Reading
for Rogation Sunday 4A: Mt. 7:21-27
June 2, 2002
The Rev. Karen Siegfriedt
St. Jude the Apostle Episcopal Church, Cupertino,
CA
Deep within the human consciousness is a way of thinking that divides us, setting us against each other, human against human, human against the rest of God's creatures. This so-called way of "modern thinking" includes dualism, mechanism, reductionism, materialism, individualism, anthropocentrism, and patriarchalism. What I would like to do for the next several weeks, is to examine these different ways of thinking, and show how these "isms" lead to a destructive path that separates humanity, and thus deprives us of the abundant life that has been shown to us by our Savior. Today I would like to focus on a few of these "isms" and show how these ways of thinking contribute to the ecological crises that we are now facing.
Let's begin with dualism. Dualism means that we look at the world in a twofold fashion: good-bad, right-wrong, true-false, male-female, friend-foe, mind-matter, mind-body, sacred-secular, human-non-human, natural-spiritual, American-foreigner, for us-against us. It is a simplistic way to view the world because it does not take into account ambiguity and complexity. The problem with dualism is, that it allows us to think our way into distinctions, not relationships. Once we have defined someone or something as being on the "other side," it is easy to demonize them as not being "one of us" and thus expendable. (i.e.,You are either for us or against us.) When we distinguish ourselves from the organic complexity and interconnectedness of all of creation, it becomes easier to ignore the needs of other creatures, the needs of the ocean, or the needs of the air. And when we make these distinctions between them and us, organic and inorganic, feeling and non-feeling, empathy weakens along with compassionate responses.
Materialism is another way of modern thinking that has impacted ecological well-being. Materialism means viewing the world as made of matter, or matter-energy. In this arrangement, "legitimate" thinking is limited to the impact of the five senses upon the brain: - senses that can be reduced to the interaction of matter. If you can't see it, smell it, feel it, taste it, or hear it, then it is "suspect" at best. The human mind then becomes simply the material brain, and any notion of a spirit or soul is wishful fabrication.
Descartes was a great advocate of materialism. He did not believe that animals could think, and it was this ability to think that separated humans from the rest of creation. If you combine materialism with dualism, you can see why we have allowed animals to be brutalized and sacrificed for agricultural and research purposes. If we view the world of nature as unfeeling and unthinking matter, it is easier to exploit it, manipulate it, and despoil it without reverence for its own intrinsic value. Materialistic thinking can reduce our values to material substance. In this arrangement, "we are what we own." The one with the most toys wins. Over-consumption of our natural resources is one of the greatest threats to Mother Earth. This is a spiritual issue in which we replace love of God, love of each other, and love of creation, with an insatiable desire to accumulate lots of things.
Finally, I want to say a few words about anthropocentrism. Anthropocentrism means that human beings are at the center of all significant concerns. For instance, when we read the passage, John 3:16 (God so loved the world...), we immediately think, "God so loved humans." We automatically think of the world from an anthropocentric perspective where the needs, wants, and desires of human beings are all that really matter. John Cobb, a modern day theologian, shows that today's ethical systems are based on an anthropocentric model. This ethical model "cannot help us do anything about the ecological crisis because our concerns are for the sake of human survival alone. We feel no kinship with the natural world and do not give serious consideration to the intrinsic value and survival of nature itself." We manipulate nature for our ends alone. I have heard that between 12-20 million people could be affected if the Pakistan-India conflict were to go nuclear. But what about the impact of a nuclear explosion on the water, the soil, the air, on millions of species of animals, birds, insects, rice, and vegetables? Do they count?
As you can see, dualism, materialism, and anthropocentrism can make us estranged from God, from nature, and from our own spiritual capacities. This kind of thinking "can make us environmentally suicidal and spiritually and ethically impotent. It can cut us off from appreciating, celebrating, reverencing, and loving the fundamental fact of reality we face daily- the elementary blessing of being alive in a universe that is brimming with fellow-life." Where do we go from here?
If we are to survive, we need to move into another level of consciousness, a new way of thinking where commonality is valued over distinctions, where feelings and spiritual awareness work alongside the five sensory perceptions of reality, and where the rest of creation is valued, not because of what it can do for humans, but because it was created by God and has value in and of itself. We need to replace accumulating things with developing relationships.
In today's gospel story, Jesus tells his followers that those who want abundant life must do the will the God. There is no place for distorted thinking, apathy, and inaction in the kingdom of God. This reading from the gospel of Matthew comes at the very end of the Sermon on the Mount. As you may remember, the Sermon on the Mount introduces a new way of thinking that is foreign to the people of first century Palestine. So challenging to the status quo is this new way of thinking, that we continue to struggle with the text even today. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus calls his disciples to a higher level of consciousness. He calls them to purify their emotions of anger and lust so that their emotions would not lead them into transgressions. He calls them to love their enemies and pray for those who persecuted them. He advises them not to store up treasures on earth but rather to focus on relational concerns. He tells them to stay in the present moment and not to be overcome with worry. He teaches them how to pray and he blesses the poor in spirit, the meek, the mournful, the hungry and the thirsty.
But Jesus did not leave them with a plan on how to deal with the ecological crises. This was not an issue in his day. But before he died, Jesus told his disciples: "I have yet many things to say to you but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of Truth comes, that Spirit will guide you into all truth." It is this Spirit of Truth, the Holy Spirit, that can lead us into all truth when it comes to dealing with the ecological crises. As we celebrate this Rogation Sunday, perhaps one of the most important things we can do as a community of faith, is to pray for and be open to the power of the Holy Spirit so that God's thoughts become our thoughts, and God's ways become our ways. For if we allow this "Giver of Life" to transform our distorted way of thinking, then abundant life becomes possible and so does the future of our Planet Earth.
*Material in this sermon taken from "Beyond the Modern Mind" by Douglas Brown.
| Updated 6/02/02 |
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