MAY 15 2016
THE PAWNBROKER
So, who is this PAWNBROKER? Wait, not so fast.
First some general stuff. We all know that pawnbrokers do not have a good name. They exploit people whose access to ready cash is non-existent, and, in order to raise money, they pawn a precious item, such as a wedding ring or another piece of jewelry, something valuable and not something needed for day-to-day survival. When they want that treasure back, they can redeem it by paying the advanced money plus, of course, interest. If it is not bought back within a certain time, the pawnbroker may sell it.
Pawning was popular at one time. In Britain in the late 19th century and early 20th century, there were nearly as many pawnbrokers as pubs, lending money on anything from bed linen and cutlery to father’s ‘Sunday best’ suit. Margaret Atwood, in her book on PAYBACK: DEBT AND THE SHADOW SIDE OF WEALTH recalls how her parents, respectable middle class people, then living in Montreal, pawned an item to pay for a hospital bill. That was during the Depression 1929-39 when cash was in short supply and banks were loath or even unable to lend.
Let me be a bit more specific.
Suppose that I have a very precious item, a real large diamond, and in order to live the life of riley and enjoy the world’s pleasures to the full, I pawn that highly valuable item so that I can party and visit all the world’s dream locations.
Heard that story before? Look no further than the parable of the PRODIGAL SON. He cashed in his inheritance and boozed and gambled it away. In the end, of course, the Reckoning comes, as was the case with this young fellow about whom Jesus tells this story as related in Luke 15: 11- 32. There this spendthrift ended up in hell and, utterly broke, made his way back to his paternal home.
Not quite a pawnbroker story, but close, as he pawned his future to live in the presence.
I believe we are doing something quite similar.
But what about that PAWNBROKER?
First some more ancient history. When God formed the earth the potential for enhanced beautification was built into the structure. I gather this from a text I quoted last week – Genesis 2: 9. There it says that God made all kinds of trees, “beautiful (most important) to look at and good for food (of secondary ranking).”
Then God, generous to a fault, gave creation to us to beautify it, to make it even more marvelous and eye catching and fabulous. Where do I get that idea? Well, simple, in the text the beauty aspect comes first. That to me suggests that our primary task in life is to enhance creation, is to promote the arts, to make and write beautiful music, paint marvelous pictures, build pleasing structures, and make great gardens.
Has that been the case?
No, I don’t have to elaborate here: the newscasts repeat it ad nauseam. Just one line. Thomas L. Friedman, in last week’s New York Times column wrote: “U.S. foreign policy now is all about containing disorder and messes.” That’s the world today: global unrest and disasters.
Back to way back, when all things started in the Garden of Eden: the good and the bad. There the Devil made humanity look at the tree again. THE TREE. Why the tree? There is no more precious item in creation, apart from us humans, than THE TREE.
As soon as I had bought the parcel where I built our house in 1975, I planted 4000 trees. I had read in THE NEXT ONE HUNDRED YEARS by Jonathan Weiner, how Greg Marland of the US Department of Energy had calculated the number of trees needed to counterbalance the C02 we pump into the air. He came to 4500 new trees for a typical North American, much less, of course, for people in Africa, India and China. I figured that being careful, having solar energy, building a solar passive house, well insulated, growing food, bike wherever possible, our burden on the atmosphere would not exceed 2000 trees. What are the highest users of oxygen? CARS. With their combustion engines they cannot operate without a constant supply of oxygen.
Fortunately we – my wife and I- live among trees: to the north and east there is a lot of old growth, both hardwood, such as oak and maple but mostly pine, and to the west we planted those 4000.
Diane Beresford-Kroeger, in her book THE GLOBAL FOREST describes how trees are our lungs and absorb our pollution. She writes: “A healthy tree with a wide canopy around a house will significantly reduce particulate pollution. Urban forests and forested areas in our neighborhoods, parks and cities have the same effect on the urban environment. Global forests do this on a planetary scale. They form a living wall for health and a basic barrier to the pillage of pollution.”
The opposite is also true: creating conditions – as we have done – where forests go up in flames, increases the occurrence of PANDEMICS, because the harm we do to our trees, we do to ourselves. Now with untold millions of trees going up in smoke, not only depriving us of precious sources of CO2 absorbance, but also creating millions of tons of Carbon Dioxide in the process, we are losing the battle of Climate Change in an accelerated fashion. Don’t for a minute think that we can avoid the effects of Global Warming: it will speed up beyond the most pessimistic estimates.
Wendell Berry in his THE UNSETTLING OF AMERICA connects it all to religion. “Agriculture means cultivation of land. And cultivation is at the root of the sense both of ‘culture’ and ‘cult’. The ideas of tillage and worship are thus joined in ‘culture’.”
