The
role of Christian Discipleship in the context of the ecological crisis.
Adam Currie - Opoho Church All-Saints Sunday - 4
Nov 2018
Scripture
Readings: Revelation 21:1-6a, Mark 12:28-34
Humanity has a serious problem. We have failed to love, cherish and protect God’s creation. We have not been wise stewards of the Earth’s resources. We have failed to exercise proper prudence, anticipate and mitigate risks, and take adequate precautionary measures. We now face a grave ecological crisis. Animal populations across the planet have fallen by an average of 60 percent since 1970. Humans have killed off over half of the worlds wildlife populations. To put this number into perspective, if there was a 60 percent decline in the human population, we would be emptying North America, South America, Africa, Europe, China and Oceania. We are running at full speed towards total environmental collapse. I’m sure you know all of this. So I instead post a different question to you today: What is the role of Christian discipleship in the midst of the global ecological crisis? Today is All-Saints Sunday. One of the most celebrated saints among those with a passion for the natural world and ecology is, of course, St Frances - the remarkable, prophetic, transformative 12th century monk who is the patron saint for animals and the environment. St Francis is celebrated by all those with a passion for the natural world and ecology. It is fitting to reflect on what it means to care for God’s good creation – this fantastically rich and varied planet with its breathtaking beauty and grandeur that we are privileged to inhabit.
Such reflection is all the
more fitting given the recent IPCC report outlining the perils of even 1.5
degrees of global warming, (let alone the 3 or 4 degrees we are headed for) as
well as the upcoming United Nations conference on climate change, where I,
along with thousands of academics, diplomats, faith leaders, and activists from
all around the globe will come together in Poland at the end of this month to
attempt to get as many of the 195 countries of the world as possible to codiy,
implement, and ramp up their carbon reduction obligations under the Paris
climate agreement.
Today, globally, we face a
series of grave ecological crises. According to leading scientists, humanity is
exceeding several critical planetary boundaries and time is rapidly running out
to rectify the problem.[1] As Pope Francis highlighted
earlier this year in his deeply moving Encyclical Letter, Laudato Si, we are failing to ‘care for our common home’. We have
not been good stewards. We have not loved and cherished the natural world. Our
ecological footprints are too large. Our carbon footprints are now massive. We
are borrowing from the future and leaving our grandchildren a dreadful legacy –
a huge, unsustainable ecological debt and colossal, irreversible damage.
How then, as Christians, should we
respond? What is God calling each of us to do at this critical time? St Francis
of Assisi provides a marvellous role model. His life was marked by integrity,
generosity, simplicity and authenticity. He shows us how to demonstrate our
creaturely love and care, not only for the poor, needy and marginalized amongst
humanity, but also for everything that God has created, everything that is
fragile and vulnerable, everything that needs our loving protection. As Pope
Francis observes, St Francis of Assisi demonstrated through his life and
teaching the inseparable bonds that link ‘concern for nature, justice for the
poor, commitment to society, and interior peace’ (Laudato Si, p.10). He reveals how to we are to live – in
particular, how we should live in harmony with God, with ourselves, with others
and with nature.
For St Francis of Assisi,
nature is a mirror of God; it reflects God’s heart, mind, imagination,
creativity and passion. As we explore the human genome, for instance, do we not
capture a glimpse of the very ‘language of God’ – as one of the leaders of the human
genome project, Dr Francis Collins, called it? From this perspective, the ‘book
of nature’, as it is sometimes called, serves as a valuable source of God’s
revelation. In complementing the scriptures, it helps us see what God is truly
like and how we ought to live.
For St Francis, humanity is
an integral part of nature. We are not above, outside or beyond the natural
realm. We are made from the dust of the earth (Gen 2:7). Our physical bodies consist of the
creation’s elements, ‘we breathe her air and we receive life and refreshment
from her waters’ (Laudato Si,
p.4). We are creatures. We are a fundamental part of the community of creation.
In his poetic Canticle of the Creatures St Francis saw
our planet – our common home – as being – to quote Laudato Si (p.3) – ‘like a sister with whom we share our life and a
beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us’. St Francis wrote: ‘All
praise be yours, my Lord, through our Sister Mother Earth, who sustains us and
governs us, and produces various fruits with coloured flowers and herbs’. In
the words of Psalm 145: “All your creation shall praise you …”.
Yet, tragically, as Pope Francis
highlights:
This sister now cries out to us because of the
harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods
with which God has endowed her. We have come to see ourselves as her lords and
masters, entitled to plunder her at will. The violence present in our hearts,
wounded by sin, is also reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the
soil, in the water, in the air and in all forms of life. This is why the earth
herself, burdened and laid waste, is among the most abandoned and maltreated of
our poor; she “groans in travail” (Laudato
Si, pp.3-4), as St Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans (8:22).
