Some texts of the Bible don’t specifically address our relationship with the environment, but we can still learn principles from them that can be applied more broadly. In a sense, this is “doing theology,” in which we look at our own context - our current time and issues - and ask what faithfulness looks like today. As we do this for today’s topics, ask the Holy Spirit to guide your thoughts and bring you to a deeper meaning of what it looks like to lean into Christ’s reconciliation of all things.
Sabbath
When the people of Israel enter the Promised Land, after wandering through the desert for 40 years, God gives them, through Moses, a looooong set of instructions (the law, the second part of the group of books known as the Pentateuch). Some of these are regarding Sabbath. Sabbath, commanded by the Lord in the Ten Commandments, has its own lengthy list of rules, some of which specifically address allowing the land to rest:
2 “Give the following instructions to the people of Israel. When you have entered the land I am giving you, the land itself must observe a Sabbath rest before the Lord every seventh year. 3 For six years you may plant your fields and prune your vineyards and harvest your crops, 4 but during the seventh year the land must have a Sabbath year of complete rest. It is the Lord’s Sabbath. Do not plant your fields or prune your vineyards during that year
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3 “If you follow my decrees and are careful to obey my commands, 4 I will send you the seasonal rains. The land will then yield its crops, and the trees of the field will produce their fruit. 5 Your threshing season will overlap with the grape harvest, and your grape harvest will overlap with the season of planting grain. You will eat your fill and live securely in your own land.
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14 “However, if you do not listen to me or obey all these commands… 34 Then at last the land will enjoy its neglected Sabbath years as it lies desolate while you are in exile in the land of your enemies. Then the land will finally rest and enjoy the Sabbaths it missed. 35 As long as the land lies in ruins, it will enjoy the rest you never allowed it to take every seventh year while you lived in it.
-- Leviticus 25:2-4a, 26:14, 34-35, NASB
Sabbath is one of my favorite topics (I have many). For more than half my life, I’ve sought to take a day of rest, although that has looked different in different years and seasons. Rather than continuing my normal fast pace of work and chores and social media, I try to fill a day with slowness, community, and even celebration. Each week I remember: I am human and I cannot do or fix everything; but Christ promises restoration, joy, and deep, soul-satisfying life! Sabbath is meant to be a blessing and a delight, a chance to revel in the goodness of creation, just as God did on the seventh day of Creation:
2 By the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. 3 Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because on it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.
-- Genesis 2:2-3, NASB
Now, let’s do theology: how does this concept of Sabbath apply to the land? What does rest and restoration, celebration and delight look like in how we care for our environment?
Consider these questions:
What does Sabbath mean to you?
What might allowing creation its own Sabbath rest mean in our time or community?
Instructions to Rulers
Later in the law, among texts about celebrations and idolatry and offerings, there’s a short passage directed toward the king. When Israel entered the Promised Land, they had no human king; God was their king. For several hundred years, they were led by a succession of judges, who communicated God’s will to the people and interceded to God on their behalf. Only in 1 Samuel 8 do we see the Israelites ask for a human king, a request which God initially warns against before eventually relenting. These are the instructions God gives to the kings of Israel:
15 you shall in fact appoint a king over you whom the Lord your God chooses. One from among your countrymen you shall appoint as king over yourselves; you may not put a foreigner over yourselves, anyone who is not your countryman. 16 In any case, he is not to acquire many horses for himself, nor shall he make the people return to Egypt in order to acquire many horses, since the Lord has said to you, ‘You shall never again return that way.’ 17 And he shall not acquire many wives for himself, so that his heart does not turn away; nor shall he greatly increase silver and gold for himself.18 “Now it shall come about, when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write for himself a copy of this Law on a scroll in the presence of the Levitical priests. 19 And it shall be with him, and he shall read it all the days of his life, so that he will learn to fear the Lord his God, by carefully following all the words of this Law and these statutes, 20 so that his heart will not be haughty toward his countrymen, and that he will not turn away from the commandment to the right or the left, so that he and his sons may live long in his kingdom in the midst of Israel.
-- Deuteronomy 17:15-20, NASB
I see in this passage directions for the king (a “ruler,” although this is a different word than “radah,” which we discussed last time), admonishing him to live moderately and humbly, focusing on God’s words and obeying them.
How can these same principles be applied to us as “rulers” of the earth?
Do you see any other principles of kingship that should inform how we live faithfully on the earth?
Awakening to God’s Call to Earthkeeping. Kim Winchell, ELCA Diaconal Minister. 2006.