.  "C'mon, I'll drive you," I said, hoping that he wouldn't throw up in the car.   He looked surprised, delighted and a little stunned.  He studied me with bleary eyes.  His next words floated to me on the smell of cheap wine and they seemed to confirm everything Mother Teresa had taught me.

"Say," he said, "you must know me."[4]

Was it worth the costs for these two men?  I think they would say that it was because it sounds to me (when I read between the lines) that they both found joy and fulfillment in the moments when they reached out past their barriers to help out those in need.  In those moments, I think they discovered the blessings of the Promised Land.  In those moments when they met Christ sitting at the table or weaving down the pavement before them.

 

For Baldwin, “family” was the social standing that would have him keep his distance from men who bear the smelly, lurking, nauseas stigma of those who have reached the end of their rope.  For the people in Gaffney’s group, it seems like pride and control were the barrier that wanted to keep everything just so and make sure everyone followed the same rules.  I don’t know what the barriers or concerns are that get in the way for each of you.  I don’t know the “family” that threatens to disown you if you choose to follow Christ.  I don’t even know what all of my own are, but I’m pretty sure that there is at least one. 

We all have that struggle.  There is a cost for each of us to count.  I only hope that you can find a way or a time or a place when you can set them aside and meet Christ.  I only pray that you too will discover the blessings and the joy of following his invitation to the banquet table set before us all.

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[1] Levin, Ron.  “Counting the Cost of Discipleship.” SermonSuite.com

[2] Pilch, John.  The Cultural World of Jesus, Year C. (Liturgical Press, Collegeville)  133 - 135.

[3] Gaffney, Paul.  “Feeding and being fed: a feast for those at the edges,” The Christian Century, September 18, 2013. 13.

[4] Baldwin, Robert. “Mother Teresa, the Wino and Me” in Chicken Soup for the Soul: Stories of Faith, Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, and Amy Newmark, eds. (Chicken Soup for the Soul Publishing, Cos Cob), 228-229.

Come and Celebrate!

sermon by Carrie Eikler
Psalm 148
September 8, 2013

When I told Torin what I was going to talk about today, I said, this sermon is going to be a “come to Jesus” moment.  I have friend who uses this phrase- a “come to Jesus moment”- when she is talks about experiencing anything that is clear, to the point, don’t put too much time into explaining it, it’s important, just do it.  Come to Jesus.

I don’t give many come to Jesus sermons. 

Perhaps I like my sermons to be a bit more nuanced than that.  A bit more poetic and flowery. 

Today, I’m chucking that.

This is my come to Jesus moment.

Just come to Jesus. Come to Jesus and celebrate.

When we decided to take on a summer-long (at least a 7week long) series on Creation Care, I knew it would be something our congregation would appreciate.  After all, we are a congregation that takes this topic very seriously.  We have identified that along with Christian Community, creation care would be one of our two main foci when thinking of outreach, education, nurture, and so on.

As we identified at our congregational retreat in April, in this congregation we have gardeners, mushroom hunters, farmers, mountain advocates, diggers in the dirt and mudpie makers, and washerwomen and washermen of cloth diapers.  We are full of people who feel called to care for the environment.

And yet, this wasn’t a series on just environment.

It was a series on creation.

On caring for God’s good creation.

If it was a series on just the environment, it would have the potential of being a seven week

call to action, an almost two month long confessional

It would be like Lent, in the middle of summer.

Repent. and Renew.

So you will have noticed that every week wasn’t about the environment.  We looked at what creation means, who is our creator, how we are as part of the creation.  Yes, we talked about our responsibility to change our habits and our hearts, but today is what it all leads up to.

Today, oh you good people of faith, is a day to celebrate.

Today, oh you responsible Anabaptists who value service so much…today is a day to remember goodness.

Come to Jesus people!  Come and celebrate!

I think we need the reminder sometimes to celebrate, don’t we?  We can take ourselves and our “responsibilities” so seriously that we forget to find joy in the simple fact that God made us and called us good.

Last week Torin gave you a Biology 204 insight into ecological terms such as neo-Malthusian and cornucopian.  And he used the Psalmist as showing you a middle way between the two

I didn’t major in Biology or environmental studies.  I was a sociology major.  I love people, and the study of people.  I’m an extrovert (in case you hadn’t realized).

