Would Jesus be an Environmentalist? Carol Meyer

…..Unfortunately, many Christians see little connection between the health of the Earth and the mission of Christ. Historically, much theological and spiritual emphasis was given to fleeing the world and putting one’s sole hope in life after death. Thus, the world had little value in itself. It was merely the backdrop for the great drama of personal salvation, a purely spiritual endeavor.

And maybe because a thriving planet provided the basic support necessary for the spiritual quest, it was taken as a given and didn’t need to be theologized about.

But now in the wake of a dying or extremely ill planet, we are suddenly realizing that God’s dream can’t materialize without the aid of the natural world.
When we examine the life and teachings of Jesus, he certainly spoke up boldly about the critical issues of his day. He proclaimed that his mission was to bring glad tidings to the poor, liberty to captives and release to prisoners (Luke 4:18). He was concerned for the sick, downtrodden, and anyone oppressed by unjust systems. The whole environmental tragedy is rife with injustices—the rich exploiting the earth for their greed at the expense of the poor and powerless who bear the heaviest load of negative consequences. Jesus would never have sanctioned or been silent about that.

We all know the famous last judgment passage in Matthew 25 where Jesus makes the feeding, housing, and clothing of those in need the criteria for salvation. In our day, the stakes are raised to a much higher collective level, beyond just individual actions. By every unsustainable personal or societal choice, we choose to create more deserts and starvation, more impure and scarce water, more erratic devastating storms, etc., that will harm millions of people and other sentient beings. By every sustainable choice, we choose actions that will contribute to the feeding, housing, and clothing of our fellow human being. We don’t have to guess at what position Jesus would take. We know he would be speaking out for a more committed stewardship of the planet, even if it means sacrifice and dying to self.

Jesus lived close to the land and drew the images for his parables from creation. It is unthinkable that the Christ who loved God so deeply did not also love all that God had made. If we grieve over the current irredeemable losses to the grandeur of creation, surely that is nothing compared to the One who knows the divine value of what we are destroying. Jesus could not have known God so intimately had he not had intimate rapport with the natural world.
Were he alive today, I’m certain that Jesus would be outspoken in challenging the powers that be and each one of us regarding the pillage of the Earth. And no doubt he would be in great trouble as he was in his lifetime–vilified, condemned, marginalized, and characterized as radical and extreme. And yes, perhaps killed for speaking truth to power, as happens to many of the prophets. Surely we should be unafraid and willing to risk a little more too.
I believe Jesus walks beside us every step of the way as we seek to find ways to live sustainably and in partnership with creation. May we be true to him and call upon his wisdom and power in this great work.

Covenant with the Earth:

We, the Federated Church of Marlborough, proclaim our love for God’s Creation and profess our belief that the Earth, ourselves, and all life are interconnected as part of the sacred Web of Life.

We covenant together to commit ourselves as a church and as individuals in the great work of healing, preservation and justice as we strive to reduce our individual and collective negative impact on the environment and to repair the damage that has been done to God’s Earth. In worship and church life we will express our appreciation and give praise for the Earth and will display a reverence for the Earth community of life.

We commit ourselves to Earth care and to the biblical principles of taking only what we need, healing the harm we do to the Earth, and keeping the Earth in repair for the future.

As Earth Protectors, we make this covenant in the hope and faith that through our Earth care we will be able to help improve and sustain the health of the land, air and water for the benefit of all current and future inhabitants of this Planet.

Jesus as the Green Face of Abba God

Throughout human history, when the state either coopted or controlled institutional religion, religious institutions, almost never, worked for the benefit of ordinary people or the poor. This is true today as it was during the history of Israel and the first century Palestine.

Jesus was formed by his Jewish creation-centered spirituality. There are some significant features of creation-centered spirituality. God, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, looked at creation good and delighted in creation. Creation was beloved and valuable to God. God was experienced in creation: mountains rivers, wilderness, and even Jesus’ claimed in his meals and living compassion. God promoted kinship relationships among the people, whereby hospitality and love of the stranger was highlighted. Love was a central relationship with each other.

The Creator God encouraged love of neighbor and just relationships. One of the chief claims in the Psalm 24:1, “the earth is the Lord’s, and all that is in it he world, and those who live in.” Other places in the scriptures make clear that we are tenants. Jesus was grounded in the Hebrew biblical tradition of creation spirituality “…..…grounded in the experience of ongoing relationship with the Creator God, leading to a covenantal bond between God and God’s people for the blessing and abundance of all people and all creation.” (Wes Howard- Brook)

Jesus’ parables and sayings are full of an intimacy nature–the sower and the seed (Mt: 13:3-9, 18-23); the vine and the branches (Jn. 15:1-17); Mark 12:1-12). He illustrated his stories by referring to the lilies of the field (Luke 12:27), the birds of the air (Mt. 6:26), and foxes and their lairs (Lk. 9:58). These were to awaken his audience to the divine presence in their midst. He understood well that the divine presence of Abba Creation and Spirit in the natural order of creation. Jesus’ healings justly restored the ill and possessed to God creation community.

A Canadian Christian clergy Bruce Sanguin describes Jesus as a “bit of an earthnik:” “He looked everywhere around at the natural world and saw God everywhere.” Popular spirituality author Matthew Fox argues, what Jesus saw in creation he incorporated within God’s kin-dom. The Spirit graced Jesus with a vivid vision of God’s creation as a gift. Kin-dom of God was the community of Abba God’s creation or the household.

