Sunday Worship 23 March | Let The Land Produce Vegetation

Genesis 1:9-13

God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good. Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day.

Jeremiah 17:7-8

Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him. They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.

We are spending this season of Lent reflecting on the six days of creation, as told in the opening chapter of Genesis, a beautiful poetic affirmation of God’s creativity and engagement with the world. We have been drawing on Ruth Valerio’s book ‘Saying Yes to Life’, and something she reflected on in her second chapter, which we didn’t have time to get into last week, was what she calls the theological reasons for creation. She writes that “the existence of this world and the universe which it inhabits has not come about by chance, but from God who chose to create it out of the overflowing of the love between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. All creation therefore exists in him - lives and moves and has its being in him - in the space created within the Godhead to allow us to come into being.” In other words, creation is an expression of the love that exists within the Trinity, and we are held in and sustained by that love.

A fancy theological term for the relationship within the Trinity is ‘perichoresis’. It translates as something like ‘going around’, and Ruth Valerio calls it a “continual movement of mutuality, reciprocity and communion”. Some theologians have described it as a divine dance, the three persons of the Trinity constantly weaving through and around one another. This may seem a bit off topic, but understanding God as relationship may help us understand creation as relationship. Nothing exists in isolation but as part of a delicately balanced ecosystem. Mycelium networks are particularly fascinating examples of this. If you walk through a forest you may see mushrooms and toadstools, but what you won't see are the threads of fungal material that run under the ground, connecting them not only to one another, but also to the roots of trees, carrying nutrients and messages. Creation is engaged in its own dance of mutuality, reciprocity and communion.

Let’s turn our attention now to the third day of creation, which is when we start to see something we can recognise as Earth. The waters are pushed back to create dry land which is filled with vegetation - specifically “plant yielding seed”, because this is a creation that will continue to create itself - and God declares that it is good. I have spoken before about understanding humanity from the perspective of original blessing rather than original sin, and that applies to creation too. And not just creation in general but creation in particular - God does not wait until creation is finished before declaring it good, leading New Testament theologian Richard Bauckham to note that “God appreciates trees and plants also for their own sake”, just as we will see that God appreciates all creatures for their own sake. 

One of my favourite poems is Wendell Berry’s ‘The Peace of Wild Things’, which says: “When despair for the world grows in me / and I wake in the night at the least sound / in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, / I go and lie down where the wood drake / rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. / I come into the peace of wild things / who do not tax their lives with forethought / of grief. I come into the presence of still water. / And I feel above me the day-blind stars / waiting with their light. For a time / I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.” When despair for the world grows in us, we can return to all that God has declared to be good. 

In ‘Saying Yes to Life’, Ruth Valerio shares some Indigenous traditions in relation to land. She describes The Venerable Karen Kime, Archdeacon for Indigenous Ministries within the Anglican Diocese of Canberra and Goulbourn in Australia, offering an ‘acknowledgement of country’ before a speech to the Victorian Council of Churches: “I'd like to acknowledge that we are in Wurundjeri Country. We give thanks for its beautiful borders of mountains and streams and the way in which it continues to provide for her people. We acknowledge the many Elders and Custodians who continue to care for this land and who are the knowledge keepers and leaders of their communities. We also give thanks for the many Aboriginal people and families who call this place home.” Ruth says this challenges her, because she has never heard anything like it in all her years of attending festivals and conferences. It should challenge us too, to reflect on how we might acknowledge the land we stand on, and the people who have cared for it.

She also recalls meeting a woman from the Gunadule people of Panama, who described their custom of giving the placenta and umbilical cord to a new baby’s grandfather, so that he can take them to the mountain, where he buries them with a newly planted cacao tree while singing: “Our good and great God, we thank you for the life you give this [child]. We have come from the earth and we give back to the earth. Today we bury these symbols of life and give back of your own generosity so that, just as the child grows strong and healthy, this cacao tree will grow big and strong. For we are one, humans and the earth.” It is a powerful way of celebrating and strengthening the connection between human life and the life of the earth, a connection many of us have lost or forgotten.

It is particularly important that those of us who belong to cultures that have colonised other lands and urbanised our own listen to the people whose ancestry is rooted in the earth we have tried to own and control. It should lead us to lament and repentance, but it may also change our understanding of our own relationship to the land. Here in England, the Right to Roam campaign is trying to reconnect us to the created world. Their website says: “Access to nature is essential to our physical and mental health and without a connection to the natural world we’re less likely to care about it and unable to act to protect it. Yet we’re excluded from much of what surrounds us. There’s a right to roam in only 8% of England, much of it in remote areas of mountain, moor, heath and down, rather than the places the majority of us live. Even where we do have access, what we can do is limited; with no right to swim or cycle, camp, or canoe. Our footpath network is brilliant but unevenly distributed and insufficient, offering a right of passage with no right to be; only to pass through.” We need to learn to be more firmly rooted in the land, like Archdeacon Karen Kime and the Gunadule people, to understand that we are not just passing through.

