Listen to the Scientific

Listen to the Scientific

(2 Chronicles 7:12-15; Romans 8:18-25)

10:30 am, Sunday, April 21, 2013, Windsor UBC, J G White

Last Earth Day I looked back... way back.  Hard to say how far back one truly can look at God’s creation.  This day before Earth Day, I want to look ahead, into our future.  What is happening to the earth?

When Sawyer W. is seventy-years-old, what will his province and planet be like then?  When Atira O. is eighty, Matthew T. is seventy-three, and Dryden D. is sixty-nine, will the climate here have changed?  How about the sea level around Nova Scotia?  The toxins in the environment?  And across the planet, what will the population be?  

Psalm 24:1 begins: The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it.  Not everyone believes this.  And, not everyone thinks the same about how important it is to care for and preserve this ecosystem.  As Christians, we are Resident Aliens, as Stanley Hauerwas put it, or we sing, This world is not my home, I’m just a-passing through, as Albert Brumley put it.

I really want to say two things today; One is listen.  Listen to the scientific.  As believers, disciples of Jesus, ambassadors of Christ, we must hear those whose view of the world is a scientific worldview, those who are the environmentalists, those who are sold on consuming LOFT: Local, Organic, Fair Trade.  If we hope to be heard by them about the spirituality and life we know, we must hear them with respect, and interest, and care.  We have do good things to learn from one another.

As we pay attention to people, we find diverse people.  In any field, people don’t agree.  Online, in the social media, you can see images like these, which are statements of worldview.  

 I’m not actually of the same opinion about the Avon River and what should be done with it now.  For instance, I’d say this is not a desert.

And...

I don’t think I share the view of my facebook friend who posted this.  I expect there is and will be climate change, caused by the past century of human activity.  That’s just me.  I am both insightful and fallible.  So are you.  So are those Christ would listen to with our ears.

We know there is diversity among scientific and environmental claims.  Is butter better for you than margarine, or the other way around?  Is the world warming up, or not, because of CO2?   

Science is just like religion.  Put two Baptists together and you’ll have three opinions, eh?  Well, neither lack of agreement worries me!  I’m not interested in bashing science because it has its inconsistencies and disagreements.  We Christians have enough problems agreeing and being good ourselves.  I am interested in science, and this environment, creation.  I am interested in the people are are scientific, who are environmentally conscious, who are secular, or atheists, or agnostics, or... faithful. I am concerned for human souls; I am concerned for the planet and future generations.  This brings me to the second thing I’ll say: care for the Earth.

Is our faith purely an escape plan for the next world?  While we are here, how shall we live?  We are creatures in creation.  If, with our fellow believers, we won’t agree on this, we also won’t agree with everyone we want to introduce to Jesus Christ.  So we learn to know and love one another in the family of faith, and go on to know and love the un-Christians, whatever their views of creation.  Such is God’s grace, God’s heart for people, God’s enjoyment of all creation, including us.

We, who visit these pews, consider God as Creator, Sustainer and Redeemer of all creation.  We may know so much of Creator God from the scriptures.  We may also be familiar with the redemption of creation that is part of our hope.  That profound chapter, Romans 8, speaks of this: the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.  And in the visions of Revelation we read: Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. (21:1)

As we search, we find comments about the Lord God caring for earth in the here and now.  This  poetic imagery is from Psalm 65.  You visit the earth and water it, you greatly enrich it; the river of God is full of water; you provide the people with grain, for so you have prepared it. (9)  

The question is: how much are we disciples to help God care for this earth?  To what degree are we to share dominion and responsibility for this fallen planet?  Christianity is basically human-centred.  Saving the planet is usually way down on our list of things to do with God.  Am I right?  Others out there have different priorities; the environment is a number one priority.

So let us have good respect for folk who are focussed on being good tenants on this earth.  Ever been a landlord?  Rented out property?  Every had any trouble with your tenants?  Have you ever - in your younger years - been a poor tenant?  I heard a story just the other night of a landlady who’d heard there was some movement going on at an apartment property she owns.  She checked out one of her places that is not rented, and found that some people had just moved in - that day - set up housekeeping, and cooked their supper!  Suffice it to say, she got rid of the squatters!

Well, what kind of tenants shall we be, on this earth, for this short time?  The old life-patterns for God’s people in Leviticus speak much of the land, the Promised Land the Hebrews received.   In chapter 25 we can read of Sabbath-keeping, and how the land itself was to have rest.  At verse 23 the word of the LORD is:  The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine; with me you are but aliens and tenants.  When you and I are tenants, we can choose our attitude...

The earth does not matter; it is not ours, after all.  We won’t be here long.  The End may come soon anyway - we are in the last days.  It’s supposed to get trashed.  

Or, earth does matter; it is not ours, and even in this fallen world creation is amazing, spectacular, and provides amazingly!  Who knows if we humans will be here for another thousand years, or more?

Jeanette read from 2 Chronicles today, including that beautiful verse 7:14.  I’d love to sing it, us all to sing it.  If my people who are called by My name will humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and heal their land.  This is recorded as part of the Lord’s answer to Solomon’s prayer, dedicating the new Temple in Jerusalem.  When the drought, or locusts, or other pestilence come upon the land (which the Lord sends!) the Lord will hear and answer the prayers and humility and obedience of the people.  “I will heal their land,” says the Lord.

The environmental preacher in me feels the temptation to make this, instantly, into a statement about how our God, now, wants to heal the globe, the environment, the atmosphere, the oceans, the ground.  That’s not quite what this is about, in 2 Chronicles.   What’s going on now was not a concern then, at all. But This message from the Lord does speak to the vital connection between God, and humans, and the planet.  The life-giving relationships.  

So I keep preaching that part of our discipleship to the Lord Jesus Christ is how we take our our trash and recycling, how we shop locally, how we expect our lifestyle to continue indefinitely.  This is part of my apprenticeship for life; my Master has a lot of training yet to do with me. And I hear the dual strands, woven together in scripture, of living here in the Kingdom of God as it is in Heaven, and living as aliens and sojourners in this life.

More than a dozen years ago, in Parrsboro where I lived, I got introduced one day to a man who was dying.  He was a neighbour of a Christian couple of my congregation.  The man was at home, suffering with cancer, and had just been led to faith in Christ by the believing neighbour.  I was invited in to minister to the man, and even to baptize him, there in his bed in his living room.  Sprinkled, but baptized as a believer.  I remember having prayer with him, and he said he did not even know what to do when it came to prayer.  He was an absolute beginner, in those last few weeks of his life.  

But he got the best of both worlds.  He was not only assured of eternal life, he lived better while still here.  That eternal promise removed the fear and dread of death, and he could make the most of the days here that he still had.  

I think of our lives that way.  Thank God! we enjoy bits of the eternal kind of life now, we enjoy citizenship in heaven.  And so we make the most of this life, this world, these people, because of Christ, and the open door to so much more He gives.  

This is the message we have for those whose view is purely scientific.  For those who see the present environmental crisis as the crisis.  And for those who don’t know what to think about all this.  Patient understanding and respect may be needed to reach them.  Patience and respect is needed among us who are already with Christ, as He unites us.

Good News!  God is in the work or restoring and enjoying creation.  That includes, us, as some of His creatures.  This Earth Day, rejoice in the earth God has given us.  And rejoice in those who share it with you.   We can leave a spiritual legacy - faith in Christ - to others, if we listen to them and Christ.  And we can leave a better planet for Sawyer and Matthew and Atira and the rest, who may live to see and enjoy the 2080s.