climate change – The Raynville Rambler

The KFL people

A Kingdom Filled with Laughter : Luke 6:17-26
Sermon for St Peter’s Bramley, 13 February 2022

“Blessed are you who are poor, For yours is the Kingdom of God.
Blessed are you who are hungry now, For you will be filled.
Blessed are you who weep now, For you will laugh.”

These are some of the best known of all Jesus’ sayings, yet also some of the hardest to accept or understand. On the surface he seems to be saying it’s a good thing to be poor, or hungry, or upset. But that clearly can’t be what he means, because all through the Bible God condemns the injustice that leads to poverty. Many times, he promises to lift people out of poverty and suffering. Jesus himself spent most of his time with the ordinary people in society, with all their problems. The song of his mother Mary – Magnificat – rejoices in the God who lifts up the lowly and fills the hungry with good things. NO, the meaning is deeper than that.

Who are the people Jesus is addressing here? Three groups. His disciples – a great crowd of them. A multitude of people from Judea and Jerusalem – the Jews. And from Tyre and Sidon – immigrants. He speaks to them directly – you who are poor, you who are hungry, you who weep, for that is what has brought them to him, and on them he has compassion.

What Jesus does in these few short sayings is to set these followers off on a journey of faith. It’s a journey that starts with an immediate change – not ‘the Kingdom of Heaven will be yours’, but ‘Yours is the Kingdom of Heaven’. Realising that we are actually part of God’s Kingdom now, one of his daughters or sons, is the beginning of the journey of discipleship.

Poor or not, hungry or not, weeping or not, however you feel at this moment, the fact that you are listening to Jesus means you are in his Kingdom. The other promises look further along the journey. ‘You will be filled, you will laugh’. These may look to be hollow promises to someone who is hungry now and weeping now. But one of the great Christian themes is hope: the trust we put in God that he will change things for the better.

And the way that God changes things for the better, occasional miracles apart, is through us, his church. It is as we realise, individually, that we are part of God’s Kingdom that we come together in fellowship. We realise that we are not alone, but part of a greater movement. We offer and receive support in each other’s troubles, and together reach out to address the needs around us.

That much can be said of any group of people with a common purpose. In the church we have one additional and much stronger bond: the joy of salvation. When Jesus said ‘Blessed are you, for you will laugh’, he didn’t mean all our troubles would vanish overnight, but that as we receive his Holy Spirit we find the strength to face our troubles and an inner joy that stops us collapsing under their weight.

Jeremiah gave us a vivid illustration that covers the same ideas when he said “Blessed are those who trust in the Lord … they shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots to the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green”. The heat and drought and stress will come in our lives, but in Jesus we can stay green.

It seems to me that we can take these three one-word promises: ‘Yours is the Kingdom, You will be Filled, You will Laugh’, and make of them a simple and memorable phrase: A Kingdom, Filled with Laughter”. K.F.L., if you wish – other three letter acronyms are available.

That phrase from Jeremiah about a tree that is resistant to drought leads me to say something briefly about the big issue of our day: climate change. How are the words of Jesus relevant to that? Like it or not, life will get harder in the future, for all of us and not just the poor. Rising gas prices and storm damage to houses are just the beginning. The fact that everyone’s life is going to change over the coming years, and our response to that fact, is going to be ever more important.

I’m currently attending a series of online meetings of a group called Climate Action Leeds. Our aim is to bring together action on two fronts: climate justice (meaning, to see that the poor are not hit hardest by the effects of climate change) and social justice (a wider response to inequality in society). The Church has always ‘done’ social justice: it’s what we are about – feeding the hungry, comforting the sad and so on. The challenge now is to bring climate justice into our planning and action in future, the two working together.

We know from these readings that we are part of the Kingdom of God, and on a journey of faith that involves change. So we understand that there is more to life than possessions, we have hope that God will fill the hungry, we can know the joy of the Holy Spirit: we, then, are the people who like Jeremiah’s tree will be resilient in the time of drought – and the time of flood. We are the people best placed to deliver not only social justice but climate justice too. We are the KFL people: the Kingdom Filled with Laughter people. We are the blessed. And our task is to share those blessings with others. Amen.

Noah the novice boat builder

Text of a talk for the Diocese of Leeds ‘Creation Salvation’ course on the subject of adapting our church buildings to a changing climate, 16 June 2020.

Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, ‘As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark. I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.’ God said, ‘This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.’ God said to Noah, ‘This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.’

Genesis 9:8-17

Noah’s ark and the rainbow after the flood is probably one of the best known of all Bible stories, and not just because it lends itself to children’s songs and activities. This tale of disaster and recovery comes to us from the mists of time, long before Abraham. So it’s not specifically a Christian story, or even a Jewish one, it’s a legend of unknown origin that found a place in the Hebrew scriptures because it speaks to us of eternal truths about God and his creation and our response to it.

