“Think Globally – Act Locally – Really?”

• Scriptural Reference: Leviticus 25:1-7
• May 25, 2008
• Listen to the Audio

Have you seen the bumper sticker that says “Think Globally – Act Locally”? I haven’t seen it as much recently but a few years ago it graced quite a few rear bumpers. As far as I understand it, folks who sported that sticker would have us always remember the greater planetary need while we make our decisions at a local level. I thought it was a rather cool idea.

Then I came across Wendell Berry. Berry writes and farms for a living, two professions not traditionally associated with making mega-bucks. His farm lies along the Kentucky River in central Kentucky just northwest of Frankfurt, land his family has occupied and tilled for generations. From his experience as a farmer Berry concluded that it’s impossible to think globally and act locally in a responsible manner. Change the focus, Berry says. Do the responsible thing locally, and you’ll contribute to the health of the globe. If enough people were to do the responsible thing locally, we wouldn’t have a global crisis.

I became fascinated with Berry when during seminary I had to run around in the intellectual field of “posts.” By “posts” I mean the academic subjects of “post-modern,” or “post-industrial” or “post-Christian,” and so on. Berry agrees that there’s plenty of merit in learning how to negotiate a post-modern or post industrial world. However, Berry says, while you can learn to live in a post modern, or post industrial, or even post Christian culture, there’s one kind of post-world you’ll never be able to live in, and that’s a post-agricultural world. If we don’t pay attention, Berry warns, we’re going to produce just that kind of world, and if you go into post-agriculture, and the food system breaks down, nothing else really matters.

What’s he talking about? Believe it or not, he’s talking about some very basic wisdom, embodied in the Levitical Code, part of which lies in Leviticus 25:1-7. There lies the basic command that fields are to lie fallow for periods of time. “When you enter the country which I am giving you, the land must keep a Sabbath’s rest for Yahweh.” You may not remember this, especially if you’ve lived in an urban or suburban environment your whole life, but for centuries farmers have known that to have a healthy farm, you practice something called crop rotation. You never grow the same kind of crop in a field for years on end. One year you might plant soy beans. Another year, you’d plant corn. Another year, you’d put in barley or wheat, then every seventh year that plot of ground wouldn’t do anything but lie untilled. Let the natural weeds grow, or plant a ground cover like clover or gorse. This was so the natural processes of decay and worm action could aerate the soil and give nutrients back to it. The old farmers knew – land needed rest the same as human beings.

This was an integral part of God’s directions for Israel: Sabbath wasn’t just for people to go sit in pews and stare at the back of other people’s heads while they made gallant efforts to stay awake during a preacher’s droning. Sabbath was part of the warp and woof of the fabric of the Cosmos itself. You ignore Sabbath at your AND THE LAND’S peril.

This calls for a little Hebrew lesson. I learned this from J. J. Owens, a Baptist linguist who knew Hebrew so well, could speak it so fluently, and understood its history and nuance so thoroughly that he taught the language at the Rabbinical Seminary in Cincinnati as well as at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville where I sat under his instruction. Every Hebrew word traces its roots back to a three letter verb. Various endings are added to construct nouns, pronouns, adjectives, participles, gerunds, and so on, but when you work at translating Hebrew, you always have to discern what the root verb is in order to understand the word, and consequently, the sentence, then the paragraph.

As you might imagine, a language based in verbs is an action language and a culture that speaks an action language is going to place a lot of value by doing things. It’s with that understanding in mind that you have to understand the word “Sabbath.” Sabbath literally means “resting.” Sabbath does not mean Day of Rest. That’s why a whole year can be called a Sabbath.

Think about it. Six days, the story tells us, God created and on the seventh, he rested. I don’t take a six day creation literally, but what this story tells us is literally true: the necessity for rest is stamped into the very fabric of the Cosmos. There is a rhythm that we ignore to our eventual demise. It is contrary to the very nature of our beings, the very make-up of what we are, to operate 24/7. Even the land needs a period of resting. Even the land beneath our feet needs to be given time off. You can work the life out of your life. You can work the life out of the land, too.

