"Time Out! Are We the Only Species That Cannot
Hear the Earth Cry?"
So many rightful claims crush upon consciousness this day – Earth
Sunday! Native American Ministries Sunday! Launching our
Springtime/Eastertide "Giving Tree" campaign for
congregational stewardship of our resources!
Our 9 am adult study series "Waters of Life," moving from
"Deserts of Dust" to "Rivers of Rain," with the
River Fest on our own river in just three weeks! Today’s "March
for Women’s Lives" on our nation’s Capitol – for lives of
women all over the earth, to whom family planning is key to personal and
social justice. Tuesday’s opening of the quadrennial General
Conference of our United Methodist Church. Not to mention the claims
that each of us brings! Let’s see if our two scrappy scriptures speak
to all of these claims!
From our Sunday School lectionary materials, I bring this story,
which could be a neighborhood one, set just a few blocks east:
A man went fishing one afternoon. He cut a hole in
the ice, put his line down, and waited. Soon he heard a loud voice
exclaim, "There are no fish here!" Startled, he looked
around but did not see anyone, so he continued fishing. Soon, he
heard the voice a second time exclaim even louder, "There are
no fish here!" Again, he quickly scoured his surroundings,
but still he saw no one. And again he focused his concentration on
catching fish from the hole he had cut in the ice. After a short
period he heard the voice for a third time. "There are no
fish here!" With great care and concern he slowly looked all
around again but still he saw no one, and could not tell where the
voice was coming from. Then, he became frightened as he came to a
sudden realization. Looking up slowly he said, with his voice
shaking, "God?" The voice rang back immediately.
"No! This is the rink manager! There are no fish here!"
If we are fixed on a course without exit or end, we will not complete
it no matter how well we stay it. And if we are fishing a place where
there are no fish, we will not catch one no matter how well we fish it.
I am reminded of the contemporary parable – First, give a hungry
person a fish. Meet their immediate need. Second, teach a hungry person
to fish. Help them to meet their own needs. But third, make room at the
pond! Make sure there are fish when they get there.
A fishing rink! What downtown Reno won’t think of next! And here we
are, like a tree, a tree of life, a giving tree, planted by the waters!
On the one hand, we shall not be moved! We shall tap the strengths of
deep roots here, nearly 75 years as a building, long before that as a
congregation! We shall nurture the trunk of the membership here, -- the
fellowship, the discipleship, and the stewardship we have become! And we
shall follow the branches and buds of new life here, leading in new ways
to reach out to new peoples, -- getting down, getting all the way down,
to being a down-town and down-to-earth church! Living as low-down on the
food-and-water chain as we can go. Looking down (There is a whole world
beneath our feet! And waters always seek the lowest, the deepest point
they can reach!), in order to lift others up, -- the very young, the
very old, the very weak, the very poor, and those, of all species, who
live on the ground.
Already we say we follow an "Earth Church Year," blending
the natural with the liturgical seasons, -- the Winter Cycle of
Advent/Christmas/Epiphany; the Spring Cycle of Lent/Holy
Week/Eastertide; the Summer Cycle of the Spirit as Baptizer/ Sanctifier,
Giver of Gifts to each person; the Fall Cycle of the Spirit as Communer
/Sustainer, Sharer of Resources with all peoples. We are learning to
celebrate life-seasons, life-elements, life-cycles, life-directions. As
if life, abundance of life, -- goodness, grace, generosity -- and the
life of the earth herself -- depend on us!
American Indians, Native Americans, teach worship with dancing, with
drumming, -- touching the earth, to the beat of her heart. The bulletin
insert calls upon us to re-member – "In our Christian walk, we
have an obligation to teach what our ancestors taught about living in
harmony with the earth." Living in harmony with all creatures!
Living in diversity with respect for every identity. Living in
complexity with respect for all integrity. Please look at the other
insert, "Common Witness 2204," and pray for General
Conference, with the theme "Water Washed and Spirit Born," to
lead us to live in harmony for and with all.
We do try to hear the earth cry! For the loss of species of every
description! For the affront that is to God’s infinite creativity, God’s
diversity in all creation, God’s complexity in each of us! God who
must love differences, God makes so many of them. We human beings are
the youngest, yet by far the most dangerous species to all the earth. We
alone possess what Bill McKibben calls the power of "decreation."
More about Bill as we plunge through this season of waters, -- more
about his love, with Job, our mentor in all respect to creation, for the
"fiercer nature" of God, -- and about his insistence that God
is, by nature, meant to be more than "enough" for us! We have
got to stop trying to add "more and more" to what God has
created and still is, thank God, creating each day! The more we try to
"add" to the goodness of all creation, the more of it we are
apt to destroy.
When, when will we ever learn? We are but one species among so many!
We are but one nation among so many! (How many? 192, and counting! The
number of fish Jesus here brings ashore, 153, is thought to be the full
number of varieties, or "nations," of fish in the world of
that time!) We are but one culture, one faith, one language among so
many! Often but one color, one class! When will we ever learn? And who
do we think we are anyway?
Just hear Revelation again this morning: "I looked, and I heard
the voice of many angels surrounding the throne and the living creatures
and the elders; and they numbered myriads of myriads and thousands of
thousands [of angels, yes, but also of creatures, -- and counting!],
singing with a full voice!" "Then I heard every creature
[every last one!] in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the
sea, and all this is in them, singing!" And yet, as Hasidic Jews
put it so poignantly, before each and every one of us alone there go a
thousand angels proclaiming, "Make way for the image of God!"
Make way for the image of God.
On the one hand, like a tree, planted by the waters, we shall not be
moved. On the other hand, in resurrection, -- like the living body of
living disciples of a living Christ led by a living Spirit to respond in
living ways to a living God, -- we shall be moved all the time! We shall
be reached, we shall we touched, we shall be moved, we shall be changed,
-- all the time! For we are alive to a living Christ. A Christ who shows
up even now. As Pablo Neruda says here, in our Words for Meditation,
Time out! "Count to twelve!" Twelve nations? Twelve apostles?
"Let’s stop . . . let’s not speak!" Let’s not harm! Let’s
not kill! But walk about with one another "in the shade, doing
nothing." "Life is what it is about!" "Perhaps a
huge silence / might interrupt this sadness / of never understanding
ourselves / and of threatening ourselves with death. / Perhaps the earth
can teach us / as when everything seems dead / and later proves to be
alive."
Perhaps an Earth Christ, who shows up where we least expect any new
life, any new hope, to be, -- even right where we are in the midst of
our everyday working lives, -- even fishing all night, catching nothing!
As if, "There are no fish here!" But with Jesus there is
always another way. There is always another way! And another chance! And
a new lease on life! A new lease on hope! John’s is a gospel of signs
and miracles of new life, new hope, -- a gospel of Christ as God
overflowing, -- from the first miracle at the wedding feast in Cana,
overflowing with wine where none was before, -- to the last miracle here
on the Sea of Tiberias, overflowing with fish where none were before.
Resurrection means, in short, faith changes the world! Beginning with
us! The faith of Jesus in God, the faith of us all in Jesus, in the
Spirit he sends anew to us every day, every moment of every day.
Resurrection, as we embrace our campaign to be "giving trees,"
is time for "re-upping" with the one who is "up" to
us all! We hear in the news of soldiers re-enlisting for dangerous duty.
We praise their courage, as well we should. Is our re-enlistment, our
responsibility, our risk, called to be any the less courageous than
theirs? How are we re-upping for church? How are we re-upping for world?
How are we re-upping for justice? How are we re-upping for peace? There
is another and costlier way.
Amen.
