Grace to you and peace...
This chapter of the Bible is the reason I’m here.
Had it not been for scholars I’ve met, and for a new way of looking at this second chapter of the entire Bible, there’s no way I’d every be your pastor and no way we ever would have met each other!
I grew up a Lutheran, went to church every Sunday, learned the my small catechism, attended the youth group, acolyted and assisted until I left for college. I kept going to church in college, even while I took biology as my major.
You see, I didn’t think Christianity had much to do with taking care of the environment. I mean, I knew we were supposed to recycle and not throw trash on the ground, but for me that was more just being a good citizen, and only in that way did it also fall into being a good Christian. I didn’t see any deep ecological instruction or ethic in the Bible for many years.
That was confirmed for me my junior year, when I went home for Christmas and was talking to my dear, sweet Grandma Roschke, who modeled for me what it means to be a Christian in so many ways. Grandma was asking me about what classes I was taking in the next semester, and I told her about Environmental Ethics, and this professor (The Rev. Dr. Byron Swanson), who had such a reverence for all life, such an awe for this beautiful planet that God made that he wouldn’t walk on grass if he didn’t have to, just to let God’s living creatures below live -- it was just part of his practice and ethic, and he was to be one of my new professors.
Grandma says (and this was pivotal for me) -- “That’s ridiculous, that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard! God put that grass there for us to walk on. It says it in the Bible.”
I didn’t argue with Grandma. For me it was furthering my suspicions that when it came to taking care of the planet, Christians were not exactly the first in line. I found other statements and speeches that Christian politicians and preachers were making against environmentalists, and I wrote a paper later that semester entitled, “Turning the Other Cheek: Christianity and the Environment”. It was about how Christians tended to look the other way, turn the other cheek, in the face of deforestation, loss of biodiversity, global warming, air and water pollution, etc. “There’s not a problem,” or, “that’s not our problem: God put that there for us to walk on.” [pause]
Fast forward a couple years, and I’m in seminary, amazingly. And there I met another professor (Dr. Ted Hiebert) who had been digging into this 2nd chapter of Genesis. He had written a whole book on it called The Yawhist’s Landscape.
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| God needed someone to till the adamah (soil). |
There was a garden. And God needed someone to till the soil, so things would grow there. That’s what it says! (2:5) I had never caught that before. I was always thinking about Genesis 1 where the humans are the last ones created, like the cherry on top. But here in chapter two, the order of creation is land, rain, then a man, made from that wet ground (adamah). And then a garden. Then animals, and then a woman.
Scholars have been talking since the 1950-60’s about there being 2 creation accounts in Genesis: chapter 1 and then chapter 2. Why had I never heard of this?!! Have you? Genesis chapter 1 is thought to be written during the Babylonian exile, when all chaos was breaking lose on God’s people. What a comforting and life giving account of creation that must have been! God bringing order to chaos. When lives are flying out of control, one day at a time, God calls us and this whole creation “good.” Chapter 1 reads like a hymn.
And this chapter 2 that we share in part today, mainstream biblical scholars understand this account to be even older than chapter 1, written during the period of the Davidic monarchy. During King David’s reign, before the exile! Fascinating!! When life was much more in order, infrastructure was more in place, during relative peace and security -- emerges the account of God as potter and gardener; God, who takes the time to plant the trees and hand-craft the humans, breathing into their nostrils, the breath of life.
In chapter 2 God needed someone to till the soil and name the other animals. God needed someone to take care of the earth. Not exploit it. This chapter saved my connection to the church, because I was loosing it, frankly. I loved Christians, but I didn’t need to be part of a family that didn’t need to care for the planet, whose biblically mandated business was to walk on the earth, and turn the other cheek, look the other way, when God’s creatures (both non-human and human), and God’s forests, and God’s water, and God’s air were being desecrated. If that’s what Christians did, if that’s how Christians read the Bible, then I didn’t want to be part of it.
But now I see that I was wrong. I was not fully understanding the scriptures. And once I discovered Genesis 2, I started seeing all kinds of calls in Scripture to care for the earth, to treat the creatures -- both human and non-human -- with respect and dignity. There’s now a green bible that you can buy which highlights all the passages like this. (I bought it for my brother when he tried to tell me that Christians don’t care about the environment.) (Social Statement.)
This is probably way more about my own journey than you wanted to hear this morning. There’s nakedness in this story; I suppose there’s a certain nakedness to my exposing so much about my own journey.
I guess I share it because our journeys are important. God works on us through our journeys, God continues to mold us and fashion us. God helps us to read the Bible again, and with new eyes. God opens our minds up to the work that others have done, to insights and learnings of scholars and theologians. God restores our faith, renews our hope, re-sparks our creativity. If that’s not resurrection, I don’t know what is!
And God calls us back again today. Back to tend the garden. You know what else was found in a garden...the empty tomb. New life happens in the garden!
God calls us to take care of the garden: “Here are partners,” God says, “helpmates, men and women, who will accompany you in this task.” So do not despair. Do not lose hope. Do not be ashamed.
In the end there’s blessing. Because God’s own hands molded you right out the middle of the muddy ground, and then God planted a garden around you, gave you companions, gave you partners to help. We are surrounded by blessing. And we carry that original blessing now, into the world to share and care for all God’s creatures. AMEN.
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