How Your Actions Clearly Say You Really Love Her

 

by Cynthia SimbahonBIBLICAL TEXTS  

ROMANS 8: 19-22

 I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. ¹⁹ For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; ²⁰ for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope ²¹ that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. ²² We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now

I John 3: 16-18

We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. ¹⁷ How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister^[a] in need and yet refuses help? ¹⁸ Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.

Introduction

            To our faculty and staff, my co students and to those who are worshipping with us through zoom and facebook live, a wonderful morning to every one!  Today I am extra grateful for the Divinity School for giving me this opportunity to preach the word of God even in this unique platform of worship. Though I am looking forward to preach in front of you in the chapel of the Evangel yet I’m still thankful to God that we were allowed to continue to worship as a Koinonia.

Let us pray!

            Our Heavenly God, the creator of all things, be with us as we reflect upon your word. Help us to listen to the cry of our mother earth. And awaken us in this reality so that we continue to work on the restoration of your creation. Amen.

For today’s meditation we will be talking about Earth Day’s celebration although we only celebrated Earth day on April 22. Let me share my reflection about this celebration alongside the condition of nature today. As we continue to respond to the call of God as God’s partner in restoring the creation I will use the Mother and Child metaphor. A mother who provides and a child who respects his/her mother.

For centuries we already acknowledge the Earth as our Mother. While making my sermon I found an article that talks where the idea of earth as a mother started. It says, “The term Mother Nature is found in the earliest written and most reliable source from Mycenaean Greek transcripts dated in 12 or 13 BC. The term mother Earth is from the word “ma-ga” or Mother Gala.” This conception had its root in the pre-Socratic philosophers who had “invented” nature from the Greek Philosopher Aristotle who wined this term. Also, the American Indian as one of the cultures, believes Earth as “mother” for a reason that Earth had the attributes of a mother. A mother that provides her children shelter, water, and abundant food. However, we know that no one but God provides us with our basic needs but I believe that Mother Earth is God’s instrument to give us our daily needs. Mother Earth is God’s gift to humankind. So we must respect her in all means as we are seeing her as our mother.

Now, I will share three points on becoming good and responsible children to our Mother Earth.

First, We can clearly show our love by hearing our mother’s cry.

Our chosen text is from the letter of Paul to the Romans. The letter to the Romans has many significant themes but one of the prominent themes was about the Righteousness-justice of God. This theme was a significant letter to Paul for it is the central message of Paul’s theological convictions. Here we see that God hates human ungodliness and injustice. God hates that we continue to sin because sin is to refuse God’s will and to fail to do what God wants. Sin causes us to live in our own ways and benefits. Paul states his conviction that no one is just. He listed down our offenses - injustice, killing, neglecting peace, deceit, and etc. These offenses made us “not seeking God” and “not fearing God”.  And as a result of sin, there are traces of our destruction and suffering which are experienced both by the victim and offender.

Today we face a lot of issues in the whole world. There are many victims of our sins. One of these victims is our Mother Earth. As children, we become irresponsible to her, we are not grateful for having her, we’ve caused damage to our mother. Our Mother is crying. We know she’s crying and groaning in pain but we remain deaf. For decades many Environmentalists have been calling us for the restoration of our mother Earth. The central message of the environmental movement is the importance of protecting her. They warn us that we can possibly die if we don’t do our action immediately. However, their efforts to encourage us have never been heard by us. Yet, every day we slowly feel the consequences of our actions. Today we suffered from the COVID 19, the extreme heat, and the wildfires like in Amazon, and other environmental crises that we continue to disregard. Nearly every single day we hear heartbreaking news concerning our mother Earth. But we continue to be irresponsible of our actions. We only complain about how this environmental crisis affects us. But then we do nothing, we are just sitting comfortably in our air-conditioned houses, offices, and churches. This first point of my sermon leads us to this question: How clearly does our actions say that we really love Her? If we will not listen to her cry. If we remain mindless of abusing her, the destruction increases and expands. Today we are all reminded that we need to hear our mother cry to encourage us to stop abusing her. Our mother Earth is God’s gift to us to experience God’s love and to be a provider to us.  Our Mother Earth provides us with our daily needs. Like our Biological mother, she will freely give us our needs without asking anything in return. We always depend on our biological mother just like how we depend on our Mother Earth. We knew that we already made her cry so let us stop our abusive behavior in any way we can. Let us all practice God’s justice to her because we destroyed her. We destroyed her because of our selfishness and resistance to the will of God.            

