Genesis 1; Romans 8:18-25

I spent the last two weeks of June in Montreat, NC, working at the Worship and Music Conference.  Our church owns and operates a conference centre in Montreat, near Asheville and it was my privilege to be invited onto the leadership team.  The day I arrived was Ruth Graham’s funeral and you couldn’t get anywhere near Montreat until late in the afternoon.  Ruth and Billy Graham live in Montreat and it was her dying wish to have her funeral at Montreat’s Anderson Auditorium.  The funeral attracted more than 3000 people to the town so car traffic was suspended in and out of the conference centre.  This delayed our conference set-up by a day but nobody was too upset.  Everyone seemed to understand why Ruth would want her funeral at Montreat that they were willing to accommodate her request.

Montreat has to be one of the most beautiful, unspoiled places I have ever visited.  Nestled into the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, it is a jewel to behold.  The Assembly Inn overlooks Susan Lake, a small mountain lake where fishermen and paddle boaters congregate.  A stream flows out of the lake and babbles its way downhill inviting young feet and old feet to come rock hopping in her waters.  And towering on all sides of the town – everywhere you look up – are the beautiful forested peaks of Blue Ridge Mountains.
On the Wednesday afternoon of the conference, I sat on the balcony of Assembly Inn while a brass band played hymns out over the lake.  The band would play two lines of a certain hymn and then the next two lines would be played by a brass band on the opposite side of the lake…a kind of call and answer.  And the music mingled with the mountains and all the people and it seemed that creation was in perfect harmony – people praising God with music with the hills echoing it up to God and back to us…the culmination of creation in praise to God.  It was as if Psalm 148 was being lived out at that moment:

Praise the Lord!
Mountains and all hills,
Fruit trees and all cedars!
Beasts and all cattle,
Creeping things and flying birds!
Kings of the earth and all peoples,
Princes and all rulers of the earth!
Young men and maidens together,
Old men and children!
Let them praise the name of the Lord,
For his name alone is exalted;
His glory is above earth and heaven.  (Psalm 148:11-13)

It felt like all created order had struck a dominant chord in its praise of God that day.  I wonder if it was not the same dominant chord struck after God created the world and everything in it.  We read about it in Genesis chapter 1 today. And surely this is where any sermon on the stewardship of creation must begin – with the genesis of it all.  We find out a whole lot more than what God created in Genesis, we find out why God created it, how God felt about what he created, and what God expects of us when it comes to creation.  Only then can we ever hope to be faithful stewards of creation.

So we begin at the beginning…the very genesis of it all, and here we discover that God made it all – everything we see – in seven days.  Now some people find that hard to believe and they get bogged down in the timeframe of the story.  Some try to relieve their uneasiness by saying, “Well, maybe a day was longer back then than it is today.”  But I ask you, is it really any less spectacular that God created this in seven days than if he created it on a lengthier timetable?  The wonder is that God created it at all…because without the earth, none of us would be here.  Humans cannot replicate what God has done here and so far we haven’t found any other planet with the same conditions as earth where life could be sustained.  It means that we are dependant on God and this created order. 

Genesis gives us the blueprint by which God made creation:

• The first day God made light and separated the two into day and night.
• The second day God made the firmament, separating the waters above from the waters below and called it the heavens – this includes the thin band of air around the earth we call the atmosphere.
• The third day God separated the waters from the dry land and called them Earth and Sea.  And God caused plants, trees and all vegetation to grow upon the dry land. 
• The fourth day God put lights in the firmament stars and planets, and God made two great lights – the Sun to rule by day and the Moon by night.
• On the fifth day, God made all the living creatures of the air – birds of every kind, all the living creatures of the sea – fish, sharks, whales, porpoises, and all the living creatures of the earth – cattle, oxen, sheep, lions, elephants, tigers, bears…
• And last of all, on the 6th day, God made man…in the image of God – male and female, God made us and blessed us and said, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it. . . and have dominion over the fish and the birds and every living creature on earth.”
• Then on the 7th day God rested – God kicked back and enjoyed the wonderful creation.

The creation story builds upon itself – it’s more than a collection of seven different days, the whole process is building towards some grand crescendo.  And the crescendo of creation is in fact humankind.  We are the crowning glory of God’s creative plans.  All the way through the account the words that keep getting repeated are: “And God saw that it was good.”  But on day six after God is finished creating everything it says, “And God saw everything that he had made and behold, it was very good.”  That’s the dominant chord that God heard on the 7th day of creation, and I heard the echoes of it at Montreat back in June as I sat on that balcony.

