050212 Stewardship
M3 Environment
Outline:
Introduction:
What do you think is the most beautiful place on earth? (it could be either a place you’ve heard about, seen in photos or art or have actually been to)?
This past Sunday I was speaking at a church in Hawaii (someone has to do it).
One afternoon we were at a park overlooking the ocean on the Eastern side of Oahu. We saw this skit of a pirate who was invading a little island. The pirate shouted from his ship to a man on island, I know you have treasure--hand it over or die! The man on the little island says, “We have no treasure on the island. The pirate shouts, I’ve heard you have treasure, hand it over! Then there is a voice over which says, “The treasure is all the natural beauty all around us.”
In beautiful places like Hawaii or Vancouver or in places we’ve thought of we are especially conscious of the fact that the treasure that is all around us.
This morning as continue our series on what it means to be manager of a steward of things that God has entrusted to us, we’re going to look at what it means to be a manager or a steward of creation.
Psalm 24 tells us that the earth belongs to the Lord…
1 The earth is the LORD's, and everything in it,
the world, and all who live in it;
2 for he founded it upon the seas
and established it upon the waters.
Historically whether people were Christian or not, many have intuitively understood that the land belongs to someone or something bigger than themselves.
The earliest settlers in what we now call North America, the First Nations or aboriginal peoples did not believe in “private property.” They believed the land was sacred and should belong to no particular human being.
As Jeremy Rifkin, the president of the foundation of economic movements points out, during medieval times in, Europe life had much more of a communal or collective quality.
The land was divided into commons are (photo Edale). People farmed the land as a collective. The land was administered by the church or the aristocracy or the lord of the manor and these people managed the land as stewards of God who owned the land (photo of the people farming the land).
People belonged to the land--the land did not belong to people. The land belonged to God…
When we’re aware that the land belongs to God, we’re much more apt to cultivate and farm it as a kind of act of worship (slide of the Angelus).
Beginning with the enclose of movements of the commons lands in the 14-16 centuries in Europe, the great common lands, were reduced to private property. Later countries would claim the oceans waters close to them, and in the last century air corridors have been bought and sold… and now in recent times in places Bolivia even the rain fallen from the sky has been privatized… sold to a U.S. based corporation…
My point is not to say that “owning property” real estate or other kinds of property is wrong or that we should adopt a communist system, but us to remind that in a time when we assume land is owned “some person or corporation or government” we can forget the reality of Psalm 24 that the earth belongs to the Lord.
Title deed or no title deed, strictly speaking we don’t own land, strictly speaking God owns the land: he owns the world, and we are simply managers of what he’s entrusted to us (use globe).
In Genesis 2:15 we see how God calls us to serve as stewards or managers of the land.
15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.
If the land was really “ours”—I suppose we could do with it what we wanted with but if it’s someone else’s property we don’t have that freedom.
We live on a corner lot not too far from here… and on the Western side of our lot is a sidewalk and between the sideway and the road list a grassed area about 9-10 feet wide that runs about 120 feet with 3 fairly newly planted trees. It’s not our land but I understand we’re responsible to take of it. We are to the cut grass, water it and the trees in the summer, and remove the litter from this area, etc. I think we take better care of this piece of property than our “own” yard. Because this someone else’s property, I guess it’s a common area, and we’ve been entrusted to take care of it.
If we’re asked to take care of someone else’s home or plants or dog or cat while they’re away on vacation, isn’t true we’ll likely better care of these things than if they were own?
The more we care for and respect the owner the better we’ll take care of their property.
After graduating from theological seminary in the Boston area, I was pretty much broke and the first position I had was serving as a pastor of a new church plant to be started in Southern California.
The church had no denominational backing and no major financial backing. A couple in Southern California who I had never met heard that I was coming to Southern California to plant a church. The husband called me and explained he and his wife traveled up to half the year and asked if I would be willing to live in their home, which over looked the Ocean, in exchange for taking care of their plants and dog while they were away.
The choice was either I’d be living in the back seat of my car or living in place overlooking the ocean… I’ll take #2.
John and Carol the owners of the home became friends of mine. Because of their care for me and generosity, I wanted to really do a good job of taking care of their plants and dog. I wanted honor them by taking good care of their home.
Part of the way we people honor is by taking care of things they’ve entrusted to us.
Part of the way honor God is by taking care of the earth he has entrusted to you us.
We honor God by gathering and singing song of worship to God, but we also honor God by taking care of the things he has entrusted to our care.
The earth is the Lord’s (Psalm 24), he has called us to take care of the earth as managers and stewards and we honor him by taking good care of the earth… and finally one of the many motivations we have as people who believe or are coming to believe in God is the fact the God tells us in his work that the day the earth will one day be renewed.
In history of Christianity, there have been periods when Christians have not taken care of the earth because people believe that it would one day be destroyed and replaced.
There is much evidence in the Bible, however, to suggest that the earth rather than being destroyed will be renewed.
In Revelation 21:1
God says 1Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.
Later in Revelation 21 God says God in Revelation 21 “Behold I am making all things new.”
Darrell Johnson in is book on Revelation says for years he misread read these words to mean I am making “all new things.”
Darrell says for years the future meant for me scrapping everything of the old creation, and starting over with a whole new plan.
Now he reads it—I am making all things new; God can make all new things, but point of Revelation 21 and 22 is that he is making all things: people and creation new.
If we believe that this world and all that is in it will one day be obliterated or just absorbed into nothingness as some religions teach, then we’d have much less motivation to care for the earth (we’d some, especially if we think about future generations).
But if we believe that this earth will one day be redeemed and made new we have tremendous motivation to take care of earth.
The famous baseball player Mickey Mantle said when he was dying from a disease that had been brought on by a lifetime of alcohol abuse; he said if I knew I was going to live this long I would have taken better care of my body. When we realize that God has a plan to renew the earth and that it has future… as renewed earth… then we also will take great care, for the glory of God, for the good of future generations, and in anticipation of its renewal.
Caring for creation and being ecologically sensitive is simply a natural overflow of who we are and what we believe.
Let’s move into some application how does this apply to us personally?
Sonja Bruce is one of the members of the community who has thought a lot about this and is really seeking to live this out with her husband. I’ve her to come and share some ways we can do this.
The population of North America of Canada and U.S. is about 5 percent of the world and yet we use over 25% of the worlds resources.
As Loren and Ruth Wilkinson remind in their book Caring for Creation in your own back yard we caan reduce, reuse, and recycle:
We can turn off the lights or the heat (when we’re not in the rooms), we can save energy, we can stop the water when we’re not brushing our teeth (I’ve started as I’ve gathering ideas in preparing this message), we can avoid over use water in show (guilty of this—long time), re-use…paper printer… that’s only been used on one side (paper), we can recyle (bin) and try to walk or bike when possible…
(The archbishop of Cantebury is urging the Anglican church toward a Green Revolution. He was quoted in a recent edition of the Vancouver Sun, saying we can try to find out where our products and wherever possible try to encourage fair trade goods.
On the C.B.C. local News Friday night there was a feature on buying fair trade roses. Roses that have been developed in places where people are conscious of both not polutting the environment or paying their workers fairly.
Where possible and as we can afford we can try to buy food from companies that are conscious of treating animals well….whether or about free range eggs, free range turkeys, Dolphin free tuna, ecological laundry…)
I love nature but I don’t kiss or hug trees. But I really want to think through what it means to decrease my ecological footprint… I haven’t done this very well.
On a personal level I want to play my part…
We can care for the earth through our personal lifestyle, but we can care for the earth by using our influence to promote care for creation.
The Pantanal region of located along the borders of Brazil, Bolivia, and Paraguay is considered the largest freshwater wetland in the world (depending on exactly where you draw the borders it’s about ¼ of the size of British Columbia) and home kind of animals and various endangered species.
It’s been described as kind of Jurrasic Park without the dinosaurs…
But, as New York Times Columnist Thomas Friedman pointed out this area was put at
risk through the forces of globalization.
Soy farmers on the plateau above the Pantanal basin were eager to get their soy to a rapidly expanding global soybean market.
To get their soy to market they wanted to straighten the winding rivers so that barges could navigate them more easily and quickly—but in ways that would harm the ecosystem (show the photos of rivers and animals).
But what happened in Pantanal is that local environmentalists engaged environmentalists here in North America to put pressure on the Inter-American Development Bank, which was planning to fund the new straightening of the river system (re-show image of the winding river)…
The Development bank, sensitive to its global brand name reputation, responded by pressuring the local governments sponsoring the river project to do a complete environmental assessment. In the end, the government figured out ways to improve the navigation of the rivers in the Pantanal without altering their shape.
20 years ago according to Vice President of Conversation International, Glenn Pricket, in a country like Brazil where most of Pantanal wetland is located… If foreign environmentalists critical of development in practices in the Amazon, the general would say “Butt out, this is our sovereign terroritory.” But with the coming of globalization and more and more companies investing in places like Brazil it creates a new dynamic. With global companies concerned about their global brandname sometimes it only takes on environmentalist waving an email message on the floor of her parliament to hold up a major power plant or project or some environmentally sensitive deal.
Some times the concerns of individuals not only lead to a company become more environmentally sensitive out of concern for their brand name and their profitability, but in some case the leader of company actually experience a kind of conversion.
Like Ray Anderson, head of the largest carpet manufacturing company in the world.
“Show video Clip”
For 21 years Ray Anderson never thought about how their products were affecting the environment and then because of the questions of some customers… set in motion a series of events that change him and his company.
I show this to demonstrate how the concerns of individual customer can turn a company but also to illustrate that when and if we have a position in the world, like Ray Anderson, we can implement change.
I know some people in this community are seeking to use their influence to care for creation. I have heard of how people like Dr. Marcello Veiga, a member of our community, who is professor mining engineering at UBC is doing this. He serves as consultant to United Nations Industrial Development Organization…giving them counsel on how to reduce mercury pollution of international waters by emissions resulting from gold mining.
As a professor at UBC he says, "My responsibility to students is to get them thinking about ethical behaviour (particularly as it affects the environment and poor), which has been sadly lacking in the history of engineering."
He and his wife Sonia are using their influence informed by their Christian conscience to care for creation.
Ron Sider, a Christian very committed to caring for creation, has…
“Noone can do everything, everyone can do something and together we can change the world.”
“Noone can do everything, everyone can do something and together, by the grace of God, we can change the world.”
