Care for Creation Commentary on the Common Lectionary
by Leah D. Schade
The Isaiah text and Psalm 29 for
Trinity Sunday contain strong, masculine images of a king seated on his throne
above Creation, exercising his power in magnificent, yet frightening ways. God speaks and the voice is like thunder over
the waters, resonating with enough force to break trees and send entire countries
running like scared young animals. The
personification of the deity as a mighty ruler whose power flashes like
lightning and whips up catastrophic storms on a whim is common across many
religions. Yet in light of earthquakes,
typhoons, hurricanes, and other natural events that can shatter lives,
communities, and nearly entire countries, we must be careful not to attribute
such occurrences to a capricious deity who appears to arbitrarily wreak havoc
on Earth. If this is who our Triune God
is and what this Abba/Father does, our awe may turn to abject fear, and there
may be little reason to trust and love such a God.
A
better way to explore the concept of the Trinity is provided by theologian Elizabeth
Johnson, who, in her authoritative and preeminent work She Who Is, seeks to appreciatively uncover, recover and assess
those classic theological resources that may fund a feminist theology (Elizabeth
A. Johnson, She Who Is: The Mystery of
God in Feminist Theological Discourse, New York: Crossroad, 1992). For example, she draws on the Cappadocian
Fathers’ idea of the perichoresis, or
mutual in-dwelling of the persons of the Trinity, to describe a three-way
partnership that is fully relational with each other and with the world.
At
the same time, she is not hesitant to point out the way our forefathers in
theology created a religious system that inscribes patriarchy into all aspects
of the faith. Drawing on the work of Elisabeth
Schüssler-Fiorenza, Sallie McFague and Rosemary Radford Ruether, Johnson
recognizes the importance of language to both name and create reality. She
beckons us to expand our images of the Trinity and offers us new ways to
understand our triune God’s relationship to humanity and nature. She
insists that Sophia, the female personification of Holy Wisdom, can and should
be the lens through which the Trinity is viewed, as well as the language
through which we speak and hear about God.
Thus she coins the terms Spirit-Sophia, Jesus-Sophia and Mother-Sophia as an alternative
Trinitarian formulation which places Wisdom/Sophia as the primary metaphor.
According
to Johnson, the Church is the most obvious candidate for modeling what it means
to answer Wisdom’s call to undergo transformative attention to those most
vulnerable, including the species, habitats, and human beings most threatened
by oppression, and to take responsibility for the health and respectful
treatment of all Creation. As Johnson
describes:
Alive in the koinonia
of SHE WHO IS, women and men are called to be friends of God and prophets, that
is, appreciators of her wonders, sympathizers with her resistance to whatever
degrades beloved creation, companions to her passion for the world's
flourishing, starting with the nearest neighbor in need and extending to the
farthest flung system by which we order, or disorder, our common life. (She Who Is, 244).
Johnson also suggests that Jesus reimaged as Jesus-Sophia
can
be understood as Wisdom incarnate, thus joining him with the Hebrew feminine
images of shekinah and
ruah. Seeing a
connection between the Greek masculine logos,
or Word of God, and Hebrew shekinah/ruah,
or Spirit of God, she argues for the recovery of the feminine Sophia in
order to counterbalance the preponderance of male imagery so often associated
with the Trinity. This is an especially
poignant insight when considering John’s Gospel, which is replete with
references to the logos, while often
presenting Jesus as a Wisdom figure along the lines of Lady Sophia from
Proverbs.
So if the “voice” of the Triune God
is more than a masculine roar triggering cataclysmic events, how might we
recalibrate our hermeneutic for hearing the “voice” of SHE WHO IS, Spirit-Sophia, Jesus-Sophia and Mother-Sophia?
One way is to remind listeners that if we listen to the voice of
Jesus-Sophia, we will clearly hear that God is not intent on inflicting pain
and suffering on Creation, inclusive of humanity. How do we know this? Because, as Jesus-Sophia clearly stated, “God
so loved the world,” (John 3:16, emphasis added). The Greek word here is cosmos – meaning not just the human “world,” but all of
Creation. Thus God is not intending to
destroy that which God loves. Nor does
God intend for humans to destroy what God loves. Rather, God intends to redeem all of
Creation, which serves as a model for humans to care for what God loves as well.
At
this point, the sermon might invoke the image of the searing, yet cleansing,
heat from the fiery ember placed on the prophet Isaiah’s tongue. We know our own lips are unclean and that we
live among a people of unclean lips, especially regarding the realities of
environmental devastation. The successful attempts to either “spin” the truth
about the dangers of extreme energy extraction, cover up or minimize the horror
of the damage, or tell outright lies about the science of climate change
illustrate the ways in which we live in a time of manufactured realities
peddled by the “Merchants of Doubt” (referring to both the book and documentary
by Naomi Oreskes [see http://www.merchantsofdoubt.org/].[1]
In the face of such deception, we hear the voice of
our Triune God asking, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" (note
the plural pronoun, which lends itself well to a perichoretic model of the Trinity!).
To which we – individually, collectively, and as people of faith – can boldly
answer: "Here am I; send me!" In other words, we can answer the call
to announce the prophetic truth – that God is indeed the sovereign over all
Creation, and we are called to be servants in this Earth-temple. And that we, as the beloved Children and
caretakers of this temple of Earth, will be held accountable for what we have
done and what we have left undone.[2] The sermon should encourage listeners to bravely
join their voices and efforts with others to speak truth to power and work on
behalf of Earth and those most vulnerable.
Here the preacher may echo the call for collective
action – in this case, inviting listeners to write down concrete actions they
can take for caring for Creation, thus increasing their level of commitment and
participation. Other possibilities for listeners to live out the Gospel might
include asking them to sign a petition stating their support for a piece of
environmental legislation, or signing up for a road clean-up, or taking part in
a field trip to a local creek. In any case, such a sermon might use more direct
language to state the need for action in the face of environmental degradation
and call on listeners to respond with the courage of Isaiah: Here am I – send me! Send us!
 |
| The Rev. Dr. Leah Schade in Washington D.C. doing advocacy work for higher mercury emission standards for the coal industry, 2011. |
[1]
See also the short documentary film by Josh Fox, The Sky is Pink, recounting the deliberate attempts of the fracking
industry to deceive the public about the dangers of shale gas drilling: http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/sky-pink/.
[2]
See Pope Francis’ injunction against those who harm God’s Creation: “God Will Judge You on Whether You Cared for
Earth” http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_REL_VATICAN_CLIMATE_CHANGE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thank you for your comment. If approved after review, it will be posted on the site.