Second, we can clearly show our love in giving our helping hands to her.

            Our chosen text from Romans 8: 19-22 is implying a message to restore the Creation from sin. Sin has caused all creation to fall from the perfect state in which God created. All things that are created are valued by God and are labelled to be good. But human sin distorted it. Mother Earth was subject to curse. Under the bondage of corruption, the beauty of the Earth is gone. However, one day all creation will be renewed and transformed but it waits on the transformation of the children as Christ made them new beings showing them what it should be in life with Christ, following His act of service. Then people will go to the world together to do Christ service, where healing is given to the Creation and fight the evil effects of sin in the world. In the light together with Jesus believers find their whole way of looking at the world changes. Then God also future glory, the new heaven and earth. That God will free the world from sin, evil and sickness. But in the meantime they must experience the true act of service to people and the need to restore first our Mother Earth in the fulfillment of God’s promise.

The reality of the fall of our Mother Earth was a very urgent need that we needed to respond. We don’t have time. I remembered Sir Lope said that we only have 20-30 years for doing our action in responding to the need of creation. If we continue to be irresponsible our Mother will be in danger. Our text reminded us to give our hands to our mother Earth. Just how our Mother provided us with all the things we needed for many years, now is the time to give back to all of her deeds. Christ saves us from sin, Christ suffers to liberate us, now if we follow Christ like, we are also willing to sacrifice and give our hands to do praxis for our Mother Earth. We can show to her that we really love our Mother Earth to help in changing our behavior towards her. As responsible children, we can actually do something for our mother. I know that we always try our best every day to make our mothers proud. We do our best in everything we do so that we can make our biological mothers happy to give back all of her sacrifices for giving us a comfortable life. Now concerning our Mother Earth, she also gives us our needs, she is God’s instrument for us to enjoy our living here in the world. She is a gift from God. Yet, why did we let her experience the destruction made by our hands? Mother Earth is clearly calling for urgent help. In the face of suffering, we saw our seas and oceans filled with plastics, cellophanes and other garbage. Climate change, man-made land-use change, intensified agriculture and livestock production or the growing illegal wildlife trade is oppressing her. Ecosystems support all life on Earth. The healthier our ecosystems are, the healthier our Mother is - and us. Restoring our damaged ecosystems will help to end poverty, combat climate change and prevent mass extinction. But how can we do it? Our hands that destroy our Mother is the same hand that will save her. Together with each other's hands we can possibly do something for her. Together with each other's hands let us transform our Mother Earth.

Third, we can clearly show our love in action to restore her.

             In our text from 1 John 3: 16-18, here  the explanation of showing real love. Real love is an action. It’s not just a feeling. It produces selfless, sacrificial giving. The greatest act of love is giving oneself for others. How can we lay down our lives? It is by serving others with no thought of receiving anything in return. This is also the message of God being love and those who know God are called to manifest such love in daily living. God is the author of love. God took the initiative to love the world mired in sin and death, through Jesus Christ, so that we may live in love again. Therefore the practice of love in the world is not an option but an important response to the Love of God. That is sin should vanish for it is the failure to practice love. Our active obedience to God’s command to love one another. Obedient believers should live for the benefit of others rather than to harm them. One concrete example is the failure to protect our Mother Earth. It is not only the destruction that our Mother Earth experienced but by the danger of our lives here on Earth. We are challenged to lay down our lives for others as how Jesus lay down his life for us.

