Shaking Ground, Holy Ground
The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
August 28, 2011
Shaking Ground, Holy Ground
Exodus 3:1-6
Twenty five seconds, more or less.
That was the duration of Tuesday’s earthquake.
Hardly a blip.
I was sitting at my desk working at my computer
when the shaking began.
By the time I realized it was an earthquake,
it was over.
There was no damage at the church.
At home, some books were knocked off a shelf,
and a couple of pictures were slightly askew.
The pieces of a small nativity I have on an upstairs bookshelf
vibrated off in different directions,
Mary to one side, Joseph to another,
the holy family looking like they’d had a quarrel
and were no longer speaking to one another.
Californians laughed at us,
with our puny 5.8 earthquake.
Still, it captured our attention,
as did the aftershock that woke many of us
in the early morning hours on Thursday.
It captured our attention
because it was something most of us
had never experienced.
We hear the word earthquake
and we think of what we’ve seen on television,
or read in newspapers: massive devastation
like the earthquake that hit Japan last March:
entire villages destroyed, buildings leveled,
death tolls in the thousands,
pictures of utter, complete destruction.
It’s only the big earthquakes that we hear about,
but each year there are well over 500,000 earthquakes
around the world;
most are too small to be felt.
I first experienced an earthquake when I lived in Buffalo
more than 20 years ago.
It was around 6 o’clock one morning.
I was awake, but still in bed
when I felt the bed start to shake;
very gently, but very distinctly.
Then, a few seconds later,
the windows began to rattle in their wooden frames.
Then, everything was quiet and still,
the earthquake come and gone.
Most of Buffalo slept through it.
But that quake, our quake,
every quake we never hear about,
as well as those that stun us with their destructive power
remind us that God didn’t created the earth
with a wave of his hand and then say,
“That’s done, I’ve got the earth created,
finished, complete.
Now, what’s next on my list?”
God created this earth as a living planet,
a planet that is constantly re-creating itself.
If we remember the lessons from
high school earth science classes,
we’ll remember that our continents sit on tectonic plates
that move about the crust of the earth’s surface,
move east, west, north, south
move constantly at the blistering speed
of an inch or two a year.
And as the plates move,
fractures and splits occur, as well as collisions
and the ground shakes.
What are now separate continents was once one large landmass,
a supercontinent scientists call Pangea,
that began to split apart more then 250 million years ago.
For hundreds of millions of years,
the land on which we live has been moving,
moving so slowly we are not even aware of it,
but moving nonetheless,
the continents moving apart as they travel round the globe.
And they will keep moving
until the cycle of movement ends
with the continents all colliding again
like the finale of a county fair demolition derby,
the borders we fight so furiously to keep intact
erased by God’s majestic power.
And then God’s amazing terrestrial quadrille will begin again.
This is the earth God created,
God created in all God’s glory,
magnificent, vital, alive,
changing constantly, always in motion,
created, re-created and re-creating
every moment of every day.
Earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes:
they are all part of the natural world,
all part of what God created in God’s wisdom.
We are forever trying to tame nature,
trying to bring it under our control.
Earthquakes and hurricanes remind us
that we will never tame nature
simply because we cannot.
The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it,
the Psalmist reminds us.
(Psalm24:1)
The earth is the Lord’s, not ours.
We are merely caretakers,
given responsibility, not power,
to care for God’s earth.
Adam was put “in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.”
(Genesis 2:15)
we read in Genesis.
We too are called to “keep” the earth.
When Moses approached the burning bush
and was told, “Remove the sandals from your feet,
for the place on which you are standing is holy ground,”
there was nothing extraordinary about the terrain.
The spot of land on which he stood looked like
the land all around him: rocky, dry, dreary,
hardly a place anyone would have called “paradise”
or “God’s country.”
But still it was holy –
holy not only because of the presence of God,
but because it was God’s.
Almost 100 years ago, the scientist and educator
Liberty Hyde Bailey wrote,
“The earth is divine because man did not make it…
If God created the earth, so is the earth hallowed;
and if it is hallowed,
so must we deal with it devotedly
and with care that we do not despoil it…
We are to consider it religiously;
Put off your shoes from your feet,
for the place where you stand is holy ground.”