For Jesus, God’s kin-dom was neither patriarchal empires nor state sponsored religion that normalize violence to promote income and power inequities. Empires and state-sponsored religion work closely, hand in hand to oppress, legitimizing abundance for the privileged few at the expense of the general peasant populace. Empire and temple financially benefitted from their mutual relationship, and this benefitted the elite or 1%. Creation-centered spirituality criticized this mutual relationship that oppressed the vulnerable and the poor.

God the Creator is envisioned as Householder of the Heaven and the Earth. Jesus’ notion of kin-dom is the earthly place of God’s transforming presence.
Abba God is Householder Creator (1 Cor. 8:6), Protector (Isaiah 63:16), Provider (Isaiah 10:1-2), and Parent Householder. These metaphors express a close, loving, and intimate relation to our specific location of creation—on earth. Jesus experienced Abba as Householder. Abba compassionately cares for the poor and needy, widows and orphans, migrants and refugees in human imperial civilization. Empire takes advantage and exploits the vulnerable and the poor. God champions the vulnerable, the oppressed, and poor.

God provides abundance to creation, both human and the more than human. In the creation story that opens Genesis, God rests and delights in creation. God values and finds intrinsic worth in all creation from human to the more than human life to the Earth herself. All are beloved and dear to God.

As I prepared for this sermon, I am so mindful of the climate catastrophe in Australia, where 27 million acres have been burned, human loss, over 1 billion animal wildlife have died, not including valuable insects for the flourishing of the biodiversity. So how would Jesus respond to the Australian climate catastrophe, in particular, and the pending global climate Armageddon?

Jesus taught love. He revolutionized the notion of love of your neighbor in Leviticus beyond tribalism (Lev. 19:18). He expanded the notion: love your neighbor as yourself (Mt.22:27-28), neighbor as the Good Samaritan, as prostitutes, tax collectors, outcasts, and those afflicted with illness. He stretched the Great Commandment to the love of enemy, and love outsiders, the poor, and the vulnerable—all parts of the community of creation.
Let me rehearse a few of the principles of Jesus’ creation spirituality.

1) After creation, God rested, delighted. and found valuable and beloved from the whole of creation to the smallest microbe and atom.

2) Abba God nurtures creation. God sends the rain and the sun for growth, clothes the grass, feeds the birds, cares for the flourishing and thriving of both human and the more than human. God is concerned with the well-being of the planet. Jesus regards God’s creation—the earth—as a gift to all life. All life shares that gift.

3) Jesus’ expansion of “love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus makes it clear that every ‘person’ we encounter – human and all life– is our ‘neighbor’.

Love of God involves love of God’s creation. This means that all family members deserve a fair share at the table and that the house must be kept in good order for others now and for the future.

One of my favorite theologians, Sallie McFague says, “That God is constantly, annoyingly present in the world and concerned with the basic and ordinary physical well-being. That God cares about lilies and sparrows and hungry stomachs…” God is present through the Spirit the world and intends that humanity and more than human life share the household. Both have the right to flourish and thrive. This includes food, water, and a place to live. We love God as we love all creation.

The Creator providentially created an abundance in the natural world. Abba taught the Israelites in the wilderness that their experience of scarcity was turned into abundance. Jesus learned that in the wilderness, and this appears in his feeding stories of the multitudes in the wilderness. The forty days in the wilderness taught Jesus the lessons on created kinship of all creatures and God’s economy of abundant giftedness to life. He learned first-hand the Spirit’s earthen economy, ”freely you have received, freely give.” (Mt. 10:8).

The justice ministry of Jesus is open to the extension to nature—nature is certainly among the poor and oppressed in our time. Right relation to nature can be guided Jesus’ praxis. Jesus mirrors God’s distributive justice of material grace, symbolizing the grace of God’s unconditional love. Distributive justice is a divine concern of Household God as provider. God has provided the whole universe, and for us, the Earth as an original gift. Air, food, land, and water are provided for us as gift. In the Hebrew tradition, land is God’s gift.

To be just means to distribute everything fairly. The primary meaning of “justice” is equitable distribution of whatever you have in mind … God’s world must be distributed fairly and equitably among all God’s people. … When the biblical tradition proclaims that revolutionary vision of distributive justice, it is imagining neither liberal democratic principles nor universal human rights. Instead, its vision derives from the common experience of a well-run home, household, or family farm. … Are the children and dependents well fed, clothed, and sheltered? Are the sick given special care? Are the responsibilities and returns apportioned fairly? Do all have enough? Especially that: Do all have enough? Or, to the contrary, do some have far too little while others have far too much? … Do all God’s children have enough? If not – and the biblical answer is “not” – how must things change here below so that all God’s people have a fair, equitable, and just proportion of God’s world? (Crossan)

Distributive justice is what biblical scholar John D. Crossan calls “enoughism ” in the Lord’s prayer. “Give us this day our daily prayer.” Enoughism is giving everyone the exact same thing. A family of six has more needs that a family of two such as Joe and myself. Enough varies, but the goal is to meet our daily needs. This extends to all of us but also extends to include more than human life—wildlife and the Earth herself.
At the center of Jesus’ kin-dom ministry was the invitation to see the world differently and to see it as beloved as God does. I turn to words and life of Jesus as the Green Face of God, “Just as every insect, flower, animal, tree, and life suffering and perishing in the fire storms of Australia, who are members of my family, you see me.” (Mt. 25:40)