Parallels of Salvation: the Desert will be glad ~ Isaiah 35

 

Stories of exclusion are painful and universal. Everyone of us has at least one, if not more. Maybe it’s that ubiquitous, unintentional moment when you wave at someone you thought was waving to you but it was to someone else. Or perhaps it was even worse – it was intentional. It was the invitation you were denied, a verbal rejection to your face, or even a trick that brought you shame. And scientist tell us that in those moments – the pain centers of our brain literally spark just as if we were slapped, punched, or beaten. And those wounds can run deep – festering in the shadows, leading to all kinds of painful actions, memories, or associations. And today I want to confront one of the larger exclusions that too many Christians have perpetuated: the exclusion of nature and non-human creation from God’s plan for salvation. We have forgotten that even the plants and animals need Jesus too. Each week of Lent we have been declaring, “Salvation is ecological.” Today, I want to show you why the Bible tells us so.

For God so loves the parallels.

One of the more powerful pieces of Isaiah 35 are all of the amazing parallels of inclusion which seek to inform us and draw upon connections so that we can understand the fullness of God’s majesty and what God wishes to do. Parallelism is a common practice of Biblical writers not to rhyme sounds, like in English poetry, but to “rhyme” ideas—that is, to put two or more lines together that somehow match each other or connect; sometimes for emphasis, sometimes contrast, sometimes to further illustrate. And our passage today wants to strongly parallel the joy of a reinvigorated landscape with the glory of God and the salvation of needy and hurting people with the salvation of a needy and hurting earth. Vs. 2 points out:

The glory of Lebanon / The glory of the LORD

The splendor of Carmel [garden or Orchard] / The splendor of our God

Lebanon and Carmel were famously forested with cedars and towering evergreens which sloped down into the Valley of Sharon, the whole area was known for abundance. The parallel of this vegetative abundance with God’s splendor and glory as a principal feature of salvation and the land as worshiper in response certainly paint a more expansive good news than many of us have previously heard.

And this parallelism continues, articulating a vision that supplements the salvation of human beings by including in the troubled elements of the planet. In vs. 4 we are told that “God will come, he will come with vengeance; within divine retribution he will come to save you.” And if I’ve taught you anything in reading Scripture always pay attention to the “you.” Who is the “you”? Well, here is where the parallelism is important. Because it’s more than us. Vss. 5-7 offer four ostracized, hurting humans to reflect the loving reach of God. And these are paralleled to four hurting natural elements which need saving too.

The blind       Are Paralleled to     The wilderness

The deaf                                            The desert

The lame                                           The burning sand

The mute                                          The thirsty ground

Each of the four experience a reversal of fortune that place both categories of human and non-human creation as victims in need of God’s saving love.

By the way, don’t imagine that this is all that Isaiah has to say on the matter. In Isaiah 32 he will speak of Spirit being poured out from on high, “and the desert becomes a fertile field, and the fertile field seems like a forest. The LORD’s justice will dwell in the desert, his righteousness live in the fertile field. The fruit of that righteousness will be peace” (Isaiah 32:15-17). And then he speaks of people dwelling in peace but even more amazingly speaks of animals being liberated by people to “range free” (Isaiah 32:20)

And Isaiah 11:6 prophesies about the peaceable kingdom of the Messiah which depicts peace between the human world, with its domestic animals (lamb, kid, calf, bullock, cow), and those wild animals (wolf, leopard, lion, bear, poisonous snakes) that were normally threats both to human livelihood and to human life and each predator is paralleled with its typical prey. And that prophecy ends with amazing declaration of peace: “The land will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.” The knowledge of the LORD will take those wild things, those dangerous animals, those untamable beasts and make them friends with domestic animals and human beings. But let’s return to Isaiah 35.

Salvation carries some (not all) responsibilities.

In vs. 3 & 4 Isaiah declares to his listeners: “Strengthen the feeble hands, steady the knees that give way; say to those with fearful hearts, ‘Be strong, do not fear; your God will come . . .’” Our first responsibility is that we are to encourage one another, strengthen one another, speak kindly one to another that God “will.” Last week I talked about finding our place within the created order. Once again, I ask you to do that by recognizing that we aren’t the saviors. That’s not a declaration to do nothing but it does reorder priorities and position. God, we are told, is the savior – that is what we declare and we must declare it – feeble hands and fearful hearts need to hear it.

