Please turn to your neighbor and describe the sky as it looks this morning. . .
Some years ago, a reporter carried out an interesting survey on the street. Pedestrians were stopped at random and asked, without looking up, to describe the sky as it was that day. Only a small percentage could give a description with reasonable accuracy!
William Arnold, who relates this incident, urges: “One way to join the psalmist in marveling at God is by looking up!”
Psalm 8 is a song of praise, written by one who was inspired by the sky – not in the daylight – but a night. This poet was struck to the core by the vastness and magnificence of the cosmos and offers thanks to a wildly generous and imaginative Creator: “When I consider your heavens: O God, how majestic is your name in all the earth. . .”
This was sometime before the Hubble Space Telescope – probably 3 millennia prior to present-day scientists, who now estimate (because of Hubble’s data) that there are 9 galaxies in Creation for every human being alive on the face of the earth. . .
This adds a new “R” word to our mantra for the environment. . . You know the mantra I mean, right? ” Reduce – Reuse – Recycle?” The Psalmist inspires us to add another mandate: “Reduce – Reuse – Recycle – “Rejoice!” OR, perhaps the rejoicing should come at the beginning, to indicate that our relationship with the planet – and our actions on behalf of the earth – are derived from our recognition of what God has done for us.
The rejoicing in Psalm 8 is 2-fold: it is amazement and humility in the face of an awesome creation. And it is amazement and humbleness not only that humans get to be part of it, but that we are assigned a singular role in creation, the role of caretaking: “dominion” – in the sense of a wise and compassionate ruler.
One preacher on this psalm writes: “if there is anything more marvelous than the sheer scale and splendor of the universe, it is the revelation that in all of that vastness, we really do matter.” In other wrods, even with the billions of galaxies, with their billions of stars, and even with the billions of life forms dwelling just below the surface of our backyards, God is mindful of us.
God is mindful, but human beings – tragically – are not.
The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is an “unprecedented environmental disaster” the impact and extent of the damage of which cannot yet be calculated or known.
Personally I am sick at heart about it.
This past Friday, the government closed more areas of the Gulf to fishing – now the area totals 48,000 square miles. There is talk of “dead zones” caused by oxygen depletion. The National Wildlife Federation expects that the oil “could wipe out entire generations of wildlife, making it impossible for some species ever to recover.” Shrimp and brown pelicans – bluefin tuna – and manatees have all been mentioned by name. The western Gulf coast is used by nearly all migratory land bird species of the eastern US, and is home to an estimated 45,000 bottlenose dolphins. The EPA tells us that half of US wetlands are found in this area – an area totalling 5 million acres.
The oil rig blow-out occurred on April 20 and killed 11 BP employees. The company, government and independent scientists disagree on the amount of oil that has gushed into the ocean to this point. From his own sources, Al Gore estimates that it is 1 Exxon Valdez every 4 days.
And why? Because human beings in the developed world – citizens of our nation – you and I – have not curbed our “insatiable appetite for oil” and are fouling our planetary nest.
Frances Beinecke, President of the Natural Resources Defense Council writes:
“We can blame BP for the disaster, and we should. We can blame lack of adequate government oversight for the disaster, and we should. But in the end, we also must place the blame where it originated: America’s addiction to oil. BP was drilling at 5,000 feet because our gluttonous appetite for oil demands it.”
And because we have already consumed most of the world’s readily accessible oil, we now have to look for it in more remote places, using even riskier and more damaging methods of extraction.
You and I, intended as partners with God in the care of creation – you and I, honored by God’s trust and caretaking responsibility – have allowed it to happen. We have committed sins of comission and sins of omission, and in large part have been oblivious to the environmental impact of our lives and lifestyles.
The UM Board of Church and Society is calling Christians to account:
“The slow-motion tragedy of the gulf oil spill lays bare our collective failure as caretakers of God’s good creation. While unknown thousands of barrels of oil leak into the rich and diverse ecosystem of the Gulf o Mexico, how are we as Christians called to respond? While it is easy to express anger and cast blame at the companies who owned, operated and profited from the deep sea exploration, we must also reflect on our own complicity through our endless demand for cheap oil.”
How do we respond as people of God, as people of faith, as awed viewers of the night sky, and singers of Psalm 8?
We have to change our ways.
We have to let go of the selfishness and greed that has caused us to put our own convenience and unsustainable lifestyles before the wellbeing of the extravagant web of life on this precious blue planet. . .”Insatiable is not sustainable.”
God placed us in a garden, and look what we have done to it! We have behaved as if we were owners, rather than fellow creatures entrusted with caring for the garden. We have confused our role. We have acted as though the planet was ours to use as we please. We have violated the first rule of ethics in medicine: “First do no harm.”
Our friend Virginia White did a project for school on Rachel Carson some months ago. We should find out what she learned.
More than 40 years ago Rachel Carson assessed the problem of environmental pollution this way: “We still haven’t become mature enough to think of ourselves as only a tiny part of a vast and incredible universe.” . . .
The Psalmist would add: “a tiny part of the universe with a very big job!”
In response to this environmental emergency, we must urgently make lifestyle changes that will help restore balance and harmony to our planet home. We need to once again approach our habitat with a sense of awe, reverence and humility. We need every day to be Earth day! We need to work as active and engaged citizens for a comprehensive energy and climate policy in our nation that will move us to a low-carbon economy.
The United Methodist Church, in its 2008 resolutions on Environmental Justice and Environmental Stewardship, has declared:
“We are called to eliminate overconsumption as a lifestyle, thus using lower levels of finite natural resources. We are called to seek a new lifestyle, rooted in justice and peace. . . We urge UMs to analyze their consumption patterns and to seek and live a simple and less resource-dependent life.”
For their part, the UM Council of Bishops has written a pastoral letter calling us to hope, focused study and intentional and strategic action on behalf of a “renewed creation”.
Please go to hopeandaction.org and find out more. We’ll be talking more about this in coming days.
We have to find the answers together – we need to change our ways, and change them now.
So here are a couple of things I have resolved to do, myself, knowing that it is very small in the grand scale of things:
- I took the bus to church today. I will do that more often.
- I have started as of Friday using a push lawn mower.
- I will continue to be aware of plastic packaging – no more cookies in plastic boxes and no more take-out that comes in styrofoam.
- I will continue to support environmental organizations but will be more active in the legislative advocacy part of their work.
I call upon all of us to make changes as well – perhaps starting with reusable coffee cups, like the ones the Helping Hands group use! That would be a really significant step in cutting our dependence on carbon-based fuel products.
At the grocery store this week I saw cloth grocery bags (I already have plenty) which read: “Reduce, reuse, recycle, RETHINK your choices.”
The Gulf Oil spill urges me to: “Reduce, reuse, recycle, REPENT”
Psalm 8 encourages us to:
Reduce, reuse, recycle and REJOICE – in this wonderful creation and in the privilege and honor of our special part in it.
( from Maryknoll magazine)
“In the beginning, God broke the divine darkness with a word – shattered the eternal silence with light – saw that it was good.
Nothing has ever been the same.
And God said, “Let butterflies blossom and flowers take wing. Let feathered miracles reflect the glory of the earth.” Then God looked at creation and wondered, “Who will care?”
So God imagined humans to care for creation. And God gave them faith to see the light. Last of all God gave them time, when all else failed, to begin anew.