Rogation Sunday/7 Easter (19-20 May 2007)

Deuteronomy 11:10-17

Pr. George L. Murphy

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Akron OH

AVOIDING THE PARIS HILTON SYNDROME

What better way to start a Rogation Sunday sermon than with the adventures of Paris Hilton? For the five people in the United States who haven’t heard of her, Paris Hilton is a young woman who inherited lots of money and whose occupation has been

described as “socialite and celebrity.” She is best know for partying. She was arrested for drunk driving, violated her parole and was sentenced to a few weeks in jail. She immediately cried that it wasn’t fair and there was an appeal to the Governor of California to give her a pardon. She didn’t get it.

What’s the connection with Rogation Sunday? Well, Ms. Hilton is Exhibit A for irresponsibility, for the idea that our actions don’t have to have any consequences – or at least any bad ones. That’s a belief that many Americans share when it comes to our activities in the natural world – we can do whatever we want and nothing bad will come of it. On the other hand, one of the main themes for Rogation Sunday is that God gives us some responsibility for the state of the natural world. Consider our First Lesson from Deuteronomy.

If you will only heed his every commandment that I am commanding you today - loving the LORD your God, and serving him with all your heart and with all your soul – then he will give the rain for your land in its season, the early rain and the later rain, and you will gather in your grain, your wine, and your oil; and he will give grass in your fields for your cattle, and you will eat your fill.

It sounds great. Unfortunately, the people who selected the readings for the lectionary ended it at that point. That may be another example of the Paris Hilton syndrome, because – well, listen to the next couple of verses which we added to the lectionary reading.

Take care, or you will be seduced into turning away, serving other gods and worshipping them, for then the anger of the LORD will be kindled against you and he will shut up the heavens, so that there will be no rain and the land will yield no fruit; then you will perish quickly off the good land that the LORD is giving you.

In short, if you obey God’s law, things will go well. If you don’t, they won’t.

Now that may seem to be too simplistic and in a way it is. We know that bad things do sometimes happen to good people and vice versa. But we may not appreciate what is being said in that text because we tend to think of the laws in the Bible just as arbitrary rules for a game, and the consequences of disobedience as arbitrary penalties. If you’re playing some board game like Monopoly and land on a certain square, you get fined seventy-five dollars. Why that square and that amount? Because the person who made up the game did it that way. If you’ve been watching the NBA playoffs you know that if you don’t get a shot off in twenty-four seconds you lose the ball. It’s an arbitrary rule that was added about fifty years ago.

The laws in the Bible are different. “You shall not steal” because society doesn’t work well unless property is protected. Families and societies get messed up by adultery, and so there’s a commandment against that. Those laws aren’t arbitrary rules but statements about how the world works, and ignoring them has consequences.

Israel was also given laws about care for the land – the twenty-fifth chapter of Leviticus is the clearest example. There care for the earth is coupled with justice in the human community. As Christians we are not bound to the letter of those laws, and in the past three thousand years we’ve learned some things about agriculture and ecology. Be we are to take seriously their purpose – that we are to care for the earth as well as the human community. If don’t, there will be consequences.

And that fits in with what we’ve learned about the way the world functions. If we put certain chemicals into the environment, some people will get cancer. If we destroy natural habitats, species will die off. Carbon dioxide absorbs infrared radiation, so putting more of it into the atmosphere is likely to warm up the earth. For the past couple of centuries we have been burning a lot of fossil fuels, and earth has been warming up. Actions have consequences. And there will be further consequences – climate change, melting of polar ice, and so on. And all of that is true in spite of the Paris Hiltons on talk radio and in congress who are still in denial.

God has created a good world, and part of its goodness is that there are regular patterns in the way things happen – what we call “laws of nature.” That’s why our actions in the world have consequences. That regularity is a divine gift because it means that we can understand the world and use our knowledge for better lives. But gifts are accompanied with responsibilities. As the creation story in Genesis 2 tells it, we are given a wonderful garden and the task of serving and guarding it. We are to be stewards, caretakers, of creation. But too often we try to pick God’s pocket, to take the gift without the responsibilities.

God will always remain faithful to the promises he has given. In our Second Lesson from Romans, Paul tells us that creation waits for God’s children to be revealed, and that it will be “set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” God will always be faithful. But since God really is God, his promises can be fulfilled even if all the gifts that seem so important to us are destroyed as the consequences of our irresponsibility. God does not need our Hummers or air conditioners or strip malls in order to bring about the Kingdom of God.

Okay, time for the closing paragraphs in which I tell you that it’s all right, God loves you, and everything will be fine. But I’m going to resist the temptation to tell you that. It is indeed true, as the Lord told Lady Julian, that all will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well. But all will be well as God judges well, not necessarily the way we see it. Some seven hundred and fifty years before Christ the prophet Hosea told the unfaithful people of Israel that God was going to bring them back to the desert where they first knew God. There they could learn again to trust in God because in the desert there is nothing else to trust in. Perhaps that is what is in store for our church, our society, our world.

Perhaps. Or perhaps the human race will remember its responsibilities – to do justice, to serve and guard the garden. Those of us who have been given the knowledge of God’s will in the history of Israel and in Jesus Christ are also given a special privilege and responsibility. We are able to know that care for the earth is not just a matter of scientific fact or economic and political prudence but a matter of obedience and service to our creator. And we are called to pass on that word to others.