“What are human beings that you are mindful of them,
or mortals, that you care for them?You have made them for a little while lower than the angels;
you have crowned them with glory and honor,
subjecting all things under their feet:“All sheep and oxen, even the wild beasts of the field,
The birds of the air, the fish of the sea, and whatsoever walks in the paths of the sea …”[i]
The author of the letter to the Hebrews quotes from Psalm 8, and Psalm 8 refers to the stories of creation in Genesis, in which God gave the human authority and dominion over all of God’s creatures; in which God delegated the loving care with which God had made every good and living thing, delegated that love and protection to the creature made most like an angel on earth, most closely in the image of the living and loving God.
My friends, I don’t know about you, but I am no angel. This language of subjection, of dominion, the language of our Eucharistic prayer, in which we remember that God made us to rule and to serve all of creation: this language makes me deeply uncomfortable. To serve, sure, I can get down with that; but to rule? Please don’t put me in charge. I don’t think that I am capable. I don’t think that I am worthy.
But here’s the thing: it’s right there in the holy Bible that God gave us, gave humanity, the responsibility, the role, the power, to govern God’s good and beautiful and bountiful creation, in the name and image of its living and loving Creator. Part of what it means to be human is that we, like it or not, for better or for worse, affect every other piece of creation with every move we make, every decision we break, every breath we take.
And we’re good with some of that, right? We have our pet blessing today, because we love to live in harmony with the birds of the air, and the wild beasts of the field, and the small creatures we have invited into our homes and our hearts. We get that love of God that named every living thing when we tickle the ears of our furry family members, and we weep for their trials as though they were human. We get what it is like to be other, and to be connected, and to love across categories of creation.
But we are less good with the pieces that take real sacrifice. Do we respect the dignity of the mountains, are we as careful not to harm the forests as the trees, do we consider our exploitation of the environment part of the loving kindness which God has delegated to us, or are we content to be powerful, and to forget the charge of protection that comes with it? Do we even think about facing up to, let alone curbing our addiction to oil before opening up new habitats to destroy with the drill?
What happens when we reap the harvest of environmental destruction that we have sown? Are we willing to accept climate refugees and call them our neighbours, and share our resources, without reserve, without resentment, because it is, for many of us, sheer dumb luck that we live in a place with fewer storms than many others? It is not because we have managed our environment better, polluted less, sacrificed any more for God’s good and beautiful and bountiful creation than anyone else. Far from it.
When we look at the devastation of the storms over North Carolina, when we consider the suffering of our neighbours, we should be moved to help, to contribute to their care, but we should also confess that we are part of a human race that has fallen short of its responsibility to care for and tend and nurture creation as God intended for us to do.
There are no easy answers to the predicament in which we find ourselves. But denial is not an option. God created humanity to be the stewards, the servants of creation, and it is part of who we are, made in God’s image, to care. We are made in the image of love, and if we set our hearts to love, as God loves us, then we will find ourselves to be only a little less than angels.
Amen.
over the water 