Scripture: Matthew 6:25-34
If I were in charge of finding someone to speak on Earth Day themes on Earth Day Sunday, I would not choose me. And if I were to sit down all by myself to think about what I was going to preach about on April 21, even knowing that April 22 is Earth Day, I would probably find something else to preach about.
However, I didn’t sit down all by myself to think about the service today. I sat down with Dottie Thomas, my planning partner for the morning, and Dottie has an interest in flowers and gardening, and an appreciation for the beauty of Charlottesville at this time of year, and she wondered if we couldn’t bring some of that natural habitat into worship this Sunday, invite people to bring locally grown flowers, and then share what brightened up our service with others by distributing the flowers to various places after worship is over. I thought that sounded like a good idea, and as it turned out we happened to be talking about Earth Day Sunday, so it all seemed to fit together—except that as a result here I am up here preaching on Earth Day Sunday, considering the lilies, if you will, even though I am a most unlikely lily considerer.
Don’t get me wrong. If Gallup polled me (not David Gallup but George) on my opinions about a whole bunch of environmental issues, I would probably come out pretty “green”. It’s just that—well, I’m pretty much of a city boy. I have always lived in cities. I have loved cities for all the different things they have to offer and even more for all the different people who live there. I have been most concerned all my life about issues that I think of as urban issues, and although sometimes those issues might overlap with environmental concerns, I have not usually thought of them that way. And when anti-urban feelings get expressed either in personal attitudes or political policies, I have often felt that what people didn’t like about the city was precisely what I did and do, the diversity of people. What some people are hostile to is not just the idea of the city but the people who live there.
I have felt myself to be an advocate for cities pretty much all of my life, and I am aware that cities make an enormously large footprint in the environment, and so even though I’m in favor of less roads and smaller cars and more public transportation and clean air and clean water and as little oil drilling as possible, I don’t think of myself as an environmentalist. I don’t even like the outdoors very much. I like looking at the mountains a lot more than being in the mountains for any long period of time. I like to walk on the beach as long as there are beds and bathrooms nearby. And I am afraid of flowers, not because I’m afraid they will hurt me, of course, but because I’m afraid I will hurt them—by looking at them or getting too close to them. I tend to have a bad effect on plant life entrusted to my care. I really don’t consider myself an environmentalist. I share many values with people who may think of themselves that way, but I don’t think of myself that way.
So it’s probably good for me to commit myself to saying something in connection with flowers and Earth Day. And actually what occurs to me as something I might say is that it’s probably good for all of us to observe Earth Day, not first of all by addressing earth issues, but by not addressing earth issues, or any other kind of issues, at least for a few minutes or at least with a part of us, not to address anything with an eye to making the world better but to remind ourselves of the need and the rightness of simply appreciating what is. Not just appreciating, but standing in wonder before what is. Being filled with the mystery of what is.
“Consider the lilies of the field”, Jesus said. I don’t think he meant here, “consider the lilies as to whether the air is good for them and what you can do about it or whether the soil is contaminated and what you can do about it and whether there are chemicals being used to help grow crops in the field next door and what you can do about it.” He meant, as I read this passage, just consider the lilies. Not to analyze their situation and develop a strategic plan to make it better but just…consider. Some have suggested that a good synonym for what I’m talking about here is “behold”. Behold the lilies. Which is different from mere seeing, much different from just noticing, way different from examining or studying.
Consider the lilies of the filed. Behold the lilies of the field. They didn’t worry themselves into existence. You didn’t worry them into existence. This is a teaching about worry, anxiety. It’s in the immediate context of worry about money, material provisions, what will be enough, and so forth. In a sense it’s about worrying about improving one’s own situation in the world. But you could extend this to be a teaching about worrying about improving anyone’s situation in the world, or anything’s. Step back, Jesus may be saying. Let go of those lilies, in the same way of letting go of one’s self. Stop trying to manipulate them or improve them. Just consider them. Behold them. Receive them as a gift. They neither toil nor spin. And it would be o.k. if you left off your toiling and spinning for at least a few moments and just let yourselves behold.
One of the things I have found important for me here at Sojourners is the implicit commitment I believe we have made with each other not to deny the brokenness that we see around us or find within us, not to deny it in worship, not to deny it in any other part of our lives, and to do what we can to mend, to heal, to reconcile, and that regardless of how far we may fall short in those areas—as people always do—that this is what gives depth and identity to who we are as a congregation.