            Here loving “others'' is significant in our text. We can view “others'' as our Mother Earth. Loving our Mother Earth means we need to show real actions.  This text shows us the perfect act of love. Laying our lives for others or laying our lives for our Mother Earth is the concrete and real practice of Love. But how can we do it? Our Mother is dying. How can we make it experienced by the next generation if we continue to be abusive and wicked. We are called for personal transformation, to be transformed individuals from being abusive into loving. Hence if we do it, we must expect to experience suffering. This task is not a simple and easy task. Your life is at risk from the dominant and wicked people. You had a lot to consider, especially your actions.  If we look back to Christ service, His act of service is patterned with endless suffering. Suffering from the judgement, suffering both emotional and physical and suffering from disappointments. Though this suffering is present, it is not a hindrance to Jesus because of his love he had for us. His sacrificial act is a concrete action of His love and compassion to us. Human beings are prisoned in sin, oppressed with our discontentment, and slaves of our selfish desires. Laying Jesus' life liberates us from sin. In connection to loving our Mother Earth, what action can show our love to her? There are so many things that we can do. Let us first acknowledge that we need each other in this task. Our Mother needs her children. Just like in the context of a family where everyone must be in solidarity with our siblings. Each of us are all siblings, and as siblings, as brothers and sisters we need to work hand in hand to free our mother from pain. The pain that we caused to her. This work is not an individual work, it is a group work because we also felt the pain. Being children of our Mother we also experienced the pain we caused. We also suffer from the damage we created. Those damages bring us back to us. We are connected to our Mother Earth since we came from God the source of everything.

Together as siblings let us discuss and identify priority actions. The urgent need for restoration because slowly we experienced the result of the massive destruction. To end her suffering we should stop thinking on our personal goal rather we must be in solidarity with the people who put efforts to end the crisis. We should create an environmental movement even in simple ways. Our government already started actions and our task is to participate and make it a more realistic movement.  There are many environmentalists that call for help in their advocacies. There are many plans and efforts on how we can end her suffering. There are plenty of discussions that offer solutions. We should not lose every opportunity to help save our mother Earth. Every day we can do something for her. Now people think that caring for the earth is just for their own survival and motivated with this reason.. If we plant trees just because we want to breathe fresh air then it is an egoistic reason. We must change this motivation because it is only for our own. If we wish to help and make our Mother Earth healed we must genuinely wish her well.

CONCLUSION

            The urgent need for the restoration of our Mother Earth should be our reason to prioritize restoring God’s gift. Being good children we must take seriously the pain we consciously made.  We can clearly say that we love our Mother Earth if we pay attention to her cry, give our helping hands and show our love through action. An action that will restore her and heal her. And action that is done in love and an action that brought healing and justice to our Mother Earth.

To end my sermon, I would like to share this challenges that my classmates presented during our Creation Theology with Dr. Lope Robin as we continue to respond the urgent call for long lasting restoration of our mother Earth.

Japhet challenges us that “When we say that we need to restore the environment, we are not talking here of the dependency of the ecosystem to us. Instead, we restore the environment from all our abusive actions in the creation. We restore the environment from our selfish decision in expense to nature’s destructions.

Ate Dory, she said “Sooner or later if we continue the destroying the environment, warming the climate, the ocean surface will continue to increase, and anyone can already imagine what will happen. God created the water to give life, but God also causes the water take life. We should hear each other out, listen to the cries of pain of our fellow creation of God.

Ate Bem, she stated that “Everything that happens in this world can be blamed on us because we destroy nature. All we can do is stop the wrong things we do against nature and start acting like true stewards of God’s creation.

 Mahal, she said, that “God created all of us because we are ought to protect and to care for each other, the whole creation. We will use God’s gift of wisdom to use and help the nature.

Janeene, she said “The voice of God is calling us to respond to the cries of the oppressed creation. It is a call to live with awareness and sensitivity, a call to speak out and live out in favor of the protection of God’s creation.

Erica, she said “As we acknowledge God’s wisdom on farming, may we support local farmers through buying their products, and practice healthy lifestyle to protect the environment. Let us continue to recognize that these creatures co-exist with us and in fact we need them for everyday consumption.

Joshua, he said “God’s covenant still remains in our time. Though the continuing destruction of creation is present, God is patiently waiting for us to respond on the call for restoring the balance of the creation and must accept the redemption God has already given to us.

Shaira, she said that “Being a bearer of the image of God, we are held accountable for the actions that we raise towards other creatures. We are called to treat the whole creation in the same way God treats them in appreciation, in honor, and in gratitude for being made in God’s image.

Mannix he said “As God’s children as a church called to do God’s mission, we are to continue to value nature conserving it, cultivating it and respecting it.

Lastly Kuya Rex he said, “There must be deep-theological analysis of the scriptural texts that are wrongly used in promoting abused for the creation. And there must be forgiveness to the creation that comes out from having our respect to God’s manifestation of power and glory.

It is my hope and prayer that with these challenges we will be empowered and encourage to participate the need for restoration for our Mother Earth as God’s creation. Amen.