Oikologie — Wisdom from our Home Planet
Psalm 19; James 3:1-12; Mark 8:27-38 - Season of Creation — Sunday, September 12, 2021
Pastor Ritva H Williams
Ecology is the scientific study of the interactions between organisms and their environment. Ecologists study the relationships between the Earth and her inhabitants. The Bible teaches us to study creation if we want to understand God, e.g. “Ever since the creation of the world [God’s] eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things [God] has made” (Romans 1:20). In the words of Fr. Richard Rohr, “creation is the First Bible, and it existed for 13.7 billion years before the second Bible was written” (The Universal Christ, p. 12). The Greek root word oikologie is being used in our 2021 Season of Creation materials to describe seeking and learning wisdom from our home planet.
Psalm 19 might be described as a piece of ancient oikologie. The author presents the heavens declaring, the sky proclaiming, day telling its tale, night imparting knowledge, and even in silence sending forth their message about the Creator God. It is God who has pitched a tent for the sun which rejoices as it rises and sets daily. The point of the psalm is that if we pay attention to the world around us, we can see how God’s cares for all creation by giving us light, heat, and life.
In his book Everything is Spiritual, Rob Bell describes the theological insight he gained from reading about quantum theory and particle physics:
“the solid, material reality that you can depend on because you can hold it and see it and feel it — thingness and stuff and matter are, in the end, relationships of energy … The world, the universe, each of us, all of it — one big, unending series of relationships? (p. 155)
Psalm 19 moves from creation as a way of knowing God, to lifting up scripture as a source of wisdom and enlightenment for living in God’s creation. So we turn to the letter of James and its concern for the quality of human relationships. He identifies obstacles to right relationships — healthy, fair, equitable relationships. Last week is was our distorted judgments about each other. Today it is the problem of verbal abuse. James writes: the tongue is a small member, yet boasts of great exploits (3:5). What comes out of our mouths stains the whole body, sets on fire the cycle of nature, and is itself set on fire by hell (3:6). With ours tongue we bless the Lord and Father, with the same tongue we curse those who are made in God’s image (3:9). James’ verdict is that verbal abuse comes from hell, stains the abuser, and burns relationships being persons, communities, and perhaps even between humans and creation.
Notice how James draws on images from creation to tell us that verbal abuse is wrong. Blessings and curses from the same mouth are like springs bubbling with both fresh water and salty sea water, fig trees yielding olives, and grapevines producing figs. James asks us to examine the words that come out of our mouths and what they reveal about us. Do our words reflect the person God wants us to be? Is our speech true to our best self or is it just our small, egotistical self speaking? Or has hell itself taken over our tongues?
James compares the human tongue to a horse that needs to be tamed and outfitted with a bridle. Like a ship without a rudder our tongues are easily blown off course. Healthy relationships between humans require us to “bridle our tongue” from time to time — to stop talking so we really hear and understand what the other person is saying. Healthy relationships are guided by the rudder of civility — polite, respectful speech, listening with compassion instead of judgment, disagreeing without disrespect, and genuinely seeking common ground.
The final verse of Psalm 19, provides a perfect conclusion to James’ message: “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer.”
In our gospel reading we see a communication breakdown between Jesus and Peter. When Jesus begins to talk about suffering, rejection, death and resurrection, Peter rebukes him. Jesus’ words are not acceptable to Peter. Like of us, he wants a savior who is a winner and who will make him a winner. Peter’s words reveal that he still has some growing up to do. Jesus, in turn, rebukes Peter: Get behind me Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things” (8:31-33). Jesus’ harsh words highlight the distance between him and his first disciple. Jesus has no intention of delivering what Peter wants, but insists on identifying with the lowliest of losers all the way to the cross, and expects his disciples to follow his example: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel will save it” (8:34-35).
To understand what it means to take up our cross, I turn again to Rob Bell, this time from Love Wins where he describes the cross as a symbol of an elemental reality that is true across all ecosystems, food chains, seasons, and all across the environment. Death gives way to life … This death-and-life mystery, this mechanism, this process is built into the very fabric of creation (Love Wins, pp. 130-131).
Bell points out that the first Christians understood the cross and resurrection to be an event as wide as the world, extending to all of creation (p. 132) …
[At the same time] This cosmic event has everything to do with how every single one of us lives every single day It is a pattern, a rhythm, a practice, a reality rooted in the elemental realities of creation, extending to the very vitality of our soul. (p. 135).
When we say yes to God, when we open ourselves to Jesus’s living, giving act on the cross, we enter into a way of life. He is the source, the strength, the example and the assurance that this pattern of death and rebirth is the way into the only kind of life that actually sustains and inspires (p. 136).
To take up the cross is to be willing to accept change, particularly positive change, the kind that we can only see in the long run (often only in hindsight). In the short run, as Richard Rohr says, it often just looks like death. To take up the cross is to hang in there, trusting in the resurrection, to see it written not just in the books of the Bible, but as Martin Luther said in every leaf of springtime.
The good news of the cross of Jesus Christ as Rob Bell puts it is that “the story isn’t over, it’s just beginning. They kill him, but it isn’t the last word. It’s the first word of a new world. Violence doesn’t have the last word, love does. The suffering doesn’t end the story, it unleashes a whole new story …
Thanks be to God!
