Today we’ll answer a question: Should Christians care about creation?
Actually, strike that. That’s a dumb question – because you already know the right answer. “Should Christian care about creation?” “Yes!” You know the right answer is, “Yes.”
So here’s a better question:
Why should Christians care about creation?
There’s more than one answer to that question – which is good, because it gives you room to find your own, most convicting, “Why.”
Last week, when we were talking about resurrection, I hinted at one reason. Every time we say the Apostles’ Creed we affirm a belief in the bodily resurrection of Jesus that foreshadows the bodily resurrection that we can all anticipate. Say it with me, and listen for it:
I believe in God, the Father Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth;
And in Jesus Christ his only Son, our Lord;
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, dead, and buried;
the third day he rose from the dead;
he ascended into heaven,
and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty;
from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic (universal) church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen.
We believe in Jesus Christ, who was buried but “on the third day rose again from the dead”; we believe in “the resurrection of the body.” This is for us humans – and for all of creation. If you flip to the almost-end of the Bible, the 21st chapter of Revelation, you’ll see a vision of a new heaven and a new earth, a resurrected world where God dwells with us.
If we believed differently we might not care about creation. If we believed, for example, that one day all the faithful will be taken away, that we’ll abandon ship on this whole “earth” experiment – well, we wouldn’t have much reason to care for the creation we’re ultimately going to leave behind. But no: we believe that God’s end game isn’t to abandon creation but to keep working in and through it. God loves this world – why would God abandon it? Do remember, in Genesis 1, what God said about everything God made? God declared it all “good”! Light, good; dark, good; land, good; water, good; plants, good; animals, good. And then: humans, very good.
Genesis 2 looks at the creation story from a different angle. The meaning is consistent, but the details are different. Humans don’t come at the end as a last detail; the first human is created in the middle, after the land and water and but before the plants and animals. The human, in fact, is made to meet creation’s need: the earth needs someone to till the ground. So God breaths life into a human, and then forms a garden – because a human now exists to tend it.
Do you see what it’s saying? Creation needs humans. If that’s true, it’s a pretty compelling reason for Christians to care about creation.
If that’s true.
I don’t know about you, but sometimes I feel like creation would be better off without us. You know those stories about a dystopian future, where zombies or pollution or machines have killed off all but a few humans? The cities overgrown with vines, trees burst through buildings, grass pushes up through asphalt – creation is breathing a sigh of relief; “Finally, they’re gone!” I think sometimes I imagine that as nature’s happy place, a place without humans like me, but meanwhile here I am and, “Sorry, nature!” As though just by existing I’m inherently bad for the creation I love.
Genesis 2 says it doesn’t have to be that way. It says that humans and nature are meant to not only exist, but when we’re living into our God-breathed, true humanity, we are good for nature.
Is that possible?
I’m no botanist. In fact, I’m a plant killer. My husband – who says “no” to be on very few things – cut me off from buying plants in our first year of marriage.
But that doesn’t exempt me from having to take care of plants. We own a home with a yard. In fact, we bought a home where it seemed like the part of the yard outside the fence – the part the neighbors have to look at – hadn’t been tended to in quite some time. No shade to the previous owners – they were moving, life happens, whatever. But the end result was a tangled, messy, dirty jungle. When we first moved in and we’d turn the corner into our drive, I’d joke to the kids, “Who lives there?!?”
Immediately I had home improvement dreams of cleaning that mess up. I just knew by the end of the summer we’d be the neighborhood’s “most improved player.” But you know – as it turns out, I don’t know what I’m doing, and it takes a lot of time and energy to get an unruly section of yard back in order. Over the past almost-year we’ve dedicated full Saturdays to weedeating and chainsawing and raking and pulling, only to turn around and look at our handiwork at the end of the day and say… “Yeah, it still looks pretty bad.”
But you know, yesterday – yesterday I was out there working in it. I was weedeating and pulling and bagging. I pulled crusty old dead leaves away in the hopes that new grass could grow. I got out the clippers and trimmed some things that, now that I’ve been in it a while, seemed to be choaking out the good stuff. I found myself giving a little Jerry McGuire speech to this sad part of our yard: “help me, help you.” I was (of course) thinking about this sermon, and genuinely had the hope that this land would be better for us tending it – even when we don’t really know what we’re doing.
Is it possible that creation isn’t wishing we were all gone… but wishing that we would do our jobs?
If so, that’s a pretty convincing reason for humans to care about creation.
Pretty convincing – but not as convincing (to me) as the simple fact that this is all God’s.
We’ve been alluding to that fact all along by revisiting the creation stories – but Psalm 24 says it nice and direct: “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it.” This is God’s creation we’re talking about, God’s earth that we’re living in. And when you’re living in someone else’s place, it makes a difference in how you treat it.
That’s been my experience – quite literally.
I’ve mentioned before that I’m kind of a messy person by nature. I had a disaster of a room growing up. When I lived alone – and then when we were first married – I figured the ideal amount of housework was the bare minimum. I didn’t want to waste my time on cleaning – there’s a whole world out there!
But then Alan and I did three things, all in one month: we got new jobs (mine to be a pastor), we moved (to serve a church in Charlotte), and we had a baby (our Eleanor). I do not recommend this, by the way – not unless your spouse is a saint like mine.
Churches traditionally provide housing for a pastor, to help the pastor better serve the community and to alleviate the burden of moving at a bishop’s discretion. That can be a housing allowance (which is what we do here, at Central) or a parsonage, a house owned by the church. In Charlotte it was a parsonage – a well-cared-for ranch-style home that was a sweet beginning to our parenting life.
As we moved into the church’s house that would be our home, something shifted in me. I felt newly motivated to do more than just the bare minimum of housework, because the house belonged to these sweet people who were using church offerings to care for it. I also knew who the previous resident had been – a kind pastor who was retiring – and eventually, I would hand the house on to another pastor in our conference. I had lived in rentals before but I had never known the people I was renting from or the folks who came before or after. But now that I knew, I felt motivated to
But when we were given our first parsonage it dawned on me that this was our home but the church’s house. They had paid for it, invested in it, taken care of it. One day, it would be passed on to another pastor who would either benefit or suffer from the way we cared for it. For the first time in my life, I started to do more than the bare minimum (and when I say “more,” keep in mind how bare the bare minimum can be). I found I cared more – and it was easy to care.
Living in this world is no different. It was well-made and gifted to us by God. Others that we know have lived here before, and will come after. That’s a pretty convincing “why” for me – maybe it is for you, too.
Should Christians care for creation? Yes, absolutely. Why? Well – pick your reason. If it’s really a “why,” then it won’t just stay in your head like a prepared answer; it’ll motivate you to act.
In just a moment we’ll confess our sins and ask God to bless these stickers. May they be a reminder of your “why” wherever they land. May they inspire you to love the creation that God loves and will not abandon, to tend the creation God designed us to tend, to live as though all of this really does belong to God.
Amen.
Prone to Wander 
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