Preacher: Rev Jennifer Hosler, PhD
Date: April 7, 2024
Scripture: Luke 24:13-35; Romans 8:18-25
We hike almost every Saturday. Since the beginning of the pandemic, most of our Saturday hikes have been along the Potomac Heritage Trail, a footpath managed by the National Park Service along the Potomac River. There were many times during the pandemic where it felt like our time on the trail was literally saving my life, my mental well-being, and like it was holding together my family amidst an anxious and difficult time for the whole world. I looked back through our family digital photo albums and saw that our first family hike there during the pandemic was March 28, 2020.
There is so much beauty in walking, in hiking, and also in hiking to the same spot, over and over again. One of the things I appreciate the most is being able to observe what new beauties occur with the change of the seasons, with the progression of the months. When the wild raspberries are ripe for picking in June. When the leaves are shin-deep during the fall. When the sycamores shed piles of bark. When the pawpaws are scattered around. When the skunk cabbage is peeking up out of the frozen mud. When the first wildflowers emerge in the spring.
We are in spring wildflower season and the Potomac Heritage Trail is full of spring ephemerals. These are native wildflowers that bloom just for a brief period; they are ephemeral, fleeting but tremendously beautiful. It is Virginia Bluebell season, and the forest was carpeted in delicate blue flowers. In the past two weeks, we’ve also spotted yellow trout lilies and dutchman’s britches and squirrel corn, bloodroot, and dropping star of Bethlehem, trilliums, and more.
This week, in the hope of resurrection and the difficulty of suffering, I am clinging to the joy of wildflowers. One might scoff and say, “How can you find joy amidst a genocide?” And I’ve seen again and again this week, plus again and again in scripture, that there is a rootedness to goodness, to the goodness of the earth and this beautiful gift from God that we call home, where we can center ourselves, sustain ourselves, and find hope.
Our Story with God Begins with Earth
Our story with God begins with the Earth, our beautiful and precious home, that swirling blue marble. In the Creation story in Genesis 1, God repeatedly calls the earth “good”. What does it mean to say that something is good? The word “good” has a wide semantic range – we use it for a lot of things. The meaning here in Genesis 1 is much more than “just okay”. In Genesis, good is pleasing, pleasant, pure, and delightful. “God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good.” God then creates the sun, moon, and stars, calls into existence the sky and land, gathers the waters, makes vegetation, plants, and animals, and after God is finished each one, God the Creator calls each of them “good.” God didn’t say, “meh,” about the trilliums or the bluebells or the Pileated Woodpecker. God created and said it was good.
The Creator gazes upon oceans and rivers and trees and streams and birds and mammals and fish and declares all of them pleasing, pleasant, pure, and delightful. From the beginning of our human story, we see that physical matter, the biological world around us, and the environment—they are all God-designed, God-crafted, and God-approved. There is goodness in our earthly home.
Genesis 1 also details the creation of human beings. Humans are shown to be in unique relationship with God, the only part of creation that is made in the image of God. When God is finished, God looks upon the humans and says that it is “very good.” Being made in the image of God gives us a special relationship with God—and also a special relationship with the rest of creation. Being made in the image of God brings with it a functional authority: there is a task to keep, guard, and protect the earth under human care. Securing the well-being of every other creature and bringing the promise of each to full fruition. From the start, humans are to have an ongoing relationship with the created world, caring for it, tending it, and protecting the earth and its creatures.
Sin Harming Creation
In Genesis 1, the beautiful creation story is presented at a macro level. God creates all facets of our world and says that they are good. In chapter 2, we get a closer look at human beings, with God creating people out of the earth itself, out of dust from the ground. Again, we see humans and the earth intertwined—physically this time. From dust we are made. Things get darker, however, as the book of Genesis continues. In Genesis 3, Adam and Eve rebel against God. The consequences of human sin proceed to spread across creation. These consequences include a broken relationship between humans and a combative relationship between humans and the earth.
Later, in the Hebrew prophets, the effects of human sin on the land are described in vivid terms of desolation and brokenness. The land is personified as mourning the sin of the Israelites. Jeremiah 12:4 reads, “How long will the grass mourn, and the grass of every field wither? For [Because of] the wickedness of those who live in it the animals and the birds are swept away…”
The prophet Hosea proclaimed something similar in chapter 4, verses 1-3, “Hear the word of the LORD, O people of Israel; for the LORD has an indictment against the inhabitants of the land. There is no faithfulness or loyalty, and no knowledge of God in the land. Swearing [oaths], lying, and murder, and stealing and adultery break out; bloodshed follows bloodshed. Therefore the land mourns, and all who live in it languish, together with the wild animals and the birds of the air, even the fish of the sea are perishing” (Hos. 4: 1-3).
