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May 3, 1998 |
Indiana Audubon Society Worship |
Dr. William M. Schwein |
On the fifth day of Creation, God said, "Let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky." So he created "every winged bird of every kind," called it "good," and then gave them this blessing: "Let birds multiply on the earth." Not long after that, the entire world was threatened with destruction because of a great flood, so God told Noah to take "seven pairs of the birds of the air...male and female, to keep their kind alive on the face of all the earth." It is important to remember that after the Flood, God made a covenant with the animals, as well as with Noah. God said, "Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the cattle, and every beast of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark." It is obvious the rest of creation has its own worth and dignity in the eyes of the Creator.
You will remember, too, that it was a bird that played an important role in the story of the Flood. A dove came back to the ark, olive leaf in its beak, to signal the flood waters had subsided. Seven days later, the dove did not come back, and so Noah knew it had found dry land and a place to build a nest. Noah was the first birdwatcher in history.
And from the beginning of time, God has also had his eye on the birds. There is no more eloquent description of how God pays close attention to them than what came from Jesus’ lips: "Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten in God’s sight...Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them." God is a bird-watcher, too! He counts them, (not just at Christmas), cares for them, and even maintains a feeder. (I have always wondered if God spent the seventh day of creation just bird watching.)
If God can care for a single sparrow—and that is where he and most of us would part company—can you imagine how he must feel about what is happening around the world? Novelist and naturalist Peter Matthiessen lives on the eastern end of Long Island, N. Y. Recently, in an interview, he listed what has been lost since he moved there 36 years ago: "No more snakes. Turtles are scarce. No more toads, which were very common. The warblers are down probably ninety-five percent. Thrushes are way, way down. So that all makes me very sad. My grandsons, they’ll never see it." He goes on to say that almost all the world’s fifteen species of cranes are endangered. He attributes that to the loss of wilderness areas: "You lose the wildlife because of loss of habitat. And you lose habitat because of more people and more and more development."
A NEWSWEEK article said that there are probably 10 to 80 million species on earth which have not been identified, but before science can find them, they’re gone—along with the acres of rain forest that vanish every day. With every acre go up to 100 species every day. Twenty-two acres of rainforest are demolished each minute, an area the size of a football field every second of every day. A million species of plants and animals will be extinct by the turn of the century. Of all the species that have existed, it is estimated that less than one in a hundred exist today. The rest are extinct.
Where is Noah when you need him?
I realize this is like preaching to the choir, but it never hurts to be reminded of the great challenge before us. And it also gives us an opportunity to pat ourselves on the back a bit for what we try to do in alerting the rest of the world to the need for preserving the world as God created it. In a sense, we are the ones building the ark that will protect the animals today. And, on this occasion, it is good for us to recognize the hundred years of history of our own state Audubon Society. What a wonderful feeling it is to know, at least in this area, we are not part of the problem, but of the solution!
We obviously have been given a mission that is close to the heart of God. God is watching the birds, and all the animals he created, as well as watching how we care for them. Jacques Cousteau tells of a flight of sparrows over Mexico City. The birds fell from the sky "like rain on rooftops and in the streets." Not one made it through the polluted air of that city. Essayist/naturist Bill McKibben uses the word "Decreation" to describe the human dismantling of the whole of creation. The climactic changes that are affecting every square inch of the Earth and the permanent loss of all those species of plants and animals are de-creating what God did at creation. We are undoing all the good that God did—and in record time.
I am not just speaking as a bird-watcher, a nature-lover, or a member of the Audubon Society. I am speaking as a person of faith. One basis on which God will judge each one of us is how we have treated the earth. The book of Revelation says that God will judge harshly "those who destroy the earth." The prophet Jeremiah said,
"But this people has a rebellious and defiant heart. They did not say to themselves, ‘Let us fear the Lord our God, who gives us the rains of autumn and spring showers in their turn, who brings us unfailingly fixed seasons of harvest.’ Your wrongdoing has upset nature’s order, and your sins have kept from you her kindly gifts."
