Plastic Jesus

Easter 4B – Earth Sunday

By Lella Lowe

Chair of the Commission on the Integrity of Creation

Member of Redeemer, Mobile

Today is known as Good Shepherd Sunday and it is kind of nice that our readings have a

pastoral, nature-based theme because it is also Earth Sunday, with tomorrow, April 22nd, being Earth Day.

Today’s Gospel reading from the 10th chapter of John is part of a larger story that starts at the

end of the 8th chapter of John and runs all the way through the 10th chapter. It is flanked at each end by Jewish authorities trying to stone Jesus, so while today’s parable seems comforting and pastoral, it actually has some teeth, so much so that the authorities of the day felt threatened, as they often were by Jesus. Jesus is contrasting himself as the Good Shepherd to a person who is simply hired to tend to the sheep. As the Good Shepherd, Jesus knows, understands and cares for the sheep, to the extent that he would lay down his life to protect them. His Jewish audience would also hear that he is equating himself to God because, in the familiar 23rd psalm, the LORD is the Good Shepherd.

Jesus compares himself as the Good Shepherd to the hired hand, who has no ties to the sheep other than a paycheck, so when disaster threatens, he heads for the hills and leaves the sheep to fend for themselves. The difference between the two is that the Good Shepherd understands and loves the sheep and will be with them through thick and thin, as opposed to the hired hand who is basically just being paid to babysit. The sheepfold is a kind of household, with Jesus as a loving parent and the hired hand as a babysitter. The word “household” comes from the same Greek root word as “economy”...oikos...so the sheepfold is an economy of sorts.

If we think of the sheepfold as a type of economy in the way that we typically think of an economy today, the sheep would pretty much be an input of production, yielding wool for

clothing and ultimately meat for the table. In fact, the hired hand relates to the sheep that

way...something that he is paid to take care of, but not something that he would protect with

his life. If they are lost, then that is just a cost of doing business. They are essentially disposable...consumable.

Where I am going with this on Earth Sunday, is that this is often how we humans treat the rest

of the created order. We give lip service to caring for creation, we offer thoughts and prayers,

but if it means laying down our lives, or inconveniencing ourselves or costing us a little more

money, then watch how quickly the rest of creation becomes expendable as we maximize our

own benefit. I think that you can see who we are in this scenario...when it comes to the

economy of the sheepfold...or the planet...we behave as the hired hands.

When I have heard this reading before, I have always placed myself in the role of one of the

sheep, but this time I’m definitely feeling that we need to hear this as the hired hands, which is

probably what the Jewish authorities were hearing, and explains why they were so disturbed.

Wendell Berry wrote an excellent essay entitled “Two Economies”...distinguishing what he

called the Great Economy from the smaller economies that operate within it. The “Great

Economy” includes everything...all created things...the economy of God, essentially the

Household or the Kingdom of God. There are rules that govern this Great Economy, but it is so vast that we can’t possibly understand it all, much less control it. So created things participate in little economies or households that make up that Great Economy...and the one that we humans in the west know best is the money economy or the industrial economy.

A commentary I read by a professor named Dennis Ormseth suggests that the sheepfold

represents the Great Economy, where every sheep has immense value, to the point where the

shepherd would lay down his life to protect each one. The hired hand, though, operates out of

the mindset of one of the little economies, in which the sheep are inputs of production...for

clothing or food...and he is merely in it for a paycheck. If they become too much trouble, or

dealing with them costs more than that paycheck is worth, then you just walk away.

That’s how I see us treating the planet today...as hired hands. We have become so disconnected from the Great Economy...God’s Economy...that we cannot see how our actions affect the rest of creation. Jesus the Good Shepherd knows and loves the sheep, but we have become so disconnected from them that we will use them as wool for clothing and meat for our tables, and then will walk away from them when they are no longer profitable. We treat the Great Economy as consumable, extractable with no limits...and it is not.

A practical example of that today, and the theme of Earth Day 2024, is plastics. Plastics come

from fossil fuels and the production and marketing of plastics is becoming ever more important to the fossil fuel industry as the demand for oil and gas as fuel declines. Fossil fuel companies have a lot riding on the growth of the plastics market and our addiction to their products.

I could go into lots of detail on the harms of plastics, but I thought that it might be better to put

all of that on a display board that you can take a look at in the parish house. Let me mention

just a couple of things that demonstrate the problem:

• Scientists have estimated that humans consume the physical equivalent of one credit card of plastic per week, mainly through microplastics in the food we eat and water we drink. That is the same as consuming 50 plastic shopping bags per year.

• Scientists estimate that by 2050, the weight of plastics in our oceans will be greater than the weight of marine animals. And I know you have read about those marine animals eating that plastic and dying horrible deaths.

• And then there is the problem of dealing with plastic waste. Annual production of plastics has reached over 460 million tons and growing. In the U.S., only about 5% of that plastic is recycled, so don’t let anyone tell you that we are going to recycle our way out of the plastics problem.

One of the biggest problems is single-use plastics, such as water bottles and shopping bags. As an example of how ubiquitous plastics are: at our recent diocesan convention someone was handing out hundreds of these tiny plastic Jesuses. It was cute. They were using the tag line “what could you do with a little Jesus in your life?” But I am sure that the sheer waste of that exercise never crossed the mind of the person who came up with that idea. And we don’t even want to talk about the amount of plastic that is thrown away during Mardi Gras, and more recently, the plastic eggs at Easter.

As I said, we can’t recycle our way out of this situation, so what can we do? The first step is to

reduce consumption. The Great Economy, the created order, cannot take the weight of all of the extraction and waste that is ongoing to support our industrial growth economy. It simply cannot take it much longer, so we must intentionally reduce our consumption. One of the resolutions passed at diocesan convention this year is a start. The General Convention of the Episcopal Church passed a resolution in 2009 to restrict the use of bottled water at church-wide functions, and our own diocese followed suit this past February. The resolution included a recommendation that churches adopt a similar plan, and also encourages every baptized

Christian to practice simple energy and water conservation techniques.

Members of the Redeemer Environmental Stewardship Team have set up a display in the parish house, with much more information about the effects of plastic pollution on our planet. We also have suggestions as to how we might individually and as a church do our part to reduce consumption of single-use plastics. We hope you will come by and check it out.

We are not going to recycle our way out of the plastics problem we have created, but neither

can we just walk away like the hired hand in today’s story, after treating God’s Creation as a

commodity for our own enrichment. We heard a portion of John’s first letter to the churches

this morning, where he tells us exactly what we must do when he says “we know love by this,

that he laid down his life for us – and we ought to lay down our lives for one another...let us

love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.” And that action may be sacrificial action...things that are inconvenient or may cost a little more.

But first our eyes must be open to the truth to that action is needed. And then love one

another, lay down our lives and abide in the Great Economy...God’s Household. Because then,

surely the Lord’s goodness and mercy shall follow us all the days of our lives, and we will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

To learn more about creation care, please visit the Commission on the Integrity of Creation webpage at www.diocgc.org/integrity-of-creation.