26^th September 2009

THE EARTH IS THE LORD'S    (Sunday 12 July 2009) Rev Dr Max Champion at St John's UCA Mt Waverley

Lessons -- Psalm 24; Ephesians 1:1-10; Mark 6:14-29

    The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, the world and those
    who dwell therein (Psalm 24:1 RSV)

This bold, comprehensive affirmation challenges the widely held view that faith in God is a purely private matter that is not relevant to the life of the world. Recently Carmen Lawrence, former Premier of Western Australia and onetime aspirant for Prime Minister, wrote an article in the Australian press bemoaning the growing trend of politicians to (mis)use their Christian faith to support their votes on contentious public issues.

Her typical reaction shows how extraordinary and controversial is the claim that 'the earth is the Lord's'. It is extraordinary because it disputes the common and rather lazy view which thinks faith in God is a private choice; controversial because it undermines the arrogance of those who claim a right to rule the earth without God. No sphere of life and no human actions are excluded from the domain of God's good and gracious rule. God is Lord over all creation!

The affirmation that 'the earth is the Lord's' (not the result of blind chance) should make us glad -- but not comfortable. It should project us into a way of life where God alone is worshipped and human pretension is challenged in the light of God's goodness and grace. It is a call to resist idolatry, atheism and inhumanity for the sake of God's costly love for 'the world'.

This call to action is necessary because 'the world' that belongs to 'the Lord' has been badly scarred by the actions of those who regard themselves as 'lords of the earth and its inhabitants'. The terrible effects of human arrogance, of which the beheading of John the Baptist by Herod (Mark 6:14-29) is one gruesome example, seem to contradict the Psalmist's confident faith in God's reign. We may wonder whether the earth really belongs to the righteous Lord or to 'high and mighty lords' who are merciless and unjust.

The passage of history doesn't give us much confidence that God is in charge. Evil seems to triumph over good. Sin -- our own and others' -- spoils personal relationships and public life. Death cuts us off from those 'with whom we have lived in the world' and returns 'us' to the 'earth'. 

If we are to join the Psalmist in this sweeping affirmation and challenging vocation, we must believe-and-act in the midst of situations where the Lordship of God is denied in practice. We must live by hope in God's creative and reconciling love where, from the human point of view, there is no hope for 'the earth and those who dwell therein'.

What grounds are there for such glad and confident hope?  The Psalmist is confident because he stands in the tradition of the 'God of Jacob' (v6): God present in the suffering history of the community called into being to be a 'light to the nations'. His hope is grounded in the faithfulness of God who loves his mistreated people despite their frequent refusal to follow their vocation.

In Mark's Gospel too there are grounds for hope. As we've seen in recent weeks, Jesus brought peace in the midst of conflict; healing amidst illness; life in the presence of death. Mark testifies that Jesus himself
is the ground for believing that 'the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein'.  Christ's presence is the sign and proof that God is Lord of the earth. He is the reality of God's self-giving love for the earth. In him we see that the 'Lord' does not despise the 'real' world, in which sin, evil and death afflict human beings and the order of nature, but loves it with infinite and costly
compassion.

In the coming of Jesus, the Creator's love for all is displayed in that he took upon himself our frail humanity, died as if he were the enemy of humanity and was raised to life as conqueror of evil. His ministry of
healing and mercy, his costly crucifixion and triumphant resurrection show that the scarred earth belongs to the 'Lord God'. The earth is the Lord's, not because it is perfect or its inhabitants are good, but because it is not beneath God's dignity to identify fully with us in order to restore us to fullness of life.

The magnificence of God's righteousness-and-mercy and the splendour of the Christian vocation are spelled out in Ephesians. God's 'purpose' for the 'world' is described as 'a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in Christ, things in heaven and on earth' (1:10). God's purpose for the Church from 'before the foundation of the world' (v4) is to praise God for 'the riches of grace which he has lavished on us in Christ' (v8) as a sign of hope for all the earth.

It is clear then that hope which has come in Christ is not for religious people with private beliefs, but for the 'world'. What has taken place in him, as anticipated in the covenant community of 'Jacob' (v6), is relevant to all because in his life, death and resurrection, the 'earth and all who dwell therein' are both judged and forgiven. Because God is the Creator and Lord of all who enters fully into the 'world' out of love for the earth and its inhabitants, and because he hates everything that resists his goodness and mercy, we may have confidence that ultimately sin, evil and death will not win.

In response to the depth and breadth of God's self-giving love, the Church's vocation is to call the world to the one place on earth where human pride has been judged and forgiven -- where our humanity has been restored. That place is the person of Jesus Christ! His earthly ministry embodied the healing, forgiving power of God; his death on a cross fixed in the earth displayed the self-giving mercy of God; and his resurrection signified the eternal love of God for the 'earth and all who dwell therein'.

Therefore love of the earth is the hallmark of the Christian life. This is because love of the earth is grounded in the resurrection of the crucified Jesus who embodied the love of God for the real world. As Bonhoeffer put it while imprisoned by a regime which scorched the earth, 'The difference between the Christian hope of resurrection and the mythological hope (of a better world beyond the grave) is that the former sends a person back to their life on earth in a wholly new way. ... ' (Letters and Papers from Prison, 336-7)

'The earth *is* the Lord's and the fullness thereof!' As the Body of Christ we identify ourselves with this extraordinary and controversial claim in a world which still suffers the terrible effects of arrogance.
Christians of all people should grieve the absence of goodness, justice and mercy in personal and public life. And we should challenge actions which degrade the earth: greed, unjust wars, ethnic hatred, euthanasia, contempt towards refugees, abuses of human rights, unrestricted abortion, environmental destruction, promiscuity, neglect of the poor and disdain for the truth.

Such actions, some of which are being introduced into our parliaments and enshrined in the laws of the land, are blatantly hostile to God's good and gracious will embodied in Christ's earthly ministry. By trampling on the dignity of some of the most vulnerable, discarded and neglected folk who inhabit the earth, they flout God's goodness and begrudge God's mercy.

By acknowledging that the earth is the Lord's the Church is committed to pray for the redemption of the world, to look forward in hope to the coming of the 'new heaven and new earth' in Christ (Revelation 21:1) and to act in the present to oppose seemingly irresistible forces and influential people who, by their actions and decisions, deny in practice that 'the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, the world and
those who dwell therein'.

It is easy to be intimidated by political leaders and media commentators who want to confine Christian faith to the private, religious part of life. We should ignore them. As Calvin says of our Mark text, 'We behold in John an illustrious example of that moral courage ... not to hesitate to incur the wrath of the great and powerful, as often as it may be found necessary.' (Cited in C Cranfield, The Gospel according to St Mark, p209).

Therefore in our vocation as the Body of Christ in the world may we too be confident that, despite so much that dehumanises our common life, God is Lord of the earth. His love of the earth and of human beings has been magnificently displayed in Christ as a foretaste of what is to come for all the earth.

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Rev Dr Max Champion is minister in the St John's Uniting Church, Mt Waverley, Victoria, Australia. Dr Champion is Chair of the Assembly of Confessing Congregations within the UCA.