creation – The Raynville Rambler

What a Wildly Wonderful World

All-age talk for Creation Sunday, 4 June 2023, St Peter’s Bramley

(based on Psalm 104 , outline by Julia Wilkins & Tearfund resources)

We live in an amazing world! Psalm 24 tells us that ‘The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it.’ Throughout scripture, we see God’s great love for this world he has created. The Psalm we just said calls it a ‘wildly wonderful world’. Full of the most extraordinary and weird creatures. All the time we’re finding ones that we didn’t know existed! But God knew all along – he knows every single species on this earth, and he made each of them different and special. Everything, from the simplest microbes to the size of the blue whale and the complexity of the human brain, he caused to evolve over millions of years to be just as he wanted. And creation still continues. All the time, plants and animals continue to adapt to their environment. An environment in which every creature, great or small, plays its part.

Once upon a time, everyone lived in villages or small towns. Most people either worked on farms, or at least spent time in the countryside every day, walking from village to village or to their parish church on Sunday – which might have meant walking many miles, even over a hill! In their work and leisure, they would get to watch the seasons change, know when each flower would bloom, each type of tree come into leaf, each type of animal give birth. They could see and feel the weather changing around them, would know which mushrooms and berries were edible and which poisonous. Farmers would fertilise their fields with the dung of their own animals, and the bees that pollinated their crops would produce honey for them to eat. Humans, animals and plants in total harmony, the whole earth one living organism, or as we call it now, the ecosystem.

But as people multiplied, cities grew. More than half the people in the world now live in big cities (and on a world scale, Leeds is not a big city). By 2050 that will be two-thirds. Farming has became a big industry (unless you buy organic food it will have been grown with artificial fertiliser) and many people rarely if ever get the chance to see their food growing or to see animals in their natural environment. Perhaps that’s just inevitable – it’s not realistic for everyone in a city to grow their own food. But it has disconnected us from nature. We can be tempted to think that women, men and children are not part of the ecosystem, somehow above the natural world of plants and animals rather than part of it. How wrong we are!

Beyond simply farming on a large scale to feed more people, the way that modern people live – and that includes us – is harming this ecosystem and putting it under more and more strain. Plants and animals are forced to adapt to changes that are not good for them, or if they can’t adapt they die out. Like Humpty Dumpty, the world is broken and all the King’s horses and all the King’s men cannot put it back together again.

Theologians – that’s people who write about God and the Bible – are increasingly understanding that what the Bible says about Jesus coming to save the world is far more than just forgiving our sins and promising people eternal life. He came to make all of creation whole again, to put this broken world back together. As Jesus was involved in creation from the beginning, only he can heal it.

But he needs us, as his brothers and sisters, to play our part. We have to think hard about how we live and how it damages creation. Tomorrow is World Environment Day. This year the theme is #BeatPlasticPollution. While plastic has many valuable uses, it is mostly made from oil, which is not a renewable resource and contributes to climate change. Our consumer society relies on single-use plastic products, which has consequences not only for the environment but for social and economic structures and people’s health.

For example, can you picture one million plastic bottles? Roughly speaking, that would fill this worship space to head height. That’s how many are purchased every minute around the world. While I’ve been talking, the church would have filled up with just the plastic bottles being used. In five days, they would fill Wembley Stadium.

Each year five trillion plastic bags are used – that’s five million million, nearly a thousand for every person on earth. Yet although most of it could be recycled, half of all plastic produced is designed to be used just once and thrown away. Very little actually gets recycled, even in richer countries like ours. A quarter of the people in the world don’t even have their rubbish collected. Over half of it ends up in landfill, the rest being burnt (which again contributes to climate change), or clogging up the world’s oceans and beaches. Many animals are harmed by our waste, and two people die every minute as a result of human waste, whether that’s toxic fumes from burning plastic or water polluted by chemicals.

