"Sorry, Mother, you're not really all that important."

We are exploiting the land. So what? We are about to destroy more timber land and more wildlife. So what? If you listened to Science Friday (Public Radio) you heard how we are exploiting the ocean. So what? I'm not affected. No skin off my back, as they say.

TIME magazine 3 weeks ago was devoted to global warming. "Except for nuclear war or a collision with an asteroid, no force has more potential to damage our planet's web of life than global warming. It's a serious issue, the White House admits, but nonetheless George W. Bush has decided to abandon the 1997 Kyoto treaty to combat climate change -- an agreement the U.S. signed but the new president believes is fatally flawed. His dismissal last week of almost nine years of international negotiations sparked protests around the world . . ."

So? Is it really all that important? So the U.S. is the biggest polluter on the planet. So what? What can I do about it?

Our country has spewed 186 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere since 1950. We are 4% of the world's population, but we produce 25% of the greenhouse gases. No wonder the rest of the world is furious.

A letter was sent to President Bush: "We urge you to develop a plan to reduce production of greenhouse gases. The future of our children -- and their children -- depends on the resolve that you and other world leaders show."

Who signed that letter? Jimmy Carter, Mikhail Gorbachev, John Glenn, Walter Cronkite, George Soros and other significant people!

Today is Earth Day -- the 31st anniversary of an idea originated by Senator Gaylord Nelson in 1970, when 10,000 schools and 200 colleges participated in parades, teach-ins and all sorts of direct action, by people who did not shrug their shoulders at the environmental crises.

The environmental movement stems from a book Rachel Carson wrote in the 60's, Silent Spring. Shortly before she died, Ms. Carson said, "We in this generation must come to terms with nature, and I think we're challenged as mankind has never been challenged before to prove our maturity and our mastery, not of nature, but of ourselves."

What a challenge! This is a day to consider the garbage glut, the hole in the ozone layer, medical waste, acid rain, toxic waste. And contaminated food and drinking water, oil spills and endangered species, shrinking forests, expanding deserts, global warming . . . Our planet is vulnerable! In addition to all the buried nuclear waste and other pollution on earth, we have hundreds of tons of inactive scientific material floating out there in space.

On that first Earth Day in 1970, Denis Hayes said, "We're flirting with something worse than war and genocide . . . and that's specie-cide. The death of [humans] is involved here, and time is running out."

O well, he's a fanatic. So let's just shrug our shoulders.

He's just another doomsday prophet, isn't he!? Lest you tune him out as a doom-and-gloom calamity howler, please consider that 20,000 people die every year because of pesticide poison. That means that 2 or 3 people will die while we meet here this morning! Of course, that's just a statistic. Most of us don't personally know anyone dying of poison right now. That's the tragedy of tragedy -- unless it hits close to home, it's just information, just numbers and statistics. So we hear the statistics and shrug them off.

Shoulder-shrugging can be a way of not getting involved. It can be a way of saying something is not worth making an issue of. It can be good . . . or bad!

The Little Rock Sertoma Club met weekly, all 50 of them, to plan activities to help the hearing-and-speech-impaired. Yet only a decade later there were only seven members to show up. Why do most of those once interested now shrug their shoulders? Is the issue of hearing and speech handicaps not all that important any more? Believe me, it would be important to you if you were handicapped! Or if you had a handicapped loved one. I live with hearing handicap; it is important!

The Roanoke chapter of the NAACP has been an active force for civil rights. Membership has dwindled from about 2500. In a heated contest for president, only 57 members bothered to vote. Why? Did the others shrug their shoulders because they didn't want to be involved? Or because segregation is no longer an issue which deserves their participation? Either is possible. I don't know. Shrugging your shoulders can be a good thing to do, or it can be an evil thing to do.

I am secretary of the Dearborn Area Ministerial Association. We send out 105 invitations to clergy, Muslim and Christian (there are no rabbis in our area). At a recent meeting in which the Dearborn Superintendent of Schools and the principal of Fordson High School gave us a splendid presentation on how they teach values in our schools, there were only 7 clergy there! Why do the others not think it is important?

Remember the story of a boy who walked along a beach picking up starfish that had been washed ashore by the tide. One after another, he picked them up and threw them into the ocean. A passerby said, "Son there are millions of starfish on these beaches, You surely aren't going to make much of a difference."

Then the boy picked up another starfish, threw it into the ocean, and said, "It makes a difference to that one!"

Psalm 24:1 reads, "The earth is the Lord's, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it."

We live on a planet created by a loving God, who also created nutritious food to eat and beautiful animals to share our abundant life. Each species has a unique place in maintaining balance in nature. If we carelessly use poison to kill weeds, it can in turn poison the worms, which in turn poisons the birds, which then causes fragile egg shells, which then leads to extinction.

God has assigned to us the honor and responsibility of stewardship. As Christians, we need to take seriously God's challenge to "occupy the land" -- God's land. We are only tenants.

The Judeo-Christian faith was born at a time when there was no particular threat to the ecosystem. There were abundant resources.