(Carpet CEO 51:55—54:33)
050212 Stewardship M3 Environment
Outline:
Introduction:
What do you think is the most beautiful place on earth? (it could be either a place you’ve heard about, seen in photos or art or have actually been to)?
This past Sunday I was speaking at a church in Hawaii (someone has to do it).
One afternoon we were at a park overlooking the ocean on the Eastern side of Oahu. We saw this skit of a pirate who was invading a little island. The pirate shouted from his ship to a man on island, I know you have treasure--hand it over or die! The man on the little island says, “We have no treasure on the island. The pirate shouts, I’ve heard you have treasure, hand it over! Then there is a voice over which says, “The treasure is all the natural beauty all around us.”
In beautiful places like Hawaii or Vancouver or in places we’ve thought of we are especially conscious of the fact that the treasure that is all around us.
This morning as continue our series on what it means to be manager of a steward of things that God has entrusted to us, we’re going to look at what it means to be a manager or a steward of creation.
Psalm 24 tells us that the earth belongs to the Lord…
1 The earth is the LORD's, and everything in it,
the world, and all who live in it;
2 for he founded it upon the seas
and established it upon the waters.
Historically whether people were Christian or not, many have intuitively understood that the land belongs to someone or something bigger than themselves.
The earliest settlers in what we now call North America, the First Nations or aboriginal peoples did not believe in “private property.” They believed the land was sacred and should belong to no particular human being.
As Jeremy Rifkin, the president of the foundation of economic movements points out, during medieval times in, Europe life had much more of a communal or collective quality.
The land was divided into commons are (photo Edale). People farmed the land as a collective. The land was administered by the church or the aristocracy or the lord of the manor and these people managed the land as stewards of God who owned the land (photo of the people farming the land).
People belonged to the land--the land did not belong to people. The land belonged to God…
When we’re aware that the land belongs to God, we’re much more apt to cultivate and farm it as a kind of act of worship (slide of the Angelus).
Beginning with the enclose of movements of the commons lands in the 14-16 centuries in Europe, the great common lands, were reduced to private property. Later countries would claim the oceans waters close to them, and in the last century air corridors have been bought and sold… and now in recent times in places Bolivia even the rain fallen from the sky has been privatized… sold to a U.S. based corporation…
My point is not to say that “owning property” real estate or other kinds of property is wrong or that we should adopt a communist system, but us to remind that in a time when we assume land is owned “some person or corporation or government” we can forget the reality of Psalm 24 that the earth belongs to the Lord.
Title deed or no title deed, strictly speaking we don’t own land, strictly speaking God owns the land: he owns the world, and we are simply managers of what he’s entrusted to us (use globe).
In Genesis 2:15 we see how God calls us to serve as stewards or managers of the land.
15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.
If the land was really “ours”—I suppose we could do with it what we wanted with but if it’s someone else’s property we don’t have that freedom.
We live on a corner lot not too far from here… and on the Western side of our lot is a sidewalk and between the sideway and the road list a grassed area about 9-10 feet wide that runs about 120 feet with 3 fairly newly planted trees. It’s not our land but I understand we’re responsible to take of it. We are to the cut grass, water it and the trees in the summer, and remove the litter from this area, etc. I think we take better care of this piece of property than our “own” yard. Because this someone else’s property, I guess it’s a common area, and we’ve been entrusted to take care of it.
If we’re asked to take care of someone else’s home or plants or dog or cat while they’re away on vacation, isn’t true we’ll likely better care of these things than if they were own?
The more we care for and respect the owner the better we’ll take care of their property.
After graduating from theological seminary in the Boston area, I was pretty much broke and the first position I had was serving as a pastor of a new church plant to be started in Southern California.
The church had no denominational backing and no major financial backing. A couple in Southern California who I had never met heard that I was coming to Southern California to plant a church. The husband called me and explained he and his wife traveled up to half the year and asked if I would be willing to live in their home, which over looked the Ocean, in exchange for taking care of their plants and dog while they were away.
The choice was either I’d be living in the back seat of my car or living in place overlooking the ocean… I’ll take #2.
John and Carol the owners of the home became friends of mine. Because of their care for me and generosity, I wanted to really do a good job of taking care of their plants and dog. I wanted honor them by taking good care of their home.
Part of the way we people honor is by taking care of things they’ve entrusted to us.
Part of the way honor God is by taking care of the earth he has entrusted to you us.
We honor God by gathering and singing song of worship to God, but we also honor God by taking care of the things he has entrusted to our care.
The earth is the Lord’s (Psalm 24), he has called us to take care of the earth as managers and stewards and we honor him by taking good care of the earth… and finally one of the many motivations we have as people who believe or are coming to believe in God is the fact the God tells us in his work that the day the earth will one day be renewed.
In history of Christianity, there have been periods when Christians have not taken care of the earth because people believe that it would one day be destroyed and replaced.
There is much evidence in the Bible, however, to suggest that the earth rather than being destroyed will be renewed.
In Revelation 21:1
God says 1Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.
Later in Revelation 21 God says God in Revelation 21 “Behold I am making all things new.”
Darrell Johnson in is book on Revelation says for years he misread read these words to mean I am making “all new things.”
Darrell says for years the future meant for me scrapping everything of the old creation, and starting over with a whole new plan.
Now he reads it—I am making all things new; God can make all new things, but point of Revelation 21 and 22 is that he is making all things: people and creation new.
If we believe that this world and all that is in it will one day be obliterated or just absorbed into nothingness as some religions teach, then we’d have much less motivation to care for the earth (we’d some, especially if we think about future generations).
But if we believe that this earth will one day be redeemed and made new we have tremendous motivation to take care of earth.
The famous baseball player Mickey Mantle said when he was dying from a disease that had been brought on by a lifetime of alcohol abuse; he said if I knew I was going to live this long I would have taken better care of my body. When we realize that God has a plan to renew the earth and that it has future… as renewed earth… then we also will take great care, for the glory of God, for the good of future generations, and in anticipation of its renewal.
Caring for creation and being ecologically sensitive is simply a natural overflow of who we are and what we believe.
Let’s move into some application how does this apply to us personally?
Sonja Bruce is one of the members of the community who has thought a lot about this and is really seeking to live this out with her husband. I’ve her to come and share some ways we can do this.
The population of North America of Canada and U.S. is about 5 percent of the world and yet we use over 25% of the worlds resources.
As Loren and Ruth Wilkinson remind in their book Caring for Creation in your own back yard we caan reduce, reuse, and recycle:
We can turn off the lights or the heat (when we’re not in the rooms), we can save energy, we can stop the water when we’re not brushing our teeth (I’ve started as I’ve gathering ideas in preparing this message), we can avoid over use water in show (guilty of this—long time), re-use…paper printer… that’s only been used on one side (paper), we can recyle (bin) and try to walk or bike when possible…
(The archbishop of Cantebury is urging the Anglican church toward a Green Revolution. He was quoted in a recent edition of the Vancouver Sun, saying we can try to find out where our products and wherever possible try to encourage fair trade goods.
On the C.B.C. local News Friday night there was a feature on buying fair trade roses. Roses that have been developed in places where people are conscious of both not polutting the environment or paying their workers fairly.
Where possible and as we can afford we can try to buy food from companies that are conscious of treating animals well….whether or about free range eggs, free range turkeys, Dolphin free tuna, ecological laundry…)
I love nature but I don’t kiss or hug trees. But I really want to think through what it means to decrease my ecological footprint… I haven’t done this very well.
On a personal level I want to play my part…
We can care for the earth through our personal lifestyle, but we can care for the earth by using our influence to promote care for creation.
The Pantanal region of located along the borders of Brazil, Bolivia, and Paraguay is considered the largest freshwater wetland in the world (depending on exactly where you draw the borders it’s about ¼ of the size of British Columbia) and home kind of animals and various endangered species.
It’s been described as kind of Jurrasic Park without the dinosaurs…
But, as New York Times Columnist Thomas Friedman pointed out this area was put at
risk through the forces of globalization.
Soy farmers on the plateau above the Pantanal basin were eager to get their soy to a rapidly expanding global soybean market.
To get their soy to market they wanted to straighten the winding rivers so that barges could navigate them more easily and quickly—but in ways that would harm the ecosystem (show the photos of rivers and animals).
But what happened in Pantanal is that local environmentalists engaged environmentalists here in North America to put pressure on the Inter-American Development Bank, which was planning to fund the new straightening of the river system (re-show image of the winding river)…
The Development bank, sensitive to its global brand name reputation, responded by pressuring the local governments sponsoring the river project to do a complete environmental assessment. In the end, the government figured out ways to improve the navigation of the rivers in the Pantanal without altering their shape.
20 years ago according to Vice President of Conversation International, Glenn Pricket, in a country like Brazil where most of Pantanal wetland is located… If foreign environmentalists critical of development in practices in the Amazon, the general would say “Butt out, this is our sovereign terroritory.” But with the coming of globalization and more and more companies investing in places like Brazil it creates a new dynamic. With global companies concerned about their global brandname sometimes it only takes on environmentalist waving an email message on the floor of her parliament to hold up a major power plant or project or some environmentally sensitive deal.
Some times the concerns of individuals not only lead to a company become more environmentally sensitive out of concern for their brand name and their profitability, but in some case the leader of company actually experience a kind of conversion.
Like Ray Anderson, head of the largest carpet manufacturing company in the world.
“Show video Clip”
For 21 years Ray Anderson never thought about how their products were affecting the environment and then because of the questions of some customers… set in motion a series of events that change him and his company.
I show this to demonstrate how the concerns of individual customer can turn a company but also to illustrate that when and if we have a position in the world, like Ray Anderson, we can implement change.
I know some people in this community are seeking to use their influence to care for creation. I have heard of how people like Dr. Marcello Veiga, a member of our community, who is professor mining engineering at UBC is doing this. He serves as consultant to United Nations Industrial Development Organization…giving them counsel on how to reduce mercury pollution of international waters by emissions resulting from gold mining.
As a professor at UBC he says, "My responsibility to students is to get them thinking about ethical behaviour (particularly as it affects the environment and poor), which has been sadly lacking in the history of engineering."
He and his wife Sonia are using their influence informed by their Christian conscience to care for creation.
Ron Sider, a Christian very committed to caring for creation, has…
“Noone can do everything, everyone can do something and together we can change the world.”
“Noone can do everything, everyone can do something and together, by the grace of God, we can change the world.”
