I’ve started reading a book titled, Toward Decentering the New Testament, by Mitzi J. Smith and Yung Suk Kim. This week, I read a passage in that book that came at just the right time.
Here’s the passage: “To read the Bible closely is to be open to reading it again and again and again. Do not assume you know everything in the text and there is nothing more to see or to know.” [Mitzi J. Smith Toward Decentering the New Testament.]
It came at just the right time, because I had been pondering how, every year, on the Sunday after Easter, we read the story of Jesus appearing to the disciples, and Thomas missing out, and Thomas insisting that he would not believe unless he could see with his own eyes and touch with his own hands the wounds of Jesus.
Every year, we have this story; and every year, pretty much, I preach on it. Normally, stories in the lectionary only appear once every three years, but this one appears every year. It seems a bit much.
And yet: “To read the Bible closely is to be open to reading it again and again and again. Do not assume you know everything in the text and there is nothing more to see or to know.”
So, after pondering this and thinking about the sermon a bit, I started putting some ideas together, into what, I hoped, would be at least halfway decent.
Then I read an online article by Leah D. Schade. In that article, she wrote about Thomas, and the spiritual crisis he was in when all the other disciples were trying to convince him that Jesus was alive, but he himself just couldn’t believe it; and how he had to touch the wounds in order to believe.
And in the background of all this, she wrote, was the trauma Thomas had endured. Think about it: All hope for his own future as well as the world’s future were pinned on Jesus; yet Jesus had been arrested, tried and crucified.
Jesus was dead; and so were his hopes. It was devastating. And he just couldn’t get his hopes up again, just to have them dashed, again.
Leah Schade wrote about how the only thing that could ground Thomas back into reality, and bring healing, was if Jesus stood before him, and he could touch the wounds. If he could touch the wounds, then he could find healing.
Finally, Leah Schade connected Thomas’ need to touch the wounds of Jesus to find healing, to our need to touch the wounds of the earth, as a way to bring about healing for the earth and for humanity.
And she mentioned how making this connection was particularly timely, given that this Sunday is also the Sunday before Earth Day.
Touch the wounds, and find healing.
It made me think of the story in the book of Numbers, where the Hebrew people were dying from poisonous snake bites—or, more accurately, venomous snake bites. I don’t know why the translators chose the word poisonous; snakes aren’t poisonous, they’re venomous…
…and the Hebrew people were dying from venomous snake bites, until Moses made a snake of bronze and put it on a pole, and the people could then look to the snake on the pole in order to be healed from their own snake bites.
And I thought, isn’t that, in its own way, just like “touching the wound” to find healing? They had to look at the cause of their trauma, in order to begin the healing process.
Thomas needed to see and touch the source of his trauma. He needed to see and touch the wounds of Jesus, in order to believe and find healing.
According to the article by Leah Schade, this is the time when we might find it helpful to touch the earth’s wounds—wounds which we have inflicted upon the earth—in order to find healing for ourselves, for the earth, and all that lives upon the earth. After all, the resurrection isn’t just a promise made to us; it’s a promise made to all of creation. All of creation breathes new life in our risen Christ.
It just so happens that, in these past few weeks, I have been learning more about creation’s wounds, and its healing. Since I am spending a few weeks this spring as an instructor at a science camp on Catalina Island, I’ve learned a little bit about the ecology of Catalina in particular, and what a remarkable place Catalina is, as well as some of the past and present wounds that have been inflicted on the island’s ecology, and some of the healing that has taken place.
And if it’s alright with you, I want to share some of what I’ve learned. (And also, I need the practice, since my first camp session with students starts in two days.)
Catalina is one of earth's most unique places. It’s unique in many of the same ways that the Galapagos Islands are unique.
Since it first formed about five million years ago, Catalina has never been connected to the mainland, despite being just twenty miles off the coast at Palos Verdes.
This means that many of the plant and animal species that exist on Catalina are unique, found nowhere else in the world. Trees, like the Catalina Island Ironwood and the Catalina Island Mahogany, for example, only grow naturally on Catalina Island. The same is true for some animal species, like the Catalina Island Fox.
Other animals and plants that do exist on the mainland grow differently on Catalina. Prey, like squirrels, grow bigger on Catalina, because of the lack of natural predators. And the few predators that are there, meanwhile, tend to be smaller, because of the limited space.
This is all because of evolution.
Humans have also made an impact on Catalina. The Tongva have lived there for 7,000 years or more, and it was thought that the island foxes that live on Catalina today were descended from gray foxes brought over to the island by the Tongva. Over the millennia, the foxes not only grew smaller, but eventually evolved into a unique species.
