Come to the Table Lecture

Chris and Beth have taught us a good bit about the shape of Christian hospitality.  And I want to continue to explore those questions, but I think as I begin, I must address first the scope of Christian hospitality, for my topic is hospitality to creation … and while I am guessing I have an audience generally favorable to that idea, it is important for us to begin by naming why it is that the creation is within the scope of our call to hospitality.  In brief then, I want to lay out the argument for why it is that Christians care about creation. 

Now, the first time I presented the argument that follows to a group of my students at Wingate University, I was told by one particularly bright student that I had to be wrong.  I get told this regularly, so that in itself was not remarkable.  But what was particularly interesting about this comment was why the student felt I was wrong: “I refuse to believe that Jesus would die on a cross for a plant.” 

That was the argument against me, and I like this way of putting it, for that is exactly what I want to suggest.  Jesus’ death and resurrection had implications not only for humans, but also for plants, and soil, and animals.  We creatures share something critical, we are of the creator, and thus in some fundamental way share a family resemblance with one another, such that the Tamworth hogs that we raise on our farm, the red oak trees that populate our forest stand, the fescue and timothy grass that is found in our pastures, and the soil in our raised garden beds are each within the scope of our biblical call to hospitality. 

The proof of this claim is that over and over again in the biblical witness, we find that humans, animals, plant, and soil, are tied together in this great redemptive story.  Let me give you just a few examples:  

• Our very naming in Genesis 2 connects humans inextricably with the soil.  Formed from the dust, “Adam,” is a play on the Hebrew for dirt, “Adamah”.  We humans are of the dirt, which is why we in the church remind ourselves each year on Ash Wednesday: “From dust you came and to dust you shall return.” 
• As Genesis continues, we learn that the fall of humans has corrupted the natural world.  The garden is forsaken and, paradigmatically, Genesis 3 indicates that the ground, the soil itself, is cursed for human’s sin.  Thorns and thistles—and wire grass I might add—will grow in the garden we prepared this morning because of human sin. 
• When the flood comes, all of creation is destroyed in God’s judgment; but, similarly, the grace of God--in the ark of animals floating above the flood waters and the covenant that God will never again flood the world--is for all of creation, reminding us that the rainbow is a comfort to sheep and cattle as well as humankind. 
• My personal favorite, in the book of Jonah, we are told that the animals of Ninevah put on sackcloth and cried out to God in repentance for their sins, which leads God to remind Jonah that he had the right to forgive the Ninevites because of all of the repentant animals that lived there. 
• In the end, Paul summarizes all of this in Romans 8, suggesting: “the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God;” like humans waiting in anticipation that it “will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.”    

In summary, what it seems to me we must acknowledge is that God’s grace is for all the world—human, animals, flora and fauna, soil—all are redeemed. 

Which is to say God’s while grace means much for you personally, in the end the Bible is the story of the kingdom of God come on earth—and it is not so much a heavenly hope that we hold—but a vision of a new creation on the earth to which our eyes are set.  It was one of the great mistranslations of the King James Version to individualize II Corinthians 5 to read “if any man be Christ, he is a new creature” in lieu of the better translation “if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation” (NRSV) or as John Howard Yoder suggests, “If one is in Christ, behold a whole new world.”  Which likewise has profound implications for how we think about the scope of our hospitality.  The creation matters to God—profoundly—and thus likewise it must matter profoundly to the church. 

The question then is how do we understand the shape of our hospitality to creation?  Here again, let us begin at the beginning with Genesis and look now at the first chapter’s creation story: God says:

“‘Let us make humankind* in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth,* and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.’ (Gen. 1:26)

Now, it seems to me that no image for our relationship with creation has had more damaging implications than this Christian vision of humankind’s dominion.  Yet, I want to suggest that this is the right vision for our understanding of human’s hospitality to creation.  The problem is not dominion, but our misunderstanding of the kingdom itself. 

That is, traditionally, Christians and others have read dominion to mean domination and exploitation. 

• We have seen this in the manner in which animals have been reduced from creatures to machines, propagated in confinement operations of such density that they require regular medication just to stay alive. 
• And we have seen this in the strip mining of coal, where mountain is leveled without regard to stream or valley so that the “resources” below can be obtained. 
• And we have seen this in the creation of a corn based industrial agriculture, in which the grasslands of the Western plains have been plowed up at great loss of topsoil, compacted with industrial size tractors, poisoned with chemical pesticides, and made fertile--for the briefest of moments—by oil based fertilizers

Each of these activities reflects a vision of domination, our sister creation a mere resource to be exploited without limit, restraint, or regard.  In this vision, only humans merit moral account or the gifts of hospitality.  And in this stark vision, even the so-called least of us--the aged, the handicapped, the unborn--are at risk. 

