St Wilfrid & Presentation, Haywards Heath Abrahamic religions 30.6.21

If the seven and a half billion inhabitants of the world were but 100 we’re told there’d be: 33 Christians, 21 Muslims, 13 Hindus, 6 Buddhists, 12 people who practice other religions and 14 people of no religion.

Given these statistics, we, as Christians, need discernment over how we share about Christ and engage in as positive a way as we can in a context where awareness of the variety of religions is widespread.

I have a few thoughts on this as the weekday Lectionary centres on Abraham as father of faith. He is so for Judaism, Christianity and Islam, the so-called Abrahamic faiths. In today’s reading from Genesis 21 we see the protection of Hagar’s son Ishmael seen as father of Muslims parallel to Sarah’s son Isaac revered especially by Jews and Christians. God promises Abram I will bless you and make your name great. So he has, as Paul says Abraham is the father of us all. His faith is in the same God we put faith in who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. Romans 4:17

Our Old Testament reading reminds us both of our Jewish roots and our links with Islam. Earlier this year the great theologian Hans Kung died at a good age just short of his century. In his later years he was involved in inter faith dialogue and this must be one of his most quoted sayings: ‘There’ll be no peace in the world without peace between religions and no peace between religions without understanding between religions’.

Earlier this week I posted on Facebook one of my ‘Fifty Walks from Haywards Heath’, a circular from St Wilfrid’s to The Ascension via the Mosque. I did so among other reasons to help put the Mosque on the map. It's sad that many people in our town don’t even know where the Mosque is!

In John chapter 14, verse 6 Christ said: ‘I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me’ and in Chapter 18 v38; ‘Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice.’ 

If everyone believed that life would be simpler and I wouldn’t be speaking as I am this morning!   Putting it in a more challenging way to you and I, the existence of other religions is proof of our failure to meet with Jesus at a deep level and become the heart to heart draw we’re meant to be through his magnetic love. 

What though of those who’re drawn elsewhere? We see distortions of Christ’s truth in faiths and also approximations. 

Saying yes to Jesus does not mean saying ‘no’ to everything about other faiths. It can mean saying ‘yes, but…’ or rather ‘yes, and…’ to other faiths, which is a far more engaging and reasonable attitude…. I say ‘yes’ to what Muslims say about God’s majesty because sometimes Christians seem to domesticate God and forget his awesome nature. At the same time, I differ with Muslims about how we gain salvation, because I believe Jesus is God’s salvation gift and more than a prophet.

Other faiths can wake us up to aspects of Christian truth that can get forgotten, like the awesome nature of God in Christ. When I visited our Mosque for Friday Prayers I was struck by seeing so many bowing down physically to God, especially as kneeling in Church seems to happen less.

‘There’ll be no peace in the world without peace between religions and no peace between religions without understanding between religions’ (Hans Kung). Bowing down to God is something all three Abrahamic religions, Jewish, Christian and Muslim have in common. Our God is an awesome God - may he build peace in the world through better worship and mutual understanding across faiths.

Trinity 4 (13 B) Jairus’s daughter 27 June 2021

I want us to get into the gospel reading this morning. We stood with attention to hear it read because the church bids us hear the words and acts of Jesus as if he were present to speak and act today. It’s that sort of understanding I want to hold you to as we sit and read it again together in four sections. 

Verses 21-24 When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered round him; and he was by the lake. 22Then one of the leaders of the synagogue named Jairus came and, when he saw him, fell at his feet 23and begged him repeatedly, ‘My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live.’ 24So he went with him. And a large crowd followed him and pressed in on him. 

Some background information. By Mark Chapter 5 we see Jesus  getting well into his public ministry which is continually opposed by the Jewish leaders. Jairus was a Jewish leader and came from a group in Capernaum opposed to what Jesus was teaching about God being God of all and not just God of the Jews. 

Why did Jairus approach Jesus? He was in deep trouble and must have sensed behind the arguments people had with Jesus something about this man that could help. Very often I find people who don’t want the church’s preaching are more than happy to receive the church’s prayer. Jairus came also out of love for his daughter. People want the best for their children.

