We have a sign by the downstairs entrance that says, “There is no Planet B.” It turns out… there IS a Planet B. I was able to put in a request and the citizens of Planet B came and gave me a brief tour1. Here’s what I discovered. 

It’s a lovely planet. It’s hard to describe. The first thing I noticed was how green everything is. Everything fits seamlessly with everything else. The Citizens of Planet B recognize that everything is connected to everything else.  

They learned how to talk to all the flora and fauna. They were very eco-friendly but had a lot of technology as well. I asked how they came to have this blend of technology and nature. A female humpback whale said to me, “We, who are us, share the world. All that is there. When it becomes less, so do we.”2 Then she recited Psalm 104. 

This is the fundamental truth of nature. This is a fundamental truth that humans on Earth have known going back thousands of years. We are dependent on nature. We share the world. All that is there. When it becomes less, so do we.  

I think we on Earth have forgotten this fact. Yet there are those who remember it. 

There are so many laws in Leviticus that treat “the land” as a character in the divine story. There are laws to let the land rest every three years. There are laws about not eating from a tree for six years after planting it. Give it time to develop. Don’t tax the land. Don’t over-farm, don’t let your greed get ahead of you and damage the land that sustains us. 

There are laws about what to eat and what not to eat. There are no explanations for these laws, they just are. Strange laws like “don’t boil an animal in the milk of its mother.” This is part of the kosher diet. Scholars wonder about this, but the rabbis talk about these laws as a matter of kindness. Be kind to your animals. Don’t be cruel. And it seems cruel to serve meat with the life force that once sustained it.  

We who are us, share the world. All that is there. When it becomes less, so do we.  

Jesus knew this truth. He was raised on Leviticus. What we would call camping, he called home. He was living much closer to nature. Planet B based their entire life on two things: Jesus and Leviticus. 

Now Leviticus gets a lot of bad press. Many well-meaning Christians have wanted to read through the Bible. Genesis is mostly stories. We know a lot of those. All good there. Exodus is part story, and part law. It gets weird, and a little challenging. Mostly it’s all good. Then Leviticus hits and we’re done. It’s a hard read. All these rules. It’s weird with all the sacrifices and “thou shalts” and rules that make no sense or aren’t explained. 

What a backwards book, many folks think. What can we learn from a barbaric book from thousands of years ago with all that animal sacrifice? Haven’t we moved beyond all this? Well, how do you feel about the phrase, “Love your neighbor”? Have we moved beyond that? Have we figured that out?3 

That phrase comes from Leviticus 19:9. “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the Lord.” How are we doing on that front? We have a war in Ukraine over old grudges. We have daily mass shootings here in our country. I don’t think we’ve moved past much of Leviticus. 

The Citizens of Planet B know that Leviticus and Jesus were all about living in right relationship with the land, with our neighbor, and with the source of life itself we call God. They know, possibly better than we; that Leviticus and Jesus are still relevant. 

Does everyone have enough food? Is everyone free from debt? Do we have clear lines of communication of how to make amends when we’ve wronged someone? Do we know how to treat refugees? Do we know how to let the land rest? These are all topics from Leviticus. Jesus echoes Leviticus when he prays “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”  

The land of Planet B is so green. The air is clean. The water is abundant and clear. No one has a job, per se. When I asked, “What do you do for money?” The Citizens gave a knowing smirk. “Oh, we gave up on the idea of money a long time ago.”  

A world without money?! My brain broke a little. Then I remembered a parable I heard a while back.  

There was once a man who rejected the phrase, “You can’t take it all with you.” He had a lot of stuff. He was proud of his stuff. So he took it with him. He loaded up a tractor-trailer bed of all the gold he had saved, and he trucked it all to heaven. People would see this man on his way up to Saint Peter, just lugging all this stuff. It took 5,000 years to get up to St. Peter at the gates of heaven. 

“My child,” St. Peter says to the man. “I’ve been wondering for 5,000 years what’s in the wagon. What do you have there?” 

The man proudly throws back the tarp, revealing all the gold. 

“Wow, that’s impressive.” Peter responds. “But why did you bring a trailer full of asphalt up here?” 