The Lordship of Christ

Yet, with all this said, I believe dominion is the proper metaphor for our hospitality to creation … and here is why.  Human’s dominion is grounded fundamentally in our particular gift … and burden … of being the image bearers of God.  While the question of what distinguishes humans from animals and the rest of creation has been one of great interest to scholars, the essence of that distinction biblically construed is this suggestion from Genesis 1 that humans are uniquely God’s image bearers and, in so being, are placed in a particular role of lordship over creation. 

But here we must understand what it means to be an image bearer in the biblical world.  This idea was tied to the lordship of a king, who would leave his image in a conquered land as a reminder in his immediate absence of his claim on that place within his kingdom.  The idea expressed in Genesis 1 is in fact repeated in the book of Daniel when it suggests that Nebuchadnezzar left his image throughout Babylon.  The suggestion that humans bear God’s image has these same resonances for us and the creation.  We are the image bearers of the Lord of all creation--God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit--who stand in his stead as reminders to the creation of its lord and maker. 

Yet--and here is where we cut to the heart of the gospel itself—that means if we are to bear the image of God . . . our dominion must reflect the life and lordship of our God.  And we have only one clear vision of that lordship, who was the Christ, who despite all expectations for the messiah to the contrary expressed that lordship in a cross in lieu of a worldly crown.  This non-violent act of love was the fullest expression of Christ’s reign in the world--not a hurdle or a detour on the way to the kingdom—but the kingdom come on earth as in heaven.  And, as such, God’s dominion is not the dominion of power through violence, domination, and control, but the self-sacrificial offer of one’s life to the other, even at the price of the cross.  That is the lordship and dominion of our God.  And so if we are to bear God’s image, our dominion within creation, likewise, must be characterized by the cross, which means that our call to dominion is not a right to dominate creation, but a call to service and perhaps even sacrifice in love of the creation. 

So again, we must ask: if the creation is taken up the story of God’s redemption, if our dominion is our call to service to the creation, what is the shape of our hospitality to creation?  Here let me conclude by focusing on just two remaining aspects of the Genesis narratives.

The first is Genesis’s suggestion that human’s work is in some fundamental way to garden.  As Genesis 2 narrates it: “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.”  Biblical scholar Ellen Davis has noted that these words are theologically loaded, tied in fact to Israel’s obligation to keep and watch over the law.  What I want to suggest is that we learn in Genesis 2 that gardening is good work.  It is in fact human’s constitutive work, in such a way that we ought not ever “escape” it.  Conveniences, such as “super markets” and “fast food”, in which food is not grown or prepared with the gift our labor, may in fact not only be to our health’s detriment, but to our moral detriment.  We are called to care for God’s garden, and even as God expels us from the garden of Eden, our call to work the soil—now made more difficult—is not removed. 

Thus, when we are care for soil--as we did this morning and as this church will continue to do over the months that follow—aerating and turning, planting and watering, weeding and tending, harvesting and returning nutrients to the soil—they are continuing in the good work that God first called Adam to and continues to call each of us to.  In carefully watching over those beds, this church will learn the skills necessary to watch over God’s creation and to follow God’s way in the world.  Their patient attention to this particular patch of the creation is their service to this place.  That those beds, cursed in light of human’s sin, will nonetheless overflow this spring and summer with a bounty of fruits and vegetables grown from tiny seeds we have started today will be a vision of grace made manifest in this place. 

Yet more than just caring for the soil I want to conclude with a final metaphor for our service to creation.  We are also told in Genesis that humans are called to name the animals.  And this naming it seems to me signifies the essence of the final gift that we must offer to soil, plants, and animals—we tell them their stories.  Again, when we look to what distinguishes humans as image bearers of God, perhaps the difference that matter’s most is our ability to tell and here stories.  Somewhere in our history, as humans first began to scratch pictures on cave walls, what it meant to be human came to be a teller of stories. 

God’s grace to us as reflected in the Bible is that God has included humans in the story of His life and--in the incarnation--even embedded his life in our flesh and bone.  Yet, as we have seen, he has included all of creation in His great redemptive story.  And so we are also called to include creation, in all of its particular and wonderful forms, in the story of God’s work in our world.  The naming of the creatures in Genesis is the first step in that process, for no character can appear in a story with first being named.

And so just as Gentiles require the Jews to know there own story, likewise, animals, plants, and soil require the church to tell them their stories, and include them in the story of the kingdom.  The early church found a place for Gentiles at the communion table.  We also must include the creation within the stories of our lives and our churches.  It is incumbent upon us to make space for remembrance of our sister creation in this journey of redemption; for though we wait with eager anticipation for the rocks to cry out in praise to our God, until they do, we worship with them and for them and on there behalf.

That is what we can most celebrate in the work that these three churches--in Cedar Grove, Fuquay Varina, and herein in Seagrove--are up to.  Their liturgy, which is their re-membering of the great story of the gospel, now includes the soil of these three gardens.  And in so doing, the soil--in very concrete and practical ways--is given voice and place in the story of the work that God is doing in His world.