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Stewards’ Folly Reverend Dr. Benton J. Trawick Grace Presbyterian Church April 29, 2018 Psalm 24: 1-2; Genesis 1: 27-31; Psalm 8 I bought a book for myself this week—not a theology tome or the latest novel, but instead, an old friend of a book, a throwback to my childhood. Forty-seven years ago, when I was a wee lad of seven, Dr. Seuss published his book, The Lorax, which was soon followed by a made-for-television animated special. Opening the book, I found that I could still quote many of the words verbatim: “At the far end of town where the Grickle-grass grows, and the wind smells slow-and-sour when it blows, and no birds ever sing excepting old crows….is the Street of the Lifted Lorax.

What was the Lorax, and why was it there, and why was it lifted and taken somewhere from the far end of town where the Grickle-grass grows? The old Once-ler still lives here. Ask him. He knows.” The Once-ler, as the story goes, is a reclusive creature who lives in the top story of his now-shuttered store. What he sold? Well that’s a bit later in the story.

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The Once-ler never comes out now—"but on special dank midnights in August he peeks out of the shutters and sometimes he speaks and tells how the Lorax was lifted away. He’ll tell you perhaps…if you’re willing to pay. On the end of a rope he lets down a tin pail and you have to toss in fifteen cents and a nail, and the shell of a great-great-great grandfather snail. Then he grunts, “I will call you by Whisper-ma-phone, for the secrets I tell are for your ears alone.” Probably on advice of his lawyers, don’t you know. It all started way back…. such a long, long, time back…. Once upon a time, the Once-ler arrived in his Once-ler wagon at an idyllic and unspoiled place, a wonderland of cotton-candy-tufted Truffula Trees and friendly teddy-bear-like Barbaloots, singing Swomee Swans, and Humming Fish.

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And where you or I might have looked at the place and seen beauty, the Once-ler looked upon it and saw untapped profit: “Those trees, those trees, those Truffula trees! All my life I’d been searching for trees such as these! The touch of their tufts was much softer than silk and they had the sweet smell of fresh butterfly milk.” Chopping down a nearby Truffula tree, the Once-ler took its soft tuft and in no time, he knitted a thneed—a thneed is a thing that everyone needs! Now of course, the need—like the thneed itself—was manufactured. Nobody REALLY needs a thneed. But the Once-ler had identified—and cornered—a new market.

It’s about this time that the Lorax shows up—a fuzzy little critter with a prophetic ecological message: I speak for the trees! From the very beginning the Lorax cautions the Once-ler that his consuming Truffula trees and producing thneeds will have consequences. But the Once-ler does not listen. In fact, he establishes a huge and expanding industry, and thneeds are what he sells in his shop that we mentioned earlier.

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So here, in the Lorax versus Once-ler standoff, we see Dr. Seuss exploring the relationship between the conservation of resources and the consumption of resources. They establish a continuum, the Lorax and the Once-ler—on one end an ecological purist who would prefer zero consumption and on the other a greedy industrialist who wants no regulation or limitation. And I’d like to suggest that it is the space between the Once-ler and the Lorax that matters to us. That is the space of stewardship, of careful management, of wise decision, of humble care. A steward is given the privilege of consumption or use AND the responsibility of oversight and nurture. It is the steward’s role that God gives to Adam and Eve in the primal creation myth of Genesis. God creates humankind in God’s own image, God blesses humanity and God says, “Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it.” Do you hear it? That’s the introduction into the idyllic wonderland that we spoke of—perhaps not Seussian Truffula Trees and Barbaloots, Swomee Swans and Humming Fish, but one of forests and wetlands and barred owls and butterflies, of hummingbirds and honeybees and rainbow trout, a creation of multifaceted splendor. And God says, on the one hand, fill the earth and subdue it, and on the other hand, exercise dominion, which is to say, rule wisely; God makes us not consumers in chief but caretakers in chief, those with the power to tend creation and to treasure it, and to conserve and preserve it. That in-between role is reflected I think, in Psalm 8. The Psalmist sings out in wonder, “O Lord, our Sovereign—O Lord our Ruler, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” When I look at your heavens and your works, what are humans that you are mindful of them or mortals that you care for them, and YET you have made them little lower than God, you have given them—GIVEN US—dominion (or care) over the works of your hands, you have placed your creation at our feet. You have made us stewards. But—the crucial but, the forgotten but, the absolute asterisk that must not be misunderstood—is that we own NOTHING. Our final scripture lesson is Psalm 24—The earth is the Lord’s and ALL that is in it, the world and those who live in it, for the Lord has founded it on the seas and established it on the rivers. The chief sin of humanity is living in the world as if we own the place—and the chief call upon humanity as stewards is to live in the world as if we DO NOT own the place. To live in the world as if we own the place is to behave as the Once-ler behaves—to practice heedless consumption or needless consumption, and the cautionary tale of the Lorax shows us precisely where that ends. The Once-ler practices what Walter Brueggemann has called the economy of extraction, he leverages cheap labor, gobbles up natural resources, and manufactures items of questionable use, and he does so down to the last Truffula Tree.

