Tag: environment

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:

  1. Shop at Bramley Wholefoods (Ecotopia) and refill your bottles and jars instead of buying new ones.
  2. Take cotton or jute bags every time you go shopping, instead of getting plastic ones each time.
  3. Buy loose vegetables instead of pre-packed ones
  4. 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

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 12th 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 25th/26th 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.

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.

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 20th or 21st 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.

The Bible in a Year – 24 May

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

24 May. Jeremiah chapters 34-37

The book of Jeremiah, as I have noted before, is confusing because it is not in chronological order.  For instance chapter 37 records how Zedekiah was installed as a puppet ruler of Judah by the Babylonians, but earlier, chapter 34 opens with Zedekiah already in post.  In it, this turncoat king does something extraordinary: he applies one of God’s commandments which the Jewish people had ignored for centuries, that they must not keep any of their fellow men or women as slaves – or at least not for longer than 6 years and only if the servant in question had voluntarily sold themselves into slavery (presumably to pay off a debt).

 

But no sooner had the slave-owners complied with the law than they tried to recapture the freed slaves. The law of God meant so little to them that even when enforced by the authorities, they tried their best to get round it for their own advantage.  God’s response was to ironically tell them that for denying others their freedom, they themselves would be ‘free’ from God’s protection and would be killed.  So often people see religious rules as purely restrictive when in fact they represent a form of protection: to follow God’s way is to receive his protection against falling into the sort of sin that rebounds on oneself.  The more people in a society who live by faith, the healthier that society will be. And the more who ignore God’s laws, the worse it will be for everyone.  It’s a lesson that is forgotten in each generation and has to be re-taught and re-learnt, often the hard way.

 

In chapter 35 the Recabites are held up as an example. They seem to have been an ascetic tribe within Israel, continuing to live a nomadic and austere lifestyle even when the rest of the people had been living the ‘good life’.  They might be compared to Quakers or Amish, for example, or the monastic orders of the Middle Ages. Although to others their self-denial might have seemed pointless, in fact their faithfulness to God was contrasted with the self-seeking of the majority.  We need such people in our society today.  Where can they be found?  There are some small Christian communities who live in this counter-cultural way, but if anything they are to be found more in secular movements and communities where sustainability of food, energy and the environment are more likely to be the aim rather than obedience to God.  But why not both?  Why are more Christians (or people of other faiths) not living this way?  It’s a challenge and one I know I must face myself.

 

In chapters 36-37 (going back to the previous reign of Jehoiakim), the king calls for the scroll that Jeremiah has had written of all his prophecies to date, and because he will not accept their message he burns it.  Burning sacred writings is always a provocative act, yet Jeremiah was a man of peace, and rather than retaliate himself he merely emphasised that the king was provoking God to wrath, and had a second copy of the scroll made for posterity, while he himself was put in prison.  It is not easy to walk the way of non-aggression in the face of such opposition.  Few people manage it; Jeremiah and Jesus were among those who did.

The Bible in a Year – 18 May

First of all, apologies if you have been following this series and wondered why it stopped at the 17th May.  Had I given up on reading the Bible?  No! It’s just that I was somewhere without internet access for a week.  Now back online.

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

18 May. Jeremiah chapters 14-17

At the start of this reading Jeremiah predicts a severe drought (14:1-6). Such things may seem natural to us who think we understand earth’s climate, and we may mock those who say “do the skies themselves send down showers? No, it is you, O Lord our God” (14:22) and who understood drought and flood alike to be God’s punishment for human misbehaviour.  But in an age when the climate becomes increasingly unpredictable, and then when scientists as well as environmentalists link this to our over-consumption of earth’s resources, maybe the ancients were right: it is in living in harmony with God and his creation that we have the best chance of a favourable climate.

 

The drought may have inspired Jeremiah’s contrast in chapter 17 between the man who trusts in other men and lives in a salty desert, and the one who trusts in God and is like a tree by streams of water.  The same image is used in the Psalms, and also reminds us of Jesus’ parable of the two men who built on the sand and the rock, and only the latter survived a flood.  Both images, of drought and of flood, portray the idea that God is the  source of the life in us. Drought and dryness in the Bible can be a metaphor for the spiritual dryness that makes life seem drab, difficult and unbearable, whereas the tree by the stream is an image of a life that can cope with all extremes – plenty and want, floods that threaten to overwhelm us and barrenness that threatens to drive us to despair – and still flourish.