St. Paul's Episcopal Church

St. Paul's Episcopal Church
425 Cleveland Ave SW
Canton, Ohio 44702
Phone: 330-455-0286
Fax: 330-455-9818
E-mail: office@stpaulscanton.org

St. Francis Feast Day
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Canton OH
Genesis 2:5-24

October 4, 2009
The Rev. Barbara L Bond

Caring for the Creation

The beauty of God’s creation is all around us in fall colors, crisp air, the harvesting of our garden vegetables – the bounty that God provides for us. St. Francis loved God’s creation and God’s creatures, and in his song of praise to God, the Canticle of the Creatures, he names his gratitude for all earthly and cosmic elements. Francis lived 800 years ago, and was a simple man, renouncing earthly pleasures and gain, striving to come closer to God. His appreciation for God’s creation has earned him a new job in recent years, as the patron saint of environmentalism. Though the readings for Francis’s feast day are lovely, I am going to take my cue today from the book of Genesis. Let’s look at the second Jewish creation story, not the seven-day story, but the one right after it – in the second chapter of Genesis.

In this story, God creates a man out of the dust of the ground. The soil itself is called “adamah” in Hebrew, so we call this man Adam. God breathes into Adam’s nostrils the breath of life. Then God creates a beautiful garden in Eden and places Adam there, to till it and keep it. God says that Adam can eat whatever he likes of the bounty of the garden -- well, everything except fruit from that tree over there. God then creates all the creatures – animals of the field, birds of the air – and brings them to Adam to name them. And then God creates woman and the story gets more complicated. Adam names her Eve. So, for convenience, we shall follow tradition and call them Adam and Eve, who in Jewish mythology are regarded as the Primal Parents, God’s avenue of bringing human beings into the creation.

For me, the most important part of this story is when God places Adam in the garden, to till it and keep it. God wants Adam to take care of the garden. God wants human beings to be good stewards.

For our society, this story has been variously interpreted, but I find it most inspiring as a story about the relationship between God and the humans. God made the beautiful creation, and asked the humans to be responsible for it, to oversee it. This has been part of our contract with God from early times, that we humans offer gratitude to God for the gifts we are given, and we take care of them as part of our relationship with God. We put the gifts of God to good use.

As we look at our lives, we have lots of things to take care of – our homes and families, our jobs, our possessions. In rearing children, we want the best for them and we nurture them with good food, clothing, loving care, and special educational opportunities. Some of us lavish care on our pets, on home maintenance, on our health – on things that are important to us. We have priorities in our expenses, with basic duties on the top of the list. Like Adam and Eve, we take care of those things, we oversee them. We are good stewards of those people and things entrusted to our care. Many of us are also concerned about the earth itself and contribute to environmental causes. And many of us lend our concern to the cure of diseases, and to supporting the arts and other worthy causes.

That’s what stewardship is about – it is about caring and nurturing, about overseeing and supporting: stewardship of the earth, stewardship of our families, stewardship of our own health, stewardship of what matters to us.

In this month of October, there will be many opportunities for us to think about our priorities and what we support. Our relationship with God and this community is very meaningful to us. As we are good stewards of our other relationships, let us also be good stewards of this primary spiritual connection to God.

The life story of Saint Francis is quite instructive. As a young man, he had all the distractions of youth. He grew up in a wealthy household and his every whim was satisfied. But he became sensitized to the lives of the poor and the oppressed, including those who worked for his father in the fabric business. Suddenly he could no longer wear the rich clothing, which he realized was made by oppressed workers. He could not participate in a system of oppression. And so, in a very public place, he took off his clothes, and walked away naked. Donning the habit of a monk, he went about answering a call from God, to build up God’s church. Initially this was very literal, as he rebuilt the ruined village church of San Damiano. But his pursuit of a pure life succeeded in building up the larger church, which had become very rich and wayward. Francis, by his example, brought about a major re-thinking about the church’s relationship with God.

Of all the saints, Francis is the most popular and admired, but probably the least imitated. As we enjoy his devotion to animals today with our Animal Blessing, let us also give thought to his devotion to his Lord. Let us consider how we can be good stewards of our own primary relationship to God.