Plastic is just one of the many environmental issues that need tackling. But the situation is not hopeless. You may be aware that last week, representatives from 170 countries gathered in Paris and negotiated a first draft of a global treaty to reduce plastic pollution. But it will take years to put into practice, and like all such treaties, will be impossible to enforce. It’s more important that all of us as individuals do what we can to reduce plastic use, and recycle what we can. Here are just a few things you could do:

Shop at Bramley Wholefoods (Ecotopia) and refill your bottles and jars instead of buying new ones.
Take cotton or jute bags every time you go shopping, instead of getting plastic ones each time.
Buy loose vegetables instead of pre-packed ones
Sign Tearfund’s online petition https://tearfund.org/rubbishpetition

Our reading ended with the words: “The glory of God – let it last forever! Let God enjoy his creation!” Is the way you live allowing God to enjoy his creation, or are you breaking his heart by spoiling it? What changes can you think of that you can make to help restore this wonderfully wild world? What could we do as a church to care more for our local area so that God can enjoy his creation, and how? At St Peter’s we’re planning to form a task force, an action group – whatever you want to call it – to take action together to improve our local environment in any way we can. If you think you could be part of that, please have a word with Julia. In a moment, we’re going to take a few minutes while the worship groups sings, for you to write any pledges on the cards you’ve been given and bring them to the front. But first, let’s pray:

Father, thank you for the opportunity we’ve had today to see our world through your eyes. We pray that as you invite us to change our current ways of living, our identities will be firmly rooted in you and our hearts will be open to consider the ways that we can bring your justice through the way we live. We pray for Christians who are campaigning across the world on plastics, waste and the environment. We pray that decision makers will see the urgency of the issues, that they will be turned towards compassion, and that they will be willing to commit and be held accountable for transforming our society. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

David Attenborough video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYXBJmrsxZU

Tearfund video: https://vimeo.com/791870984

Closing prayer and other ideas from https://www.tearfund.org/-/media/tearfund/files/campaigns/rubbish-campaign/rubbish-campaign_churchtalk_aw.pdf

The Lord is King, he set the stars in space

“The fourth day of creation”
Icon by Betsy Porter (c)betsyporter.com

This coming weekend sees the start of the Kingdom Season (from now until Advent) with choices of hymn to match. So today’s is “The Lord is King” by Brian Hoare.

The first half of each of the first three verses list the ways in which the Lord is King: that he set the stars in space (i.e. is the creator), sent his Son to earth, and sent his Spirit; thus, a Trinitarian structure, although usually in Christian parlance the terms Lord and King refer specifically to Jesus Christ rather than to the Trinity as a whole.

The second part of each verse is an appropriate response: “Creator God, your kingdom stands”, “O Saviour Christ, your kingdom comes” and “Spirit of truth, whose kingdom grows”. The final verse proclaims praise to the Lord and King from all created things.

In all, the hymn is nicely crafted as a statement of faith, and might well be used in place of a spoken Creed in the Communion service, but didn’t strike me as conveying any original thought.

A week of worship

I’ve been on holiday for the last week without access to a computer, which is why there have been no posts this week – it’s too difficult to type much on a mobile phone. So here is a briefer commentary than usual on all this week’s hymns. I have been singing them all, as well as attending three very different worship services – communion in a parish church, Cathedral evensong, and harvest festival in a Baptist chapel. In all of them, music has played a key part, whether provided by a robed choir or a couple of guitarists – you can work out which is which.

Sunday 19 September

“Peace on earth to all your people”, a Scottish version of the canticle Gloria in Excelsis. See 12^th September for my previous comments on this canticle. The present version departs from the standard text in a few places, such as in verse 2 where it has “receive our song of praise” rather than “receive our prayer”; I’m not sure that’s a sensible change as the original is really a prayer for mercy. And in verse 3, “God in heaven” rather than more specifically “Christ in heaven”.

Monday 20 September

“Creating God, we bring our songs of praise” by Jan Berry and sung to the well known (sometimes over-used) tune ‘Woodlands’. The first verse addressed to the ‘creating God’ celebrates life, work, skill and joy. The second to the ‘forgiving God’ expresses sorrow for our anger, strife and emptiness. The third to the ‘redeeming God’ refers to the ‘fragile hope’ that he will make all things new, which is an honest acknowledgement that it does take a good deal of faith to hold on to that hope. The last verse addressed to the ‘renewing God’ looks to a future of harmony, peace, justice, dignity and pride – all the things that are often lacking in our earthly societies. Overall this is a good summary of what the Christian life is about.

Tuesday 21 September

“For the music of creation” by Shirley Murray. The first verse suggests that music is a sort of metaphor for creation, as it requires creativity in us. God is described as the ‘world’s composer’ and we as the ‘echoes of his voice’. The second verse lists various types of instrument, and different types of music – ‘simple melodies’, ‘hymns of longing and belonging’, ‘carols from a cheerful throat’, lullabies and love-songs. The music we make doesn’t have to be ‘religious’ to please God. The last verse refers to movement in worship – ‘hands that move and dancing feet’ – for the idea still sometimes found in Western churches that we have to stand up straight and immobile when singing in church probably seems weird to many Christians around the world for whom the whole body is used in worship.