How did Jesus respond? He made himself immediately available. Once I stepped down as parish priest I lost the demand priests have - or should have - of 24-7 availability and we noticed it. This is part of the sacrifice at the heart of the ministerial priesthood. Jesus didn’t put Jairus on his to do list he went with him right away. Of course availability to others isn’t just for priests - we all need discernment as to when we do as Jesus did here, dropping everything to serve one particular need.

Let’s read on v35-37. As we do so I should note the Gospel passage selected skips over v25-34, the account of the healing of the woman with an issue of blood who touches his cloak on the way to Jairus’ house which explains the first phrase While he was still speaking:

35 While he was still speaking, some people came from the leader’s house to say, ‘Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?’ 36 But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the leader of the synagogue, ‘Do not fear, only believe.’ 37He allowed no one to follow him except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James.

His friends came to break the sad news to Jairus. ‘Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?’ It was only natural to stop Jesus coming. All was over. But was it? In dealing with Jesus we’re dealing with God in human form and the possibilities of God exceed human imagination. As we heard in the first reading God did not make death, and he does not delight in the death of the living (rather he) created us for incorruption, and made us in the image of his own eternity. Christ’s resurrection revealed his divinity. It helps us look death in the face. Here in the raising of Jairus’ daughter we see the trailer if you like to the great drama to come.

Do not fear, only believe. Put faith in the One who is stronger than the evil you fear. To put faith in God – in Jesus – is to recognise our humble place and to invite the greatness of God to touch our situation. Two men looked through prison bars. One saw mud and one saw stars. The woman or man of faith has an eye trained above and not too down to earth. Do not fear, only believe. These words of Jesus are an encouragement to look to the big picture God sees and is ready to open up to the eye of faith. 37He allowed no one to follow him except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James. Perhaps these three were privileged because their faith in Jesus was that bit firmer than the rest.

Let’s read v38-40 38When they came to the house of the leader of the synagogue, he saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. 39When he had entered, he said to them, ‘Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping.’ 40And they laughed at him. Then he put them all outside, and took the child’s father and mother and those who were with him, and went in where the child was. 

Mark’s Gospel is the earliest and simplest of the four. Sometimes you can see the raw account he gives tidied up in Matthew and Luke who largely copy Mark. What an emotional roller coaster you see in these verses as the people turn from weeping and wailing loudly so that they laughed at Jesus. When we lose someone we love it can feel as if our whole being is torn apart emotions and all. Jesus himself knew this. We know he wept once at the death of his friend Lazarus. The shortest verse in the Bible - John 11v35 - records this. The child is not dead but sleeping. In those words Jesus tells us the full picture of death. Death is a sleep from which there will be an awakening for  judgement. This is why we have St John’s cemetery which means, from the Greek, St John’s sleeping place’. It is this understanding that lies behind rules that honour and preserve the peace of our cemetery.

Let’s read the last section verses 41-43 41 He took her by the hand and said to her, ‘Talitha cum’, which means, ‘Little girl, get up!’ 42And immediately the girl got up and began to walk about (she was twelve years of age). At this they were overcome with amazement. 43He strictly ordered them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat. 

In v40 we read how Jesus put them all outside before he worked his miracle. Those who making so much noise and who lacked faith were a hindrance to what he was about. Notice the determination of Jesus. When we bring God into a situation he helps settle and determine things. ‘Talitha cum’, which means, ‘Little girl, get up!’ Here rarely, because the Gospels were written in Greek, we’re given the actual words spoken by Jesus in Aramaic. In those days little girls weren’t thought of as highly as they are today. It was an extraordinary thing for Jesus to leave the crowd to visit a young girl and speak in love to her as he did. Jesus Christ, though for his own reasons he excluded women from his apostles, did more to raise the profile and dignity of women than any other major religious leader in history. 

So we have the miracle, a great wonder as Jairus’ daughter is resuscitated. And a lovely last touch, reminding us that God is never unconcerned about our lesser matters, he told them to give her something to eat. 

