How did Jesus interpret his own scriptures? What principles did he use? You notice that I do not use “read.” Jesus probably did not read or write though Luke portrays that he can read from the scroll of Isaiah. Jesus probably could recite large passages of the Hebrew scriptures from memory. Very few folks—less 1.5% of the Jewish population in the first century CE—could read and write. The story this morning illustrates two ways of interpreting the Jewish scriptures: The Pharisees’ and Jesus’ way.

Jesus went through the grain fields on the Sabbath, already a violation. His disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain to eat. The Pharisees saw this, they said to him. “Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath.” The objection comes from the scriptural commandment not to work on the Sabbath.

Later after the exile in chapter in Genesis narrative of God’s creation of the universe in six days, the Sabbath celebrated the seventh day when God rested from creation and delighted in creation. It anticipates the completion of God’s designs in creation. Rest on the Sabbath recognized God’s reign over the created world. Norman Wirzba, an eco-theologian writes,

God takes complete delight in what is made. Delight marks the moment when we find whatever is in our presence so lovely and so good that there is no other place we want to be. All we want to do is to soak it up, be fully present to it, and cherish the goodness of the world God has made. Something so good cannot be enjoyed from a distance or in the abstract. It requires the deep knowledge that comes from “union,” from tasting of it.

God’s deep gaze of delight is a contemplative seeing the created world as beloved and beautiful and communing with creation. When God takes delight, the evolving world becomes creation. “Creation” is a theological term arising from delight, union, and erotic intimacy with the natural world, recognizing God’s presence within nature. I understand creation as “seeing the world or nature as God sees it.” We need more “delight” in the Earth, for Sabbath delight arouses in us the excitement and intimate connection with the evolving world. Let quote Wirzba again on a Sabbath perspective.

Here in this spirituality of delight is the realization of bodily interrelatedness, the basis of a spirituality of compassionate care for all life and for the Earth. All bodies, whether human animal and nonhuman animal, matter to the Creator, and they should matter to all spiritual peoples.

For God, all bodies mattered. There is a democracy of siblings here. We must recover and re-connect our bodies with the Earth, the land, and other life. In fact, I would argue that all of us need to compost the Earth and the interrelatedness of all life into our spiritualities. It connects us to God’s delight in life and the Earth. I will come back to point for Jesus’ Sabbath spirituality.

The emphasis on food with the Sabbath is found in today’s gospel. The Jews for millennia have celebrated the Sabbath with a meal. God’s sovereignty extends over the food producing Earth, and with God there is an abundance enough for all God’s creatures.

Now, the disciples are hungry while traveling through the fields and pluck grain to eat. It was allowed that the hungry could take some pick some food or glean the field after the harvest. The disciples’ action to alleviate their hunger raises profound issues. It is considered work by the Pharisees, and colleague of mine tells a story of visiting his son when a knock from a Hasidic Jew in the downstairs apartment asked him if he would come down and take his laundry out of a washer and place them in a dryer. For the Hasidic Jew, even pushing the button of the dryer was considered work. Work on the Sabbath was not permitted according to the law, but the Sabbath also celebrated God’s provision of food and alleviating hunger to the Hebrews in the Sinai desert.

The Pharisees understand the disciples as violating the covenant on observing the Sabbath. Jesus’ disciples have acted contrary to the will of God. If Jesus has allowed them to act this way, the Pharisees can argue publicly that he cannot be from God. Jesus’ credibility and authority as a religious teacher are at stake.

Jesus defends his disciples’ behavior to gather food out of hunger. Rather, he contests the Pharisees’ logic of their scriptural interpretations. They literally interpret the commandment and never allow for other interpretations than their own. The Pharisee are fundamentalists, practicing an embattled form of spirituality that protects what they cherished from selective retrieval of certain commandments and practices from the past. They practice a spirituality that also cooperates with the Temple rulers, who have been coopted by the Roman colonizers. They have become legalists and fundamentalists. Religious fundamentalists do not regard this battle as a mere conventional political struggle but experience it as a cosmic war between the forces of good and evil. The Pharisees practiced a holiness like the Temple priests, keeping themselves holy at all costs and maintained the practice of tithing and maintaining purity as the priests practiced. Ordinary folks could never practice such purity and holiness without hardship.

Jesus disputes the narrowing down of interpretation of the scripture and tradition of Sabbath observance. He suggests that they do not understand the scriptures. “Have you not heard…” He remembers the origin of the Sabbath in the Sinai desert with God’s abundant gifting of food and drink. But the first scripture that Jesus cites is David on the run from King Saul. The future king and religious hero, David, breaks the law by entering the house of God and commandeering the bread of presence, consecrated bread reserved only for the priests to eat. Jesus pointed out that they ate the bread reserved only for the priests. Jesus draws the parallel between the eating of his disciples and David and his companions. They break literally the laws and religious boundaries out of basic human need, hunger.

Then Jesus presents his argument to the Pharisees by pointing out exceptions to strict observance of the Sabbath. A fundamentalist interpretation does not allow for any exceptions. It is my interpretation only, not yours. We hear this often in contemporary debates on marriage and homosexuality from Christian fundamentalists., and other issues First, hunger is a legitimate concern for humans, and God is concerned in feeding and providing for the poor. Food is ultimately a gift of God’s providential care. After all, the Sabbath is the day that celebrates God’s provision of the food-producing world, God’s provision of manna in the desert was pure gift. The Sabbath is a gift, grace if you want to use Christian theological language. The Sabbath is connected with God’s delight in creation: Remember my earlier comment that all bodies matter to God, and God’s provision for the Hebrews in the Sinai desert after the Hebrews escaped from slavery in Egypt. Sabbath celebrates both God’s creation and justice.

Despite all of his arguments, Jesus reverses the narrow interpretations of the Pharisaic fundamentalists: He announces to them, “The Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath.” Here Jesus has turns upside down the Pharisee’s interpretation of the law and regulations. They have turned the Sabbath into a law, a regulation, when God originally intended the Sabbath to be an unconditional gift or grace. I am reminded Jesus’ words to his disciple: “What is given freely, give freely.” (Mt. 10:8)

Today we celebrate the Christian Sabbath in the eucharist. Listen to the words of the UCC biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann:

I have come to think that the moment of giving the bread of Eucharist as gift is the quintessential center of the notion of Sabbath rest in Christian tradition. It is gift! We receive in gratitude. Imagine having a sacrament named “thanks”! We are on the receiving end, without accomplishment, achievement, or qualification. It is a gift, and we are grateful! That moment of gift is a peaceable alternative that many who are “weary and heavy-laden, cumbered with a load of care” receive gladly. The offer of free gift… might let us learn enough to halt the dramatic anti-neighborliness to which our society is madly and uncritically committed.

Our Christian Sabbath has some important features derived from Jesus’ practice of an open table during his ministry and his last meal with male and female disciples. Let me elaborate on these elements: They challenge us and Christian fundamentalists. Let me remind you of the words of one my favorite writers Diarmuid O’Murchu in the opening unison prayer:

When you give a feast/ Give first place to the margins/ To infidels and strangers/ Then you need to stop and ask yourself,/ Why you left them out so long.

When you give a feast/ Where the boundaries are all broken,/ Parabolic truth is spoken,/ New hope is awoken. Then you need to stop and ask yourself,/ How powerful grace can be..