Wednesday 22 September

“Earth’s fragile beauties we possess” by Robert Willis. John provided his own alternative tune to this one. The theme is life as pilgrimage. The first verse looks at the ways we should move through this life leaving as little impact as possible on those ‘fragile beauties’. The second looks at ‘earth’s human longings’ in grief, loss, famine, plaque and sword, referring to Christ’s cross as well as the story of Exodus, the archetypal pilgrimage. The last verse reminds us that we possess not only the beauties of earth but God’s own image, any deliberate damage to which was borne by Christ on the cross. This is a hymn for our times as people are realising too late the irreversible damage we have already done to this fragile world.

Thursday 23 September

“We give God thanks for those we knew” by Michael Perry, a hymn about healing and wholeness. It reminds us that Jesus came to bring healing through his love, and still does, but that we too should “dedicate our skills and time” to address the suffering around us.

Friday 24 September

“Maker of all whose word is life” by Elizabeth Cosnett. It’s a wedding hymn, addressing the Trinity: the Father as God of truth and faithfulness, Jesus the Son who knew earthly happiness, and though unmarried himself brought joy to the wedding guests when he turned water into wine, and the Holy Spirit as guide and bringer of steadfastness. The last verse reminds us that we need God’s grace to help us keep our wedding vows.

Sunday 26 September

The final song in this section, for the weekend of 25^th/26^th September, was a setting of “Holy, holy holy Lord” by Geoff Weaver. There’s probably not much to say about this short and familiar text, but John did suggest it was an appropriate response to the Old Testament reading about the dedication of Solomon’s Temple when the shekinah-glory of God filled the place.

The heavens proclaim God’s glory

the Horsehead nebula — The ‘horsehead’ nebula

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is ‘The heavens proclaim God’s glory’ by Martin Leckebusch. A setting of Psalm 19, set in the book to a tune called ‘Stand up’, though John used the tune ‘Morning Light’ better known to the words ‘Stand up, Stand up for Jesus’. The three verses reflect the three parts of the psalm.

The first verse covers probably one of the best known of all passages in the psalms, “The heavens proclaim God’s glory, the skies sing out in praise”. The passage of day and night, the movement of stars and planets, has always fascinated humankind and been seen as evidence of a powerful creator. Contemporary understanding of the immense (possibly infinite) size of the universe and the features ancient people could not have imagined such as the ongoing formation of stars and galaxies, black holes, and so forth, have not lessened that sense of awe. The intellectual debate about whether the complexity or even existence of a stable universe is random, or a necessary result of the conditions at its beginning, or truly evidence of intelligent design, will probably never be resolved, but for those who have faith, we can still praise God for all this.

The second verse is about God’s laws, and the benefits to the individual of obeying them. This move from the stars and planets to the moral law may seem illogical, but I think it would have seemed logical to the author, for whom the planets were obeying God’s instructions just as much as he exhorted people to do. The message is, that if we go along with what God has determined to be the way for us to live, we will find it the way of happiness. Just as the planets have to make no effort to continue in the course that God (or gravity) determines for them, so it should be effortless for us to live a good life.

The last part of the psalm then explains why this is not so. “Forgive my secret failures, the faults I do not know; from wilful sins protect me, the ways I should not go”. The human tendency is to err from God’s ways, even if we don’t always know when we are doing so. Like an asteroid that breaks free from its orbit and heads towards the sun or another planet, we may up harming ourselves and other heavenly bodies. We need God’s help to put us back on the correct course.

This reflection is not, of course, meant to be good astronomy, or even good theology. But perhaps it might get us a bit closer to what the writer of the psalm had in mind.

Praise the Lord of Heaven

Gaia at Wakefield Cathedral
image from Diocese of Leeds website

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is “O Praise the Lord of Heaven” by Timothy Dudley-Smith. The set tune (Vicar’s Close) was unfamiliar, but John sang it to the better known tune (or one of them) to “At the Name of Jesus”, which fits the mood of the hymn well.

