St. Gregory of Nyssa said, almost 1700 year ago, “…when one considers the universe, can anyone be so simple-minded as not to believe that the Divine is present in everything, pervading, embracing, and penetrating it? For all things depend upon God who is, and nothing can exist which does not have its being in God who is.” Our part of the universe, the earth on which we live, from which we take our food, and in which we place our bodies after we die is a miracle beyond all imagining. Of all of the flying pieces of rock that we have located and explored in the universe, only this one is the shining blue ball of life. We owe the God who made this earth all that we have and are to sustain and tend her. She is magnificent and she is fragile. What an experiment she is. The earth is almost 8 miles is diameter and 71% of its surface is covered with water. Not a lot of it is left over for people, land animals, and plants to share. It’s important that we heed God’s first commandment found in Genesis giving humankind responsibility for the earth. Without proper care, we exploit the earth. Our actions have far-reaching consequences.

When we think of caring for the earth, we often think of big and overwhelming issues that seem to be beyond our immediate influence – rain forest deforestation, oil spills, over-fishing, urban sprawl, dead zones in the ocean, melting ice caps. We look at the inefficient, corrupt, and bureaucratic character of nations and lose hope that governments anywhere will make much difference. But in reality, these things are the results of our daily choices that seem as insignificant as the problems seem overwhelming. If each American would change only one light bulb to an energy star energy efficient bulb, we would save $6,000,000 in electricity and prevent the release of greenhouse gasses equivalent to 1 million cars. When we buy our food, do we buy the cheapest food purchased at the biggest supermarkets? We have the choice to buy food that is in season, locally grown, and organically produced. On average our food travels 1,500 miles to get to our table. That requires a lot of energy. Genetically engineered food saps the soil of its nutrients. Many of the large farming companies clear cut in order to reduce the costs of production in order to pass the savings to us. The beef in hamburgers at fast food restaurants require, on average, 600 million gallons of water and five times the patty’s weight in topsoil. The alternative is simple. Right here in Washington we are blessed with a diversity of geography that yields us rich greens and shiny nutritious fruit. We can rediscover our farmer’s markets and local farms. Not only will we be helping the environment, but we will also be supporting our local farmers. I know that a lot of you grew up on small farms. They are disappearing; we can stop that. It may mean more than one stop to find all of our groceries, but it also means reducing the mileage used to bring the food to our tables by over 1,000 miles. Growing up, my family joined with other families to purchase one cow from a local farmer. We portioned it up and received different parts. It’s still possible to do just that. We can buy meat from local butchers who work with local farmers. We can also buy directly from farmers themselves. They earn more money. We get fresher meat. And the earth is treated more gently. We can join a food co-op and look for labels to tell us whether the food was organically grown. There are big fixes that have to happen if the generation after mine will live on a sustaining earth, but there are little choices that each of us has to make in order for the big changes to have a chance. Each little choice is important. Each little choices produces ripples that move all over the earth. Each little choice makes way for another and another and another.

As people grow up, we become numb to the assaulting number of bad things that happen in the world. We can become so very numb that we forget to experience life with wonder and reverence. We learn to believe that we have no power and to see the bad and broken all around us. It’s always been so. Just before the reading in today’s gospel, Jesus is approached by the leading scholars of the Law, the Pharisees, and is asked a question about divorce. Jesus’ heart seems to just plummet when asked this question. It arises from two kinds of hard heartedness. First, they want to argue with him for the sole sake of finding fault with him and he knows it. And second, the very question presumes a hardness in the Law – a rigidity – that loses sight of the Law’s life-nurturing core. Basically Jesus sighs and goes, “If you really want to debate the letter of the Law, I’ll debate the letter of the Law. But in so doing, you’ve missed the point of the Law altogether.” So, he gives the letter of the Law answer. But the real answer, for Jesus, is to step away from the question. The question itself belies a hardness of heart not possible in God’s kin-dom. Instead Jesus invites into God’s realm those who have hearts open to wonder and awe like a child, and who desire relationship and life over argument and hardness. The fact that these men would even ask the question shows how far they are from reaching the kin-dom that Jesus proclaims. Unfortunately, we are often like the Pharisees, pulling our questions from our hard hearts and missing the point altogether. Like them we see the world devoid of its wonder. We live captive to the wrong presumption and we ask the wrong questions. We miss the point. The point is not that the earth is dying. It is, surely, at the ends of our hands. The point is that with eyes of wonder and spirits willing to change, we can be the stewards of this earth that God had hoped that we would be. By looking at the radical interrelatedness of all living things, including the earth in and on which all live, we come as children, open and ready to see a different world – God’s world. We can bring life back to this earth. It is crying out to us to ask different questions that will bring different answers. We can, through wonder and awe, revive the earth.

Today we begin Stewardship Month. I invite you to spend this month taking an inventory of God’s wonders, thanking God for the goodness of creation, and discerning the ways in which we might better steward this earth. Stewardship begins with a big picture. As a people of faith in general, and as Christians in particular, we believe that the earth and all that is in her belong to God. This is a radical view point, and it is one that we forget too easily and too often. It is a sacred and holy thing to live in this world. It is a sacred and holy gift – this life that we have. It is a sacred and holy task before us to re-imagine the earth as God’s and to make necessary life changes that reflects this belief. We are calling today “Food and Faith Sunday” as a reminder that when we ask God for our daily bread that we also have a responsibility in tending the earth that yields it to us. We have the power to bring back the snow on our mountains, to fill our oceans with fish, to restore integrity to our streams, and to replenish the nutrients in our earth. We have the ability – with little choices made every day – to affect our world in incredible ways. Wendell Berry said it best: “To live, we must daily break the body and shed the blood of creation. The point is, when we do this knowingly, lovingly skillfully, reverently, it is a sacrament; when we do it ignorantly, greedily, clumsily, destructively, it is a desecration…In such desecration, we condemn ourselves to spiritual and moral loneliness, and others to want.” The intentionality of our lives brings God’s perfect communion. What a joy to understand stewardship as beginning in this place.