By Father Casey

I love how Earth Day, April 22, typically falls in Eastertide. We tend to think of Earth Day as a "secular" event, but Earth Day and Easter have so much to do with each other. As I preached back on Easter Day, the risen Jesus was confused by Mary Magdalene for a gardener (John 20:15), which was no accident: he seemed to be a gardener, because he is a gardener: the great gardener of Creation, who has been bringing life into existence since the very dawn of time. This is what he has always been up to, and what he will always be up to. Creating life where there seems to be death.

Having a gardener for a Lord means something for us. It means that our call as his followers is to make the world a garden again. We are to help our life-loving Lord bring springtime to a world stuck in winter. This is what it means to be Easter people: nurturing the world with the power of love.

Which may make it less surprising that Earth Day was begun by a Christian. Though he is seldom remembered in the story of the modern environmental movement, in 1969, peace activist and Pentecostal Christian John McConnell first proposed the idea of Earth Day at a UNESCO Conference. Like many, he had been struck by the image[1] of the planet taken from lunar orbit by the Apollo 8 mission, which captured the exquisite beauty and delicate fragility of the Earth. His faith put that image into context, for McConnell knew the words of the psalmist: "The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof (Psalm 24:1)," as well as, "The heaven of heavens is the Lord's, but he entrusted the earth to its peoples (115:16)." The seed of his idea quickly flourished into a global movement and resulted in some of the most consequential conservation legislation in our nation's history: the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, and Endangered Species Act, to name a few. All because a Christian recognized how his faith called him to a special relationship with our precious planet.

55 years later, and we are still very much in need of this annual reminder. Each year we receive more stark warnings from scientists about the calamitous consequences of human greed. Climate change receives most of the attention, and rightly so, but deforestation, oceanic acidification, mass extinction, and the general "de-wilding" of our world are all enormous crises with a common origin: people. And while the scale of our problems is so vast as to require government-level solutions, we cannot let ourselves off the hook for our own personal responsibilities as stewards. Yes, God is looking to nations to sort this out on the large scale, but God is also looking at each and every one of us individually – to be gardeners with Jesus, to care about what we are leaving behind, to use only what we need. We have to take our place in the work of healing and preserving this wonderful world given into our care.

At Transfiguration, we seek to do our part. You probably know by now of our solar tiled-covered church roof, which is a product of our capital campaign. Just this month, it will generate about 4.3 MWh of power, which is enough to power 390,000 phones, and reduces our carbon use by 3.5 tons of CO2. One day, I hope we can install even more solar tiles on our campus, until we're producing all, or at least most, of our power from the sun's rays.

Meanwhile, we're taking to heart the call to be gardeners. This last weekend we began a replanting of the carport island with a Texas Native Garden in honor of beloved former Flower Guild Director David Diggs. Thanks to a grant from the Texas Native Plant Society, we were able to select dozens of plants at the Heard Museum Native Plant Sale to create a beautiful garden at our main entrance, that will also be great for pollinators. We want to be good neighbors to human and insect, alike!

These are small things, really, in comparison with the hugeness of the challenges of our age. But what is faithfulness if not small things done with great love? So let's keep doing our part – on Earth Day and everyday – to help our risen Lord make the world a garden again.

[1] Earthrise, taken by astronaut William Anders on December 24, 1968. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthrise

Fr. Casey+