So instead of looking at the world through a lens like Torin or other science-minded folks might, I look at the world and am fascinated by behaviors, motivators.  What makes us tick.  Why we do things.  How we shape society and how society shapes us.

It’s a good lens to take into looking at the religious life, and it has been great to try to understand the peculiarities of what I see in many Mennonites and Brethren, and many socially-conscious people of faith.

So here is my own interpretation of some dualistic extremes I see among us in our world

It is easy to see where the American lifestyle is one of what I call “extravagant entitlement.”  We believe we have the right to anything we want.  In any quantity that we want.  Whenever we want.  Forget about the consequence. 

Now when we realize the folly this lifestyle, there is a tendency (at least mentally) to swing to the opposite side, to a place I think of as “fearful responsibility .”  Now, I’ll use myself as an example, and I’ll say I see this a lot around me, maybe here.  The consequence of every choice is agonized over.  Everyday living can seem to be a series of “Oh, but there are starving people in (fill in the bank) so I shouldn’t eat this cookie.”  We embrace our call to simplicity with such mental rigor that we become cynical, skeptical, even unloving towards our neighbor who lives differently than we do, more extravagantly than we might.  We live in fearful responsibility about what will happen if we live the “wrong way.”

Now these are extremes, I realize.  But I have certainly felt it.  When I was a earnest, contentious seminarian, I remember having a conversation with another student named Keith.  Keith was a Quaker who grew up Mennonite and had lived for sometime in Portland, Oregon.  I myself had lived in the Northwest for a year, in Olympia Washington, so we were  chatting about familiar places in the area.

And I had said to him (it’s kind of embarrassing to say this now), something along the lines of “You know it is so beautiful out there.  But I couldn’t help feeling, as I looked at the Pacific, and saw houses and roads and all the white people “Wow, our ancestors destroyed and decimated the people of this land and this was as far as we could go.  I look at the ocean and think of all the destruction took place for me to stand here.”

Now, I thought I’d have a sympathetic ear in my good liberal friend Keith.  I thought he’d give me an affirmative “Oh, I know.  Isn’t it horrible.”  But I’ll never forget the look he gave me, an incredulous look, and he said “Really?!  When you looked at the beauty of God’s creation  all you could see was humanity’s tragedies?  How sad for you!”

Now of course, I did see the beauty of the gorgeous coast.  But he was right!  How sad for me, that I took our call to love, nonviolence, service, care, and all those good Come to Jesus things…how sad that I couldn’t see deep beauty because liberal guilt or Christian righteousness or my quest for virtue was more important.

So I’ve been setting the stage of extremes, extravagant entitlement versus fearful responsibility.  And it’s not that we live in all of one or the other, we all probably have some of both. 

The psalmist says you are part of creation.  And creation is to celebrate.

Perhaps the best way to restore ourselves in creation is to listen to God calling us

to shout praises.  To laugh joy.  To be delighted in life.

Perhaps we can find healing when we recognize that, yes,  things may seem desperate but we can use joy as antidote to destruction.  We can use prayers of praise as a defiant act against antipathy and discontentedness and entitlement

The Scottish hymn writer John Bell said on one of the videos we watched last year something to the effect of humans shouldn’t be so haughty as to believe we are the only one who could possibly sing God’s praises.  The river when it runs, the birds when they sing, when the coyotes howl and the cicadas chirp.  When the wind rushes through the branches, creation sings it’s praises to God.

Ask creation to teach you how to celebrate.  How to banish fear and entitlement from your life and to speak God’s praises.

So here it is, friends.  My come to Jesus moment.  We are called to responsibility.  We were called to till and keep and worship and serve in the garden.

But just as importantly, we are called to celebrate and praise our Creating God. //

Perhaps celebrating creation and our Creator is the first steps towards reconciliation with creation.//

So come to Jesus, children!  Come celebrate God’s creation.

