Monday, April 3, 2023

Out From Ashes’ Bosom: A Sky Care Sermon for Earth Day

 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?”

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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.[2]

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.  

The economic fabricators of idols become conformed to them (Ps. 115.8), taking on their unhearing, unseeing, senseless impotence (vv. 5-7). Isa. 44.9-20 images feeding on ashes (cf. Ps. 102.9) as foreshadowing the Capitalocene political economy of combustion heedless of Creation’s material, limiting justice. Global heating is an apocalypse: it is an unveiling of God’s anger at the human economy’s idolatries of waste and social failures to address material privation of social outsiders, the vulnerable, and the ignored.

 Feeding is a key prophetic, often condemnatory, image. Ezek. 5:10 is the central indictment of a society that symbolically feeds on children, realized in history during sieges of Jerusalem. In feeding on ashes, the human economy is feeding on God’s children: The poor.

Prov. 30:15-16: The leech has two daughters; “Give, give,” they cry. Three things are never satisfied; four never say, “Enough”: Sheol, the barren womb, the earth ever thirsty for water, and the fire that never says, “Enough.”

 This proverb graphically symbolizes the rapacity and insatiability of economies of fire and the appetites it stimulates, both of which never say “enough.”  “Ashes” is metonymy for the idolatrous appetite for physical fire, a vain wish for vaporous oblivion, in contrast with the Created desire for the Burning Bush that is not consumed.

 The “leech” is a symbol for the worm of anxiety that sucks the blood of the poor. The economies of fire are representations of a people not in accord with shalom: secure attachment to the grace of God. This anxiety powers idolatry, most pronouncedly in the military-industrial complex’s bottomless gullet eating its way to weaponized vanities of security. The U.S. military makes war on the sky as the world’s largest source of Greenhouse gas emissions. God’s heating anger is returned to us.

 Thomas Hardy in The Return of the Native (1878) places the psychological impetus to feeding on ashes (the theme of the novel’s chapter 3) in atavistic, rebellious instinct against nature’s cycles of providence:

[T]o light a [bon]fire is the instinctive and resistant act of man when, at the winter

ingress, the curfew is sounded throughout Nature. It indicates a spontaneous,

Promethean rebelliousness against the fiat that this recurrent season shall bring foul

times, cold darkness, misery and death. Black chaos comes, [as] the fettered gods of the earth say, Let there be light.

European settlers of Colonial New England  were ash feeders. William Cronon describes how they altered the terrain, cleared forests, setting the fallen timber ablaze with no instrumental purpose other than stoking huge bonfires in rituals of domination of the land and its festive festoon of ashes.[3] Their notions of property intruded onto Native American ecosystems accelerating ecological degradation absent the virtues of thrift and self-restraint and the responsibilities of trusteeship of nature’s providence. They mistook temporal gifts of nature for an eschatological, eternal bounty in their conceit of a new promised land. They actualized this religious conceit by rolling depletion (heir performative malice of bonfire and tree axes) to invade the putatively boundless frontier. Cronon concludes, ''And in the long run, [boundless material growth] was impossible…the [pilgrim fanatics] of plenty were a people of waste” (ibid.).

 Beside the jigs around toppled trees and bonfires, there is an aesthetics—rather an artless noise, an anti-poetics—of ash and ashmaking.   Dickens, in Bleak House (1853, ch. 63), images Babel’s noisome language in the combustion economy:

 [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.”[4]

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”[5] [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.



[1] Cited in  Jenkins, Willis. 2013. The Future of Ethics: Sustainability, Social Justice, and Religious Creativity. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press..

[2] Jenkins 2013.

Jenkins, Willis “Atmospheric Powers, Global Injustice, and Moral Incompetence: Challenges to Doing Social Ethics from Below.” Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 34, no. 1 (2014): 65–82.

Jenkins, Willis, Berry, Evan, and Luke Beck Kreider. “Religion and Climate Change.” Annual Review of Environment and Resources 43:9.1–9.24 (2018).

Moe-Lobeda, Cynthia D. n.d. “Climate Change as Climate Debt: Forging a Just Future.” Manuscript.

———. 2013. Resisting Structural Evil: Love as Ecological and Economic Vocation. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.

[3] Cronon, William. 2003. Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. New York: Hill and Wang.

[4] https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/capitalism-is-eroding-safe-operating-space-for-humanity-warn-scientists-6e469132dbba

[5]  Wagner 1995, Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, vol. VII, 54-56.

[6] e.g. see https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/interactive/2023/birds-song-nature-mental-health-benefits/?fbclid=IwAR3ekiygzo_5b_MnNP-DNLbmqGYxuY3jPD4_lUVNiCOeyfhtOIUji8WG-Rw

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