    But we all know that the dominant chord of praise is not heard every day throughout creation.  God is not praised by everything that is happening in creation and to creation today.  Humanity and nature are in many ways at odds with each other – working against one another.  Things are happening to the atmosphere,  to the waterways,  to the landscape that do not honor God.  Some of it is going on in the name of progress – some of it is going on in the name of economic gain, some of it is going on in the name of ignorance and some of it in the name of apathy and lack of concern.  None of it is going on in the name of God who created us, and who calls us as partners in the care of creation.

The stewardship of creation is no small matter – in fact if we listen to the environmental prophets of our present day – Al Gore, Bono, Melissa Ethridge, David Suzuki,   it seems clear that we are at a critical point, a no turning back point in the life of the planet.  Al Gore has been beating the environmental drum for years now,  and only recently have we been willing to sit up and listen.  In his acclaimed presentation, “An Inconvenient Truth,” he makes some very convincing points about the state of health of the planet.  In particular he focuses primarily on our atmosphere which he claims is most vulnerable because it really isn’t very thick…taken in scale, it’s about as thick as a coat of varnish put on a globe of the world.  The atmosphere is also vulnerable because we all share it…what China does to the atmosphere affects us in America.  So it behooves us all to do whatever we can to cut back on greenhouse gases that pollute the atmosphere and are warming up the planet.  We need to work together – embracing world-wide initiatives and agreements like Kyoto so that our efforts are collectively felt.  And yesterday “Live Earth” concerts were held worldwide – New York, Washington, London, England, Australia, Japan, South Africa, Brazil, Germany, even Antarctica to draw attention and commitment to the problem of global warming.  The younger generation has truly jumped on this bandwagon.

Now, we Protestants have not paid much regard to the environment in the past – not many sermons ever preached on the subject, not many churches with environmental groups associated.  Why is that?  I think it’s because our theology has been deficient in this area.  Protestant theology has been primarily interested in salvation but our theology of salvation has not include a place for creation in it.  Salvation has been seen to take place,  primarily within the human heart.  As for creation, it’s was just the neutral playing field upon which salvation is carried out.  So there was no real concern for plants and animals, earth, water and sky.  Besides, God will give us a new heaven and new earth at the end of time so this one doesn’t matter.

But today theologians are revisiting that notion and are beginning to see that God does have a concern for the rest of creation.  Salvation is not just for the human heart, but for all of God’s creation.  And we are beginning to pull out of scripture passages that emphasize the place of all creation…passages like Paul’s in Romans:  “For the creation waits in eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God…the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God.  We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now.”  

So stewardship of creation is now the “in” thing among God’s faithful – especially among the younger generation, who are far more environmentally concerned than any previous generation of Protestants.  And we are beginning to hear from our pulpits of the need to reclaim our calling as stewards of creation.  And stewardship is really just a Christian word for ownership.  And there is a lot of talk today about who owns what in this world… and does ownership give one the freedom to pollute simply because they claim to own it?  Christianity cuts to the quick on this whole discussion, because we claim that whatever the status of property, be it individually owned,  corporately owned, state owned, or church owned, all of it is held in trust on behalf of our Creator for the sake of his purposes.   And we are held accountable for the things we have in trust from God.  So there is no escaping the important task of caring for creation!  It is a sin to hand on a ravaged world to our children and say “Sorry for the mess, you’ll have to clean it up.”  The world we inherited from our parents is the world we must endeavor to hand on to our children.  They deserve it and God calls us to it.

And I think the secret to doing that is for us to remember who this world belongs to.  Who is the rightful owner?  Who created it?  If Genesis chapter 1 is clear about anything, it’s on the answer to this question.  The word ‘God’ (Elohim) is found 32 times in the chapter.  The word ‘humankind’ is found only twice.  So God is the principle character in  creation.  This is God’s creation, not ours.  God made it and when God looked upon all that he had made he felt intense satisfaction:  “It is very good.”  So we must be sure that we do our up most to be sure God continues to feel that way about creation. 

On Christmas Eve 1968, Apollo 8 orbited the moon and as it was coming back around towards the earth again they snapped this picture of earth.  The earth hangs in the sky like a beautiful blue jewel…unlike any other planet in the galaxies.  God has touched this planet with life and given us the gift of stewardship for it.  Let us each endeavor to do our best individually and collectively to care for this creation God has entrusted to us.  This is my Father’s world.

Amen