So we meet with Jesus this morning knowing not only will he give us himself as food in the eucharist but that he is concerned to give us this day our daily bread. We meet with Jesus who would make himself as available to you and I by his Spirit as he made himself available to Jairus in the days of his flesh.

We come to Jesus without fear but with belief, to put faith in One who is stronger than all the evils we fear. We come to Church this morning to put faith in God and to invite his love and his greatness to touch our situation and to lift us as he lifted Jairus’ daughter.

St Wilfrid & Presentation, Haywards Heath Eucharistic Sacrifice 23.6.21

 

In this Eucharist we are being caught up into the eternal sacrifice of Christ and its profound challenge to our self-interest. This online gathering is part of an eternal gathering stretching back to Abraham and beyond and stretching forward to the consummation of all things. This morning we are touching reality - we are drawn to the events represented here which institute God’s covenant with us, and drawn into a love which touches every concern upon the earth.

The Old Testament reading from Genesis describes an awesome encounter between Abraham and the Lord.  In this holy eucharist we too should be in awe as we approach the same Lord in the Eucharistic sacrifice. This is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, happy are those who are called to his supper.

Jesus St John says is the lamb slain from the foundation of the world. The sacrifice once offered on Calvary and made present at this altar is rooted in the history of God’s people and the eternal covenant.

The first reading from Genesis Chapter 15 describes the institution of that covenant with Abraham by the shedding of blood, an agreement between man and God pledging loyalty even unto death.  In the ancient world, when a covenant was ‘cut’ with the slaughter of lambs its breaking could be punishable by death. It also symbolised a death to independent living and the coming alive of a relationship or covenant.

In the covenant God made with Abraham there was a special sign.  The sacrificed animals were consumed by a supernatural intervention interpreted as an anticipation of the new covenant.  As the animal sacrifice was consumed by fire from heaven, so Jesus is to see his body and blood separated in death and then transformed by power from heaven in the glory of the resurrection.

So it is that in the Eucharist we witness the separate consecration of Christ’s body and blood. We pause devotionally on two occasions to recall the sacrificial sundering of the Lamb of God - this is my body...this is my blood...of the new covenant, which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins

Some of us possibly visited the ‘Seeing Salvation’ exhibition years back at the National Gallery. One of the many images of Christ was this  (show) - ‘The Bound Lamb’ by Francisco de Zurbarin who lived in the 17th century.  It is an image that often appears on Nativity scenes, the Shepherds’ offering which anticipates Christ’s sacrifice. As Jeremy Paxman wrote in the Church Times of this painting: ‘no image I know so perfectly captures the astonishing force of the Christian story’.

The sacrificial imagery in today’s Old Testament links to this symbol of Christ as Lamb of God so familiar to us from the liturgy of the Eucharist - familiar and yet often rather empty of meaning to many of us until we examine the Old Testament roots as we are invited to do so by this morning’s first reading.

How often we hear those words ‘Lamb of God’? How much we need to ‘inhabit the words’ of our prayer and liturgy and not be empty ritualists! Jesus is the Lamb of God whose voluntary sacrifice takes away our sin.  Our Lord on Calvary takes the full impact of sin and death for us at the cost of his life. 

Our Lord has soaked up all the evil that would defeat me and offered me life to the full - life that cancels sin with forgiveness, sickness with healing, bondage with deliverance and even doubt with the gift of faith through the mighty Redemption he has won.  

All of this is powerfully present to me in every celebration of the Eucharist.

I cannot understand it but I will accept it. I cannot understand the way electricity works but that does not stop me switching on the lights. I take both on authority and it works to do so.

Jesus died in my place so that he might live in my place. Jesus died in my place to carry off the impact of evil upon me, through the gift of the Eucharist. Jesus lives in my place, cooperating with my will by his Spirit, as I welcome him again and again into my heart in this Sacrament!

This morning we make the memorial of the Offering of Jesus and enter into that Self-Offering! It is through the sacrificial Lamb of God that we can make a perfect offering to the Father, our sinful bodies made clean by his body..our souls washed through his most precious blood.

