Blogging Toward Sunday, May 1, 2016

Fifth Sunday of Easter

Ordinary: God's Ecosystem

Hosea 14: 4 -8

I will heal their disloyalty;
    I will love them freely,
    for my anger has turned from them.
5 I will be like the dew to Israel;
    he shall blossom like the lily,
    he shall strike root like the forests of Lebanon.[a]
6 His shoots shall spread out;
    his beauty shall be like the olive tree,
    and his fragrance like that of Lebanon.
7 They shall again live beneath my[b] shadow,
    they shall flourish as a garden;[c]
they shall blossom like the vine,
    their fragrance shall be like the wine of Lebanon.

8 O Ephraim, what have I[d] to do with idols?
    It is I who answer and look after you.[e]
I am like an evergreen cypress;
    your faithfulness[f] comes from me.

Hello fellow "Peaceniks." Tom Wilkinson here, temporarily doffing my hat as Vice President of the Florida United Methodist Foundation and happily donning the hat of clergy spouse and collaborator with Pastor LeeAnn as we look forward to this Sunday, the culmination of our series on the "Ordinary," focusing on the book of the same title, subtitled "Sustainable faith in a radical, restless world," by Michael Horton.

Like many of you, I came of age in the 1960's and 1970's. Those years saw the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, the clean water act, the clean air act, all occurring on the improbable watch of President Richard Nixon, who some pundits like to call our "last liberal president." Notwithstanding his well-documented faults, he did get some good things done. A story of redemption, or almost redemption.

I grew up in the Midwest, and lived next to a farm field that was alternately planted in corn, soybeans or wheat, depending on the year and the season. I was a member of my church's 4-H club, and entered tomatoes, corn and green beans in the Shelby County Fair each summer.

As a high school grad of the class of 1974 in Shelbyville, Indiana, I was deeply influenced by those environmental events. I went off to school at Purdue University, where I majored in environmental engineering as an undergraduate and went on to graduate degrees in public policy and agricultural economics. So the metaphor of our earth, our planet, as God's ecosystem, God's garden, has particular relevance to me.

Which brings us to this week.

The old testament prophet Hosea cast a vision of a utopian tomorrow, where God is the refreshing dew to Israel, a lily blossom, the shade of an olive tree, the fragrance of the cedars of Lebanon, a flourishing garden. Eden? But that future vision comes with a caveat - God, who has given us "dominion" over the earth (see Genesis 1), calls us to be faithful, responsible stewards of God's creation. And if we fail at that, the consequences can be devastating. That utopian future can wither away if we don't pay attention to it.

This Sunday we will fast-forward our calendars a hundred years and consider a future state when we, humanity, have to deal with the consequences of our human-made choices, short-sighted, self-protecting, temporal, expedient.

Our children and our grandchildren are watching us. May we learn from the ancient prophet Hosea, and take heed.

 

See you in church,

Pastor LeeAnn and Tom Wilkinson