Sermon September 11, 2011

“God's Body. . . Our Life . . . the Land”

Preparing for this Sunday's sermon, I have been swayed from a couple of different directions:

• “The pain and suffering that we as Americans associate with terrorism began [ten years ago today] and has continued ever since.”¹
• And this month, I've decided to take on the newly suggested Season of Creation and today's theme is Land. So, I am bound by my own choices of lectionary stream and the scriptures there.

But as often happens in my experience, the texts of the lectionary and the movement of human history have much to say to each other, through the wondrous, mysterious sweeping movements of the Holy Spirit.

Hear again these words from Psalm 139:

⁷ Where can I go from your spirit?
   Or where can I flee from your presence? ⁸ If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
   if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. ⁹ If I take the wings of the morning
   and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, ¹⁰ even there your hand shall lead me,
   and your right hand shall hold me fast. ¹¹ If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me,
   and the light around me become night’, ¹² even the darkness is not dark to you;
   the night is as bright as the day,
   for darkness is as light to you. ²

Hear those words as we remember the moments we saw the planes crashing into the World Trade Center Tower; hear them as we recall the last words of the courageous men and women on the plane that crashed in rural Pennsylvania; hear them as we remember the smoke and fire at the Pentagon that day. “If I ascend or decend . . . you are there. If I flee . . . you are there. If I take wing . . . your right hand shall hold me. If I hide in the dark. . . . the darkness is as light to you.”

These words were the words we used in a community service of mourning that week in Cuba where I was serving. We didn't and couldn't understand, and yet we needed to know that we were accompanied through the pain and suffering. God's presence was there in each particle of soil upon which we stood around this nation and around the world and in the particles that showered from the sky with each one who lost loved ones and each one who was lost to death. The Land—the earth itself—was wounded and the land itself absorbed the losses that day. And the land—the earth itself—allowed us to understand in some way that God was ever present, that day and always.

The grace of God and the life that God wants for all humanity was a source of comfort and gratitude in those days, of this I am sure. And yet in those days, we were also sorely wounded by violence brought to the shores of this country. It wasn't a new kind of violence, though we felt it in this nation as if it was new. “. . . it is important to note that for others around the world, that day is the day we experienced the degree of pain other nations and peoples have experienced far longer. September 11^th was a day the tragedies of the world came to our shores.”³

Yet we can still look at that day and at that place as a symbol of the futility of violence and the fruitlessness of vengeance. We can see it, too, as an ongoing symbol of how we have not yet learned to live in peace with one another as individuals, nations and peoples of faith.

We know that we are never alone in our lives—that we are accompanied by God always and that is a comfort. We also know that we are never alone and sometimes that makes us more aware of how we have fallen short of God's intentions for us sometimes as individuals and as all of humanity. And we know that the very land we live on bears much of the burden of our sinfulness and our social and individual responsibilities for our own actions and the actions of those who represent us.

In Genesis 3 and 4 that we read this morning, we hear the biblical account about the entrance of sin and violent murder into the world. We read of God holding all parties as accountable for disobedience in Eden. The serpent, after its actions, consequently was a perpetual enemy of humanity. The woman, after her actions, consequently suffered pain in the birth and growth of children. The man, after his actions, consequently toiled with difficulty to produce food from the land. And Cain and Abel's story tells us that the land itself cried out to God in protest to the blood and murder of Abel by Cain. And Cain consequently lost his home, the land of his birth, because of his actions.

In this stories, we hear that the land itself is impacted by the entrance of sin into the world. In this stories, we hear that humanity was changed, too, by the actions of a few and the reaction of the land to that action. The consequence of unrighteousness, injustice and violence are unavoidable because they reverberate from the choices we make as individuals and the actions we take together as church, community, nation and humanity as a whole.

A simple, or perhaps just common, example of this social and individual responsibility comes from my ambiguous feelings about the oil industry. I know I say this in a place, a land if you will, that has depended upon oil for economic health and structure. And I come from Oklahoma, another land that depends upon oil as well.

My personal confusion comes from life experience. I am, as many of us are, dependent on the oil industry; I have been supported, fed clothed and sheltered by it, too; and I am, as many of us are, aware of the problems that industry can cause.