There is a deep continuity between the sacrifice of Abraham, the offering of Jesus the Lamb of God, the Eucharistic Sacrifice and our own sacrificial living as Christians.  They all hang together. In a culture so full of self-interest what we are about this morning is powerfully counter-cultural. Here, in union with Christ, we are offering our souls and bodies to be a living sacrifice 

Sacrifice is at its heart about the voluntary choice about how we direct our lives - it is about love before it is about death.  It is about ‘joyous living’ just as sure as ‘God loves a cheerful giver’. It is not so much about forgoing what we desire but of binding our energies to what God desires. 

Here in the Eucharist day by day we’re drawn into such a school of sacrifice, into a love which touches every human concern upon the earth. We are caught up again and again into the loving sacrifice of Christ and its profound challenge to our self-interest. In offering our lives once again this morning we’re entrusting them afresh into the hands of God, renewing our covenant with him, so as to be employed to his praise and service in every situation we shall face today.

St Wilfrid & Presentation, Haywards Heath Trinity 3 (12B) 20.6.21

 

‘With Jesus in the boat we can smile through the storm as we go sailing home’ That Sunday School song summarises the message of today’s Gospel anticipated in the reading from Job alongside Paul’s chronicle of bearing tribulations as a Christian outlined in 2 Corinthians.

Having sung my song I could sit down but I won’t just yet since I want to share something of the challenge of the storms we face individually and as a church. This last week has been a hard one for many as plans have gone on hold again. The conviction that God is our ultimate security is a saving grace. If you imagine life as an often-perilous journey, the image of a boat represents such security. It's a rich image. The boat carries us through life’s shifting currents. We are moored, and we lose our moorings. We sail with and against the tides. The boat holds us secure above the chaos of life. Many headstones have boats inscribed to capture how faith carries us through the deep waters of death to the harbour of heaven where, to quote Thomas Aquinas, God ‘feasts his saints with the vision of himself, who is true light, the fulfilment of all desires, the joy that knows no ending, gladness unalloyed, and perfect bliss’.

Over the last year I have been thinking about the storms of church life. In the wake of my walk book, publication of which was delayed so it almost coincides with that of the Christian book, I wrote and published Elucidations. Thanks to the ongoing success of ‘Fifty Walks from Haywards Heath’ I’m able to offer it at half the price of that, £5 not £10, to get it into as many hands as I can. ‘Elucidations - light on Christian controversies’ has 25 essays on storms we sail through as a Christian community worldwide and across denominations. Besides the old chestnuts of church divisions, homosexuality, Mary, suffering, unanswered prayer and so on the book touches on the storm of COVID as well as the storm of child abuse. These are rocking the boat of the church worldwide, the second with its sickening evidence of the misuse of power. Such storms impact us all, especially the last two with the weight of regulations and the time and trouble needed to deal with them. 

The Church is God-given yet man-handled. As God’s never-ending family it has unique status tracing back twenty centuries across five continents. It is an instrument of salvation conveying Christ’s divinity, a safe boat for voyaging through the tumult of this world. It is also human in a deficient sense compared to her sinless Lord. With 24-7 media scrutiny people are more aware than ever of those failings. Trusting the Church, an essential for Christians, has been made a mockery in our age and an uphill struggle to elucidate. Despite clerical failings however scripture makes these invitations: ‘we appeal to you, brothers and sisters, to respect those who labour among you, and have charge of you in the Lord and admonish you; esteem them very highly in love because of their work’ 1 Thessalonians 5:12-13. ‘Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls and will give an account. Let them do this with joy and not sighing’ we read in Hebrews 13:17. In such words we are encouraged to distrust ourselves and look to those trained and authorised to engage us with the word of God, in the worship of the eucharist and moral wisdom of the church through the ages. The alternative is swimming outside the boat, so to speak. It’s going our own way without sermons, eucharists, moral guidance or formation in prayer all of which build divine life within us to the detriment of our sinful humanity. 