This is Jesus’ intent in his practice of an open table. Our Christian Sabbath, likewise, reminds us to pause and remember who is not here and who may be excluded.  It is a pause to remember God’s inclusiveness, God’s hospitality and abundant grace. Sabbath is pause that invites us to transformation by remembering Jesus’ radical inclusive love and invites our own practice of radical inclusiveness. There are never any strangers at God’s table.

I would add that Christian Sabbath has an invitation to fight against the economic inequalities in our community and world.  It is an act of resistance to economic patterns of the wealthy that impoverishes the poor to enhance their own wealth. Sabbath justice, and I would add, economics deny scarcity for God’s abundance: there is abundance when we all share with one another our resources and food. Think of Jesus multiplication of the loaves and the fish for the multitudes in the wilderness.  Our Sabbath pauses to remind us that there is an alternative form of giving and sharing than taking resources from people. The Sabbath is about God’s gifting us, and that gifting is, in turn, gifted to others.

Jesus claims, “The Sabbath was made for humankind.” The necessities of life should not be restricted by literalist obedience to the scriptures or strict observance of the Sabbath.  Meeting human need is the divine will for the Sabbath celebration. Feeding the hungry and justice expresses the divine intention of the Sabbath as gift.   Fundamentalists, who presume to do the divine will, by literal and aggressive adherence to the Sabbath, cannot allow for mercy, generosity, and justice to enter their interpretation of the Hebrew scriptures.  They use the Sabbath as a weapon to keep people in check, to control people, and manage them what I call a “sin management strategy.” Just think of politicians who voted to repeal Obama care, to throw millions of people off healthcare, and who voted corporations and the very wealthiest in our country with tax cuts. The 1% in the US own more than 50% of the global wealth, and some 150 individuals own nearly 40%. Depriving people of basic services and care for your own wealth is the gross re-enactment of the parable of Dives and Lazarus the poor beggar at the gate of his estate.

So radical inclusiveness and care for the needs of human bodies are hallmarks of our Sabbath celebrations.  But there is one added feature. God’s delight in the universe, where creation becomes beloved and delightful, speaks to us that the Earth and the community of non-human life are beloved to God.  When we realize that all created life, included ourselves, are siblings and part of God’s beloved community of creation, we need to widen our inclusiveness in our eucharist to include the Earth and all life in our celebrations. We need to share resources and respect the rights of nature as we respect human rights.  All life has rights before God as Creation, Christ whose incarnational outreach has fleshly as well as comic interconnectedness with all life, and the Spirit who ensouls herself in all life as the sustainer of life.

What is the language of Creation? Psalm 19:1-4 proclaims,

The heavens are declaring the glory of God,
And the firmament proclaims God’s handiwork,
day to day pours forth speech,
And night to night declares knowledge.
There is no speech, nor are there words,
Their voice is not heard;
Yet their voice goes out through all the earth,
And their words to the end of the word.

The psalm I read speaks paradoxically of the no speech of creation yet also mentions the voice and words of creation. I raise this point today because I want to ask what really happened to Jesus at his baptism and in the wilderness? Did Jesus hear the voice and words of Creation? I want to suggest to you this morning that Jesus learned three significant insights:

1) First, he sought to understand his relationship to Abba God and developed an intimate and loving experience of Abba God.

2) Abba God was compassionate. In Luke 6:36, Jesus states, “Be compassionate as Abba God is compassionate.”

3) Jesus also learned the wild grace of God. God’s grace is wild. God’s Spirit colors outside the lines. She is trickster and ensouls herself in creation, the Earth and all life. All creation is beloved.

There have been some alternative interpretations of Jesus’ baptism and 40 days in the wilderness. Native American Christians understand that Jesus, at his baptism, had a visionary experience with God’s Spirit, who in the form of the dove becomes a spirit guide for the ensuing vision quest of understanding who Jesus was and his call. I would suggest a novel understanding that the Spirit under the elements of water and in the form of a mother dove shapes a pivotal experience of revelation at the baptism, but I also point out that Jesus was shaped by the land, atmospheric winds, and the fire of sun in the wilderness. He was accompanied by the beasts: the Greek word indicates dangerous animals in the wilderness. The Spirit, as theologian Mark Wallace notes. ensouls Herself in the Earth, its elements and processes. Traditionally, Christianity understood the Holy Spirit as the sustainer of life and involved in the dawn of creation in the big bang.

The late Jesus scholar Marcus Borg describes Jesus as a Jewish Spirit-led prophet. There has been a movement of biblical scholars, grounded in anthropological research, to comprehend Jesus as a shaman. This acknowledges the scriptural evidence of Jesus’ altered states of consciousness at his baptism and his meditative experiences during the forty days in the wilderness. As a comparative historian of religions, shamanic experience, ritual with auditory and visionary experiences, evolves into the meditational practices of Buddhist mindfulness, Christian centering prayer, and many popular forms of meditation.

My first point: Jesus received an auditory and visionary experience of God’s Spirit at his baptism as he emerged from the waters of the Jordan: he heard that that he was a beloved child in whom God was pleased as the Spirit descended upon him in the form of the dove. It was an experience of God’s gracious care and love. Unless there is a foundation of loving yourself, you cannot love others. But Abba God’s love does not stop with Jesus, for he realized that God’s providential love extended to all human beings, especially, the suffering, the disadvantaged, and the poor. But God loves nonhuman animals, and all creation is beloved as well.

Most biblical scholars look to the temptations of Jesus, but Jesus is with the wild animals. This is an image of God’s hope for the peaceable kin-dom in Isaiah 11:6-9, where predators and domestic animals live in harmony. Nonhuman animals are with Jesus in the cave he was born, on the mule he rode into Jerusalem as the anti-violent Messiah, and his death as the lambs were slaughtered in the Temple for Passover.

The word most used by Jesus to identify God’s quality is compassion. Compassion in Hebrew comes from the word for “womb.” Compassion is a feminine image in the Hebrew world-view Compassion is God’s womb-like love. But Jesus is revolutionary in calling for disciples to imitate God’s compassion. “Be compassionate as God is compassionate.” (Lk. 6:36) Compassion means literally to “suffer with.” It is just not a feeling moved to care; it is that and more. The Dalai Lama argues, “Compassion is the radicalism of our time.” Compassion is a spiritual practice, cultivated and intentional, and with what Buddhists call mindfulness or Christian describing as centering prayer as foundational for the practice of compassion. Jesus promotes the social dynamics of compassion, and this message of compassion becomes a dangerous message to the religious establishment and the Roman Empire

I grew up with Latin American liberation theology’s prime notion of God’s preferential option and care or the poor, the outcast, the sick and ill, the widow and the orphan. One of my favorite liberation theologians, Leonardo Boff, extends the notion of God’s preferential option for the poor to include the preferential option for the vulnerable Earth. Pope Francis’ recent climate change letter, Laudato Si, picks up this theme of God’s preferential love for the poor and the vulnerable Earth. He notes that as climate change develops the poor are disproportionately harmed. This is a dangerous memory of God’s compassion in the biblical tradition. It is so dangerous that the Koch brothers sent their executive director of Heartland Foundation, their political pact for fossil fuels, to offer Pope Francis  fifty million dollars to the Vatican if he would not release his climate change letter. The Koch brothers did not even get to first base with Pope Francis, for he well understand that God finds creation and all life as beloved.

