13.02.05 Ali Genesis 1 / Matthew 4:1-11 Being an Eco-Congregation (1)
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Today we are beginning to
look at what it might mean to be an eco-congregation. What does it mean to care for creation?
Perhaps we cannot begin to think about that unless we are first in touch with how
much we love the earth, our home, which nourishes and feeds us, which brings
delight to us through our sight, touch, scent hearing and taste. How much do we
notice, how much do we savour the good things that God has given us?
Genesis 1
is a foundation text for scripture – foundational because it says that
creation is a sacred expression of God and that we are made in God’s image to care for
creation. Israel, grew up cheek by jowl with cultures which maintained that the
spirit world was created by God and that matter came from an evil spirit. The Genesis
story here rejects this dualism - both spirit and matter is created by God. So we can
expect to meet God in creation in its beauty and wildness, in its interconnectedness and
interdependence, in its cycles of death and rebirth and in its rhythms - for
creation is of God and is continually being born from the womb of God.
Eruguina
a 9th theologian says there are 2 books where we can read
about God - the big book of creation and the little book of
scripture. Kenneth White, a Scottish contemporary poet, understanding
this, says ‘I open the book and the words fly out of the page.’
He is speaking of the book of creation, a living Word, just like the
book of scripture. Creation reveals and expresses God just as
scripture does.
If God sees
that creation is good and delights in it, then we are invited into
that delighting. Mary Oliver describes this well in her poem called
‘The Summer Day’
Who made the world?
Who made the swan and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
The grasshopper, I mean
The one who flung herself out of the
grass,
The one who is eating sugar out of my
hand,
Who is moving her jaws back and forth
instead of up and down-?
who is gazing around with her enormous
and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and
thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and
floats away.
I don’t exactly know what prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to
fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in
the grass
how to be idle and blessed, how to
stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all
day.
Tell me what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last and
too soon?
Tell me what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
There is another side to the story - that we do not always cherish this world we live in but before we think about that lets take some time to remember where we have enjoyed creation or taken time to notice or experienced a moment of wonder. Things like a winter sky or what’s in the garden or the birth of a baby. Think for a moment - let anything come to mind and then share it with your neighbour.
So why do we not care for our planet as we would want?
We are made in the image of God, yet we often forget the light of God that is at the centre of our lives and of all of life. We live lives, at times, cut off from the image of God in us, cut off from its freshness and aliveness , cut off at times from what is for our well being and the well being of our families, our society, our planet. We live lives, at times, cut off from the deep connection with each other into which we were born and created which is also about being made in God’s image.
The Jewish philosopher, Martin Buber, speaks about I - thou relationships with people or creation where we do not objectify the person or life form turning them into things out there. Instead we remain alert to the presence of the other so can become aware of their mystery, their otherness, their uniqueness, their place in creation along side us and that all of us are held together, interconnected in God without whom we would not be.
In my teens in Orkney I used to ride horses. A friend was telling me this week about a man called Monty Roberts and his relationship with horses. He has trained thousands of horses, not by breaking them, but by trusting in the deep connection between horse and the owner, which is naturally there. He calls the process ‘starting a horse’ rather than ‘breaking’ because he uses no force. First he sends the horse into flight running round and round wild in a pen and he does this by staring it in the eye, which is a sign to a horse to keep away. The choice is given to the horse to stop running or keep going and this choice is vital in the process. Inevitably the horse stops and chooses to be less afraid of the trainer as it has not been hurt or bullied. Monty then drops his gaze to be unthreatening. The horse stops and twitches its ear towards him, a sign it is interested in relationship. It then drops its heads to the ground as if grazing, a sign of relaxing. Monty then turns from the horse and slowly walks away and the horse will come in towards him, even to the point of laying its head on his shoulder. This same pattern happens to many horses whose trainers follow Monty’s method. He says he is passing on to others what is natural, that the relationship and connection is ancient but we have forgotten how to develop trust and good relationship with these animals. He also demonstrates how important our body language is to them in building trust.
Relationship, interdependence and connectedness are at the heart of what God has planted into creation. Even though we move far from realising this, the psalm today pointed out that God does not give up on us. We heard ‘I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go, I will counsel you with my eye upon you.’ God is forever mindful of us, drawing us into relationship, even though we forget God.
So how does this fit with Lent? Lent is about repenting - from the word metanoia, which means turning around, turning around to be who we are meant to be, made in the image of God who is relational.
If we are made by God interconnected to each other and meant to be in relationship, if creation needs all the parts to stay in a balanced whole and is a single living organism, then will this not make us more alert to where the body of creation is suffering and lead to a desire to act with more compassion? [does this remind you of the body theme over the last few weeks?]
