Jesus and the Earth
June 11, 2008
The excerpts above are used with permission from the author and are taken from pages 7-18 of Jesus and the Earth by James Jones, Bishop of Liverpool. The book was published in 2003 by SPCK Press in London and available at amazon.com.
This post originally appeared in Creation Care Magazine.
Until I began to seriously study the issue, if you had asked me what Jesus had to say about the earth and whether the Gospels had anything to say in formulating an environmental ethic, I would have thought, “precious little.” However, all that has changed. I have read the Gospels again and again [in light of this question], and am still reading. I am determined to read out of the text and not into it. I find myself unearthing things in the Gospels which persuade me that Jesus not only was earthed but also saw his mission as none other than the earthing of heaven.“Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” was the logical sequitur of his prayer for the coming of the Kingdom. This book (Jesus and the Earth) is a reflection on my search for evidence of the connectedness of Jesus to the earth and begins in the stormiest of waters and with the furious debates over what Jesus meant when he called himself “The Son of Man.” It is the only title that he takes to himself … in Hebrew the phrase “Son of Man” is Ben Adam, Son of Adam, and Adam is the one hewn from the earth, Adamah in Hebrew. I returned to the Gospel text with a new eagerness. Searching for evidence of a connectedness between Jesus and the earth I took special notice of those episodes in which he called himself the “Son of Man” and wondered whether I would find there any echoes of Adam or Adamah, the earth …
Of the passages in the Gospels where the Son of Man and the earth are explicitly mentioned together, let us look at three, one each from Luke, Matthew, and John.
The Lukan passage occurs in all three synoptic Gospels. It is the story of the forgiving and healing of a person paralyzed and incapable of walking. Having absolved him, Jesus says to him and his critics, “The Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” (Luke 5:24).
Each synoptic Gospel account includes the reference to the earth. Why “on earth”? What is added to the meaning of his authority to forgive by stating explicitly that it was “on earth”? … Is there any mention of the earth in the story of Adam’s falling into sin? There is, of course. The result of their sin is that the earth is cursed. Adam who was hewn from the earth and called to serve the earth (Genesis 2:7, 15) finds that his sin wreaks havoc on the earth: “cursed is the ground because of you” (3:17).
The only way that the earth can be relieved of its curse is through the forgiveness, healing and restoration of Adam’s successors … The earth bears the wounds of human sinfulness. “The whole creation has been groaning,” says Paul, clinging to the “hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay” (Romans 8:21, 22).
The future wholeness of the earth and the whole of creation according to Paul is bound up with the destiny of the children of God. A redeemed humanity is central to that vision. Key to that redemption is God’s forgiveness. In short, how can the earth be freed from the curse of human sinfulness? Only through God appointing and anointing a successor to Adam to have “authority on earth to forgive sins.” This is clearly how Luke saw Jesus. This Jesus who is “the Son of Man [who] has authority on earth to forgive sins” undoes the earth-damaging work of Adam.
Let us turn to Matthew … Forgiveness presupposes judgment … Crisis is the Greek word for judgment. When the media broadcast the headline “Environmental Crisis” they are declaring to the world a truth greater than we realize. We are reaping what we sow. This is the crisis, the judgment: “Do not be deceived,” wrote Paul, “God is not mocked, for you reap whatever you sow” (Galatians 6:7).
It is in this context of judgment that we come to our next passage in which we find Jesus speaking of himself as “Son of Man” and in the same breath talking about the earth (Matthew 12:40f). “For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a sea monster, so for three days and three nights the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth” … What happened to the earth when he died?
The earth quaked (Mt 27:51). What happened when God raised him from the earth? The earth quaked again (Mt. 28:2). … As the son of the one hewn from the earth is laid in the heart of the earth there is a seismic response from the earth’s heart to his death and resurrection. Is this a voice in the chorus of the collective groaning of the whole of creation which Paul writes about in Romans 8:22? The earth, God’s creation, is longing for liberation from the curse in Genesis and somehow knows that its own freedom “from the bondage of decay” is inextricably bound up with “the children of God” and “their redemption” and “their freedom,” and that comes about through the death and resurrection of Christ Jesus “who has set us free” and in whom there is “now no condemnation” (Rom. 8).
Turning to the Gospel of John we are arrested by the declaration: “All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.” This is a confessional statement about the Word who is Jesus. This is echoed through the primary chapters of Colossians, Ephesians, and Hebrews. Colossians 1:16: “For in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible … all things have been created through him and for him.” Never has so much theology hung on two such small prepositions, “through” and “for”!
It is these creedal statements that lead to a high view of creation. It is the gift of Christ. … Creation does not exist for the human family but for Christ. … It is a blasphemy to usurp Christ’s place . . .
In John 12 we find a third Son of Man/earth saying: “‘And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people [all things] to myself.’ He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die. The crowd answered, ‘How can you say the Son of Man must be lifted up?’” Here again the Son of Man is found in the same context as the earth and is cast in the role of the one who will draw all to himself. Echoes again of Colossians: “And through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven by making peace through the blood of his cross.” The Son of Man’s ministry is one of connectedness with the earth. Jesus self-consciously sees himself on a mission through which he should lose nothing of what has been given to him. “‘I have come down from heaven [to earth] not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me’” (John 6:39). Jesus has the whole cosmos in his sights, not just individual souls who want to escape earth and bag a place elsewhere. The earth is within God’s cosmic purposes.
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