We acknowledge that there may be a certain brokenness in the fabric of faith for each of us. We acknowledge that there may be ruptures in our relationships with God. We will not just pretend that we all have at all times, or surely ought to have, constant, warm, personal, rewarding relationships with God.
We acknowledge, with compassion toward ourselves and others, that there are places of brokenness within us and that this is not a sign of weakness or a lack of faith or of spiritual deficiency of any kind. We acknowledge the brokenness of our world that is continuous with our own brokenness and which is not simply the result of other people refusing to see the error of their ways and the rightness of ours. We acknowledge our calling to be primarily one of tending to the brokenness of the world, doing our finite best to mend the brokenness, not to find a way to be “raptured” out of the mess that surrounds us, not to be transported by faith into some other realm where we enjoy a joy and a peace reserved only for us.
This willingness to acknowledge the brokenness without and within is in no way unique to Sojourners, but it is, as I have experienced us, an important part of who we are. And I am extremely grateful for it. But just because our commitment in this regard is so firm, it is good to sometimes set aside time, and to set aside some parts of ourselves to acknowledge not only the world’s brokenness but the world’s loveliness. Not that we never do this, of course. But we are people, many of us are, who are intent on improving things, changing things, reforming things—improving, changing, reforming ourselves and our world around us. Toiling and spinning, inside the church and outside the church, trying to make ourselves better, and the world better. But beyond the striving, apart from the striving, is the world that is given to us as a gift, including ourselves, who don’t really need to be improved any more than those lilies do.
Except, of course, that we do—need improvement, that is. And so does the world. And so both truths need to be held simultaneously. This is one of those things you find so often in religious life where two apparently opposite things are both true at the same time. Muriel Wiggins was kind enough recently to lend me some tapes she had of the shows Bill Moyers did for PBS with Joseph Campbell, the man who did so much work in the area of religious mythology. In one of the tapes Campbell was making the point that from some religious perspectives things just are and they are infused with holiness, or with God, but the relationship is not one of trying to figure out what use something is or to designate it as good or bad, pretty or ugly, or even to ask what meaning it has. You don’t, he pointed out, ask what meaning a flower has. The religious perspective he was trying to communicate had to do with simply appreciating that it is, and that anything is, and sensing that somehow God is present in it, and that God is present in everything, not just a few things that we see as especially wonderful but in everything.
Meanwhile, Bill Moyers, who the camera turned on every so often, was beginning to squirm a little and looking quizzical and skeptical, which was how I was feeling too. And when Moyers finally asked his question, it was the question I wanted to ask as well. It was to the effect: So, are we supposed to just sit back and sigh at the wonder of it all and stop trying to make the world better and stop trying to fight the good fight—whatever it is—and say yes to everything.
And of course the answer is: Yes…and No. The answer is yes, we are summoned from somewhere deep within the nature of things, from the heart of creation we are summoned to let go of all the straining and striving of our lives so that we may be free simply to delight in what is. At the same time we are also called not to give up the fight, not to let go of our straining and striving toward something better than what is. How we do both of those things at the same time, I cannot say, because I don’t know. I only know that I hear both things said to me and feel both claims being made on me. And it’s not just that it’s sometimes the one and sometimes the other, or that there’s this one part of me that is set aside for wonder and this other part of me that is to be devoted to moral struggle. It’s that both claims are made on the whole of me at all times. The life of faith is often a paradox.
In this case I think there is a way for the two sides of the paradox to be held together. It occurs to me that much of what we delight in, much of what God delights in, is fragile. Creation, which includes us, is not something so much that we try to improve but something we do need to tend, like a garden. What we delight in, what God delights in, does require something of us—not our ability to control and use and manipulate and invade and improve, but our attention and nurture and care. Whether we’re talking about lilies or people, we begin, maybe, with delight. And we end with delight. In between we do our share of toiling and spinning in the hope, not that we may engage in some vast human building project on the face of the earth, but that we may increase our capacity for delight in God’s world and God’s people, and indeed that we may move toward losing ourselves in wonder, and in God. Amen.
Jim Bundy
April 21, 2002