Why do we need this time off? We need this time of stopping, of resting, so we can pay attention to that which yields life. For example, in order to practice sustainable agriculture, that is, healthy farming, one must love the land and care for it. One must take the time to observe, bend down and squeeze the soil between the fingers, and look at the dirt to see and feel if it is good. Smell it. If one has thousands of acres to plow, one must necessarily overlook much of the land. One cannot love what one overlooks. What one overlooks soon becomes neglected and neglect leads to eventual ruin. As an example of the ruin that results from lack of a close, loving relationship to the land, Berry cites the vast loss of topsoil now threatening the long-term health of harvests all across the mid-western portion of the United States. The farms have become so huge, with fewer and fewer people farming more and more acreage, that farmers must use heavy machinery to plow, plant, fertilize, till, and harvest. Heavy machinery not only packs the soil because of sheer weight, but because it costs thousands of dollars to finance the machines, farmers must go into massive debt to buy and pay for the things. That kind of financial burden results in a need to make the land yield constantly, with many such farmers abandoning the practice of crop rotation, of giving the land a Sabbath. A fallow field becomes an unproductive field, and so wise farming is abandoned.

This would be something you and I wouldn’t notice. How many of us are acquainted with the quality of dirt in which our food grows. Indeed, if we don’t like vegetables and prefer meat, the animals we eat dine on grain. Even a fillet mignon at Outback requires good dirt. We don’t notice this because we drive over, around, and by the dirt. And caring for dirt sounds a little funny. After all, when our hands get dirty, we wash them. Get rid of dirt. But those who notice dirt have seen that the world is heading in a very disturbing direction. Because our lives have become so busy, demanding easy and cheap food, and since most of us are so profoundly separated from the source of our food, we don’t notice that most arable land in the world is suffering. We’re demanding more from it than it was ever intended to yield. We ignore this at our peril. The only way we can notice it is to practice real, practical, ACTUAL Sabbath.

My cousin Tyson Honeycutt who farms in eastern North Carolina advocates a wide-spread, real Sabbath for our society. He was talking with a young woman about this necessity and the young woman commented that she didn’t understand why he would be so insistent about farms needing to have fallow fields. He asked her where she’d get her milk if there weren’t any more healthy farms. The young woman looked at him incredulously and said, “I’d just go to the grocery store.” The young woman has never noticed where the milk comes from. She’s never thought it was important to stop and consider how the very basics of her life have to be tended to by someone.

And many of those someones are currently very worried, largely because the rest of us haven’t taken the time out to notice. We haven’t believed in Sabbath.

Prosperity is possible while at the same time recognizing Sabbath. Ukrops and Chik-fil-et have demonstrated this. Ultimately, though, prosperity will not last without Sabbath. It’s like the wood chopper who desperately needed four chords of wood cut before the day ended. He chopped himself silly, cutting lots of logs at first, but as the ax dulled, his progress slowed significantly. A friend came by and said, “Homer! Take a break! Sharpen your saw!”

Homer said, “I can’t stop. I need to get four chords cut before night fall.” And so he kept on hacking away, the edge getting duller and duller, cutting less and less while at the same time making a less clean cut.

The U.S. Army found out long ago that you can march a platoon of soldiers farther over a period of four hours if you rest them for 15 minutes out of each hour than you’d march them if you went four hours steady. Stop and sharpen the ax. Stop and rest your legs. Stop driving the car. Cut off the cell phone. Don’t go shopping. Bend down and scoop up some dirt. Sniff it. Press it between your fingers.

Isn’t it interesting? The erosion of the land matches the erosion of our souls. While we try to squeeze everything from it, it slowly breaks down, losing its own ability to produce health, life. And so with our souls – as we rush and hurry and fill our thoughts with anxiety in a mad dash to squeeze more and more from our days, we infuse more and more medications, both prescribed and un-prescribed in an effort to fortify our souls. It has even become a sort of moral code: we don’t feel right if we stop and rest.