But the prophet will give us a second responsibility as well. We are to walk “the Way of Holiness”: “And a highway will be there; it will be called the Way of Holiness; it will be for those who walk on that Way.” What is that way? Well, it’s those who recognize and order their lives  by the declaration of God’s salvation for all creation and not just human beings. And as Christians we believe that this way is the way of Jesus, who is the One saves us, who teaches us how to live, how to find our place, how to receive forgiveness, who was the very image of God in action with us, for us, and for all created things. So we walk this way and anticipate the salvation that has both come and is coming but always remember that it is God and God alone who is ultimately responsible. The centrality of Jesus’ way and Jesus as the way is for this whole project of ecological salvation was brought home to me in a surprising way by a delightful New Testament scholar named Richard Bauckham who pointed out something that I had never seen from Mark’s Gospel.

¹³ and [Jesus] was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. He was with the wild animals, and angels attended him. ~ Mark 1:13

Why must Jesus go into the wilderness? Because as Isaiah has prophesied that’s where salvation is needed and the messiah must establish himself among non-human creation before he can embark on his mission to the human world (which is why three categories of non-humans are mentioned): Satan, the wild animals, and angels.

Whereas Satan is simply an enemy of Jesus and the angels his friends, the wild animals, placed by Mark between the two, are enemies of whom Jesus makes friends. Jesus in the wilderness enacts, in other words, the peace between the human world and wild nature that Isaiah envisions. Mark’s simple phrase “he was with the wild animals” indicates Jesus’ peaceable presence. The expression ‘to be with someone’ in the Gospel of Mark (3:14, 5:18, 14:67, cf. 4:36) has the sense of close, friendly association. It means that Jesus enacts salvation by befriending them. Now it’s true that in Jesus’ day the relationship between wild animal and human beings was quite different. Then, it was humans who lived in fear of them. Now, it is often they who live in fear of us. In fact, more than a few of the animals that Jesus could have encountered no longer exist. But, the work of Jesus can still speak to the reversal. It reminds us that animals and creation have inherent value and remain a concern of the creator and a part of Jesus’ salvific work. Jesus, as Isaiah prophesied, will be the Lord’s justice dwelling in the desert. Jesus’ way is the way of friendship with all creation.  

I want to invite you to come forward during the next song to prayerfully pick up a feather and ponder a potentially life-altering truth: the God of the universe wants to save the birds along with you. The God of the universe wants to pour out his love on the thirsty ground along with you. God wants to offer his Spirit to change landscapes as well hearts. I want to invite you to keep this feather in your Bible as a means of reminding you that salvation is bigger than you might have believed and better than you might have hoped.

And if you haven’t decided to follow this great and wonderful way – what Isaiah has called the Way of Holiness. I want to invite you to that journey. It’s what you were made for. Jesus welcomes you to walk the path that through the cross and resurrection he has made for you. Walking it will change your life and should change the earth.

Manna, Meat & Graves of Greed: How Should We Eat as Christians? ~ Numbers 11:4-6; Psalm 78:22-25

 

Last week on Creation Groans. Last week we discovered the two tales of Adam and Eve and their relationship to creation. We learned that while they were graciously made in God’s image that they were also made from dirt – fragile, kin with the soil, common ground with creation. And we discovered that our job description was not to lord over creation but care for it as a servant. And that we are to watch and keep it – like God asks us to keep the law and like God keeps us. But this week – this week we watch what can happen when we are not satisfied, when we want more, when we encounter graves of greed, when we talk about meat. 

And I want to acknowledge up front that I am a Texan so this topic is not easy for me. I’d much rather talk about the book of Revelation or sex but not about what we eat. My wife feels the same. She was once asked if she was a vegetarian and replied, “No, I’m French.” But we’ve nevertheless, despite these carnivorous cultural backgrounds, been on a journey together where we are experiencing the dire realities and wonders of this earth through a faith posture that is curious, open, and honest. And we are finding ourselves transformed. Two quick caveats before we begin this conversation today. First, I’m not going to tell you what to do or what you should eat exactly. I’m not going to follow you home, or open your refrigerator, or even try to shame you for the choices that you make. I simply want to look at our world honestly and ask questions that are grounded in Scripture and love for God and neighbor. There is within this conversation, in other words, the wide boundaries of both freedom and responsibility. Second, I want to ask you to invite Jesus to dinner. I want to encourage you to prayerfully imagine that eating is an act of faith. I want to inspire you to read more about what’s happening in our world concerning food and even tell you to talk to your doctor before you embark on any dietary changes. Okay – that’s enough of that – let’s begin.