World population was then but a fraction of what it is now. Josef Greig noted that "Faith did tend to be anthropocentric." Human-centered. He goes on to say, "We may feel we have a mission to save the people of the Amazon, but not a mission to save the rain forests in which they live. We may feel the need to feed and clothe the poor, but no thought to the environmental factors of their poverty."

Dear saints, today I want to shout aloud, with all the prophetic power I can muster, we Christians must assume responsibility for the environment, for God's good earth. Today, if you leave the sanctuary feeling comfortable, then the sermon will have been a failure.

Every little bit helps or hinders the God-planned function of creation. Do you know one tablespoon of mercury in a body of water 15 feet deep and the size of a football field makes the fish unsafe to eat? Maybe you remember the popular song of the 50s, "Little Things mean a lot." In the matter of ecology, little things do mean a lot. If we want to leave our children an earth which is inhabitable, we better think about that!

We sing "He's got the whole world in his hands." God created the world, and us. He could have made us perfect. I think he did. He could have kept us perfect. He didn't. Why? Freedom! Freedom to take responsibility for the good earth. Or freedom to shrug our shoulders and let someone else worry about it.

A couple of months ago Bob Herbert wrote an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times. In part, here's what he wrote:

"The easiest approach for the time being is to pretend it's not happening. It's better for the nerves in the short run to remain riveted by the Clinton follies or the latest shenanigans on 'Temptation Island' than to acknowledge that the ice cap atop Mount Kilimanjaro, which seemed for so long to be an almost permanent feature of the planet, will vanish in less than 15 years . . . a few years ago scientists were astonished when a mammoth fragment of the Larson Ice Shelf at the edge of the Antarctic Peninsula collapsed like a window shattered by a rock. The fragment had measured 48 miles by 22 miles and was hundreds of feet thick. It eventually disappeared . . . Global warming is not coming, it's here. . . ."

The report discussed the ethical implications, a scathing indictment of our shoulder-shrugging. I urge you to get the printed sermon and read the entire article. Herbert closes with these words: "But that's only one approach. Another is to just ignore the problem and continue to feast like gluttons at the table of the world's resources. That will work for awhile. Why not? All you have to do is convince yourself that damaging the planet is somebody else's problem."

Just shrug your shoulders!

Here is another quote from TIME, this issue dated last Monday: "Last week the Bush administration went beyond condiments, proposing to ax a regulation that forces the meat industry to perform salmonella tests on hamburger served in school cafeterias."

I'm glad to say that the uproar from the public forced them to keep the regulation. Letter-writing, phone calling, letters-to-the-editors and other forms of protest do make a difference.

I hope there will also be enough backlash in regard to the Kyoto global environmental accord to force the leaders in Washington to honor our commitment to the world in that matter. And in the matter of carbon monoxide regulation.

The Kyoto Protocol set reduction targets for six heat-trapping greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), sulfur hexafluoride and perfluorocarbons (PFCs). You need to know that United States increased our pollution of those gases by 21.8% during the 90s. While Russia decreased their pollution of those gases by 57.6%, and many other nations decreased theirs, too. It seems we Americans simply do not take the matter seriously. For shame!

The administration has also shelved the standards for arsenic in drinking water. Arsenic, as if you didn't know, is a poison! There has been a growing backlash to that. So much so that Representative Henry Waxman, who wants to restore the standards, collected 165 co-sponsors in two days!

TIME continues: "Meanwhile, other industries are submitting their wish lists . . . Lobbyists are asking for a relaxation of lead-contamination standards. You'd think we had put that issue to rest long ago. But [the] Interior Secretary Gale Norton used to lobby Congress on behalf of lead-paint manufacturers."

Lead slows mental and physical development in children. The administration clamors for "risk-assessment" and more studies! How will they study the dollar benefits of brighter first-graders? Is not corporate accountability as important as the much-touted teacher accountability?

Let me remind you of two significant factors: (1) those are concerns not just of a radical preacher, but one of the country's most respected news magazines; and (2) we are talking about matters which will impact the earth we leave to our children.

Yes, God created a beautiful earth for us, and challenged us to be in charge of it. If we are faithful Bible-believing Christians, we better take God seriously. We better take Earth Day seriously. We better take the future of our children and our grandchildren seriously.

If I sound like a calamity-howler, it is because I love this earth, and I love my children, and my grandchildren, and my great grandchildren. I want them to live as comfortably as we live.

Leonardo Boff wrote: "It's not only the poor who must be liberated; the earth must also be liberated from the captivity of the kind of development that denies its dignity, destroys its resources and disrupts its equilibrium . . . so the theology is broadened to a liberation that is truly integral and universal, embracing everyone and the entire planet."

Listen to Luisah Teish: "Many people are waiting to be lifted up to heaven in a religious rapture, or by first-class reservations on the Mothership . . . And it's a great way to excuse oneself from taking responsibility for the consequences of our actions."

