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[Silence] The following message is preached by Reverend Dr. Bruce Wheeler Thielman. His sermon is entitled "Of Nature, Humankind, and God." [Silence]

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The scripture reading of the morning is from the first book of Moses, commonly called Genesis. I begin at chapter one with the verse numbered one. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep,

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and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters. And God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light. And God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day and the darkness he called night.

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And there was evening and there was morning one day. And God said, 'Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.' And God made the firmament and separated the waters which were under the firmament

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from the waters which were above the firmament, and it was so. And God called the firmament heaven, and there was evening and there was morning a second day. And God said, 'Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear,' and it was so.

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God called the dry land earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called seas. And God saw that it was good. And God said, 'Let the earth put forth vegetation, plants yielding seeds, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind upon the earth.'

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And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.

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And there was evening and there was morning a third day. And God said, 'Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years. And let them be lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light upon the earth.'

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And it was so. And God made the two great lights, the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night. He made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light upon the earth,

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to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning a fourth day. And God said, 'Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures,

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and let birds fly above the earth across the firmament of the heavens.' And so God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind.

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And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, 'Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.' And there was evening and there was morning a fifth day.

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And God said, 'Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds, cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.' And it was so. And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds,

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and the cattle according to their kinds, and everything that creeps upon the earth according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness,

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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 earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.' So God created man in his own image.

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In the image of God he created him, male and female he created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.'

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And God said, 'Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air,

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and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.' And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.

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And there was evening, and there was morning a sixth day. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work which he had done. And he rested on the seventh day from all of his work which he had done.

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So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all his work which he had done in creation. And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his word. Pray with me.

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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. On this Earth Day in the year of our Lord, 1990, I would ask you to think with me about how the God

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who made nature and humankind expects them both to get along with him and with each other. Our source for our study will of course be the book of beginnings, the book of Genesis. And the first thing that we discover there is this. The Bible says that God creates, that he is the supreme craftsman of everything that is.

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As you study the early verses of scripture, it becomes very clear that God is the only actor. He derives no help from any outside source. Now we as humankind often congratulate ourselves on the ingenuity of our technological advances. But the Bible says that had God not made and sustained all things,

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humankind would be unable to manufacture anything. The scriptures say that humankind is not in any way self-sufficient. Some time ago I had the opportunity to visit Epcot, that great Disney extravaganza in Orlando, Florida.

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And as you enter, you pass under a model of the globe which is 11 stories high. And it is called Spaceship Earth. And gathered around that globe are displays by some of our greatest companies. Bell Industries, Kodak, General Motors, General Electric, Exxon, Kraft, a great number of them.

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And I will say to you without any hesitation that I enjoyed my time at Epcot very much. And yet, the whole time I was there, there was a certain uncomfortableness in me. And it all started when I walked beneath that globe called Spaceship Earth. Calling it a spaceship implies in some way that we made it.

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Of course, we've always done that, you know. When we invent things, we give them very grandiose names. The first turboprop airplane we called a constellation, as if it was as great as one of those figures written out in stars.

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We call our tall buildings skyscrapers, though they do not touch the sky. Our automobile manufacturers produce Broncos and Cougars and Lynx and Eagles and Colts. Yet actually, no man is able to make any of these things. And in fact, we are destroying most of them.

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We even have one company that has produced a car which they call Taurus, named after one of the great constellations in the heavens. Imagine that. Naming something that we have made after one of those great gems of space which sprawl across the universe, spangling the night with their color.

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Wider, deeper, longer in light years than even Avogadro's number. We even call our bathroom cleanser Comet. And it all implies that somehow we create and control these things, that they are the apex of our efforts.

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But the fact is that they are nothing compared to what God has made. We must come before him in honesty, in humility, in reverence, and in praise. When I was flying back from that trip to Epcot, our plane got caught in some turbulence, and we started to bounce around like a kite between clouds on a March day.

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And the coffee cups were flying and the stewardesses were running for their seats. And as we were being knocked about by this playful wind of God, I thought to myself of God's words to Job. Do you remember how they're recorded in the 38th chapter of that book?

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Brace yourself like a man, and I will question you, and you shall answer me. Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? Tell me if you understand who marked off its dimension. Surely you know.

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Well, in our hearts of hearts, surely we do know. These things were not made by humankind. They were made by God. The psalmist sums it, "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof.

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It is he that hath made it, and not we ourselves." Now, the second thing that Genesis teaches us is that God not only creates, but that everything he creates is good. I was reading a book by Sir Alan Walker,

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and in this book he tells of an experience in South Africa. They were having problems with hippopotami, who constituted water hazards for pleasure boats. And so the word went out that the hippopotami could be shot on sight,

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and hundreds of them were killed. And after the hippopotami were gone, the silt in the rivers and the waterways began to accumulate, and the flow of the water slowed down.