(Carpet CEO 51:55—54:33)
050212 Stewardship M3 Environment
Outline:
Introduction:
What do you think is the most beautiful place on earth? (it could be either a place you’ve heard about, seen in photos or art or have actually been to)?
This past Sunday I was speaking at a church in Hawaii (someone has to do it).
One afternoon we were at a park overlooking the ocean on the Eastern side of Oahu. We saw this skit of a pirate who was invading a little island. The pirate shouted from his ship to a man on island, I know you have treasure--hand it over or die! The man on the little island says, “We have no treasure on the island. The pirate shouts, I’ve heard you have treasure, hand it over! Then there is a voice over which says, “The treasure is all the natural beauty all around us.”
In beautiful places like Hawaii or Vancouver or in places we’ve thought of we are especially conscious of the fact that the treasure that is all around us.
This morning as continue our series on what it means to be manager of a steward of things that God has entrusted to us, we’re going to look at what it means to be a manager or a steward of creation.
Psalm 24 tells us that the earth belongs to the Lord…
1 The earth is the LORD's, and everything in it,
the world, and all who live in it;
2 for he founded it upon the seas
and established it upon the waters.
Historically whether people were Christian or not, many have intuitively understood that the land belongs to someone or something bigger than themselves.
The earliest settlers in what we now call North America, the First Nations or aboriginal peoples did not believe in “private property.” They believed the land was sacred and should belong to no particular human being.
As Jeremy Rifkin, the president of the foundation of economic movements points out, during medieval times in, Europe life had much more of a communal or collective quality.
The land was divided into commons are (photo Edale). People farmed the land as a collective. The land was administered by the church or the aristocracy or the lord of the manor and these people managed the land as stewards of God who owned the land (photo of the people farming the land).
People belonged to the land--the land did not belong to people. The land belonged to God…
When we’re aware that the land belongs to God, we’re much more apt to cultivate and farm it as a kind of act of worship (slide of the Angelus).
Beginning with the enclose of movements of the commons lands in the 14-16 centuries in Europe, the great common lands, were reduced to private property. Later countries would claim the oceans waters close to them, and in the last century air corridors have been bought and sold… and now in recent times in places Bolivia even the rain fallen from the sky has been privatized… sold to a U.S. based corporation…
My point is not to say that “owning property” real estate or other kinds of property is wrong or that we should adopt a communist system, but us to remind that in a time when we assume land is owned “some person or corporation or government” we can forget the reality of Psalm 24 that the earth belongs to the Lord.
Title deed or no title deed, strictly speaking we don’t own land, strictly speaking God owns the land: he owns the world, and we are simply managers of what he’s entrusted to us (use globe).
In Genesis 2:15 we see how God calls us to serve as stewards or managers of the land.
15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.
If the land was really “ours”—I suppose we could do with it what we wanted with but if it’s someone else’s property we don’t have that freedom.
We live on a corner lot not too far from here… and on the Western side of our lot is a sidewalk and between the sideway and the road list a grassed area about 9-10 feet wide that runs about 120 feet with 3 fairly newly planted trees. It’s not our land but I understand we’re responsible to take of it. We are to the cut grass, water it and the trees in the summer, and remove the litter from this area, etc. I think we take better care of this piece of property than our “own” yard. Because this someone else’s property, I guess it’s a common area, and we’ve been entrusted to take care of it.
If we’re asked to take care of someone else’s home or plants or dog or cat while they’re away on vacation, isn’t true we’ll likely better care of these things than if they were own?
The more we care for and respect the owner the better we’ll take care of their property.
After graduating from theological seminary in the Boston area, I was pretty much broke and the first position I had was serving as a pastor of a new church plant to be started in Southern California.
The church had no denominational backing and no major financial backing. A couple in Southern California who I had never met heard that I was coming to Southern California to plant a church. The husband called me and explained he and his wife traveled up to half the year and asked if I would be willing to live in their home, which over looked the Ocean, in exchange for taking care of their plants and dog while they were away.
The choice was either I’d be living in the back seat of my car or living in place overlooking the ocean… I’ll take #2.
John and Carol the owners of the home became friends of mine. Because of their care for me and generosity, I wanted to really do a good job of taking care of their plants and dog. I wanted honor them by taking good care of their home.
Part of the way we people honor is by taking care of things they’ve entrusted to us.
Part of the way honor God is by taking care of the earth he has entrusted to you us.
We honor God by gathering and singing song of worship to God, but we also honor God by taking care of the things he has entrusted to our care.
The earth is the Lord’s (Psalm 24), he has called us to take care of the earth as managers and stewards and we honor him by taking good care of the earth… and finally one of the many motivations we have as people who believe or are coming to believe in God is the fact the God tells us in his work that the day the earth will one day be renewed.
In history of Christianity, there have been periods when Christians have not taken care of the earth because people believe that it would one day be destroyed and replaced.
There is much evidence in the Bible, however, to suggest that the earth rather than being destroyed will be renewed.
In Revelation 21:1
God says 1Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.
Later in Revelation 21 God says God in Revelation 21 “Behold I am making all things new.”
Darrell Johnson in is book on Revelation says for years he misread read these words to mean I am making “all new things.”
Darrell says for years the future meant for me scrapping everything of the old creation, and starting over with a whole new plan.
Now he reads it—I am making all things new; God can make all new things, but point of Revelation 21 and 22 is that he is making all things: people and creation new.
If we believe that this world and all that is in it will one day be obliterated or just absorbed into nothingness as some religions teach, then we’d have much less motivation to care for the earth (we’d some, especially if we think about future generations).
But if we believe that this earth will one day be redeemed and made new we have tremendous motivation to take care of earth.
The famous baseball player Mickey Mantle said when he was dying from a disease that had been brought on by a lifetime of alcohol abuse; he said if I knew I was going to live this long I would have taken better care of my body. When we realize that God has a plan to renew the earth and that it has future… as renewed earth… then we also will take great care, for the glory of God, for the good of future generations, and in anticipation of its renewal.
Caring for creation and being ecologically sensitive is simply a natural overflow of who we are and what we believe.
Let’s move into some application how does this apply to us personally?
Sonja Bruce is one of the members of the community who has thought a lot about this and is really seeking to live this out with her husband. I’ve her to come and share some ways we can do this.
The population of North America of Canada and U.S. is about 5 percent of the world and yet we use over 25% of the worlds resources.
As Loren and Ruth Wilkinson remind in their book Caring for Creation in your own back yard we caan reduce, reuse, and recycle:
We can turn off the lights or the heat (when we’re not in the rooms), we can save energy, we can stop the water when we’re not brushing our teeth (I’ve started as I’ve gathering ideas in preparing this message), we can avoid over use water in show (guilty of this—long time), re-use…paper printer… that’s only been used on one side (paper), we can recyle (bin) and try to walk or bike when possible…
(The archbishop of Cantebury is urging the Anglican church toward a Green Revolution. He was quoted in a recent edition of the Vancouver Sun, saying we can try to find out where our products and wherever possible try to encourage fair trade goods.
On the C.B.C. local News Friday night there was a feature on buying fair trade roses. Roses that have been developed in places where people are conscious of both not polutting the environment or paying their workers fairly.
Where possible and as we can afford we can try to buy food from companies that are conscious of treating animals well….whether or about free range eggs, free range turkeys, Dolphin free tuna, ecological laundry…)
I love nature but I don’t kiss or hug trees. But I really want to think through what it means to decrease my ecological footprint… I haven’t done this very well.
On a personal level I want to play my part…
We can care for the earth through our personal lifestyle, but we can care for the earth by using our influence to promote care for creation.
The Pantanal region of located along the borders of Brazil, Bolivia, and Paraguay is considered the largest freshwater wetland in the world (depending on exactly where you draw the borders it’s about ¼ of the size of British Columbia) and home kind of animals and various endangered species.
It’s been described as kind of Jurrasic Park without the dinosaurs…
But, as New York Times Columnist Thomas Friedman pointed out this area was put at
risk through the forces of globalization.
Soy farmers on the plateau above the Pantanal basin were eager to get their soy to a rapidly expanding global soybean market.
To get their soy to market they wanted to straighten the winding rivers so that barges could navigate them more easily and quickly—but in ways that would harm the ecosystem (show the photos of rivers and animals).
But what happened in Pantanal is that local environmentalists engaged environmentalists here in North America to put pressure on the Inter-American Development Bank, which was planning to fund the new straightening of the river system (re-show image of the winding river)…
The Development bank, sensitive to its global brand name reputation, responded by pressuring the local governments sponsoring the river project to do a complete environmental assessment. In the end, the government figured out ways to improve the navigation of the rivers in the Pantanal without altering their shape.
20 years ago according to Vice President of Conversation International, Glenn Pricket, in a country like Brazil where most of Pantanal wetland is located… If foreign environmentalists critical of development in practices in the Amazon, the general would say “Butt out, this is our sovereign terroritory.” But with the coming of globalization and more and more companies investing in places like Brazil it creates a new dynamic. With global companies concerned about their global brandname sometimes it only takes on environmentalist waving an email message on the floor of her parliament to hold up a major power plant or project or some environmentally sensitive deal.
Some times the concerns of individuals not only lead to a company become more environmentally sensitive out of concern for their brand name and their profitability, but in some case the leader of company actually experience a kind of conversion.
Like Ray Anderson, head of the largest carpet manufacturing company in the world.
“Show video Clip”
For 21 years Ray Anderson never thought about how their products were affecting the environment and then because of the questions of some customers… set in motion a series of events that change him and his company.
I show this to demonstrate how the concerns of individual customer can turn a company but also to illustrate that when and if we have a position in the world, like Ray Anderson, we can implement change.
I know some people in this community are seeking to use their influence to care for creation. I have heard of how people like Dr. Marcello Veiga, a member of our community, who is professor mining engineering at UBC is doing this. He serves as consultant to United Nations Industrial Development Organization…giving them counsel on how to reduce mercury pollution of international waters by emissions resulting from gold mining.
As a professor at UBC he says, "My responsibility to students is to get them thinking about ethical behaviour (particularly as it affects the environment and poor), which has been sadly lacking in the history of engineering."
He and his wife Sonia are using their influence informed by their Christian conscience to care for creation.
Ron Sider, a Christian very committed to caring for creation, has…
“Noone can do everything, everyone can do something and together we can change the world.”
“Noone can do everything, everyone can do something and together, by the grace of God, we can change the world.”
(Carpet CEO 51:55—54:33)
050212 Stewardship M3 Environment
Outline:
Introduction:
What do you think is the most beautiful place on earth? (it could be either a place you’ve heard about, seen in photos or art or have actually been to)?