“Asphalt?!” says the man. “It’s gold!” 

“Yeah,” says Pete. “We pave the streets with that. It’s useless here. I mean, we can take that off your hands and fill some potholes if they show up… but since it’s… Heaven. We don’t get potholes here…” 

No money on Planet B. I asked what they did all day. “We live” was the response. We make sure our neighbor has food, shelter, and community. We who are us, share the world. All that is there. When it becomes less, so do we. When our neighbor is less, so are we. 

The poor are no longer with them (because poverty doesn’t exist). Those who choose to work, do so.  Those who can’t are included. Planet B provides for their needs. There is enough for all. 

I had a lot of questions for them as they showed me around. My guide wasn’t too helpful. I asked how certain things worked… Like where they got all their electricity from. How they could teleport. How their hoverboards worked. They just looked at me and shrugged. When I got a little frustrated and impatient, which are my go-to emotions… they said, “Can you explain how your cell phone works?” 

I couldn’t. I just shrugged. 

We passed a gathering. I asked what was going on. My guide stated it was a funeral. I wondered about how they thought of death. My guide said, “Where does a circle end? It is always now ending, and now beginning. We rise and fall on our breath for as long as the world allows. The days press against us, and then move past. Now becomes next until we fall away. And return what has been taken.”4 

Ask the beasts, they will tell you. The birds, the plants, the fish, all will teach you. It is good to be a student of each. Job was. Jesus is. Consider the lilies, the ravens, the crows. The Kingdom of God is like a shrub. The Kingdom of God is a treasure buried in the field. God is like a shepherd who leaves the 99 to get the 1. God is like a mother hen who longs to gather her chicks. 

We are gifted with life. With this planet. Both are a gift we didn’t ask for, but we find ourselves in the midst of an epic story that started long before we arrived on the scene and will one day continue on without us. The circle never ends. In our end is a new beginning.  

We are still here. The days press against us still. What shall we do? 

We shall follow the Spirit. We must be on fire for God’s people and God’s world. Being on fire for God’s ways means that we don’t set other people on fire. We don’t scapegoat them. We seek to welcome, love, and serve them as Jesus did for us. We take care of God’s creation, our own planet.  

I had a lot of questions for my guide, they only had one question for me. “Your planet has Jesus, why don’t you follow him?” 

I said that I thought we did. 

They replied, “No. Most of those who claim his name want enough of Jesus’s blood to get into heaven but have no intention or desire to follow anything Jesus said or did. He was about getting heaven here, not going there. As on earth, as it is in heaven. How does life on earth feel like these days?” 

The citizens pointed out how we had a god of war, but not for the things we told everyone is worth fighting for:5 things like peace and freedom. We have a god of death, but not of mourning, of sadness, of coping. A god of thunder, but not of rain. A god of courage, but not care. A god of vengeance, but not of forgiveness. A god of wrath, but not of reflection. And when God showed up and was all of those, we made Jesus into a god of war, death, courage, vengeance, wrath, and not what he actually preached of love, freedom, forgiveness, and such. 

As UCC Pastor Dr. Robin Meyers wrote, “Consider this remarkable fact: in the sermon on the mount, there is not a single word about what to believe, only words about what to do and how to be. By the time the Nicene Creed is written, only three centuries later, there is not a single word in it about what to do and how to be–only words about what to believe.”6 It’s not really about what you believe, it’s about what you do. 

May we go and do likewise. Maybe we start a green team. If you’re interested, let one of the moderators or pastors know. Maybe we set some environmental goals like a covenant to be carbon neutral in 5 years. I don’t know. You’re the church. I am just the guy in the pulpit. I’m just the sheep dog barking at y’all to get us to follow the shepherd Jesus. Maybe I’m just filled with a new wine. Or maybe I’m speaking about things the Spirit has been trying to tell us since the first Pentecost, when Christ walked the earth, when Leviticus was first put on parchment. We who are us, share the world. All that is there. When it becomes less, so do we. Christ came to give us life, and life abundant. As for me and my house, we will choose life. Thanks be to God. Amen.