Out From Ashes’ Bosom
A Sky Care Sermon For Earth Day
Rev. Dr. Douglas Olds
Point Reyes (California) Community Presbyterian Church
April 16, 2023
OT READING: Isaiah 44:9-20
All
who make idols are nothing, and the things they delight in do not profit; their
witnesses neither see nor know. And so they will be put to shame. 10 Who would
fashion a god or cast an image that can do no good? 11 Look, all its devotees shall
be put to shame; the artisans too are merely human. Let them all assemble, let
them stand up; they shall be terrified, they shall all be put to shame.
12 The
ironsmith fashions it and works it over the coals, shaping it with hammers, and
forging it with his strong arm; he becomes hungry and his strength fails, he
drinks no water and is faint. 13 The carpenter stretches a line, marks it out
with a stylus, fashions it with planes, and marks it with a compass; he makes
it in human form, with human beauty, to be set up in a shrine. 14 He cuts down
cedars or chooses a holm tree or an oak and lets it grow strong among the trees
of the forest. He plants a cedar and the rain nourishes it. 15 Then it can be
used as fuel. Part of it he takes and warms himself; he kindles a fire and
bakes bread. Then he makes a god and worships it, makes it a carved image and
bows down before it. 16 Half of it he burns in the fire; over this half he
roasts meat, eats it and is satisfied. He also warms himself and says, “Ah, I
am warm, I can feel the fire!” 17 The rest of it he makes into a god, his idol,
bows down to it and worships it; he prays to it and says, “Save me, for you are
my god!”
18 They do not
know, nor do they comprehend; for their eyes are shut, so that they cannot see,
and their minds as well, so that they cannot understand. 19 No one considers,
nor is there knowledge or discernment to say, “Half of it I burned in the fire;
I also baked bread on its coals, I roasted meat and have eaten. Now shall I
make the rest of it an abomination? Shall I fall down before a block of wood?”
20 He feeds on ashes; a deluded mind has led him astray, and he cannot save
himself or say, “Is not this thing in my right hand a fraud?”
---
Philosopher Hans Jonas claims, ‘the qualitatively novel nature of …our
[industrial economies] has opened up a whole new dimension of ethical relevance
for which there is no precedent in the standards and canons of ethics…’ Ethics
seems overwhelmed by climate change. None of our inherited moral traditions
anticipate practical responsibilities for managing the sky, nor construct
institutions of justice to discipline [petroleum’s] power across cultures and
generations... Adequate responses to climate change elude us in part because
atmospheric powers outstrip the capacities of our inherited traditions for
interpreting them.” [1]
Others
assert that there is no Biblical message or historical analogy to apply to the
issue of Global Warming and Climate Change.
However, my doctoral research into how the Bible does address human
environmental responsibility uncovered a number of verses directly applicable
to caring for both earth and sky.
Our initial reading this morning is centrally concerned with the idolator’s
use of combustible resources--the unsustainable scale of exploitation and
industrial combustion of which is at the root of the Greenhouse Effect. Sometimes
trivialized by scholars as a “parody,” Isaiah charges the idol maker with
diverting combustible resources away from their existential, intended
function--instrumental sufficiency for householding’s warming and
cooking--toward the creation of idols in the vain pursuit of self-created
transcendence.
[Rouncewell] comes to a gateway
in the brick wall, looks in, and sees a great perplexity of iron lying about in
every stage and in a vast variety of shapes—in bars, in wedges, in sheets; in
tanks, in boilers, in axles, in wheels, in cogs, in cranks, in rails; twisted
and wrenched into eccentric and perverse forms as separate parts of machinery;
mountains of it broken up, and rusty in its age; distant furnaces of it glowing
and bubbling in its youth; bright fireworks of it showering about under the
blows of the steam-hammer; red-hot iron,
white-hot iron, cold-black iron; an iron taste, an iron smell, and a
Babel of iron sounds.
