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Let All That Have Breath Praise God”

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Let All That Have Breath Praise God” “Let All That Have Breath Praise God” A sermon delivered by Rev. W. Benjamin Boswell at Myers Park Baptist Church on April 24, 2016 The Fifth Sunday of Easter/Earth Sunday from Psalm 148 There once was a woman who loved her dog so dearly that she wanted to make sure she would be with her forever for eternity. So she went to the local Baptist church, called on the pastor there, and asked him if he would give her dog a blessing. The Baptist pastor said, “Well Ma’am, I’m sorry to say we just don’t do that kind of thing here at the Baptist church. You should go to the Episcopalian church. I hear they do animal blessings over there.” “Thank you,” the woman said. “I appreciate your help. Can you give me some advice? How much should I pay the priest—$5 or $10,000 dollars?” “Wait a second ma’am,” the pastor said, “I didn’t know your dog was a Baptist. What kind of blessing do you want?” Today is Earth Sunday and every year the NCC Creation Justice Ministries suggests a theme for congregations to explore in their observance of Earth Day. This year’s theme, which you may have already noticed from the hymns we sang this morning, is “Care for God’s Creatures.” I have to admit that I was a little concerned about this theme because the last time I preached about God’s creatures, a member of a previous congregation got very upset with me. In a sermon on the book of Job, I said, “What if human beings are not the center of the universe? What if creation wasn’t made for us? What if humanity is really only one small part of the great wonder and mystery of God’s creation? That’s basically what God said to Job from the whirlwind. God gave Job a glimpse of how God sees the world and Job quickly learned that creation does not exist solely for human beings. We are a part of a great mystery God has created; but we are no more important than any other creature and we depend on all the other parts of creation for our health, wholeness, and vitality. Like Job, we need God to remind us of our proper place in the family of things.” The next day a woman came to my office and said, “I heard your sermon on Job yesterday and I don’t agree with you. Do you really think that I am no more important to God than a bird?” You know, it’s amazing what people get out of a sermon. How do you answer that question? That’s one of those times you realize that the Bible is not very helpful when it comes to pastoral care. I wasn’t sure what to say so I just replied, “You must not know how strongly I feel about birds.” Earth Sunday is a relatively new concept and is not an officially recognized Sunday in the church calendar yet; so the lectionary texts for this Sunday usually have nothing to do with creation. But this year is different. It just so happens that the Psalm for the fifth Sunday of Easter is perfect for Earth Sunday. Psalm 148 is nothing less than a great symphony of praise featuring the entire universe in chorus. The Hebrew word for praise, hallel, appears thirteen times in fourteen verses and every part of creation is summoned to praise God—heavens, angels, hosts, sun, moon, stars, waters, sea creatures, oceans, fire, hail, snow, winds, mountains, hills, fruit trees, cedars, wild animals, cattle, creeping things, flying birds, and people of all kinds—rulers, leaders, judges, princes and commoners, men and women alike, young and old together. A remarkably diverse choir made up of the entire universe is called to praise God in power, unity, and fidelity. The great universal symphony of praise in Psalm 148 is a reflection of God’s vision for the world. It echoes back to the very beginning in Genesis 1 where God created the waters, the earth, the vegetation, the trees, the light, swarms of living things, birds above, sea creatures below, cattle, creeping things, and wild animals of every kind including human beings—and God saw that it was good. But Psalm 148 is not just a vision that echoes back to creation. It is also a vision that looks forward to the future in the hope of what the kingdom of God will be like—a place like the vision in Isaiah 11 where all creatures live in harmony and © where “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together… they will not hurt or destroy on God’s holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of God.” It is impossible for me to speak about Psalm 148 and not give proper respect to its greatest interpreter—St. Francis of Assisi, whose beautiful hymn “All Creatures of Our God and King” is likely the most famous reflection on this Psalm. And while his prayerful, poetic, paraphrase is a beautiful encapsulation of the Psalm’s meaning, the life of St. Francis was an even more stunning witness. Francis was known to talk to larks, lambs, rabbits, pheasants, falcons, cicadas, bees, waterfowl, the famous wolf of Gubbio, pigs, and fish. Francis could see that the entire material world had sacred, sacramental meaning. He believed that all creatures’ bear the image and likeness of God, and creation itself became his primary place of worship. What St. Francis of Assisi understood, more clearly than most people in history, was his proper place in the order of creation. How did we lose this sense of our proper place in the order creation? Perhaps it began during the Enlightenment when many thinkers promoted a strong distinction between rational human beings and non-rational animals. This idea was given extreme expression by the philosopher Descartes who viewed animals as automatons incapable of conscious states, including a sense of pain, and did not think they were worthy of moral consideration. Immanuel Kant also argued “all animals exist only as means to an end, and not for their own sakes, in that they have no self-consciousness.” The belief that non-rational creatures do not merit moral consideration became widespread after the Enlightenment. This elevation of human rationality not only devalued animals and creation by considering them merely something to be “used for human means,” it also treated any human beings that were considered by those in power to be “less rational” as if they were “animals”—such as women, children, the disabled, the poor, non-Western peoples, native cultures, and those from different ethnicities. The Biblical witness of Genesis and Psalm 148 makes a mockery of the Enlightenment’s claims. In Genesis, humans don’t come first in the order of creation—we come last. Everything else was created first; the waters, the sky, the light, the darkness, the trees, the vegetation, the birds, the bugs, the sea monsters, the wild animals, the cattle, and every other creature was created before human beings. We were the last things to be created. Psalm 148 bears the same witness. In Psalm 148, human beings are the last things that are called to praise God. Everything else is called to praise God first—sun, moon, stars, fire, wind, snow, hail, creatures, fruit trees, cattle, animals, birds—they are all summoned to praise before we are. In fact, it takes eleven verses before there is a single mention of human beings. Human beings were simply not the priority of the Psalmists invocation. In our arrogance, we humans tend to believe that God “saved the best for last,” but the reality is that if there is a hierarchy in the order of creation, we were created to be on the bottom—not the top. Human beings were created last, at the very end of the sixth day, and we were given a specific purpose to be stewards, custodians, and caretakers of all that was created before us. But through our desire for power and dominion over all the creatures of the earth, we have turned the world upside down. Now we human beings are on the top and all of creation is on the bottom. When Jesus proclaimed the upside down kingdom of God where last are first and the meek get to inherit the earth, he was not proclaiming something totally new but simply the restoration of the created order—a return to the harmony of Garden of Eden before the fall—a repairing of the world back to the way was originally intended to be. We have reversed the order of creation and lost our place in it and in so doing we have failed to fulfill our purpose as the caretakers of Creation. Imagine how preposterous it would be for a caretaker to say, “I am more important than this thing that I am supposed to be caring for. I shouldn’t serve them. They should serve me.” It is completely antithetical to the very nature of caregiving, and yet that is exactly what humanity has said to the created world. © This is why we need the powerful and transformative act of praise that the Psalmist implores us to practice. Praising God the Creator can be a healthy antidote to our narcissism as created human beings. When we practice the holy activity of praise, we experience a change in orientation.
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  • Festival Siddur
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