Love God & Your Neighbor By Caring for Creation
Adapted from a sermon I delivered at St. John’s Episcopal Church on 7/21/2019
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.
— John 1:1–3
Then God said, “Look! I have given you every seed-bearing plant throughout the earth and all the fruit trees for your food. And I have given every green plant as food for all the wild animals, the birds in the sky, and the small animals that scurry along the ground — everything that has life.” And that is what happened. Then God looked over all he had made, and he saw that it was very good!
— Genesis 1:29–31
These two readings today remind us that all of creation is not just from God, but of God. I don’t think I’m alone in saying that I often feel closest to god when I’m in nature: warm sunshine on my face, the smell of fresh air, the steady sound of a stream, and even the sight of a powerful osprey or eagle in flight.
God is present in his creation. But what does that mean for us as Christians? What’s our moral obligation to care for his creation?
Well, let’s consider what Jesus said are the two most important commandments. First, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” And second, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” “There is no commandment greater than these,” Jesus said (Mark 12:30–31).
If we are to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind, then we must also love and care for his creation. Remember “All things came into being through him” (John 1:3).
For me, care for God’s creation is essential to love God. And I’m not alone. There’s a growing movement of Christians — Episcopalians, Catholics, and Evangelicals alike — that are deeply committed to protecting the planet because they see it as fundamental to their spirituality and love for God.
But creation care is not only about loving God. It’s also central to Jesus’s second commandment: loving your neighbor as yourself.
One year ago, I joined the Chesapeake Bay Foundation as their Senior Director of Communications. The biggest thing I’ve learned in my time there is that what you do upstream has a profound impact on those downstream.
With the Chesapeake Bay for instance, what thousands of family farmers in central Pennsylvania do on their farmland has a dramatic impact on the health of the Chesapeake Bay and the lives of the humans and animals that live there.
And closer to home in DC, by picking up trash on your street or planting native plants and trees in your yard, you’re not just beautifying God’s creation in your neighborhood. But you’re also caring for God’s creation downstream. The roots of those plants will soak up rain water and prevent it from going into the street, picking up trash and pollution, and carrying it into our Potomac River, the Chesapeake Bay, and eventually the ocean.
So by caring for God’s creation at home, you are also loving your neighbor downstream. But as we learn more about how carbon emissions warm our planet, we need to expand our love to our neighbors in New Orleans or Miami that are facing rising sea levels, more extreme weather, and increasingly frequent flooding.
We must also consider our brothers and sisters in India, the Middle East, and South Asia that will face more frequent droughts, heatwaves, flooding and extreme weather due to climate change.
More than 120 million people could slip into poverty within the next decade because of climate change, according to the United Nations. They will have to choose between starvation and migration.
At the same time, more of our friends with fins, feathers, or fur are threatened with extinction now than at any other period in human history, according to another recent UN report.
In order to love God’s creation and love our neighbor we must reflect on the impact of the choices we make: how we travel, what food we eat, and how much energy we consume. Collectively these decisions have a dramatic impact on God’s creation and our neighbor. Two things that Jesus taught us to love.
I encourage you all to think about how you can love God and love your neighbor by caring for God’s creation.
