Good shepherds care for the earth

Good shepherds care for the earth
 
April 21, 2024, 4nd Sunday of Easter and Earth Day
Helen Weber-McReynolds
Readings from:  A New climate for Theology, by Sallie McFague; Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer; John 10: 2, 1, 3-7, 9-18
 
           Yesterday afternoon, I had an experience of the “abundant life” vision to which Sallie McFague referred in our first reading. I was at Girl Scout Camp Gallahue, in Brown County, out on the lake, teaching canoeing. There were 114 Scouts and leaders there, and over the course of four hours, they came down and put on their life jackets, got in their boats by twos and threes, and experienced that beautiful freedom of propelling a boat with their muscles and paddles. That silent peacefulness of unity with water, boat and body, augmented by wind, bright sun sparkling on the lake, and friendship. The awesome beauty of earth, lake, and sky. Of learning something new, or teaching something you have loved all your life, and sharing with a new generation.

          Over and over, kids and adults just kept saying, “It’s so beautiful here.” The physical setting was breathtaking, but so was the opportunity to soak it all in, with their kids, their troop mates, their neighborhood volunteers. I think is was an example of what Robin Wall Kimmerer referred to in our second reading as “making something beautiful in response.” God has given us a world that is so intricately interrelated that we will never fully understand it. We can only try to immerse ourselves in it, whenever we can, and do our best to share it, and to inspire one another to protect it and sustain it. As McFague said, working for environmental justice “….need not be a call for asceticism, for anxiety, or for despair. Rather, it is a vision of… our place as dependent and interrelated with all other life-forms in order to attain a just, sustainable planet where we—and all others—can flourish.” When we understand that our biology and that of bees, as Kimmerer points out, is identical in attraction and enjoyment, we get a glimpse of the love with which God created the world given to us. God truly is a protective, caring shepherd, who leads us to what we need and can teach us how to thrive.

          When we think about sheep, however, we know that they are not necessarily the docile, soft, wooly followers that are depicted in children’s bible stories. Sometimes sheep butt heads, even for hours at a time, fighting for dominance. They throw themselves at each other at speeds up to 20 miles an hour. People can be the same, fighting greedily for oil and gas revenue, for example, at the peril of the earth and everything in it. We need the energy these products can give us, but not at the expense of climate change and its consequences, which, as Pope Francis has pointed out, impacts the poor first and most. We must use the intelligence and impulse toward charity which we are endowed to reverse the forces destructive to the earth which we have instigated. Jesus emphasized in today’s gospel that he was one with us, bodily unified with our flock, and willing to sacrifice himself to teach us the dedication efforts like reversing climate change will take. He was willing to lay down his life, and calls us to lay down our work with governmental leaders, our financial support, and our study and understanding of the environment to care for one another by caring for our planet. Experiencing the world’s beauty can inspire us. Avoiding head-butting for dominance must be part of the love put into it. And providing inspiring experiences for others can help.​