Ironically, this idolatry of noise, haste,
and military-industrial pursuits of vain security has become limited not by
combustible stocks of petroleum, but by the capacity of the atmosphere to act
as a sink for carbon dumped into it as what is called the Capitalocene—the geological
epoch of the furnace of finance—overflows creation’s limits accorded to this
generation. Yet not all humanity is equally complicit: As of 2017, “The richest
10 percent of people [were] responsible for up to 43 percent of destructive
global environmental impacts. In contrast, the poorest 10 percent in the world
[were] responsible just around 5 percent of these environmental impacts.”
Isaiah is a prophet for today’s environmental
crises: Isa. 50:11: “But all of you are kindlers of fire, lighters of firebrands.
Walk in the flame of your fire, and among the brands that you have kindled!
This is what you shall have from my hand: you shall lie down in [what I’m
paraphrasing as ‘angry heat.’]”
It doesn’t have be this way. The writer(s)
of Genesis 1 revealed an alternative, novel, and non-violent cosmogony absent
hostile chaotic forces. We know the story:
Gen. 1:27 So God created
humankind in his image, … 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… 31 God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was
very good.
With the use of the imperative verbs for “subdue” ( כָּבַשׁ
kāḇaš) and “have dominion” ( רָדָה rāḏâ) we seem to re-enter the ANE cognitive environment of forceful
monarchical power granted to divine agents over the earth. However, as I’ve preached to you before, dominion
never implies doing of violence just as it cannot not mean depleting the gifts
of the earth to support life—all life. Rather dominion as exemplified in Jesus
is
An “utopian anthropological maxim that
every human is a [guiding] “ruler” of the world”
[who subdues spaces by virtue and grace that soothe anxieties and calms
conflict].
As a directive to humanity in Gen. 1:28, “Subduing” is a social call to calming
virtues not an environmental program of natural exploitation to the point of depletion. As you’ve heard from me before: “Subduing” tames the
wild horse by “gentling” rather than “breaking.” The practice of dominion that
subdues the earth is through non-violent, redirective “grace pressures,” --Aikido-like
modeling the virtues of Christ: his humility,
charity, healing empathy, and reverence.
The unfortunate instrumental construal of “dominion” applied as
environmental “domination” began after a half-millennium of Christendom to
subordinate nature to human extractive and exploitative production processes. It
is as if a misreading of Gen. 1:28—our post-Fall forgetting that the prime
mover of both being and becoming is perfectly gracious--to focus on domination
of nature captivated the medieval and modern mind bent on economic growth, and,
like a black hole, vacuumed up all the light of Gen. 1 ontology of living grace
and of Gen. 2:15’s clear directive to humanity to act as trustees of nature’s
“garden.”--to “serve”
and “guard/preserve” the garden. Linking “serve” (עָבַד āḇaḏ)
to “guard” (שָׁמַר šāmar) is humanity’s role of trustee for the
long-term, productive sustainability of nature’s deposits and yearly harvests.
Near Eastern monotheistic religions
recognize the trustee principle of human responsibility for nature’s gifts.
Rabbi David Gordis (2001, 1369) derives the principle of human trusteeship
for the natural world from Torah. The Koran (II:29-30) links Creation with
human trusteeship of the earth:
29. He made for you all
that lies within the earth, then turning to the firmament He proportioned
several skies: He has knowledge of everything.
30. Remember, when your
Lord said to the angels: "I have to place a trustee on the earth" (Al-Qur'an 2001).
As in the opening to
the Book of Genesis, God’s creating activity is linked by the Koran with the
need for designating a human trustee in the Creation. In all three religions,
humanity is designated the trustee by a
decree founded in the Creation account itself. Other religions have pantheistic
principles to care for the Earth. Human trusteeship and an earth care ethic is
ontological in every religion with which I am familiar.
God’s directive to Adam in Gen. 2:15
includes the whole “garden,” so that the imperatives “Serve” (עָבַד āḇaḏ)
and “Guard” ( שָׁמַר šāmar ) stipulates that Adam/humanity manage and harvest
sustainably and without waste, enhancing the natural estate given by God at the
Creation.
