Missing the Mark in Mission or Living in Hope - #SeasonofCreation2020
You can listen to this sermon here
Gate Pa – 2020
24th Sunday in Ordinary Time in Year A and 2nd Sunday in Season of Creation
Readings:
Psalm Psalm 139: 1, 7-11
First Reading: Exodus 14:19-31
Second Reading: Romans 5: 12-17
Gospel: Matthew 18:21-35
What I want to say:
Explore some of the ways that climate change is affecting the forests and land using Barbara Rossing
Offer hope
What I want to happen:
This election year
- How will these issues affect how we vote
- What we vote for
What ways can we live to repair our damaged relationship with creation and in reverence of God’s gift
What ways can we live hope
The Sermon
1. Introduction:
Said last week,
we have joined churches all over the world
- Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Lutheran and many other denominations
annual ecumenical world-wide Season of Creation
- celebration of prayer and action to protect our common home.
This year with the theme of Year Jubilee
- Leviticus 25 – every 50 years
o Debts forgiven
o Slaves freed
o Land restored
- Essentially restart button on our technology when starts not working properly
- Usually fix it by restarting
- Same true Leviticus
- We are saying – same is true today
2. Marks of Mission
One important aspects of Season of Creation is that it reminds us of the importance of caring for creation as part of our response to God.
Too often we see it as an added extra
-> If we have time and energy left once we have done the important things
- Heard that said in conferences
Once gifts of being Anglican is our agreed understanding of mission,
As defined by the Anglican Consultative Council – describe
The Five Marks of Mission:
The mission of the Church is the mission of Christ
1. To proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom
2. To teach, baptise and nurture new believers
3. To respond to human need by loving service
4. To transform unjust structures of society, to challenge violence of every kind and pursue peace and reconciliation
5. To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation, and sustain and renew the life of the earth
-> usually see these as 5 independent “marks” that we can pick and choose from
- and that we can place in order of importance
-> first 3 often seen as the important aspects of mission
- next two as ones only left wing crazies have time for
-> are a number of people including myself who see these as 5 threads of one rope
Together all 5 make up mission of God
Leave any of them out we are not involved in mission of God
Season of Creation reminds us of that
Invites us into much fuller understanding of our response to God’s love
Unless each of these marks are present,
- we are not involved in mission of God
Caring for integrity of creation is not added extra
But core part of who we are and what we do
3. Climate Change
Climate change has put greater sense of urgency around this Season
- especially last 2 or 3,
o release of IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C
We have less than 10 years to halve our Green House Gas emissions
30 years to reduce them to preindustrial revolution levels
Even that is not enough
Also need find ways to remove CO2 out atmosphere
Already too late
Wildfires in USA now and in Australia end last year earlier this year show
- increasing storm strength and consequent damage brothers and sister in Pacific
- increasing droughts around world and here
these effort will reduce devastating effects of climate change
-> 100’s millions still badly affected
Season of Creation offers a chance to reflect on our place on this planet
And to take the learnings from this time and to reduce their carbon footprint
Remember that this is central to our response to God in living gospel
4. These of Land and Forest
Each week during this season - theme
Last week was forests
- hold so much soils on which our life depends
- With seas and oceans act as lungs of this world
o Cleaning air of pollutants and pumping oxygen out in it’s place
This week is land
When astronauts first went into space , astounded at beauty of this planet
Astronaut Michael Collins – (American astronaut who flew the Apollo 11 command module Columbia around the Moon while his crewmates, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, made the first crewed landing on the surface)
“I remember so vividly what I saw when I looked back at my fragile home – a glistening, inviting beacon, delicate blue and white, a tiny outpost suspended in the black infinity. Earth is to be treasured and nurtured, something precious that must endure.”
More recently Commander Ellen Collins, (first women to lead US Space Shuttle mission)
Described seeing Madagascar – “we saw deforestation…The rivers and streams that normally would be a bluish-grey color are now brown from erosion of soil flowing onto the ocean”
- Story repeated around the world
- Highlighted over last year by fires in Amazon started by commercial farming interests
- Storm damage done places like Solomon Islands
Devastating effects on both land and sea.