About twenty years ago, the Catalina island foxes almost went extinct. A raccoon that stowed away on a boat brought to Catalina a disease that killed most of the Catalina Island foxes. In the late 90s, there were fewer than 100 foxes left.
That is one of the wounds I’m talking about.
But a group of scientists and biologists worked to care for the remaining foxes, and today the population of island foxes is up to over 1,800. And we can see them, sometimes, at the camp I’m working at.
That’s the healing I’m talking about.
If we look at the wounds and touch the wounds, we can bring about the healing that this world needs.
The first week I spent at this science camp—it was our training week, when I got certified as a lifeguard and when I learned a lot of these things—I saw, that week, on two different occasions, a bald eagle flying over the camp.
Have you ever seen a bald eagle in the wild? It’s so exciting, for a number of reasons.
One, it’s our national bird.
Two, they are so beautiful and graceful when they fly.
Three, until just recently, it was extremely rare to see a bald eagle in the wild, because there were so few of them.
You probably know that bald eagles in this country came close to extinction. In 1963, there were only 417 nesting pairs of bald eagles in the United States. This was largely due to the use of DDT. DDT got into the water, fish ate the DDT, the eagles ate the fish, and ingested that DDT, which caused their eggs to be fragile, with shells that would break before they could hatch.
To prevent extinction, we had to first look at and touch the wound. We had to confront the use of DDT, get it banned, and educate people about how destructive it is to life.
Then, the healing could begin. On Catalina Island and elsewhere, groups of scientists worked with the eagles. One of the things they would do is replace the eggs with fake eggs, then raise the real eggs in incubators where they could protect their fragile shells. Then, when the eggs hatched, the fake eggs were replaced with the eaglets, and the new parents would raise them.
And that’s how we saved the bald eagles. That’s how we brought healing to the earth. Today, instead of just 417 nesting pairs, there are over 70,000 nesting pairs throughout the United States, and a total population of over 300,000.
And I’ve been fortunate enough to see bald eagles on Catalina Island, at a boy scout camp in Oregon, and at Green Valley Lake in the San Bernardino Mountains.
But the threats still remain. Deep in the ocean between Catalina and Palos Verdes, there is a giant dumping ground where hundreds of thousands of barrels of DDT and other dangerous chemicals were dumped.
They’re still there, these barrels; and they are in danger of leaking or breaking apart. And because they are so deep—about 3,000 feet deep—and so fragile, it is difficult and costly to remove them safely, and there are currently no plans to do so that I’m aware of.
And we know that there are even bigger wounds, wounds that haven’t even yet begun to heal, wounds that are still being made worse. Some of the biggest wounds are caused by our addiction to fossil fuels. And healing won’t begin until we look those wounds in the eye (so to speak), and see them… see the damage that is being done…see how we continue to make those wounds deeper and more deadly by our actions and our inaction.
And then, it will take a huge, global effort to begin the healing. This is the work of governments and corporations—the empire—and the empire has an atrocious track record when it comes to environmental protection. The empire has developed and maintained an economy where nature is only valued if it can be commodified, sold, and profited from.
In other words, trees (for example) only have value when they are cut down and sold, according to our economic system.
That’s called idolatry, by the way; ascribing ultimate importance, ultimate allegiance to the ability to make a profit…
To bring about true healing for the earth, we need to reshape our economy, and how we calculate what has value and what does not, which won’t be easy.
So it’s tempting to give up hope that this planet will ever experience the type of healing that is needed.
But if Jesus can be resurrected to new life, then new life is also possible for this good earth. Jane Goodall talks about this all the time. Have you ever listened to her? Her talks are full of lament for what humans have done to the earth, but she is also so full of hope, because of the healing that has already taken place through the efforts of so many, and the potential and the possibility that even greater healing will take place in the future.
And as far as I’m concerned, this is a deeply theological issue. God created the earth, and all that lives in it, and God pronounced it all good. And then God created humans, out of the dust of the earth, and gave humans the responsibility to care for creation.
This belief, that humans were created out of the dust of the earth, connects us to the Tongva, the original inhabitants of this region. Their very name—Tongva—means, “people of the earth,” and they have been caring for this land for over 7,000 years.
God calls us to join them and all of humanity in caring for this land. God calls us to repent from our destructive ways, and change how we view this beautiful, good creation.
We can do it, if we look at the wounds our current way of figuring things causes, and if we change our ways so that healing can occur.
And it won’t just be the forests, or the foxes, or the eagles, that will be healed. Our souls will find healing, too. Because we are connected. All parts of God’s creation are connected. What we do to the earth, we do to ourselves.
Let’s look at the wounds, and let the healing begin.
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