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