When I was a child, my father worked for several very small oil companies as a pumper. At the height of his work he had between 40 and 60 wells, and over time lost due to economic changes and as the production of those wells slowed. I watched him in my ignorance as well as his, do things that poisoned the ground around those wells. As a child I was probably exposed to way too much crude oil for my health, I have no idea. When I got older I began to learn about the impact of petroleum and carbon fuels on the environment. I know that the full extent of those impacts are controversial—what damage is actually done or if any damage is permanent or if the earth can heal with time and assistance.

Individually I know I bear some responsibility for the impact my fossil fuel use has one the environment, to a greater or lesser extent. I can choose to use less or more fuel in my driving, in my home as heat and cooling and so many other choices that make smaller and larger differences daily.

Within this society, nation and culture, I know I also bear responsibilities as a part of this body of people. I have to ask question from my own conscious: Do we use more than we need? Could we change our lives to be more responsible as a whole? Can I do more to encourage and rally for this kind of responsibility?

I'm not just picking on oil, it's just familiar—there are many issues and problems just as complicated. It helps to reveal our particular downfalls—as individuals and as a body: culture, nation or even as a religion or a church. It helps to look inside and outside at those problems, complications and fallenness because it helps us realize how it is that God wishes us to live in this imperfect, yet beloved world. It helps us understand more fully how it is that we can care more fully for the land we live on and for the lands around the world that may need us to be more responsible, as well.

The stories from Genesis, in many ways, make me more aware, on this day especially, that my actions have impacts on the people closest to me and upon people that I don't realize I affect. Though I can't change all that I am and do, I can depend upon God—as Paul emphasized in his letter to the Romans—to give me the grace to act without being bogged down by the sin of all humanity. Paul's good news is that we can act within God's grace to be the human beings, societally and individually, that Jesus revealed in himself. We don't avoid the consequence of the evil that we do—or the evil of the people whose lives surround our own—in grace, we can leave behind choices like vengeance. In grace, we can be moved by the Holy Spirit to see life through the eyes of Jesus—not responding to violence with violence, but with love. In grace, in my oil industry example perhaps, we can be led to see the abundance that responsible living can produce, instead of only seeing the limitations of giving up a few miles of driving and living only for comfort and pleasure.

As we focus on how the land—how the abode of God—how our own place of living is impacted by our living and moving and being—we are made aware of how our actions not only affect earth beneath our feet—the effects are multitude. They are environmental, emotional, economic, cultural, physical and they are spiritual.

Poet Wendell Berry writes,

“Creation is thus God’s presence in creatures. …our destruction of nature is not just bad stewardship, or stupid economics, or a betrayal of family responsibility; it is the most horrid blasphemy.”⁴

Despite the feelings of some, I don't believe that effective sermons are meant to cause guilt among us—but to move us to desire transformation by God's Holy Spirit. In this time and in this place, on this land and on this particular day, we can realize that when we are unthinking in our use of the land and its resources, we may be attempting to flee from God. And in our attempts to be responsible and thoughtful in our lives and consider the impacts of the choices that we make, we are acknowledging God as creator of the land and all that it supports and contains.

Most importantly, I want us to be aware and be thoughtful about the constancy of God's presence through and with the earth that God created as a support system for living things. I want us to realize that God's presence is a reminder of God's love as well as God's continuous pursuit of the choices that we make in life—to love God our creator and to love our neighbor creatures and created matter as we love ourselves.

This is a complicated day to preach—it is a day to remember and it is a day to be moved to serve. It is a day to know that God wants us to live in grace and as every day God wants us to be the best human beings and human communities that we can be. In God's land—in the midst of God's existence—we bring God glory, this day and always. Amen.

1http://www.ucc.org/news/pastoral-letter-from-gmp.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A%20UnitedChurchOfChrist%20%28United%20Church%20of%20Christ%29

2Psalm 139:7–12

3http://www.ucc.org/news/pastoral-letter-from-gmp.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A%20UnitedChurchOfChrist%20%28United%20Church%20of%20Christ%29

4By Wendell Berry from Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community, © 1994 Wendell Berry, Pantheon Press.