This past Sunday I was speaking at a church in Hawaii (someone has to do it).
One afternoon we were at a park overlooking the ocean on the Eastern side of Oahu. We saw this skit of a pirate who was invading a little island. The pirate shouted from his ship to a man on island, I know you have treasure--hand it over or die! The man on the little island says, “We have no treasure on the island. The pirate shouts, I’ve heard you have treasure, hand it over! Then there is a voice over which says, “The treasure is all the natural beauty all around us.”
In beautiful places like Hawaii or Vancouver or in places we’ve thought of we are especially conscious of the fact that the treasure that is all around us.
This morning as continue our series on what it means to be manager of a steward of things that God has entrusted to us, we’re going to look at what it means to be a manager or a steward of creation.
Psalm 24 tells us that the earth belongs to the Lord…
1 The earth is the LORD's, and everything in it,
the world, and all who live in it;
2 for he founded it upon the seas
and established it upon the waters.
Historically whether people were Christian or not, many have intuitively understood that the land belongs to someone or something bigger than themselves.
The earliest settlers in what we now call North America, the First Nations or aboriginal peoples did not believe in “private property.” They believed the land was sacred and should belong to no particular human being.
As Jeremy Rifkin, the president of the foundation of economic movements points out, during medieval times in, Europe life had much more of a communal or collective quality.
The land was divided into commons are (photo Edale). People farmed the land as a collective. The land was administered by the church or the aristocracy or the lord of the manor and these people managed the land as stewards of God who owned the land (photo of the people farming the land).
People belonged to the land--the land did not belong to people. The land belonged to God…
When we’re aware that the land belongs to God, we’re much more apt to cultivate and farm it as a kind of act of worship (slide of the Angelus).
Beginning with the enclose of movements of the commons lands in the 14-16 centuries in Europe, the great common lands, were reduced to private property. Later countries would claim the oceans waters close to them, and in the last century air corridors have been bought and sold… and now in recent times in places Bolivia even the rain fallen from the sky has been privatized… sold to a U.S. based corporation…
My point is not to say that “owning property” real estate or other kinds of property is wrong or that we should adopt a communist system, but us to remind that in a time when we assume land is owned “some person or corporation or government” we can forget the reality of Psalm 24 that the earth belongs to the Lord.
Title deed or no title deed, strictly speaking we don’t own land, strictly speaking God owns the land: he owns the world, and we are simply managers of what he’s entrusted to us (use globe).
In Genesis 2:15 we see how God calls us to serve as stewards or managers of the land.
15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.
If the land was really “ours”—I suppose we could do with it what we wanted with but if it’s someone else’s property we don’t have that freedom.
We live on a corner lot not too far from here… and on the Western side of our lot is a sidewalk and between the sideway and the road list a grassed area about 9-10 feet wide that runs about 120 feet with 3 fairly newly planted trees. It’s not our land but I understand we’re responsible to take of it. We are to the cut grass, water it and the trees in the summer, and remove the litter from this area, etc. I think we take better care of this piece of property than our “own” yard. Because this someone else’s property, I guess it’s a common area, and we’ve been entrusted to take care of it.
If we’re asked to take care of someone else’s home or plants or dog or cat while they’re away on vacation, isn’t true we’ll likely better care of these things than if they were own?
The more we care for and respect the owner the better we’ll take care of their property.
After graduating from theological seminary in the Boston area, I was pretty much broke and the first position I had was serving as a pastor of a new church plant to be started in Southern California.
The church had no denominational backing and no major financial backing. A couple in Southern California who I had never met heard that I was coming to Southern California to plant a church. The husband called me and explained he and his wife traveled up to half the year and asked if I would be willing to live in their home, which over looked the Ocean, in exchange for taking care of their plants and dog while they were away.
The choice was either I’d be living in the back seat of my car or living in place overlooking the ocean… I’ll take #2.
John and Carol the owners of the home became friends of mine. Because of their care for me and generosity, I wanted to really do a good job of taking care of their plants and dog. I wanted honor them by taking good care of their home.
Part of the way we people honor is by taking care of things they’ve entrusted to us.
Part of the way honor God is by taking care of the earth he has entrusted to you us.
We honor God by gathering and singing song of worship to God, but we also honor God by taking care of the things he has entrusted to our care.
The earth is the Lord’s (Psalm 24), he has called us to take care of the earth as managers and stewards and we honor him by taking good care of the earth… and finally one of the many motivations we have as people who believe or are coming to believe in God is the fact the God tells us in his work that the day the earth will one day be renewed.
In history of Christianity, there have been periods when Christians have not taken care of the earth because people believe that it would one day be destroyed and replaced.
There is much evidence in the Bible, however, to suggest that the earth rather than being destroyed will be renewed.
In Revelation 21:1
God says 1Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.
Later in Revelation 21 God says God in Revelation 21 “Behold I am making all things new.”
Darrell Johnson in is book on Revelation says for years he misread read these words to mean I am making “all new things.”
Darrell says for years the future meant for me scrapping everything of the old creation, and starting over with a whole new plan.
Now he reads it—I am making all things new; God can make all new things, but point of Revelation 21 and 22 is that he is making all things: people and creation new.
If we believe that this world and all that is in it will one day be obliterated or just absorbed into nothingness as some religions teach, then we’d have much less motivation to care for the earth (we’d some, especially if we think about future generations).
But if we believe that this earth will one day be redeemed and made new we have tremendous motivation to take care of earth.
The famous baseball player Mickey Mantle said when he was dying from a disease that had been brought on by a lifetime of alcohol abuse; he said if I knew I was going to live this long I would have taken better care of my body. When we realize that God has a plan to renew the earth and that it has future… as renewed earth… then we also will take great care, for the glory of God, for the good of future generations, and in anticipation of its renewal.
Caring for creation and being ecologically sensitive is simply a natural overflow of who we are and what we believe.
Let’s move into some application how does this apply to us personally?
Sonja Bruce is one of the members of the community who has thought a lot about this and is really seeking to live this out with her husband. I’ve her to come and share some ways we can do this.
The population of North America of Canada and U.S. is about 5 percent of the world and yet we use over 25% of the worlds resources.
As Loren and Ruth Wilkinson remind in their book Caring for Creation in your own back yard we caan reduce, reuse, and recycle:
We can turn off the lights or the heat (when we’re not in the rooms), we can save energy, we can stop the water when we’re not brushing our teeth (I’ve started as I’ve gathering ideas in preparing this message), we can avoid over use water in show (guilty of this—long time), re-use…paper printer… that’s only been used on one side (paper), we can recyle (bin) and try to walk or bike when possible…
(The archbishop of Cantebury is urging the Anglican church toward a Green Revolution. He was quoted in a recent edition of the Vancouver Sun, saying we can try to find out where our products and wherever possible try to encourage fair trade goods.
On the C.B.C. local News Friday night there was a feature on buying fair trade roses. Roses that have been developed in places where people are conscious of both not polutting the environment or paying their workers fairly.
Where possible and as we can afford we can try to buy food from companies that are conscious of treating animals well….whether or about free range eggs, free range turkeys, Dolphin free tuna, ecological laundry…)
I love nature but I don’t kiss or hug trees. But I really want to think through what it means to decrease my ecological footprint… I haven’t done this very well.
On a personal level I want to play my part…
We can care for the earth through our personal lifestyle, but we can care for the earth by using our influence to promote care for creation.
The Pantanal region of located along the borders of Brazil, Bolivia, and Paraguay is considered the largest freshwater wetland in the world (depending on exactly where you draw the borders it’s about ¼ of the size of British Columbia) and home kind of animals and various endangered species.
It’s been described as kind of Jurrasic Park without the dinosaurs…
But, as New York Times Columnist Thomas Friedman pointed out this area was put at
risk through the forces of globalization.
Soy farmers on the plateau above the Pantanal basin were eager to get their soy to a rapidly expanding global soybean market.
To get their soy to market they wanted to straighten the winding rivers so that barges could navigate them more easily and quickly—but in ways that would harm the ecosystem (show the photos of rivers and animals).
But what happened in Pantanal is that local environmentalists engaged environmentalists here in North America to put pressure on the Inter-American Development Bank, which was planning to fund the new straightening of the river system (re-show image of the winding river)…
The Development bank, sensitive to its global brand name reputation, responded by pressuring the local governments sponsoring the river project to do a complete environmental assessment. In the end, the government figured out ways to improve the navigation of the rivers in the Pantanal without altering their shape.
20 years ago according to Vice President of Conversation International, Glenn Pricket, in a country like Brazil where most of Pantanal wetland is located… If foreign environmentalists critical of development in practices in the Amazon, the general would say “Butt out, this is our sovereign terroritory.” But with the coming of globalization and more and more companies investing in places like Brazil it creates a new dynamic. With global companies concerned about their global brandname sometimes it only takes on environmentalist waving an email message on the floor of her parliament to hold up a major power plant or project or some environmentally sensitive deal.
Some times the concerns of individuals not only lead to a company become more environmentally sensitive out of concern for their brand name and their profitability, but in some case the leader of company actually experience a kind of conversion.
Like Ray Anderson, head of the largest carpet manufacturing company in the world.
“Show video Clip”
For 21 years Ray Anderson never thought about how their products were affecting the environment and then because of the questions of some customers… set in motion a series of events that change him and his company.
I show this to demonstrate how the concerns of individual customer can turn a company but also to illustrate that when and if we have a position in the world, like Ray Anderson, we can implement change.
I know some people in this community are seeking to use their influence to care for creation. I have heard of how people like Dr. Marcello Veiga, a member of our community, who is professor mining engineering at UBC is doing this. He serves as consultant to United Nations Industrial Development Organization…giving them counsel on how to reduce mercury pollution of international waters by emissions resulting from gold mining.
As a professor at UBC he says, "My responsibility to students is to get them thinking about ethical behaviour (particularly as it affects the environment and poor), which has been sadly lacking in the history of engineering."
He and his wife Sonia are using their influence informed by their Christian conscience to care for creation.
Ron Sider, a Christian very committed to caring for creation, has…
“Noone can do everything, everyone can do something and together we can change the world.”
“Noone can do everything, everyone can do something and together, by the grace of God, we can change the world.”
(Carpet CEO 51:55—54:33)
Outline:
Introduction:
What do you think is the most beautiful place on earth? (it could be either a place you’ve heard about, seen in photos or art or have actually been to)?