Are we listening to the voice and words of theEearth and vulnerable species? If so, do you hear their cries and their sufferings? Do you hear the groaning of the Spirit suffering with the Earth and all life threatened? Compassion is a key meditative method for listening to Earth, our waters, our air, and our children. Our Children’s Trust –21 youth—have sued the Trump administration for the right to breath clean air—air without carbon—and to live in a world without the ravages of climate change. The UCC Environmental Justice Council is sponsoring a youth preach-in to support this legal action with interfaith and ecumenical participation. We had Daniel a college student who grew up in the UCC Petaluma congregation preach in January. He had worked on the church garden, participated in confirmation class, and Christian education. His words moved the hearts of the congregation. He became the voice of every child and youth, grandchildren, nieces, and nephews of the congregation. It seems that that Sunday Daniel spoke for every child, grandchildren, niece and nephew..

Compassion—being with suffering, whether it is for the poor and homeless in San Francisco or listening to the wildlife –the trees, wildlife, and human beings in the fire storms of Northbay or Southern California. Compassion turns to passionate care for life—both human animals and non-human life. All life is beloved as God’s Spirit reveals to Jesus in the waters of the Jordan and the Judean wilderness.

Finally, Jesus breaks off from the John the Baptist and his message of coming judgement in the wilderness. Jesus discovered God’s wildness—God’s wild unconditional grace and love for the suffering, the disadvantaged, the outsider. Combining the mountain Zen Buddhism and Native American spirituality, the poet Gary Snyder writes,

Wilderness is a place where the wild potential is fully expressed, a diversity of living and nonliving beings, flourishing according to their own sorts of order…. To speak of wilderness is to speak of wholeness.

Jesus named the wildness of the wildersness, the Spirit, as he experienced his intimate and compassionate Abba God as the “kin-dom of God.” It was God’s dream of wholeness, flourishing, and well-being. Jesus learned God’s wild grace in the wilderness, and the wilderness shaped and shaped his dangerous ministry of God’s compassion for all. He broke from John the Baptism and his message, and Jesus created a new ritual of table-fellowship, where men and women of all sorts of purity status, sinners and prostitutes, men and women in a discipleship of equality were welcomed at God’s table.  He dared to symbolize God’s dream for us—God’s reign, or living with God’s intimate presence, imitating God’s compassion translated in sharing resources together, and fighting injustice, healing and flourishing. Learn about Jesus as God’s dangerous memory. Read one of my favorite author Diarmuid O’Murchu’s book, Christianity’s Dangerous Memories.

What I am attempting to leave with you is that Jesus invites us to listen to the voices and words of human creatures and the Earth and the community of life. They are crying at Parkland High School in Florida but also in Miami as high tide floods the streets.  Watch and listen to Al Gore’s Inconvenient Sequel, I hear the voice of the Spirit groaning at her suffering with life and inspiring a wild grace to care for Earth.

Jesus also invites us to imitate God’s compassion and incarnate them in concrete actions. Take some time during this week and listen to the voice and words of created life.  Compassion is an intentional practie that allows you to empathetically listen but also respond. This is what the Dalai Lama understands clearly, “compassion is the radicalism of our time.”

I leave you a story from last summer. I attended an Environmental Justice Council retreat just before the General Synod. At the retreat, there was a presenter, the head clergy from the Island nation, Tuvalu, eight islands with 28 square miles, with 3 to 4 feet above sea level, and an indigenous population of 10,000. This population became Christian in the 19th century. The nation has signed the Paris Climate Agreement and looked to the United States for leadership in fighting climate change. Tuvalu is a nation at risk from sea level rise. They already lost one island to sea level rise. But today’s first reading is pertinent.

God says, “I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth. This rainbow is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations.” The head clergy shared the question asked him numerous times. “If God promised not to destroy humanity with a flood, why is God is doing this?” He responded, “God is not doing this, humanity is responsible.”

Humanity is killing the Earth, but if you fall in love with God’s Earth, you will fight to save Her.

The Voice of the Earth in Genesis 1, Norman Habel, The Earth Bible Project

I am Earth, I was first revealed when God summoned the primal waters to part. I came forth from the waters as a living domain with the potential to give birth. I count this a great honor and grounds for celebration. I am a valuable part of the cosmos.

At the request of God, I brought forth, like a mother, all the flora that covers the land. I gave birth to vegetation that has the capacity to reproduce. After the flora that comes from within me is interconnected with me and is nurtured through me.

At the request of God, I also brought forth, like a mother, the fauna that live on the Earth. They are my offspring and depend upon me for subsistence. All fauna depend on the vegetation I produce for their survival and enjoyment of life. I am Earth, the source of daily life for the flora and fauna that I have generated from within me.

Sad to say, there is another story that has invaded my world, the story of the so-called god-image creatures called humans. Instead of recognizing that these god-image creatures are beings interdependent with Earth and other Earth creatures, this story claims that the god-image creatures belong to the superior ruling class or species, thereby demeaning their nonhuman kin an diminishing their value. Instead of respecting me as their home and life source, the god image creatures claim a mandate to crush me like an enemy or slave.

My voice needs to be heard and intrusive story about the humans in Gen. 1:26-28 named for what it is from my perspective: the creature of a group of power hungry humans.

Sermon:

In the mythic story of Creation in six days, God rests on the seventh day. Genesis 1 is a mythic story that speaks about our origins. But this is the same story told from a different perspective. Biblical scholar and founder of the Earth Bible Project Norman Habel re-envisions the story told from the Earth’s perspective and voice. This has the impact of de-emphasizing the anthropocentrism or the view that humanity is exceptional and above all species. If we could listen to the elements and life on Earth, we would receive a harsh critique on on human greed and selfishness. Further on in the story is the verse:

And God 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 heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

This verse has been used to justify our exploitation and use of the world. It implies a patriarchal exceptionalism and used to justify industrial and corporate plundering of the Earth. We humans have elevated our position in our arrogance. Everything has been made for our benefit and use. We can do whatever we want to the land, soil, water, air—the terrain we name Earth. The first chapter of Genesis—God says six times, it is “good,” and the last time it is “very good.” God creates for intimacy and delight. It communicates a major truth of our planet and the universe, everything is interrelated. We are all interconnected to each other and everything else.

Environmentalist Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, observes, “We’re running Genesis backward, de-creating.” Let me talk about “de-creating.”
There is the denial of climate change by the current Trump administration. Scott Pruitt was named as head of the EPA, an organization to protect our environment and health. And he is attempting to undo EPA regulations for the sake of fossil fuel companies. Mr. Pruitt belongs to a Baptist church in Oklahoma that believes that the Earth was created some five or six thousand years ago. Mr. Trump has withdrawn the US from the Paris Climate Agreement to reduce carbon emissions in our country. He has signed an executive order that allows coal companies to dump coal ash no longer in ponds that impact aquifers but now directly into the rivers—water supply for towns and cities. The President has asked his Secretary of the Interior to eliminate or reduce the national monuments so that corporations may drill for oil and gas. He supports the Canadian Keystone XL pipeline to cross the largest aquifer in the heartland that provides water to millions of families and farmers. There are numerous oil spills such as Deep Horizon in the Gulf. We frack the earth to withdraw natural gas and oil. We poison the waters and create earthquakes.

Our overdependency and now political resistance to renewable energies are warming up the planet, and the glaciers are melting. Sea-level rise is proposed by the end of the century to rise by 8-11 feet. The earth is heating up. At preview of Leonardo DiCaprio’s Before the Flood at Cal State University, Northridge, I was on a panel when a Muslin woman scientist spoke about the temperatures for one week in the summer of 2016 in the Arab Emirates reached 160’s Fahrenheit.