Yet it is a Christian story in that Noah is in some ways a saviour figure, a prefiguring of the Messiah. What can we learn from this legend of a good man who saved not only his family, but the world, from the wrath of God, and received a new covenant by which we should live?

Firstly, Noah understood nature and read the signs of the times. The story begins by telling us that “God saw that the earth was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted its ways upon the earth”. It’s not clear precisely how things were corrupted, but Noah was a righteous man and understood that corrupted they were. The Bible calls him a ‘man of the soil’ – a farmer. He understood ideas of sustainability and biodiversity – even if his language had no words for those concepts. He understood by a prophecy that God was going to destroy all living things that he had created and he didn’t want that to happen.

Secondly, he responded by taking practical action. He could have just resigned himself to his fate, but for the sake of his descendants and for all the animals around him, he decided to do something about it. Noah, let it be said, was not a boat builder by trade, he was a farmer as we have already seen. But he was also a man of faith. When he understood the solution was to build a large ship, he and his sons set about doing just that. They would have built wooden houses and barns before, so it was a matter of adapting the building skills they already had to new purposes for the benefit of others.

It cost them, of course – it cost them the price of many trees’ worth of wood and cartloads of pitch, not to mention the value of the food they could have sold. How long was Noah on the ark? The ‘forty days’ is only how long it rained, starting on the 17th of the second month. But they did not leave the ark until the 27th of the second month of the following year. Much of the ark’s lower decks must have been taken up with food and fodder! Peoples around the world whose land gets flooded today as a result of climate change will understand the implications of a year without sowing or reaping. But what is money for anyway, when the very future of life on earth is under threat? This was an investment of time and money in a sustainable future when the climate was at a tipping point – or rather, a tipping-it-down point.

Thirdly, as a farmer he understood the rhythms of life. When Noah’s family emerges from the ark, God promises – to use the words of John Bell’s paraphrase – “while earth remains there’ll be seed-time and harvest, summer sun and winter moon, the dead of night, the bright day”. Part of the rhythm of life for farmers is that of gathering in and sending out. The harvest is gathered into barns, and the food, hay or silage is then distributed throughout the year to people and animals as they have need. The ark fulfilled the same function in a unique way, gathering in pairs of animals against the coming deluge and keeping them safe and fed until they could be sent out to repopulate the earth.

For us in the Church, our buildings have the same function – gathering people in from our community to experience the saving love of God, feeding them on His Word, and sending them out to fulfil God’s mission in the world. As we face a climate and biodiversity crisis no less drastic than that of Noah’s day, may our buildings be made as climate-proof as Noah’s ark, and likewise be the means by which the world can be saved anew through these rhythms of grace.

The Apocrypha in Lent – 23 March

If this is your first visit, please see my introduction to these Lenten readings.

23 March. Baruch chapters 1-3

These first chapters of the book are a combination of three Biblical genres – history, lament and wisdom. The introduction sets it firmly in historical context – Baruch wrote it in exile in Babylonia as a text to be read first to those who were in exile with him, then to be sent back to Jerusalem to be read and acted on by those who remained. It was sent along with money to pay for sacrifices and other expenses of the Temple. Reading the other books of this period one can get the impression that no Jews remained alive in Judah, that the Temple was totally destroyed and worship ceased. But from this book we get a different impression – a remnant remained in Jerusalem and was trying to keep the faith going there, just as the exiles were trying to “sing the Lord’s song in a strange land”. By having them both read the same texts, Baruch was trying perhaps to foster a sense of unity between them. Different places, different trying circumstances, but the same people of God. As one verse of a well-known Christian hymn puts it,

Through many a day of darkness,
Through many a scene of strife,
The faithful few fought bravely,
To guard the nation’s life,
Their Gospel of redemption,
Sin pardoned, man restored,
Was all in this enfolded,
“One Church, one Faith, one Lord.” (Edward Plumptre, 1889)

The second element is lament – the people’s confession and contrition for their sins, acknowledging God’s right to punish them for turning away from him. This sits very uneasily in today’s culture of rights, entitlements and personal freedom. While nearly everybody (I hope) realises when they have physically or emotionally hurt someone else and will be willing to apologise for it, it is common for people to take the attitude “what I choose to do is no-one else’s business, and if I offend them, that’s their problem”. And if that is the attitude towards fellow humans, the idea of offending God, let alone the idea that God has the right to punish us, is even more alien to this post-modern world.

Sometimes it takes a real crisis – personal or corporate – to make people come to their senses and understand that right and wrong, sin and punishment, confession and forgiveness, operate not only between individuals but across communities and ultimately the whole world. Perhaps the nearest a secular mindset comes to understanding this is with ecological damage and climate change, where we are gradually accepting that the pollution or waste I cause today will, indirectly but surely, have a negative impact on the lives of people I will never meet. And the scale of confession and repentance (i.e. changing attitudes and actions) that is required is no less than that which faced the Jews in exile, or left behind in Jerusalem.