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And waters which before had been moving became stagnant, and malaria came to areas where it had never been before. And a small but deadly snail took up residence in those steaded waters and infected with disease many of the people who lived near those places.

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You see, those hippopotami were nature's dredges. They kept the channels clear. Now, that is a kind of parable to me of what is said in Proverbs 16. "The Lord has made everything for its purpose."

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We picked up the same idea in the words from Genesis, which we read a few moments ago. "God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good." It's only at our peril that we shoot anything on sight.

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If you study the ancient religions of the world that existed at the same time as our Hebrew ancestors were coming to know their faith, you will find that in every single one of those religions except Judaism, there is a fear and a terror before nature.

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But you find none of this in the scriptures. For the Hebrews, for our spiritual ancestors, speak of nature as being good. In just the early books of the Bible, there are more than a hundred references about the goodness of the world of nature.

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Having gotten out of the hospital a few weeks ago, I was sitting out on a little lawn beside the condominium where I live. And it was a beautiful day. The sunshine made me feel grand. And the daffodils were quivering against the April breezes.

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And little robins hopped by with their feathers all puffed up to keep them warm. And a couple sparrows came by and berated me for being there. And I even saw a little chipmunk who stretched as if he was waking up from his winter's nap. And it all spoke to me of the perfection of God's creation.

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And I remembered those words that St. Francis wrote a long time ago. "How sweet the understanding that I am no longer alone, but part of an immense life, generous and resplendent about me." As the children of God, we are called upon to recognize

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the goodness of everything that God has made. After all, Jesus says that God treasures it so much that not a sparrow falls to the ground without his taking note of it. Now, the third lesson we derive from Genesis about nature, humankind, and God is this.

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God creates, and all he creates is good, and God is very concerned that his creation be in a proper relationship to him and to itself. Now, just one way in which this is demonstrated in the early chapters of Genesis is the Garden of Eden. It symbolizes the perfection of creation.

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Out of the earth of Eden comes Adam, the first man. Adam comes from the Hebrew word "adama," which means "earth." He was brought forth out of the dust of the ground. The human came out of the humus.

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That's how close we are to nature. And then it says that God filled the garden with trees and vegetables which were pleasant to the eyes and good for food. Nature is to support humankind.

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But it also says that humankind has a responsibility in the garden, for it says that Adam and Eve are to till the garden and to keep it. That's their responsibility toward nature. They also name the animals.

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And in Hebrew thought, to name something is to take responsibility for it. That is to be, you see, a cooperation between humankind and nature, which reminds me of Jim and Jack. Jim and Jack were friends.

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Jim worked on the railroad, and one day in a tragic accident, both of his legs were severed from his body. The railroad company did what it could for him. It gave him a job at a very remote station about 150 miles from any center of civilization,

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right on the railroad track. And he lived in a little cottage there, and he had a cart in which he could ride. And twice each day he had to go out and change some major switches there to direct and redirect the train.

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Well, Jack went along with his friend Jim when Jim went to take this job, and Jack would take care of the cottage, and Jack drew the water, and Jack also took care of the vegetable garden. As Jim got older, it became harder and harder for him to wheel himself out to those switches,

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which were a couple of hundred yards from the cottage. And so Jack took over that job, too. Twice a day he would go out and change the switches, and occasionally he would have to carry a great iron key,

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which he would give to the conductor of the train, which would stop, and at a later point that key would be used to change the track so that the train would go in the right direction. By this time, Jack was doing almost everything,

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taking care of the cottage and the water and the vegetable garden and the signals and the switches and the key. And he did all of that for nine years. And in nine years, he never made a single mistake,

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never pushed the wrong switch at the wrong time, never failed to have the key where the key was needed and supposed to be. But at the end of that nine years, Jack developed tuberculosis and died. And if you go to Cape Colony in South Africa today,

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you will find very near the cottage in which Jim and Jack lived, Jack's grave. A beautiful stone stands above it. People go to see it because as far as anyone knows, that's the only gravestone that's ever been raised in all of history for a baboon.

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Jack was a baboon who never missed the switch, never missed the key, took on all of those duties. Cooperation, you see, between humankind and nature. It's true, the Bible teaches, that man is made in the image of God.

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What does that mean? Well, it means, among other things, this. In those days, kings owned great sections of land. And because they could not travel over their entire realms, they would erect statues of themselves in remote places, their images.

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And when the people who lived there would see the image, even though they were far from the capital city, they would know that this ground on which they walked belonged to the king. So when it says that humankind is made in the image of God,

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it means that humankind is to represent God in creation, to show that it is His. In Genesis, it says humankind is to have dominion over nature. But this dominion is never unrestrained.

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Humankind is never given permission to abuse nature. In the fourth commandment, it doesn't say that only humankind shall rest on the Sabbath day. It says to rest your ox and your ass also. Or in Exodus 23, it says that every seven years, the land is to be rested.