Last week I attended a UCC environmental retreat, I heard a presentation from a clergy from the island nation of Tuvalu, square miles, 12,000 indigenous people in the Pacific Ocean. The nation is sinking, and few nations are listening to their pleas. Very sad and prophetic of the future. I also heard the youth Water Protectors from the Standing Rock Reservation. Impressive group of youth fighting to safeguard their water from the Dakota pipeline. The water protectors listen and fight for the water and land with courage and love be.
Our addiction to beef is leading to massive deforestation of the Amazon forest or palm oil in the deforestation of large tracks of jungle in Indonesia. We do this regardless of the consequences to the planet and other life. We have lost 100 million trees in the Sierras through drought, beetle infestation, and apocalyptic raging fires.

Corporate greed and our own consumerism outweigh the lives of future generations of human animals and nonhuman animals. The sixth extinction of nonhuman life is taking place right now.

Contemplative spiritual teacher and writer Matthew Fox sums our situation aptly, “the killing of Mother Earth in our time is the number one ethical, spiritual, and human issue of our planet.” Nothing is more real, and we have little time before the tipping point where the planet’s temperature rise of 4 degrees Celsus will be inevitable and all life will face unparalleled disaster.

The Earth reading does not continue to include the verses that God rested on the seventh day. For many Jews, the seventh day becomes a Sabbath time of rest, re-creation, and erotic delight. In the Jewish tradition, when you make love on the Sabbath, you are twice blessed. Try preaching that in a mainline Christian, and congregants panic. I did in a LGBT church, and one bright congregant asked “if we are twice blessed then are we also twice blessed on the Muslim and Christian Sabbaths.” I said, “Of course, you are blessed twice to the third power which is eightfold.”

There is a cultural amnesia on “Why God rested?” We forget that for the previous verse in Genesis 1:28 to subdue and dominate the Earth. Unless we come to some appreciation of God’s resting, we will take the Earth as place to dominate and exploit. Why does God rest? One of my favorite, eco-spiritual authors, Norman Wirzba writes,

God takes complete delight in what is made. Delight marks the moment when we find whatever is in our presence so lovely and so good that there is no other place we want to be. All we want to do is to soak it up, be fully present to it, and cherish the goodness of the world God has made. Something so good cannot be enjoyed from a distance or in the abstract. It requires the deep knowledge that comes from “union,” from tasting of it. (Wirzba)

When God takes delight, the evolution of the world becomes creation. “Creation” is a theological term arising from delight, union, and erotic intimacy with the world. I understand creation as “seeing the world or nature as God sees it.” We need more “delight” in the Earth, for Sabbath delight arouses in us the excitement and intimate connection with the evolving world. Let quote Wirzba again on a Sabbath perspective.

No creature, no body whatsoever, should be neglected, despised or abused. Each body is God’s love made visible, touchable, smellable, hearable, and delectable… Nothing in God’s creation is to be despised or forgotten. (Wirzba)
Here in this spirituality of delight is the realization of bodily interrelatedness, the basis of a spirituality of compassionate care for all life and for the Earth. All bodies, whether human animal and nonhuman animal, matter to the Creator, and they should matter to all spiritual peoples.

This delight in the Earth, I would suggest, reflects the 7th principle of Unitarian Universalism: “Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part. This is the truth of all spiritualities that live with Earth and all life.” We are all interrelated, everything in the universe, including the divine is interconnectedness.

A possible solution to human de-creating or ego-centric relationship to the world is our eco-conversion. “Eco-conversion” is turning away from human self-centeredness to understanding ourselves as part of a network of life, and that everything is interrelated. Once we let go of ego-centeredness and view ourselves an interdependent with the Earth and the web of life, we become a part of that interdependent network. It opens us a new relational understanding with the natural world and that God interrelated with the Earth and all life. Eco-conversion is viewing all life as God views life.

We must recover and re-connect our bodies with the Earth, the land, and other life. In fact, I would argue that all of us need to compost the Earth and the interrelatedness of all life into our spiritualities. It connects us to God’s delight in life and the Earth.

Humanity is greedy for more; consumerism without restraint drives us to want more and better things. It is not an ecological economy, but driven by corporate greed over the need of life. What is missing in many of our lives is intimacy with and delight in nature, which is linked physically and spiritually with the Earth. In his book, Home Ground, Language for an American Landscape, Barry Lopez writes,

Many American poets and novelists have recognized that something emotive abides in the land, and that it can be recognized and evoked even if it cannot thoroughly plumbed. It is inaccessible to the analytic researcher, invisible to the ironist. To hear the unembodied call of a place, that numinous voice, one has to wait for it to speak through the harmony of its features—the soughing (moaning) of the wind across it, its upward reach against a clear night sky, its fragrance after a rain.

I suggest that you take your church outside into nature. There John Muir found the beatitudes in the Sierra mountains, he found baptism in the glaciers. He practiced an ancient form of meditation, lectio divina, meditative attentiveness of scripture. Desert fathers and mothers in Egypt transferred these techniques to nature. Galileo spoke of two Bibles: the Hebrew-Christian Bible and the Bible of Nature.

Engage Nature meditatively, listen. Listening is paying attention. Pay attention to the trees, vines, plants, streams, and nonhuman animals. Petaluma is extremely blessed with enchanting and beautiful , and I am enchanted by its forests, love the Armstrong Forest, the ocean coast, the green hills and life abundant. Pay attention to the landscape and to the web of life, and I guarantee that you fall in love with the Creator’s Earth.

Mystics, conservationists, biologists, and religious founder found the divine present in nature. Moses discovered God in a burning bush and on a mountain top, the Buddha under the Bodhi tree, Jesus in the Judean wilderness, Mohammed in a cave outside of Mecca, and numerous indigenous peoples as they listened to the voices within natures and followed their spirit guides.
The Buddha discovered the interrelatedness of everything under the Bodhi Tree, and this is the foundation for Buddhist compassion for all life.

In the spirit of the Buddha’s discovery, the Engaged Thai monk, Buddhadasa, lived in a forest jungle Watt in Thailand. He writes,

The entire cosmos is a cooperative. The sun, the moon, and the stars live together as a cooperative. The same is true for humans and animals, trees, and the earth. When we realize that the world is a mutual, interdependent, cooperative enterprise… then we can build a noble environment. If our lives are not based on this truth, then we shall perish.

When I was in Thailand, I met an Abbot of a Forest Watt. When he discovered that I was not only a professor in Buddhist studies but also a Christian clergy, he shared an observation, “At the level of meditation, we agree on love.”
Jesus, in his forty days in the Judean wilderness, preached the kindom of God that was grounded in a primary ethical principle: “Be compassionate as Abba God is.” God’s compassion was directed to humanity and to the entire Earth, the web of life. If I had the time, I could explore more spiritual traditions: But the Buddha and the Christ agree: We are all interconnected with the web of life, the Earth is in us and all life.

Go out today and cherish the hills and the environment here in Petaluma. Fall in love, connect with a tree or flower, or your non-human companion animal, walk in a garden, the John Muir Forest, or canoe down the Petaluma River. If you fall in love with God’s Earth, you will share God’s delight and passion for life. Let us join together to fight for the Earth and all life. Join me as I found a green team in the UCC, let us delight in life together.

Compassion Grows–An  Excerpt from Henri Nouwen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUkZTR0pPLQ

Several years ago, I asked all invited speakers who preached at our anniversary to imagine this was their last sermon. It was based on an academic movement in universities to ask a professor to imagine giving his/her last lecture. After 13 years, this is my final sermon at MCC United Church of Christ. So here goes my attempt:

I am grateful to this church for many reasons. We have done great things over 13 years.