Numbers 11 is tangled tail of slavery, liberation, manna, meat, and greed. Israel has just left Sinai, moving across the desert like an army whose rations include manna – bread from heaven – appearing every morning (they don’t have to buy it or bake it), specifically to win their trust in God and learn the discipline of sufficiency. But some of them were unimpressed by this so-called “bread of angels.” And they demand that God serve them more, specifically more meat, even going so far as to complain that slavery was a better deal (11:5). It’s a confusing and terrifying story. And I can’t answer all your questions today about it. I can’t even answer all of my questions. But the Psalmist’s interpretation (Psalm 78) of the event is enough for us to chew on – that the problem was greed. And this story is of particular importance for us in North America because greed is often the governing spirit of our society. Our craving for “more than enough” is the deadly sin that is wreaking havoc on a global scale. I am thinking of economists who point to the fact that the United States, with six percent of the world’s population, presently uses thirty-five percent of its resources – six times our fair share.

Psalm 78 goes to the heart of the matter: “because they did not believe in God or trust in his deliverance,” the Israelites could not be satisfied, even with the bread of angels. Greed always stems from a lack of faith. We crave more than we need because we do not look to God to fill the emptiness we quite accurately perceive in ourselves. In fact, only God can fill the emptiness, the fragility, within us. So greed is nothing more than a twistedness of our natural desire for God.  Greed is deadly because it kills by a kind of spiritual malnutrition. The King James calls it “leanness in the soul” (Ps.106:15). And Psalm 78 precedes this diagnosis of greed with the profound declaration that we must remember and learn these stories because what we do now, what we practice in the present, impacts the next generation (Psalm 78:5b-7). Our greed is leaving a legacy of a poorer earth.

It would seem then that the Israelites struggled with what we might call good faith eating - an act of faith that trust that God is good and desires to bless people – to feed them. It’s also the recognition that “bad faith” in the Old Testament was often associated with the idolatrous eating in which Israel tried to hedge its bets by worshiping other gods in order to secure food (Hosea 2:10, 14, 15).

In the story of Numbers 11, the Israelites’ greed quite literally kills them (Numbers 11:33-34). In fact, in their desire for more it’s “more” that becomes the problem. The writer declares God saying: “You will not eat meat for just one day . . . but for a whole month – until it comes out of your nostrils and you loathe it” (11:19-20). Psalm 78:29 says, “They ate till they were gorged.” Numbers 11 will go on to speak of Israelites tragically dying from this excess, even calling to place Kivrot haTa’avah, which literally translates Graves of Greed. The great tragedy of Kivrot haTa’avah is that Israel already had plenty; God “sent them food enough.” But their desire for more and lack of contentment meant destruction. Perhaps this is why when the Lord sent manna each household was instructed to gather only what it needed for that day and no more, for manna had no shelf life. Anyone who took more than they could use in a day ended up with a mess of maggots.

What if our own craving for meat, our desire for endless buffet, is continuing the great tragedy of Kivrot haTa’avah? I know this might seem like a stretch but what if our desire of eating more than our fair share is an idolatry with serious consequences for our planet? What if we are creating graves of greed? What if our desire to eat as much as we want, whenever we want, in proportions that are coming out of our noses, reflects a deep-seated idolatry that is killing the planet, killing others, and killing ourselves?

One of our students has these concerns and I would like to invite her up here to share briefly about a project that she did at school for her Environmental class. Would you welcome Sage Taloyo up as she shares about the environmental harm of too much meat. 

Killing The Planet: Animal Agriculture and Climate Change by Sage Taloyo

The consumption of meat has been part of the human diet ever since humans have needed it for survival; from hunting fish and elk in the wild forest up until now in the form of chicken nuggets and juicy hamburgers. But our way of eating animals is not the same as it was all those years ago. Animal agriculture has grown to 80 billion animals raised and killed a year, and this is having significant impacts on the Earth, and we need to take action before our choices have irreversible consequences.