Fundamentalists, (lower-case) of which I am one, emphasize the Second Coming of Christ. We are in danger of failing to take such matters as Earth Day seriously. After all, if Jesus is coming again, why worry about the state of the earth which will be destroyed by the brightness of his coming? That mentality is not only unfaithful to the Bible, it is also a poor example of Christianity. We simply cannot shrug our shoulders about environmentalism and be faithful.

We heard about the Second Coming in our reading from Revelation 1, where John's great vision opens with a declaration that God is coming in great final triumph. Christians who have believed that thru the ages were convinced that they were living in the "last days."

Our Statement of Faith says, "He promises to all who trust him . . . courage in the struggle for justice and peace." The prophet said, "He has showed you, O man, what is good . . . to act justly . . ."

(Micah 6:8)

Christians must be concerned about saving the world. That is Biblical. Jesus said, "Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation." (Mark 16:15) Doesn't good news include making the world worth saving? Poor Mother Earth has been struggling for existence ever since God spoke her into being. Some folks are more concerned about the point in time and the amount of time involved in creation than in preserving what God so bountifully created and presented to us.

In the face of staggering problems there are two things we need to remember: First, no one of us can solve the ecological problems of the world. Refraining from throwing one chewing gum wrapper out the window is only a little thing. But it is important as a symbol of our integrity. I am either part of the problem or part of the solution. My part is to do what I can do. The second thing to remember is that we are responsible to "struggle for justice." We must work for a better world.

Norman Lear gave a powerful speech to the American Academy of Religion. Remember, he was originator of Archie Bunker and the Jeffersons. He said, "It is unfortunate that too many of us sophisticated, better educated people in this secular, science-oriented culture regard those who try to 'live deliberately' -- in Henry David Thoreau's lovely phrase -- as somewhat odd . . ."

Doesn't sound much like Archie Bunker, does it? But to "live deliberately" is what it takes if we are to share the plenty of our abundance with those in need, and if we are to maintain the "integrity of creation" for future generations. We must make deliberate decisions to change both our attitudes and our behavior, even in little things. Maybe especially in little things!

Lear decried the "profoundly destructive ethic" of our consumption of resources. "Each year the earth is losing more than 10,000 species through extinction, and this rate of loss is increasing. The human race is intervening in so many naturally-occurring processes of our biosphere -- deciding which species of plants and animals will live and die; how pristine or polluted our air, water, and soil . . ."

Emerson said, "The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn." He could have added that the destruction of a thousand forests is in the careless destruction of a tiny acorn!

Calvin Coolidge once said, "People criticize me for harping on the obvious. If all the folks in the United States would do the few simple things they know they ought to do, most of our big problems would take care of themselves."

That is the principle principle of Earth Day. That is the one primary truth to which today's sermon boils down. We are but tenants of this earth. We are stewards of the earth. It's too bad it takes catastrophes of major proportions to awaken us from our apathy in regard to the environment.

I guess the earth has to get our attention sometimes. Three Mile Island. A garbage-laden barge going from country to country, trying to unload. Toxic material and dead fish washing up on our beaches. Smokestacks pouring tons of poison into the air. Landfills so near capacity that we despair of finding more room.

In a cartoon, the irascible Andy Capp stands at a bar with his pal and says, "What a life!"

"Things could be worse, Andy. I'm an optimist -- I believe we live in the best of all possible worlds."

"Yeah?" retorts Andy. "Well, I believe we live in the best of all possible worlds -- that's why I'm a pessimist!"

Optimists don't shrug their shoulders. They leave that to pessimists!

Priorities, for the Christian, cannot be determined by expediency, certainly not by compromise. They must be set by principle. There are compromises for the Christian, to be sure. But not in the determination of life-style principles. We must not, can not be pessimists, surely not in relation to God's creation.

Irenaeus was a bishop in the 2nd century. As a boy he knew Bishop Polycarp of Smyrna, who in his youth had known the Apostle John. After Bishop Polycarp was martyred, Irenaeus succeeded him. Irenaeus himself suffered martyrdom at the hands of Roman authorities.

Irenaeus was a peace activist, an environmentalist if you please! In his most important work, Against the Heresies, he defended the importance of the Old Testament for Christians, and he opposed those who denied the goodness of material creation and the human body.

Earth Day should remind us to recycle. Earth Day should remind us to conserve. Earth Day should remind us, above all, to praise God for a beautiful world. The environment of our planet is a complex web of relationships between earth and sea and sky; plant and animal life; past, present and future. Each part of the web affects the others.

Christian environmentalism is our challenge. It contradicts a lifestyle which comes by exploitation of the earth. It calls us to work for justice, protecting God's handiwork, challenging the racism, sexism, poverty and materialism which would exploit God's loving creation. Please take life seriously. Please take God seriously. Please take the earth seriously.

Let us pray . . .

God, for all the holy places where we see stars and wild flowers, where we touch leaves and sand, where we listen to the birds sing and the sound of sea shells, where we smell pine needles and flowers, where we feel the breeze and the velvet of roses, for all this we praise you.

Slow us down, Lord, and let us feel the ground, and love it better. Let us see each other with love and concern. Please, God, instill within our hearts an intensity of concern for your creation.