Reading Francis

I’m a work in progress when it comes to caring for creation, but I’m trying to notice the ways in which the Bible includes nature in God’s love story.

This Sunday, the 23rd Sunday of Ordinary Time, is mostly about the blind seeing and the deaf hearing. Isaiah 35 talks about it, Psalm 146 talks about it, and Mark 7 has Jesus actually healing a deaf man. But before we get there, hang on for the end of the Isaiah reading:

Streams will burst forth in the desert,

And rivers in the steppe.

The burning sands will become pools,

And the thirsty ground, springs of water.

Pope Francis has built on several themes that were central to the saint whose name he took, St. Francis of Assisi, but none more than caring for creation. Even though his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, is known as the “green pope” for his interest in the environment, Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si (“On Care for Our Common Home”) broke new ground in centering care for creation in Catholic social teaching.

(For a lot of folks, this is a big change. Frankly, in the U.S., a lot of Catholics would rather just focus on a couple of the culture war issues and paper over the rest of Catholic social teaching, so this papal emphasis on protecting creation is super inconvenient.)

I’ve got a long way to go on this, but one little thing I’m trying to do is open my heart and mind to see us humans as a part of creation, instead of apart from creation. From my reading, this is the source of the environmental interest of both Francises: if you believe that God creates out of love and for love, then you should recognize that it’s not just the people who are invited to loving relationship with our Creator, and we should look at our fellow creatures with the same love that God has for us.

While the reversals of blindness and deafness we see this week are meant as symbols of a greater turning of tables, signs of a new era of justice and freedom, they’re also deeply physical. In fact, the Mark story even includes details like Jesus putting his fingers in the deaf and mute guy’s ears, spitting, and touching his tongue. The earthiness of that is a reminder that our life shouldn’t be boiled down to abstract concepts; we’re flesh and blood and even a little spit.

There’s a temptation to “spiritualize” this stuff about God – to make everything about theoretical constructs that we assent to. Stories like this are a reminder that the work of the Divine is right here in the dirt and water with us, and if we really hope for all the other things that the psalmist connected to this physical healing of creation – justice for the oppressed, food for the hungry, freedom for captives, protection for the stranger and orphan and widow – we need not to forget that the deserts and thirsty ground need healing, too.