As God formed man, adam, from the Earth, Adamah humanity is not
limited to the dust but is headed for Life in the Spirit. Yet Adam is
disconnecting itself from its living Adamah by its idolatrous focus on sustaining
and reveling in its ashenness-- pursuing dead Adamah, the extinguished fire,
the ash. Adam is seeking its mother’s breast in ashes. All of creation is groans,
as Paul says in Romans, a text that grounds the Global South’s Accra Confession
from 2004 that calls western imperialist economies to account for their environmental
profligacies.
The delusion of
Homo combustialis is that its capitolocene epoch of disrupting the geochemical
cycles of earth and sky is how it becomes divine—or at least its rich celebrities
become worshipped as so. Space pirates we, abandoning our trust over non-human
species.
Yet Psalm 104 incorporates other species into God’s provident care and
commonwealth:
Psalm
104: 1Bless the LORD, O my soul.
O LORD my God, you are very great.
You are clothed with honor and majesty…
10You make springs gush forth in the valleys;
they flow between the hills,
11giving
drink to every wild animal;
the
wild asses quench their thirst.
12By
the streams the birds of the air have their habitation;
they
sing among the branches.
13From
your lofty abode you water the mountains;
the earth is satisfied with the fruit of your
work.
14 You cause the grass to grow for the
cattle,
and plants for people to use,
to bring forth food from the earth,
15and
wine to gladden the human heart,
oil
to make the face shine,
and
bread to strengthen the human heart.
16The trees of the LORD are watered
abundantly,
the cedars of Lebanon that he planted.
17In them the birds build their nests;
the stork has its home in the fir
trees.
18The high mountains are for the wild goats;
the rocks are a refuge for the coneys….
27These all look to you
to give them their food in due season;
28when
you give to them, they gather it up;
when
you open your hand, they are filled with good things.
Psalm 104 envisions the intentional, providential,
and interdependent ecosystem—with the
non-human species citizens of nature’s commonwealth. Psalm 148 incorporates
non-human species into the worshiping community, poetically reveling in their intrinsic—non-instrumental—value
as loved of God.
Psalm 148:1 Praise the LORD!
Praise the LORD from the heavens;
praise him in the heights!
2Praise him, all his angels;
praise him, all his host!
3Praise him, sun and moon;
praise him, all you shining stars!
4Praise him, you highest heavens,
and you waters above the heavens!
5Let them praise the name of the LORD,
for he commanded and they were created.
6He established them forever and ever;
he fixed their bounds, which cannot be
passed.
7Praise the LORD from the earth,
you sea monsters and all deeps,
8fire and hail, snow and frost,
stormy wind fulfilling his command!
9Mountains and all hills,
fruit trees and all cedars!
10Wild animals and all cattle,
creeping things and flying birds!
11Kings of the earth and all peoples,
princes and all rulers of the earth!
12Young men and women alike,
old and young together!
13Let them praise the name of the LORD,
for his name alone is exalted;
his glory is above earth and heaven.
14He has raised up a horn for his people,
praise for all his faithful,
for the people of Israel who are close to
him.
Praise the LORD!
The totality of the created community is tasked by these two Psalms with
praising God. Yet humanity has caused a massed extinction event of wildlife
since 1970 as 60% of fauna, fish, reptile, and bird species have been entirely
extinguished. Moreover, human idolatry—greed and failure of trusteeship—has
disrupted authentic and covenanted worship of God by the full community of
Creation detailed in Psalm 148.
Isaiah, again, agrees with the Psalmist,
linking the providence of the Creator’s grace with all nature’s duty to honor
and praise:
Isa. 43: 19–20b (cf Job 38: 41–39:6)
19 I am about to do a new
thing;
now
it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I
will make a way in the wilderness
and
rivers in the desert.