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It is to be allowed to lie fallow. Or in Deuteronomy chapter 20, there's a very interesting reference in which God tells the Israelites how to take a city, but then He says to them, "As you besiege the city, do not touch the trees that surround it.

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You may eat the fruit of them, but you may not lay an axe to them." You see, what is being said is that insofar as the relationship between humankind and nature is concerned, humankind has been put in the driver's seat, but God establishes the rules of the road.

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And the relationship between humankind and nature is to be a metaphysical and a moral relationship. Yes, there is dignity in humanity, but that dignity does not entitle humanity to destroy the world of nature. Yet a few weeks ago, I saw photographs of dogs with their hindquarters being crushed in what are called "Blaycock presses."

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And these crushings take place to determine how fluids accumulate in crushed flesh. And I saw pictures of baboons on whom open-heart surgery was being performed without the benefit of anesthesia. And I saw pictures of rabbits in stalks held so that they could not move their heads, and foul products were put into their eyes.

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This is called the "Drys-A test" in order to determine what ingredients in cosmetics might cause the eyes to ulcerate. Now, the interesting thing about these tests is that every one of the bits of knowledge being derived from them could be found in other ways.

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In fact, many say that these particular tests produce results which are almost invalid. But they're cheap and they're quick, and they get the product to the marketplace quickly. Yet there's no justification for anything like this in God's Word. It speaks of harmony. It speaks of peaceful sharing.

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It speaks of mutual respect, till all of creation is redeemed. And remember that. The Bible doesn't say that humankind alone will be redeemed. It says that all of creation will be redeemed.

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In fact, sometimes in the New Testament, the word "redemption" is substituted for by two synonymous words. "New Creation." Listen to what Paul writes to the Romans. "The creation itself will be set free from decay."

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Or listen to what he writes to the Colossians. "God, through Christ, has reconciled all things to Himself, whether they are on earth or in heaven." We need to gain the principle of the neighborhood again. You know the word "neighborhood" comes from the word "ni."

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People who are "ni" to you are your neighbors. The word has taken on connotations that are spatial and ideological and temporal. But when Jesus spoke about the neighbor, he deliberately chose as his example a Samaritan. Someone who did not live nearby.

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Someone who did not share the same ideas. Someone who was altogether different from the Jews. Jesus' concept of the neighborhood extends beyond the spatial and the ideological and even the temporal. So when we build our chimneys very, very high, so that the smoke produced by them will produce acid rain that falls on our Canadian brothers and sisters,

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we're profaning our neighbors. Or when we have such a demand for cheap beef in this country, that Central American countries cut down hundreds of thousands of acres of their natural rainforest, driving the people who lived in those forests and have lived there for generations into poverty in big city ghettos, and affecting the whole environment, the balance of carbon dioxide in our air, by cutting down those trees.

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Or when we use the resources of the globe at such a speed now, that our children are going to have significantly less of them. When we do not hesitate to mortgage their future, or to force posterity to submit to our desires, well, we are sinning against our neighbors. For our children are our neighbors. The scope of the neighborhood in the Scriptures is global.

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And it is beyond any one generation. It includes all generations. We are called, you see, by God's Word, written, commanded by Him, to live with one another as humankind in nature, and to live with Him in a relationship of sharing and of peace. You know, the first right of all living things is to be left in peace.

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And that means that we can go to the woods if we need wood to burn or to build, but we may never desecrate the woods. We may go to the seas and take from them the fruit of the seas, the fish that dwell there, in order to feed our bodies. That's right and proper according to Scripture, but we are not to defile them. We may use nature to serve us. That is part of the cooperative relationship between humankind and nature.

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But that's a two-way street. We may never have contempt for nature. And if we don't pay attention to this Word of God and obey it, then we are going to subject ourselves to immediate judgment. For we will kill off the animal kingdom, and we will pollute our air, and we will foul our food, and we will poison our water.

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It seems to me that what we need to do is to spend some time in the backyard looking at the stars, or watch a beetle scramble across a leaf, or sit and dream a while when you see a firefly floating at night above a field of August wheat. Focus on the beauties of what God has made and on being in relationship with it and having it in relationship with you. Obey God. That's what we're called to do. Obey God.

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Recall that solemn covenant which He made centuries ago when He said, "This is the sign of the covenant which I make between Me and you and every living creature that is with you for all future generations," He said. "I set My rainbow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between Me and all the earth." Let us pray.

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O God, on this Earth Day, make us mindful of the treasures with which Thou has surrounded us in the beauties of the natural world, and of the treasures Thou has hidden in us by giving us dominion over them, and grant that we might be faithful to Thy Word, enjoying those things which Thou has given, but never abusing them, so that the whole creation might be redeemed in and through Jesus Christ, by whose power, spirit, and promise we lift our prayer.

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Amen.