More than that, essential to being a Christian is being part of the community, the local body of Christ, in corporate engagement with scripture, eucharist, the age old expression of faith and morals, under pastoral oversight. Helping out at St Wilfrid’s and Presentation has been for me an enormous privilege building from my own community involvement in Bentwood seizing opportunities to share Christian faith both online and face to face in which ‘Elucidations’ is playing a part. 

‘A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But Jesus was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?" He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, "Peace! Be still!" Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. He said to them, "Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?"’ Mark 4:37-40

It has been an unsettling week with the extension of lockdown restrictions we hoped would be lifted tomorrow. Our Lord is the illumination, the one to elucidate, to shed light on our forward path. ‘Peace, be still…why are you afraid?’ The scripture today invites us to confess our anxieties and make fresh entrustment to God of our lives, our church, our town and our world. One expression of that entrusting is manning the boat, so to speak, under the captaining of Derek and Arthur as we await the answer to our prayers for a successor to Fr Ray. A new partnership of priests and people is on the horizon continuing teamwork stretching back over 150 years. 

When I served as diocesan mission and renewal adviser I recall how surveys of new church members evidenced them being drawn across spiritual and practical hurdles into two convictions: God is good and the Church is OK.  Business with God leads people so far but it needs complementing by a decision to trust the Church and give the institution the benefit of the doubt. As in my own experience, seeing the integrity, large-heartedness and holiness of church members can be pivotal in overcoming the stereotypes of Christians as narrow thinking. ‘As we work together with Christ’, Paul says to us this morning, ‘we urge you… not to accept the grace of God in vain. See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation… open wide your hearts!’ (2 Corinthians 6:1,2,13)

‘With Jesus in the boat we can smile through the storm as we go sailing home’.

St Wilfrid, Haywards Heath & Holy Trinity, Cuckfield Feast of St Richard of Chichester Wednesday 16th June 2021

 

In 2003 I remember being part of a group welcoming a touring icon of St Richard of Chichester at Haywards Heath station. It was our diocesan patron’s 750th anniversary and I was responsible for organising a great service in Worth Abbey as part of the Icon’s itinerary.

St Richard in his lifetime was seen as a representation of the living Lord Jesus. All our devotion to him is to the Christ in him. His prayer for us is Christ’s prayer. All prayer to the Saints is prayer to the Christ in them.

Through his teaching, miracles and charity St Richard shared in the newness of Jesus and brought the Lord’s mission and empowerment into the 13th century. His enduring legacy is that of the Lord himself as we invoke his prayers today.

The Lord Jesus has an unalterable newness as we engage with him day by day through scripture, sacrament and the saints as well as through prayer and the disciplines of Christian life and fellowship.

New every morning is the love our wakening and uprising prove. 

Yes you and I are in our conscious beings evidence of the love of God in Jesus Christ for through Christ all things were made including you and I.

We were made, as in the end of Richard’s famous prayer, to know, love and follow Jesus Christ.

In Jesus Christ we gain not ideas, doctrines, rules but Life - and here it is in our midst at the eucharist. Life that connects us with God and one another, with the church and with the cosmos! 

To be made new with Jesus we need to seek Jesus. We need to choose to empty our pride for this quest to be effective.

On the feast of our diocesan patron we are rightly called afresh to know, love and follow Jesus Christ in imitation of St Richard.

As our patron brought the light of the Lord to the 13th century we are called to bring the same to Sussex in the 21st century - and the main obstacle to this lies within us in our lack of repentance and faith.

Today’s a day to admit shortfallings and turn with all our hearts to the One who is author and perfecter of our faith and can make us new.  Let today’s eucharist draw forth fresh allegiance to Our Lord and be a loosening from more of our shortfallings.

As a near contemporary of St Richard expressed it – and I advise you to take this saying to heart - It is not what you are or have been that God looks at with his merciful eyes but what you would be. 

What would you be today? Would you be new with the unalterable newness of Jesus, filled with his Spirit? I hope you would, since that would give our diocesan community of faith what it most needs from you at the prayers of St Richard.

