Today is Earth Day, which was started nearly 40 years ago to create a common banner for people who were trying to bring about change in the way people were treating and utilizing the earth and its resources, as well as to purposefully appreciate the environments in which we find ourselves and with which we interact. It was a national grassroots campaign where people (mostly youth and college students) took to the streets to voice their concern and protest against oil spills (a major one in Santa Barbara had just occured), factory pollution, raw sewage being dumped into water ways and oceans, toxic dumps, pesticides, the loss of wilderness, and the extinction of wildlife. From the first few years of the Earth Day celebrations came things like the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act (and the similar Clean Drinking Water Act), and the Endangered Species Act.
“The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden…to work it and take care of it.” - Genesis 2.15
How we treat the creation is a reflection of how we view the Creator. We live in a finite system of soil and ice and atmosphere and water and bacteria and vegetation. It all interacts together, and we are inextricably involved with it. As humans, our very first calling from God was to creatively and carefully tend it. But given the Crisis and our rebellion, we have an inward tendency to not do that, and instead extract whatever we can for our own use and comfort. In and of itself, this isn’t a bad thing…but living in a finite system, we have to understand that there are limits. Is it possible that our current rates of pollution, consumption, and waste are the same as eating that first fruit from the tree we were told not to eat from? Are we crossing healthy limits?
“If you have men who will exclude any of God’s creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men.” - St. Francis of Assisi
So, I pose a challenge for you on this Earth Day: think about the place in which you find yourself, in which we all find ourselves. Buy a fieldguide of regional animals and spend time identifying local flora and fauna. Find a map of our area and get familiar with the streams and rivers that flow through the valley. Learn about different ecosystems and environments and how they can be so different from one another and yet be so incredibly dependent upon one another. Do some digging to find out where the stuff you own comes from and how it’s made. Find out where what you eat comes from and how it’s made. And how all that impacts others, locally and globally.
This Creation is good. In fact, it is very good. As God is the ultimate Creator and Sustainer and Cultivator of all things, being a reflection of Him we are commissioned to be as well — to create and sustain and cultivate…but not in damaging ways, not in destructive or selfish ways. But in ways that serve and benefit everyone. Ways in which, as Jesus said, we love others as much as ourselves.
“…ecosystems and species can be saved only by understanding the unique value of each species in turn, and by persurading the people who have dominion over them to seve as their stewards.” - E. O. Wilson
We are brought up being told about what it means to be a citizen of this nation, or perhaps of this state or county or even town. But what does it mean to be a citizen of the watershed we find ourselves in? How much do we know about the environment in which we drive and hike and rest and farm? Above all else, we are citizens of a new Reign, a new Kingdom. As citizens of this new order in which God is restoring all things and bringing about acts of new creation, God is restoring us and our purpose as care-takers of his good creation, to cultivate and enhance and promote even more goodness. So how does this translate into our town? Our valley? Our watershed? Our consumption? Our relations with other countries and peoples (in other words: our neighbors)?
Today the world celebrates Earth Day, and that’s a good thing. But as followers of this new Way, the Way of Jesus, every day is Earth Day. Every day is an opportunity to follow and partner with our Creator and the ways in which his intended future for all creation is being pulled more deeply into our present. Five centuries ago a man by the name of Martin Luther was asked what he would do today if he knew the world would end tomorrow. His answer?
Plant a tree.
