"A Little Less Than God" - Psalm 8 - May 26, 2002

One of our church members lives near a lake. She says sometimes she sees baby turtles trying to find their way to the lake. Unfortunately, predators often eat them before they make it. On several occasions she has helped them on their way, to prevent them from being devoured. "It’s my way of helping the young turtles have a chance," she says.

According to the Psalm, God has given us "dominion" over the creatures of the earth. God has given we humans the responsibility to be in charge. Some folks, like this particular woman, take that very seriously. Others may argue that to intervene in nature may upset natural cycles or disrupt the food chain. On the other hand, modern civilization has to learn how to coexist with nature, or all of God’s creatures may someday be extinct.

It is unlikely that saving a dozen baby turtles will change the future of the earth. Besides, few people I know really like turtle soup. So I doubt that saving turtles will help feed the human race in the future. On the other hand, some things we do to preserve our natural resources will help to sustain the future of the planet. For example, recycling takes valuable resources and enables us to reuse them, rather than dispose of them in a landfill. The main point of this Psalm is to remind us that God expects us to care for the earth. "Thou has put all things under his (humankind’s) feet."

We are God’s agents, appointed by God to manage the earth and assume responsibility for all its wildlife, plant life and resources. God is relying on us to take care of the earth. God is counting on us to maintain an ecological balance, protect the ozone, keep our rivers from being contaminated, preserve the rain forest, etc. etc.

To think that we are charged with such an awesome task is difficult to imagine. Most of us don’t think of ourselves as managers of the earth. We leave that to the experts. The psalmist, however makes it clear that even the weakest among us is included as a partner in managing the earth. "By the mouth of babes and infants, thou hast founded a bulwark because of thy foes, to still the enemy and the avenger."

This week I was at a luncheon and Mary Ellen Allenbaugh, the County Treasurer, was seated at my table. Although there is no connection it reminded me of a story about a teenager named Eric Allenbaugh, who wrote a story in Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul. He was a student in Southern California about thirty years ago. After a football game in the fall of 1959, he and his girlfriend were leaving the stadium when someone kicked him from behind. When he turned around he encountered one of the local teen gangs, armed with brass knuckles. They beat him and he ended up in the hospital with internal bleeding and a concussion. He nearly died. Fortunately, his girlfriend was not harmed.

After he recovered some of his friends approached him and said, "Let’s go get those guys!" Retaliation is the way those problems are often settled. Part of Eric said, "Yes," but part of him said, "No." He knew revenge did not work. It only accelerates and intensifies conflict. He wanted to do something that would break the chain of counterproductive events. He gathered a diverse group of kids and they formed the "Brotherhood Committee" to work on enhancing racial tension. Not everyone bought into this program of cross-cultural exchange but many joined the effort. Two years later, Eric became the student body president and about 3,000 students joined in the effort to do things differently. They built bridges between cultures and ethnic groups. Their efforts made a tremendous difference in the community. Hate and indifference were replaced with trust and cooperation.

These young students chose to care for humanity by getting involved and choosing God’s way of love. When it comes to the problems of the world, it is often the very young who lead us. To be in charge of the earth is to respond to any situation in which we hear the cry of the oppressed, the helpless, the defenseless, any person, animal or thing, that needs attended to, even tiny, defenseless, baby turtles trying to survive in a hostile world.

On Memorial Day we remember those who gave their lives, fighting for peace and unity of a divided country. We humans also live in an environment that is not always friendly and safe. Three years after the Civil War ended, on May 5, 1868, the head of an organization of former Union soldiers and sailors, the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) established Decoration Day as a time for the nation to decorate the graves of the war dead with flowers. Maj. Gen. John A. Logan declared it should be May 30th.

The first large observance was held that year at Arlington National Cemetery, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. The cemetery already held the remains of 20,000 Union dead and several hundred Confederate dead. The ceremonies centered around the mourning-draped verandah of the Arlington mansion, once the home of Gen. Robert E. Lee. Gen. and Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant and other Washington officials presided. After speeches, children from the Soldiers' and Sailors' Orphan Home and members of the GAR made their way through the cemetery, strewing flowers on both Union and Confederate graves, reciting prayers and singing hymns.

