Called to the Wilderness: August 25 (The Climate is Changing – Part 4)

Called to the Wilderness

Psalm 104: 1-30

August 25, 2024

This sermon is the fourth message in a series on The Climate is Changing. We’re looking at views we’ve held about our world that we need to deconstruct. Then we’re coming up with better ways to understand our situation to respond to our climate crisis.

The first Sunday I shared that we shift from theology of escape to a theology of restoration. The second Sunday we talked about moving from individualism to interconnection as family and friends with creation. Dr. Kristen Poole also challenged us to move from just thinking about our neighbors today to also thinking about loving our neighbors of tomorrow. Last Sunday I talked about how we need to move from thinking that bigger is better to one where small is beautiful.

Today I want to respond to one of the barriers to taking our climate change seriously. It’s sometimes called: Nature Deficit Disorder. Researchers have observed that children are spending less time outdoors than any other generation before this one. Actually, it probably involves more than just children spending less time outdoors. I believe most Americans of all ages spend less time outside in nature than our predecessors. Would you say that you spend less time than your grandparents outside?

As a result, we can easily ignore trees, plants, birds, fields, rivers and lakes, considering them nothing more than a background to our existence. Our alienation from nature leads to ignorance about nature. Who knows the difference between a white oak tree and a pin oak tree?

Our nature deficit disorder can also lead us to not caring for the environment. If we aren’t outside appreciating it, we often don’t value it or desire to preserve it.

In the midst of our nature deficit disorder, we hear a different call. It’s a call to return to the wilderness. This is not a new call. It’s one that God has shared over and over in the stories found in our Bible. God called to Moses, not in a temple or tabernacle or city, but in the wilderness in the form of a bush and up on top of a mountain. The Jewish people escaped out of Egypt to live in a wilderness.

David experienced God in the wilderness. Years later, the prophet Elijah fled to the wilderness. John the Baptist’s ministry was entirely done in the wilderness. Then Jesus himself started his ministry by going into the wilderness for forty days. Paul went into the wilderness after his conversion experience. People of God have always been called to the wilderness. That’s where they experience God and learn from God.

We too are called to the wilderness in our day. There is a book that talks about this called: The Church of the Wild by Victoria Loorz. She reminds us that God’s people find God when they are out in nature, out in the wild. That’s where church can be: the church of the wild.

In this message, I’m going to share four places in the wild where I experience God. At the end of the message, I’m going to invite you to share where you find wilderness. Where do you go when you’re feeling called to the wilderness by God? Where do you experience the wonder and love of the natural world around you? What specific places are important to you?

The first place I’m going to name is the Al Sabo Preserve. It’s located near Texas Corners on the southwest side of Kalamazoo. I travel down I-94 and get off at Exit 72. I go south past Kalamazoo Valley Community College.

Al Sabo Preserve is a large area that was originally set aside for the Kalamazoo area drinking water supply. It’s full of trails that are unmarked. I’ve gotten lost many, many times in that park because it’s big and the trails so convoluted.

I will often go there on a Friday morning. I’ll take my journal in my backpack. I’ll hike the trails for a while. Then I’ll find a tree to lean against. I’ll take my journal out of my backpack and use my backpack to sit on. I’ll read and write in my journal.

My journal is where I reflect on my life and reflect on God’s call on my life. I’ll read back previous entries and remember again who I am and what I’m invited to do and be. I’ll sort out challenges I face in my life. I’ll often communicate with God using a written dialogue.  

Al Sabo Preserve is one of my wildernesses. It’s a place where I experience God. It’s my church of the wild.

As we go to the wilderness, we experience three emotions. One of these emotions is gratitude. We find this in our Scripture reading today: Psalm 104. After I preached a couple weeks ago using the second Creation story found in Genesis 2, John Reid came up to me and said: “You know there’s a third Creation story in the Bible.” I hadn’t heard that before. John said, “It’s found in Psalm 104.”. So today we’ve heard the third creation story in our Bibles.