The words are based on Psalm 148, one of the most positive psalms, in that unlike many of them there is no lamenting one’s problems or condemnation of enemies, just praise of God. The hymn follows the psalm in calling on all levels of creation to praise their maker, from angels to stars and moon, oceans, fields, all manner of animals (but not plants: did the Hebrews not consider plants to be living beings?) as well as people at all levels of society from princes to maidens, old and young. Even the smallest creatures and the people at the bottom of society’s pyramid are invited “High above all heavens [to] magnify his name!”

Later this week I intend to visit Wakefield Cathedral to visit their temporary art installation ‘Gaia’, a 7-metre diameter globe covered with satellite imagery of the entire earth’s surface. Part of Wakefield Council’s wider ‘Festival of the Earth’, it’s intended to stimulate reflection and prayer on “awe for the planet, a profound understanding of the interconnection of all life, and a renewed sense of responsibility for taking care of the environment.” I think that’s what the Psalmist was getting at. Although humanity’s understanding of the nature of the created world and its relationship to its maker has developed a long way since then, the basic idea still holds true, that if we understand ourselves to be part of a much wider created universe, in such a way that our actions affect the well-being of other creatures and even the weather, we will consider those actions more carefully. And at the present time that is more vital than ever.

Creator God, the world around

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is “Creator God, the world around” by Brian Hoare. The suggested tune is ‘Melita’, better known to the words “Eternal Father strong to save” (the sailors’ hymn).

Like yesterday’s hymn, the focus is on God as creator, the beauty of the natural world being celebrated in the words of the first verse. But here he is also hailed as Composer in verse 2, celebrating the use of God-given musical talents in worship, and as Designer in verse 3, as the visual arts in their various forms also play their part in our places of worship, as well as on Christian retreats and so on.

The last pair of lines of each of these verses begins “Yet…”, to express the idea that however much we appreciate natural or human-made beauty, and although they undoubtedly play their part in enhancing worship, they must always be inadequate to understand the creator fully. So the last verse offers a contrast: “Mysterious God … in Jesus Christ you show your face: a God of love and truth and grace”.

Yes, we believe Jesus to have been fully divine as well as fully human. But can this one life lived on earth, however perfectly, show the fullness of God any more than the ways listed above? Surely the full majesty of Jesus Christ was shown only through his resurrection, ascension and giving of the Holy Spirit? Others may beg to differ.

Loved with everlasting love

St Francis and the birds, Holy Cross Monastery, New York
(c) Randy OHC Creative Commons 2.0

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is “Loved with everlasting love” by George Wade Robinson. Unlike nearly all the other hymns in this book, it was not written in the 20^th or 21^st centuries but the 19th. The suggested tune, Calon Lan, is a Welsh one, and has the same rhythm as “Here is love, vast as the ocean” (17 March). Robinson, according to his Wikipedia entry, was an Irish Protestant minister (who later led English congregations).

The theme this time is belonging to Jesus; the last line of each verse is “I am his, and he is mine”. There are three verses here (a version I found online has a fourth verse, omitted here, perhaps because of the overly sentimental wording such as “Pillowed on the loving breast”). The first of them celebrates the peace of knowing ourselves loved by God, and the last is in similar vein: “with what joy and peace Christ can fill the loving heart!”

The second verse tries to explain in words one of those things that by definition are beyond words: the way the world seems different in God’s presence. I recognise what he is trying to express with lines such as “Heaven above is softer blue, earth around is richer green … songs of birds in sweetness grow, flowers with deeper beauties shine”. I have experienced that – not all the time, but at times when God’s presence has been real to me. It’s a reminder that often, the opposite can be true: the cares of the world and business of life cause us to neglect both a relationship with God, and the beauty of his creation.

There is, of course, always a danger in such sentiments of conflating God with nature, which has always been considered a heresy in Christian thought, since God by definition is much greater than anything s/he has created. But to ignore the natural world or to exploit it for our own purposes is perhaps the greater heresy of recent generations, and one of which the environmental movement persuades us, more forcefully than most Christian leaders, to repent. Where Christian faith and environmental concern meet is indeed where we experience the truth that “I am his, and he is mine”, being part of One who is greater than the created world, and that what God loves, we shall love too.

Enemy of apathy

The hymn that I chose from Sing Praise for Friday was “Enemy of Apathy” by John Bell and Graham Maule. I’ve been away from the computer for a couple of days which is why I’m only commenting on it now. But it was one of the hymns sung by our music group in church this morning, for Pentecost Sunday itself.

The hymn covers several aspects of the role of the Holy Spirit as found in the Bible, reimagined in poetic language. The Spirit is here referred to as female throughout, maybe as a deliberate balance to the tendency to address God in general or the Spirit in particular by male pronouns, though of course God is neither, yet more than both.

