From One Groundling to Others

 Three things this week.

First, Happy Pride Month, my friends! I am continually honored to be part of a community that is gay, straight, cis-gender, non-binary, transgender, married, single, divorced, widowed, parents, grandparents, childless, and … I’m running out of words. However our culture has come to define family and partnerships, the good news of the Gospel is that in Christ, all are made one. So, however you identify yourself and whoever you love, our choir put it so well last week as they sang, “Love is love is love is love.”  

 

Second: Oh, those Southern Baptists! My grandmother would say, “Sometime you don’t know whether to give someone a spanking or a hug.” If there is anything that exposes the need for a critical approach to reading the Scriptures, it’s a bond of people in the 21^st century who feel that a human being who is female cannot be called to ministry as the pastor of a church. This is a big topic and I’ll address it more next week (and include some really good news in the process!) 

 

Finally: Over the last two weeks, we have begun our Saturday or Sunday worship with this Land Acknowledgement: For thousands of years, Indigenous People lived in Orange County, hunting, cultivating, and gathering in harmony with and thanksgiving for the abundance that this land yields. Those native people are often called the Gabrieliño, Juaneño, and Luiseño people, with names coming from the Spanish Missions nearby. Many of the native folk decolonize their name, preferring the title, “Tongva” or “Acjachemen” people. We honor their history and lament their displacement even as we profess that the earth belongs to God and everything in it. 

 

It is no accident that we have offered this Land Acknowledgment during a month when we have been focusing on “Creation Stories” in Genesis. Those stories give an incredible amount of attention to the land. We have seen that the Hebrew word for “land,” adamah, is the feminine form of the same word that is translated “human,” adam. Adam is born out of the adamah, so to speak, then God breathes God’s own breath into adam’s nostrils, making it a living being. The dirt out of which adam was formed is sometimes translated as ‘dust,’ the same substance that we talk about on Ash Wednesday when we quote Genesis 3:19, “you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Our Land Acknowledgment is partly a way of remembering the history of the ground on which we gather to worship each week, as well as a way to remember that being “grounded” is part of our identity as human beings. 

 

When the Old Testament was translated from Hebrew into Greek, the Greek word ge was used to capture the meaning of the Hebrew word adamah. Ge, of course, is the root of our words geology and geography, and it gets translated in the New Testament as land, earth, country, or ground. It can refer to the “Land of Israel” or the “ground beside the seashore” or the “earth” vis-à-vis “heaven.” The word ge shows up over 250 times in the New Testament. A small word, but no small topic.

 

So, why am I going on and on about these Hebrew and Greek translations of dirt? Because these words matter and give meaning to our world. Think about it: When the Bible uses the words land, earth, country, or ground, it is talking about the original source from which human life was formed. We can quibble with that scientifically, but it’s a theological statement: We are grounded beings. When we speak of “the land of our birth,” we’re not just identifying a location. We’re connecting our lives with the flora, fauna, and other inhabitants of that land. When we use a spade to plant a seed into the “ground,” we are investing in the same life-giving power of the earth that gave rise to human life in the first place. To offer a “Land Acknowledgement” of those who inhabited this space before many of our ancestors arrived, is to honor for their history, and lament their exploitation, in the “common ground” that our histories share. And we could go further, acknowledging the plant life, rock formations, birds, fish, and mammals that inhabited this space long before humans migrated here. A “Land Acknowledgment” is a statement of faith – God has placed us within a history that is sacred. 

 

Please understand if you ever hear me refer to someone as a “groundling,” it is a term of endearment. In the end, what signifies us most as human and a human community is our oneness with all of God’s creation. 

 

Your fellow groundling, 

Mark of St. Mark