John 17:1-11
MP3 File
The other day I was reading the headlines of the New York Times while I was on the tread mill at the gym. One headline almost made me fall off the machine: For Exxon Mobil, $10.9 Billion Profit Disappoints. That was one article I had to read. One section read as follows: “Exxon said that its net income in the first quarter was $10.9 billion or $2.03 a share, up from $9.3 billion, or $1.62 a share a year ago. Analysts had forecast $2.13 a share. William A. Featherston, an analyst at UBS, said the results were “disappointing” compared with those of BP and Shell.” Now I’ve never claimed to be an economist, but I couldn’t shake the image of a giant corporation being disappointed about earning almost eleven billion dollars in three months as gas prices for consumers hit $4 a gallon.
Perhaps I was especially sensitive because I was preparing to preach this sermon on enough. The theme of “enough” had reached out and grabbed me when I read today’s lectionary text a couple of months ago. John 17 is Jesus’ final prayer with the disciples in the upper room. One line especially got my attention this time: “I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do.” Finishing? Jesus was just about to be sent to an early death about three years after his public baptism by John. There was no “death row” for Jesus like there has been for William E. Lynd, who on Tuesday will become the first person in the US to be executed since the Supreme Court lifted a moratorium on executions. How could the Son of God say that he had finished God’s work on earth in such a short time? What could he have possibly meant by “finished”? All we have to do is look at the state of the disciples, to whom he was turning over the work, to realize that the word “finished” seems a little premature. How could Jesus possibly believe he had done “enough.”
Jesus obviously meant something different than what Exxon understands by enough. And that is one of the main reasons it is so difficult for us to claim Jesus’ definition as our own: we are surrounded by powerful forces that say there is not enough. The reason that people in contemporary society do not "get it" is that we are so deeply embedded in a philosophy of consumerism, what Walter Breuggemann calls a "love affair with commodity that is a spiritually demonic force." The Hebrew Scriptures present a narrative of abundance from God that becomes a sacramental liturgy. The sacrament is about the drama of "more than enough." But that narrative of abundance that represents the "overflowing, limitless, generous power of God" has always collided with Pharaoh-- "the belief that there is not enough"--the narrative of scarcity.
This is the season at Immanuel when we prepare to receive financial pledges to support the church’s ministries. It is a good time to be reminded by the likes of Walter Breuggemann that "Stewardship is not about raising money for church, but about asking if there is any alternative to the culture of death in which we live." Raising money for the church can never be a big enough container for something as dynamic as stewardship. Our view of stewardship gets distorted because we are immersed in a narrative of scarcity during most of our lives. If one hour of worship is all we get each week, it’s very difficult to become convinced that the Bible’s narrative of abundance has any relevance for real life.
So when the church asks us to make a financial pledge, especially during a time of economic downturn, we start from a place of scarcity, a place of “not enough.” Again, Breuggemann describes it best: "The alternative to stewardship is fear. Fear that there won't be enough." Fear of not enough is a belief that is driven by the economics of scarcity, which is the invention of Nike and Coke and Exxon. "The narrative of scarcity posits that the past is barren of miracles and the only way to get anywhere is to invent yourself and scramble for whatever you can get. A past without gifts and a future without hope give a present that is an arena for anxiety--an anxiety endlessly stirred by those who generate the great theology of scarcity - a theology which says our neighbors are a threat; which creates more suicides, murders and prisons."
What is the alternative? What does “enough” look like in terms of our behavior? In the passage from John, Jesus focuses on courage: “In the world you face persecution. But take courage; I have conquered the world.” The disciples finally understood what Jesus meant with those words after the Ascension, which we celebrate today, and at Pentecost, which we celebrate next Sunday, when the Spirit came. We see boldness winning over fear in the Book of Acts when Peter and John, who had been driven by fear to deny Jesus and hide from his enemies after the crucifixion, finally stood up to the rulers to proclaim their faith. We see it again when other followers pray for boldness rather than protection in the face of threats to their safety. How might that kind of courage change history in our post 9/11 mindset? Could that be a high enough calling for our stewardship?