John Logan, who later became a senator, was an advocate for the general welfare of humanity. He believed that our educational system should be one that protects our natural resources, including the resources of our people. Here are a few exerts from his speech in March 16, 1882.

"Private individuals ransack the streams and the mountains for particles of gold, and offer them to the world as an addition to its wealth; but a nation finds honor in discovering, minds, and offering them to be used in all the duties of life."

"A fine climate gives effect to every interest and industry of a land; a fertile soil attracts population and enterprise to cultivate it; mines afford opportunity for the poor to gather wealth and scatter it abroad throughout the world. But none of these are of any more worth than a desert, without hands to improve them; and what are hands worth, without minds to direct them? A hand, with an educated brain behind it, is worth more than treble an ignorant one. Give the finest climate earth can show, the fattest soil the continents lift out of the sea, the richest mines the mountains contain, the safest harbors that border the sea or indent the Land, and let a people be ignorant of their own capabilities, or of the resources of Nature and her mighty agencies, and what are all these worth?"

"We need, as a Nation so extended, to foster homogeneous instruction in our hundred different climates and regions. The one grand thing, to do in every one of these regions, each larger than most of the nations of the world, is to secure the uniformity of intelligence and virtue. We need no other."

"We all read the same Bible, and claim to practice the same golden rule. Let us instruct all the youth whom the beneficent Father gives us, natives of this land or born on other shores, in the grand principles of morality which it inculcates, and in all the science in which it has fostered." (See full text at www.jal.cc.il.us/loganspeech.html)

Senator Logan seemed to grasp the essence of Psalm 8. He understood the need of humankind to be caretakers of the earth. At the same time he acknowledged the providence of God. And it was Logan who is credited with the origin of Memorial Day. God must have been pleased. God must have also been pleased with those soldiers who gave the ultimate sacrifice to bring an end to hate and strife. God surely must have been pleased to see children participating in the celebration.

God needs us to be caretakers of the earth. Unfortunately, it is we same humans who mess it up in the first place. Even when we do our very best we still are not in control. There will always be an enemy out there, who doesn’t want to live in harmony with others. Some will always want their way and others will always be indifferent to the needs of people around them. Like senator Logan said, "we need to practice the golden rule."

The psalm tells us that while we have a responsibility to maintain God’s creation, having been given "dominion over the works of God’s hands," we are nevertheless, "a little less than God." Memorial Day is a reality check for us, a day that reminds us that we are still finite and not immortal. It is a day for us to remember those who have gone before us. They too once walked the earth as God’s partners. As inhabitants of the earth they cared for God’s creation, God’s children and they cared for us.

God expects us to be God’s agents, but being responsible includes humility. This great psalm affirms our role in managing the earth. However, we can’t overlook the fact that it is framed with the divinity of God.

We grieve over the loss of our loved ones. It grieves us too that many of God’s children had to die on the battle fields. Fields of dreams became blood-stained fields of tragedy. Yet, you can stand in those same fields today and look up to the skies and the same stars and moon that glowed in history continue to shine tonight. It is no accident that the psalmist reminds us to look to the heavens. Casting our eyes upon the stars at night connects us with the greatness of God. The psalm is cosmic, for attention to the heavens overshadows the smallness of the earth and especially the minuteness of ourselves. By looking upward we have a sense of life beyond this life, realizing that we are just one small part of something much larger, nevertheless we are connected.

My friend may appreciate god’s little creatures, like baby turtles. As for me, I appreciate our lakes and oceans. Nothing gives me more pleasure than sailing at night, gazing to the heavens and being consumed by the millions of stars. Those same stars that appear in the sky this night are the same stars that shine on my grandfather’s grave, on the families of my fallen comrades in Vietnam. They are the same heavenly lights that glow over the site of the former World Trade Center, Gettysburg, Normandy, Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, Auschwitz and Jerusalem.

"O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth."

Dr. Keith Wagner, St. Paul’s United Church of Christ, Sidney, Ohio