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YEAR A: The Spirit Series
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YEAR A THE SPIRIT SERIES 70 YEAR A: THE SPIRIT SERIES First Sunday in Creation Forest Sunday Theodore Hiebert genesis 2:4b-22 Psalm 139:13-16 Acts 17:22-28 John 3:1-16 Background: Why Trees Matter When we think about trees and our environmental responsibilities, the first phrase that may come to mind is the slogan “tree hugger.” This has become a popular way to disparage the environmental movement by implying that loving nature and taking it seriously are sentimental acts by fringe elements who are not really in touch with the hard realities of the world. I would not be surprised if there are members of our congregations who, consciously or not, have this phrase and its sentiment in the back of their minds somewhere. But it has also been my experience that the members of our congregations are concerned about the deterioration of their environment, and they are simply overwhelmed by the enormity of the problem and at a loss as to what to do. So I believe that when we are talking about forests, we are facing a community partly skeptical and partly curious and concerned. One of the best ways to motivate such a community to take responsibility for our forests is to acquaint them with the essential roles that trees play in both our physical and spiritual well-being. Scientists tell us that forests are essential both to our physical health and to the health of the planet.When we actually look at the hard realities of the world, it becomes clear pretty quickly that trees are not just a cute, sentimental attraction, [52.55.214.236] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 09:58 GMT) 71 First Sunday in Creation | Forest Sunday as the “tree hugger” critics would have us believe. Forests contribute to our economic well-being: timber remains the principal material humans use for construction worldwide; paper—even in today’s electronic age—is essential for communication and education; and for nearly three billion people in the developing world, wood provides the main energy source for heating and cooking. Forests also provide crucial ecosystem services: they harbor most of the world’s biodiversity, sheltering more than half of the world’s known plant and animal species; they protect and enrich soils and sustain water quality and quantity; and, by absorbing carbon dioxide and producing oxygen, they give us healthy air to breathe and they reduce global warming. As it turns out, life as we know it is impossible without the world’s forests. The problem is that we are losing our forests, and with them all of the essential benefits they provide for our planet and for ourselves. More forest areas have been cleared from 1850 to the present than in all of previous history. Due to population growth and deforestation, the amount of forest cover available to each person has declined globally by 50 percent since 1960. The results of deforestation are serious. Losing forests means losing the incredible diversity of plant and animal life they shelter. According to present trends, one-quarter of the Earth’s species of plants and animals will be lost in the next forty years, a loss that will take nature ten million years to replicate. Furthermore, deforestation is a major contributor to global warming, the most serious environmental threat we face. Tropical deforestation produces more global-warming pollution than the total emissions of every car, truck, plane, ship, and train on Earth. Deforestation accounts for about 20 percent of heat-trapping emissions, an amount equivalent to the emissions from China or the United States. Forests also play an essential role in our spiritual health. This may be trickier to talk about than about those physical forest facts, because saying that trees are important for religious reasons immediately sounds“pagan” and“new age,”and it can evoke the precise eye-rolling and dismissive attitude that leads to the “tree hugger” slogan. This nervousness about the religious significance of trees stems largely from our modern worldview that has made a complete split between spirit and matter and that has reduced the natural world, and trees with it, to merely physical objects. As we have just seen, we need forests for our physical well-being.Yet many of us moderns think that is the end of it: trees are part of a scientific equation for physical survival, but not a part of our faith or our spirituality. However, our faith traditions and our experiences say otherwise...