Isaiah 11:6-9; Romans 8:18-25
June 2, 2024
Sermon preached at Evergreen Baptist Church, Rosemead, CA
Greetings!
As a member of the ABC Creation Justice Network, an initiative of the Office of the General Secretary of ABCUSA, I congratulate you becoming one of a growing list of “Creation Justice Congregations!” You, in your conscience to your faith, have made a public witness that caring and standing up for God’s creation are a significant part of being active and faithful disciples of Jesus Christ in the world, especially today. Thank you.
Thank you for inviting me to be behind this pulpit at the invitation of Pastor Jason. Jason was a member of the MMBB Asian Colloquium’s second cohort of pastors and now we are glad that Pastor January Lim is currently a member of the Asian Pastors Colloquium now in its second of a three-year duration. Earlier, Pastor Ken Fong was a member of the first cohort.
As a co-convener of the colloquium, I appreciate the contributions that pastors from Evergreen have made in giving us a deeper understanding of Evergreen’s ministry in the larger Los Angeles area. You may not know this but as the result of such collegial sharing and teaching, we have all benefited from your active and faithful ministries. Thank you.
In April, Pastor Jason and I were both attending the Space for Grace conference in King of Prussia outside of Philadelphia. On behalf of you, Jason came to a Creation Justice Network reception when I shared that I knew Dr. Jitsuo Morikawa and that he coined the word, “Eco-Justice!” So, in the wake of your upcoming “Creation Justice Fair” next Sunday, I am humbled to bring a good news word to Evergreen today.
Los Angeles
Even as a native Bostonian, but a long-time resident of the San Francisco Bay Area, I know about the rivalry between Northern California and Southern California! We may have cable cars but nothing beats Disneyland and California Adventure! Like Northern California having its challenges, the Los Angeles region has its share of climate problems. You know this already but to set a relevant context:
- Greenhouse Effect—LA has a lot more sunny days than SF! We have “Karl the Fog,” to shield the sunrays, but reflecting sunlight makes the ground temperature more livable. A few years ago, we replaced our roof with a hybrid roof painted light gray to reflect the sunlight.
- Fossil-Fueled Cars—CO2 emission from just the convenience of driving our cars over our many freeways is creating poor air quality, disrupting weather patterns, and increasing the city’s heat index. I didn’t help by flying in this morning.
- Drought Years—Our entire state has experienced drought conditions for years now—it’s the new normal to replace our green lawns with stone gardens, take military showers, and not to expect water at your restaurant table unless you request it. While we have diminishing amount of drinkable water, the Pacific Ocean is rising! Warmer water expands and therefore rises. Sea levels are projected to continue rising in the future. Roughly 1-2 feet of sea level rise is projected by mid-century, and the most extreme projections predict 8-10 feet of sea level rise by end-of-century. If nothing is done, 31-67% of Southern California beaches may completely erode by 2100. That’s only 75 years from now!
We can go on and on with science-based statistics to the point that we become frustrated and simply throw-up our hands and say, what can we do? We may be groaning but I am here to also say to you that there is also hope.
Four Legs Except the Kitchen Table
As a first generation born in the US, my Toishanese parents expected us to eat everything with four legs except the kitchen table! We ate two-legged animals with wings too! Since my father and older brother worked at Chinese restaurants, they would bring home all kinds of animal parts that they couldn’t serve to paying customers.
We ate pig tails, chicken necks and butts. We had chicken wings before Buffalo wings became famous! We ate chicken feet before they became a delicacy at dim sum. My favorite was ox tails cooked in a stew! I would put ketchup on it even when it was cooked with black beans. The best was ox tail stew at Uncle’s in San Francisco Chinatown at the other end of Waverly Place where First Chinese Baptist is located. Some years ago, for $5, you can get a plate of ox tail stew over rice with vegetables, a dinner roll, a piece of apple pie and a cup of coffee. It was amazing!