We see the power of the Spirit of God infusing the same courage today. In the movie about the life of El Salvador’s bishop, Oscar Romero, there is a scene in which Romero pays a pastoral visit to a town that was occupied by soldiers. When he arrived the soldiers started to ridicule him as a priest. They tore his shirt and tried to publicly humiliate him. Overcome with fear, he started to leave, but then stopped, came back again, and moved forward while the town watched. The next thing we see is some women putting a shawl over his shoulders and bringing him the communion elements. Then we see a collection of unarmed people lining up in front of him to receive the Eucharist. The startled soldiers no longer had the will to do them harm. The complete helplessness of the power that was evident among them was too great. So the soldiers stood aside and the people shared the communion meal. Something that moments earlier had been impossible became possible by God’s power at work in a simple priest.
Jesus offers another evidence of living with the perspective of enough: what will attract the world to the liberating truth of life in Jesus is the unity of Jesus’ followers. But again this year a different word got my attention. I have always focused on unity. But this year the image of attraction got my attention. Jesus prayed, “May they be one in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” Earlier in John Jesus had spoken about his death in terms of attraction: “Now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” One will be driven out while the other draws people in. Jesus’ experience with the ruler of this world began in the desert when he was tempted to impress people so they would follow, rather than offer his life in a way that would draw them to him because of his authenticity.
One of the most damaging consequences of the lie of scarcity is that there is only so much fame to go around. Only one person will be the American Idol. Only a few will be celebrities. Only a handful of high school athletes will be drafted by professional teams. What we also know about many of those celebrities is the mess that characterizes their personal lives. To hold up the model of impressing people by performance is to consign those who succeed on that path to a life that leaves less and less room for satisfying intimacy, while demanding more and more distance from authenticity. Those who fail on the path of fame have the possibility of discovering the life-giving way of the cross, but only if they can overcome the regret of not succeeding on the path of fame.
A final sign of living with “enough” comes from the founding narrative of a theology of enough. In the story of the Manna we are offered the foundation of a life characterized by trust rather than anxiety. Even before the Israelites knew what the flaky substance that fell from the sky even was, they shared a powerful experience of enough: “those who gathered much had nothing over, and those who gathered little had no shortage; they gathered as much as each of them needed.” Their trust didn’t last long. Some tried to hoard the manna overnight, contrary to Moses’ instructions. It bred worms and became foul.
So how do we get to enough? I want to suggest three words: remember, listen, and contemplate. This morning we once again gather around the communion table. John’s Gospel shows Jesus reclining at that table as he prayed these words. Each time we celebrate the Eucharist we are invited to “remember that on the night on which he was betrayed he gave thanks…” The church doesn’t celebrate the Eucharist as the time when we remember. Rather it is the sacramental expression of a life that is to be characterized by remembering. The Hebrew Scriptures are full of commands and warnings to remember and not forget. Almost all of us have experienced miracles. Hopefully all of us have experienced being cared for by another person more than once.
In a few minutes we will sing a song that is popular among Jewish people during Passover. Dayenu essentially means “it would have been enough for us.” One line reads, “Had our God delivered us from waters of the flood and not remained faithful in love when we strayed.” Rabbi Tom Meyer makes some interesting comments on that line. He asks groups of people, "'How many have experienced a personal miracle?’ Almost everyone in the room raises their hand. They don't believe other people's miracles, but they believe ‘something happened to me, I can't explain it; it was amazing.’ The sea splitting is an open miracle where nature changes. It's much more pleasurable when you see an open miracle, right in front of you. Most of us have not seen that level. But from what we have seen, we can infer the potential of even greater miracles. When you choose to be a soul, the physical world opens up for you. The tension releases. You don't have to fight nature as we're so used to doing. At the sea, God released us from that constraint. That would have been enough.”
The second word is “listen.” I believe that one reason the disciples were able to access their courage after the Holy Spirit fell at Pentecost was because they had listened to Jesus praying for them and believing in them. Jesus had prayed, “Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you.” I don’t think it was experientially true in the moment that Jesus prayed it. But the words had a generative quality to them: they actually created the reality they described. We need to listen to Jesus, and to people who speak to us as Jesus talks in order to become the people Jesus believes we are. I’ve had that experience in prayer and in spiritual direction. We are offering spiritual direction through the healing center. Many of you have asked what that is. For today’s purpose I would describe it as a place where someone listens to our hearts, and responds with words spoken back to us that change and heal us as we listen to them. I commend both practices to you.