Of course. As I so often have said: the earth is holy. Working in the earth is a religious act. I feel that especially now, in the spring time. That means that working in the garden where I use a spade to make beds and a rake to smooth them out is an act of worship. When doing that I thank the Lord for allowing me to till his holy earth and so grow our food. I have a feeling of elation when I work the soil, a sense of holiness. Writes Berry: “To live, to survive on the earth, to care for the soil, and to worship, all are bound at the root to the idea of a cycle”.
Both Dietrich Bonhoeffer and J. H. Bavinck have said that “God, we and the earth are one.” I fully sense that. Once we forego ‘being true to the earth’ faith is no longer possible. That is a radical statement, I know. The Belgic confession comes to mind again which asks the basic question: HOW DO WE KNOW GOD?, and answers it by pointing to creation as God’s Primary Word. Writes J. H. Bavinck: “That is why Scripture and Creation are never at odds. They always form a unity where the one reinforces the other.” Psalm 119: 105 unambiguously says: “Your word – the Scriptures – is a lamp for our feet and a light for our path (in creation).
TREES are so precious and personify creation: every tree symbolizes the planet. I believe that with that in mind God planted some special trees in the Garden of Eden: the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
We now are starting to see that we cannot live without trees. Yet, thanks to our disastrous living habits, wantonly altering the weather, causing drought and heat, we are killing THE TREE OF LIFE and with it ALL OF LIFE. We now also are discovering what is good and what is evil. Good means fidelity to the natural world. Evil means exploiting the natural world for our own purposes and greed. It seems to me that natural life centers on trees.
John in his book REVELATION in Chapter 12 sees a dragon. There he did not think of all sorts of monsters such as they appear in the Babylonian and Egyptian myths, but was primarily focused on what is described in Genesis 3. This dragon is not the primeval ocean, not some sort of mythic monster, not the personification of the chaotic powers in the cosmos, but he is the ‘ancient snake’, the ‘devil and Satan’ who ‘has seduced the entire world.’
That he is depicted in Revelation 12 as ‘the great red dragon’ must indicate that he is as red as flames as if he wants to destroy the entire cosmos in his roaring rage and frightening fires. There is only one dragon, one mind-killing monster which throughout all the ages, especially today, has only one goal: death and destruction.
That process of death and destruction is now in full swing.
The fires we see burning in the northern forest, especially in Canada and Siberian Russia, are unstoppable until the winter sets in – if there will be a winter. This past January there were forest fires in Alaska, and we know how far north that is. Last winter, at times, it was warmer on the North Pole than in much of the USA. This essentially means that global fires could burn all year.
All this finally brings me to THE PAWNBROKER.
God created the earth. He then gave it to us and this precious possession we PAWNED it because we wanted to speed matters up, reluctant to go the slow, organic way. We wanted to be able to act like gods, just like the Prodigal Son, and Satan offered us that very possibility on condition that we transferred the ownership of earth to him, which we did, so he gave us carte blanche to pursue our desire.
Just as that young fellow in Jesus’ parable, we squandered our inheritance. We now see the earth’s treasures diminish in value, exactly what the great PAWNBROKER had in mind, because his intent was not to make a profit, but his payment came in the form of REVENGE: the destruction of the cosmos which God called ‘good’ seven times.
Today we are, whether we like it or not, aiding the Devil in his aim. This year 2016 is already the warmest ever. More extreme heat will accelerate fires, already at their worst. When Noah’s flood had subsided, God promised never to initiate a world-wide disaster again. Now we have become like gods and are capable to destroy the world all by ourselves.
What or who will redeem this world out of the clutches of the PAWNBROKER? Today this is not a simple case of expensive jewelry, that, with a bit of luck, or perhaps, from the proceeds of an inheritance, can easily be redeemed.
What is at stake now is the very survival of the planet: the lives of billions of people are at risk, plus all the animals, the plants, and, of course, the trees.
But there is HOPE. Through these disasters God is bringing his Kingdom.
The central point of the Gospel is not us, poor humans and our pain and suffering; rather, its entire focus is aimed at the unique and powerful reality that God wants to reinstate his Kingdom.
It is God’s intention to unite all fractured parts of his creation into one overarching harmony. The goal of our life can only be that we again become part of the wider context of the Kingdom of God, where all things are again unified under the one and only all-wise will of him who lives and rules forever.
Christ on the cross paid the price, including principal and interest, to buy creation back from THE PAWNBROKER, who in that curious interval between making the ‘real estate’ deal final, and taking possession, is out to destroy as much of creation as possible, with, sad to say, us as his unwilling, or mostly willing, allies.
All this makes John 3: 16 the most important text in the Bible. It has everything to do with the redemption of creation, buying it back from THE PAWNBROKER and restoring it to its former pristine condition.
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