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.