Leonard Sweet, Seminary Professor, contrasts the way we treat the works of human hands and heads, and the way we treat the works of God. He says we build a rotunda in the National archives around the Declaration of Independence, place it in a one-ton bombproof vault, put it behind three inches of bulletproof glass, and station guards all around it. We don’t let anyone look at it unless through green ultraviolet filters. We spend $3.3 million just to monitor its condition. Then Sweet asks, "What would we do if Michelangelo had painted a picture of a spotted owl? Here is what we would do—we would declare it one of the world’s ‘priceless treasures’ and do everything humanly possible to protect it and preserve it. We might even go to war over keeping it. What we wouldn’t think of doing to it, even if we were planning on stealing it, would be to take a knife to it, much less a chainsaw. But when God creates a spotted owl, when we’re talking about a ‘Work of God’ or a ‘Work of Nature’ rather than a ‘Work of van Gogh’ or a ‘Work of Michelangelo,’ we treat it with disregard and disdain."
The way we treat the works of God is not just an ecological issue, it’s a theological one. My denomination has a statement in its Social Principles which says:
"All creation is the Lord’s and we are responsible for the ways in which we use and abuse it. Water, air, soil, minerals, energy resources, plants, animal life, and space are to be valued and conserved because they are God’s creation and not solely because they are useful to human beings."
That, to me, is the important phrase: "they are God’s creation." We have to read no further in the Bible than the book of Psalms to be reminded that we have been given "dominion over the works of God’s hands." Dominion is not the same word as dominate. Dominion implies a duty of stewardship that requires us not only to "work" the earth, but also to "take care of it." Dominion means that whatever is done to the earth and its inhabitants must be done with an awareness that it all belongs to God. The responsibility we have for the care of creation was a gift from God. And we are accountable to him for how we use or misuse that gift and that potential for good or for evil. Since we were created in the image of God, and are to possess the same attitude toward creation as was his, we are to be co-creators, treating the created world as gently and lovingly as he did. It is good to remember the words of the 24th Psalm: "The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it..."
One of the great theological concepts is that of unity. All things are interrelated. God created the world with incredible balance and precision. As was his intent at creation, so is his goal for all creatures: Unity, everything holding and running together in a "just-right" state of things. Until you and I realize how sensitive is this balance, how significant is our role as caretaker and partner, creation can never be restored to that state of unity.
We are a part of nature. One of the reasons we need a theology of nature is to correct our insensitivity to it, and to narrow the distance between humankind and the rest of the physical world. We are all in this together. The word ecology itself is from the word meaning house. We live under the same roof—the ozone layer, I guess some would say—or heaven.
Just one example of that delicate balance, how nothing we do is without its impact and consequences. Most of us had coffee this morning. But scientists at the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center say the world’s thirst for coffee is helping bring about the gradual disappearance of our best-loved songbirds. Orioles, hummingbirds, warblers and others, which spend their winters in Central and South America, traditionally have settled in the shade trees that shelter coffee bushes. Now these trees are being wiped out. A strong demand for coffee in the U.S. has encouraged coffee growers to cut down the over-hanging trees and to convert their land to densely planted "sun plantations." One scientist said that "more and more, what kind of coffee you drink makes a statement about who you are." He suggests we ask for "shade-grown" coffee beans. I understand in some gourmet stores, you can buy coffees labeled "bird-friendly." We are not going to save the natural world just by keeping other humans away from it. I think the key is for us to realize we are a part of it. Only when humanity and nature become parts of an integrated ecology will the created world be unified and whole.
But there is one final reason for developing a theology of ecology and that has to do with us, not just the animals. We need it. We are losing something by distancing ourselves from the world in which we live, of which we are only a part. American essayist Joseph Wood Krutch has written, "Only those within whose consciousness the suns rise and set, the leaves burgeon and wither, can be said to be aware of what living is." In an article in HARPER’S, David Ehrenfeld, a biology professor at Rutgers University, wrote of "vanishing knowledge," including the disappearance of our long-accumulated knowledge of the natural world. He said,
"We are on the verge of losing our ability to tell one plant or animal from another and of forgetting how species interact with one another and with their environments. I fear for us when there is no one left in our places of learning who can tell one moth from another, no one who knows the habits of hornbills, no one to puzzle over the diversity of hawthorns, no one even to know that this knowledge is needed and is gone."