The third and final word is “contemplate.” My favorite definition of contemplation is: a long, loving look at the real. That is not the same thing as “get real”, which usually means “stop dreaming.” That assumes that the narrative of scarcity is real when in fact it is a great big lie. But the only way to know it’s a lie is to contemplate, or pay attention to, the truly real. The tradition of the Church says that the best truly real reality to contemplate is Jesus’ witness of walking the way of the cross. That can help us recognize the lie behind the walk of fame. So remember, listen and contemplate, and move into that satisfying space known as enough. Let us pray the prayer of Dayenu.
May 15, 2008
April 30, 2008 - The Christian and the environment - Hayward Fong
Genesis 1:1, 26-30
A week ago, yesterday was designated as “Earth Day.”
James Washburn’s article in the April 17, 2008 edition of the L.A. Weekly provides some interesting history and background for my thoughts today.
The first Earth Day took place April 22, 1970, thirty eight years ago. In 1970 the world’s human population was just under 3.7 billion. It had taken nearly 2,000 years to plump that number up from a mere 200 million that populated the earth in Bible days. In merely 38 years the 3.7 billion has been inflated by another 3 billion.
In 1970, gas was 34 cents a gallon and few people pondered what the lead in it was doing to the environment, except those in the DuPont board room which had covered up lead’s downside for decades. Our oceans were still teeming with fish, and they weren’t anywhere near full of mercury yet. Delaware-sized chunks of Arctic and Antarctic ice shelf weren’t yet crumbling into the sea.
Back then, the weather extremes, species die-offs and oceanic dead zones of today were still within realms of conjecture between science and science fiction. Some events have come to pass that even the writers of science fiction could not have imagined, such as in 2004, when Australia’s epic drought drove thirst-crazed kangaroos into urban areas where they attacked humans.
In 1970, our dichotomy regarding the earth as both our oyster and our toilet hadn’t taken so obvious a toll on the planet, nothing like what is happening now. But it was enough to get people thinking and organizing. Earth Day was a huge event in which 20 million Americans took part…from teachers taking school children to tide pools to experience touching sea creatures to participants fostering substantive legislative, scientific and academic change.
Earth Day has since gone global, observed in 174 languages. But here at home it has slowly demonstrated our political inertia, particularly over the past seven years of environmental rollback. I don’t believe anything will change until policy changes are made at the Environmental Protection Agency. Since these changes will come about only with direction from the White House, much will depend on what happens in November.
It is ironic that the Agency owes it existence to the first Earth Day. President Nixon, being politically astute, saw how he could bolster falling public support of his administration by giving lip service to what he saw represented by the 20 million people that first Earth Day. By combining various elements of existing cabinet departments, tying a bow around it, and calling it the Environmental Protection Agency, he gave away nothing and gained support from both sides of the Congressional aisle but most importantly outflanked his chief rivals in both political parties for re-election in 1972.
Lobbyists are in charge of agencies that should be policing the lobbyists’ polluting industries. Whistle blowers are fired or shunted into obscurity. Science has been so censored and distorted by the current administration that over 4,000 scientists, including 127 members of the National Academy of Sciences and 48 Nobel Prize winners, issued a 48 page detailed letter condemning these actions.
The question you and I need to ask ourselves is, “What is our role as Christians in the environmental issue?”
But the revelation wasn’t new, not really. That view of us from beyond ourselves is God’s view – the picture of the Bible painted long before the camera caught it. God created the earth whole. He made it beautiful. He created Adam, “Earthman,” to tend it in His name.
I can still recall the elderly Japanese gardener bending ever so close to this tiny tree that his chin literally stroked the needles of this 200 year old bonsai pine, only eighteen inches high. He then moved to a miniature maple, again lowering his head in what seemed an intimate communion, a relationship between man and the living things in his care. Next he stooped over a small sturdy oak, then a two foot high cedar, product of nearly 300 years of devoted care. What empathy with roots and soil, sap and bark, generation after generation, had gone into the nurturing of those trees!
When I asked him as to whether he was speaking to the trees, the old man with a face seemingly full of age and wisdom as the trees themselves, answered, “No, I do not speak to the trees. I listen to them.” We need to learn the language of God’s creation.
Two weeks ago, I spoke on how Christianity has and should play a role in the environment, sharing several articles on how Christianity has been deemed to be a source of the earth’s degradation. So what is our responsibility as Christians for the future of this earth?
