Sermon: “To Work and To Keep”
September 13, 2020 Rev. Betsy Perkins
Scripture passage: Genesis 2-3 First Baptist Church, Delavan WI
A big basket of home-grown produce is certainly part of God’s amazing grace! This is special time of year, when gardens are producing delicious tomatoes, zucchini, beans, corn. Crops are starting to be harvested. We are so blessed to see the bounty of the earth here in Wisconsin! Yet in some places it’s so hot that fires are raging, so dry that crops have withered, or locusts have eaten them, or storms have flattened them.
Made of Ground and God
I love the imagery of this second creation story in Genesis, the image of God scooping up some dirt, some adamah in Hebrew. It means the fertile topsoil, the humus, that dark, rich earth that is perfect for gardens beds. God formed this adamah into an adam – it’s a word play in Hebrew, like forming the humus into a human. Then God breathed the breath of life into the man’s nostrils and he became a living creature.
If you were to trace your family tree all the way back, the two ancestors at the top of the tree are Father God and Mother Earth. We each contain within us the breath of the divine, but lest we become arrogant or think too highly of ourselves, we are also told that we were made from dirt. The minerals and elements that our bodies share with all creation, should keep us humble. That is the reminder we hear on Ash Wednesday: “For dust you are, and to dust you shall return.”(Gen.3:19) Or the reminder at a graveside service: “earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” Yet most days we prefer to shut out the message of our kinship to the soil. We’d rather listen to the message of Psalm 8 that says, “You, O Lord, have made human beings a little lower than the angels, and crowned them with glory and honor.” But we need the earthy reminders for the enticement of the snake was precisely for humans to overreach, to be like God.
To Work and To Keep
The Lord God had a particular purpose in mind for creating humans from humus. Humans were created to fulfill a special role. Genesis 2:5 explains that initially something was missing in creation: there is no adam to work the adamah, no human to work the humus, no gardeners for the garden. Which points then to the task God gives humans in Genesis 2:15, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.” What does it mean to work it and to keep it?
In this context, these words are generally understood as agricultural terms but when you take a look at those words in Hebrew, rarely do they having anything to do with farming. More often those words are used in talking about relationships – relationships between people, and the relationship between God and humanity. That’s interesting because it seems to imply that God’s intention was for us to be in relationship with the earth, in relationship with the soil on which the life of all living creatures depends.
First, the human is to work it. The Hebrew word here is avad, and in various English versions it is translated using words like to ‘till’, to ‘cultivate’, to ‘tend’, to ‘farm’, to ‘work the ground’. Yet the word avad is more about working for someone or something. It’s used to talk about a slave or servant working for a master; it means to ‘serve’. In the story of the Exodus, God directs Moses to tell Pharaoh, “Let my people go, that they may avad me!” In the relationship between God’s people and God, the word to ‘serve’, is about worshipping God. Of course we are not to worship the ground, but the idea here is that humans are not to just force the ground to produce things as if they are the master and the garden plot is the slave. Rather, humans are to serve the earth, working it in a way that honors the soil from which our sustenance comes.
Second, humans are to keep it. The Hebrew word is shamar. It is translated into English as to ‘care for’, to ‘watch over’, to ‘guard’, to ‘protect’, to ‘keep’. It’s the word that is used in the priestly blessing of Numbers 6, “The Lord bless you and keep you.” Also in Psalm 121 “The Lord watches over you (shamars you); the Lord will watch over your coming and going, both now and forevermore.” It is also about being obedient. The Israelites are told to keep, to shamar, God’s commands (Ex.20:6). It indicates a sense of responsibility toward the earth, similar to what we ask God to do for us, watch over us, guard and protect us. It also indicates a sense of obedience, of doing things as God commands, in the way of love and respect.
So the two together, to work it and to keep it, seem to indicate that our relationship to the earth is to be one in which we seek the best for the land, care for its needs, its requirements, remembering that we are dependent on it. I like the way Ellen Davis expresses it in her book Getting Involved With God: “The soil is more like a relative than resource: it is to be respected, and not just used.” (p.190)
Defiance/Disobedience
Then comes the moment of crisis in the Genesis story: the humans fail to keep God’s command concerning one of the trees of the garden. The reach into that tree to pick its fruit was an overreach. Instead of respect for limits, there was greed. Rather than being content with enough, there was a desire for more. That defiance, that overreach, has characterized the broken relationship of humans with God, and also the relationship between humans and the earth. Our ecological crisis is rooted in a spiritual crisis, in a disordered relationship with our Creator and with His creation. So as we truly seek to understand from the Bible what our relationship with the earth was intended to be, we recognize the ways in which we have failed to serve it and to guard it.
