Psalm 104 & Luke 24:36b-43
Care of Creation Sunday
Fourth Sunday of Easter
26th April 2015
Allow
me to be clear here from the start. The sermon title might be a little
deceiving. I’m not making a pitch for buying organic, but for living organically or, simply, organic
living. That’s where I wish to go.
But since I brought it up let’s talk for a minute about buying organic. What makes something organic?
“All agricultural
products that are sold, labeled or represented as ‘organic’ in any way must not
have come in contact with sewage sludge during production and must be produced
without the use of: synthetic substances, National
Organic Program-prohibited non-synthetic substances, non-organic/non-agricultural and non-organic/agricultural
substances used in or on processed products. Also
banned are ionizing radiation and various methods used to modify organisms
and/or their growth and development in ways that cannot be achieved under
natural conditions.”[1]
I looked all of this up on the Internet.
I talk don’t like this.
So, have you joined the organic craze? The jury is still
out whether or not organic is really better for us. I’m not going to get into that debate,
because I’m not trying to get you to buy organic. I would say, however, that an
organic banana really does taste like a banana.
Did you know that sales of organic food and non-food
products in the United States totaled more than $39.1 billion in 2014, up 11.3
percent from the previous year? Organic sales make up a 5 percent share of the
total food market. The organic dairy
sector posted an almost 11 percent jump in sales in 2014 to $5.46 billion, the
biggest percentage increase for that category in six years. Sales of organic
non-food products—accounting for 8 percent of the total organic market—posted
the biggest percentage gain in six years, with sales of organic fiber and
organic personal care products the standout categories.[2] I looked this
up too.
There’s a lot of
money to be made here. Whole Foods,
Trader Joe's, MOM’s Organic Market seem to be doing well. Even Giant and Safeway are now selling more
organic items. Atwater’s here in Catonsville can’t seem to keep its organic
milk in supply. Perhaps you get your
dairy products delivered to your doorstep from a Maryland farm.
We
want local, fresh produce. Instead of
buying blueberries flown in from Chile, we would rather buy them from a farm in
Harford County. We want to reduce our
carbon footprint. In this sense, the organic food craze is driven by a real
desire to help care for creation. Farm
to table restaurants are everywhere, the most popular being Woodberry Kitchen
in Baltimore (one of my favorite restaurants). It’s tough to get a reservation
there on a Saturday night. Farmer’s
Markets are growing in popularity. We have two here in Catonsville, one on
Wednesdays and one on Sundays. The
largest market in Baltimore, under the Jones Falls Expressway, is open right
now; the new season kicks off today.
I’ve never been to it. I’m usually busy on Sunday mornings. But I hear it’s great.
Most
would probably prefer to buy organic food—if most could afford it. This is not an option for a family on a very
tight budget. And so this becomes a
justice issue. Organic food costs
more. Places such as Whole Foods are
ridiculously expensive. I love Whole Foods and don’t shop there on a regular
basis. When I do, I often think of the neighborhoods
in Baltimore City without supermarkets of any kind, no Giant or Safeway anywhere
to be found, these “food deserts” where folks buy food from over-priced corner
convenience stores, without the option to buy fresh fruit and vegetables of any
kind.
No,
this sermon is not about buying organic—it really isn’t—but about organic
living. They’re connected, however, linked
by a theological vision for the way we live in God’s good creation. Whether you’re caught up in the organic craze
or not, the overall interest is rooted in a desire to care for creation, to
heal the soil from the damage caused by pesticides, to help heal the atmosphere,
the air that we breath, to help heal our bodies, to remove some of the toxins
that contribute to the development of disease, to reconnect with Mother Earth,
to return to the earth, to the soil. All of this might appear to be very
secular, not necessarily religious or even Christian. But it is actually very theological and therefore directly relevant to our life as
Christians.
To
care for the earth is the responsibility of every follower of Jesus Christ. To care for the creation is part of Christian
discipleship. Several months ago, Pope
Francis, who is becoming known as the “green Pope,” said, “a Christian who doesnot protect creation…is a Christian who does not care about the work of God.” It should not be overlooked that the Pope took his name from St. Francis
(1181/2-1226), the unofficial patron saint of ecology. At the beginning of worship today we sang St.
Francis’ “Canticle to the Sun,” his hymn to creation written in 1225. It’s a remarkable poem. St. Francis’ theological vision calls us to
see creation intimately connected to and existing within the Creator. The
creation cries out with praise, like the psalmist, with gratitude to the
Creator. All of creation is dependent
upon the movement of the Creator, who at the beginning called us into being and
who remains Creator, and is still creating us.
When
we say God is Creator we must not limit God’s creative activity only to the first
seconds of the Big Bang. When we say God
is Creator, Creator of this creation, we are affirming that God is still creating the world, still sustaining
us with and in life. God is life and in God we’re given life and
wherever God is there is life. God is
forever saying, “Let there be…” and there was
and is, thus yielding a life giving,
dynamic, organic creation pulsating
with life. An organic existence celebrates the interconnectivity of all that
makes for life. Living organically means
living with the knowledge that as a living-entity
we are all connected to everyone and everything and that everyone and every blessed thing are directly connected to
God, “in whom we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).