Reading from the Bible, humanity was not created to take advantage of creation, but rather to keep it, nurture it and sustain it: “We were formed in God’s image to represent Him on earth so that all the earth, in turn, could glorify Him better and better.”
The environment is an issue that the Church must not ignore. Intellectually we may know that God gave humanity the job of dressing the earth and keeping it, but how do we accomplish it? How can we even begin to be truly committed to the care and preservation of our earth?
In an attempt to help us answer this question on the environment in its biblical context, let us see what the Bible has to say.
The Bible tells us that we have a Creator God, that He does care about the environment, and shows us what our responsibilities toward nature and family are from His point of view.
The definition of a steward is one who looks after and takes care of the possessions of another. Most Christian authors agree that human beings were put here to be stewards over the physical earth. The concept of stewardship is a most important one. Humanity’s job was - and is - to manage and to take care of what God has given us.
Thus, stewardship, for the Christian, focuses on God’s creation. It encompasses all His gifts, including time, talents, money, earthly opportunities - to name a few. It recognizes responsibility for His world - being proactive in managing the gifts of the Creator.
So, why has it taken us so long to recognize that our physical environment is crumbling faster than the technicians can reassemble it? Why are we more or less content to watch the world God made turn into a chemical swamp? Perhaps it’s because we think the problem is too big for us to deal with and that we can’t do anything about it, or even want to be bothered. All stewards must account to his principal; as such, we, you and I, will be judged by what we do with what God has given us.
The environment is an ethical and spiritual issue that should motivate us to prayer, meditation and action. Ecological problems are real and we’re not going to make them go away by consistently ignoring them. They won’t and can’t fix themselves if we continue to contribute to the problem rather than the solution. Christians must be active and involved.
World crises and problems that command our immediate attention will come and they will go, but acid rain, salinization, pollution of our water ways and the extinction of species will quietly continue.
People in nearby communities have taken heed. Young people have taken it upon themselves to clean up our beaches and flood control channels and help restore them to their God intended natural states. They have scheduled regular programs to remove trash that has been dumped or brought down from upstream storm drains. The trash you see at the street corners eventually ends up in the ocean by way of streams like the Los Angeles River even though its concrete walls make it difficult to think of it as a waterway. The hundreds of tons of trash and rubbish these volunteers remove enable God to rehabilitate this and other water courses and save His environment
On a larger scale, our elected officials must enact legislation to protect our environment and not allow corporate America to put the dollar sign in front of their eyes.
Global warming is causing an ever increasing rate of irreversible polar ice caps recession, raising the water level of the oceans and threatening the habitat for numerous animals such as the polar bear, fox and wolf, and the food chain for the creatures of the sea.
In the April 20th edition of the Los Angeles Times, this headline appears: “A global warming calamity is building in the Himalayas.” Here are some excerpts from that article.
It is a long article and addresses other matters affected by the climatic changes such as agriculture and disease. It concludes with the following statement.
You and I, as Christians, are called to keep God’s creation, nurture it and sustain it. We are formed in God’s image to represent Him on earth so that all the earth, in turn could glorify Him better and better.
A week ago, yesterday was designated as “Earth Day.”
James Washburn’s article in the April 17, 2008 edition of the L.A. Weekly provides some interesting history and background for my thoughts today.
The first Earth Day took place April 22, 1970, thirty eight years ago. In 1970 the world’s human population was just under 3.7 billion. It had taken nearly 2,000 years to plump that number up from a mere 200 million that populated the earth in Bible days. In merely 38 years the 3.7 billion has been inflated by another 3 billion.
In 1970, gas was 34 cents a gallon and few people pondered what the lead in it was doing to the environment, except those in the DuPont board room which had covered up lead’s downside for decades. Our oceans were still teeming with fish, and they weren’t anywhere near full of mercury yet. Delaware-sized chunks of Arctic and Antarctic ice shelf weren’t yet crumbling into the sea.
Back then, the weather extremes, species die-offs and oceanic dead zones of today were still within realms of conjecture between science and science fiction. Some events have come to pass that even the writers of science fiction could not have imagined, such as in 2004, when Australia’s epic drought drove thirst-crazed kangaroos into urban areas where they attacked humans.
