Yesterday was Laity Sunday at my church, the United Methodist Church of Northfield. Three of us - myself, Ron Griffith, and Rev. Mary Keen - were asked to prepare short talks that would take no more than five minutes to read - in effect, mini-sermons. Here is what I said:

I was asked to comment on the topic of my discipleship and the care for creation, and I want to relate that to our reading, the parable of the ten lepers (Luke 17: 11-20). I take several lessons from the parable: first, it is God who makes us well, but to be completely well, to receive all of God’s gifts, we must have faith; our faith makes us well. Second, God asks us to give thanks and praise for his gifts. Third, God heals and cares for all people, even the foreigner, the stranger, in this case the Samaritan. Here as always, Jesus is an example to us; we are asked to love and care for the alien, that strange other who is also our neighbor, though we often resist seeing him or her that way.

Now I relate this to our care for God’s creation in this way: We are to give thanks and praise for creation, to make our faith in God central to our lives, and to follow the example of Jesus as healer – healer not just of our immediate neighbors, not just the members of our nation, but the people of all nations.

Now I ask, are we acting as healers today in the way we live? In many ways we are not, I believe. And here I extend our notion of care for the stranger to our care for God’s creation, which sustains all of us. The food we eat, the air we breathe, the water we drink, these are part of creation. They sustain all of us, and to the extent that we endanger them, we endanger our neighbors; and when we care for them, we care for our neighbors.

Today, as the world population approaches 7 billion, human activity is endangering creation and its ability to sustain us. We’re doing so by causing several environmental crises. First, we’re rapidly depleting resources for future generations, including forests, soil, fuel, fisheries, and water. Second, as we spread across the planet and consume these resources, we destroy habitat for wildlife; an estimated 20,000 species are lost annually due to extinction. Third, we release pollution into the air, soil, and water. Most importantly, we’re releasing billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the air each year. The vast majority of climate scientists tell us that this is causing our planet to heat up and our oceans to rise, which will create enormous hardship for millions of people through coastal flooding, more intense storms, loss of water, and more. This hardship falls most heavily on the poor, who have fewer resources to deal with these changes.

Together these crises constitute a reckless experiment with unknown and potentially catastrophic outcomes for the creation that sustains us.

These are frightening problems, but we know that God does not want us to be paralyzed with fear or turn away in denial. He asks us to face these problems squarely, acknowledge whatever role we may have in causing them, and attempt to resolve them. As we go about that work, let us give praise that we have the opportunity to be of service, healing the planet out of love for our neighbor.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 22nd, 2007 at 2:58 pm and is filed under Environment and Ecology, Northfield, Religion.