CEC member Christopher Fung attended the Micah Network 4th Triennial Global Consultation held in Limuru (close to Nairobi), Kenya between July 13 – 18, 2009. Kenya was just hit by a drought recently because it received less than one-third of the usual rainfall during the rainy season this year. It is the first such occurrence in living memory of many Kenyans who have no doubts that climate change is the cause and fear that this is a portent of things to come.
These events have prompted Christopher to reflect over our traditional theology on God’s Creation. He finds that it would be deficient if such theology does not relate to Jesus, the flesh and blood person who walked this earth and the centre of our faith. He believes that “the Son of Man is the Lord of the Sabbath” holds the key to a creational theology. The main points of this framework are:
- Jesus was killed because he knowingly and purposely challenged his Jewish contemporaries’ interpretation of the Sabbath.
- The Sabbath points to a cosmic ending in which each worker is endeared to the works of his hands and each part of creation entering into a mutuality with each and every part therein.
- In Old Testament times, God was guiding his Creation forward through three institutions based on the Sabbath: Sabbath Day (man towards his destiny when he is endeared to the works of his hands), Sabbatical year (nature towards its destiny of being in harmony with man) and Jubilee (common destiny of God, man and Nature). Man is the lynchpin in all these under God, hence the Sabbath day is foundational.
- Jesus transformed these three institutions through his death and resurrection, declaring that he – the flesh and blood man – is the Christ and proclaiming the fulfillment of the Jubilee. These institutions then become the Lord’s Day, the Church and the Kingdom of God, respectively.
- By vesting upon God’s cosmic cause of the Sabbath in his life (through challenging deviant interpretations and practices) and paying his life for it and then through God accepting him for resurrection, Jesus has become the cosmic Jesus Christ, leading his wholesome Creation forward.
- Man’s task is thus to partner with God in this forward movement that started with man’s first and only mandate (to rule over the God’s Creation (Gen 1:28)) and ends with the renewal of Creation when the Kingdom comes on earth (Rev. 21&22).
- There is only one mandate for man, but also one obstacle to overcome, namely our sin, to reach the final Sabbath. This otherwise insurmountable obstacle is overcome in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and because of this, our doing the Lord’s work – fulfilling our only mandate – will not be in vain (1Cor 15:58). We are thus to follow the Son of man, Lord of the Sabbath, to our final Sabbath.
Dear brothers and sisters, next time you walk under the heat of the noonday sun or hurry through the gusts of a tropical storm battering Hong Kong, let’s ask the question “What is our role as redeemed stewards and how are we to exercise this stewardship as vested in us by God our Creator?”
Christians for Eco-concern