In 1970, our dichotomy regarding the earth as both our oyster and our toilet hadn’t taken so obvious a toll on the planet, nothing like what is happening now. But it was enough to get people thinking and organizing. Earth Day was a huge event in which 20 million Americans took part…from teachers taking school children to tide pools to experience touching sea creatures to participants fostering substantive legislative, scientific and academic change.
Earth Day has since gone global, observed in 174 languages. But here at home it has slowly demonstrated our political inertia, particularly over the past seven years of environmental rollback. I don’t believe anything will change until policy changes are made at the Environmental Protection Agency. Since these changes will come about only with direction from the White House, much will depend on what happens in November.
It is ironic that the Agency owes it existence to the first Earth Day. President Nixon, being politically astute, saw how he could bolster falling public support of his administration by giving lip service to what he saw represented by the 20 million people that first Earth Day. By combining various elements of existing cabinet departments, tying a bow around it, and calling it the Environmental Protection Agency, he gave away nothing and gained support from both sides of the Congressional aisle but most importantly outflanked his chief rivals in both political parties for re-election in 1972.
Lobbyists are in charge of agencies that should be policing the lobbyists’ polluting industries. Whistle blowers are fired or shunted into obscurity. Science has been so censored and distorted by the current administration that over 4,000 scientists, including 127 members of the National Academy of Sciences and 48 Nobel Prize winners, issued a 48 page detailed letter condemning these actions.
The question you and I need to ask ourselves is, “What is our role as Christians in the environmental issue?”
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1).So begins our Bible. So begins the history of the universe and mankind. Our very life, and that of future generations, depends on our love and care of our planet Earth. We celebrate Earth and our God-appointed task for its care every day.
"It is required in stewards, that a man be found faithful” (I Corinthians 4:2).Those first photographs from space appeared in the early sixties and changed forever the way we see the earth. For the first time we beheld our planet whole: a blue and white jewel set in the blackness of the universe, lovely beyond imagining but also fragile beyond imagining, - a shimmering dot in the yawning immensity of space. It was no longer the enormous earth that men had struggled to explore and conquer… a mountain here, an ocean there, elsewhere a desert or a forest. Our portrait from space showed us a unity, a little ball, bound together and interconnected in every part.
But the revelation wasn’t new, not really. That view of us from beyond ourselves is God’s view – the picture of the Bible painted long before the camera caught it. God created the earth whole. He made it beautiful. He created Adam, “Earthman,” to tend it in His name.
God said, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth” (Genesis 1:28).I developed an interest in bonsai art when I was working for the Los Angeles County Road Department. Over the years, I lost interest in it, but renewed my interest when I went to work for the City of Gardena where they have an annual bonsai festival.
I can still recall the elderly Japanese gardener bending ever so close to this tiny tree that his chin literally stroked the needles of this 200 year old bonsai pine, only eighteen inches high. He then moved to a miniature maple, again lowering his head in what seemed an intimate communion, a relationship between man and the living things in his care. Next he stooped over a small sturdy oak, then a two foot high cedar, product of nearly 300 years of devoted care. What empathy with roots and soil, sap and bark, generation after generation, had gone into the nurturing of those trees!
When I asked him as to whether he was speaking to the trees, the old man with a face seemingly full of age and wisdom as the trees themselves, answered, “No, I do not speak to the trees. I listen to them.” We need to learn the language of God’s creation.
Two weeks ago, I spoke on how Christianity has and should play a role in the environment, sharing several articles on how Christianity has been deemed to be a source of the earth’s degradation. So what is our responsibility as Christians for the future of this earth?
Reading from the Bible, humanity was not created to take advantage of creation, but rather to keep it, nurture it and sustain it: “We were formed in God’s image to represent Him on earth so that all the earth, in turn, could glorify Him better and better.”
The environment is an issue that the Church must not ignore. Intellectually we may know that God gave humanity the job of dressing the earth and keeping it, but how do we accomplish it? How can we even begin to be truly committed to the care and preservation of our earth?
In an attempt to help us answer this question on the environment in its biblical context, let us see what the Bible has to say.
The Bible tells us that we have a Creator God, that He does care about the environment, and shows us what our responsibilities toward nature and family are from His point of view.
The definition of a steward is one who looks after and takes care of the possessions of another. Most Christian authors agree that human beings were put here to be stewards over the physical earth. The concept of stewardship is a most important one. Humanity’s job was - and is - to manage and to take care of what God has given us.