(The Holy Earth, 11)
And yet we show such disdain for God’s creation,
filling God’s sky with our poison and filth,
pouring our wastes into God’s rivers, lakes and oceans.
“Business first,” we say.
“Environmental regulations strangle our freedom.
Environmentalism is job-killing,”
favorite phrases of too many politicians.
Such sentiments are doubly troubling:
first because they are unsupportable.
Second, because they are faithless.
Our default should be,
“God first means God’s earth first,
for the land on which the factory sits,
the road is paved,
the mine is dug,
the well is drilled,
the garbage is buried,
is holy ground,
for the earth is the Lord’s.”
Stop at a traffic light and look at the tailpipe of the car in front of you.
You cannot see what is coming out of it,
yet we know, don’t we,
we know that what comes out of the tailpipe is lethal,
so lethal that if you were to sit in an idling car
in a closed space for more than a few minutes
the fumes would kill you.
And yet, every day, a billion – a billion! --
autos, trucks and other vehicles around the globe
fire up their engines and pour that
same invisible, yet oh so lethal poison into God’s sky.
You have heard me say that I am proud to call myself
a tree-hugger because of the one who made the tree.
The term has been used as a sneering, snide epithet
those who are considered for soft-headed, soft-hearted,
people who always stand in the way of progress.
But we men and women of faith
should embrace the term “tree-hugger”,
just as we should embrace the term
and calling of “creation care,”
for they both reflect the lives we are called to
as we stand, walk, work,
play, and live on holy ground.
Twenty years ago the General Assembly
of our Presbyterian Church
called all Presbyterians to embrace the idea of creation care
as elemental to how we live out our faith lives
as children of God and disciples of Jesus Christ.
The statement adopted by our Church reminds us that
“ …restoring creation [is] a central concern of the church,
to be incorporated into its life and mission at every level.
…God's work in creation is too wonderful,
too ancient, too beautiful, too good to be desecrated.”
The statement calls us to be fully engaged with God
in keeping and healing God’s creation,
keeping and healing the creation for our own sakes,
but just as important,
for the generations who will come after us –
our children, and their children, and on and on.
We are to “till and keep”,
not destroy, poison,
or foul the land, the sky, and the waters.
Our response to the call to creation care
has to be more than a lukewarm acceptance of recycling
and a reluctant willingness to change a light bulb here,
use a little less gas there.
It has to be something other than an automatic denial
that our actions and activities could possibly have
a destructive impact on God’s holy creation.
Our mindset has to begin with the reality
that we stand on holy ground;
that the earth is the Lord’s;
that the earth has not been given us,
that we are but tenants,
God the owner.
(Leviticus 25:23)
This means that we should not limit our talk of creation care
to the third Sunday in April
when Earth Day rolls around.
We should embrace the term “creation care”
and live it 24/7, as an intrinsic part of our faith.
In the weeks and months ahead
I am going to look for opportunities
for us to talk more about creation care,
and what it means to be good stewards of God’s earth –
opportunities for us to grow in knowledge and faithfulness
both as a church and as individuals
as we walk God’s holy ground.
I invite you to make suggestions for what we might do
as a church, as a community,
as children of God and disciples of Christ,
to assure that we always treat the earth
as hallowed and holy.
In Paul’s letter to the church at Rome he wrote,
“Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord.”
(Romans 12:9)
Serving the Lord isn’t limited
to serving one another;
it is also serving God’s creation
this magnificent living, moving, unpredictable
and at times even frightening earth.
Serve the Lord with zeal
as you serve this earth,
this holy place, this hallowed place,
this place of awe-inspiring beauty,
and quaking power…
We may experience another earthquake next week,
or we may live in blissful geologic stability for another generation.
The winds and the rains may howl again next month,
or we may experience a beautiful Virginia autumn.
We may stand on shaky ground,
solid ground,
flooded ground, rocky ground,
wind-ravaged ground,
but wherever we stand
the land on which we stand
will always be holy ground,
for “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it.”
AMEN
posted by Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson @ 11:00 AM