This past Sunday I was speaking at a church in Hawaii (someone has to do it).
One afternoon we were at a park overlooking the ocean on the Eastern side of Oahu. We saw this skit of a pirate who was invading a little island. The pirate shouted from his ship to a man on island, I know you have treasure--hand it over or die! The man on the little island says, “We have no treasure on the island. The pirate shouts, I’ve heard you have treasure, hand it over! Then there is a voice over which says, “The treasure is all the natural beauty all around us.”
In beautiful places like Hawaii or Vancouver or in places we’ve thought of we are especially conscious of the fact that the treasure that is all around us.
This morning as continue our series on what it means to be manager of a steward of things that God has entrusted to us, we’re going to look at what it means to be a manager or a steward of creation.
Psalm 24 tells us that the earth belongs to the Lord…
1 The earth is the LORD's, and everything in it,
the world, and all who live in it;
2 for he founded it upon the seas
and established it upon the waters.
Historically whether people were Christian or not, many have intuitively understood that the land belongs to someone or something bigger than themselves.
The earliest settlers in what we now call North America, the First Nations or aboriginal peoples did not believe in “private property.” They believed the land was sacred and should belong to no particular human being.
As Jeremy Rifkin, the president of the foundation of economic movements points out, during medieval times in, Europe life had much more of a communal or collective quality.
The land was divided into commons are (photo Edale). People farmed the land as a collective. The land was administered by the church or the aristocracy or the lord of the manor and these people managed the land as stewards of God who owned the land (photo of the people farming the land).
People belonged to the land--the land did not belong to people. The land belonged to God…
When we’re aware that the land belongs to God, we’re much more apt to cultivate and farm it as a kind of act of worship (slide of the Angelus).
Beginning with the enclose of movements of the commons lands in the 14-16 centuries in Europe, the great common lands, were reduced to private property. Later countries would claim the oceans waters close to them, and in the last century air corridors have been bought and sold… and now in recent times in places Bolivia even the rain fallen from the sky has been privatized… sold to a U.S. based corporation…
My point is not to say that “owning property” real estate or other kinds of property is wrong or that we should adopt a communist system, but us to remind that in a time when we assume land is owned “some person or corporation or government” we can forget the reality of Psalm 24 that the earth belongs to the Lord.
Title deed or no title deed, strictly speaking we don’t own land, strictly speaking God owns the land: he owns the world, and we are simply managers of what he’s entrusted to us (use globe).
In Genesis 2:15 we see how God calls us to serve as stewards or managers of the land.
15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.
If the land was really “ours”—I suppose we could do with it what we wanted with but if it’s someone else’s property we don’t have that freedom.
We live on a corner lot not too far from here… and on the Western side of our lot is a sidewalk and between the sideway and the road list a grassed area about 9-10 feet wide that runs about 120 feet with 3 fairly newly planted trees. It’s not our land but I understand we’re responsible to take of it. We are to the cut grass, water it and the trees in the summer, and remove the litter from this area, etc. I think we take better care of this piece of property than our “own” yard. Because this someone else’s property, I guess it’s a common area, and we’ve been entrusted to take care of it.
If we’re asked to take care of someone else’s home or plants or dog or cat while they’re away on vacation, isn’t true we’ll likely better care of these things than if they were own?
The more we care for and respect the owner the better we’ll take care of their property.
After graduating from theological seminary in the Boston area, I was pretty much broke and the first position I had was serving as a pastor of a new church plant to be started in Southern California.
The church had no denominational backing and no major financial backing. A couple in Southern California who I had never met heard that I was coming to Southern California to plant a church. The husband called me and explained he and his wife traveled up to half the year and asked if I would be willing to live in their home, which over looked the Ocean, in exchange for taking care of their plants and dog while they were away.
The choice was either I’d be living in the back seat of my car or living in place overlooking the ocean… I’ll take #2.
John and Carol the owners of the home became friends of mine. Because of their care for me and generosity, I wanted to really do a good job of taking care of their plants and dog. I wanted honor them by taking good care of their home.
Part of the way we people honor is by taking care of things they’ve entrusted to us.
Part of the way honor God is by taking care of the earth he has entrusted to you us.
We honor God by gathering and singing song of worship to God, but we also honor God by taking care of the things he has entrusted to our care.
The earth is the Lord’s (Psalm 24), he has called us to take care of the earth as managers and stewards and we honor him by taking good care of the earth… and finally one of the many motivations we have as people who believe or are coming to believe in God is the fact the God tells us in his work that the day the earth will one day be renewed.
In history of Christianity, there have been periods when Christians have not taken care of the earth because people believe that it would one day be destroyed and replaced.
There is much evidence in the Bible, however, to suggest that the earth rather than being destroyed will be renewed.
In Revelation 21:1
God says 1Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.
Later in Revelation 21 God says God in Revelation 21 “Behold I am making all things new.”
Darrell Johnson in is book on Revelation says for years he misread read these words to mean I am making “all new things.”
Darrell says for years the future meant for me scrapping everything of the old creation, and starting over with a whole new plan.
Now he reads it—I am making all things new; God can make all new things, but point of Revelation 21 and 22 is that he is making all things: people and creation new.
If we believe that this world and all that is in it will one day be obliterated or just absorbed into nothingness as some religions teach, then we’d have much less motivation to care for the earth (we’d some, especially if we think about future generations).
But if we believe that this earth will one day be redeemed and made new we have tremendous motivation to take care of earth.
The famous baseball player Mickey Mantle said when he was dying from a disease that had been brought on by a lifetime of alcohol abuse; he said if I knew I was going to live this long I would have taken better care of my body. When we realize that God has a plan to renew the earth and that it has future… as renewed earth… then we also will take great care, for the glory of God, for the good of future generations, and in anticipation of its renewal.
Caring for creation and being ecologically sensitive is simply a natural overflow of who we are and what we believe.
Let’s move into some application how does this apply to us personally?
Sonja Bruce is one of the members of the community who has thought a lot about this and is really seeking to live this out with her husband. I’ve her to come and share some ways we can do this.
The population of North America of Canada and U.S. is about 5 percent of the world and yet we use over 25% of the worlds resources.
As Loren and Ruth Wilkinson remind in their book Caring for Creation in your own back yard we caan reduce, reuse, and recycle:
We can turn off the lights or the heat (when we’re not in the rooms), we can save energy, we can stop the water when we’re not brushing our teeth (I’ve started as I’ve gathering ideas in preparing this message), we can avoid over use water in show (guilty of this—long time), re-use…paper printer… that’s only been used on one side (paper), we can recyle (bin) and try to walk or bike when possible…
(The archbishop of Cantebury is urging the Anglican church toward a Green Revolution. He was quoted in a recent edition of the Vancouver Sun, saying we can try to find out where our products and wherever possible try to encourage fair trade goods.
On the C.B.C. local News Friday night there was a feature on buying fair trade roses. Roses that have been developed in places where people are conscious of both not polutting the environment or paying their workers fairly.
Where possible and as we can afford we can try to buy food from companies that are conscious of treating animals well….whether or about free range eggs, free range turkeys, Dolphin free tuna, ecological laundry…)
I love nature but I don’t kiss or hug trees. But I really want to think through what it means to decrease my ecological footprint… I haven’t done this very well.
On a personal level I want to play my part…
We can care for the earth through our personal lifestyle, but we can care for the earth by using our influence to promote care for creation.
The Pantanal region of located along the borders of Brazil, Bolivia, and Paraguay is considered the largest freshwater wetland in the world (depending on exactly where you draw the borders it’s about ¼ of the size of British Columbia) and home kind of animals and various endangered species.
It’s been described as kind of Jurrasic Park without the dinosaurs…
But, as New York Times Columnist Thomas Friedman pointed out this area was put at
risk through the forces of globalization.
Soy farmers on the plateau above the Pantanal basin were eager to get their soy to a rapidly expanding global soybean market.
To get their soy to market they wanted to straighten the winding rivers so that barges could navigate them more easily and quickly—but in ways that would harm the ecosystem (show the photos of rivers and animals).
But what happened in Pantanal is that local environmentalists engaged environmentalists here in North America to put pressure on the Inter-American Development Bank, which was planning to fund the new straightening of the river system (re-show image of the winding river)…
The Development bank, sensitive to its global brand name reputation, responded by pressuring the local governments sponsoring the river project to do a complete environmental assessment. In the end, the government figured out ways to improve the navigation of the rivers in the Pantanal without altering their shape.
20 years ago according to Vice President of Conversation International, Glenn Pricket, in a country like Brazil where most of Pantanal wetland is located… If foreign environmentalists critical of development in practices in the Amazon, the general would say “Butt out, this is our sovereign terroritory.” But with the coming of globalization and more and more companies investing in places like Brazil it creates a new dynamic. With global companies concerned about their global brandname sometimes it only takes on environmentalist waving an email message on the floor of her parliament to hold up a major power plant or project or some environmentally sensitive deal.
Some times the concerns of individuals not only lead to a company become more environmentally sensitive out of concern for their brand name and their profitability, but in some case the leader of company actually experience a kind of conversion.
Like Ray Anderson, head of the largest carpet manufacturing company in the world.
“Show video Clip”
For 21 years Ray Anderson never thought about how their products were affecting the environment and then because of the questions of some customers… set in motion a series of events that change him and his company.
I show this to demonstrate how the concerns of individual customer can turn a company but also to illustrate that when and if we have a position in the world, like Ray Anderson, we can implement change.
I know some people in this community are seeking to use their influence to care for creation. I have heard of how people like Dr. Marcello Veiga, a member of our community, who is professor mining engineering at UBC is doing this. He serves as consultant to United Nations Industrial Development Organization…giving them counsel on how to reduce mercury pollution of international waters by emissions resulting from gold mining.
As a professor at UBC he says, "My responsibility to students is to get them thinking about ethical behaviour (particularly as it affects the environment and poor), which has been sadly lacking in the history of engineering."
He and his wife Sonia are using their influence informed by their Christian conscience to care for creation.
Ron Sider, a Christian very committed to caring for creation, has…
“Noone can do everything, everyone can do something and together we can change the world.”
“Noone can do everything, everyone can do something and together, by the grace of God, we can change the world.”
(Carpet CEO 51:55—54:33)
050212 Stewardship M3 Environment
Outline:
Introduction:
What do you think is the most beautiful place on earth? (it could be either a place you’ve heard about, seen in photos or art or have actually been to)?
