The Way of Jesus as an Ecological Reality
The Way of Jesus as an Ecological Reality
My talk from this year's Audio Feed Festival
This post is late, and for that I apologize. I am at the AudioFeed Festival and have been getting ready for that and traveling when I would usually be writing and posting. This feels a little bit like cheating, but I am going to post my notes from my talk for my weekly post, which I should have posted on Saturday or Sunday, but am posting today :)
Later, after some light editing is done, I am going to post the actual talk so you can listen to it as well. The talk is a little different than the notes, as is typical in these kinds of things, but by and large it is the same. My talk was directly after that by the author of Orphaned Believers, Sara Billups, who did an incredible job, I might add. She talked some from her book, and addressed the perennial problems of Christian nationalism and the troubled state of the Evangelical church. If you’re not following her, you really should be. Here’s her website, Twitter, Instagram, and Substack. I found our talks to be in an interesting conversation with one another and, like an estuary, the meeting of the two together created something life giving.
And so, with no further ado, my notes from this weekend, which honestly will feel much like reading a post cause I don’t know how to take notes.
Living the Estuary
The Way of Jesus as Ecological Reality
These are the generations of the heavens and the land, concerning their creation.
On the day the LORD God made the land and the heavens, when there was no shrub of the field in the land, when no herbs of the field had sprouted, because the LORD God had not caused it to rain on the land and there was no human to tend the soil–but a stream rose up from the land to give drink to the whole face of the soil–the LORD God formed the human from the dust of the soil and breathed into his nose the breath of life and the human became a living being.
And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden in the east and he placed the human who he formed there. And the LORD God caused every tree that was pleasing to the eye and good for food to sprout from the soil. And the Tree of Life was in the midst of the garden as well as the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
And the LORD God took the human and placed him in the Garden of Eden to serve it and to keep it. And the LORD God commanded the human, saying, “From every tree of the garden you may freely eat, but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you may not eat, because on the day that you eat from it, dying, you will die.
Genesis 2:4-9, 15-17
The first two chapters of Genesis sit at the center of a controversy about how the world was created. People get lost in the details of what a “day” is in Genesis 1, we argue about whether or not the Garden of Eden was real or if Adam and Eve “actually existed.”
But to read these texts as if they were telling us “how” the world came into existence, at least as if that was the main point, is to miss what Genesis is trying to do completely.
The first couple chapters of Genesis tell us why the world is the way it is and why humanity is the way it is. They also give us a glimpse into the deep relationship between humanity and the rest of the created world. In the imagination of Genesis, human beings are one creature among many. Perhaps with a unique role among God’s creatures (think “image of God”), but a creature among creatures.
As a creature among creatures, we are part of the creation. Another way to say this is that we are part of the ecosystem, even the local ecosystem. To say that, then, is to say that we are an integral part of the life of the place where we live.
You’ll notice that when I translate these verses, I use the English word “land” instead of the traditional “earth.” It’s not necessarily that I think “earth” is a bad translation of the Hebrew word eretz, but because of where we live (21st century United States), when we hear “earth,” we think of the planet. We don’t think of a localized place where we live and work, but of an impersonal, if miraculous, rock that floats in the emptiness of space.
But a land is something different, and land, or a land, conjures in the English speaking mind something closer to what I believe ancient Israelites would have heard when reading Genesis.
People belong to a land as much or more than land belongs to people. The earth is a planet, land is a place, and people are from places. Land and place form identity because the soil is literally and metaphorically full of history. All the good and bad goes down into the soil and manifests in the bodies and identities of the people who grow from the soil.
Human beings are complex and have complex relationships with their places, and nothing is one for one, but the place where you grew up, the people you grew up with, the institutions you were part of (schools, churches, programs, etc.) are all part of who you are, even if you’re reacting against them. If you’ve moved, like I have, to a new place, it begins to impact you as you impact it.
You are part of the physical and metaphorical ecosystem where you live, and that is the picture Genesis 2 is painting. We are told that no plants had yet sprung from the ground, and why? There’s two reasons, because God had not caused it to rain and because there was no one to tend to the fields. Humanity’s presence is integral to the flourishing of the places where we live.
That’s probably not the story you’ve heard. We live in a nihilistic age where humanity’s negative impact on local and global ecosystems are daily in the news. And we cannot deny the horrific impact humans are having in the world, but in a strange way, our oversized negative impact reveals just how influential humanity is in their ecosystems, in their places.
I’ve become very fascinated with ecosystems over the last few years, and looking at how ecosystems work can teach us a lot about what it means for us to be human, and what it means for us to be Christians who are part of our world.
I chose the title “Living the Estuary” because I believe, as humans, it’s impossible to live separate from our place, whether that is as part of the “natural” ecosystem or as part of the cultural ecosystem. And as Christians, we are called by God to be positive inputs into all the ecosystems of which we are a part.