Let me start personally. I met my future husband Joe at Claremont School of Theology when I was invited to speak about Queer Theology. As we quietly dated, he came to Sunday service one week. And Larry Duplechan, during announcements, mischievously asked, “Are you not going tell us about your guest?” Larry had outed us, and I speak for myself, that it felt like my family had to give their stamp of approval. Joe grew into his ministry and finished his work at Claremont with two Masters. Our non-legal holy union was blessed in 2007 in this church by Rev. Troy Perry, and he legalized our marriage a year later with several others. That night of illegal wedding, I promised him that there would be a day that I would follow him. I have honored that commitment, and I follow him to Petaluma in a couple of days. Joe was ordained as a clergy here.

I am grateful to you for your faithfulness to Christ, and I take so many wonderful memories of all of you with me and those who have moved away or passed: Ray Therriault, Bob Cross, Roberta, Elinor, Dante, Gerry, Barbara, Joe, and Gregoir to name some. I grieved with you at their loss while we remembered and celebrated their lives. Their stories as well as your stories are woven with my own.

I am grateful to Venus and Emily for rescuing Friskie on the streets, after canvasing the neighborhood for the owner, but they slyly brought him to church after I lost my dog of sixteen years ago. I wouldn’t touch Friskie then because of my grief, but as I was talking with Roberta, Friskie jumped into my lap. And he became part of my family. And he loves to come to church.

But not all memories have been good. There were troubled times, drama, and pain directed at one another. I publicly apologize for my contributions to causing pain, whether rightly or wrongly. People left over disputes on using inclusive language, music, spouses, because I was male, Avatar, the service was too liturgical and not evangelical enough, the age of the congregation, and many other reasons.

But this church known for resisting change has changed over 13 years and achieved remarkable accomplishments. Let me share what stands out:

The greening of our church: We made the Earth a member of our congregation and embarked on a journey of living more sustainable with the Earth from solar panels, to retrofitting the campus to more efficient energy and water usage, the garden and the garden. The garden has been a gift to us all. We were named the first Creation Church of the UCC.

I am grateful to Michael and James who painted the mural for celebrating LGBT families and relationships on the wall. They started the process of jackhammering the asphalt to create an herb garden in front of the mural. But they unleashed the gardening passion of Gregoir who jackhammered more asphalt to create our garden.

We led the campaign to raise monies to place solar panels for Las Memorias AIDS Hospice in Tijuana. They have half of the needed solar panels, and we have freed up funds for people living with HIV.

I can remember the feeding programs, knitting scarfs for the women’s shelter and for the homeless, and knitting caps for the LGBT retirement at Triangle Square.

We produced and launched Terrence McNally’s play Corpus Christi: It became a missionary arm to tell the story of LGBT inclusion to numerous venues: churches, Edinburgh and Dublin Fringe Festival and off Broadway. The cast became an unchurched church speaking about radical inclusiveness of the Jesus/Joshua story. And he cast produced a documentary of their journey and faith—Playing with Redemption is now on Netflicks. They were a wonderful ministry outreach. But we have produced Godspel, The Man Who Killed Jesse James, and Vicki’s one woman play.

Paul Allison would not forgive me if I did not mention the acquisition of the pipe organ from MCC San Francisco when the building was condemned.

I remember Daddy Nick, who suffered a broken hip, and recovering in our living room for 8 months. Nick became a deacon, and then in gratitude he with a crew of folks renovated our kitchen.

This church has recognized my difference from the first time I interviewed when I identified as Buddhist Christian. You have welcomed all visitors with an extravagant hospitality in your midst– all who were non-Christians as fellow sojourners and companions on a variety of paths to discover the mystery of God called by many names.

As the denomination MCC has declined significantly, you struggled with myself about the future of the church whether we should dually affiliate with the United Church of Christ and after months of prayerful discernment chose to dually affiliate.

Of course, we know how to party and throw events: Out at the Circus with fire-spinners, jugglers, and high-wire acrobats and lots of fun; Our Night of Intercultural Music and Dance in our garden, concerts and plays, square dances and celebrations. We love to celebrate life. There is so much I can speak of our success, and I have so much gratitude for our work together.

Now, you have chosen an interim pastor, Rev. Pat Langlois. The board has taken a leadership role with confidence, and I believe that the best days of growth and service are ahead.

But I want to share some words of wisdom. There are a few words of wisdom that I learned over the decades and want to leave with you.

The first is that this church and all other churches need to follow the path of compassion. The video of Henri Nouwen’s words on Growing Compassion are pertinent, for they are expansion of Jesus, God’s prophet of compassion: “Be compassionate as Abba God is compassionate.” (Lk. 6:26) Jesus rightly connects compassion with Abba God, the source of compassion.

Jesus’ compassion is kindness towards a stranger that is unexpected. Compassion is linked to generosity, empathy, sympathy, and mercy. The life of Christ reflects for Christians the very essence of the meaning of compassion. Christ has also inspired Christians throughout history to found hospitals, care for the poor, feed the hungry, work in leper colonies, create schools for the children of the poor, fight for the vulnerable, and other such charitable acts. It is also Christ’s example that challenges Christians to forsake their own self-interested desires and act compassionately towards others, especially, but not exclusively, towards those in some type of distress or need.

Christ says, “I am the vine, and you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit because apart from me you can do nothing.” This is an organic metaphor used by Jesus in his farewell discourse to indicate the interconnections between us and the risen Christ. Our interconnectedness with Christ the Vine becomes the basis of Christian compassion and Christians living together in the world and with the world. As individuals and as a church, we needed to be rooted in God and Christ. When rooted in God’s compassion, we become a school of compassion, training others on Christ’s path of compassion. Grow in God’s compassion, and imitate Christ’s compassion.
Make compassion a part of your life, and you will turn things around in the world. If you treat others the way that you want them to treat you, it will be a more compassionate world. You do compassion acts, and you will make a difference by making this world a bit kinder and interrelated.

Henri Nouwen writes about Christ’s compassion:

Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into the places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human (and all life: my corrective).

When we recognize our pain and suffering, we connect deeply with other people’s pain and suffering. One of the insights of both Jesus the Christ and Siddartha the Buddha is that everyone experiences suffering and pain. Compassion becomes a means for us to connect other people’s pain and suffering and find common ground.

Compassion tears down walls between us and other people. Jesus encouraged his disciples to follow the example of the Good Samaritan to reach out beyond people like us to those who are different, strangers, and enemies. When the Samaritan looked into the eyes of the man beaten on the road to Jericho, he recognized a common humanity—that could be “me.” The Good Samaritan did not confine his compassion to his people alone but to a Jewish stranger. Jesus asked his disciples not to confine compassion to their own people and friends, but to the stranger and even to an enemy.

Let me take a sideline to help contextualize a story from Karen Armstrong, religious scholar and compassion activist; When I was youth, I read the Iliad more than 20 times. At first, it was about ancient Greek myth and culture, but there was an intimate relationship between Achilles and Patroclus. I identified with that intimacy and did not name myself as gay.