St Gabriel, Pimlico Trinity 2 (11B) 13.6.21

 

With the G7 summit we have been following thinking and resolutions about the future of the world linked to countering COVID by vaccination and addressing the environmental crisis. Sometimes people see Christianity apart from such forward thinking and that is sadly mistaken. The worship of Jesus Christ is inseparable from an aspiration that ‘the kingdom of this world become the kingdom of our God and of his Christ’, a scripture emblazoned behind the altar in Westminster Abbey, Revelation 11:15.

Today’s readings touch on the future - the future of the world, the church and each one of us as individuals chosen and loved by God. The Gospel reading from St Mark, Chapter 4 touches on the nature of God’s kingdom and can be read in relation to his ultimate plan for the world. The first reading from Ezekiel Chapter 17 illuminates God’s forward plan for the church and the second reading from 2 Corinthians 5 the best future he has for us as individuals. I wasn’t at the zoom meeting to look at these readings on Thursday but I picked up from Jack how people saw in them those three lines of thought: the key role of God in inspiring mission, that whether a Church thrives or not is up to him as also to the carrying of responsibilities by individuals like us called to execute his will in Pimlico in 2021.

Three readings then, and three aspects of mission, all of which we can engage with further after Mass over lunch. The process we are in at Heaven’s Gate is true to the Gospel where ‘using many parables … Jesus spoke the word to them, so far as they were capable of understanding… and he explained everything to his disciples when they were alone’. Lockdown has been a set back to us here but what we are about is set within a longer term process and that should help us gain heart.

'This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man throws seed on the land. Night and day, while he sleeps, when he is awake, the seed is sprouting and growing; how, he does not know. Of its own accord the land produces first the shoot, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. And when the crop is ready, he loses no time; he starts to reap because the harvest has come.' I love that image - ‘first the shoot, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear’. Though in terms of numbers we feel set back if there is sowing going on reaping will come about. My task as a visitor is to encourage our keeping faith in that big picture and using what resources we have to bless and go with what God is accomplishing in Churchill Gardens stage by stage.

When the kingdom of God is preached and lived the church grows.

Anne and I spent a couple of nights in Hastings last week. A century ago this was home to one of Christianity’s most forward thinkers, the French priest scientist Teilhard de Chardin who trained there because of the anti-clericalism of his day in France. As a geologist he climbed the cliffs. As a seminarian he trained as a priest. Teilhard said his first Mass in Our Lady, Star of the Sea Church at Hastings (bottom left). On Friday’s feast I walked under the cliffs and recalled Teilhard’s devotion to the Sacred Heart, to Christ who promised to ‘cast fire upon the earth’ (Luke 12:49) seeing the fire of divine love as parallel to the fiery lava in the heart of the earth. When Christ’s heart was pierced at his death stones were heard breaking in the earth beneath. This groaning of the earth anticipated the transformation and gathering together in Christ of the whole creation. When we lift up host and chalice at the eucharist, transformed material, Teilhard taught, we anticipate the transformation of all things starting in this room and rippling out through this estate, across London, the world and the cosmos! Rich stuff, which came back to me walking by the sea in Hastings. What we sow through prayer and the celebration of the eucharist is preparing a kingdom harvest, that is, it anticipates Jesus Christ being made the be all and end all. 

Our first reading from Ezekiel with its image of grafting has a bearing on how we see the Church in this bigger picture of God’s kingdom forming up in Christ. The Lord is ‘the one who stunts tall trees and makes the withered green’. This small gathering is green at different levels - we might like to explore that over lunch - maybe a green-ness that is naive, we hope not, or one that sees lockdown as a passing winter that will be followed by church growth. Ezekiel’s image of green fruitful branches that give shade is a precious one as we gather today in a place as needy as this estate. Lastly, making the withered green is a work of the Holy Spirit in the individuals associated with St Gabriel’s committed to Heaven’s Gate mission, which brings us to the second reading.

