Interfaith Power and Light, a nonprofit working against climate change, sponsored a Climate Preach-in for Valentine’s Day, complete with Valentine messages to send to political leaders. Among the several hundred clergy who participated were Karla Stoltzfus-Detweiler, minister of church community life at First Mennonite Church in Iowa City, Ia., and Spencer Bradford, pastor of Durham Mennonite Church, Durham, North Carolina.
Among Bradford preached on Matthew 25:14-30, the parable of the talents. He emphasized that this story should instill gratitude for all God’s generous treasures entrusted to us, and that God’s property entrusted to us as servants of Christ certainly includes the earth. Tending it and nourishing its fruitfulness and flourishing for future generations is stewarding it to increase its treasure. Bradford saw parallels between the servant accused of laziness and today’s inability to make changes in our patterns of industry and consumption necessary to sustain and increase the vital flourishing of creation.
“Whatever the level of influence we have in the care of God’s creation (however many talents we have), we are called to exercise initiative to sustain and increase its vitality, not exhaust it and decay its vitality,” Bradford said. “The parable shows us we cannot pass the buck for creation’s condition back to God — God has entrusted it to us and will seek an accounting for it.”
Stoltzfus-Detweiler chose Deuteronomy 30 as her text and entitled the sermon, “Choose Life!” In this passage, Moses delivers a parting message to his people, laying out the life and death choices that are before them. Both pastors reported that their congregations responded favorably.
gratitude must lead us to invest God’s gifts for the returns of God’s kingdom. During the part of the sermon addressing creation care, I said that God’s property entrusted to us as servants of Christ certainly includes the earth (“the earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof” – Psalm 24:1). Using up and burning out creation is laziness, and dismissing the value of creation to God as his property is unbiblical (Revelation 11:18). Tending it and nourishing its fruitfulness and flourishing for future generations is stewarding it to increase its treasure. The spirit of fear and timidity of the faithless servant who buries his treasure, and the laziness of which the master accuses him, constrains us from making the changes in our patterns of industry and consumption necessary to sustain and increase the vital flourishing of creation. Whatever the level of influence we have in the care of God’s creation (however many talents we have), we are called to exercise initiative to sustain and increase its vitality, not exhaust it and decay its vitality. The parable shows us we cannot pass the buck for creation’s condition back to God — God has entrusted it to us and will seek an accounting for it.