One of my favorite authors Karen Armstrong in a speech promoting the Charter of Compassion, draws an example from Homer’s Iliad. Achilles has withdrawn his men from war against Troy. Unbeknownst to him, his intimate Patroclus dons Achilles’ armor. He engages in combat with Hector, the champion of Troy and is slain. When Achilles experiences the death of his intimate, he is enraged and grieved. He challenges Hector to combat and kills him. He strips Hector of his armor and ties his feet to his chariot and parades the mutilated body before the walls of the city to dishonor the corpse.
Achilles refuses to bury or turn the deceased body of the trojan prince for burial. In Greek religion, an unburied body damns the soul to endless loss and wandering. Hector’s father, King Priam disguises himself and makes his way through the Greek encampment to Achilles’ tent. He drops his disguises and pleads for the body of his son. Achilles looks into the eyes of his enemy King Priam weeping, and Priam asks him in tears to remember his own father. He recognizes a common bond of suffering, and the two men weep together. They recognized the divine in each other and share compassion for each other. Achilles tenderly lays the body of Hector into the feeble arms of Priam. This is compassion in action—a recognition of our common humanity.

Compassion in action, to me, is defined as the ability to step back from any personal differences I may have with another human being and see that person as they are at their core, as another child of God, and acting in accordance. It is the ability to look past the details of what creates the illusion of separation between myself and another child of God who is on an equal plane to me in the mind and eyes of God, and behave as if I cannot see that which may create division. It is seeing clearly through the eyes of love, letting love filter out conflict, letting love guide my actions. It is remembering that no matter what differences another person and I may have as individuals, that we are both are children of the same God. My faith calls me to display the same unconditional sense of love and care to that person that God shows me. Remember Christ’s words, “When you do this to the least, you do it to me. “

One of the great accomplishments of our church is the expansion to the Earth. Compassion is the language of the Earth and life, it is the grace of realizing our interrelatedness to everything. It is incarnational and risen Christ whose roots are deeply found in all life and all matter.

We are aware that our bodies are not limited to what lies within the boundaries of our skin. There is no phenomena on this planet that does not intimately concern us or involve us. Our ego-centered existence only separates us and distances us from the suffering of other humans, animal species, and the suffering of the planet.

We practice compassion to save our planet. we save the Earth for those who come after us. We protect the Earth because we are motivated by compassion and respect for all things, animate and inanimate. We respect and care for life, for we inter-exist as siblings before God.

Anyone feeling compassion sees no boundary between one’s self and others, we feel compelled to do something when a fellow creature of God is hurting and suffering–whether it is another species, a human, or the planet. Christ has helped to realize that all life suffers and that Christ suffers with us.

I end this reflection with a paraphrase of Teresa of Avila’s prayer:

God has no eyes in this world, but ours, to identify injustices, to see a better way, to locate and reach out to those in need;
God has no ears in this world, but ours, to hear the cries of those in need, to listen with love and compassion, to hear the need in another’s voice and minister to them;
God has no mouth in this world, but ours, to speak out for justice, to offer words of encouragement and support for those in need, to let others know how much they are loved;
God has no feet in this world, but ours, to walk the extra mile alongside others who need a friend, to travel to places to help those in need, to go and share God’s Love with those who are not aware of it;
God has no hands in this world, but ours, to heal the sick, to create sanctuaries for other life who have loss space, to carry those who cannot walk on their own, to hold someone in our arms when they need comforting; to recycle and create environments of sustainability, not waste;
God has no mind in this world, but ours, to seek and find ways to make our lives and those of others better, to create works of art and ways of sharing, to create a better world and to arrest the causes of global warming. God has no heart in this world, but ours, to feel and share love with all others and to love God’s creation—the Earth.

The latest report from scientists is a sobering report. The glaciers in Greenland are melting faster than first thought and now the western ice sheet in Antarctica with a sea level rise of 5-6 feet or more by 2100 and 20 feet by 2200. Already at high tide, the oceans are flooding the streets of Miami, and most of Florida is 1-3 feet above sea level. Coasts are threatened around the world, and a large majority of humanity live near the oceans.

The Trump administration has declared war of the Earth, denying the existence of climate change. Trump’s executive order this week attempts to roll back all the climate initiative of the Obama administration and its commitment to the Paris Climate Accord. The EPA have removed studies of carbon atmosphere studies, looking to remove discussion of the science that studies global warming.
Today, our scripture is the story of the Garden of Eden, but it is not just the story we are accustomed to hearing. It is the voice of the Earth. Just shifting the story from the human story-teller’s voice to the Earth mind remind us to listen to the voice of the Earth today.

God loves planting trees. The original garden. envisioned in the story of Eden, is a royal park full of trees or a grove of trees. God delights in planting trees. Trees are significant in the biblical and religious stories of humanity.

Let me focus on trees for a moment. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna observes:
The birth of trees is truly the most blessed in the world, for they contribute to the well-being of all other creatures. Just as no one needy returns disappointed from generous persons, so too one who approaches trees for shelter. They meet the needs of others with their leaves, flowers, fruits, shade, roots, bark, wood, fragrance, sap, ashes, and charcoal.

Trees are symbols in the spirituality of humanity—representing symbols of life, abundance, generosity, energy, food, strength, shelter. Trees are gardeners in their own right. They provide shelter for other species—plant, nonhuman animal life and insects. Leaves fall and decompose to create a rich humus-like soil. Trees circulate water from their roots into the trunk and branches. They protect biodiversity. Trees capture carbon dioxide and release oxygen that we and other non-human life require. Trees live in communities, and they are one of the most ancient life forms, for they stabilize the weather and are useful for recycling water. They are intelligent and have stable children. I have met redwood trees who are 800 years old and few trees 1600 years old in the Armstrong Forest in Russian River. They have stories to tell us and a wisdom to communicate to us if we chose to listen. In fact, the midrash on Eden came from a morning walk among the ancient redwood trees in the Armstrong Forest with my husband and companion dog. I listened to the trees and found a deep spirit within them, connecting to God’s Spirit and the risen Christ. And I realized that they were faithful gardeners as intended by God.

The female Nobel Peace Prize laureate and founder of the Green Belt Movement, Wangari Mathai writes, “When we plant trees, we plant the seeds of peace and hope.” Mathai has founded a movement whose goal is the reduction of poverty in Africa and environmental conservation. In order to protect biodiversity and forests, China legislated a law requiring its citizens to plant 4 four trees or pay for the planting of four trees. China has remained the top in human planting of trees in the world.

God creates the earthling—adamah from the humus of the Earth. The soil is able to hold God’s breath, and God is concerned for the earthling and creates animals for companions, but that remains unsatisfactory. So God e divides the earthling to create humans male and female. God compassionately cares for the welfare of each creature and the dirt creature now male and female. The Earth rejoices in all her children.

God commissioned the walking dirt creatures to care and serve the garden. And the walking earthlings followed God in gardening, caring and tending the community of the soil. They learned to work the abundance of life in the garden—preserving and caring the community of trees, plants and vegetative life, and other life. God expected the walking earthlings to follow in God’s vocation as gardeners and gave them one instruction not to eat of the fruit of the tree of good and evil.

Of course, we know that in the familiar fable, the couple in the garden ate from the fruit of the tree of good and evil at the prompting of the serpent. They became aware of their nakedness and now separated themselves from the animals in their nakedness.

And the Earth lamented, “Sadly, they lost all connectedness to myself and their siblings. They forgot their humus origins.” God placed them outside of Eden to learn how to re-connect to the Earth community once more. Humans, however, forgot a deep truth of the soil that all life shares a common ancestry from the humus or soil and are a part of the community of my body.

As I wept at the loss of my earth children, but God comforted me with hope. One day there will be a new earth creature (adamah) born again from the soil. He will be born from a cave tomb in a garden and become a great gardener, carrying on the mission of his parent who loves gardening. He will instruct humanity on gardening once more, and they will return to the community of the soil and once again connect to all life forms as an interdependent community of the soil. Hope was born once more in my dreams….