If we become aware that we meet God now within the connections we already have which bring us life, energy and love, then we will probably be drawn to try to find right relationships elsewhere. Thomas Merton 20th century mystic said ‘The idea of compassion is based on a keen idea of the interdependence of all living beings which are all involved in one another’
I had an interesting experience a few years ago leading a meditation on this theme of our interconnectedness in God. The folk were to become aware of breathing air shared by others - they were told that yesterday maybe the air was in the lungs of someone 100 miles away or last week it might have been breathed out by a refugee in the Sudan, or by a starving child in Bangladesh, or by someone in a submarine with his finger ready to launch a nuclear weapon. Afterward a woman told me she didn’t like doing this ‘I like to just pray with God and me’ she said ‘I don’t like having to breathe in other peoples air.’ A wonderful example of privatised religion!
Scientists today are telling us how interconnected we are. Cosmologists say that everything that exists in the universe came from a numinous outburst of energy from a tiny pinprick, the primeval fireball In our expanding universe it is estimated there are a trillion galaxies altogether, each galaxy with a hundred million stars and a star is a million times bigger than the earth.
It has taken 20 billion years to get to where we are and humanity is very new on the scene. We arrived only 2 million years ago and everything that has gone before us was required for our appearance and is held within us- an amazing story - but now the difficult bit. We are in the process of destroying life forms at a terrifying speed unknown before in the history of the earth.
Brianne Swimme an American cosmologist speaks about the necessity of understanding our interconnectedness soon for already 25% of life forms on earth have disappeared mostly from deforestation.
Only 20% of world’s population live in developing countries yet we use up 53% of the world’s energy, 44% of the world’s meat and own 80% worlds cars. We have burned as much oil in the last six weeks as we burned over a year in 1950.
Sustainable development is crucial if
we are to improve the living conditions of the world’s citizens and of those who
are to come. At present 1 in 7 are malnourished.
To limit the disastrous affect of
global warming caused by CO2 emissions and prevent the ensuing
climate change with all the droughts and flooding it will be
necessary for developed counties to reduce CO2 emissions by 80%. It
is also imperative that the ‘lungs’ of our world, our forests
are protected as they are essential for the world’s biodiversity.
Currently an area of primary tropical forest double the size of
Ireland is lost every year.
10 years ago P and I had Sean MacDonagh
a Columban Irish priest staying with us. He wrote ‘To Care for the Earth’
and ‘The Greening the Church’ He had been part of setting up ecological farms in the
Philipinnes. His life was threatened and other priests working with
him were killed for opposing the illegal logging and destruction of
the forests. I had a dream the night he stayed with us of creatures
of extraordinary beauty dying in their thousands in a huge polluted
swamp and woke up overwhelmingly sad - it has stayed with me ever
since as strong dreams do.
What will it take to come alive to
change? As well as keeping alive to the gift of life do we need to
grieve the loss as well. In Lent we perhaps need to lament what is
happening - laments being songs or melodies that help us move
through sorrow. Many psychologists believe the grasping to possess
which lies at the root of our consumer society is linked to anxieties
in the face of death - we are trying to gain some measure of
immortality in things we own. Yet in pursuing the illusion that we
can resist death individually and collectively the tragedy is we are
causing the planet to suffer and Christ is suffering there.
This raises the issue of trust in God,
the issue of our willingness to face death and loss and let Christ’s suffering and
passion for creation be lived in us as we move through Lent towards Easter.
Jesus in his temptations goes into the
desert alone yet in solidarity with humanity. He chooses to feel the hunger and
neediness- his and humanity’s and he waits on God. He chooses to feel the physical
vulnerability and lack of protection - his own and humanity’s and he waits on God. He
chooses not to be possessive of the glittering good life and in the waiting upon God
he discovers his strength. This is the important part, that he finds the strength of God
within him, forged in the dryness and emptiness of the desert. This strength
will sustain him later in his healings, teachings, and feeding of others as well as on
his journey to the cross.
Perhaps during Lent we can seek to
know what it is to turn around to become our true selves made in the image of God
who is compassionate and choose in small ways to remember those who do not have,
while we have so much.
Perhaps we can allow ourselves to feel
a little of the hunger and neediness of one another and of our planet, [resisting
the first temptation to have our needs met] - perhaps we can allow
ourselves to feel a little of our physical vulnerability and our
planets vulnerability, [resisting the second temptation to say we can
save ourselves in our own power] - and perhaps we can more deeply
recognise that our possessiveness does not lead us to life, [seeing
the falseness of the third temptation]
Might we then come to know the
strength that lies within us, given by God, to live in a way that speaks of generosity and
compassion - to do what we can for each other, for our families, for the earth and
its peoples. Being an eco-congregation is one small step in that direction, as is the
church responding to the trade justice and the ‘make poverty history’ movements.
Elisabeth Jennings has a poem where she
finds the Spirit present in creation but also where humanity recognises its need of
God. It feels an appropriate poem as we begin our journey through Lent.
‘The Spirit moves in the muscle of the world, in continual creation. He burns the tides, he shines from matchless skies. He is the day’s surrender. Recognise him in the eye of the angry tiger, in the sign of a child stepping at last into sleep, in whatever touches, graces and confesses, in hopes fulfilled or forgotten, in promises kept. This spirit, this Power, this holder together of space is about, is aware, is working in your breathing. But most of all he is in the need that shows in hunger, and in tears shed in the lonely fastness, and in sorrow after anger.’