In this way, I think we are again undoing what God intended at creation. Remember that Genesis tells us that after he formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, God brought them to Adam to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all "cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field..." It must have been important to God for us to be able to distinguish among all the species. Even Jesus knew the difference between a sparrow and a raven. He knew what a lily was. He called the Holy Spirit a dove—not just another "big gray bird."
To fail to distinguish the wonderful diversity of nature is to fail to receive one of the greatest gifts of God. Warren Hultgren said, "Nature is God’s Braille to a blind world." We see so much of God when we open our eyes to the world he created. That, in turn, can help us develop a reverence for life.
I will always be grateful for the first Golden Book of birds my father gave me, for my first Peterson’s Field Guide I bought, and for the teachers who encouraged me to learn how to distinguish between a Downy and a Hairy Woodpecker.
I’d better close or we’ll miss lunch. Novelist David James Duncan wrote recently about his love of nature. He told of driving down Oregon Coast Highway 101 in a torrential November rain. In the headlights he noticed a brown ball rolling along the side of the road. He hit his brakes instantly, certain of what it was and sure that it had been run over at least once already. As he pulled off on the shoulder, he noticed it was an adult pygmy owl—not hopelessly injured, but too disoriented to escape the road. Duncan saw ten cars behind him that would surely mean the bird was doomed. He was already past the owl, so he jumped out and took off running. "Ten cars doing fifty, me on foot doing maybe sixteen, a living bird somewhere in between," he recalls. The owl had been staring, stupefied, at the approaching cars. When it heard his pounding feet, it swiveled its gaze at him. "The lead car saw me and hit its horn just as I reached the owl. I swung my right foot in the gentlest possible kick, chipping the bird like a soccer ball toward the road’s shoulder. I followed the bird instantly, not quite needing to dive as the lead care shot past, outraged horn blaring. All ten cars shot past. I ignored them, searching the rain gusts and the night air. And at the edge of the many headlight beams I suddenly saw my tiny owl in uninjured, earnest flight, circling back toward the traffic-filled highway...a gust of sideways rain blasted my owl, its wings twisted in response, and it rose inches over the crisscrossing headlights and car roofs, crossed both lanes, left the highway, and vanished, without once looking back, into the forest and the night... Through a life spent looking, or refusing to look, at an endless stream of other creatures, I’ve learned that by merely opening my eyes, I, too, take part in the creation and destruction of the world..."
Perhaps all it will take is for us to open our eyes. And to remember God’s eye is on the sparrow, and that he watches you and me.
A mother in one of my churches gave me a poem her seven-year-old daughter wrote in school. It was titled "Trees."
When the sky is blue.
The trees are green.
And the birds build a nest.
When the birds hatch
God’s love passes by
And the trees are very happy.
It is my hope and prayer that many generations to come shall know that kind of beautiful, peaceful, happy world. Thank you for being among those who give your lives so that it may be so.
Let me close with a beautiful prayer from the blind George Matheson, a minister for the Church of Scotland, from more than a century ago:
"My Father, fill me with love for things beneath me. Forbid that I should be cruel to the beasts of the field. Give me the tenderness that is born of reverence. Teach me to revere the creation under me. Was not its life a stream from thy life? Is not its life a mystery to me even now? Give me fellowship with beast and bird. Let me enter into sympathy with their hunger, their thirst, their weariness, their cold, their frequent homelessness. Let me give their wants a place in my prayers. Let me remember them in the struggles of the forest. Let me remember them in the winter’s frost and snow. Let me be to them what Thou hast been to me—a protector, a Providence. Amen.