In the Hebrew scriptures, human sin is not just an individual problem. Sin affects the well-being of the community and the well-being of the environment. Greed and violence hurt humans and ecosystems filled with plants, animals, and insects. There is good news, though. If human sin impacts all of creation, then God’s salvation and redemption bring healing to all of creation.
Poppies and Hope
When I was in Palestine, my eyes were drawn to the blooms. Amidst the sorrow and hardship of occupation, the genocide in Gaza, and so much injustice, the blooms persisted and spoke to the beauty of the land. Wild mustard popped up everywhere, shining brightly in its majestic yellow. At the beginning of March, mindful of our DC cherry blossoms that were about to progress toward peak bloom, I marveled at the wonder of almond tree blossoms, which looked quite similar to my eye in their snowy whiteness. There were massive blooming rosemary plants. At the Tent of Nations farm near Bethlehem, there were vivid red flowers, which I learned are poppy anemones.
This week I watched a brief video by Bisan Owda (@wizard_bisan1), a videographer and journalist in Gaza. I want to share it with you because, amidst the reporting of displacement, of bombs, of starvation, of genocide, we see Bisan delight in showing the world her favorite flower, Hanoun.
Another photojournalist in Gaza, Suhail Nassar (@suhailnssr) was on a rooftop in a place where he and his parents were sheltering during displacement. His older adult parents were looking for firewood when they found yellow flowers – his father began to make a photo session of his mother, and she was so pleased of the photos, she asked him to send her the pictures immediately so that she could share them with her sisters outside of Gaza.
Beauty amidst displacement. Beauty amidst the rubble. God’s tangible presence, with us even amidst suffering.
Embodied Redemption
In the gospels, we see of a physical, tangible theology: an embodied theology. Embodied. God in a body. The Word of God becoming flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood. God is born in a barn. Fully human, fully God, feeding, healing, walking, hugging, living in the beauty of God’s good earth. Jesus looking to the plants and the animals to teach his disciples. Jesus walking among the fields, the mustard flowers. We see Jesus, plunging into the Jordan river during baptism. Jesus turning water into wine. Jesus tearing off a piece of bread.
The gospel is physical, embodied. Jesus died a physical bodily death and was raised to a physical, bodily resurrection. In our gospel text, the resurrected Jesus walks along a road, eventually making conversation alongside Cleopas and another disciple, who are distraught and leaving Jerusalem after the Passover observances and the crucifixion of their leader. They travel and talk, eventually stopping to rest for the evening. Jesus, Cleopas, and another disciple continue conversation over their evening meal. Jesus picks up the fresh loaf of bread, blesses it, breaks it, and gives it two these travelers. In the physical and embodied act of breaking bread together, the two disciples realize who this fellow traveler really is.
This gospel text stands in contrast to a gnostic or dualistic spirituality that says that our physical bodies or the physical earth are not important. In this text, God continues to be incarnate in the flesh. Jesus – even resurrected Jesus – participates in earthly life, walking along a road, breathing the air, hearing the swish of the grass and the chirp of the birds. Maybe Jesus saw the wild mustard or the poppies along the road. Jesus joins with others in being nourished from the earth and the disciples recognize him in the breaking of bread.
I think it is important to say that Jesus did not disdain the physical world. While not often preached by American Christianity, the “saving” Jesus brings in scripture is not limited to our spiritual souls but extends to our physical bodies and even the created world all around us. Paul teaches that it is not only humanity that needs Christ’s redemptive power. The earth and all creatures in it also eagerly await the full reconciliation that Jesus will bring.
Paul writes in that “the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption [as God’s children], the redemption of our bodies” (8:19-23).
This created world, plants and animals and ecosystems, is tied up in the spiritual and physical fate of humanity. God’s plan of salvation does not just lead to souls being saved, but to our physical bodies and the rest of Creation are also being redeemed. We stand in the resurrection power of Christ, empowered by the Holy Spirit. We receive the first fruits of the Spirit’s transformation, and together with the plants and animals and insects and reptiles, we work toward and await the fulfillment of Jesus’ work in this world.
Bluebells amidst grief. Poppies amidst genocide. There is much grief and suffering of all kinds. I think the beauty of our created world can be an anchor where we root ourselves to the hope of resurrection, the hope of Jesus, the hope of justice, the hope of God’s transformative power. My prayer is that we find our hope and our strength for the work of God in this world, nourished spiritually by the bluebells, the yellow trout lilies, the wild mustard, and the poppies. AMEN.
Washington City Church of the Brethren 