O Dust, Arise! Our Covenant with All, All, All, All, All, All, All, All, All, All, All, All Creation Beckons
Mark 1:9-15 and Genesis 9:8-17
March 1, 2009
With all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all flesh that is on the earth God established his covenant with Noah and all of Noah’s descendants, descendants that include each and every one of us who are living and breathing in this sanctuary at this very moment. All of us. All of the birds of the air. All of the beasts of ground. All flesh on the earth. All of the sacred life that God has created.
The Hebrew word translated as “all” or “every” or “as many as” in our English Bibles is lK' and this Hebrew word appears 12 times in only 10 verses in our passage this morning from Genesis. (That’s the same number of “all’s” in the sermon title, for those keeping track). The writer of this text is known as the Priestly writer, because of the emphasis he places on tradition and order and ritual. He was an ancient lawyer of sorts, and thank goodness for lawyers, because though their language may sometimes be legalistic and repetitive and is designed to prevent abuse of covenants and contracts. And that language comes through loud and clear here! No loopholes in this contract between God and humans. No exemptions, no entitlements. All creatures are included—twelve times over and again.
This repetition is helpful because it is tempting when reading of God’s covenant with Noah to focus only on the human aspect, because that’s where we’re included. But we must remember that humans are merely one part of this covenant. God promises never again to destroy all life—not just humans, but all living flesh—by the waters of a flood.
The sign for this new covenant is the bow in the clouds. But this is no simple rainbow. The Hebrew word used for bow here, is the same word for the archer’s bow and every other time it is used in the Hebrew, this is what it refers to—a weapon, a bow with a quiver of arrows. In essence, God lays down a weapon of destruction—an unstrung, unloaded bow in the clouds—and God calls a truce promising a new way of relating to the world where all life is sacred and worth preserving. And who are we to act differently than God?
This same preservation of life is written subtly into our passage from Mark as well. After Jesus is baptized by John he is driven into the wilderness by the Spirit of God where he is tempted by Satan for forty days. During this time of soul-searching in the wilderness we are told that Jesus lives with the wild beasts and is waited on by angels. Does this remind you of any other Biblical stories?
Think of the Garden of Eden. One recurring theme in the book of Mark is Jesus as a new type of human, living life as God truly intended; and so Mark uses Jesus as a new Adam. Both Jesus and Adam are in isolated places—Jesus in the wilderness and Adam in Eden. Adam was tempted by a snake. This snake in later Jewish tradition became Satan, and it is Satan who tempts Jesus in the wilderness. In Jewish tradition as well, Adam was served meals by angels while in the Garden. Jesus is served in the wilderness by angels in Mark. Adam lived peacefully with wild animals while in Eden, even naming them.
And Jesus lives with wild animals while on his sojourn. This preposition “with” is very important. Jesus didn’t struggle with the wild animals, he didn’t kill the wild animals, or cage the wild animals, rather he was with them, side-by-side in a recreated Eden—a version full of the original shalom that God created between humans and other animals. It is a representation of the very kingdom of God.
But it is just that, a representation, it is not yet a reality and creation still groans for the peace and wholeness of the Kingdom of God that God has promised.
Pondering the history of the relationship between humans and our brothers and sisters in the animal world I came across a fascinating era of human-animal interaction. Back in the Middle Ages, humans had everyday interactions with animals. When people moved houses or cities they took their animals with them. They relied on animals and plants that they raised or harvested for much of their nutrition. And they saw animals as much closer to their human counterparts. This is seen in the practice of bringing animals to court to try them in justice system.
There is a book called The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals written about a century ago that fills 368 pages of text with stories of field mice being excommunicated, or horses being condemned to death, or the torturing of sharks as punishment, etc. In one case, a female pig was condemned to death in a court of law because she had killed a small child. Her piglets, fortunately, were acquitted on the grounds that their mother had set a bad example for them. In another case a famous church leader, annoyed by flies buzzing around his head, shouted “I excommunicate you!” whereupon flies died in such heaps they had to be scooped up with shovels. And finally there was a situation where rats were brought to trial for destroying crops in a field. But fortunately for the rats, they were represented by a top-notch lawyer who recognized that his clients had not been properly summoned to court, and further they were not able to make safe passage to defend themselves because of hungry cats lying in wait.
