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First Friends Meeting
Romans 8:18-25
Advices & Queries #42
Living the Queries, Part 5:
‘Dreaming of a Green Christmas’
We don’t really know what time of the year Jesus was born.
There’s nothing in the gospels to suggest it was this time of
year. In the early centuries of the Church, they started
celebrating the birth of Jesus at this time, to coincide with the
winter solstice. It makes good symbolic sense. We celebrate
the light coming into the world in a tiny baby, just when we’ve
passed the shortest day of the year and the days start getting
longer. And just as it took the Christ-child a long time to grow
up and become Jesus of Nazareth, so each year it takes a while –
too long for me – for the days to get longer and begin warming
the earth again. But we live through these coldest weeks of the
year in confidence. The orbit of the earth around the sun and
tilt of the earth on its axis will bring light and life to us once
again.
By placing the celebration of Christmas just after the winter solstice,
the Church combined the coming of Christ, a unique moment in human
history, with the ageless cycles of life on this planet.
It’s not just handy imagery, the light coming into the world, in
nature and in Jesus. The point is, really, that when the Word
became flesh in Jesus, spiritual reality and natural reality came
together in a powerful, unique way.
We’re continuing our series on the Quaker queries. The one
Tim just read, #42, is the newest of the Advices and Queries in Britain
Yearly Meeting’s Faith & Practice. It expresses a new,
emerging testimony among Friends – a testimony to the earth as
God’s creation, and a concern for our care of it. Or
rather, I should say, the creation and our part in it. Because we
too are created. We are part of the same vast, cosmic
evolutionary process that produced everything around us. The
natural world is not our ‘environment’ – we’re
part of it and it’s part of us. When God said, “Let
us make humans in our likeness, God was speaking to the whole universe,
which God had just created. We are created in the image of both
an invisible God and the visible universe. The name
‘Adam’ literally means ‘dust’. We came
from the earth and we will return to it. The name
‘Eve’ literally means ‘life’. We are part
of a vast, interconnected web of life. If we degrade it, we
degrade ourselves.
So #42 advises us to “Show a loving consideration for all
creatures, and seek to maintain the beauty and variety of the
world. Work to ensure that our increasing power over nature is
used responsibly, with a reverence for life.”
A few weeks ago, I spoke on Isaiah’s prophecy of the coming of
the Messiah, the birth of a new king, who would rule with wisdom and
with concern for the meek and the poor. What would the world look
like, ruled by such a king? Here, Isaiah uses a fable – a
vision of animals, all of them living together in peace. The wolf
lying down with the lamb. The calf and the lion cub led together
in peace by a little child.
A few days later, Barbara Jenkins sent me an article about an animal
sanctuary in Texas. It’s the home to a menagerie of well over a
thousand animals who have been victims of the human race. Chimps
who were used for medical research. Animals that were cast off
from circuses and roadside attractions. Animals that were rescued
from neglect, exploitation, and abuse. There were other cases as
well. These animals live in peace and are fed in this
sanctuary. All because some people felt compassion for them and
delivered them from misery, futility, and death. Barbara
suggested that maybe the peaceable kingdom is breaking out on earth
after all. Everything has to start somewhere. Often the
peaceable kingdom has to start out on the margins of society, on some
less preferred real estate, where no one is looking.
The peaceable kingdom breaks out that way with the birth of
Jesus. As we read it in Luke, there was no room in the inn at
Bethlehem, even as Mary was going into labor. She and Joseph were
forced to the margins, a stable on the edge of town, a place where the
human world and the animal world meet. And there a newborn child
was laid in a feed trough, among the animals. Mary and Joseph had
just stumbled into Isaiah’s vision of the peaceable
kingdom. A few people came to the stable – some shepherds
from the hills, some astrologers from the East. All of them had
ideas about this newborn child. I don’t suppose the animals
said anything. They rarely do. At least not in ways we pick
up. But the animals knew what this was about. They’d
seen babies born in that stable before. All kinds of
babies.
When Mary was in labor and cried out in pain, the animals
understood. In the passage that Tim just read for us, Paul writes
that the whole creation is like a woman in labor, groaning to be
delivered. Like a woman in labor, the whole creation groans in
hope – hope to see the children of God revealed, in their
glorious liberty.
Parents bring new children into the world, always in hope. Hoping
they will succeed where we have failed. They will have
opportunities where we were denied. They will become creative men
and women with the talents they possess. And in all those ways,
they will be free – free to realize their potential. Free
to be useful in society. Free to further God’s kingdom on
earth. Paul makes an extraordinary claim here. We are
united with the universe not just in suffering, in bondage to decay and
the futility of death. We are united with the whole universe in a
driving, throbbing hope to be free, to be creative partners with God
– creative creatures.
When God said to the universe, let’s make humans in our likeness,
both God and the universe placed amazing powers in us. And both
God and the universe placed a great hope in us. When we live up
to the greatness that is in us, when we live faithfully toward God and
toward God’s other creatures, that hope is fulfilled. We
become the true children of God and the true children of the
universe.
The Psalmist (8:3-6) puts it another way. “When I look at
your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you
have established; what are humans that you are mindful of them, mortals
that you care for them? Yet you have made them a little lower
than God, and crowned them with glory and honor. You have given
them dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things
under their feet.” When the Psalmist looked up at the
heavens 3000 years ago, he had no idea just how vast a realm it
was. But he knew enough to be awed and humbled. How could
God care about us tiny humans? It continues to be part of the
wonder of faith that God cares for each of us. And yet, we often
miss the corollary of that truth. Yes, God cares about each of us
six billion humans on this planet. But that means it also matters
what we do, no matter how tiny and statistically insignificant we
are.
That’s where we so often cop out in our care of the earth.
We think, oh, Exxon, Monsanto, Dow Chemical, all the others –
they’re the real polluters, the real destroyers of
creation. What difference does it possibly make what kind of car
I drive, how I heat my house, or this meetinghouse, or whether we use
disposable plates and cups here once a week? Yes, “what are
humans that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for
them?” Often, we would prefer to think, get Monsanto to change,
then I’ll change. But our testimony to God’s creation
is like our peace testimony. We can’t wait for the world to
become peaceful and then join in. It will never happen that
way. Likewise, the small ways we use energy and other resources
need to become part of the answer, no longer part of the problem
– no matter how insignificant it seems in our own eyes.
Because we are not insignificant in God’s eyes.
As the earth completes this cycle around the sun, the news has been
dominated by two big political struggles – health care reform in
Congress and the climate change summit in Copenhagen. Both have
been frustrating for everybody. But both address key questions
about how we live on this planet with the resources available.
Everyone is concerned about both. Yet we can’t agree how to
deal with these vast problems. Politics have divided and
conquered us once again. We have a long way to go in solving
these and many other problems. And the people with the power to
solve them seem like titans clashing far above our heads. For
now, the best we can do is work on becoming part of the solution.
We play very small parts, but not insignificant. For the
peaceable kingdom breaks out here and there. A stable outside
Bethlehem, a sanctuary in Texas, and here.
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