Of course, we must be
thankful for the abundant economic growth of the past century. This growth has
yielded a dramatic improvement in the living standards of billions of people
and substantially reduced poverty and material deprivation. But these benefits
have come at a great and unneeded environmental cost. Here in New Zealand our
problems include deteriorating water quality, the over-allocation of fresh
water supplies, a significant per capita carbon footprint, poor land-use
management, weak marine governance and threats to many native species. Since
human settlement, we have lost 85% of our indigenous forests, nearly a hundred
bird species, masses of valuable soil and much of our wetlands, and we have
polluted at least 60% of our rivers.
Globally, the situation is
even bleaker. The damage includes: widespread habitat destruction and
degradation; air, land and water pollution; ozone depletion; soil erosion and
desertification; the over-exploitation of scarce natural resources; climate change;
ocean acidification; and massive deforestation. In terms of biodiversity loss,
the species extinction rate is now estimated at about 1,000 times above the
normal background evolutionary rate. Indeed, we are currently in the sixth
great mass extinction event of the past 540 million years. Such events are
where more than 50% of the planet's species are destroyed. The most recent mass
extinction was about 65 million years ago. But unlike previous mass
extinctions, which were the result of massive volcanic eruptions and asteroid
impacts, the current event is the product of human activity – much of it driven
by greed. As the former Pope Benedict XVI observed at his Inaugural Mass in
2005: “The external deserts in the world are growing because our internal deserts
have become so vast”.[2]
To compound matters, further
environmental harm is now inevitable. This is because of the inertia or long
lags in many natural and human systems – the climate system, our energy
systems, our transport systems and our political systems. Our carbon emissions
today, for example, will have damaging consequences for numerous generations,
if not thousands of years. At current rates of emissions, we are likely to
exceed within 25 years the carbon budget consistent with the internationally
agreed warming cap of two degrees. Time
is running out. Accordingly, quick and effective action is imperative, both
globally and locally.
Yet our responses have been
muted and reluctant. Why is this? Perhaps it is partially because of what
Margaret pointed out in her introduction to the readings: “We tend not to be so
confident about the destination stories” - its far easier to look back on the
past than it is to consider the future. Unfortunately, the magnitude of what is
being lost and the huge risks humanity is running are largely invisible. Many
people simply do not see the gravity of the problem. Another reason lies in
deliberate moral disengagement: many people choose not see our destruction of
the natural world. As Christians we must seek to unmask what is invisible and
challenge any moral disengagement.
Bernie Krause, a musician and
naturalist, spent four decades making sound recordings of many of the world's
most pristine habitats, including some 15,000 species. Unfortunately, the loss
of species over recent decades has been so extensive that around half these
recordings are now archives – they cannot be repeated either because the
relevant habitats have ceased to exist or because they have been totally
compromised by human noise. As Krause has put it:
A great silence is spreading
over the natural world even as the sound of man is becoming deafening … Little
by little the vast orchestra of life, the chorus of the natural world, is in
the process of being quietened. [This is the chorus that offers constant praise
and worship to God ...]
There has been a massive
decrease in the density and diversity of key vocal
creatures, both large and
small. The sense of desolation extends beyond mere silence. If you listen to a
damaged sound-scape … the community [of life] has been altered, and organisms
have been destroyed, lost their habitat or been left to re-establish their
places in the spectrum. As a result, some voices are gone entirely, while
others aggressively compete to establish a new place in the increasingly
disjointed chorus.[3]
These are the kinds of stories
that need telling and retelling.
How should we respond?
But how, as Christians,
should we respond? Surely, our first reaction must be one of lament, deep
sorrow and repentance for the harm we have inflicted upon God’s good creation.
Our trashing of the planet is sinful. Rather than preserving life, we have
‘become death, the destroyer of worlds’ (to quote the ancient Hindu holy book,
known as the Bhagavad Gita – which
translates to ‘the song of the Lord’).
Second, we must be alert to
the power of evil, including the sway of materialism and neoliberalism as well
as the urge to leave environmental problems for others to fix. We are all
responsible before God for our stewardship of the planet. We are also
responsible to one another. Free-riding has no place amongst Christians. Nor is
there room for complacency, denial or evasion of the truth. We must heed the
best available scientific evidence and respond appropriately. But in so doing
we must avoid the temptation to play the role of God – such as the desire to
free ourselves from the proper limits of our creatureliness. For instance, we
should avoid expensive and highly risky technological fixes. We should avoid
masking or merely treating the symptoms of the problems we have generated; we
must tackle the root causes.