Perhaps that sounds like a strange thing to say, because there have been traditions within Christianity that have very much taken the view that we are only passing through, but that’s not what I see in scripture. There is a commitment to place and time, which we can see in the recurrent motif of trees, symbols of strength and stability which come through being deeply and firmly established. Scripture is bookended by the Tree of Life, Isaiah declares that God’s people will be called oaks of righteousness, Micah promises that everyone shall sit under their own fig tree and none shall make them afraid, and Jesus uses the mustard tree as an example of the kingdom and the vine as a picture of our connection to God. Ruth Valerio suggests that trees remind us that “we do not have a disembodied faith but one that is rooted: rooted in place and land and in the whole world that God has created”. Looking beyond trees, Leviticus includes the land in the Sabbath law, and the closing chapters of Revelation picture the fulfilment of all God’s promises as a garden city. Scripture makes clear that land will always be a part of our story, although we only need to look to the Middle East to see the ways in which our connection to the land can become dangerous - it must not override our connection or our responsibility to one another.

The title for Ruth Valerio’s book comes from a poem by Revd Francis Simon, which she quotes at the end of her chapter in the third day: “To plant a tree is to say yes to life / It is to affirm our faith in the future. / To plant a tree is to acknowledge our debt / to the past: seeds are not created out of nothing. / To plant a tree is to co-operate in nature's works / whereby all forms of life are interdependent. / To plant a tree is to take sorrow for past mistakes; / when we took life's gifts for granted. / To plant a tree is to make a social statement for / green-consciousness, for conservation and ecology. / To plant a tree is to enhance the quality of life / It brings beauty to the eyes and uplifts the spirit. / To plant a tree is to make a spiritual statement or point. / We are all members of the tree of life, / we stand or fall together.”

We can plant trees both literally and metaphorically, so let's think now about what we can do to look after the land and its vegetation. We can remember that we are deeply dependent on agriculture - however far removed we may be from the processes of sowing and harvesting - and so those of us who can afford choice can buy food that is farmed in ways that respect the earth and its ecosystems, for example being organic or locally grown or ‘wonky’ produce that would otherwise go to waste. We can also understand that deforestation is currently a major issue - as Ruth Valerio points out, “trees have a vital multifaceted role in countering climate change and mitigating its effects” as they remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, hold back storms and flooding, restore moisture and fertility to the soil, and provide and protect habitats - and so as far as we are able we can can choose responsibly sourced and manufactured products that do not further contribute to the problem.  We can also try to reestablish our connection to the earth - for example the Japanese have an ancient process of relaxation called ‘shinrin-yoku’ or forest bathing, which is as simple as spending time among trees, focusing on our sensory engagement with the natural world - as such practices may help us to live with greater reverence and appreciation.

We can also get together and think big, and the church may have a particular role here. The Orthodox Church in Ethiopia sees the forest as a symbol of heaven on earth, and is replanting trees around its buildings, to the extent that if you look at an aerial view of Ethiopia and see a swathe of green, there is likely a church in the middle of it. And Christians from the Quechua communities in Peru bought a mountain and planted one thousand trees on it to create a ‘mountain of prayer for the nations’, combining worship with restoration of the land.  We might not be able to reforest Knighton, but we can take care of the patch of green we are blessed with, and we can make choices as a community that are informed by our understanding of what it means to be good stewards. We have long been supporters of Fairtrade, who are concerned with sustainable practices for the earth as well as fair pay and conditions for workers, and we have been switching to more eco-friendly supplies, but there will always be more we can do, so let us say with God that this world is good and let us do all we can to keep it that way.

I close with a prayer for trees and earth by Gerson J Ramirez, a member of Tearfund's Young Theologians, and a consultant on issues of development and mission for churches and organisations in El Salvador - "God of creation, you have taught us to love life. That our longing for life should be above all other desires; a transcendent longing that values all of creation's living creatures. The earth and trees groan because of our failure to care for and protect them, ruling over and profiting from them rather than protecting them from death. We have viewed the earth as a resource to be exploited rather than as our mother. We accept the challenge of taking care of ourselves in order to care for the earth, our mother and our common home, for the trees and for life itself. We recognize that you have given us an understanding greater than other living creatures in order to reflect your creative, communal and loving character towards everything that exists. Lord, we commit to live caring for all nature, guarding our hearts from selfish desires and not living as proprietors, but as brothers and sisters and in community with all living things, especially the trees that are the source of life. Amen.”