‘We are always full of confidence’ Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5 verse 6 going on to affirm how that confidence is linked to faith and not sight, to the hope of heaven more than to earthly appearances. As ‘Heaven’s Gate’ it is that sort of faith we are to instil but it must start with each one of us as individuals keeping their faith green. How do we do that? It is more than receiving the love of God in Jesus Christ which we will do shortly in Holy Communion. I mean, if you want to build that faith, that love, the recipe is to give it away. The only way to keep yourself in the love of Jesus is to be forever sharing it with others. Heaven’s Gate is made so by you and I being always ready to hand on the love of Christ. Remember the Magic Penny song sung for years at primary school - it never loses its force - ‘Love is something if you give it away, give it away, give it away. Love is something if you give it away, you end up having more. So be it in Churchill Gardens starting at Heaven’s Gate.

Today’s scripture has as much relevance to the future of the world as the G7 meeting but like that meeting it needs practical application through you and I in generous living woven together within this pioneer Christian community. The Lord who ‘makes the withered green’ is at work among us and in this Garden Estate as part of a greater work impacting the future of the world in which the kingdom of this world is giving way to ‘a kingdom of truth and life, a kingdom of holiness and grace, a kingdom of justice, love and peace’ (Preface of Christ the King).

St Wilfrid & Presentation, World Environment Sunday 5.6.21

‘I prayed with my heart, everything around me seemed delightful and marvellous. The trees, the grass, the birds, the earth, the air, the light seemed to be telling me that they existed for man’s sake, that they witnessed to the love of God for man, that everything proved the love of God for man, that all things prayed to God and sang his praise.’ This description of prayer captures the sense of God in all things central to Christianity. It comes from the Russian classic ‘Way of a Pilgrim’ which encourages repeating the Jesus Prayer ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner’ as aid to attaining the ability to ‘pray without ceasing’ (1 Thessalonians 5:17). As one who uses and has written about the Jesus Prayer I confirm its ability to make the one praying feel one with nature in their prayer. Given the enormity of the environmental crisis I find this sense of creation praising God in tension with its ‘groaning in labour pains’ awaiting ‘be[ing] set free from its bondage to decay [to] obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God’ (Romans 8:21-22). Both passages, ‘Way of a Pilgrim’ and Romans, imply a link between the agony and ecstasy of nature and human beings in their origin and destiny as understood in Christianity. Thinking through the ‘eco-friendliness’ of Christian faith uncovers a number of weighty things to be balanced one with another: heaven with earth, dominion with stewardship, physical with spiritual, individual with collective, economic with political, strategy with serendipity and belief with practice.

Ecology is the science of our home (Greek: ‘oikos’) seen as our physical environment. Christianity, believing ‘our homeland is in heaven’ (Philippians 3:20), lives with a balancing act here which explains some historical short-falls in eco-friendliness. Though heavenly-minded gratitude for all that is, as in the ‘Way of the Pilgrim’ example, keeps people in the present moment more aware of others and of nature, living assured of heaven with contempt for earth has an opposite sense. It is telling that, despite generations of theological reflection, it took until 2015 for a Pope to give teaching on the environment as in ‘Laudato Si’. In his encyclical Pope Francis is at pains to achieve the rebalancing of human dominion and stewardship of earth taught in Genesis: ‘The harmony between the Creator, humanity and creation as a whole was disrupted by our presuming to take the place of God and refusing to acknowledge our creaturely limitations. This in turn distorted our mandate to “have dominion” over the earth (cf Gen 1:28), to “till it and keep it” (Gen 2:15). As a result, the originally harmonious relationship between human beings and nature became conflictual (cf Gen 3:17-19 linked to the sequel to this Sunday’s first reading). The insight Christianity brings to human origins and shortfalls can help the educational task facing the international community faced with damage that affects every living organism through the global environmental crisis. Holding belief in the dignity of human beings as bearers of God’s image goes hand in hand with belief in their falling well short of that dignity through sin. If dominion were not more comfortable to us than the selfless service of keeping the earth, that damage would have been lessened.