As silly as these instances may seem, I wonder if we have really progressed much further in our own modern culture. Every single day there are entire species of animals and plants becoming extinct because of human activity; and it is rare that any of these species ever have a chance to defend the sacredness of their lives in a courtroom, unless they have the paradoxical privilege of being deemed “endangered” or “threatened” species.
Indeed in the last few hundred years we have moved physically and perhaps spiritually further away from other created beings; We no longer share living space with the animals that nourish us, and few of us grow any of the food that feeds our families. One must wonder if this separation has any bearing on how we see Noah’s covenant with God. Can we realize the sacredness of non-human life if we rarely interact with it, if we don’t touch, see, or smell God’s beautiful creations?
It is appropriate that both of our texts from Genesis and Mark that discuss the beauty and sacredness of life are found at the beginning of Lent. It is in the season of Lent that we recommit our lives to the challenges of faith each and every year. A time when we renew covenants. A time when we search our souls to improve our ways of living with other people, with God, and with the rest of creation.
In Lent we are reminded that we, just like the animal plant life that surrounds us, are dust and to dust we shall return. We are not separate from animals, we are animals. But unlike other created beings we humans have the ability to search our souls and seek to live a life that is wholesome and good and nurturing to the world in which we wander.
Yes, we are dust. But we are more than dust. We can choose how to live. We can choose to make our lives and the world around us a better place. We can renew Noah’s covenant with God, a covenant that we are, in fact, already committed to as the descendants of Noah. We can search our lives during this Lenten season to uncover how each one of us can better serve the animals, people, plants, all of nature with which we share this spinning, orbiting sphere.
And there are two key words which have the potential to give us a different perspective about our human relationship with nature during this Lenten season. For centuries, Christians have interpreted our position in the order of creation as one of “dominion” which comes from a Genesis passage. But there is another word from Genesis that is often overlooked. We are told in Genesis 2:4 that God made Adam and put him in the Garden of Eden to till it. Here the word that is translated as “till” is the same word that means “servant” or “slave.” So Adam was placed in the Garden of Eden to “serve” the land. “Serve” the land.
Another word of perspective to reconsider during lent is “conquer.” When Sir Edmund Hillary became the first Western man to summit Mount Everest, newspapers in Europe proclaimed “Man Conquers Mountain.” In Chinese newspapers that same event translated to “Man Befriends Mountain.”
Befriending mountains. Serving the land. These phrases echo a renewed interest in many Christian communities of a diverse spectrum to reevaluate humanity’s relationship with nature. In response to this movement there has even been a “Green Bible” produced—one made of recycled paper and renewable and sustainable resources—that has over 1000 verses highlighted in green text which show God’s continuing love and care for humans, animals and nature. In the foreword to this Bible there is a poem by author, farmer and poet Wendell Berry:
The clearing rests in song and shade.
It is a creature made.
By old light held in soil and leaf,
By human joy and grief,
By human work,
Fidelity of sight and stroke,
By rain, by water on
The parent stone.
We join our work to Heaven’s gift,
Our hope to what is left,
That field and woods at last agree
In an economy
O widest worth.
High Heaven’s Kingdom come on earth.
Imagine Paradise.
O dust, arise!
O dust, arise! O dust arise! We are dust, but we are more than dust. We can refocus our lives during this Lenten season to renewing Noah’s covenant with God for the benefit of all creation. Perhaps during Lent we can ride our bikes more. Or we can spend time walking in the woods or we can recycle more, or we can use less, or we can plant trees, or we can change light bulbs, or we can turn off the TV and the radio and listen and observe the glorious world that surrounds us, or we can share the food we have with those who need it, or we can carpool, or we can turn down our thermostats a few degrees and put on a sweater, or we can bring a coffee mug to church so we can reuse it every week, or maybe we can sit peacefully under a tree, or maybe tomorrow morning if we awaken to new fallen snow, we can choose to leave our tiny footprints in the beauty of one of God’s little wonders.
O dust arise! The earth is an exquisite place. The life that inhabits it is miraculous and splendid! The vegetation is lush and verdant! Mountains are waiting to be befriended, and the earth is ready to be served.
O widest worth.
High Heaven’s Kingdom come on earth.
Imagine paradise.
O dust arise!
It is here before our very eyes! Amen.
