As a small child, I remember seeing cars opening their windows and throwing their trash on to the street. I remember litter being a part of the landscape of the city. And then attitudes toward littering changed. People began to frown and look down upon the families throwing their paper waste as they pulled out on to the road after eating dinner in their cars at McDonalds. And finally littering was outlawed… People were fined. It was seen as not just unneighborly but illegal.
As a small child, I remember the beauty of my yard right after a snowfall. And, then, by the time I was driven to school, the white snow would have turned to a grey and almost black by the roads, not because of dirt, but because of the car emissions coloring and putting poison into the atmosphere and eventually the aquifers where the water would collect. As a child, I remember driving by the steel factories in Cleveland, their distinct odor, the color of the grey air that formed like a cloud around them and the dirt that was everywhere. And then attitudes towards car emissions and factory emissions changed. There was an increase in cancer and respiratory diseases that was linked to poor air quality and laws were passed to clear up emissions going into the air. And people were fined and companies were fined. It became illegal to spew such filth into the air.
And, as a small child most of the adults I knew smoked. My grandfather smoked a pipe and the grownups on television smoked. When you walked by the teachers’ lounge at school, the smell of cigarette smoke permeated the air. People smoked in restaurants, in theaters, and on airplanes. In fact, the dinner that was served you on a plane came with a little pack of cigarettes and a package of matches. And then people realized that even second hand smoke led to cancer. You could get sick from the cigarette of the person next to you! So, they passed laws that said you could only smoke in designated smoking areas and had to sit in the back of the airplane if you wanted to smoke cigarettes. And then, when those rules were not seen as adequate, new laws were passed that prevented people from smoking in public places, on planes, and in hospitals and schools. It is now illegal to like up a cigarette where others are forced to breathe its smoke.
I also grew up in Cleveland Ohio…. The mistake on the lake, whose river was so polluted with run off oil and debris from the industrial waste in the city that it caught fire and burned. Yes….on June 22, 1969, the surface of the Cuyahoga River which runs through Cleveland caught fire and burned.
And because I sound like I am as old as Methuselah, I remember that first earth day which took place on April 22, 1970. This was the year that Jimi Hendrix died, the last Beatles album was made, and Simon and Garfunkel came out with the song, ‘A Bridge over Troubled Water’. It was the height of the Hippy Counter Culture and our country was in great unrest. The Viet Nam War raged and students were protesting the war nation-wide.
And Senator Gaylord Nelson from Wisconsin, after witnessing the effects of a major oil spill in Santa Barbara California, thought that if he could harness the energy of the young adults in the anti-war movement into the emerging public consciousness about air and water pollution, our environment might be saved. He worked with other politicians and community leaders and on that first Earth Day, millions of Americans took to the streets, parks, auditoriums in coast to coast rallies to save our Mother Earth. I was in middle school. After the school assembly that day, the students at my school were sent out into neighborhoods with trash bags to clean up the waste that seemed to be on every corner and in every street.
That was almost 50 years ago…..
How in the world did we get there? At one point we became a society that was detached from the environment and an ethic developed in our society where it was generally accepted that the earth was ours to use and abuse. As the top of the food chain, we felt as though we had use and control over the planet. Something happened and we no longer felt that we were a part of the earth, but had total use of it. Did it happen when we moved from an agricultural society to an industrial one and people moved away from the country side to the cities where their jobs were now located and became emotionally removed from the land and nature flora and fauna? Was it left over from a pre-modern understanding of the world where we felt we were at the center of it and it was created by God for us? I guess that is for the historians and sociologists to debate. All I can say was that as you know, we were headed down a path that we have not stopped, but have at least we have realized is wrong and in the end will destroy us. Earth Day was and is the reminder that we are not detached from God’s good earth but a part of it.
What we know is that the Bible paints an image of God’s creation in which we are an important part but that we are just a part. In the first chapter of Genesis and in the Psalm we read this morning, we learn that God’s creation is beautiful and it is good. Somewhere we went from being a people who believed that we were a part of God’s good creation to believing God created solely for our purpose. We moved from being the world’s stewards or its caretakers, to a more removed relationship where the world was given to us by God to use for our good. Out of our dis-connection to the environments around us, we put the health of our planet on a downward spiral.
Psalm 104 is a psalm of praise to God. Like the Psalm before it which speaks of the steadfast love of God, this one also praises God as the one who created the universe. They are the only two Psalms that start and end with the phrase, Bless the Lord, Oh My Soul.
Bless the Lord, oh my soul for being our sovereign creator who has used your power to create and provide for all life. Bless the Lord, oh my soul, that you have made and that you continue to sustain all living things. This Psalm sings out from an understanding of the interdependence of all living things which is a fundamental ecological statement. We humans are but one of many creatures of God’s creation.
The Psalm continues in amazement of the diversity within creation and the absolute certainty that God made all of them. There is an understanding of the rhythm of life… All creatures depend on God for food and life itself. God created a world that is interdependent and good… We need only to realize our dependence on the trees for us to breathe to celebrate God’s good creation with each breathe we take.
The Presbyterian Church calls on its members this earth day to reconnect with creation. The Creation Justice Ministries of our church ask us to continue that journey we began that first Earth day almost half a century ago. The planet is not ours but it is God’s. Creation is not something we use or rape for our gain. We need to realize that we are brothers and sisters to the beautiful birds of Tropical Florida, we are related to the animals and plant life in our oceans, rivers, lakes, and waterways. Their wellbeing is our wellbeing. And we are responsible to them as well. And, God created us interdependent to all of creation, so finally our welfare and health and very survival, depend on our stewardship of God’s good earth. Amen.