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| Image by Jim Choate |
Week 6: Justice, Part 5: Creation Justice
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A GREETING
Hear, O God, and be gracious to me! O Lord, be my helper!’
(Psalm 30:10)
A READING
‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly God feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. ‘So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.
(Matthew 6:25-29;33-34)
MUSIC
A MEDITATIVE VERSE
Surely everyone stands as a mere breath.
(Psalm 39:5)
VERSES RETOLD
So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.
(Matthew 10:31)
Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself where she may lay her young, at your altars, O God of hosts.
(Psalm 84:3)
A REFLECTION
At the core of Jesus’ teaching is a radical dependence on God, which rightly embodied assumes the form of community and its implications for solidarity and interdependence. It is the task of our communities to carve out meaning and identity and expressing solidarity and interdependence with our ecosystems, our neighborhoods, and our cities at large. What is to be done in the face of others hungering. others who have no water, or others who need clothing for work or for school? What is to be done when the lilies do not grow, or where cold cement and pavement dominate green space? The friction caused by the text and our current realities force us to question not just striving and anxiety, but deep needs that extend beyond our body and to the body of the earth that moves us to a holy worrying that recognizes privilege and power while inspiring action toward equity.
- from Do Not Worry: Resisting a First World Reading of Matthew 6:25-34
by Peter Garcia
VERSE OF THE DAY
All things came into being through God, and without God not one thing came into being.
What has come into being in God was life.
(John 1:3-4)
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| Experimental painting by Juniper Harrower, a science-artist who "studies the complexities of species interactions under climate change as an ecologist and artist". This work is an "experimental painting of Joshua trees, roots, and soil with mycorrhizal fungi, and it was painted with acrylic, Joshua tree seed oil and Joshua tree root soap." The Joshua tree is a threatened species, because it is not able to adapt to how quickly the atmosphere is heating up in its environments. |
The calming words of Jesus in urging all of us to stay rooted in the moment we live in, relies as Peter Garcia says, on a "radical dependence on God". The meaning of this wonderfully reassuring text has been traditionally understood as one of letting go of a material agenda in life and trusting that by helping to build up the realm of God, we all will experience abundance. The images at the center of Jesus’ teaching are the lilies and grasses of a field, which he says do nothing but exist, and in their existence they thrive and grow naturally as expressions of God’s loving bounty in the world. Their simple glory is greater than the wealth of Solomon. In our twenty-first century reality of climate change, however, it can be hard to read Jesus’ words comfortably. Everywhere we turn, we see evidence mounting at terrifying speeds of the inevitable collapse of the planet’s ecology, unless we make change. We can believe Jesus that anxious worrying may not add a “single hour” to our life span, but if we don’t do something radical soon, then the tomorrow that will bring “worries of its own” will be upon us in force. How do we hold the wisdom of Jesus that asks us to surrender our will to God’s steadfast love — alongside the pressing necessity that we act quickly to subvert catastrophe? Today’s artist turns our attention to some of what the essence of Creation is: soil, roots, ash. Using the life-giving elements of the Joshua trees, she creates an image of the devastation of the trees that she sees taking place in front of her. When we care for the soil, the roots, the grasses and the lilies of the field, we are helping to build back how God’s creation is life-giving to us. Caring for the earth is how we stop worrying. The other ecological image that the Matthew text gives us is that of birds. In chapter ten, Jesus gives the same reassurance as he does in chapter six, and names the birds as sparrows. These small birds were used as sacrificial animals, except when they had somehow managed to make a nest in the altar of the temple, as we hear in Psalm 84, in which case they were spared. By nesting in the place of death, they save themselves. In order to be able to calm our anxious hearts and minds about the crisis in Creation, we need both radical dependence on God’s steadfast love and a descent into the truth of what we don’t want to face. We need to nest in the altar of the facts, the disappearing glaciers, the inevitable extinctions, so that we can find a way to survive. How can we be challenged into a holy anxiety, that both radically depends on God and also on us? How can we change the story of climate crisis into the hope of new creation?
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| Image by Radamés Manosso |
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Thank you and peace be with you!