 

A Tale of Two Worlds

sermon by Torin Eikler
Psalm 104:1-30           Genesis 1:1-5, 20-2:3

In college I studied environmental studies, and as part of that major I took an ecology class where we explored the way natural systems function.  We looked at systems as a whole as well as how each part of a system plays into the greater synergy that makes life for all parts possible.  The class was heavy on detailed examination of the scientific “facts” that help experts in their quest to reduce the confusing complexity into sets of equations that explain things in more clear-cut terms. But we also spent some time thinking about philosophies of ecology and different perspectives on resource and species management, and in one of those units I learned the terms Neo-Malthusian and Cornucopian.

Those two words - Neo-Malthusian and Cornucopian – refer to two different and opposed views on the resources available and the future of humanity.  Neo-Malthusians follow in the footsteps of Malthus who lived at the turn of the 19^th century and predicted the eventual mass die-off of humanity due to a lack of food.  Looking at the world, they see a finite - or limited – number of the resources needed to sustain human life.  Given the ever increasing number of people living on the planet, they believe that humanity will reach a point where there is no longer enough to sustain the population.  At that point, millions (if not billions) of people will die from starvation, disease, or in the increasingly violent struggle to gain control of what is left.

Cornucopians take the view that humanity will always find a way to provide what is needed to support the population.  Yes, they say, when you look at the resources around us, they seems to be too little to support all the people who are coming down the pipe, but advances in science will allow us to continually produce more of what we need from whatever there is available.  “Fundamentally, they believe,… there is enough matter and energy on the Earth to provide for the ever-rising population of the world,”[1] and ultimately, we, as a species, will be able to manipulate the world and even the universe around us in order to make ends meet (so to speak).

In essence, these two viewpoints describe two different worlds – or it might be more accurate to say that they describe the same world in two very different ways.  On the one hand, this world is one of scarcity.  On the other, we are surrounded by all we could ever want or need.  We just waiting for us to take advantage of it.

In the past couple of weeks, I was reminded that these opposing views are alive and well in our society by the newest novel by Dan Brown.  The book is set in a world with a population over 7 billion and growing.  Hundreds of millions of people live in poverty.  Tens of millions die of starvation each year, and over 100 million die of disease.  Energy and water are in short supply as well, and there are an increasing number of wars fought over the diminishing amount resources.  To top it all off, many of the basic sources of food, water, and energy are getting used up so fast that they cannot replenish themselves or be replenished by any technology known to humankind.

If that sounds familiar, it should.  The world of Inferno is our world as it was several months ago, and not much has changed since then.  (Our population continues to grow at a rate of one person every 13 seconds which means that we have added about 18 people since I started this sermon.  More than 14% of those children are likely to suffer starvation, and even more will die of diseases related to malnutrition and unclean water.)  It’s not a particularly pretty picture.

Now I’m not sure which view of the world Inferno is meant to portray, and I’m not going to tell you why in case you still want to read the book.  But, there is no question in my mind that feeling I got from it fit right into the Neo-Malthusian perspective.  As I read, I was carried along by the sense of fear and worry that comes from recognizing the impossibly fragile nature of the future – and not just the future of my life ... or my children’s lives … or the life of humanity … but the future of all life on this planet.  It’s the kind of feeling that makes people want to hole up in a safe house somewhere with as large a stockpile of the necessities as possible.  It’s the kind of feeling that gets people filling whole rooms with guns and ammunition to make sure that what they have is safe.  In the end, it makes it all about you.

 

Okay … take a breath or two.  We aren’t in that place yet… not really.  So relax … relax and listen to the words of Psalm 104 for a little while….

Bless the Lord, O my soul…. 

                 You make springs gush forth in the valleys;
                        they flow between the hills, giving drink to every wild animal …. 
            By the streams the birds of the air have their homes,
                  and they sing among the branches.

You cause the grass to grow for the cattle, and plants for people to use.

                  [You] bring forth food from the earth,
                        and wine to gladden the human heart,
                              oil to make the face shine,
                                   and bread to strengthen the human heart.

 These all look to you to given them their food in due season;

                    when you give to them, they gather it up;
                           when you open your hand, they are filled with good things….
             When you send forth your spirit, they are created;
                           and you renew the face of the ground.

 

That makes you feel better doesn’t it.  The images of natural beauty and of God providing everything that we need – everything that all of creation needs … those are comforting words.  Everything will be alright, they say because God is in control.  God loves us, and God is going to take care of us.

