“During that first Arctic summer, I began to understand that the apparent stillness of the Svalbard landscape was completely illusory. Everything was in motion: slopes were slipping, ice was pulsing, the land was rebounding, the mountains were flowing, the geography of the world was changing. It took some effort not to revert to my quasi-mystical childhood perception of the natural world, in which plants, rocks, and streams seemed to be whispering to one another…in Svalbard it was undeniable that the austere landscape was alive, its rocks and water, ice and air were in constant conversation. The terrain was animate, sentient, and creative. It would just take me thirty years to say it out loud.” (Marcia Bjornerud, Turning to Stone: The Subtle Wisdom of Rocks, p. 4-5)
So writes naturalist Marcia Bjornerud, reflecting on her 
expedition to the northernmost part of Norway. Now, there are plenty of people who would say that Dr. Bjornerud has spent a little too much time up there in the frozen North, and that she needs to get a grip. And it would just be a figure of speech to say that she has an “intimate” knowledge of the landscape, right? Maybe…and maybe not.
“The heavens are telling the glory of God,
And the firmament proclaims God’s handiwork…
There is no speech; their voices are not heard;
Yet their voice goes out through all the earth.”
So says Psalm 19; and so, in fact, says much of scripture. When, in Genesis chapter two, God fashions Adam out of “the dust of the ground,” in Hebrew, adamah, it reminds us that human beings are earthlings, made of the same stuff as everything else in our world. And when God breathes the breath of life, the ruach, into Adam’s nostrils, it’s the same breath of life that God breathes into everything that lives. And the last verse of Psalm 150 reads, “Let everything that has breath praise the Lord!”
Some of the earliest hymns I learned as a child, and maybe you did too, were about God’s relationship with the natural world:
This is my Father’s world, and to my listening ears
All nature sings, and round me rings the music of the spheres.
This is my Father’s world, the birds their carols raise;
The morning bright, the lily white, declare their Maker’s praise.
Let all things now living, a song of thanksgiving
To God our Creator triumphantly raise.
As we just sang in our opening hymn,
All creatures of our God and King,
Lift up your voice and with us sing…
What if we took all of this seriously? What if we came to think of it not as sentimental Sunday School poetry, but as literal truth? What if we really believed that we live in that world?
This is the time of year when we become especially attuned to nature – from the striking beauty of Autumn to the stormy blasts of Winter. And an increasing number of scientists tell us that we are embedded in a vast network of sounds and sights and smells through which creation talks to itself. And it just might be that we haven’t heard those voices, the voices that “go out through all the earth,” because we haven’t been listening closely enough.
You may remember the Lerner and Lowe song:
I talk to the trees
But they don’t listen to me
I talk to the stars
But they never hear me
The breeze hasn’t time
To stop and hear what I say
I talk to them all
In vain.
Well, it now appears that the trees are talking to each other through a complex system of chemical signals transmitted through roots and fungi, in effect warning each other of impending danger from disease and insect pests, nourishing those that seem to be in poor health, and leading arborists to talk, only partly tongue in cheek, about the “Wood Wide Web.” We don’t really have good language for describing this kind of plant intelligence, but we do talk about “training” a plant to climb a trellis. Is that just a metaphor? Well, maybe, but then, maybe not.
Turning to the animal kingdom, we now know that sperm whales communicate with each other over thousands of miles using a vocabulary of click patterns, or “codas.” Scientists have identified 8917 of these codas to date, and there are surely more to be discovered.
Closer to home, when you and your dog stare lovingly into each other’s eyes, you’re communicating more than you know. Zoologist Arik Kershenbaum reports that “Dogs want us to look into their eyes, and experiments have shown that making eye contact with a dog increases the levels of pleasure-giving hormones like oxytocin both in the dog and in the human. It’s as if both dog and human are biologically built to communicate with each other – and that is, in fact, the case.” (Why Animals Talk, 211)
I could go on about elephants and chimps and octopi and bacteria, but that’s probably enough weird science for one sermon. In fact, how much of this is solid science, and how much is mere speculation, is an ongoing debate. What is clear is that nature is not “mute,” or “dumb,” or “brutish,” as we used to think.
This world is abuzz with all kinds of conversations, and they’re not all about us. I don’t think it’s too much to say that God is having conversations with God’s creatures – all of God’s creatures – through chirps and clicks and howls and all kinds of visual and electrical and chemical signals – and that many of these conversations don’t include us. And that’s humbling, but it’s also marvelous!
Now, there are all kinds of reasons not to romanticize the natural world. I recently had the privilege of watching a red-tailed hawk dismember and devour a squirrel in our backyard, and someday I’d like to have the chance to ask the good Lord, “Was that really necessary?” Well, I was not consulted, and I find that…troublesome. And over the past few weeks, in this season of storms, we have had more than one occasion to realize just how much our lives are shaped and can be disrupted by forces of nature that are beyond our control and about which we weren’t consulted. And our misgivings about “the wonders of nature” are well-founded.
