Other than health care, which has taken front and center in recent days, there may be no more explosive topic that divides the right and the left in America than the topic of climate change.  Whether or not global warming is attributable to human activity is debated between those who say that science is clear that human activity is affecting climate change through the warming of the atmosphere, and those who say that climate changes are part of a natural cycle and not attributable to human activity.  There are theological implications across the range of these points of view, and certainly religious – like zeal at the extreme ends of the spectrum.

At one extreme, there is a point of view about climate change that basically divides humanity from creation, worshipping creation as essentially good and characterizing humanity as essentially the evil that exists in opposition to the good.  At its extremes, this point of view worships the created order and attributes mostly negative value to human life.

On the other hand, there are religious conservatives who are so human-centric that the earth comes off as irrelevant.  In the extreme form of this point of view the destruction of the earth and its environment just hasten the coming of God to redeem humanity from the evils of the created order.

It seems to me that there is no doubt that God cares about the earth – or more accurately about the structure of creation and the relational systems that sustain the created order.  In the book of Genesis, the early Hebrew storytellers devoted most of the days of creation to the creation of what we would call the natural order, and part of one day to the creation of humanity.  Surely they wanted to convey meaning about God’s concern and involvement with all of creation.  In fact, God is considered to be revealing God’s self through the created order.  It is not just a quirk of human personality that people feel close to God when we are out in nature.  God is in the nature that we are experiencing, just as God is present in us.  We are, after all, created from the same stuff of which creation is made.  The difference between a little dust and us is a matter of the organization of chemicals and, as the biblical story describes it – the breath of God breathed into us.

Of course, the creation narrative in Genesis is controversial, as well, and subject to a broad range of interpretations, some more reasonable than others.

John Walton, a biblical scholar who usually tends to the more conservative side of the theological spectrum asserts in The Lost World of Genesis One:  Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate – that the divine creative act is not about the creation of objects out of material, but ordering of functional relationships.  While seeking to free the biblical text from the ravages of the creationism vs.  science debate, this assertion also opens the way for exploration of the nature of the relationship God intends between creation and humanity.  Walton suggests that one translation of the summary of the creation story might read like this:  “In the initial period, God created by assigning functions throughout the heavens and the earth and this is how God did it.”

So the question before us is “how shall humans who seek to be faithful to biblical faith function in relationship to the creation?”  Much of the conversation hinges on interpretation of two words in Genesis 1:28.  Those are the two words often translated as “subdue” and “dominion.”

Some commentators have meant to soften the meaning of these words, suggesting that they mean “stewardship.”  While I can ultimately argue that this is a text about stewardship, one cannot make a direct leap from the meaning of the vocabulary to that conclusion.

There is simply no avoiding the reality that the word translated as “subdue,” the Hebrew word kabash, means to overcome, control, and subdue that which is a threat to you.  It is used in the text to describe how Israel is to control the land and peoples they conquer in war.  So, in the sense in which is used in the Hebrew text, one can conclude that the parts of nature which threaten human health and survival are to be “subdued.”

The Hebrew word radah which is translated as “dominion” also has fairly consistent usage.  It is about ruling over, and is used to describe how Israel’s Kings are to have dominion.  Psalm 72 is a prayer for the King in which it is said, “May he have dominion from sea to sea and from the River to the ends of the earth.”  What is interesting is that God has desired qualities for this King for whom the prayer is offered.

“May he judge your people with righteousness, and your poor with justice.  May the mountains yield prosperity for the people, and the hills, in righteousness.  May he defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the needy, and crush the oppressor.”

In other words, the nature of dominion in the biblical tradition is benevolence.

It is clear that the culture of consumption upon which our economic system is built is not sustainable.  It not only is contributing to global warming, primarily through carbon release into the atmosphere, but also contributes to increasing stress on the poor; particularly people whose indigenous agricultural and resource management practices are dependent on climate.

There is no doubt that we are separated from the pure goodness of creation, and that we have abused our dominion and lost the sense of benevolence that God intends.  I expect that the story of Adam and Eve being cast out of the garden and into hard labor in order to work the land is an imaginative description of this lived reality.

And the early Hebrew story tellers could not have imagined how profoundly technology would alienate modern people from creation.  Perhaps the most profound example of that alienation is embodied in the image of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, an event which marked its anniversary just a few days ago.

We are separated from the balance of relationships that are expressed in Genesis 1 – that alienation characterizes our human condition, and one name for that alienation is sin.  We participate unavoidably in a world which is broken.  But we also participate as those who claim that God has acted to reconcile that brokenness.

The ecological movement in Christian churches is a movement that invites us to participate in concrete, incarnate ways in working out that reconciliation.  I would offer that there are two movements we are called upon to make.  I think you can do one without the other – but I think people of faith, people who want to live biblically and as persons reconciled to God at the invitation of Christ, must make both moves – perhaps in fits and starts – perhaps in no particular order, but progressively and relentlessly – we must get connected again to our natural world and we must divest ourselves of our love for things.

If you live anywhere near a gardener at this time of year, the odds are, you’ve been given a zucchini.  People are desperate to give away the zucchini, and the search for a recipe that will make you say, “Oh, I can’t wait to get more zucchini” is ongoing.  And so I said to a gardener, “why do people plant zucchini when nobody wants the zucchini?”  The answer, “it’s fun to watch it grow?”  Our children need to watch things grow.  We all need to watch things grow.  If you don’t have something at home you can watch grow, take a walk over to the North Broadway Community Garden on your way home today.  Watch how with Ryan McDaniel’s help for his Eagle Scout project, and Noah Blundo’s leadership with the young adults, food is growing right out of the dirt.  That food is being taken to the Community Resource Center.

While energy efficiency is a struggle in a building as large and complex as ours, we are diligently working at it.  Notice how most of the light bulbs in the church building have been replaced with energy efficient fluorescent bulbs, and please, if you are the last one out of a room – turn off the lights.  Notice the recycling opportunities around the building.  At our home, and this is easier since the children left – between recycling and composting, we usually have only one small trash bag a week going to the landfill.  These may seem like small things…but small things added together can make a great difference.

God’s creation is a gift to us…and it is us.  Creation does need to be managed, and we dare not lose our sense of awe at the power of creation; we delude ourselves if we believe we can control it totally for our own purposes – it will always remind us of its power.  And we control it with technology at our own peril, too.

The biblical invitation is for we created ones to live in harmony with our created environment.  Our mutual existence depends on we who have free will freely choosing to honor the world in which God has given us a home.  A harmonious relationship with creation has these characteristics:  a healthy respect for its ability to defy our efforts to control it; gratitude for our total dependence upon it; and unabashed awe and wonder at its beauty and magnificence.

We must turn toward the created world and away from the manufactured world, and I know of no more beautiful way to hear the challenge and invitation here than through Mary Oliver’s poem, “The Sun.”

The Sun
   by Mary Oliver

Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful

than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon

and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone--
and how it slides again

out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower

streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance--
and have you ever felt for anything
such wild love--
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure

that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you

as you stand there,
empty-handed--
or have you too
turned from this world--

or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?