by L. Shannon Jung

Do you remember filling up your car or truck with gas a year ago? What did you have for supper last night? If you can answer either of these questions (and even if you can’t), You have a relationship with the earth.

Sometimes it is hard to remember that connection or answer those questions. After all, we mentally reduce the gasoline we put in the tank to the money we pay at the pump. And we think of the grainfed beef we ate for supper as an item we bought at the grocery store.

But maybe the deepest relationship we have to creation is one that we rarely, if ever, think about. That is our relationship with air — the oxygen and carbon dioxide we breathe in and out maybe 10 times a minute or so. We are so dependent on air that we don’t even realize it until we get a respiratory infection or have trouble breathing.

That is pretty basic, isn’t it? I remember my science teachers pointing out that we animals breathe in air, use the oxygen, and breathe out carbon dioxide. Then plants breathe in the air, use the carbon dioxide, and breathe out oxygen. Ingenious, right? God had an amazing plan when creating us. We animals are symbiotic with the plants. It’s the oxygen cycle.

The air is interesting in another way. When we think of ourselves as breathing animals, it is hard to know where the outside world ends and we begin. The air out there is now in here, and now it is out there again, and more is in here. There is a rhythm to our breathing in the oxygen that plants don’t use, and then their breathing in the carbon dioxide poisonous to us.

We live in a balance with all life, in a dance. The Hebrew people have a word for it: shalom. We believe that God created the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that moves on the earth and in the sea so that we fit each other. God created a balanced microcosm in the way that animals and plants feed each other oxygen and carbon dioxide. A similar dynamic happens with food; we eat it and it becomes us, and we expend it in all sorts of ways.

The ELCA Social Statement on "Caring for Creation" says that "Christian concern for the environment is shaped by... the Breath of God daily renewing the face of the earth." So the breath we take and exhale renews plants. And plants renew us with their releases. Could it be that this is one way that "the Breath of God daily renews the face of the earth"? If so, does that mean that we are not only connected with plants, animals, and each other, but also with God? All those connections are spiritually rich.

Food
Another way we are related to the land, another way that God provides for us, is my favorite. And that is food: smelling it, cooking it, eating it, sharing it, praying over it, enjoying it. Food is God’s great gift to us. God didn’t have to make that pumpkin pie so tasty or that ribeye steak or pork chop so yummy. What was God thinking, tempting me with Snickers bars and chocolate raspberry ice cream?

All that is involved in eating reminds us that we are related to the earth. We are "creatures from the land, of the earth" (adamah in Genesis 2:7, 1:26) who find our homes on the earth. All that we breathe, eat, drink, relish, and salivate over is part of the relationship that God created between us and the earth. Jesus seems to have enjoyed eating and drinking too — we have many accounts of times when Jesus ate with the disciples, with folks like Zaccheus, Mary and Martha, the Pharisees, and of course, the five thousand sitting on the grass.

A close study of the Bible would show that God created food for two purposes: for delight or enjoyment and for sharing with others, hospitality.

When I make a presentation on this topic, I take a bag of Hershey kisses with me in a grocery sack. As I talk, I reach down into the sack and pull out the bag of Hershey kisses. I put the bag on the lectern, open it, unwrap a piece of candy, and pop it into my mouth. I can just feel people tasting it in their imaginations. Then I eat another one, and ask the people if they like Hershey kisses. By the time I unwrap the third one, people are nearly salivating. Someone inevitably says, "That’s not fair!" I ask "What’s not fair?" and they say "Eating in front of us." Then, of course, I share the kisses. This little show makes the point: Food is not only for our delight, but it is also meant to be shared with others.

Those of you who are farmers now or who grew up on farms know just how strong a connection all of us eaters have with the earth. You know what it takes to care for the land, plow the fields, plant the seed, cultivate the crop, harvest the crop, transport the crop, sell the crop, and finance all those other operations that go into growing a crop. That crop is then processed into breakfast cereal, hamburgers, bacon, bread, cheese, and butter. Without the land to grow the crops, how could we have a cup of coffee in the morning? And without growers, how could we realize the joy of eating? Beyond that, what would happen to community without eating; what would happen to our communities without farmers?

The gift of limits
We all have a fundamental relationship with creation: We are limited within the confines of creation, and we have a range of ways of responding to these limits. We can think of these limits as gifts of God and, through them, we can recognize the goodness of God’s creation. For example, if we eat 3,500 calories a day, we will gain weight. If we fail to breathe, we will die. We cannot control all the ramifications of our creaturely existence, much as we would like to.

But this is a gift, too. If we accept and enjoy the limits of our bodies, we tend to be happy. For example, we need not see our bodies or food as enemies but as sources of enjoyment within certain God-given limits.

On the other hand, we have a range of ways that we can change outcomes for either better or worse. God has given us freedom and responsibility. We can choose a healthy diet, for example, or a car that uses more or less gas. We can recycle or not. We can shop at the local farmers market. We can do all sorts of things — like eating, cooking, exercising — that can bring a great deal of enjoyment. We can share with others or we can hoard our resources. Paradoxically, the sharing is often far more enjoyable than the hoarding.