Thus, stewardship, for the Christian, focuses on God’s creation. It encompasses all His gifts, including time, talents, money, earthly opportunities - to name a few. It recognizes responsibility for His world - being proactive in managing the gifts of the Creator.
So, why has it taken us so long to recognize that our physical environment is crumbling faster than the technicians can reassemble it? Why are we more or less content to watch the world God made turn into a chemical swamp? Perhaps it’s because we think the problem is too big for us to deal with and that we can’t do anything about it, or even want to be bothered. All stewards must account to his principal; as such, we, you and I, will be judged by what we do with what God has given us.
The environment is an ethical and spiritual issue that should motivate us to prayer, meditation and action. Ecological problems are real and we’re not going to make them go away by consistently ignoring them. They won’t and can’t fix themselves if we continue to contribute to the problem rather than the solution. Christians must be active and involved.
World crises and problems that command our immediate attention will come and they will go, but acid rain, salinization, pollution of our water ways and the extinction of species will quietly continue.
People in nearby communities have taken heed. Young people have taken it upon themselves to clean up our beaches and flood control channels and help restore them to their God intended natural states. They have scheduled regular programs to remove trash that has been dumped or brought down from upstream storm drains. The trash you see at the street corners eventually ends up in the ocean by way of streams like the Los Angeles River even though its concrete walls make it difficult to think of it as a waterway. The hundreds of tons of trash and rubbish these volunteers remove enable God to rehabilitate this and other water courses and save His environment
On a larger scale, our elected officials must enact legislation to protect our environment and not allow corporate America to put the dollar sign in front of their eyes.
Global warming is causing an ever increasing rate of irreversible polar ice caps recession, raising the water level of the oceans and threatening the habitat for numerous animals such as the polar bear, fox and wolf, and the food chain for the creatures of the sea.
In the April 20th edition of the Los Angeles Times, this headline appears: “A global warming calamity is building in the Himalayas.” Here are some excerpts from that article.
“PUNAKHA, BHUTAN – High in the Himalayas, above this peaceful valley where farmers till a patchwork of emerald green fields, an icy lake fed by melting glaciers waits to become a ‘tsunami from the sky.’The article goes on to say, “Because of Earth’s rising temperatures, at least 25 glacial lakes in Bhutan are at risk of overflowing and dumping their contents into the narrow valleys where much of the country’s population lives.”
“This lake is swollen dangerously past normal levels, thanks to the glacial warming that is causing the glaciers to retreat at record speed. But no one knows when the tipping point will come and the lake can take no more, bursting its banks and sending torrents of water crashing into the valley below.
“Such floods from above have hit Punakha before, most recently in 1994, a calamity that killed about two dozen people and wiped out livelihoods and homes without warning. But scientists say a new flood would unleash more than twice as much water as before and be far more catastrophic.”
It is a long article and addresses other matters affected by the climatic changes such as agriculture and disease. It concludes with the following statement.
“Despite Bhutan’s records as one of the world’s most environmentally vigilant nations, it has no choice but to confront and plan for problems incurred by the actions of others, …‘There is a sense of helplessness,’ said Doley Tshering of the United Nations Development Program, ‘but at the same time, you can’t sit back and do nothing about it.’”Our nation with its insatiable appetite for fossil fuels is the world’s largest contributor to this problem of global warming. A total of 174 nations including all of Europe have affirmed the Kyoto Protocol designed to reduce the generation of carbon dioxide and other gases that create the greenhouse effect causing global warming. President Bush has refused to ratify this Protocol negotiated over a period of almost ten years, ignoring the report by his Environmental Protection Agency and advice from the National Academy of Science as to the major cause of global warming. As a country professing to be “one nation under God,” the President’s action does not bear a good witness to the world.
You and I, as Christians, are called to keep God’s creation, nurture it and sustain it. We are formed in God’s image to represent Him on earth so that all the earth, in turn could glorify Him better and better.
References:
L.A. Weekly, April 17, 2008, James Washburn, “Headin’ for the Tar Pits, One and All”;
L.A. Times, April 20, 2008, Henry Chu; P/T; DG 0422/23/2490;
042397, 042298, 042199, 042804, 042705. 042606.
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