The current tragedy of the COVID-19 pandemic is a symptom of human overreach. Coronaviruses are animal viruses, and the SARS-CoV-2 is the 7th one to cross over to infect humans. Crossover happens when humans push into animal habitats or bring animals in human habitats. Humans have done this with wildlife trade, capturing animals and profiting from them – like the wet markets in China, or poachers in Africa. We have encroached more and more into territory that was pristine forest or grassland, as human populations grow and developers build. I read an article this week about people in Fukushima, Japan having to use firecrackers to get monkeys to stay away from their homes and gardens. I remember the same concern when we lived in India, concern for disease being brought in by monkeys that roamed through the school campus at times. The covid-19 virus has inflicted unimaginable suffering and losses, and unless we make changes, we will face a future of pandemics from viruses crossing to us from wildlife.
Of course it’s not just Asia and Africa, we have our own practices that threaten human life with disease. This summer saw a big increase in salmonella outbreaks. One particular strain of salmonella that sickened over 1000 people across 48 states in July was linked to backyard poultry and the proximity of backyard chicken coops to people’s daily life. As some farms push to produce more and more, animals are packed into smaller spaces. That kind of overproduction has led to more disease among the animals and more passed on to humans. We’ve responded by feeding animals antibiotics, which has led to more antibiotic resistance, which has led to even more virulent strains of disease.
Symptoms of human overreach and human greed pushing beyond what is sustainable is seen in many ways. When we lived in the Verde Valley in Arizona all the water had to be specially filtered because large scale mining in the area had contaminated the all the ground water with arsenic. We know that human activity, the burning of fossil fuels, travel, manufacturing, is contributing to the warming of earth’s climate. Warmer ocean temperatures are driving stronger storms, like Hurricane Sarah that ramped up so quickly in the Gulf of Mexico to hit Louisiana with such force, causing so much devastation. Warmer, drier climate is driving the fires out west. In California, the 5 worst fire seasons have all been in the last 15 years. This year is unprecedented: over 2.5 million acres already burned, a half million more acres than in all of 2018 which had set a record. It is not even the peak of fire season yet!
Some, especially some Christians, seek to argue with the science, as if somehow science and faith are at odds. But God created science; God is the original scientist. Human scientists are simply studying the world God created. And when we truly listen to the earth and to creation, with humility and with love, we can understand how to best serve the earth and how to best keep it, to guard it and protect it.
Mercy/Grace
In the Genesis story God tells the humans that “the day that you eat of it, of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall surely die.” And yet on that day that they ate it they did not die. Yes, death entered into their lives and decay entered creation, but so did God’s mercy and grace. Rather than striking them dead, God stitched clothes for them. Listen to Genesis 3:21-23: “God made leather clothing for Adam and his wife. God said, ‘The man has become like one of us, capable of knowing everything, ranging from good to evil. What if he now should overreach again and take fruit from the Tree of Life and eat, and live forever?’ So God expelled them from the Garden of Eden and sent them to work the ground, the same dirt out of which they’d been made.” God gave humans another chance.
The 2020 Living Planet Report describes the consequences of habitat destruction, of overfishing, overhunting, overproducing, of pollution and the loss of biodiversity, and then it concludes, that the continued human abuse of the planet may lead to the collapse of the very natural systems and natural resources that allow human civilization to persist.
Yet each day God gives us another chance. Each day we have another opportunity to choose to live in line with our calling to serve the earth and to guard it. With humility rather than arrogance, we can learn what the earth needs and what is damaging it. We can pull back our overreach, learn to be content with enough, not always needing more and more. As many of you already do, we can grow some of our own food and buy from local gardens and farms. We can reduce our waste, reuse, recycle. We can turn off lights and take reusable bags to the grocery store. We can walk more and drive less.
I realize that these small actions won’t necessarily change the world, but small actions, even simply symbolic actions, change our hearts and minds and can change the hearts and minds of others. As Christians we recognize the power of symbolic actions such as baptism and communion. So let us nourish our bodies with that of which we are made. We are made of water, so we constantly need to drink water. We are made of the earth, so we fill ourselves with food that is as close to natural as possible. We are made of the breath of God, so we fill ourselves with God’s Spirit through worship and prayer. The story of Genesis calls us back to living in the way of honoring the earth, in the way of honoring God our Creator. Our lives depend on it!
Add Your Comment