Now, let me be clear. I’m not telling you folks who have to work on Sunday that you have to quit. First of all, you wouldn’t do that. You’d simply dismiss me. After all, Sunday isn’t the Sabbath. The literal Sabbath is Saturday. However, if you work at some kind of job on Sunday – and thank the Lord we have policemen, medical people, and other service people who show up to work on Sunday – do you make sure that you infuse the rhythm of your life with intentional rest at some other time? Do you desist at some time? Do you intentionally stop from production and focus on re-infusing your life with nourishment? Do you have times of lying fallow? You cannot continue to yield a crop if you do not let the soil of your soul regenerate gently in the presence of the One who gives life.

It boils down to noticing. I was talking to Travis Collins, pastor of Bon Air Baptist Church across the river, and we laughed about something. Both of us have read books on how to remember names. Do you have that problem? You meet someone and then later cannot for the life of you remember their name? I have people say this to me all the time: I’m terrible at remembering names. Travis and I laughed because we both had to admit that if we weren’t so preoccupied with other thoughts when we met someone, we’d remember their names better. Most of the time, I’m thinking about what I’m going to say next when I meet someone. I’ll shake their hands, say “nice to meet you,” and go on to the next person. But if I slow down, consciously decide not to think about anything else, look at that person, notice that person, I’ll usually remember the name.

It takes noticing. Noticing is about caring. When you care, you notice. But you won’t notice, you won’t slow down enough to invest the time, if you don’t care. These two things, though – caring and noticing – aren’t separate. Caring IS noticing. Noticing IS caring. When you notice, you care, and nurture results. Nurture yields life.

That’s why God wove Sabbath into Creation. God wanted us to have life and to have it abundantly. God noticed our predicament and sent Jesus. Jesus noticed. Jesus cared, and he commanded that his followers notice and care. Notice the earth around you. Notice it locally. Notice the people around you locally. Care for the locality. When you do that, the rest of the globe will follow.

Here are a couple of challenges for us. First, I want to learn Walnut Grove Baptist Church’s environmental address. Oh, I know WGBC’s political address: 7049 Cold Harbor Road, Mechanicsville, Virginia, 23111. But do I know the nature of the soil underneath these walls and embracing the bodies of the saints in the cemetery? Do I know where the water flows when it leaves this property? Do I know where the trash goes which we toss it out? What’s the quality of the land around us? Are there ways in which we might care better for the land of this area? Could we contribute to the health of local farming if we had a farmer’s market here on our property on a regular basis featuring locally raised agriculture?

Here’s a second challenge: notice the actual makeup of the population of Mechanicsville and Hanover County and ask ourselves if we’re responding to them as Jesus would have. The most recent reliable data we have tell us that more than half the people living in Hanover County claim no religious affiliation. Why is it that biblical wisdom recedes further and further into the background of our world, even in so-called conservative bastions like Hanover County?

This leads us to the third challenge: we may need to take a Sabbath from our church business as usual and focus on whether or not we’re nurturing the kind of congregation that actually practices biblical wisdom. Are we – the people who gather here from Sunday to Sunday in these rooms – actually practicing Sabbath in our own lives? Are we letting the dirt of our souls lie fallow long enough to be replenished? If you respond that you just cannot see how you can actually slow down enough to take a complete and thorough Sabbath in your life, then your life is devoted to a god other than the one of the Bible.

We need to be faithful to the land locally. Then our responsibility here will have effects beyond our county. As far as our Christian mandate is concerned, that is, to make disciples and baptize them unto the ends of the earth – maybe we better ask ourselves whether or not we’re cultivating good discipleship in ourselves, in our own souls, the most local region we can think of. When we conquer that locality, then the globe indeed will be changed.