The good news is that lament is followed by praise to God for his wisdom (Chapter 3), by which we can do things right. Only by doing things God’s way, and recognising our mutual dependence on each other, can we find the way of wisdom, the way of forgiveness, the way of sustainable living.

The Bible in a a Year – 2 June

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

2 June. Ezekiel chapter 12

Chapter 12 contains the second of the acted parables, this time with Ezekiel packing his bags and making as if to leave the city through hole in the wall, as a sign that the walls of Jerusalem were about to be broken down and its remaining inhabitants taken into exile. He was also told to explain to the people that God’s judgement would be delayed no longer and that his prophecies were about imminent events, not the far future.

It is a human tendency to ignore bad news, to put off dealing with difficult challenges, and to hope that something will turn up to prevent the worst from happening We see that in a big way in our day with climate change: although the vast majority of people accept the need to do something about it, both ordinary people and politicians are slow to make commitments to reduce emissions and pollution, and even when countries do set targets, typically to reach a lower level of emissions within (say) 10 or 30 years, they generally do nothing until the last couple of years, then apologise that there was not enough time to meet the commitment, and postpone the target date. But the change is here, and the time for action is now!

The Bible in a Year – 1 March (Ash Wednesday)

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

1 March. Deuteronomy chapters 5-7

It may be no coincidence that the Bible reading plan I am following includes Deuteronomy 5 today, for it is a reprise (in slightly different words) of the Ten Commandments. Today is Ash Wednesday when Christians particularly focus on confessing sins in order that we may make a new start with God and make new resolutions to be more holy, whether that is by giving up something that takes us away from God, or doing more of something that brings us closer to him such as prayer, volunteering in the community or charitable giving.

Note what Moses says to the people – “Not with our ancestors did the Lord make this covenant, but with us, who are all of us here alive today” (5:3). These commandments are for all people at all time, universal rules for living in harmony with our creator and the creation. Whereas the more detailed rules and regulations already given through the books of Leviticus and Numbers were, as Moses says in chapter 6, for this specific nation at the time they were settling that particular country, so not all of them will be applicable to us today.

Chapter 7 stresses again the importance of keeping the commandments. Why? “God maintains covenant loyalty with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations, and repays in their own person those who reject him.” (7:9-10) The results of sin can be seen in someone’s own life very quickly, but the fruits of good works may not be evident until future generations. That’s a lesson within families as intended – a bad parent creates a dysfunctional family easily, but good parenting only really shows itself as one generation succeeds another. But it’s also true when it comes to something like tackling climate change (something that many Christian charities now ask us to think about in Lent as well) – cutting my energy use now will not make much difference to me in my lifetime, but it’s a small contribution to preventing changes that will massively impact billions of people in the future.

The Bible in a Year – 20/21 January

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

20/21 January. Exodus chapters 7-12

These chapters cover the plagues of Egypt, in which God, through the prophesies spoken by Aaron and the symbolic actions of Moses, brought one disaster after another on the Egyptians, initially sparing the political leaders but increasingly affecting them too. But each time Pharaoh either refused the request to let the Hebrews go, or else reneged on his promise. Only the last and most dreadful plague – the death of every firstborn child and animal – persuaded Pharaoh to agree to the ‘repatriation’ request. This has echoes for me of two contemporary situations:

Firstly, the increase of negative attitudes or even hostility towards immigrants in Britain, especially since the Brexit vote. Not only illegal immigrants, but those who have come legally from within or without the EU to work, and those born here of foreign parents, find themselves the subject of hate, discrimination or even violence. That of course is incompatible with a Christian understanding of equality and love of neighbour. But what strikes me is the contrast between those in the UK who want immigrants to “go home” even when they are working and living peacefully here, and pharaoh who refused to let an increasingly troublesome immigrant group leave the country when they wanted to! It seems that actually he valued and needed their labour to keep the economy going. Presumably they were doing the jobs that Egyptians would not do – making bricks, rearing sheep and goats, and probably many other back-breaking or dirty jobs. And they were indispensable (though underpaid). Whereas the immigrants who do such jobs in our country – also often underpaid and living in poor conditions and sometimes even as slaves – are regarded with scorn. If they do leave (willingly or otherwise) who will do their jobs? And whose side will God be on?

The other aspect of the story is Pharaoh who saw the plagues and knew that the Hebrews (or their god) were causing them, and yet refused to acknowledge the damage the plagues were causing to his people – water pollution, infestations, disease, extreme weather, crop failure and increased mortality – until they hit his own family directly. This week the new president of the USA is a known ‘climate change denier’ who has appointed another such man to head the Environment Protection Agency. What will it take for these people to acknowledge the impact that mankind’s activities are having on our fellow humans and the wider environment? Will it take the death of their own children? I hope not. But change they must.