We have become the only species capable of destroying both ourselves and this beautiful, fragile world. Our common home could become our common end. However, David McLoughlin shows that a more careful reading of the wider biblical tradition offers us hope and guidance.
In this Jubilee year, let us dare to see the bigger picture of God’s revelation. God’s relationship with the whole of creation and its evolution must take centre stage in this time of ecological crisis. Our more recent focus on the privileged divine-human love story has not only cost us dearly, but even more so the earth we live on. This is what Pope Francis called us to understand in Laudato Si and Laudate Deum and what Pope Leo is continuing to promote.
As pilgrims of faith, we walk in hope amid wars and divisions, climate change and mass migration. And it is right here that the Scriptures re-emerge as significant for our times: Job, the Psalms, Proverbs, Wisdom, Lamentations and Ezekiel all speak to this individual and collective suffering. In the gospels, we discover anew the different ways that Jesus draws on his surrounding natural world – its creatures and plants, weather patterns and vital resources throughout his teaching. From water and bread to wind and fire, mustard seeds and vines to the lilies in the field, from humble donkeys to the birds of the air – everything is connected, everything has its purpose in the kingdom of God.
From the first Garden in Genesis 2-3 to the vision of the final Garden City for the healing of the nations in Revelation 22:1-5 we are invited to live in the presence of the Creator God. The apocalyptic literature in the Scriptures is, therefore, a challenge not just to our future but to this present world, provoking our engagement and action as pilgrims here on earth. Pope Francis was concerned that a consequence of our human centred approach of recent centuries is that we have become dangerous beings. We have become the only species capable of destroying both ourselves and this beautiful but fragile world. Our common home could become our common end.
However, a more careful reading of the wider biblical tradition offers hope and guidance. The distinctiveness in the human imaging of God in Genesis 1:26 and in our naming of the animals in Genesis 2:19-20 does not imply a separation of humans and animals. Humans are created by God on the same day as all the other animals, we share the same vital ‘stuff’. ‘Adam‘ is ‘of the earth’ and is made of adamah, the rich red clay of the Nile delta, and Eve is the ‘daughter of life’. We diverse and dispersed peoples become living beings through the same breath that God breathes through all living matter in Genesis 27.
The Scriptures make it clear that we are to share God’s providential care for the whole creation.
To this end:
‘The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.’ Genesis 2:15
‘The Lord bless you and keep you;
25 the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;
26 the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace…’
Numbers 6:24-6
Our relationship to the earth is to be modelled on that of Christ which involved self-emptying rather than self-aggrandisement. And the Letter to the Colossians 1:19-20 makes it clear that our model is Jesus the last Adam, not the sad young creature that is the first Adam! We are called to share and continue Jesus’ work of the restoration and reconciliation of all things. This is the reason the Church exists in history.
Creation is an ongoing divine gift which we are called to enjoy and reverence. Yet the tendency of the few to destroy what God has made, out of over consumption, starts early and is critiqued by the prophets comparing us to greedy sheep cf. Ezekiel 34:18. Even in time of war there must be care for the earth: ‘When you besiege a city you must not cut down its trees…’ Deuteronomy 20:19; 22:6.
Again, and again the Wisdom literature also calls us back to the earth and its creatures to find understanding and insight. Proverbs 6:6-9 encourages us to notice ‘the way of the ant.’ Proverbs 30 observes ‘the way of an eagle in the sky, a snake on the rock, a ship on the sea, and a man with a woman.’ Wisdom can be found in the ants, the badgers, the locusts and lizards. Another common, but neglected, biblical theme is creation’s praise of God such as we find in Isaiah 42:10; Psalm 19:1-4;69:34; 96:11-12; 98:7-8; 103:22; 150:6; Daniel 3; Philippians 2:10 and Revelation 5:13 which honour the givenness of creation.
Throughout the Scriptures there is a profound element of hope in the future. The constant remembering of the slave community from Egypt led by Moses into a land free from oppression, fruitful and flowing with milk and honey is to be re-celebrated each year. A new society built on justice towards others, especially ‘the widow, the foreign migrant, and the orphan’, the powerless ones, is to be guaranteed. While the sabbath day will free the land and all its creatures – human and animal, for delight, rest and praise of God. The prophets will repeatedly call Israel to this justice for the living land and its peoples. When they return from exile Isaiah will put before them the vision of shalom, the peace of the final day of creation, a land where integrity and justice will become real once more.
The Letter to the Colossians speaks of Christ redeeming all things, including redeeming the suffering earth. The groaning land and its people wait for deliverance in Romans 8:19-23. This waiting is not passive – we are invited to act in this redemption through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. In this we live out our original Sabbath promise, returning to our rightful place alongside all creatures, all living things, in relation to our one Creator.
We rediscover the worth of all life forms. We rediscover our essential inter-connectedness as ‘the earthling’. We are kin to all other creatures and in this sense, ‘kin-dom’ is a better word than ‘Kingdom’ as Diarmuid O’Murchu suggests. So our purpose is not separate from other life forms but is to be worked out with them. We become true pilgrims who travel this earth, as guests and custodians for our time.
The Scriptures open with a story of God walking with the man and woman he has just created in a garden of flora and fauna he has also created. A garden that is at one with all the species and living in harmony according to his will. The vision of the last book of the Bible is of the same God coming again to dwell among us in a garden city, the New Jerusalem. A garden city for the healing of the nations and of the planet. As we continue our pilgrimage this year, let us walk in God’s ways and work to build the harmony of the whole of Creation again. May it be so!
David McLoughlin is the Emeritus Fellow of Christian Theology at Birmingham Newman University. He has helped to train Christian activists, priests, deacons, ministers and teachers for 40 years.
David McLoughlin reflects on the Biblical narrative of Noah in both the Old and New Testaments.
Dr Richard Goode navigates the story of Noah and its clarion call today from his own canal boat in the West Midlands.
