Day 43 - Stewards of Creation

“This world is not my home, I`m just a passing through.”

Growing up in Northern Ireland, this hymn seemed to sum up the kind of theology that typified many of my fellow conservative evangelicals in those days. We had no concept of what is now called `the green agenda`. We hadn`t heard of environmentalism and conservation might have been something that the National Trust was interested in, but not God-fearing Ulstermen. The World/Creation was indeed a gift from God but it was something that according to our reading of Genesis was something we were to “have dominion over” (Genesis 1 vs.26). Our role was clear,

“Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”

I`ve only just noticed the word “replenish;” I don`t think we ever tried to understand what that might mean. Yes, we proclaimed every Harvest Festival that “The Earth is the Lord`s” but He`d put us in charge and more or less given us free reign to do what we wanted. And anyway, as the hymn put it, this world was not our home. It was expendable, it had a sell-by date, namely the Second Coming of Christ or the Rapture, (depending on your theology) and we`d be whisked off to Heaven and the world could quite literally go to Hell.

I think I can honestly say that it was not until I came to Luther King House, Manchester, to do my ministerial training in the early 1980s that I discovered a completely new way of looking at the World. There was an awareness in my new setting of our role as stewards of creation rather than subduers. This was reflected in the liturgy and song of college life. One hymn which I still use to this day is F. Pratt Green`s,

“God in His love for us lent us this planet, Gave it a purpose in time and in space.”

Ending as it does with that great prayer of supplication:

“Earth is the Lord`s: it is ours to enjoy it,

Ours as His stewards, to farm and defend.

From its pollution, misuse and destruction,

Good Lord, deliver us, world without end!”

As we find ourselves in Holy Week, on the day before Maundy Thursday, we are vividly reminded of the truth of the Incarnation, that God in Christ is not aloof or remote from the world and all it`s problems. In Christ, God has become intimately involved with the world at the very deepest level of its pain and suffering.

God in Christ has not only come down among us but has got His hands dirty. He was even buried in the Earth! Perhaps only someone so totally immersed in the Earth could ultimately redeem it.

Thanks be to God!

Alan Kennedy