I remember learning to read blueprints. They were spread out on our the kitchen table and the four of us stood above them. I studied them meticulously. I was enthralled. Envisioning a house set into the mountain was fun and a family adventure. But then, it all came to a halt.
A drunk contractor on an excavator toppled trees and tore an angry red strip across the land. My mother and father banned him from the scene. The contractor’s violence uncovered my parents’ values for the land.
The house was never built.
But a finer experience emerged from the pain. A wee camper redeemed from my uncle’s back yard was set back into the woods above the hole. The hole in the side of the mountain became a play-space preserved for years, even as the forest sought to reclaim it. My sister and I spent hours traipsing around this patch of earth. Camping, gardening, and working with my family in this space without the confines of a house was an unexpected gift. Besides learning the joy of smores, I learned to anticipate the fingerprints of God in everything.
The stuff of earth came alive for me.
I have grown up in North America where Christians have not appeared to be on the front lines of “earth” initiatives. The stereotype of Christian capitalistic consumption is built on a narrative of dispensational nihilism: The stuff of earth will burn; it will all dissolve like snow; so, let’s be powerful and eat drink as much as we can and be merry while we can; Jesus is Lord. Really? I don’t really know anyone who believes all this so neatly but it’s attributed to us.
Some Christians may be raving industrialists pressing for the consumption of as much as possible in a most expedient manner. Many have been baptized into Jesus and hope to do good with what they make. Making money is turned into a “holy” pursuit and it’s draped in a perverted form of puritan work ethic. Other Christians who also reside in “Babylon,” have been quietly and steadily pressing for the conservation of the land, air, and water because they see stewardship as a moral imperative flowing out of a life of loving God and loving people with Jesus.
American Christian discipleship built on the Roman Road, the Bridge Illustration, or even Three Circles has had to labour hard to recover all four dimensions of relational Christianity. The way one comes to Jesus in the Gospel preached seems to create a trajectory of blindspots. Some of us don’t see the earth and the connections between Jesus and what we build, drive, and eat. If Jesus is just good for life-after-death insurance, then we can live as best we see fit on earth secure in the hopes of mansions here and mansions there.
I believe Jesus saves us in all our relationships. A four dimensional and relational discipleship presents salvation as participation in the life of Jesus the King in all our relationships. His kingdom includes the “heavens” and the earth. We live with anticipation for the new heaven and new earth. People, lovingly created by God, have for four relationships — with God, with self, with people, and with the stuff of earth (or the cosmos) as we participate in the communion of God — the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. A thorough reading of the Old and New Testaments presents a cosmic conflict into which Creation is cast; it is finished in Christ at the Cross but is not yet finished in Creation as the agents of the conflict still seek to diminish the glory of God in all creation while God is patient.
Theologies of discontinuity disconcert me. Justification by faith is not meant to be a theology of discontinuity. Yet, if we unhitch any consequential implications for life “here” with Jesus with life “there” with Jesus then what we do and what anyone does in their lifetime doesn’t really matter and a whole slew of passages and parables are trivialized. This disconnection leaves our relationship with the stuff of earth behind. Grace is not a theology of disconnection. Grace in the Gospel is a theology of connection. The Gospel presses us to respond to God by wisely stewarding our common ground. Jesus is good news for all our relationships — our relationship with God, with self, with people, and with the stuff of earth.
It’s the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. It’s been part of my life for almost all of my life. I regularly read some followers of Jesus being critical of and fearful of association with the day. Of course Earth Day matters to folks for a whole lot of reasons and with a whole lot of spiritual frameworks undergirding their affections. That’s how it is when anything belongs in the “commons.” It is not somehow disloyal to Jesus if we care about the earth. Nor is it particularly becoming as a follower of Jesus to treat scientists, farmers, poets, and other concerned residents who care about the Earth as if they are a threat to the knowledge of God because they care.
We don’t have to create a dichotomy between caring for Creation and walking with Jesus as a way of protecting the Gospel. Caring about the earth is not somehow going to ruin our lives with Jesus. A full-bodied discipleship can include theological reflection on our bodies, our work, our food, and the ground we walk upon, the air we breathe, and the water we drink. We do not have to romanticize and place some kind of utopian vision upon the indigenous people’s or their histories in order to care for the earth and each other. I believe we can be realistic about people as people since we are all infected with sinful capacities AND we can celebrate or critique the values within people groups (including my own) that affect creation-care negatively or positively.
If our discipleship and our presentation of the Gospel does not include the stuff of earth I believe we are doing people a dis-service. The Gospel majestically ushers us into the love of God. Now we know God loves. Now we know I am loved. Now we know there is power available to love people. Now we know we can love creation. All these loves matter forever.
Wonder, beauty and mystery are very much connected to the grace of God.
And the grace of God is very much connected to the earth.
Yet, this Earth Day we groan.
The stuff of earth was never meant to bear the weight of our souls. It so easily betrays our misplaced affections and reveals our need to surrender to God. But our surrender need not be made in despair. Rather our surrender may be informed by the resurrection of Jesus. Until He sets all things right, we shall continue to labour for the benefit of all. We do not surrender to death. We do not surrender to thorns and thistles. We do not surrender to greed. Rather we steward our lives and our work under Jesus the Lord so generosity and abundance may abound. Our labour is not in vain. Even our labour to live rightly on the earth in the grace of the Gospel is a exercise in faith. (Suggestion: Read the Gospels again and explore Jesus’ relationship with and stewardship of the stuff of earth.)
So Earth Day — it’s a day of faith for me. It’s a day of yearning with faith for justice — the justice contained in loving our neighbour, the justice proclaimed in the Cross of Christ, the justice of properly stewarding the stuff of earth, the justice anticipated in the restoration of all things in Jesus’ return.
“The first man was of the dust of the earth; the second man is of heaven. As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the heavenly man, so also are those who are of heaven. And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so shall we bear the image of the heavenly man.” 1 Corinthians 15:47-49