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The Barbaloots that ate the Truffula fruits are gone. The Swomee Swans fly South or North or East or West or wherever is left to fly. The tune of the humming fish dies away, like the humming fish themselves. And as soon as the last Truffula Tree is chopped—well the Lorax is lifted away. There is no more need for his warnings because the worst has come to pass. And here is what we can know of Once-lers. They never EVER stop Once-ler-ing. What do I mean by that? They will never stop extracting a profit or deferring responsibility. Look at our story for this morning—the Once-ler is willing to tell his tale of woe and of hard lessons learned—FOR A PRICE. He can’t sell Thneeds anymore, so now he will sell his story—for the price of fifteen cents and a nail and the shell of a great-great-great grandfather snail, or whatever else he can get for it. He isn’t out in the world caring for creation, he’s shuttered in his shop, eyes greedily focused outward, looking for the next opportunity. And do you remember how the book ends? The Once-ler has sold his story for fifteen cents and a nail to the young boy who has come out to his shop, and he concludes by saying, “Now that you’re here, the word of the Lorax seems perfectly clear: UNLESS someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not. So…Catch!” calls the Once-ler. He lets something fall. “It’s a Truffula seed. It’s the last one of all! You’re in charge of the last of the Truffula seeds. Plant a new Truffula. Treat it with care. Give it clean water and feed it fresh air. Grow a forest. Protect it from axes that hack. Then the Lorax and all of his friends may come back.”

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Now don’t miss this detail—it’s an important one. The Once-ler doesn’t do a benevolent thing even in the end. HE HAD THE ANSWER ALL ALONG. HE HAD THE SEED. HE DID NOTHING WITH IT. HE MAY BE REGRETFUL BUT HE’S NOT REPENTANT, BECAUSE TO REPENT IS TO CHANGE. Instead of planting it himself, the Once-ler sells the last Truffula seed for the shell of a great-great-great grandfather snail and passes off the responsibility to somebody else. Now as I mentioned before, the Once-ler is an extreme, he’s a caricature, he’s pure consumption. And the Lorax I suppose, is also a caricature. He gristles and gruffs and he sounds stern warnings—but he also does nothing materially to change the situation. Maybe because either extreme can’t hold the answer. Stewardship lies between the two sides. But there is a clear call for us as stewards. We must not practice needless consumption, or heedless consumption, but THNEEDLESS consumption. What do I mean by that? Well the thneed in the Lorax is a metaphor—it is a thing that everyone thinks they need—but in fact nobody needs it. And as evil as the Once-ler is in the story—his extraction of resources and production of thneeds--is entirely enabled by the people who buy the thneeds. They’re never mentioned in the story, but if no one were buy-buy-buy-buying the thneeds, then the Once-ler couldn’t sell-sell-sell-sell them. If the consumers were demanding wise government regulation, and ecological care, and preservation of Truffula trees and protection of Barbaloots, the Once-ler would have to incorporate those into his business practices and his cost factors. The Once-ler may chop the very last Truffula—but the invisible consumers give him the axe. Now what I want to suggest is that we are surrounded by thneeds, and every day, we must make the decision of whether or how we will use them. I’ll give an example, because it is now almost universal. It is by no means the only thneed in the world, but let’s examine it. We have at least two in the church, you may have one in your home, or in your office, you may have friends or family that own them…but here my friends, is a thneed.

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I give you—the Keurig coffee machine. Almost one in three American homes now owns a pod-based coffee maker. A Thneed is a thing that everyone needs, and who indeed does not need the convenience of a single-serving coffee maker? It’s fast and it’s easy, the coffee’s fresh and it’s hot, there’s no wasted effort and no wasted coffee. But that’s not to say there’s no waste.

This is a K-cup. It’s plastic. There is one K-cup for every piping hot cup of coffee I drink. If I have one a day, that’s seven in a week. If you have a cup a day, that’s

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fourteen. If all approximately 150 of us have a cup a day, that’s 1,030 little plastic cups in the landfill—or the streambed—or the ocean. Two years ago, the Atlantic reports, Keurig sold 9 billion K-cups. 9 billion. Plastic. Thneeds. Now I will never come between a person and their coffee, I’m not a fool. In fact, coffee is one of those God-given plants for us to tend and to enjoy and to consume. But HOW will we consume it? There’s the decision. This is a need.

And THIS is a Thneed.

And THIS is a reasonable solution.

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It is a washable, refillable, reusable insert for a single serving coffee maker. It takes a bit more effort—and 9 billion cups of coffee using this—has incalculably LESS environmental impact. So again, the challenge for us is to be practitioners of Thneedless consumption. And the Keurig coffee maker is but one example of dozens of daily decisions. The key is for us to actually MAKE THOSE DECISIONS. Is that plastic straw with my glass of water in a restaurant a need? Or a thneed? Where will it go when I’m finished with it? Is the toy in my child’s happy meal a need—or can I teach her that it’s a thneed? Where will it go when it bores her in less than an hour? Can I ask for a meal with no toy? Plastic grocery bags—need? Or thneed? Here are some thneed watchwords or warning words—convenient. Disposable. Fast. Easy. Single use. Single serving. And even good-sounding words like sanitary can refer to a plastic item wrapped in plastic and sold to me in a plastic shopping bag. Here are some questions to guard against the thneeds in our lives. Where did it come from/how was it produced? Where will it go when I’m done with it? Can I live without it? Is there a better solution? Is it gentle upon God’s earth? Am I practicing stewardship—or consumption? “You’re in charge of the last of the Truffula seeds. And TRUFFULA TREES ARE WHAT EVERYONE NEEDS. UNLESS SOMEONE LIKE YOU CARES A WHOLE AWFUL LOT…. nothing is going to get better. It’s not. The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it…the world…and those who live in it. Amen.