Humanity has lost its connectedness to the Earth and other life. Humans forgot their origins from the Earth and their soil community. Humanity is placed outside the garden to learn how to re-connect to the Earth. Instead we have continued to separate ourselves from the Earth and all other life.

Note that the Earth has not transgressed any intention of God. Nor have the trees, the plant life, or animal life. Both Celtic and Orthodox Christianities maintained that the Earth never fell. It still retains the holiness, its original innocence and blessing, beloved of God and carrying on their intended mission by God.

God comforts the Earth with the promise of new Adam, born in a cave with animals. He would be lifted upon a tree and die, but he would be buried in a cave in a garden. Let me point out that Golgotha was originally an olive grove of trees as well as Gethsemane and the grove of the resurrected Jesus. This new Adam, the risen Christ, will be a true gardener, following in God’s footsteps

Today humanity suffers from anthropocentrism, we are the center of the world. Everything is for our benefit. The Earth is our warehouse of resources to use whatever we choose. Animals exist for our purpose, and they are soulless, and we can hunt, abuse, and kill them for our use. They are inferior. We suffer from an arrogant apartheid the Earth and the community of life. Humanity practices an exclusivity not only with other humans but also with all life. We are exceptionally arrogant, and we are conditioned by our culture and religion to separation. Separation from the Earth is pervasive in our culture. That is why we can pollute, dump radioactivity and toxic chemicals into the environment. We can frack the Earth and explode mountain tops to get at coal. We factory farm, and not only raise and slaughter animals inhumanely, their waste releases methane into the atmosphere. It heats up the atmosphere 40 times more than carbon pollutants. If we reduce our eating of meat produced from factory farming, we could significantly reduce the warming of our climate.

And I will say strongly, “If we are separated from the Earth and the community of life, we are also separated from God.” We have as a church defined our ministry the radical inclusive love that Jesus practiced. There was a time when I as a gay man, along with other LGBT folks, were excluded, and we had to form a ghetto community to survive and practice our faith. Tearing down all walls that exclude and separate is not only the mission of Jesus but is our church mission; radical inclusivity and extravagant hospitality to everyone. And I would add to all life. I am proud that my own church made the Earth a member of our church eight years ago, and today they renew their covenant to the Earth and all life.

Christopher Uhl, a Professor of Biology and Ecology, has been interested, for decades, in environmental healing. You might be surprised. He understands that responding to the environmental crisis is not by repairing the environment. He argues that we first need to repair ourselves. This means to change our attitude and perceptions of ourselves and the Earth. That means we need to break down the conditioning of separating out our selves.We need to awaken, letting go our ego-centeredness and realize that we are interconnected with all life and the Earth. We are not above or separated from the Earth, but participants in the Earth community.

Chris Uhl talks about antidote to anthropocentrism that we are practicing here, for the solution is radical inclusivity. He writes,

Inclusivity is grounded relationship whereas exclusivity stems from separation. A consciousness rooted in inclusivity generates trust, one moored in exclusivity foments fear—especially, the fear of the Other. When our goal is exclusivity, we silence those with whom we disagree; but when inclusivity becomes our goal, we to create a world that works for all. (Uhl)

Inclusivity is the key, it tears down the barriers with any person or being or even the Earth. When I read John’s Gospel, there is the affirmation in the prologue: “The Word became flesh and lived among us.” A Danish theologian, Niels Gregersen writes,

…the incarnation of God in Christ can be understood as a radical or deep incarnation, that is, an incarnation into the very tissue of biological existence, and system of nature. Understood this way, the death of Christ became an icon of God’s redemptive co-suffering with all sentient life as well as with the victims of social competition. God bears the cost of evolution, the price involved in the hardship of natural selection.

This means that Christians hold a deep incarnational viewpoint that God’s incarnation did not start with Mary’s “yes” to the Angel Gabriel and her pregnancy. It started before the big bang and during the big bang when the molecules of Christ were formed. like our own, 15 billion years ago and later would form the embryo in Mary and the physical body of Jesus. This process of deep incarnational roots would spread through the resurrection of Christ into the Earth, all fleshy life, human and other, and the entire universe. The resurrection would tie us to risen Christ in a soil community in the Earth’s story. Jesus would become a new Adam.

Jesus described himself as the vine and us as the branches. The risen Christ is mistaken by Mary Magdalene as a gardener. What a prophetic insight Magdalene makes. The risen Christ restores us as members of the soil community, the community of the Earth.

Thomas Berry writes,

We come into being in and through the Earth. Simply put, we are Earthlings. The Earth is our origin, our nourishment, our educators, our healer, our fulfillment. At its core, even our spirituality is Earth derived. The human and the Earth are totally implicated, each in the other. If there is no spirituality in the Earth, then there is no spirituality in ourselves.

Brazilian liberation theologian Leonardo Boff claims, “the human being is the Earth who walks.” Or Zen Buddhist Teacher Thich Nhat Hanh , “We are the Earth and the Earth is in us. We have always been one with the Earth.”
Sallie McFague writes,

I am of the earth, a product of its ancient and awesome history, and I really and truly belong here. But I am only one among millions, no billions of other human beings, who have a place, a space, on the earth.

Pope Francis I reminds us, “We have forgotten that we ourselves are dust of the earth (cf. Gen 2:7). Claim your earthiness this Earth Day. Our siblings are suffering and dying. If we proceed as we are doing, a sixth extinction will occur in the near future. So today I want you to remember the theme of my new book, God is Green: If you fall in love with God’s Earth, you will fight for the survival of the Earth. The risen Christ is incarnated in all life and in the Earth. Let us practice our incarnational discipleship as gardeners and may the Trees this remind us that God intended us to be Gardeners.

I have written queer theology for the last 27 years, and I now write about a period of 8 days, the queerest days that I can imagine. I am speaking from the moment that Jesus arrives in Jerusalem on a donkey to God’s resurrection of Jesus from the death.

Now let me dispel a notion: I am not writing about LGBTQI concerns, they are included but not the focus this morning. Queer theory and queer stories focus usually on LGBTQI concerns and inclusion in history, but I am speaking about God’s dream for life and humanity, and that dream is very queer. It is God’s unconditional grace and love for creation and all life.

Let me define queer for a moment. To “queer” is to interfere or disrupt. It is to transgress exclusive categories, notions, boundaries, and all boxes. I queer Christianity because it has remained exclusive, often violent and oppressive of someone or some life. Queering exclusiveness is to interfere and spoil exclusiveness and make it more inclusive.

My colleague and friend Rev. Dr. Patrick Cheng, understands queering as eliding dualism. Dualism is a destruction form of binary thinking used by dominant theologies, church leaders and politicians. It separates the world into male and female, culture and nature, the have and have-not, human and non-human, and so. For Patrick, God’s love is queer because it elides such thinking and behaviors. Dr. Justin Tanis comprehends queer as dawn or dusk, that liminal or ambiguous space between night and day. My deceased theologian and friend speaks of indecent and perverse. In Luke’s gospel, the Temple high priests bring a charge against Jesus before Pilate: “This man has perverted the nation.”

I have engaged with God’s Christ in Jesus of Nazareth. God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit have made me “queer” and more so over time. I describe myself as “a queer seeker of God and disciple of an even queerer God.” Jesus laid the foundations of ministry and message of the companionship of empowerment or kindom of God as a “topsy-turvy and upside-down kindom. He opens God’s table to everyone and upsets nearly every religious Jew of his time. Just listen to the parables of Jesus—the Good Samaritan, the prodigal son, the mustard seed, the baker woman who sneaks leaven into 50 pounds of flour, and so on. They provoke and disrupt religious exclusivism that reserves God’s grace and favor for the chosen “holy.”