Third, we need a broader and
deeper conception of what loving our neighbour means, as we reflected on in
today's Gospel Reading from Mark. Surely, our neighbours include not only those
alive here and now, but also all those in the future who will suffer harm
because of our actions and inactions today. Similarly, we need to apply the
golden rule to all spheres of life – for instance, emitting unto others only as
we would have them emit unto us!
And in taking a broader view
of what neighbourly love means, we should follow St Francis of Assisi in seeing
humanity as an integral part of an amazing community of creation. Hence, our
compassion, like God's compassion, must extend to all forms of life, not only
human life. We are called to love the world that God has made, treasure its
resources and protect everything that is endangered. We should be slowing the
pace of evolutionary loss, not dramatically increasing it.
Sadly, not all Christians
share such views. As part of Generation Zero, Aotearoa New Zealand's youth
climate advocacy group, I’ve engaged with a wide variety of church groups in
the hope of building consensus and solidarity regarding climate change. But a
depressingly large amount refused to talk to us, arguing that saving the planet
was not part of the Gospel. Protecting the environment, they said, was not
relevant for Christians. Such attitudes persist. Sometimes they reflect a
denial of scientific evidence. Alternatively, they result from a certain kind
of eschatology, namely the idea that Jesus will soon return and rescue
believers from the coming doom, transporting them safely to Heaven. From this
standpoint, the primary aim must be to save souls; being good stewards of the
Earth is irrelevant. After all, the Earth will soon pass away.
But such an eschatology fits
very uncomfortably with our Lord’s prayer: this highlights God’s desire for His
will to be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. Equally, various scriptures
suggest that God will ultimately redeem and renew the whole created order, not
destroy or replace it. There will be both continuity and discontinuity. St
Paul’s letter to the Colossians 1: 15-20 is instructive in this respect. St
Paul speaks of God in Christ ‘reconciling all things’ to Himself in Christ, not
only human beings.
But surely, it might be
argued, God will not let humanity destroy the Earth. Surely God will intervene
miraculously to change the biochemistry of the planet, thereby tempering the
destructive forces which we have unleashed. The passage from Luke’s Gospel
about Jesus calming the storm on the Sea of Galilee might be used to support
this proposition. Hence, as the Earth’s ecological storms intensify – when the
planet is about to be overwhelmed and ‘capsize’ – God will suddenly awake and
calm the storm, saving humanity from its folly.
There are many reasons for
doubting this interpretation of the passage from Luke’s Gospel. First, notice
that it is Jesus who prompts the disciples to get into the boat and cross the
lake. They do so at His beckoning. By contrast, there is no divine calling for
humanity to cause ecological havoc.
Second, the storm on the Sea
of Galilee was not the result of the disciples’ own actions or ineptitude. It
came upon them from outside, unexpectedly. By contrast, the current ecological
storms are of our own making. Moreover, the likely consequences of our actions
have been known for decades. We are not destroying our common home in complete
ignorance. We are doing so with open eyes and in the face or repeated warnings
from the world’s leading scientific authorities. Greed, selfishness and
powerful vested interests have prevailed over prudence and responsibility.
Third, in the current
ecological storm it is not Jesus who lies asleep, but ourselves. We are
sleep-walking to destruction.
Finally, it is true that Jesus’
calming of the storm on the Sea of Galilee revealed his divine power – the
power to control all the elements of nature, instantly. Understandably, the
disciples were full of awe, wonder and fear. They marveled: “who is this who
commands the winds and the water and they obey him?’
But this incident does not
mean that God will miraculously save humanity from a self-inflicted
ecologically disaster. To quote Rowan Williams:
… to suggest that God might
intervene to protect us from the corporate folly of our practices is as
unchristian and unbiblical as to suggest that he protects us from the results
of individual folly or sin. This is not a creation in which there are no real
risks; our [Christian] faith has always held that the inexhaustible love of God
cannot compel justice or virtue; we are capable of doing immeasurable damage to
ourselves as individuals, and it seems clear that we have the same terrible
freedom as a human race.[4]
Does that mean that all is
lost? No. There is no reason to be overwhelmed by the magnitude of the task or
paralyzed by fear or foreboding. For in Christ, there are no grounds for
defeatism or fatalism. “Behold”, Jesus said, “I am with you always, even to the
end of the age” (Matt. 28:20). To quote Rowan Williams again: ‘God’s faithfulness
stands, assuring us that even in the most appalling disaster, love will not let
go”.[5]
Moreover, we must never
conclude that our efforts to conserve, heal and restore God's creation are
worthless. Doing what is right, responding to the Spirit of God, is important
and valuable, regardless of the apparent outcomes. When St Paul remarks that
‘our labour in the Lord will not be in vain’ (1 Cor 15:58), he does not imply
that our strivings will inevitably improve our current circumstances. Rather,
he means that they ‘will have effects that will be preserved in the new
creation’.[6] The nature of these effects
we may never know. But we must be faithful all the same.
