"Creation flavored" thoughts on the lectionary texts
Date: October 26, 2008
Text: Psalm 90.1-6,13-17
Thoughts
God was, is, and will be - even before and after the mountains. Humans, on the other hand, are a brief flash -
as individuals and even as a species! (If you scale the time from the Big Bang to one day, humans show up about 9pm
on New Year's Eve! As individuals, we show up just as the ball is hitting the ground! Here are a couple of
"timeline of Creation" websites!
We come from the dust and return to it. (That makes me feel a little more at home in my study - which is getting
kind of dusty!) On the other hand, so does the Earth, apparently. We just do it a little more quickly!
"The grass that flourishes in the morning and fades in the evening" - we used to have one of those plants that the leaves
closed up in the evening. It was fun to watch.
"Establish the work of our hands" - is that really what we want? (This verse seems a little confused and unclear
- probably requires deeper study!)
"Make us glad as many days as thou hast afflicted us, as many years as we have seen evil." The reality is that
it is going to take Earth much longer to recover from what we have done than it has taken us to do it!
Text: Deuteronomy 34.1-12 Moses
dies and is buried
Thoughts
Moses died and the Lord buried him. In a green burial, no doubt. And with no gravestone, maybe even in some
kind of wilderness preserve. That would be fine for me - someplace out there in the back forty! I wonder if the
National Forest Service would be interested......
Text: Matthew 22.34-46 Love
God and your neighbor
Thoughts
"Love the Lord your God, and Love your neighbor as yourself." Where does Creation fit into that? Does the
love of God entail a love for what God has made? Does it entail taking seriously God's primal word - to till and keep
the garden?
Would loving your neighbor entail not tossing toxic chemicals into their yard, or into their life? Or changing
their climate in destructive ways? How many chemicals have we produced and released into the Creation? How many
of them are safe?
Are trees, moose, birds, fish, chipmunks and such our "neighbors", at least as much as the dogs and cats that are part
of our families? The IUCN report suggests that up to 25% of mammals are at risk!
(Thank you, Charlie
We're glad for a declarative sentence after nine straight questions and ahead of two more!!) How do they
fit into that "Love God; Love your neighbor" policy? And is a confined animal feeding operation (CAFO) showing love
to either the creature or the Creator? The Mutts cartoon in our Sunday paper (granted, not one of my favorites, but
still....) has been promoting the proposition in California that would require humane treatment of animals. Here's a
video about it from Free Range Studios -
http://uncaged.yesonprop2.com/. Interesting that apparently meat raised in high stress conditions in not particularly healthy for us to eat!
And I want to take a moment just to note that this is the passage (well, the MT parallel!) quoted by the 138 Islamic
scholars and clerics in their document "A Common Word Between Us and You" (
www.acommonword.org) just a year ago. Perhaps it's not a blatantly "Creation-flavored thought", (although anything that moves
us away from war, hostility, and violence is certainly a plus for the Creation) but I would encourage you to note it.
Prayer
God of all times,
the long ages past, before we appeared,
the long ages yet to come, after we have gone,
and these present moments that we share -
despite the great love you have shown in Creation,
and the responsibility to "till and tend and keep" that you have entrusted to us,
we have not lived in ways that have blessed your creation
and indeed the danger we are doing will likely linger beyond our time.
Give us the grace to set our hearts and minds and hands to the care of Creation,
even tomorrow morning,
and establish that work upon us.
Yes, establish that work before, behind, around, and upon us.
One Thing to Do This Week
Take a moment to think about what you are "tossing out" this week - either in the trash or the recycling. What
effect will it have on Creation - for how long?