This past Sunday I was speaking at a church in Hawaii (someone has to do it).
One afternoon we were at a park overlooking the ocean on the Eastern side of Oahu. We saw this skit of a pirate who was invading a little island. The pirate shouted from his ship to a man on island, I know you have treasure--hand it over or die! The man on the little island says, “We have no treasure on the island. The pirate shouts, I’ve heard you have treasure, hand it over! Then there is a voice over which says, “The treasure is all the natural beauty all around us.”
In beautiful places like Hawaii or Vancouver or in places we’ve thought of we are especially conscious of the fact that the treasure that is all around us.
This morning as continue our series on what it means to be manager of a steward of things that God has entrusted to us, we’re going to look at what it means to be a manager or a steward of creation.
Psalm 24 tells us that the earth belongs to the Lord…
1 The earth is the LORD's, and everything in it,
the world, and all who live in it;
2 for he founded it upon the seas
and established it upon the waters.
Historically whether people were Christian or not, many have intuitively understood that the land belongs to someone or something bigger than themselves.
The earliest settlers in what we now call North America, the First Nations or aboriginal peoples did not believe in “private property.” They believed the land was sacred and should belong to no particular human being.
As Jeremy Rifkin, the president of the foundation of economic movements points out, during medieval times in, Europe life had much more of a communal or collective quality.
The land was divided into commons are (photo Edale). People farmed the land as a collective. The land was administered by the church or the aristocracy or the lord of the manor and these people managed the land as stewards of God who owned the land (photo of the people farming the land).
People belonged to the land--the land did not belong to people. The land belonged to God…
When we’re aware that the land belongs to God, we’re much more apt to cultivate and farm it as a kind of act of worship (slide of the Angelus).
Beginning with the enclose of movements of the commons lands in the 14-16 centuries in Europe, the great common lands, were reduced to private property. Later countries would claim the oceans waters close to them, and in the last century air corridors have been bought and sold… and now in recent times in places Bolivia even the rain fallen from the sky has been privatized… sold to a U.S. based corporation…
My point is not to say that “owning property” real estate or other kinds of property is wrong or that we should adopt a communist system, but us to remind that in a time when we assume land is owned “some person or corporation or government” we can forget the reality of Psalm 24 that the earth belongs to the Lord.
Title deed or no title deed, strictly speaking we don’t own land, strictly speaking God owns the land: he owns the world, and we are simply managers of what he’s entrusted to us (use globe).
In Genesis 2:15 we see how God calls us to serve as stewards or managers of the land.
15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.
If the land was really “ours”—I suppose we could do with it what we wanted with but if it’s someone else’s property we don’t have that freedom.
We live on a corner lot not too far from here… and on the Western side of our lot is a sidewalk and between the sideway and the road list a grassed area about 9-10 feet wide that runs about 120 feet with 3 fairly newly planted trees. It’s not our land but I understand we’re responsible to take of it. We are to the cut grass, water it and the trees in the summer, and remove the litter from this area, etc. I think we take better care of this piece of property than our “own” yard. Because this someone else’s property, I guess it’s a common area, and we’ve been entrusted to take care of it.
If we’re asked to take care of someone else’s home or plants or dog or cat while they’re away on vacation, isn’t true we’ll likely better care of these things than if they were own?
The more we care for and respect the owner the better we’ll take care of their property.
After graduating from theological seminary in the Boston area, I was pretty much broke and the first position I had was serving as a pastor of a new church plant to be started in Southern California.
The church had no denominational backing and no major financial backing. A couple in Southern California who I had never met heard that I was coming to Southern California to plant a church. The husband called me and explained he and his wife traveled up to half the year and asked if I would be willing to live in their home, which over looked the Ocean, in exchange for taking care of their plants and dog while they were away.
The choice was either I’d be living in the back seat of my car or living in place overlooking the ocean… I’ll take #2.
John and Carol the owners of the home became friends of mine. Because of their care for me and generosity, I wanted to really do a good job of taking care of their plants and dog. I wanted honor them by taking good care of their home.
Part of the way we people honor is by taking care of things they’ve entrusted to us.
Part of the way honor God is by taking care of the earth he has entrusted to you us.
We honor God by gathering and singing song of worship to God, but we also honor God by taking care of the things he has entrusted to our care.
The earth is the Lord’s (Psalm 24), he has called us to take care of the earth as managers and stewards and we honor him by taking good care of the earth… and finally one of the many motivations we have as people who believe or are coming to believe in God is the fact the God tells us in his work that the day the earth will one day be renewed.
In history of Christianity, there have been periods when Christians have not taken care of the earth because people believe that it would one day be destroyed and replaced.
There is much evidence in the Bible, however, to suggest that the earth rather than being destroyed will be renewed.
In Revelation 21:1
God says 1Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.
Later in Revelation 21 God says God in Revelation 21 “Behold I am making all things new.”
Darrell Johnson in is book on Revelation says for years he misread read these words to mean I am making “all new things.”
Darrell says for years the future meant for me scrapping everything of the old creation, and starting over with a whole new plan.
Now he reads it—I am making all things new; God can make all new things, but point of Revelation 21 and 22 is that he is making all things: people and creation new.
If we believe that this world and all that is in it will one day be obliterated or just absorbed into nothingness as some religions teach, then we’d have much less motivation to care for the earth (we’d some, especially if we think about future generations).
But if we believe that this earth will one day be redeemed and made new we have tremendous motivation to take care of earth.
The famous baseball player Mickey Mantle said when he was dying from a disease that had been brought on by a lifetime of alcohol abuse; he said if I knew I was going to live this long I would have taken better care of my body. When we realize that God has a plan to renew the earth and that it has future… as renewed earth… then we also will take great care, for the glory of God, for the good of future generations, and in anticipation of its renewal.
Caring for creation and being ecologically sensitive is simply a natural overflow of who we are and what we believe.
Let’s move into some application how does this apply to us personally?
Sonja Bruce is one of the members of the community who has thought a lot about this and is really seeking to live this out with her husband. I’ve her to come and share some ways we can do this.
The population of North America of Canada and U.S. is about 5 percent of the world and yet we use over 25% of the worlds resources.
As Loren and Ruth Wilkinson remind in their book Caring for Creation in your own back yard we caan reduce, reuse, and recycle:
We can turn off the lights or the heat (when we’re not in the rooms), we can save energy, we can stop the water when we’re not brushing our teeth (I’ve started as I’ve gathering ideas in preparing this message), we can avoid over use water in show (guilty of this—long time), re-use…paper printer… that’s only been used on one side (paper), we can recyle (bin) and try to walk or bike when possible…
(The archbishop of Cantebury is urging the Anglican church toward a Green Revolution. He was quoted in a recent edition of the Vancouver Sun, saying we can try to find out where our products and wherever possible try to encourage fair trade goods.
On the C.B.C. local News Friday night there was a feature on buying fair trade roses. Roses that have been developed in places where people are conscious of both not polutting the environment or paying their workers fairly.
Where possible and as we can afford we can try to buy food from companies that are conscious of treating animals well….whether or about free range eggs, free range turkeys, Dolphin free tuna, ecological laundry…)
I love nature but I don’t kiss or hug trees. But I really want to think through what it means to decrease my ecological footprint… I haven’t done this very well.
On a personal level I want to play my part…
We can care for the earth through our personal lifestyle, but we can care for the earth by using our influence to promote care for creation.
The Pantanal region of located along the borders of Brazil, Bolivia, and Paraguay is considered the largest freshwater wetland in the world (depending on exactly where you draw the borders it’s about ¼ of the size of British Columbia) and home kind of animals and various endangered species.
It’s been described as kind of Jurrasic Park without the dinosaurs…
But, as New York Times Columnist Thomas Friedman pointed out this area was put at
risk through the forces of globalization.
Soy farmers on the plateau above the Pantanal basin were eager to get their soy to a rapidly expanding global soybean market.
To get their soy to market they wanted to straighten the winding rivers so that barges could navigate them more easily and quickly—but in ways that would harm the ecosystem (show the photos of rivers and animals).
But what happened in Pantanal is that local environmentalists engaged environmentalists here in North America to put pressure on the Inter-American Development Bank, which was planning to fund the new straightening of the river system (re-show image of the winding river)…
The Development bank, sensitive to its global brand name reputation, responded by pressuring the local governments sponsoring the river project to do a complete environmental assessment. In the end, the government figured out ways to improve the navigation of the rivers in the Pantanal without altering their shape.
20 years ago according to Vice President of Conversation International, Glenn Pricket, in a country like Brazil where most of Pantanal wetland is located… If foreign environmentalists critical of development in practices in the Amazon, the general would say “Butt out, this is our sovereign terroritory.” But with the coming of globalization and more and more companies investing in places like Brazil it creates a new dynamic. With global companies concerned about their global brandname sometimes it only takes on environmentalist waving an email message on the floor of her parliament to hold up a major power plant or project or some environmentally sensitive deal.
Some times the concerns of individuals not only lead to a company become more environmentally sensitive out of concern for their brand name and their profitability, but in some case the leader of company actually experience a kind of conversion.
Like Ray Anderson, head of the largest carpet manufacturing company in the world.
“Show video Clip”
For 21 years Ray Anderson never thought about how their products were affecting the environment and then because of the questions of some customers… set in motion a series of events that change him and his company.
I show this to demonstrate how the concerns of individual customer can turn a company but also to illustrate that when and if we have a position in the world, like Ray Anderson, we can implement change.
I know some people in this community are seeking to use their influence to care for creation. I have heard of how people like Dr. Marcello Veiga, a member of our community, who is professor mining engineering at UBC is doing this. He serves as consultant to United Nations Industrial Development Organization…giving them counsel on how to reduce mercury pollution of international waters by emissions resulting from gold mining.
As a professor at UBC he says, "My responsibility to students is to get them thinking about ethical behaviour (particularly as it affects the environment and poor), which has been sadly lacking in the history of engineering."
He and his wife Sonia are using their influence informed by their Christian conscience to care for creation.
Ron Sider, a Christian very committed to caring for creation, has…
“Noone can do everything, everyone can do something and together we can change the world.”
“Noone can do everything, everyone can do something and together, by the grace of God, we can change the world.”
(Carpet CEO 51:55—54:33)
050212 Stewardship M3 Environment
Outline:
Introduction:
What do you think is the most beautiful place on earth? (it could be either a place you’ve heard about, seen in photos or art or have actually been to)?