Interdependence
The ways we have been gifted through our creaturely limits and the way we are responsible stewards of creation are evident in the ELCA’s "Caring for Creation" statement. The statement talks about our interdependence with creation and also about the ways we have been blessed. It points to our responsibility to act in ways that are sustainable and participatory, to express solidarity with creation, and to recognize sufficiency.

You can hear this in the offertory prayer in Lutheran Book of Worship (page 109): "Through your goodness you have blessed us with these gifts. With them we offer ourselves to your service and dedicate our lives to the care and redemption of all that you have made...."

Christians have long expressed their relationship with the earth through the spiritual practices that they adopt in daily life. Some of those include caring for creation directly—recycling, taking care of the soil, treating animals with compassion. We honor our bodies through exercise and proper rest and nutrition.

Many of us engage in spiritual practices when we eat: ways of getting in touch with God the Creator who gave us so many earthly gifts. One of the most important of those is sharing, or hospitality. It is part of what God intended, that we share food with others and are hospitable — especially to the hungry. Much of the Bible is devoted to the commendation of hospitality.

One spiritual practice is saying grace before meals to express gratitude to God. Others may include fasting in some seasons or feasting on special festival days.

We also engage in the practice of preparing food — that’s right, cooking. If we have time to prepare food with care and with other people, it can be a wonderful — indeed, spiritual — experience; the process of preparation and the anticipation of the meal makes it something of a feast.

Finally, of course, the master practice that incorporates elements of all the others is the Lord’s Supper, the Eucharist.

"Without these daily practices that help us seek God’s presence in the ordinary moments of our lives, we will miss countless opportunities to draw near to the God who made us," writes Stephanie Paulsell in Honoring the Body (Jossey–Bass, p. 11). With these spiritual practices, we can learn to see God in our connection to food and to the land. We can see God’s marvelous ingenuity in designing creation for our joy and sharing. We can see the ways that sharing food with others is a way of enriching ourselves and of fulfilling what God had in mind for us.

When we marvel at God’s good creation, whether a lovely lake on a sunny day or a hot-fudge sundae or our grandchildren, then we see God and see the way that God has connected us to each other, to animals and plants, and to the earth.

We also see that God has breathed life into our lives and does so in numerous ways.

We see that gathering with family and friends around the fruits of the earth is evidence of God’s presence with us. We learn that it is through the practice of hospitality, of giving and of receiving, that we become fully human.

L. Shannon Jung is professor of town and country ministries at Saint Paul School of Theology in Kansas City, Mo. He is author of two books published by Augsburg Fortess, Food for Life: The Spirituality and Ethics of Eating (2004) and Sharing Food: Christian Practices for Enjoyment (2006).


Caring for Creation
by Mary Minette,
Director of Environmental Education and Advocacy, ELCA

“We know care for the earth to be a profoundly spiritual matter.”
In 1993, the Churchwide Assembly adopted a social statement that outlines the ELCA’s concern for the environment. The “Caring for Creation” social statement articulates the church’s vision of our place in God’s creation and summons us to act, as individuals, as a worship community, and as a public church, to protect the earth from environmental harm.

“[T]oday living creatures, and the air, soil, and water that support them, face unprecedented threats.”
The social statement conveys a sense of urgency, listing the myriad ways that we have failed as stewards of the earth by polluting our air and water, depleting our resources, and destroying habitats and species. But it also gives a “vision of hope and justice for creation” that through individual and collective action we can address these problems and find effective solutions.

“Caring for Creation” commits us to advocacy on behalf of creation, and urges us to stand with the poor and the powerless — those who are most vulnerable to environmental degradation. It calls us to protect our air, land, and water from pollution and degradation, to protect species and their habitats from destruction, and to address difficult global threats, including the threat posed by global warming. And most of all, it calls us to act, boldly and without delay.

In my work as an advocate, I read parts of the “Caring for Creation” social statement nearly every day and often marvel at the insight of those who came together to write this document. Global warming has made headlines this year. On Earth Day, Time magazine told us to “be afraid” of the current and future impacts of climate change, and the movie An Inconvenient Truth took a presentation on global warming and gave it national prominence. But the ELCA recognized that global warming was a “serious” threat in 1993, more than a decade ago, and the social statement calls for our church to take a leading role in addressing this grave threat to our planet.

And so we act. In Washington, we act through advocacy to persuade our elected officials to act now to protect God’s creation for future generations. You, too, can act by joining our e–Advocacy Network to contact your elected officials about environmental issues (www.elca.org/advocacy) and by making environmentally conscious choices in your church and home. For example, if every household in America replaced just five conventional light bulbs with energy–efficient light bulbs, that would keep more than one trillion pounds of greenhouse gases out of our air — equal to the emissions of more than 21 coal–burning power plants!

“Our tradition offers many glimpses of hope triumphant over despair. When Martin Luther was asked what he would do if the world were to end tomorrow, he reportedly answered, I would plant an apple tree today. When we face today’s crisis, we do not despair. We act.”

Excerpts are from “A Social Statement on: Caring for Creation: Vision, Hope, and Justice,” 1993. The full text of the social statement is available at www.elca.org/socialstatements