Many people are not aware of the space that animal agriculture takes up. Among the many reasons for deforestation, Industrial agriculture is the leading cause. Moreover, deforestation is one of the biggest contributors to climate change, along with fossil fuels. The United Nations reports that each year about 300 million acres of forest are destroyed. That’s 300 million acres of delicate ecosystems and biomes. 300 million acres of unique organisms with their own unique roles gone from the planet. Destruction of these systems lowers biodiversity which affect humans. When forests are burned and trees destroyed, everything once living is damaged.

Other than animals, have you ever thought of how much food it takes to raise them? It takes 1,847 gallons of water to produce a pound of beef, and, in the US alone, an estimated 41 million tons of plant protein is fed to livestock to produce only 7 million tons of animal protein for human consumption yearly. Additionally, nearly 80% of global agricultural land is used for livestock while only producing about 20% of the world’s calories. In other words, the resources we use to produce our meat is significantly more than what we get out of it.  The US could be feeding 800 million people with the grain that livestock eat.

Aside from destruction of valuable ecosystems and the seemingly wasteful amount of resources used to produce animal products, the consumption of meat has other negative effects on humans and our climate.  Animals also release harmful gasses into the air. All of our food; pigs, cattle, chickens, and goats release gasses, but cows are among the largest and most gas emitting animals we eat. In a year, a single cow will release 220 pounds of methane. Now consider the 320 some million cows that are raised for food. Methane is a greenhouse gas, and is even more potent than carbon dioxide. Roughly a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions is from the meat industry which assists in climate change.

Deforestation, resources for feeding the poor, climate change, and the loss of biodiversity can seem like issues too big for you to put an end to, and you’re right. It will take a lot of effort and a lot of people to really put our Earth back on course. However, small change must happen before big change, and reducing your consumption of meat is an easy, affordable way of helping the environment. As we wrestle with the impact of climate change, our ways of life must change too. I encourage you to help your friends and family understand the impacts of eating animals, and know that when you choose not to eat meat, you are contributing to much more than saving an animal’s life.

When I first read Sage’s project, I was reminded of another good-faith eating passage: Romans 14, where the Apostle Paul discusses the challenge of Christian eating, specifically about meat sacrificed to idols. He will state unequivocally, that we have freedom to eat meat – even meat sacrificed to idols. But, he will caution, if your eating harms someone else then don’t do it. If it harms your weaker brother or sister, don’t eat it. Now, I know that this is not the kind of eating that Sage just talked about. But given what you just heard about the devastating impact of animal agriculture, how might you now hear the words of the Apostle Paul?: “¹⁵ If your brother or sister is distressed because of what you eat, you are no longer acting in love. Do not by your eating destroy someone for whom Christ died. ¹⁶ Therefore do not let what you know is good be spoken of as evil.”

We must return out of love for God and neighbor to manna manners. Manna is the great Biblical symbol of contentment. Christian worship and prayer are basic training in the art of sufficiency. Here we learn to ask what is enough for us: “Give us this day our daily bread.” Here we receive the one thing that can truly satisfy us, the bread of heaven, that draws our memory back to manna in the wilderness – when, against all of the odds, everyone had enough to eat, even the riffraff. So next week when we have communion pay careful attention to the liturgy. It aims to teach us to speak the language of sufficiency, to articulate satisfaction as we are fed by Jesus in faith. And Jesus is food enough.

Hope for Creation

1.     Check out the helpful article. “How to eat less meat” on our Psalm 104 Clothesline. It’s not that hard, fun to experiment, way cheaper on your budget, and like anything can become a habit with lasting consequences. As we all struggle with the painful question concerning climate change, “What can I do?” The simplest and most effective answer is: “Eat less meat. It’s in your control, and you can begin right now. It benefits both you and the planet.” Imagine what could happen if every Christian out of love chose to not eat what they freely could. If the average person eats around 57 pounds of meat a year, think about the effect that we could have as a congregation.

2.     Try for failure. This maybe an odd point for section titled “hope” but I’ve recently been learning more and more about how trying to fail and embracing failure is increasingly making me stronger, more resilient, and more mindful of goals. In my own rock climbing I’ve begun to try much harder routes which lead me to fail more often than not. But alongside that failure I am becoming stronger than I’ve ever been.