No Waste Faith

April 21, 2024 - Psalm 24: 1-2 & Genesis 1: 1-9

I want to begin today with a poem by Danusha Lameris:

“Ever since I found out that earthworms have taste buds

All over the delicate pink strings of their bodies,

I pause dropping apple peels into the compost bin, imagine

The dark, writhing ecstasy, the sweetness of apples

Permeating their pores. I offer beets and parsley,

Avocado, and melon, the feathery tops of carrots.

I’d always thought theirs a menial life, eyeless and hidden,

Almost vulgar–though now it seems, they bear a pleasure

so sublime, so decadent, I want to contribute however I can,

Forgetting, a moment my place on the menu.”

On this Earth Day Sunday, the waste we humans make is causing a crisis on a planetary level. That very thought can paralyze a lot of us– leave us feeling like we are the earthworms stuck under a heaping pile of garbage. What can our menial lives do to process all this waste? So, I like this poem to remind me that even something as humble as an earthworm has an important job to do in the scheme of processing and of recreating a healthy world.  

I like this poem because its images help me conjure up both the grossness of compost and the sweetness of tasting an apple through all our pores. Doesn’t life carry both those extremes all too often?

I like this poem because when I imagine myself in the place of the earthworm I feel soft, squishy, and vulnerable, and I think those are the qualities we need to face the challenges before us more than we need invincibility, hardness, and meanness. 

The Creation myth we read in Genesis is such a big story of God’s awesome power to call this world into being. Our spiritual ancestors were looking for ways to explain how we got here and what we do now. While today, we also have the benefit of thousands of years of scientific advancement, we can still continue to use these stories to debate those same questions. What do we do now with this awesome resource?

Next to the power to bring the world into being, our power individually is miniscule. What then are we to do? Will all our efforts also go to waste? After all, aren’t we very nearly as fragile as the earthworms?

“Everywhere we look in our culture you will find plastic,” shares Creation Justice Ministries in their resources for Earth Day 2024.

“[Plastic] surrounds our food, it makes up our technology and it is a standard element in our household items. Unfortunately, it is also overflowing from our landfills, floating in our waters and polluting our soil. More and more, you can even find it in our own bodies and those of other living creatures. There have even been traces of plastic found in breast milk. Despite the fact that we have learned the harms of plastics, we are steadily increasing our production of the material and integrating it into more and more items. Plastic is everywhere!”[1]

One place plastic isn’t though is in the Bible. Although plastic breaks down at such a slow pace it could be said to be with us basically forever, it has not always been with us. They didn’t have plastic in Bible times.  

I find that kind of interesting to consider. It helps me envision a time in the future when we figure out how to live without plastic again or at least how to mitigate its harm.

I struggle with how to fit plastic into its place in Creation. It’s not listed here in the Creation myth found in Genesis, no. There’s no day eight when God created plastic. But plastic is not not part of the world. It comes from oil in the ground. Oil is naturally occurring. So, part of Creation, right? But it’s reached the point that we’re being choked with the stuff. It’s poisoning us. We can’t dispose of it safely enough with enough consistency. So, it’s poisoning the planet.

What do we do with this part of Creation?

My hunch is that the majority of us here are already cutting down on plastic use – especially the single-use plastics that proliferate and create waste that could be avoided by carrying reusable water bottles, coffee cups, shopping bags, take out containers, or utensils.  

I know I’m not alone among you to be delighted by the growing accessibility of products that help us avoid certain single-use plastics like these cool strips of laundry detergent we can get ahold of now. They work great, and they come in paper instead of a big heavy water filled plastic bottle that not only has to be disposed of but costs more carbon in the shipping process. There are a lot of individuals and companies, too, trying to come up with solutions for personal single-use plastic.  

I’m under no delusions though that my individual actions will alone save the planet. That’s why I also appreciate collective efforts to find ways to reduce plastic use across our communities or to lessen the power and impact plastic-producing fossil fuel companies have. Did you know there are whole denominations, like the United Church of Christ, that have agreed to resolutions to find ways to reduce their plastic use wherever they can. There are also congregations who call themselves “no waste churches” and are intent on reducing or eliminating waste that goes to the landfill from their churches and homes.

The snippet of Psalm 24 we read today proclaims that “the earth is God’s and everything in it.” One thing I love about psalms is the way they try to capture the awe of this Creation. And I think even this small line of Psalm 24 gets at the awe-inspiring scope of the natural world that is so far beyond us and cannot belong to any one of us alone – not even to all of us as a human species. It belongs to God, the Source of All Being.

How then should we treat this natural world and each other?

What if we treated our bodies and our planet as if we were all as fragile as the earthworms–soaking up everything and walking around with all our taste buds exposed? It’s not really so different from the truth, like it or not, or so that nasty detail about how plastic seeps into breast milk has me rather convinced. If this planet isn’t so much ours as it is God’s then maybe that, too, helps us treat this borrowed resource that we only steward for the short span of our lives like the precious, fragile thing that it is.

That seems like a way of embodying our faith to me. I don’t know what that manner of embodying faith would change for you, but what it does for me is invite me to move at the pace of what is real. The pace of what is real, reminds me that I can’t solve all these problems myself but I can do something about them.  

And I can learn to trust that other people are doing something about them, too, as is the God who called this precious Creation good. That helps me to trust that our faith-filled actions to reduce our harm to the planet and to each other will not be wasted. One way or another, God will use us, the earthworms, and more to work a resurrection story, yet.                                                          

May it be so. Amen.

[1] https://www.creationjustice.org/plasticjesus.html