“What are we waiting for?”

Karen Sloan 30/01/2022

Readings - 1 Corinthians 13:1-13, Luke 4:21-30

I’ve had an interesting week this week.  I have been doing a few days of pastoral care at RPH, but on Monday I was sent home after having to have a Covid test.  Now before you panic, it was negative, of course, but in the hospital I have been seeing patients who are very very sick and you suddenly become paranoid with the slightest of sore throats, in this case brought on by living in air conditioning for weeks.

Anyway I tell you this because of what happened when I was at home, taking it easy.  I watched the movie, “Don’t look up”, which has been getting lots of publicity lately.

The movie is an Incredible examination of our inability to see what is right in front of us, through sheer hubris and our attachments to possessions and our propensity for false news and our inability to see that science, real science has its vital role to play in our understanding of the world.  Its satire, funny in that dark sort of way and very, very scary. While it could apply to climate change, and probably it’s a metaphor for it,  it actually focusses on a comet, which 2 scientists discover is huge and heading for earth.  But no one listens, until it’s too late.   The name of the film comes when the comet becomes visible in the sky, and the scientists call for people to look up and see it for themselves.  Unfortunately another movement is spawned, the don’t look up movement.  I probably don’t have to say anything more about that.  It has an amazing ending, which I don’t want to spoil, but maybe it shows us what is lacking for so many of us, community, gratitude, and love. the love that is heard in the famous reading from Paul. A love of commitment and solidarity.

The movie and it’s message made me think about the reading today.  We spoke last week, about Jesus calling his listeners in Nazareth to celebrate a jubilee year every day, where debts are cancelled, slaves and prisoners released and property returned to its original family.  Wealth that had been accumulated would be redistributed.  A different way of living and being in the world.

But  those who knew him well, and who heard him weren’t all that interested. Why, because he was asking them to come out of their comfort zones, out of well-oiled lives, for they were not the poor or marginalized.  Maybe they realized his words were quite sharp, that the only people who listened to previous prophets , like Elijah and Elisha, were those who didn’t have anything to lose, widows and lepers, and outsiders.  Rather than expecting Jesus to do a miracle, the miracle would be that everyone participated, everyone is included.  Everyone had a role to play.  In Jesus confrontation he quotes a bit of folk wisdom, ‘No prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown”. And so it turns out. The congregation changes into a furious lynch mob from which Jesus narrowly escapes. You can hear them now, isn’t this Mary and Joseph’s son, who does he think he is!!!

Now Jesus was not an environmentalist, because in his time the world and it’s population was so much smaller.

And he didn’t have to face the existential threat of climate change that we are having to.  Yet the sentiments expressed in this reading are the sentiments expressed in the movie.  Those that have the most to lose will dilly dally, or worse be confrontational and out and out lie, to protect what they think they love. And those who are the poorest, those without support, those without choices, they are the ones who will suffer the greatest.  But in the end we know that all will suffer.

Why, because we are all connected.  To each other, to God and to the all of creation.

So let’s celebrate our home, our only home, earth, and seek to protect her, because we find God there, just as we find God in us.

And the modern church, the church of the world, has a significant role to play.

I opened with some beautiful music, we have had some beautiful prayers, about the natural world and our place in it, but we have to open our hearts to its call. And be prepared to give some things up.

Because, most of the time we will only protect what we love, and our understanding of God influences what we will love.

God can be limited, by an understanding that is only about us, only about our family, only about our church.  Or about believing in Jesus and going to heaven.

Or God can be found as Michael Morwood says within each of us, a universal presence, never absent, at work at all times, in all places, in all peoples, all through human history and all through this amazing and mind-boggling universe.  In this scenario God is the divine mystery urging each one of us to connect with one another in love. There is no separation between us and God, between us and another or with the whole of creation. This separation is artificial and as Einstein put it, an optical illusion.  The psalmist knew it and speaks beautifully about it. So does the  poet. So does the prophets, so does Jesus.

Charles Birch, a theologian and scientist, has written,

“The universe is a happening of happenings.  Stop the happenings and the universe collapses.  God is necessary for the world.  God is not the world and the world is not God.  God is not before all creation but with all creation.  The world includes God and God perfects the world.  There is no world apart from God.” 

Accepting this universal story means we see our relationship with the rest of creation in a totally different inclusive way.  God is not a magical figure intervening at regular intervals in order that humans can somehow have it easy.  No, God is far, far bigger than that. This God can be called many things, creator, holy one, mystery, love, light, spirit, or even the incomprehensible holy mystery.  Whatever the name it calls us into relationship with each other and the world. The whole world.

 So, can we make a difference to our world, which is slowly dying.

Yes, we can.

But it requires seeing things as they really are. Not looking down but looking up and around.

And seeing our faith in a radical new way. As Thomas Berry suggests in the book, “The Christian future and the fate of the earth,” “the 21st century church which has lost a sense of its basic purpose in these past centuries, could restore its efficacy and extend its influence over human affairs.  The church could be a powerful force in bringing about the healing of the distraught earth.”  The church could provide a place of awe and wonder and but also responsibility and care.

Because it will involve not just ecological sustainability but a search for justice as well.  Remember Jesus the man, standing in the synagogue in Nazareth.  We have to become eco-centered, or creation centered, or cosmos centered rather than human centered, which means challenging a human centered approach to ethics, economics, religion and culture.  

David Suzuki, a leading environmentalist and scientist,  suggests  that to go on and on expecting that we can grow forever, produce and consume forever is ridiculous without there being major consequences.   Already we are suffering not just a global environmental crisis but a crisis of inequality and social upheaval. Because as the world has got cleverer and human achievements more advanced, not everyone benefits.  The rich get richer and the poor poorer.  We have seen that during the pandemic, where richer countries have plenty of vaccine, while many poorer countries have very little.  And for those who are rich, more possessions and money do not necessarily make each person happy or a society well balanced or an earth sustainable. The need for more also is likely to destroy us.

Again sounds a bit like Jesus, no wonder those that have followed in his footsteps, people like Martin Luther King, Gandhi and Desmond Tutu have been leaders in the justice and peace movements, .  While Jesus didn’t know much about global warming he knew a lot about the effect of money and power on those who have it and those that don’t.   We cannot follow God and money.  Solutions to environmental issues, and particularly climate change must be designed with the needs of the poor in mind.

So, in the end we are called to be involved in a transformation to a new way of living that includes all in the banquet of life in a sustainable, supportive way.  A transformation that Jesus called for in his teachings. That even in his day people had trouble accepting as being the way, of life and love and freedom.

This way includes rich and poor, black and white, human and non-human alike.  It will involve seeing ourselves as part of creation, and as part of the answer to her problems.  It will require us to see that we have a special role to play.  Not a special place, but a special role, as co-creators to life.  We as humanity have now come to a point where we can help choose the future of God’s evolving creation.   But we have to shed some religious baggage along the way. For the God who claims us is also the God of everything else.

As Val Webb wrote -

The sea of divine attention

Laps my soul,

But not only mine.

Others feel its stroking,

On the other side of the ocean,

By sharing these waters,

The world is connected.

And this is where the church needs to be.   Thomas Berry calls ecological restoration the great work of our time.  It is time for the churches to get on with that work – and in ways that are visionary, adventuresome, prophetic, grace filed, inviting and celebratory of creation.  We need to integrate ecology, economics and faith, developing a sustainable river of life for all. 

Otherwise our ending may be the ending not just of us, but of everything.

Similar to the movie, which I recommend you see.

Amen