Credit: NASA

Happy Earth Day.

One of my favorite theologians, Sallie McFague, advocated for a theology that understands the earth as the body of God. This Earth Day, I am so grateful to sit with this powerful metaphor for God.

Other metaphors for God, images and words to describe how we picture God, may be more familiar. In cartoons, for example, God is almost always depicted as an old white man in a long white robe, with a long white beard. In surprisingly theological comedy films I’ve enjoyed, God has been played by George Burns, Morgan Freeman, and Alanis Morissette. In a wood carving in our sanctuary, God is depicted as a giant hand, if reaching down as if from heaven. We know that none of these is actually God, even if they might help us think about God more deeply.

The idea of our planetary home being the body of God has been helpful to me in that it has helped me think about the earth as a whole; it changes the scale of my perspective, pulling me out of my limited, human-sized worries and fears. When I think about the earth as God’s body, it helps me understand and believe how precious it is – how precious we are, as a part of a much bigger whole. Not only do I see that there is connection and unity among all the peoples and creatures who inhabit the earth (despite our divisions and boundaries), but I have a way to imagine and believe that how we treat each other matters to God. The ways that we treat ecosystems we are a part of are the ways we express our devotion to God.

I picture the whole of our planet, as if I were seeing from space, like the astronauts on the Artemis 2 mission. I’m in awe at the photographs they captured, marveling at details: the auroras around the poles! The movement of clouds and weather! A new perspective on our planets relationship to the moon, and the sun.

Last Saturday morning, I really enjoyed spending time with folks from our church and many volunteers from across Los Angeles, at a Habitat Restoration Day with the Friends of the Los Angeles River. We worked in the Sepulveda Basin, removing invasive plants in an effort to restore the rich biodiversity that allows a multitude of plants and animals to flourish more readily. As I was bending, kneeling, and sitting, it really did feel like devotional work. It was as if I was kneeling in prayer and worship, tending God’s very body, not unlike the woman who anointed Jesus feet with oil,

The gifts of understanding the earth as God’s body, then, come not just when we look at the whole planet. They are powerfully meaningful when we think about any small part of the whole system. When we stop to marvel at a beautiful caterpillar, or the way the light illuminates a jacaranda tree against a grey cloudy sky, we can be giving attention to the very presence of God. When we lament the loss of habitat, we are grieving for and with God. When we choose to tend any piece of this planet, we are showing devotional love to God.

There are so many things that are so deeply distressing to me right now; I am disturbed and alarmed at our war in Iran. I am disgusted by the disregard for the dignity of survivors of abuse whose stories are in the Epstein files, the immigrants who are incarcerated in appalling conditions in detention centers, the transgender neighbors in our communities. (Among other things.)

Here on Earth Day, I invite you to join in the holy work of choosing love and devotion for God. Through the work of tending and care, of honoring and noticing. Of believing that God is present in it all, and that it matters. I invite you to find a way of honoring God’s sacred presence, not only in the people and places where it’s easy to see beauty, but in the broken and hurting ones, too. May we choose care, together.

grace and peace,
Pastor Molly