Preached at the Beacon Hill Fellowship, April 23, 2023, Tim Sizemore, spiritual leader
“Whose Earth is It Anyway?”
“The earth is the LORD's, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein.”
Psa 24:1 KJV
The late Dr. James Cone was the founder of Black Liberation Theology. He spent most of career as a professor of Systematic Theology at the Union Seminary in NYC. He wrote,
“Until recently, ecological justice has not been a major theme in the liberation movements in the African American community.... Justice fighters for blacks and the defenders of the earth have tended to ignore each other in their public discourse and practice. Their separation from each other is unfortunate, because they are fighting the same enemy—human beings' domination of each other and nature.
The logic that led to slavery and segregation in the Americas, colonization and apartheid in Africa, and the rule of white supremacy throughout the world is the same one that leads to the exploitation of animals and the ravaging of nature...People who fight against white racism but fail to connect it to the degradation of the earth are anti-ecological, whether they know it or not. People who struggle against ecological injustice but do not incorporate in it a disciplined and sustained fight against white supremacy are racists, whether they acknowledge it or not. The fight for justice cannot be segregated but must be integrated with the fight for life in all its forms.” Sojourners Magazine, July 2007.
Psalm 8, makes the comparison between the “bigness” of God and the “smallness” of humankind.
“O LORD, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. ...When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? Yet you have made them a little lower than God,
and crowned them with glory and honor. You have given them dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under their feet, ...whatever passes along the paths of the seas.
9 O LORD, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”
Psalm 8:1-5, 9 NRSV
Julian of Norwich, the 14th century anchoress from Norwich, England, whose writings are the earliest surviving writings in the English language by a woman, wrote in one of her “shewings,”
“I know well that heaven and earth and all creation are great, generous and beautiful and good... God’s goodness fill all his creatures and all his blessed works full, and endlessly overflows in them... God is everything as I see it, and the goodness which everything has is God.”
The Psalmist in 121:1-2 exults “I will lift my eyes to the hills— From whence comes my help? My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth.” KJV
The psalmist declares out total dependance to Mother Earth, this our sacred and compelling duty to keep her healthy for the future of humankind.
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” Gen 1:1-2 NRSV
The Hebrew word for God is pronounced “RUACH.” with the emphasis on the guttural sound, RU-ach. It is a feminine word, meaning - Wind, Breath, Life Force.” In the Greek it is “pneuma.” Pneuma adds an additional meaning to RUACH’s two – “Spirit.” It is the power encountered in the breath and the wind.
There is also the image of God “hovering” over Creation that it is about to be. The writers of Genesis give us an image of a dove sweeping, moving, and hovering, spreading her wings to protect her chicks.
These are all feminine words and images. The writers of Genesis suggest that the Earth and the Universe were created by a “mother life force.”
Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good; Gen 1:1-3 NRSV
Astronomers with powerful telescopes tell is that the “Big Bang” occurred nearly 14 billion years ago. In 2015 the Webb space telescope revealed the most distant galaxy so far from earth.
It is known as GN-z11. It looks like a few clumps of red, fuzzy matter. It is estimated that it was created about 2% into the life from Big Bang.
Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” So, God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” Gen 1:26-27 NRSV
Twice Genesis mentions that humankind was made in God’s image. It doesn’t mean that we were made to be gods, rather we were created as God’s image, that is to reflect God’s divinity. Later, in Genesis 3, the woman, and the man, make the terrible decision to consider themselves as gods. And as they say, the rest is history.
28 God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”
God’s blessing means that She entrusts man and woman to have dominion over the rest of Creation by living into God’s image. By dominion, God “entrusts” them to care for Creation. Dominion is not “domination.” Humankind does not have a unilateral control over Creation to do as they fit, even to eventual destroy it for their own selfish gain to power and riches.
Genesis concludes the story of creation when Ruach declares “... to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the “ruach” of life, I have given every green plant for food.”
“And it was so. God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.” Gen 1:31 NRSV
In all the previous stages of creation, God declares what She has just made as being “good.” But here he declares all that she has made as “very good.”
Genesis 3 records Adam and Eve’s “Sin” as their desire to become as their Creator. However, the fifth century theologian, Augustine of Hippo, redefines their sin as the “Fall,” or as the “Original sin.”
The original meaning in Genesis 3 is that in the Garden of Eden, the woman and man CHOSE to sin against God. God never made them to sin. God gave humankind the freedom to choose between good and evil. The rest of the story of humanity is based on how people made that choice and acted on it. This had nothing to do with humankind’s original goodness as recorded in Genesis 1.
The false doctrine of “original sin” was applied by the Church into scaring people with “hell and damnation.”
Matthew Fox joins a host of Christian mystics across the centuries who challenged the false orthodoxy of the Church who abused God’s original blessing.
What does all this have to do with us today and what are we going to do to about it to save the our planet?
1. We must reclaim our mother-consciousness, embedded in our essential goodness, as declared in Genesis
2. Fox writes what the Celts have known for centuries. Mother Earth is first Bible.
In 1972 James Lovelock proposed the “Gaia” theory. Earth is a living organism, with living and inanimate beings are created by Mother God. They manage the climate and biochemical conditions that make life on earth possible. Gaia can recreate and heal herself if humankind allows her to do so.
3. We must become a part of the healing of the earth. We must become activists for the sake of our survival and all created beings. It’s a lot more than recycling and ceasing the use of plastic and foam cups at church dinners. Our activism must be much more substantial and transforming.
For example, join environmental activist groups like the Sierra Club. The Polk County League of Women Voters is active promoting EV vehicles and organizing household coops to install solar panels.
The Lakeland Branch of the NAACP is advocating for the removal for toxic waste dumps located in African American communities. Fumes from these sites have a direct correlation with low-birth weight in newborns and causing asthmatic patients.
We must lobby our politicians to support laws which address climate change, or to vote them out if they don’t.
We can stop throwing our shoes at our TV's or to just pray that Mother Earth will heal herself without our intervention. The good news is that if given a chance, Mother Earth will return to her original goodness.
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