Readings: Proverbs 8: 22-31 Revelation 22: 1-5
We pray:
May you speak into
our hearts and minds today O God, guiding us in your way and encouraging us and
strengthening us for the journey in Jesus name.
Amen.
Our readings for
today are, we could say, the bookmarks between which we exist – the beginning
of time when the expectations for a world deeply cared for by humankind
were strong , and the final chapter where the revelation of the end time when
Christ comes again is imagined. Both are
places of great exuberance and beauty, of peace and reconciliation, of surplus
and healing. And if we want to imagine
what that might look like today hear these words by Rob Ferguson from a ‘A
Springtime Carol’ that picture a world where that same creation has the
freedom to be full of all it could be.
Look around you, see the bursting, life is breaking
out, the earth is full.
Yellow, purple, green refreshing, snow is melting fast
upon the hills.
Hear the river waters chuckling, [the] blossoms
blowing, [the] flowers glowing, [the] mountains shine!
Look around you, see the bursting, life is breaking
out with love divine!
It is a powerful
picture – creation at its most productive, beauty surrounding us, at one with
nature and with God. And that sense of
love just bursting out, unable to be contained is so compelling.
It is the same
sense of awesomeness when we hear the words of Sophia, Wisdom from the Proverbs
reading – rejoicing in God’s inhabited world and delighting in the human
race. Sea, sky, land and all that
inhabits it is blessed by God.
I feel fortunate
indeed to live in a land that enables me to imagine the possibility of that –
to have an upbringing that includes communing with nature in that life defining
way – to have children that understand it too – one of them wrote a poem about
being down at a place we call ‘The Heads’ at the outflow of the Owaka River
which I have in from of me in my office – it grounds me.
Celtic Christian
spirituality understands that deep connection with the land – that we are
intricately bound and earthed in the seasons and the dirt and the water that
sustains us and that we are responsible for nurturing and caring for
creation. In Maori spirituality too is a
deep understanding of being anchored in the land – it is who we have been, who
we are and who we will walk into the future with.
And as Christians
we are asked to have that same connection with God’s creation: we are asked to
do more than simply experiencing this amazing world, we are asked to care for
it, nurture it and sustain it for those who are yet to come.
Yet we are pretty
much doing the exact opposite – our planet is in pain, even in this slice of
what was/is considered a veritable paradise.
Our rivers, our land, our skies, our flora and fauna, the ocean that
surrounds us all full of chemicals and plastics and poisons that are killing
it.
The world has
fallen prey to a ‘don’t care’ attitude from the vast majority of our
people. Humankind no longer delight in
this world but treat it as ours to exploit, trash, use in whatever way we
desire. When money is valued over
environment, convenience over sustainability, the now over the longterm then
the earth and all that is in it suffers.
Why is our
Christian voice not shouting into this disaster?
Hear these words
from Shirley Murray:
Where are the voices for the earth?
Where are the eyes to see her pain, wasted by our consuming path,
weeping the tears of poisoned rain?
Sacred the soil that hugs the seed, sacred the silent fall of snow,
sacred the world that God decreed [of] water and sun and river flow.
Where shall we run who break this code, where shall tomorrow’s children
be, left with the ruined gifts of God, death for the creatures, land and sea?
We are the voices for the earth, we who will care enough to cry,
cherish her beauty, clear her breath, live that our planet may not die.[1]
This is a lament
for our world; do we hear it? You know
if you read the book of Lamentations from the Hebrew Scriptures, as some of us
have just done, you have this overwhelming sense of despair – of the people of
God realising that they have got things so wrong that is appears there might be
no way out this time. Is that where we
are at today?
And even if we are
not, if we still allow hope for better care of our earth, some don’t seem to
grasp the urgency of it. Our governments
don’t – our retailers don’t, our consumers don’t, we don’t. And in fact within the church some of us
don’t actually see care for the environment as part of our Christian
purpose. Pope Francis has something to
say to that:
"It must be said
that some committed and prayerful Christians, with the excuse of realism and
pragmatism, tend to ridicule expressions of concern for the environment. Others
are passive; they choose not to change their habits and thus become
inconsistent. So what they all need is an “ecological conversion”, whereby the
effects of their encounter with Jesus Christ become evident in their
relationship with the world around them. Living our vocation to be protectors
of God’s handiwork is essential to a life of virtue; it is not an optional or a
secondary aspect of our Christian experience."[2]
Wise
words, challenging words that give us no wriggle room at all.
Where
is the hope for saving of our world? We
are it – as Christians we walk alongside and sometimes in front of all those
others who care deeply and passionately for this earth and its
inhabitants. It is essential that we
recognise our close relationship with the land, with God’s creating
presence here on this planet and beyond
- and that it has been given into our care, our responsibility until the end
time.
Imagine
this: springs abounding with clean
water, mountains piercing an unpolluted sky, earth and fields and soil without
rubbish and chemicals and with time to rest, seas without plastic - once again
safe for the creatures of the ocean, sustainable farming and ecologically
responsible urbanites, landfills running out of business and air that is sweet. This our prayer, and God grant that what we
pray for we would work to bring about.
Amen.
Margaret
Garland
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