Matthew 25 gives us an image of the Gospel: a person shows up at your door in need and you serve that need. It sounds simple, but it requires you to look directly into the eyes of the other and find compassion. It would seem, in the wake of tragedies like Hurricane Harvey, that it has become on earth as …
Creation Care for Christians: Climate Change
Last week, we were coping with despair in the face of immense problems. This week I made the turn toward anger. The chapter we read in Patricia K. Tull’s Inhabiting Eden focused on the prophet Jeremiah. The background of the scene is that the Babylonians are poised to siege Jerusalem. Jeremiah is going around telling everyone of the danger. He …
Creation Care for Christians: Fairness
This week we talked about environmental fairness, but we discovered that this is not a simple calculation. In theory, according to Scripture, there are the bad people that covet everything and the good people who are impoverished and oppressed. This is certainly the broad scope of the problem. There are certainly the rich and the powerful who think they have …
Creation Care for Christians: What Happened?
When I began seminary, one of the first things I was asked to read was an essay by Simone Weil. It advised that, in our studies, we should always go slow and pay attention. It’s somewhat of a cruel joke, given that the next four years involved being so overwhelmed with assignments that such a thing was impossible. Still, the …
Creation Care for Christians: Who Are We?
In seminary, my Hebrew professor gave us a simple hermeneutic, a method of interpreting Scripture. Take any verse or passage and, if this was all you knew, ask these questions: 1) Who am I? 2) Who is God? 3) What am I to do? Our study of Patricia K. Tull’s Inhabiting Eden began in earnest this week with our guest …
What I Meant to Say Was…
It was a great conversation on Sunday about the earth as neighbor. Thanks again to Genny Rowley for poking her head out of thesis-land to share with us. A couple of things came up that I wanted to follow up on. First, Genny mentioned a retreat for the Interfaith Dallas Environmental Action group. It will on Saturday, July 28th, at …
Undone by Love: The Earth (Program and Sermon)
Program Genny’s Introduction The journey of becoming an ecotheologian of sorts began for me through caring about people: I have a distinct memory from my first semester of coursework at Brite, where I was reading a text by Eleazar Fernandez where he asks the question: What does it mean to have hearts as large as the world? I was already …
Undone by Love: The Earth
It seems that as I think about this series more and more, I keep circling back to the question asked in the Luke 10 version of the greatest commandment story: “Who is my neighbor?” It’s a reasonable question. If we are to love our neighbor, surely we should know who that is. The answer, presented in the parable of the …