coming home to the earth

October 1, 2023 • Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Readings from Thomas Berry and Robin Wall Kimmerer
Pastor Jeff Wells

[You can view the full worship video recording at:
https://youtu.be/eAmCdj-D4pw]

Today, our worship and this message are focused on coming home to the Earth. You may have noticed that we do not have a reading from the Bible today. That is because there are no passages in the Bible that say, “The Earth is our home.” In fact, I did a Google search for the phrase “What does the Bible say about ‘the Earth is our home’?” That’s a fair question, right? You would think the Bible says something about that. The search results said exactly the opposite. Google yielded titles such as, “What Does the Bible Say About This World Is Not Our Home?” and “This World Is Not Our Home – We Are Just Passing Through” and multiple references to the Letter to the Hebrews, chapter 13, verse 14, which says: “This world is not our home; we are looking forward to our everlasting home in heaven.” This seems to me to be an important lesson in why we cannot rely on the Bible, exclusively, to answer all of the pressing theological, spiritual, or practical questions of our time.

Fortunately, many deep thinkers like those quoted this morning have produced a wealth of resources and shared experience over the past 70 years that provide a foundation for our ethical, theological, ecological, and scientific learning. They help to make possible the transformation of our human consciousness so that we can grow in our spiritual and emotional connection to the Earth and all of its complex and robust ecological systems.

We don’t need another litany of the damage we humans have been doing or the economic, social, and philosophical systems responsible. We are reminded of them as well as the dire predictions about our future and the Earth’s future all the time. We experience or witness the effects of human action on an almost daily basis. Instead, I want to focus on our need for grounded and practical ways to dramatically shift our consciousness and our sense of connectedness to the whole of the natural world that makes up the Earth.

We will take risks and make sacrifices to save those we love. Surely, we cannot ignore huge disparities in responsibility for the destruction of our planet and great inequities and injustices done to humans along with injustices to the Earth and its ecosystems. The ruling powers that benefit the most, bear the greatest responsibility. Yet, all of us can and must act to help save what can be saved of our home. David Attenborough described the problem this way: “No one will protect what they don’t care about; and no one will care about what they have never experienced.” We all have a role to play. We all can take steps to intimately experience, to get to know, and to learn to love the Earth and all of the wonder, beauty, and complexity that it holds.

We know the whole universe is God’s home. But let’s just stick to the Earth for today. God is in everything and everything is in God. So, God certainly loves the Earth and beckons us to do the same. God calls us to be fellow citizens and good neighbors in a living Earth community. Yet, in spite of continual prompting, it seems the majority of humans are only beginning to grasp the effort and sacrifices that call to love demands of us.

There are a lot of reasons for this failure, but a large part of the problem lies in our physical, emotional, and spiritual distance from the parts of the Earth not built by human beings. The human population is increasingly separated from open landscapes and wilderness, from being able to observe the amazing ways plants and animals interact, depend on each other, and thrive together. The shift of the human population from rural to urban areas has been happening for a couple hundred years. Around the year 1800 less than 3% of the world’s population lived in urban areas. The shift accelerated dramatically in the past century and especially in the last few decades. By 1920, the figure was 14%. [1] In 1990, 43 percent of humans lived in urban areas vs. 57 percent in rural areas. In just 33 years, those numbers have flipped. Today, 57 percent – the majority of the human population does not have ongoing daily contact with wilderness spaces or even parks. As a congregation, most of us are in that category. What can we do to fall in love with the Earth? How can we learn to experience the Earth’s mutual love for us?

I am convinced we don’t have to travel the world or move back to “living off the land” in order to experience coming home to the Earth. We can still find ways to build a sense of belonging and community with our home.

Recently, I had the pleasure of getting to know Rev. Corey Turnpenny, the pastor of a 2-year-old United Methodist community, called the Church in the Wild. It is in the Upper New York Conference, north of Binghamton. They meet exclusively in the woods. They call themselves an alternative eco-spiritual community. Like the Church of the Village, they are not wedded to a strict set of doctrines or a creed. They are open to people coming from many religious and non-religious backgrounds. They are especially trying to reach those who have left church or were never part of a church before. They want to reach the “spiritual, but not religious,” the “Nones” and the “Dones.” I asked Corey, “So, what does your District Superintendent think of all this?” She said he sort of understands what they are trying to do and pretty much leaves them alone. I don’t think he has ever stopped by to worship with them.

The Church in the Woods is a beautiful model. But worshiping every Sunday in the woods is not really an option for us. So what can we do? Well, for our members in the New York City area, we have taken some initiatives already by having outings to large city parks that exist in all of the five boroughs. We have organized some hikes along the Hudson River or in the Catskills accessible from the city by train. I encourage our online members to find local groups that do similar things. Take up a hobby that gets you outdoors and closer to the non-built world. Consider birdwatching. You can do that just about anywhere. The Ramble or the North Woods in Central Park are great locations for birding. Or maybe, like me, you can learn to love taking photos of mushrooms and other fungi and learning their names and their importance to their ecosystems. It can be as simple as walking through a botanical garden or arboretum or just sitting on the grass and meditating on the trees and flowers.

Closer to home for some of us, Dwight suggested reconnecting with our 13th Street Alliance neighbors to replant the tree beds on our block with flowers and other plants. Alfida offered that the Church of the Village could form a partnership with a local community garden or neighborhood park. She said, “I want us to do something more concrete in collaboration with creation. Let’s not just talk about it. Let’s put our hands in it.”

Of course, we will continue to study, talk, pray, preach, and advocate about the theology, ethics, and science behind the ecological crisis and its solutions. That’s a big job in which we have lots of co-workers. Yet, deepening our spiritual connection to our Earth home is an important way to ground our thinking, activism, and advocacy. And we don’t even need to leave the building or leave Zoom to do that.

Let’s take just a few minutes for meditation and prayer around coming home to the Earth. I am going to lead us in a meditation practice called visualization. Close your eyes and take a couple of slow, deep breaths. Now bring to your mind a favorite place where you have experienced wilderness or connection with a deep green part of nature. What do you see around you? Can you feel the wind blowing? What do you smell? How does visualizing this make you feel? Just sit with that vision for a moment. [Pause]. Now, in that place, try to open yourself to the love that the Earth offers to you. Try to open yourself to the sacred bond between you and the Earth. [Pause].

Let us pray…

God of every atom, every cell, every microbe, every living being across the globe, you call us to come home to the Earth and its amazing beauty, diversity, and abundance. Helps us to evolve a robust ecological spirituality that teaches us to love and learn from the plants, animals, fungi, water and climate systems which are our neighbors, our beloved, with whom we share a home and a sacred bond. Amen.

Copyright (c) 2023 - Rev. Jeff Wells
All rights reserved.

[1] - Salas RM. Population and the urban future. Draper Fund Rep. 1981 Dec;(10):1-4. PMID: 12311446.

[2] - Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1262483/global-urban-rural-population/