“Then God spoke to Moses, ‘Go down at once to your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt, for they have corrupted themselves. They have made for themselves a molten calf and are worshiping it and crying out ‘This is your god, O Israel!’” God is angry and wants to consume this ungrateful people in an almighty rage!
But Moses pleads with God for their sake, reminding God of the promise made to Abraham, Sarah, and all those others back in the day. “Remember?” Moses asks God. “Remember? You swore to them you would make their descendants as numerous as the stars! You said ‘all this land I will give your descendants as their heritage forever.”
And God remembered. Mercy flowed. And God forgave the people.
We are those descendants of Abraham and Sarah, God’s people. And at 7 billion strong we are certainly growing toward being as numerous as the stars! But the land we were promised—this land, this earth—is not only OUR heritage. It is the heritage of our descendants as well, and their descendants, and theirs and theirs, on and on forever. It is our Home, the only home we know. It is where our children are born. It is where our loved ones die and are buried. We live and learn here, side by side, as sisters and brothers wrestling with limits, harboring gifts and dreams planted within each of us by a loving God for the good of everyone. But we have forgotten who we are and where we are. We got lost somewhere on the trail of ambition and achievement, spoiling our environment in the process.
In his Encyclical, Laudato Si, “On Care For Our Common Home,” Pope Francis draws on his namesake to rekindle our memory of what has been lost and desperately needs to be found and reclaimed—a merciful relationship with the Earth herself. He begins his letter with these words from St. Francis’ “Canticle of the Sun.” “Praise be to you, my Lord, through our sister, Mother Earth, who sustains and governs us.”
“St. Francis reminds us that our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life,” Pope Francis tells us. She is “a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us. This sister,” he says, “now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her. We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will….The earth herself,” he writes, “burdened and laid waste, is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor; she ‘groans in travail.’”
These words of Francis echo God’s lament over the Israelites: they have corrupted themselves, he tells Moses, then instructs him to go down to them at once! Waste no time!
Today’s environmental prophets feel this same urgency.
Pope Francis quotes Patriarch Bartholomew who said, “inasmuch as we all generate small ecological damage”, we are called to acknowledge “our contribution, smaller or greater, to the disfigurement and destruction of creation.” Bartholomew goes on saying, “to commit a crime against the natural world is a sin against ourselves and a sin against God”. Or, in the words of Exodus, we corrupt ourselves.
Many of us are ultra sensitive to the word ‘sin’. Since we’ve been bludgeoned and traumatized by it over the years, our disdain for sin-talk is completely understandable. In the context of socio-spiritual corruption, however, it might be one of the most provocative terms we can use. The idea of individual sin has been promoted to the point of exhaustion but the reality of social sin, however much denounced and ignored, is alive and well. Looking back at Moses, and the Hebrew Scriptures generally, we see God’s focus on the corrupted attitudes and behaviors of a PEOPLE, the whole culture. God doesn’t fault individuals so much as CALL them—Abraham, Moses, the Prophets—to bring the PEOPLE to their senses, to turn the culture around from its corrupted ways
Francis first book as pope is called: “The Name of God is Mercy.” And he declared this the “Year of Mercy.” What does the word ‘mercy’ mean when applied to the Earth? When Francis says the Earth is “among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor,” he is placing our home planet in a powerful context. One of the basic social justice teachings articulated by the Church this century is “the preferential option for the poor.” The requirement to assist the poor is even codified in Canon Law [222 §2].
According to Francis we must recognize the Earth as one of our ‘poor,’ and show solidarity and compassion for Her. In creating public policy we must ask how our decisions will affect the most vulnerable members of society and this, now, includes Earth. She, too, has a moral claim on our conscience.
SAINT Francis teaches us how to empathize with Brother Air and Sister Water by recognizing in them the living Spirit of God. He teaches us to recognize our partners in the animal kingdom as our sisters and brothers, and to learn again how to reverence the rocks and trees of our Sister, Mother Earth. Focused on our “common home,” POPE Francis wants us to align our hopes and our actions with this view of the primal sacredness of the Earth. We have no personal or corporate ‘rights’ that contradict the core value of the natural world.
Our God is not a judge but a lover, a God who goes to extremes to reach us, a God who is as relentless in that mission to find us as is the mother of a lost child. And this is especially so when we are lost in the rubble of our own faulty thinking and decisions. Our thinking about the Earth, and the natural world generally, has led us down roads that are unsustainable. As a people, as a global citizenry, it is imperative we change the way we see and interact with the sacred beings, forces and surroundings of our world.
Through Pope Francis and St. Francis we are summoned to stand with the poor of the Earth, and the Earth herself, crying out for compassion and mercy. Our God, who goes by the name of ‘Mercy’ is with us, searching relentlessly for the lost threads of mercy, benevolence and gratitude within each of our 7+ billion hearts. This God is in love with the created world—and in love with all of us. God will not rest until those threads are found.
I so wish that Brookings was not 4+ hours away from Eugene! Thank you for posting these homilies. They are a breath of fresh air in the muddled, but sincere homilies at our church.