The
psalmist said it best, “The earth is the LORD’s and all that is in it, the
world and those who dwell in it;…” (Psalm 24:1). Such a simple sentence yet
saying so much! It all belongs to God,
life given by God. There’s no part of
creation that doesn’t belong to God.
It’s all part of a whole, a whole that includes you and me.
In the Hebrew and
Christian scriptures we find, again and again, a holistic vision of creation.
This is in contrast to the dualism that we find in other religions and
philosophies. In scripture we don’t find
a dualist split between spirit and body or spirit and matter. One is not privileged over the other. The spiritual is not superior to the material
or the physical. Privileging spirit over matter emerged a long time ago within Greek
philosophy, yet its influence is everywhere in our society today, including
some theologies that we find in the Church.
Scripture is far more holistic
in its outlook. Spirit and matter are combined.
In fact, to counter the over-emphasis on spirit and spiritual things, we find
within Judaism and within Christianity the elevation
of matter, of the physical, of the flesh, an approach that horrified the
average person in the Greco-Roman world.
The Gospel of John makes it very clear:
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth”
(John 1:14). The birth of Jesus itself
should remind us that matter matters
to God, our physical, fleshly existence in this world is sacred and holy, embodiment
is important to God, and everything in creation, at all levels, from the micro
to the macro, is required for the sustenance of life. Creation is sacred. The French, Roman Catholic priest,
philosopher, mystic, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955), who was also a
geologist and paleontologist, said it beautifully, “By virtue of Creation, and
still more the Incarnation, nothing here below is profane for those who know
how to see.”[3]
And
with the eyes of faith the creative outpouring of God’s life is seen most brilliantly
in the life pouring through Jesus and most profoundly in God’s re-creating life,
which brought Jesus back from the dead.
Not as a ghost, says Luke, but in the flesh (Luke 24:37-38). It’s the resurrected body—not a ghost—that
sits at table with the disciples. The
resurrected body sits at table and requires food for sustenance. Why? Because the resurrected body of the Lord
is hungry.
“What
do you have to eat?” It’s a remarkable
scene. The disciples are “disbelieving
for joy” and full of wonder and completely baffled by Jesus’ appearance, but
Jesus is hungry and says, almost ignoring them, “Have you anything to
eat?” Several verses prior to this
account we saw the resurrected Jesus at a different table, where he became
recognizable to his traveling companions on the way to Emmaus only after he
took the bread and blessed it and broke it and gave it to them (Luke 24:30).
We
can see in these stories how our understanding of the Lord’s Supper developed
in the church. Yes, we think of the
Lord’s Supper as the Last Supper before his death. But these post-resurrection meals are also suppers
with the Lord, sacramental meals of presence.
This means that when we celebrate the Lord’s Supper or the Eucharist or Communion
we should also view it a post-resurrection meal, a meal with a Resurrected
Lord. These meals of remembrance
reconnect us to the Living Christ who
connects us, through the Holy Spirit, to the Living God. Early on, the Church
viewed the meal as a sharing with and participating in the life of Christ, who
is sharing in the life of God. The meal
connects us to Christ who connects us to God in whom all is connected, which
makes the Lord’s Supper or Communion or the Eucharist an expression of organic
living at its best, as a sharing in the Source of life, sharing with all of
life, sharing with one another in the One who makes us one.
“Lift
up your hearts,” we say when we share Communion. “We lift them up to the Lord.” Theologian Ian
McFarland, in his remarkable new work, a theology of creation, writes, the “Eucharist
draws us upward by drawing us together, binding us not only to one another but
also to the bread and wine, which in their organic connection with soil, water,
sun, and air implicate the whole web of creaturely relations that makes our
life specifically and genuinely human.”[4] A web
of creaturely relations…. It’s as if
the entire universe, all of creation, Creator and creation, are all somehow
contained in bread and wine and when we eat that bread and drink that cup we,
too, share in the abundant life of the Creator.
All of this is true when we have Communion in church, but Communion also
reminds us what is true all the time, at every meal, whether we’re conscious of
it or not.
Perhaps our approach to the Lord’s Supper can shape how
we share every meal and inform our relationship with food and how it’s produced
and sold and bought and shared. And
maybe our relationship with the food on our tables will connect us more deeply with
the bread and wine served at the Lord’s Table. It’s all organic.
[1] Food Safety News:
http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2013/08/the-low-down-on-organic-foods/#.VTzpxq1Viko. See also the National
Organic Program of the USDA, http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/getfile?dDocName=STELDEV3004445.
[2] Data from the Organic
Trade Association: https://www.ota.com/what-ota-does/market-analysis.
[3] Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Divine Milieu (New York: Harper Torch Books, 1960), 112.
[4] Ian A. McFarland, From Nothing: A Theology of Creation
(Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2014), 180.