Rev. Brent Gundlah
In late seventeenth-century England, a religious movement began that came to known as “deism.” One of deism’s central premises was that religion should be solely based in reason (by what we’re able to observe in the world) rather than on revelation (from scriptural or supernatural sources). And another was that religion should concern itself only with the basic elements that the world’s faiths tend to have in common: belief in the existence of a higher being, the importance of worship, the need for repentance (or, at the very least, for ethical living) and the idea that there is some sort of afterlife.
Deism was embraced by many of the great scientific and philosophical minds of the Enlightenment — people like Voltaire, Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. What these folks had in common was a belief that they could think their way into anything that was actually worth knowing.
Another essential tenet of deism — one that’s worth considering in light of what our readings for today have to say— is that while God created the world at some point in the past, God really hasn’t had anything to do with it ever since. For deists, it’s as if God built a clock, wound it up, and then just walked away to let it run on it’s own. Suffice it to say, today’s passages from Isaiah and the Psalms wouldn’t have been a big hit with those who understand the world in this way.
I say this because the God of whom Psalm 65 speaks is clearly not a distant and aloof creator; this is a God who has chosen, for some reason, to be actively engaged with what they decided to create. To put it in theological terms, this God is both transcendent (a creator who is beyond and not of creation) and imminent (still very much involved in the unfolding history of that creation).
The first part of our reading speaks glowingly about all that God does for God’s people, the details of which should sound pretty familiar because we talk about them a lot in church. Every Sunday we gather in our sanctuary down in Holladay to worship the One who answers prayers; forgives our transgressions; brings us near; and gives us wonderful things like deliverance and salvation and hope.
But I chose this text for this occasion because of what the Psalmist talks about in the second part, as we gather here today in this beautiful place to worship a God whose influence extends to the ends of the earth and of the farthest seas; a God who established the mountains, who silences the roaring waves, and who created the morning and the evening (and pretty much everything else). But that’s definitely not all there is to know about this God.
You see, according to the Psalmist, the God who created the world didn’t just do that and disappear, which kinda makes sense. I mean, why would God go through all that trouble and not continue to enjoy what they’d created? So, the God of whom the Psalmist speaks visits it and waters it and enriches it and provides and prepares and waters it again and blesses it and crowns it with bounty; this God keeps quite busy tending to what they’d taken it upon themselves to create. I can’t tell you for sure who wrote the Psalms, but I’m pretty sure they weren’t a deist.
So, how does creation respond to God’s persistent presence and ongoing care? With wagon tracks that overflow with richness and pastures of the wilderness that also overflow and meadows that clothe themselves with flocks and valleys that deck themselves with grain. And, all the while, these meadows and valleys sing together with joy, and the hills gird themselves with joy, and the morning and the evening shout for — you guessed it — joy.
The prophet Isaiah speaks of similar things in our first reading — about mountains and hills that burst into song and trees of the field that clap their hands in a spirit of thanks for the rain and the snow that come down from heaven to water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater. If what the Psalmist and Isaiah say is to be taken literally, the world is like a cross between the Garden of Eden and The Muppet Show. But it’s probably not meant to be taken literally.
The point here is that the myriad parts of creation express their gratitude to their creator for having created them and for continuing to care for them, not by actually singing and clapping but by doing what they were created to do in the first place — or, as God says to Isaiah, “to accomplish that which I purpose, and [to] succeed in the thing[s] for which I sent [them].”
But what about us? I mean we’re part of God’s creation too, right? So, are we accomplishing that which God purposed, and succeeding in the thing for which God sent us? Are we truly continuing to be in relationship with God and with creation, as God has chosen to be in relationship with us and with creation?
Way back in the early chapters of Genesis, when God was busily creating, God decided to put a human in the Garden of Eden, and charged them to till it and to keep it — to utilize it, but not to exploit it; to enjoy it, but to take ongoing responsibility for caring for it as God has, to honor the gift they’d been given (and, more importantly, the giver) by doing their part to sustain that gift for the future.
As our air becomes unbreathable, as our water becomes undrinkable (or disappears altogether), as trees are cut down and meadows are paved over, as species of animals are driven to extinction, we really need to ask ourselves:
if we’re really expressing our gratitude to God for all that God has given us by treating with it reverence and respect;
if we’re really we as concerned about what we can do for the world around us as we are about what the world around us can do for us?
if we’re really being the kind of stewards of the beauty and the bounty all around us that God is, and that God has called upon us to be?
I think we all know the answer to these questions is the same.
So, maybe, just maybe, we could actually learn something from these joyful hills and meadows, from these singing mountains and clapping trees; maybe we could actually try to succeed in the thing for which God sent us.
May the God who answers our prayers; who forgives our transgressions;
who offers us deliverance and salvation and hope; who made all this and continues to be involved in it; who created us to be partners in caring for it;
help us to change our entire way of seeing and being amidst this splendor that God has created;
and inspire us to honor God — to show our gratitude to God — by loving it like God does.