And this brings us to our rather hair-raising passage from the book of Job.
I will be the first to admit that I have problems with the book of Job. Anyone who has spent any time with the book of Job has problems with the book of Job, the poor sufferer who endures all kinds of afflictions while God looks on approvingly, or at least tolerantly; and, when Job finally loses his patience, it all comes to a head with a divine verbal smackdown that begins with the verses we just read. By the way, consider yourselves lucky that we just read this much, because God’s rant goes on for four more chapters, offering a whole catalog of creation.
It all leads off with a thundering question, “Where were you?” Where were you, Job, when I made all of nature? And God then goes on to elaborate a lot of places that Job wasn’t. God puts Job in his place, forcing Job to recognize that he has his own particular location in the grand scheme of things. And that’s not an entirely bad thing.
“Have you comprehended the expanse of the earth?
Declare, if you know all this.
What is the way to the place where the light is distributed
or where the east wind is scattered upon the earth?
Do you know the ordinances of the heavens?
Can you establish their rule on the earth?
Who put wisdom in remote places,
or who gave understanding to a rooster? (CEB)
Do you give the horse its might?
Do you clothe its neck with a mane?
“Is it by your wisdom that the hawk soars
and spreads its wings toward the south?
Is it at your command that the eagle mounts up
and makes its nest on high?
It lives on the rock and makes its home
in the fastness of the rocky crag.
From there it spies the prey;
its eyes see it from far away.
Its young ones suck up blood,
and where the slain are, there it is.”
God doesn’t quite touch on all creatures great and small, but he comes pretty close, and it’s breathtaking. And all Job can do is gape.
As Presbyterians we believe in an “active faith,” and that’s all to the good. Our grandaddy John Calvin described the world as “the theater of God’s glory,” and made it clear that followers of Jesus were to be seriously and deeply engaged with the world. But every once in awhile I think it’s just fine to spend some time admiring the sets and the staging, to realize that we aren’t the only or even principal actors in the play. It may seem strange to talk about cultivating a discipline of wonder from our particular niche in nature, our spot onstage, but that’s what I want to suggest today.
Our Jewish friends are doing that this week, during the holiday of Sukkot, the Feast of Booths. As you may know, during this harvest festival Jews are required to build a temporary shelter or sukkah in the backyard, if they are able, that is open on one side and has a partial roof through which they can see the stars at night. They take their meals there, and some choose to sleep in the sukkah as well.
The point is to remember God’s providing for the people in the wilderness following the Exodus from Egypt, to celebrate God’s continuing care at harvest time, and to recognize the transience and fragility of human life. It’s a reminder that we all live in temporary structures, even if some are more temporary than others, and that we are mortal, and that we are creatures, ourselves part of the natural order. A sukkah isn’t intended to keep the elements out. It’s specifically designed to be open to both raindrops and starshine. And that’s the point.
As I reflect on my own creatureliness, and realize that I’m not the big cheese that I often think I am, I may just gain a more acute sense of solidarity with my fellow creatures, who are also the recipients of God’s communication and care, even if it is in ways that often remain mysterious to us. A couple of weeks ago this congregation, like many others, held a service of blessing of the animals. This is a lovely thing, for sure, but it makes me wonder how many things we do to animals, including the ones that end up on our dinner tables, that are anything but blessings.
Considering the number of fowl that I have eaten over the years, I have a recurring fantasy that when I get to heaven I will be met at the Pearly Gates by a very large chicken, who will say, “I have a bone to pick with you.” And I’ve been more than a little inclined to think that it would be a good idea to start eating a bit lower on the food chain. I do think that the animals in my life would feel more blessed if I didn’t eat so many of them, and if they were raised under more humane conditions. And that’s a little ongoing struggle that I have with myself – and maybe you do too. Unlike that red-tailed hawk, I have a choice in the matter.
On a larger scale, we need to spend some time thinking about how we might bless the animals, not just one day out of the year, but every day. Today the United Nations is convening a biodiversity conference in Colombia to address the alarming fact that wildlife populations worldwide have diminished by around 73% over the past half century, largely as the result of deforestation and other forms of human activity. It’s a conversation we all need to have. A good place to start is to look up, and out, and to consider just how great God, and nature, really are.
Presbyterian theologian and wilderness backpacker Belden Lane, reflecting on the ways we so often remake God in our desired image, says, “One of the scourges of our age is that all our deities are house-broken and eminently companionable. Far from demanding anything, they ask only how they can more meaningfully enhance the lives of those they serve.” I think we all know that our God is bigger, and wilder, than that; but in a culture that so often takes nature, and even God, to be mere resources that are at our disposal, it’s good to take time to consider all the worlds our God has made, and to practice a regular discipline of wonder. Amen.