The 104th Psalm finds the psalmist thanking God for creating all the marvelous, teeming life we find on this planet. We thank God for the skies above and the oceans below. We thank God for streams of water in the hills and valleys. We thank God for the animals like the donkeys, lions, goats, cattle and birds. We thank God for the trees like the cedars of Lebanon. We thank God for the grasses and the plants and the grains. It’s all about gratitude.

I found another take on gratitude in the book Braiding Sweetgrass, written by the indigenous author Robin Wall Kimmerer. She talks about how the people of the Onandago Nation begin every gathering with what is called the Thanksgiving Address. In it, they give thanks not just to the Creator, but also directly to the Creation. They thank all the various elements of creation like the water, the fish, the trees, the birds, the plants and the Four Winds. Kimmerer suggests that if we were more deeply formed in this kind of gratitude, we might treat the nonhuman creation with greater respect and protection. 

When I think about gratitude myself, the one location that comes to mind is the lake I live near: Lake Cora. Many mornings I wake up before the sun gets up and walk down to my neighbor’s beach. I turn over my kayak and pick up the paddle. I drag the kayak into the water. I get in and paddle out toward the center of the lake.

Then I wait in silent anticipation for the sun to come up over the trees on the opposite side of the lake. I wait in gratitude. I watch as the orange or yellow blaze rises up and I’m thankful. Thankful for a new day. Thankful for the beauty all around me. And thankful to be able to share a picture of it with others through the magic of Facebook. 

As we go into the wilderness, we experience gratitude. We also experience the emotion of wonder. Wonder invites us to pay attention to the beauty of the world around us. We lay aside our focus on ourselves and notice the amazing attributes of nature.

I like this quote I found in Debra Rienstra’s book Refugia Faith: “Beauty awakened longing, and longing drew me into wonder, entangling me in the net of God.” Let me repeat that: “Beauty awakened longing, and longing drew me into wonder, entangling me in the net of God.”

She went on to say: “I’m beginning to understand that for me, beauty remains at the heart of my own little refugia work in response to the climate crisis and to this moment in history.”

Wonder is our response to the beauty.

When I think of wonder, the place that comes to mind is the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in northern Minnesota. It is my absolute favorite spot in the world. There is a rugged beauty to this place full of lakes and trees and birds and bears. A week from now, Lori and I will leave to go up that direction. This year though, instead of canoeing in the lakes along the border between the United States and Canada, we’ll be driving a houseboat in the Voyageur National Park. We’re anticipating the beauty will be just as amazing as it is located just outside the Boundary Waters.

The absence of human development accentuates the remarkable beauty I find in these northern woods.

As we go into the wilderness, we experience both gratitude and wonder. This leads to a third emotion: love.

I like what Victoria Loorz wrote in Church of the Wild about love. “Once you fall in love with a particular other – a shoreline, a tree, a meadow, a particular deer or dog or bay – it is not such a difficult thing to come up with new ways to protect and care for and adjust your lifestyle around the wellbeing of these others. These others become part of you. Defending them becomes defending your own family.”

Kimmerer puts it this way: “Knowing that you love the earth changes you, activates you to defend and protect and celebrate. But when you feel the earth love you in return, that feeling transforms the relationship from a one-way street into a sacred bond.”

As I think of a loving relationship with a piece of nature, I think of the Lake Michigan shoreline. When Lori and I were pondering where to move when we were ready to leave our mission in Kentucky fourteen years ago, we thought of Lake Michigan. We chose to move somewhere within a short drive of the Lake Michigan shoreline.

You see, we’ve lived most of our adult life close to Lake Michigan. When we lived in Hammond, Indiana we’d go to the Indiana Dunes State Park. When we lived in South Bend, we’d go to Warren Dunes. When we lived near South Haven, we’d go frequently to see sunsets over the lake. When we lived in Pentwater, we spent a lot of time going to the end of the pier and looking out into that magnificent great lake.

Maybe you too love Lake Michigan.

God invites us to go to the wilderness. That is where we experience gratitude and wonder and most of all love.

How about you? Where is your wilderness? Where do you experience gratitude and wonder and love?