20The wild animals will honor me,
the
jackals and the ostriches;
for
I give water in the wilderness,
rivers in the desert.
Trusteeship not only involves managing the
resource base, it involves preserving the opportunities for a good life for all
created beings, including non-human species. The texts of the 6 days of
Biblical creation tell us that animals were like adam also drawn from
the soil and filled with the common breath. As Eccl. 3.19:
For the fate of humans and the fate of
animals is the same; as one dies, so dies the other.
They all have the same breath (רוּחַ
rûaḥ),
As animals are enfleshed in relationship
with air, the vector of the Holy Spirit in Creation, they are companions to humanity in the atmospheric processes and
similarly endowed with usufruct rights to the garden’s clean and temperate air.
And to have an intrinsic right to life as praiseworthy and praising created
beings. Animals are existentially beloved of God and integral to God’s proper
worship as citizens of God’s ecosystem and natural commonwealth.
Animals are shown to have souls: Even the
animals repent (שׁוּב šûb) in Nineveh in Jonah
3:7-8. God expresses compassion and care for Nineveh’s animals (Jonah 4: 11). Greg Boyd
asks, If humans will “judge the angels” (according to 1 Cor 6:3) because the
angels were entrusted with the caring of humanity, might humanity someday stand
before the tribunal (of the animal kingdom)" for which we are trustees over the
whole earth (see also Hab 2:17)?
I could go much further into the scope and
depth of the Bible’s environmental ethic of care. I have not addressed the clear
Earth Care ethics in the Gospels, in Deuteronomy, or in the Book of Proverbs
among others. As Jesus’s call is directed to create civilizations of care, we
are earthbound to the broadest expanse of the ethics of earth care. Grace knows
no cosmic limit! No territorial or species boundary!
The sky communicates (reveals) to humanity
God’s sustaining relationship (rainbow, winds, works) so that the sky and atmosphere are the frontier of idolatry’s assault: to treat the sky
as a non-living entity devoid of the Spirit’s action and energies, a dump for byproducts
of the combustion economy.
We conclude by returning
to Eccl 1.4 as a key text for directing
conscience toward loyalty to the earth & our given place on it. The claim
that the earth remains לְעוֹלָ֥ם (leʿôlām: “forever”) This
signifies an eternal status for this aeon’s terra firma that is networked into bodies
& soul destined for eternity. Do we not know that we were created in
partnership with the creatures of the earth and its cycles, with landscapes that gave
our souls sensibility—that shaped our language in natural metaphors and awareness
of its energies and power? [6] Human loyalty necessarily must accommodate, commune, & commit to the terrain & atmosphere encountered during its ever earthly
walk. There is no evidence that such a sustaining terrain & atmosphere
exists for humanity in outer space so that we can trash this planet’s
sustaining processes to get there. The lure of outer space is an illusion
tailored for our death-dealing age of furnace finance. The lure of outer space demands our death.
Mars calls our language and our arts to die. Our air and water which enter and exit our nephesh to become poisoned. Even if our bodies could live, our souls
would die!
Never in the
prophets is condemnation the final word, as God mercifully restores the people repentant.
We see this as Isaiah
sums up with a prophecy of grace to counter our contemporary tendency to feel doomed
in these crisis—this crucible of an increasingly fevered planet.
Isa. 25.5: “the
noise of aliens like heat in
a dry place,
you subdued the heat with the shade of
clouds;
the song of the ruthless was stilled.
For this
prophecy of grace is that not even human idolatry and injustice may extinguish the
incarnate, sanctified cosmos. God will work even in and through our ashes.
Despite our ashes and ash making. For God knows we come from dust. Grace is
what shapes dust and fructifies ashes. From the ashes of our histories baptized
by the Jordan. Our destiny ensured not by war’s Martian phoenix but by grace’s riverside dove. By
his Spirit, Christ is truly and irreversibly becoming all-in-all (Col. 3.11), even
in the ashes of our making. May this dove’s vision be so for all adam.
For you and me. Amen.
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