This past Sunday I was speaking at a church in Hawaii (someone has to do it).
One afternoon we were at a park overlooking the ocean on the Eastern side of Oahu. We saw this skit of a pirate who was invading a little island. The pirate shouted from his ship to a man on island, I know you have treasure--hand it over or die! The man on the little island says, “We have no treasure on the island. The pirate shouts, I’ve heard you have treasure, hand it over! Then there is a voice over which says, “The treasure is all the natural beauty all around us.”
In beautiful places like Hawaii or Vancouver or in places we’ve thought of we are especially conscious of the fact that the treasure that is all around us.
This morning as continue our series on what it means to be manager of a steward of things that God has entrusted to us, we’re going to look at what it means to be a manager or a steward of creation.
Psalm 24 tells us that the earth belongs to the Lord…
1 The earth is the LORD's, and everything in it,
the world, and all who live in it;
2 for he founded it upon the seas
and established it upon the waters.
Historically whether people were Christian or not, many have intuitively understood that the land belongs to someone or something bigger than themselves.
The earliest settlers in what we now call North America, the First Nations or aboriginal peoples did not believe in “private property.” They believed the land was sacred and should belong to no particular human being.
As Jeremy Rifkin, the president of the foundation of economic movements points out, during medieval times in, Europe life had much more of a communal or collective quality.
The land was divided into commons are (photo Edale). People farmed the land as a collective. The land was administered by the church or the aristocracy or the lord of the manor and these people managed the land as stewards of God who owned the land (photo of the people farming the land).
People belonged to the land--the land did not belong to people. The land belonged to God…
When we’re aware that the land belongs to God, we’re much more apt to cultivate and farm it as a kind of act of worship (slide of the Angelus).
Beginning with the enclose of movements of the commons lands in the 14-16 centuries in Europe, the great common lands, were reduced to private property. Later countries would claim the oceans waters close to them, and in the last century air corridors have been bought and sold… and now in recent times in places Bolivia even the rain fallen from the sky has been privatized… sold to a U.S. based corporation…
My point is not to say that “owning property” real estate or other kinds of property is wrong or that we should adopt a communist system, but us to remind that in a time when we assume land is owned “some person or corporation or government” we can forget the reality of Psalm 24 that the earth belongs to the Lord.
Title deed or no title deed, strictly speaking we don’t own land, strictly speaking God owns the land: he owns the world, and we are simply managers of what he’s entrusted to us (use globe).
In Genesis 2:15 we see how God calls us to serve as stewards or managers of the land.
15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.
If the land was really “ours”—I suppose we could do with it what we wanted with but if it’s someone else’s property we don’t have that freedom.
We live on a corner lot not too far from here… and on the Western side of our lot is a sidewalk and between the sideway and the road list a grassed area about 9-10 feet wide that runs about 120 feet with 3 fairly newly planted trees. It’s not our land but I understand we’re responsible to take of it. We are to the cut grass, water it and the trees in the summer, and remove the litter from this area, etc. I think we take better care of this piece of property than our “own” yard. Because this someone else’s property, I guess it’s a common area, and we’ve been entrusted to take care of it.
If we’re asked to take care of someone else’s home or plants or dog or cat while they’re away on vacation, isn’t true we’ll likely better care of these things than if they were own?
The more we care for and respect the owner the better we’ll take care of their property.
After graduating from theological seminary in the Boston area, I was pretty much broke and the first position I had was serving as a pastor of a new church plant to be started in Southern California.
The church had no denominational backing and no major financial backing. A couple in Southern California who I had never met heard that I was coming to Southern California to plant a church. The husband called me and explained he and his wife traveled up to half the year and asked if I would be willing to live in their home, which over looked the Ocean, in exchange for taking care of their plants and dog while they were away.
The choice was either I’d be living in the back seat of my car or living in place overlooking the ocean… I’ll take #2.
John and Carol the owners of the home became friends of mine. Because of their care for me and generosity, I wanted to really do a good job of taking care of their plants and dog. I wanted honor them by taking good care of their home.
Part of the way we people honor is by taking care of things they’ve entrusted to us.
Part of the way honor God is by taking care of the earth he has entrusted to you us.
We honor God by gathering and singing song of worship to God, but we also honor God by taking care of the things he has entrusted to our care.
The earth is the Lord’s (Psalm 24), he has called us to take care of the earth as managers and stewards and we honor him by taking good care of the earth… and finally one of the many motivations we have as people who believe or are coming to believe in God is the fact the God tells us in his work that the day the earth will one day be renewed.
In history of Christianity, there have been periods when Christians have not taken care of the earth because people believe that it would one day be destroyed and replaced.
There is much evidence in the Bible, however, to suggest that the earth rather than being destroyed will be renewed.
In Revelation 21:1
God says 1Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.
Later in Revelation 21 God says God in Revelation 21 “Behold I am making all things new.”
Darrell Johnson in is book on Revelation says for years he misread read these words to mean I am making “all new things.”
Darrell says for years the future meant for me scrapping everything of the old creation, and starting over with a whole new plan.
Now he reads it—I am making all things new; God can make all new things, but point of Revelation 21 and 22 is that he is making all things: people and creation new.
If we believe that this world and all that is in it will one day be obliterated or just absorbed into nothingness as some religions teach, then we’d have much less motivation to care for the earth (we’d some, especially if we think about future generations).
But if we believe that this earth will one day be redeemed and made new we have tremendous motivation to take care of earth.
The famous baseball player Mickey Mantle said when he was dying from a disease that had been brought on by a lifetime of alcohol abuse; he said if I knew I was going to live this long I would have taken better care of my body. When we realize that God has a plan to renew the earth and that it has future… as renewed earth… then we also will take great care, for the glory of God, for the good of future generations, and in anticipation of its renewal.
Caring for creation and being ecologically sensitive is simply a natural overflow of who we are and what we believe.
Let’s move into some application how does this apply to us personally?
Sonja Bruce is one of the members of the community who has thought a lot about this and is really seeking to live this out with her husband. I’ve her to come and share some ways we can do this.
The population of North America of Canada and U.S. is about 5 percent of the world and yet we use over 25% of the worlds resources.
As Loren and Ruth Wilkinson remind in their book Caring for Creation in your own back yard we caan reduce, reuse, and recycle:
We can turn off the lights or the heat (when we’re not in the rooms), we can save energy, we can stop the water when we’re not brushing our teeth (I’ve started as I’ve gathering ideas in preparing this message), we can avoid over use water in show (guilty of this—long time), re-use…paper printer… that’s only been used on one side (paper), we can recyle (bin) and try to walk or bike when possible…
(The archbishop of Cantebury is urging the Anglican church toward a Green Revolution. He was quoted in a recent edition of the Vancouver Sun, saying we can try to find out where our products and wherever possible try to encourage fair trade goods.
On the C.B.C. local News Friday night there was a feature on buying fair trade roses. Roses that have been developed in places where people are conscious of both not polutting the environment or paying their workers fairly.
Where possible and as we can afford we can try to buy food from companies that are conscious of treating animals well….whether or about free range eggs, free range turkeys, Dolphin free tuna, ecological laundry…)
I love nature but I don’t kiss or hug trees. But I really want to think through what it means to decrease my ecological footprint… I haven’t done this very well.
On a personal level I want to play my part…
We can care for the earth through our personal lifestyle, but we can care for the earth by using our influence to promote care for creation.
The Pantanal region of located along the borders of Brazil, Bolivia, and Paraguay is considered the largest freshwater wetland in the world (depending on exactly where you draw the borders it’s about ¼ of the size of British Columbia) and home kind of animals and various endangered species.
It’s been described as kind of Jurrasic Park without the dinosaurs…
But, as New York Times Columnist Thomas Friedman pointed out this area was put at
risk through the forces of globalization.
Soy farmers on the plateau above the Pantanal basin were eager to get their soy to a rapidly expanding global soybean market.
To get their soy to market they wanted to straighten the winding rivers so that barges could navigate them more easily and quickly—but in ways that would harm the ecosystem (show the photos of rivers and animals).
But what happened in Pantanal is that local environmentalists engaged environmentalists here in North America to put pressure on the Inter-American Development Bank, which was planning to fund the new straightening of the river system (re-show image of the winding river)…
The Development bank, sensitive to its global brand name reputation, responded by pressuring the local governments sponsoring the river project to do a complete environmental assessment. In the end, the government figured out ways to improve the navigation of the rivers in the Pantanal without altering their shape.
20 years ago according to Vice President of Conversation International, Glenn Pricket, in a country like Brazil where most of Pantanal wetland is located… If foreign environmentalists critical of development in practices in the Amazon, the general would say “Butt out, this is our sovereign terroritory.” But with the coming of globalization and more and more companies investing in places like Brazil it creates a new dynamic. With global companies concerned about their global brandname sometimes it only takes on environmentalist waving an email message on the floor of her parliament to hold up a major power plant or project or some environmentally sensitive deal.
Some times the concerns of individuals not only lead to a company become more environmentally sensitive out of concern for their brand name and their profitability, but in some case the leader of company actually experience a kind of conversion.
Like Ray Anderson, head of the largest carpet manufacturing company in the world.
“Show video Clip”
For 21 years Ray Anderson never thought about how their products were affecting the environment and then because of the questions of some customers… set in motion a series of events that change him and his company.
I show this to demonstrate how the concerns of individual customer can turn a company but also to illustrate that when and if we have a position in the world, like Ray Anderson, we can implement change.
I know some people in this community are seeking to use their influence to care for creation. I have heard of how people like Dr. Marcello Veiga, a member of our community, who is professor mining engineering at UBC is doing this. He serves as consultant to United Nations Industrial Development Organization…giving them counsel on how to reduce mercury pollution of international waters by emissions resulting from gold mining.
As a professor at UBC he says, "My responsibility to students is to get them thinking about ethical behaviour (particularly as it affects the environment and poor), which has been sadly lacking in the history of engineering."
He and his wife Sonia are using their influence informed by their Christian conscience to care for creation.
Ron Sider, a Christian very committed to caring for creation, has…
“Noone can do everything, everyone can do something and together we can change the world.”
“Noone can do everything, everyone can do something and together, by the grace of God, we can change the world.”
(Carpet CEO 51:55—54:33)
050212 Stewardship M3 Environment
Outline:
Introduction:
What do you think is the most beautiful place on earth? (it could be either a place you’ve heard about, seen in photos or art or have actually been to)?