But I became a vegetarian over 20 years ago and left all that ox tail stew for others to enjoy! I was leading a weekday Bible study and providentially, we were studying both Genesis 1 and 2. I became aware that in God’s creation, we were created to live in harmony with everything God created; for everything was good. It was only after the Fall that we began to see other members of God’s creation to be inferior to humankind that we began to dominate and control for our own benefits.
I grew to believe that contrary to my Toishanese upbringing, I should stop eating other animals with 4 legs. Those with 2 legs and 2 wings as well as those who swam in our oceans, lakes and rivers too. I became a vegetarian.
Isaiah 11
The prophet Isaiah in Chapter 11 where many of our Bibles labeled “The Peaceable Kingdom” became the kingdom that I hope and pray would become a reality. It reads:
The wolf shall live with the lamb;
the leopard shall lie down with the kid;
the calf and the lion will feed[a] together,
and a little child shall lead them.
7 The cow and the bear shall graze;
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
8 The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.
9 They will not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.
This prophetic vision of what the future would be like in God’s favor became my hope for the world and my reason to be a vegetarian. We are expected to live in peace and harmony with all of God’s living creatures; not to hurt them or consume them. Some people wondered if my conviction was based on dieting and losing weight. Some thought I wanted to be healthier.
As pastors when we get behind the pulpit, we are always calling you to be more generous but we know that you’ll hold back some. We call you to be more loving and more forgiving but we know that you and I will still have a residue of dislike and anger toward others. We call you to become more active in creation justice, knowing that it’s more convenient to buy a Starbuck’s in a paper cup or it’s easier not to compost that take-out box or buying another piece of clothing just because it’s on sale knowing that we already have too many tops in our closets.
The vision of the Peaceable Kingdom is trying to live into that reality of the not-yet but it will be. If there is in any way that I can be more in line with God’s plan, I choose to be in line with that. I am trying to participate in God’s plan fully knowing that it may not happen in my lifetime. But in so doing, I am striving to experience God’s heart.
There was a 18th century Quaker minister and artist named, Edward Hicks who painted Isaiah’s Peaceable Kingdom. He had 62 versions of this passage! But when you begin to compare his earlier versions with his later ones, you will begin to see that in his later depictions of the animals, they became more ferocious. The wolf looked hungrier to eat. The lion’s teeth became longer and sharper. The bear became bigger and more threatening. Was Edward Hicks losing hope in the future of the world?
Jitsuo Morikawa
One of American Baptist’s prophets is Dr. Jitsuo Morikawa whom this church knows very well. Dr. Morikawa was the Director of Evangelism in ABC National Ministries when I first knew him. When we think about evangelism, we often understand it as personal salvation. Are you saved? Do you have Jesus in your heart? Do you want to be baptized? This personal salvation definition of evangelism was not a complete picture of what Dr. Morikawa believed.
Aaron Weaver1 of Good Faith Media writes, Dr. Morikawa’s “new evangelism” signaled a more social action-oriented trajectory that largely put aside the traditional door-to-door faith-sharing tactics. This holistic evangelism viewed salvation to be both individual and social – inclusive of the entire world, political and economic structures too.
Morikawa said, “We have obscured the gospel, distorted the gospel by assuming that evangelism was primarily and fundamentally winning souls to Christ and saving them from eternal perdition. We have missed out on the larger horizon of the redemption of the cosmos, the restoration of God’s universe.”
“Evangelism is primarily the activity of God, transforming this world, renewing this world, sustaining this world, persons, society, institutions, families, corporations and social structures,” he explained.
Morikawa and his staff team coined, “eco-justice” to mean, that we need a new ecologically just theology to confront the prevailing destructive theology of a God-given dominion that has created so much pain and suffering and we need repentance from our consumerism-driven sins that had produced so much environmental degradation.
In Aaron Weaver’s words, “During his life, Jitsuo Morikawa modeled for Baptists the importance of living an active faith or “evangelistic lifestyle” that readily recognized the social nature of sin and affirmed the Christian calling to pursue social justice and ecological wholeness.”