My often quoted author, Diarmuid O’Murchu, calls the parables as “enlightened confusion.”

The story Jesus told them turned their world upside-down,
Bombarding every certainty they knew.
The boundaries were disrupted,
Their sacred creeds corrupted,
Every hope they had constructed,
Was questioned to the core!
By the story ended,
Stretching meaning so distended,
What they had known for long before.

O’Murchu speaks about Jesus’ parables. But what if we understand the gospel stories of Jesus as a parable about God? God is queering in the story of Jesus on a massive and unprecedented scale, not since the big bang. God has incarnated in a human being—such a queer and scandalous notion. God is queering and communicating a thoroughly queer and radically inclusive love. All are beloved—all humanity, all life, and all creation. No on is left behind or out.

Let me point out the queer highlights of this week:

For Jesus, God was a king unlike all kings and rulers. God’s rule was “queer,” meaning “not fitting in, strange, at odds with, out of place, disruptive, blasphemous, revolutionary, dangerous, outside the box, or my word “mischievous.” It is a topsy-turvy non-ruling but luring us through unconditional gift and love. God’s strategy is never coercive but always luring us through unconditional grace and love.

The Temple high priest and his colleagues brought Jesus before Pilate with the charges: “He perverted the nation.” Here “perverted” means inverting religious values, hierarchies, breaking all sorts of purity codes and religious laws for the sake of compassion. Jesus was always out of place; a peasant was meant to be quiet and subservient to the rulers of the Temple. Jesus spoke out compassion and was not afraid to break religious rules to extend God’s compassion.
Let’s examine today’s gospel a little more carefully. Unfortunately, the distribution of palms on Palm Sunday has become a spiritual blessing for us today. Many Christians tie up their palms into a bow and hang the palm crosses in their homes. And I am not opposed to anyone doing so if you determine to ask God to make you a bit queerer. But Palm Sunday has a deeper meaning than just the palms. Jesus rides on donkey into Jerusalem accompanied by a ragtag group of male and female disciples.

Jesus enters Jerusalem or to use biblical scholar Warren Carter’s phrase “making an Ass of Rome:” The conflict between Jesus and Pilate begins the day that Jesus enters in Jerusalem on the back of a donkey and praised as the “Son of David.”

Roman entrances into city were always triumphant. No red carpets, but soldiers trumpeting, followed by cadence war drums sounding the entrance of the conquering hero. In this case, it was Pilate who represented the triumphant Roman Empire and Emperor Tiberius. Days before Pilate rode on a war horse from the sea resort of Caesarea followed by marching his Roman legionnaires with standards, Pilate entered Jerusalem as conqueror and made it clear to the populace that the Rome was in charge of their city and their lives. They paraded and displayed extravagantly the power of Tiberius Caesar and Rome. It communicates Roman greatness and military power, reminding the crowds that they were conquered by the powerful Roman legions—the greatest power in the world blessed by the Gods. Augustine was the true Son of god Apollo, and the savior of the world.

But Jesus intends to literally make an ass of Pilate and Rome. He choreographs his own dramatic and symbolic entrance into Jerusalem. He queers some of the Roman ritual entry or rather mischievously reframes them as symbolic challenges. His entrance into Jerusalem reminds the Jews of their religious history in which God enters the holy city to serve, not dominate. He chooses an ass, not a war horse in which Pilate rode into the city. Matthew remembers the line from the prophet Zechariah: “Tell the daughter of Zion, your king is coming on an ass”(9:9). The rest of the verse states that your king comes triumphant and victorious, and humble riding an ass.

Jesus is recognized not as a king but more likely anti-king. He teaches humility, non-violence, compassion and love, forgiveness, and peace-making, empowerment through mutuality and service, not conquest and domination. God’s community is constituted by a new a kinship as children of God—not be wealth, prestige, gender, or ethnicity. It is constituted by God as Abba, our parent in love with all and equally. And God lives within us and in our midst.
Another example of this last week of Jesus’ life that reveals God’s queer activity among people as empowering mutual companionship is the Last Supper. Companionship is created when we share food together, and we eat with God in our midst. Companionship was based on exclusion but gathering together to eat with God and one another.

I want you to remember the video from Centering Prayer this morning, Eating Twinkies with God. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9N8OXkN0Rk It expresses the incarnational vision of the Last Supper and Jesus’ ministry of eating together with God and finding God present.

There is no question that for Jesus the Last Supper had to be open and inclusive. I cannot accept the readings of the Last Supper as an exclusive meal. It goes against the very queer nature of who Jesus was and who God is. People from the highways and byways were to be invited into the meals. It was populated with diversity: outcasts, prostitutes, abominable people, tax collectors, those folks that terrify Pharisees and Christians alike. He did not moralize, berate them how to change their lives, or threaten them that could not share the table if they did not change their ways.

In Christianity’s Dangerous Memory, Diarmuid O’Murchu describes Jesus’ parables, healings, and ministry. The description is equally applicable to his meals and his to Last Supper:

They defy the criteria of normalcy and stretch creative imagination toward subversive, revolutionary engagement. They threaten major disruption for a familiar manageable world, and lure the hearer (participant) into a risky enterprise, but one that has promise and hope inscribed in every fiber of the dangerous endeavor.

There were no hierarchies at table, no one in charge and in power. There were only those who voluntarily served others, gladly washed the feet of their companions, who assisted folks at table to heal from the years of religious abuse and oppression. And God was mischievously present through each other. Jesus encouraged them to dream a future with hope, with God with shared resources and the abundance of food created by the companions of the bread and the cup.
Jesus’ Last Supper, like all his meals, undid social ordinary patterns and hierarchical behaviors, introducing people into a new egalitarianism, an equality before one another and God. No Roman official like Pilate would ever serve food to another person, especially with a male lesser of status or serve even his wife. No religious Jew would invite men and women together at table, suspected impurity and sinfulness.

And then there is the radical service of Jesus at table that evening– washing the feet of his male and female disciples. This was the service of only household slaves or women. No free male would do such a washing service because it demeaned his masculinity and patriarchal authority. Jesus turns the social hierarchies inside out, breaking down the gender boundaries and social hierarchies. There is only table fellowship of mutual service and equals, revering those who were the socially least, and inviting the disciples to imitate Jesus in his act of foot-washing.

Finally, Jesus dies a cruel death inflicted by the powers of imperial domination and religious exclusivism, always an unholy marriage of violence. It is an ultimate queering of human expectation, God’s vulnerability and suffering on the cross. God understood vulnerability in the incarnated Christ on the cross, and God identified with the suffering Christ and the least and vulnerable humanity and life in history. We have no comprehension of the depths of God’s suffering for all suffering life, but we do have a window into the depth of God when Jesus told his disciples: “Be compassionate as Abba God is compassionate.” Abba God suffered and died with Christ out of compassion, for God has suffered with all suffering life and human life. God the Creator becomes vulnerable and experience suffering the incarnated Christ on the cross and the Holy Spirit that groans and suffers with all created life. This is the queerest notion of God in history—God who becomes vulnerable and experiencing suffering. God is with us in so many unimaginable ways.

But the queer God surprised all of us. God said “no” to such violence and cruelty, God proclaimed a “yes to unconditional love” on Easter Sunday. Next Sunday I will speak how the queer God queers death for resurrected life!