In the face of unprecedented
environmental challenges, Christians are called to act, both individually and
collectively, and at all levels – as citizens, congregations, in our local
communities, within our businesses and places of work, and in our wider
contributions to public life. We should be setting an example and providing
leadership, not dragging the chain.
Individually, we must prayerfully
consider what God requires of us in the urgent and demanding task of creation
care. Everyone can contribute, drawing on their experience, expertise,
resources, talents and connections. This may be costly, but that is the nature
of Christian discipleship. All of us should be reducing our carbon footprints:
taking fewer overseas trips and domestic flights, buying more fuel-efficient
cars or electric cars, and divesting of shares in companies whose activities
are irresponsible environmentally. But perhaps more fundamentally,
we must reject secular environmental individualism, and instead stand and rally
together as a community.
As citizens we have a duty to
engage in debates about the policy changes that are essential for a more
secure, sustainable and resilient future. Currently, many governments around
the world are failing to take the measures necessary to protect properly the
Earth’s atmosphere and oceans, to reduce pollution levels, protect biodiversity
and ensure prudent stewardship of scarce natural resources. They are bowing to
the power of vested interests and often ignoring their scientific advisers.
Such governments need to be challenged, not by the person sitting next to us
over there, but by me and by you, in whatever form that may take.
Finally,
in the midst of the demanding tasks that await us, let us rejoice in the
awesome God we worship here today. God has not abandoned us. He has not
forsaken His loving plan or repented of having created humanity. Moreover, our
incredible God calls us and gives us the ability to work together, to build
bridges across divided communities in the common task of healing and restoring
this afflicted planet, our common home. Let us all pursue this important
calling with perseverance and with joy. Thanks be to God!
Canticle of the Creatures (St Francis of Assisi)
Most High, all-powerful, good
Lord, all praise is yours, all glory, all honor, and all blessing. To you,
alone, Most High, do they belong. No mortal lips are worthy to pronounce your
name.
All praise be yours, my Lord,
through all you have made, and first my lord Brother Sun, who brings the day;
and through whom you give us light.
How beautiful is he, how
radiant in all his splendor; Of you, Most High, he bears the likeness.
All Praise be yours, my Lord,
through Sister Moon and the stars; in the heavens you have made them, bright,
and precious, and fair.
All praise be yours, my Lord,
through Brothers wind and air, and fair and stormy,
all the weather's moods, by
which you cherish all that you have made.
All praise be yours, my Lord,
through Sister Water, so useful, humble, precious and pure.
All praise be yours, my Lord,
through Brother Fire, through whom you brighten up the night. How beautiful is
he, how cheerful! Full of power and strength.
All praise be yours, my Lord,
through our Sister Mother Earth, who sustains us and governs us, and produces
various fruits with coloured flowers and herbs.
All praise be yours, my Lord,
through those who grant pardon for love of you; through those who endure
sickness and trial.
Happy are those who endure in
peace, By You, Most High, they will be crowned. All praise be yours, my Lord,
through Sister Death, From whose embrace no mortal can escape. Woe to those who
die in mortal sin! Happy those she finds doing your will! The second death can
do them no harm.
Praise and bless my Lord, and
give him thanks, And serve him with great humility.
************************************************************************
[1] See, for instance, Johan
Rockström, et al., “A Safe Operating Space for Humanity’, Nature, 461, 24 September 2009, 472-475; John Rockström, et al.,
“Planetary Boundaries: Exploring the Safe Operating Space for Humanity”, Ecology and Society, 14, 2.
[2] Pope Benedict XVI, Inaugural Mass, 24 April 2005.
[3] Quoted by John Vidal, The Guardian, 3 September 2012.
[4] Rowan Williams Faith in the Public Square London,
Bloomsbury, 2012, p.190. See also Rowan Williams, “The Climate Crisis:
Fashioning a Christian Response”, 13 October 2009.
[5] Rowan Williams Faith in the Public Square London,
Bloomsbury, 2012, p.190.
[6] Richard Bauckham, “Ecological
Hope in Crisis?”, p.3.
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