While the words, “eco-justice” may have found roots in our nomenclature, it has to be more than a catch word or just a proud historical marker. How can we today, live into that reality of receiving the love of God as persons as well as saving the earth and the world that God created? It’s simply not enough to believe that when I am personally okay with God that everything else, every other person, every other animal, bird, fish, all other living creatures are not my concern.
Eco-justice means that our faith convictions are big enough, broad enough, wide enough, expansive enough to include everything under the sun. Everything we do or choose not do has benefits or consequences. And everything that we do, do would make a difference even as invisible as it might seem.
Groaning toward Hope
I know that my dietary lifestyle-change of being a vegetarian may make a small difference. But it does even in a small way. Some years ago, when I shared my journey at a camping/conference center directors meeting, one of them became a vegetarian. I know that when our San Francisco church has a luncheon, they make sure I have an option to eat; therefore, many others might also taste my dish and in God’s time, they too might begin to see their dietary choices can help with environmental problems. On Thanksgiving Sunday, they make me a “tofurkey!”
We know that raising cattle for consumption produces methane that affects air quality and waste that pollutes waterways. Cattle raising replaces fertile land with grazing land that causes soil erosion, destroys biodiversity, increases global warming. But even more profound is the Biblical interpretation in my journey that I need to live into the promised reality of the Peaceable Kingdom.
The Apostle Paul writing to the Romans in Chapter 18 spoke about the future, the not yet. In the face of suffering, Paul encourages the people that “in hope, the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain in the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” He goes on to say, “We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.”
He then said, “Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” (8:18-25)
The solution for the environmental damages that we have done is not an instant fix. The earth is groaning. We are groaning; sometimes frustrated and disappointed that more improvement is not happening. But as Paul reminded us, we must have hope and patiently wait in faith that what we are doing, we are doing it faithfully and making a difference for future generations to live and thrive.
What’s Next?
There are many ways you can become involved in creation justice. You have already made a commitment by being a “Creation Justice Congregation” and to continue to do more in the future. Next Sunday is your “Creation Justice Festival” that you can support and participate.
Through the ABC Creation Justice Network, you can access the Blessed Tomorrow website of Eco-America for resources and training to become a Blessed Tomorrow Ambassador. A trained ambassador will be equipped with materials from the Christian perspective to educate and inform others to become advocates for the earth. I have personally participated in this training and found it to be amazingly relevant and helpful.
And of course, with the availability of the internet, you can find information that is particularly informative to Los Angeles and Southern California to help you understand your role in creating a more sustainable community.
Let me close by sharing a story by Rabbi Marc Gellman, “The Tomato Plant.” 2
Like this midrash of Adam and Eve in creation, we are no longer in the Garden of Eden but outside in the world where we are now responsible for all living creatures, the entire environment, the earth, the waters, the heavens and the small tomato plant. Unless we take responsibility for ensuring that God’s spectacular creation is living, we would not be living as the first fruits of the Spirit.
Notice in this story, Rabbi Gellman said, “Adam and Eve were happy and sad at the very same time.” We are groaning for ourselves and the whole creation is groaning as well. But we have this hope in the not yet that there will be peace on earth and that the realm of God will be just, loving, caring and living in peace for everything and everyone God created because all that God created is good. Let us groan with the hope that God is with us.
Let us pray.
God of creation, God of us all, continue to lead us to see our stewardship responsibilities to be faithful activists in creation justice. When we are frustrated and disappointed, give us encouragement to persevere on. When we strive to build up networks and communities for action but find reservations and fear, give us extra energy to try again. And Lord, when we are groaning and the world is groaning, give us the patience and hope that according to your will and plan, in your time, all will be well. May we be humble co-creators today. In the name of Christ Jesus, we pray. Amen.
- Aaron Weaver, Jitsuo Morikawa: Father of Baptist Environmentalism, Good Faith Media, April 22, 2021.
- Marc Gellman, Does God Have a Big Toe? New York: Harper-Collins Publishers, 1989, P.23.