Is Christianity environment friendly? Inasmuch as it balances reverence for both physical and spiritual elements in life. Spillage of oil, leaking of chemicals into our rivers, acid rain, deforestation and burning off fossil fuels are an irreverent assault upon the physical environment. Catholic and Orthodox traditions have developed sacramental understanding of the physical world counter to this irreverence, seeing the spiritual conveyed through physical nature. Whilst not denying the immediacy of the Holy Spirit held in Evangelical and Pentecostal traditions they see the extending of the incarnation of God in Christ into the sacraments. Spiritual grace is given through the physical order as in the water of baptism, bread and wine at the eucharist, oil in anointing and through the action of laying on hands. As Pope Francis writes: ‘It is in the Eucharist that all that has been created finds its greatest exaltation. Grace, which tends to manifest itself tangibly, found unsurpassable expression when God himself became man and gave himself as food for his creatures. The Lord, in the culmination of the mystery of the Incarnation, chose to reach our intimate depths through a fragment of matter. He comes not from above, but from within, he comes that we might find him in this world of ours… the Eucharist is also a source of light and motivation for our concerns for the environment, directing us to be stewards of all creation’.

In the understanding of the Eucharist across Christian traditions there is a potentially eco-friendly balancing of individual, collective and global. ‘Though we are many, we are one body, because we all share in one bread’ (1 Corinthians 10:17). ‘The bread that I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh’ (John 6:51b). With other religions and movements Christianity represents people in solidarity committed to the common good beyond the aspirations and actions of individual followers. The common good of the world is also served by farming, fishing, industry, technology, the means of communication, governments and all who contribute to the creation and distribution of wealth. Having an effective say about the means of wealth production, curbing damage to the environment in its process and just distribution of that wealth goes beyonds individuals. It is achieved by collective aspirations especially governments. The future of the environment depends on such balancing of economics and politics in service of the common good where Christian witness stands alongside others in championing those on the margins. 

My own career has seen involvement with the indigenous people or Amerindians of Guyana, South America training priests for the vast interior of that beautiful land which has its heavily populated north coast on the Caribbean Sea. Over the years I have seen the indigenous people of Guyana’s interior grow in confidence as a minority group through struggles with mining and logging companies hard to police in a vast forest land. The Church has helped and continues to help give voice to such minorities who, especially in the Amazon basin, stand on the front line of rainforest devastation with its human consequences. 

In solidarity with such groups and many others the Chair of the Anglican Communion Environmental Network made the following statement on the environment: ‘The Christian faith is certainly about personal salvation. But it is more than that: Christianity is first and foremost a concern for the whole of the created order - biodiversity and business; politics and pollution; rivers, religion and rainforests. The coming of Jesus brought everything of God into the sphere of time and space, and everything of time and space into the sphere of God. All things meet together in Him: Jesus is the point of reconciliation. Therefore, if Christians believe in Jesus they must recognise that concern for climate change is not an optional extra but a core matter of faith.

Christianity eco-friendly? In this question there is a weighing of a big cause alongside the world’s biggest problem and how they connect. We have considered balancing heaven with earth, dominion with stewardship, physical with spiritual, individual with collective and economic with political. From our initial list of weighty things in need of balance we have left balancing strategy with serendipity and the obvious conclusion of tipping belief into practice in serving the environment. Serendipity, openness to all contained in the present moment, thrills from the opening quotation about an individual praying the Jesus prayer in solidarity with ‘the trees, the grass, the birds, the earth, the air, the light’. Strategy has an eye to Christians planning corporately and with others to address the environmental crisis. This needs balancing by individuals laying hold of the world in serendipity, moment by moment, with humility and gratitude before God.  Though church documents contribute to forming strategies for environmental renewal to be acted upon, the future shape of the world relies on individuals recovering humble living as addressed in a powerful paragraph from Laudato Si’ with which I conclude my homily:

“‘The external deserts in the world are growing, because the internal deserts have become so vast’. For this reason, the ecological crisis is also a summons to profound interior conversion… whereby the effects of encounter with Jesus Christ become evident in [a Christian’s] relationship with the world around… gratitude and graciousness, a recognition that the world is God’s loving gift, and that we are called quietly to imitate his generosity in self-sacrifice and good works… the conviction that “less is more”... marked by moderation and the capacity to be happy with a little’.