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Psalm 123 1 To you I lift up my eyes, 2 As the eyes of servants look to the hand of their masters, 3 So our eyes look to the Lord our God, 4 Have mercy upon us, O Lord, have mercy, 5 Too much of the scorn of the indolent rich, This year, Monday Matters will focus on wisdom conveyed in the treasures of the book of Psalms. We’ll look at the psalms read in church before Monday Matters comes to your screen. |
The earth is the Lord’s
The heat of summer can be harder on the unhoused than the cold of winter. During one August heat wave, a rector opened his air-cooled church to those who lived on the streets, allowing them rest in the sacred space. Not everyone thought this was a good idea. One established parishioner approached the rector and said: “I don’t like all these people in my church!” to which the somewhat courageous rector responded: “Ma’am, this is not your church. This is not my church. This is God’s church.”
The earth is the Lord’s all that is in it.
Speaking of summer heat, the warming of the earth, felt by all regardless of national boundary, represents an inconvenience for some but tragic hardship for many. Climate change is due in part from a sense that we as human occupants of this planet can do whatever we want with the planet. It’s ours to mess with. Or is it?
The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it.
I grew up in a religious tradition that derived great energy from figuring out who was in and who was out. My own spiritual journey unfolds in recovery from that kind of toxic spirituality. The dynamic is not unique to my tradition. Religious folks of all sort try to define boundaries of their communities on the basis of good doctrine, good works or good taste. They abandon the notion of human family, feeling better about themselves because some other group is excluded. Current political discourse echoes that, e.g., the ascendancy of Christian nationalism. We might do well to reflect on Psalm 24:
The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it.
As individuals, a big part of the journey of faith is thinking about what we do with what we’ve been given. What does ownership look like? Many of us have been born into privilege (a goodly number of us in this country). While many of us have been born on third base, we may give in to the tempting imagination that we have hit a home run. That is not to diminish accomplishment or perseverance. But our faith tells us that all is gift. Even our skill, our accomplishments, our perseverance as well as our prosperity is to be seen as gift. In other words, they belong not to us but to God.
The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it.
If all is gift, what is our response? If we see all that we are and all that we have as gracious gift from God, it could make us feel diminished. So much of our culture depends on the model that we deserve what we have because we earned it. We worked hard for it. That can provide glimmers of satisfaction. It can also make us really tired. And it can make us lose our way, as we confuse ourselves as creation with the creator.
There is freedom in embracing the notion that all is gift, that the earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it. As we embrace that notion, we may find the freedom to reflect that grace to a grace-starved world. Mentor and friend, Bishop Henry Parsley has stated it this way: What is given is given to be given again. That grace-filled approach can open our eyes to God’s activity in all of life. From Howard Thurman: If God is the creator of all things, then all things are in candidacy for his high and holy end.
Give thanks today for the beauty of God’s creation. Give thanks for the gift of God’s church, the body of Christ. Give thanks that even though we human beings are a diverse bunch, we are all children of God, made in the image of God. Give thanks for all good gifts around us as we reflect on what it means that the earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it.
-Jay Sidebotham