 

At first glance, Psalm 104 looks like it would represent the opposite perspective – the Cornicopian view.  But the psalmist is not so naïve as she seems.  She is not saying that everything will work out because people will find a way.  People are hardly mentioned at all, and we certainly are not at the center of things like we often think.  God is at the center.

This psalm is a hymn of praise and re-orientation.  It calls us to remember that we are not the be all and end all.  We are part of the world, but we are just part of the world.  With its imagery that evokes the Genesis story of God’s good creation, it reminds us that the earth is the Lord’s.  Everything - all creation exists in balance and harmony … when it works together according to God’s vision … and we serve as caretakers. 

 

God’s world is a world of abundance.  It’s a world filled with good things: light and darkness, land and sea, food and water, life and potential everywhere we look.  That world is our world.  It’s the same place.  That world did exist … could exist again if we were willing put ourselves back into the life cycle of creation instead of standing outside it as we have been for so long.  So why is it so hard to live into the hope and promise of the vision of creation? Why do we struggle to trust in the abundance that God has provided?  Why do we always think that we must do all the work of making things right … for ourselves and for the world?

As J. Clinton McCann, Jr. approaches our struggle with these words:

Our motivation [in this world that preaches scarcity] is to maintain our current standard of living without trashing things so terribly or depleting natural resources so severely that we cannot pass the same style of life on to our children.  In other words, our primary concern is ourselves, and our major motivation is fear…. 

For the Psalmist, relating to the world – in our terms, perhaps, an environmental consciousness – begins with praising God.  The motivation is not fear but rejoicing in the Lord.  Praise involves the acknowledgement of God’s sovereignty and the commitment to live under God’s rule.  To take the psalmist as an example, we would have to conclude that concern for the environment begins with praising God.  To be sure, this sounds hopelessly simplistic, scientifically and technologically naïve.  But such a starting point – and its underlying conviction that the world belongs to God – is the only thing that will dislodge our arrogant assumption that we can save the world, as if it were ours to save! ….

In a profound sense, Psalm 104 puts us humans in our place – with springs and hills and trees and creeping things.  If our motivation for facing our own future and the future of the earth were to glorify God, we might even have the humility to ask ourselves what it would really mean to live in partnership with a tree or with a wild goat or with the thousands of species whose disappearance causes hardly a ripple of attention, primarily because we are convinced that nature exists to serve humanity.  Quite simply, Psalm 104 asserts that this is not the case.  Rather, to serve God will mean ultimately to serve God’s creation (as it says in Genesis 2:15 which should be translated “to serve and keep it”). ….[2]

 

Back in Ecology 204 we had an old-school blue book final.  We had an hour and a half to state whether we held the Neo-Malthusian or the Cornucopian view and then defend our position.  I chose Malthus with all his scarcity and assured destruction because all the evidence of science tells us that we live in a world defined by scarcity.  We struggle to make ends meet.  At home, out in the world, and here … we hear the message that we need more than we have, and that makes us worried and scared about what the future will look like.

I defended that perspective, but not because it’s what I believe.  I chose it because it is easier to “prove,” and in the world of scarcity where one grade can make such a big difference – where an “A” can make the difference toward a successful career, I didn’t have the courage to embrace something more risky.  So, I went with fear and Malthus even though I really believe in the world described by the psalmist. 

What would it look like if we followed the example of the psalmist … if we had the courage to embrace and be embraced by the abundance of creation? 

How would it feel if we could let go of our fear and live in joy and awe at the work of the creator? 

How would our approach to living change if we put aside the pride and worry that puts us at the center of life and began to care … really care for the rest of creation, trusting that creation … God’s creation would take care of us in return? 

What would happen if we left behind the world of scarcity that we have created and took up our place in that world … if we chose God’s world … if we embraced the abundant Kingdom of God?

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[1] taken from Wikipedia on August 30, 2013.  See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornucopian

[2]McCann, Jr., J. Clinton. “The Book of Psalms: Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections” in The New Interpreter’s Bible: A Commentary in Twelve Volumes, Volume IV (Abingdon Press, Nashville) 1996.  1100.