IPCC this year released special report on land use and climate change
- Land provides the principal basis for human livelihoods and well-being
o including the supply of food,
o freshwater and multiple other ecosystem services,
o as well as biodiversity.
- Human use directly affects more than 70% (likely 69–76%) of the global, ice-free land surface (high confidence).
- Land also plays an important role in the climate system.
- Note that since the pre-industrial period, the land surface air temperature has risen nearly twice as much as the global average temperature (high confidence).
- Climate change, including increases in frequency and intensity of extremes, has adversely impacted food security and terrestrial ecosystems as well as contributed to desertification and land degradation in many regions.
Go on to say that
- Climate change creates additional stresses on land, exacerbating existing risks to livelihoods, biodiversity, human and ecosystem health, infrastructure, and food systems (high confidence).
o COVID-19 is example of consequences of that.
We can see these issues here in New Zealand
- Some farmers focussed on short term economic gain and refusing change farming methods to more long term sustainable ways
- Little care for long term water quality
- Buying good farmland to grow pines to offset carbon emission
o Not great food systems, long term livelihoods, biodiversity, and ecosystem health
5. How to respond
How do we respond to all that?
Natural response to all this is one hopelessness and despair
- For many that it is too big and there in nothing I can do
- Do nothing and hope for best.
Importance of the Season of Creation is to remind us that as Followers of Christ we are invited to another way
Firstly as we offer worship to God who first loves us
We are invited to also treat God’s gift of our common home with reverence and care
- As set out in Genesis, all scripture
Our lives then not driven by fear of what future might hold if we fail to act
- But as part of our response to God, and God’s free gift of this good world
Whether or not climate change is a thing,
- We would still be invited to live in such a way that we love God by loving our neighbour, creation, as we love ourselves
Secondly
Reminded of underlying theme of scripture
- God working to restore humanity and renew creation
- Fulfilled in Jesus
- Teaches and shows us what this restoration and renewal looks like
- Called reign of reign God/Kingdom of heaven
Return to when Jesus sat on mount invited them and us
To imagine another world
a world where the most important people are:
the poor in spirit,
those who mourn,
the meek,
those who hunger and thirst for God’s justice,
the pure in heart,
the merciful,
the peacemakers,
those who are persecuted for the sake of God’s justice,
he invites us to be liberated from our known world
into the kingdom of heaven
- Reign of God
This is a world where all flourish
Where the common good, including good of all creation, is held as paramount
A world where the needs of the poor are placed first
Where ALL, including all plants and animals, are treated with honour and respect
And given what they need to thrive
Thirdly we are to respond with hope
Jim Wallis - “Hope is believing in spite of the evidence, and then watching the evidence change.”
Knowing that we provide an example to others
Joining others who are responding for all sorts of reasons
Looking for and celebrating stories of all those acting to safeguard the integrity of creation all around the world
- indigenous people offering their insight from a perspective that is much closer to a biblical perspective
- all those around world who are working at new energy forms that do not have greenhouse gas emissions
- developing new ways of farming that are economical and sustainable
- those working on ways for industries that are high polluters and emitters to capture those emissions and make money of them
- Ways pulling carbon dioxide out air and either sequestering it into the soil, or deep into the sea
6. Conclusion
- Invite you to use this time to take stock
- As we might in lent
- Reflect on how we live giving thanks to God for and in reverence of creation
- How we join living the reign of God in which all might thrive
- How we live in hope
This election year
How will these issues affect how we vote?
What we vote for and who we vote for?
We might need to take some time to think about that
Finish with words from Barbara Rossing quoted in pew sheet
“God’s love for creation in Genesis 1 invites us to explore complex ethical questions, to listen to one another, and to take bold, prophetic action to care for the whole of creation as our neighbor. Creation is endangered by human sin, as astronauts are seeing. “How good!” expresses God’s love for each element of creation. That love that sees the earth in all its brokenness and beauty is the same love the compels us to act today.” [1]
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