This past Sunday I was speaking at a church in Hawaii (someone has to do it).
One afternoon we were at a park overlooking the ocean on the Eastern side of Oahu. We saw this skit of a pirate who was invading a little island. The pirate shouted from his ship to a man on island, I know you have treasure--hand it over or die! The man on the little island says, “We have no treasure on the island. The pirate shouts, I’ve heard you have treasure, hand it over! Then there is a voice over which says, “The treasure is all the natural beauty all around us.”
In beautiful places like Hawaii or Vancouver or in places we’ve thought of we are especially conscious of the fact that the treasure that is all around us.
This morning as continue our series on what it means to be manager of a steward of things that God has entrusted to us, we’re going to look at what it means to be a manager or a steward of creation.
Psalm 24 tells us that the earth belongs to the Lord…
1 The earth is the LORD's, and everything in it,
the world, and all who live in it;
2 for he founded it upon the seas
and established it upon the waters.
Historically whether people were Christian or not, many have intuitively understood that the land belongs to someone or something bigger than themselves.
The earliest settlers in what we now call North America, the First Nations or aboriginal peoples did not believe in “private property.” They believed the land was sacred and should belong to no particular human being.
As Jeremy Rifkin, the president of the foundation of economic movements points out, during medieval times in, Europe life had much more of a communal or collective quality.
The land was divided into commons are (photo Edale). People farmed the land as a collective. The land was administered by the church or the aristocracy or the lord of the manor and these people managed the land as stewards of God who owned the land (photo of the people farming the land).
People belonged to the land--the land did not belong to people. The land belonged to God…
When we’re aware that the land belongs to God, we’re much more apt to cultivate and farm it as a kind of act of worship (slide of the Angelus).
Beginning with the enclose of movements of the commons lands in the 14-16 centuries in Europe, the great common lands, were reduced to private property. Later countries would claim the oceans waters close to them, and in the last century air corridors have been bought and sold… and now in recent times in places Bolivia even the rain fallen from the sky has been privatized… sold to a U.S. based corporation…
My point is not to say that “owning property” real estate or other kinds of property is wrong or that we should adopt a communist system, but us to remind that in a time when we assume land is owned “some person or corporation or government” we can forget the reality of Psalm 24 that the earth belongs to the Lord.
Title deed or no title deed, strictly speaking we don’t own land, strictly speaking God owns the land: he owns the world, and we are simply managers of what he’s entrusted to us (use globe).
In Genesis 2:15 we see how God calls us to serve as stewards or managers of the land.
15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.
If the land was really “ours”—I suppose we could do with it what we wanted with but if it’s someone else’s property we don’t have that freedom.
We live on a corner lot not too far from here… and on the Western side of our lot is a sidewalk and between the sideway and the road list a grassed area about 9-10 feet wide that runs about 120 feet with 3 fairly newly planted trees. It’s not our land but I understand we’re responsible to take of it. We are to the cut grass, water it and the trees in the summer, and remove the litter from this area, etc. I think we take better care of this piece of property than our “own” yard. Because this someone else’s property, I guess it’s a common area, and we’ve been entrusted to take care of it.
If we’re asked to take care of someone else’s home or plants or dog or cat while they’re away on vacation, isn’t true we’ll likely better care of these things than if they were own?
The more we care for and respect the owner the better we’ll take care of their property.
After graduating from theological seminary in the Boston area, I was pretty much broke and the first position I had was serving as a pastor of a new church plant to be started in Southern California.
The church had no denominational backing and no major financial backing. A couple in Southern California who I had never met heard that I was coming to Southern California to plant a church. The husband called me and explained he and his wife traveled up to half the year and asked if I would be willing to live in their home, which over looked the Ocean, in exchange for taking care of their plants and dog while they were away.
The choice was either I’d be living in the back seat of my car or living in place overlooking the ocean… I’ll take #2.
John and Carol the owners of the home became friends of mine. Because of their care for me and generosity, I wanted to really do a good job of taking care of their plants and dog. I wanted honor them by taking good care of their home.
Part of the way we people honor is by taking care of things they’ve entrusted to us.
Part of the way honor God is by taking care of the earth he has entrusted to you us.
We honor God by gathering and singing song of worship to God, but we also honor God by taking care of the things he has entrusted to our care.
The earth is the Lord’s (Psalm 24), he has called us to take care of the earth as managers and stewards and we honor him by taking good care of the earth… and finally one of the many motivations we have as people who believe or are coming to believe in God is the fact the God tells us in his work that the day the earth will one day be renewed.
In history of Christianity, there have been periods when Christians have not taken care of the earth because people believe that it would one day be destroyed and replaced.
There is much evidence in the Bible, however, to suggest that the earth rather than being destroyed will be renewed.
In Revelation 21:1
God says 1Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.
Later in Revelation 21 God says God in Revelation 21 “Behold I am making all things new.”
Darrell Johnson in is book on Revelation says for years he misread read these words to mean I am making “all new things.”
Darrell says for years the future meant for me scrapping everything of the old creation, and starting over with a whole new plan.
Now he reads it—I am making all things new; God can make all new things, but point of Revelation 21 and 22 is that he is making all things: people and creation new.
If we believe that this world and all that is in it will one day be obliterated or just absorbed into nothingness as some religions teach, then we’d have much less motivation to care for the earth (we’d some, especially if we think about future generations).
But if we believe that this earth will one day be redeemed and made new we have tremendous motivation to take care of earth.
The famous baseball player Mickey Mantle said when he was dying from a disease that had been brought on by a lifetime of alcohol abuse; he said if I knew I was going to live this long I would have taken better care of my body. When we realize that God has a plan to renew the earth and that it has future… as renewed earth… then we also will take great care, for the glory of God, for the good of future generations, and in anticipation of its renewal.
Caring for creation and being ecologically sensitive is simply a natural overflow of who we are and what we believe.
Let’s move into some application how does this apply to us personally?
Sonja Bruce is one of the members of the community who has thought a lot about this and is really seeking to live this out with her husband. I’ve her to come and share some ways we can do this.
The population of North America of Canada and U.S. is about 5 percent of the world and yet we use over 25% of the worlds resources.
As Loren and Ruth Wilkinson remind in their book Caring for Creation in your own back yard we caan reduce, reuse, and recycle:
We can turn off the lights or the heat (when we’re not in the rooms), we can save energy, we can stop the water when we’re not brushing our teeth (I’ve started as I’ve gathering ideas in preparing this message), we can avoid over use water in show (guilty of this—long time), re-use…paper printer… that’s only been used on one side (paper), we can recyle (bin) and try to walk or bike when possible…
(The archbishop of Cantebury is urging the Anglican church toward a Green Revolution. He was quoted in a recent edition of the Vancouver Sun, saying we can try to find out where our products and wherever possible try to encourage fair trade goods.
On the C.B.C. local News Friday night there was a feature on buying fair trade roses. Roses that have been developed in places where people are conscious of both not polutting the environment or paying their workers fairly.
Where possible and as we can afford we can try to buy food from companies that are conscious of treating animals well….whether or about free range eggs, free range turkeys, Dolphin free tuna, ecological laundry…)
I love nature but I don’t kiss or hug trees. But I really want to think through what it means to decrease my ecological footprint… I haven’t done this very well.
On a personal level I want to play my part…
We can care for the earth through our personal lifestyle, but we can care for the earth by using our influence to promote care for creation.
The Pantanal region of located along the borders of Brazil, Bolivia, and Paraguay is considered the largest freshwater wetland in the world (depending on exactly where you draw the borders it’s about ¼ of the size of British Columbia) and home kind of animals and various endangered species.
It’s been described as kind of Jurrasic Park without the dinosaurs…
But, as New York Times Columnist Thomas Friedman pointed out this area was put at
risk through the forces of globalization.
Soy farmers on the plateau above the Pantanal basin were eager to get their soy to a rapidly expanding global soybean market.
To get their soy to market they wanted to straighten the winding rivers so that barges could navigate them more easily and quickly—but in ways that would harm the ecosystem (show the photos of rivers and animals).
But what happened in Pantanal is that local environmentalists engaged environmentalists here in North America to put pressure on the Inter-American Development Bank, which was planning to fund the new straightening of the river system (re-show image of the winding river)…
The Development bank, sensitive to its global brand name reputation, responded by pressuring the local governments sponsoring the river project to do a complete environmental assessment. In the end, the government figured out ways to improve the navigation of the rivers in the Pantanal without altering their shape.
20 years ago according to Vice President of Conversation International, Glenn Pricket, in a country like Brazil where most of Pantanal wetland is located… If foreign environmentalists critical of development in practices in the Amazon, the general would say “Butt out, this is our sovereign terroritory.” But with the coming of globalization and more and more companies investing in places like Brazil it creates a new dynamic. With global companies concerned about their global brandname sometimes it only takes on environmentalist waving an email message on the floor of her parliament to hold up a major power plant or project or some environmentally sensitive deal.
Some times the concerns of individuals not only lead to a company become more environmentally sensitive out of concern for their brand name and their profitability, but in some case the leader of company actually experience a kind of conversion.
Like Ray Anderson, head of the largest carpet manufacturing company in the world.
“Show video Clip”
For 21 years Ray Anderson never thought about how their products were affecting the environment and then because of the questions of some customers… set in motion a series of events that change him and his company.
I show this to demonstrate how the concerns of individual customer can turn a company but also to illustrate that when and if we have a position in the world, like Ray Anderson, we can implement change.
I know some people in this community are seeking to use their influence to care for creation. I have heard of how people like Dr. Marcello Veiga, a member of our community, who is professor mining engineering at UBC is doing this. He serves as consultant to United Nations Industrial Development Organization…giving them counsel on how to reduce mercury pollution of international waters by emissions resulting from gold mining.
As a professor at UBC he says, "My responsibility to students is to get them thinking about ethical behaviour (particularly as it affects the environment and poor), which has been sadly lacking in the history of engineering."
He and his wife Sonia are using their influence informed by their Christian conscience to care for creation.
Ron Sider, a Christian very committed to caring for creation, has…
“Noone can do everything, everyone can do something and together we can change the world.”
“Noone can do everything, everyone can do something and together, by the grace of God, we can change the world.”
(Carpet CEO 51:55—54:33)
posted by Shigematsu at 9:55 PM
1 Comments:
Wow...your rough drafts go way back! Will take me a while to read them all~~~
Thanks again for being a guiding light to me eversince I started coming to Tenth! =)
- Fiona & Family
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