An estuary is the meeting point of rivers and oceans, of salt and freshwater. The mixing of these waters creates something new, brackish water. This meeting point where something new emerges creates some of the richest and vibrant ecosystems on the planet. The estuary also becomes the meeting point for many different land and water species. It’s a place where animal and plant life thrive and is vital for migratory and birthing patterns.
What does this have to do with creation and the way of Jesus? We often, and still, though we’ve been talking about it for decades, fall prey to the kind of compartmentalism at which the West is so good. Academia goes over here. The arts over here. Religion over there. Spirituality here. The Spirit filled life there. As much as our inner lives are striated along these lines, we compartmentalize in groups like this as well.
My argument is that in order to be the best source of life and good for the world, Christians must be in the world as Christians. I reject the old Relevant-era idea that “Christian” is a bad qualifier, a bad adjective to append to a noun. It’s not enough to be “a band of Christians,” or “an artist who is Christian,” or any number of combinations.
I reject this idea because it reifies gnosticism, as if our spirituality was not always already affecting everything we do. We ourselves are physical, psychological, and spiritual ecologies that manifest as a self. If you are in a band of Christians, you are a Christian band.
I understand the original impetus behind this idea. Many people wanted protect good art, good work, good business from mediocre (or worse) art, work, business, etc. I admit that too many people then and now got away with producing bad art because it was appended “Christian.” A better response, in my mind, is for good Christian artists to continue to make good art.
You are the salt of the land, but if the salt becomes tasteless, how will it become salty? It is not good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by people. You are the light of the world. A city placed at the top of a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and place it under a basket, but upon a lampstand, and it shines for all who are in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before humanity, in order that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in the heavens.
Matthew 5:13-16
With these words, Jesus opens up his famous Sermon on the Mount, and in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus calls us to a kind of “godly materialism,” living in the world and of the world. But the call of Jesus on his people doesn’t stop there. Jesus calls us to be in the world, of the world, and for the world.
When Jesus said we were salt and light, he meant that by living in the spirit (Spirit?) of the Sermon on the Mount, we would be a force of holiness and good for the world.
The Sermon is interesting because it is oriented toward the Kingdom of God, toward that time when God makes all things new and champions justice in the world, but it is a kind of backwards recapitulation. The Sermon is the way Jesus teaches his disciples to embody the Kingdom of God today, in our land, and in our place. It’s how we become a positive part of our cultural ecosystems.
The image of salt is a symbol of preservation, and the image of light is a symbol of safety and refuge. I believe in judgment, but I don’t believe judgment is God’s goal. God’s desire is salvation and liberation. God actually desires human flourishing, and one way he does that is by placing his people in specific places, doing specific things, that are all very earthly.
And all that you do, in word and in deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus…
Colossians 3:17
Therefore, whether you eat or whether you drink, do everything for the glory of God. Be blameless, both to Jews and Greeks and to the church of God, just as I please all people in all things, not seeking my own advantage but that of the many, in order that they may be saved.
1 Corinthians 10:31-33
I still believe that Jesus is in the business of saving souls, but eternal destruction (whatever that is) is only one small piece of the picture, and not even a main piece. The beautiful thing about the word “soul,” in both biblical Greek and Hebrew, is that it essentially means the whole, embodied life.
The salvation God provides in Jesus is a salvation that extends not just to the invisible parts of our existence (which are real!), but to our whole lives. The Sermon on the Mount, then, is Jesus’ call to embody his liberation in our daily lives.
This is what I think St. Paul is getting at when tells us to do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, that whatever we do, even if it’s as simple and daily as eating and drinking, to do it to the glory of God.
Think about the ways you are engaged in your culture and your communities. Doing things for the glory of God is to act well, to do well, to act justly, to fear the Lord whether it’s eating, drinking, painting, drawing, cooking, working, gardening. It’s to do all things as excellently as we can and to do them as Christians, as people who love and follow the Lord Jesus.
When we contribute thoughtfully and with care to culture, when we contribute good inputs to our cultural ecosystems, we are doing good works that glorify God, and that hopefully draw people to the kind of Spirit-filled life you are manifesting in your place.
If you read the Sermon on the Mount carefully, you see what Jesus is calling us to is a life lived toward and for others. It’s the kind of life Jesus lived, and why I call the Sermon “the Way of Jesus.” It’s not just a list of rules, though there are commandments to be found there. The commandments Jesus gives are like little narrative pockets that teach us how to live the way of Jesus in all kinds of life-scenarios.
As we embody what we read here, the nutrients found in the Sermon get taken up into our whole lives, and we begging to walk in the way of Jesus, not just in the stuff listed here, but in all areas of life, in all the stuff first century Galileans would have never imagined.
So my invitation to you, and which I believe is the invitation of Jesus to us, is to embrace the way of Jesus, to remember that everything we do in being formed by our cultures and contributing to the cultures of our place. This isn’t metaphor, this is reality. Remember that, just like God placed Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, he has planted you in the place where you live and given you the opportunity to be his image-bearer there, to do good works that manifest the life of Jesus, and in so doing, become a preaching of the Gospel, the good way of Jesus, so that people might see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.
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