The feminine character of God is perhaps particularly appropriate to emphasise in the Creation story (verse 1) where the imagery used by the composers is that of birthing: the Spirit is “’like a bird, brooding on the waters … mothering creation, waiting to give birth to all the Word will say’. Here we see the partnership between God the Creator (the divine act of will), God the Word (the divine act of communication) and God the Spirit (the divine power of action). I love the phrase ‘she sighs and she sings’, expressing perhaps the joy of seeing God’s will being done with as well as the frustration we equally feel when we long for God to act and it seems s/he is delaying action.

The second verse sees this spiritual bird in a more active role, ‘winging over earth, resting where she wishes, lighting close at hand or soaring through the skies. Sometimes the Spirit’s way of working is personal and intimate as one person is brought closer to God, and sometimes visible and dramatic, as when a nationwide revival happens. The birthing imagery is repeated but in terms of human reproduction, as she ‘nests in each womb, welcoming each wonder, nourishing potential hidden to our eyes’. Without wishing to get drawing into a pro-life / pro-choice argument, we must recognise that God must know each developing embryo as intimately as any child or adult who is consciously aware of God.

The third verse brings us to the feast of Pentecost itself. The spirit here ‘dances in fire, startling her spectators, waking tongues of ecstasy where dumbness reigned’. How wonderful it must have been to witness that day, when the Spirit appeared in a form that Luke (or those witnesses whose evidence he heard) must have struggled to express in meaningful ways to others. But her work was not completed then, rather it lives on as ‘she weans and inspires all whose hearts are open’.

Finally we are reminded in verse four that, as we will consider on Trinity Sunday next week, there are not three gods but ‘one God in essence’. The creator, the saviour, the spirit all express God’s love. The final line gives the hymn its title: ‘enemy of apathy and heavenly dove’. Apathy is usually defined in its literal sense of not feeling emotion, or in common usage as ‘not being bothered’ about something. Here it is probably used to mean a reluctance to join in with God’s work of creation and redemption. Those who are filled with the Spirit want nothing more than to be the channels of God’s ceaseless activity.

Lord of all worlds

Rotting logs © David Pashley licensed for reuse under Creative Commons Licence

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is “Lord of all Worlds” by Christopher Ellis. Like yesterday’s (“Let all creation dance”) it’s a celebration of God’s goodness in creation. Like St Francis of Assisi’s ‘canticle of creation’, it covers the beauties of sun and stars, earth, wind and sea, fish and birds (but no mention here of land animals).

There is a problem with this and many similar hymns, which is that we only praise God for “all things bright and beautiful”. I’ve seen several internet memes that suggest alternative verses to that hymn such as Monty Python’s “All things dull and ugly, all creatures short and squat, all things rude and nasty, the Lord God made the lot”. We must acknowledge that the created world is “red in tooth and claw”, and by no means all beautiful or useful to humanity.

We are of course partly responsible for earth’s problems. The “glittering shoals flash[ing] through the rippling water” now have plastic in their stomachs, and the “wind that rushes through the heavens” is getting stronger, more destructive and the air more polluted as a result of our burning fossil fuels. Humanity has fallen far short of God’s intention for a sustainable world.

But even allowing for a theology of ‘fallen creation’ in which the evil of deliberate or even unintentional destruction and harm had no place in God’s original plan, the problem still remains. Imagine Eden before the fall, full of ripe fruit and seeds for Adam and Eve to eat. There must have been bees to pollinate the trees, and did they never sting the naked bodies of the blissful couple? Would the trees not still have fallen, rotted and been recycled by bugs (the recent trend for ‘bug hotels’ does at least recognise the importance of insects) ? The serpent in the story perhaps acknowledges that less attractive, and potentially harmful, creatures were there from the start. And how many people down the millennia have been killed by natural events such as volcanoes, floods and hurricanes?

Any rendition of “all things bright and beautiful” or the present hymn, therefore, should (at least for an adult congregation) be balanced by recognising the complexity of creation in which the bugs and snakes are as loved by God as the lambs and kittens, and in which mountains cannot appear without earthquakes nor fertile land without flooding. We praise and adore God for the wonder of this complex creation of which we are part, but confess our humility at being such a small part in it, our gratitude for being entrusted with its stewardship, and our guilt at failing to do so to the best of our ability.