An Invitation to Pray For the Oikos of God

The notes for this sermon can be found here 

Gate Pa – Year B 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Season of Creation One
Readings:
Psalm                          Psalm 125     
First Reading:              Prov 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23           
Second Reading:        James 2:1-10, 11-13, 14-17   
Gospel:                         Mark 7:24-37               
What I want to say:
I want to introduce this year’s theme for the season of creation, - A home for all? Renewing the Oikos of God – joining worldwide church in responding to God’s invitation to work together to renew our world as an interconnected and interdependent global beloved community.
This week invite us to join in praying, using the Season of Creation Prayer (finish sermon with)
What I want to happen:
People to pray each day for our world

The Sermon

1. Introduction

Watch the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9YPN84q3S8&t=9

2. Our World is hurting

Our world is hurting. We can see that in news each day. In the last week alone, in USA there have been huge wildfires on the West Coast, while on the East Coast Hurricane Ida crashed into New Orleans and then up the coast causing loss of life and massive damage. This is happening around the world. In Europe, Asia, Africa. Here in the Pacific.

Our home is imperilled. Humanity’s greed, exploitation of, disrespect for, and disconnection from creation has resulted in climate change, biodiversity loss and life-threatening pollution. It would be easy to be overwhelmed and feel paralyzed with fear.  The challenge is how to respond from our faith.  We do not need more fear. What is needed is an urgent reframing of our relationship with God’s gift of creation and for people to act on this.  As followers of Christ we have much to offer.

3. Season of Creation

For last 2 years we have joined our fellow Christians from all denominations around the world in the annual Season of Creation. Every day should really be a season of creation. But from September 1 to October 4, the day we remember St. Francis of Assisi, we are given this opportunity to pay attention to our relationship with creation and all who share this world with us, and to hear the invitation anew to join God’s creative work renewing God’s gift, our common home.

This year the theme is “A home for all? Renewing the Oikos of God”.

The central image for this year is Abraham and Sarah’s tent. Taken from the story in Genesis 18, this is when they welcome and offer hospitality to the three strangers, who turn out to be angels. The tent is open on all sides and offers welcome, shelter, refuge, and safety to all. It invites us to consider this world as God’s tent, and to reflect on who is excluded in our world today, including people and creatures. And it invites us to prayerfully consider how we might live do that all creatures and people who share our common home or oikos might have a place.

4. Oikos

The word “oikos” is an interesting word. Oikos refers to three related but distinct concepts: the family, the family's property, and the house. God’s Oikos includes all three concepts. It is about God’s family and household, and God’s house.

God’s household includes each and every beloved creature that God created. All life plays their own distinctive role. As part of God’s household, they are equally loved by the creator and are equally important.

God’s house is the created world we all share.  In the creation stories of Genesis, God creates all that is, and places all under one dome – the oikos or House of God. In ‘Laudato Si’ Pope Francis calls this our ‘common home’.

The Oikos of God then refers to both God’s gift of this world, our common home, and to ALL life that belongs to God’s household, not just human life.  

But wait there is more

Oikos is the root of the word oikoumene, or ecumenical, which describes how we as Christians stand and work together as part of God’s oikos. It is about the kind of relationships that sustain our common life.

Oikos is also the root word of three words that are about relationships.

Oikoumene, ecumenical is also about all humanity sharing our common home with each other, and all life – even viruses. Again, this is about the kind of relationships that sustain our common life.

Ecology (oikologia) also has its root in oikos. Ecology describes the relationships between animals, plants, non-sentient organisms, and minerals that each play a vital role in maintaining the balance of this beloved community. Each creature is important and contributes to the health and resilience of the biodiverse ecosystem in which it lives. Humans belong in the right relationship within this Earth community. We are made from the same stuff of the Earth and are cared for by our co-creatures and the land.

Economy (oikonomia) also has its roots in oikos. Too often we limit this to being just about money. But it is also about the relationships between people; and the kind of relationship between us and God’s creation that shape our use. As the psalmist remind us this week, “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it”. We are imbedded in God’s oikos, and life-giving economies pay attention to humanity’s relationship with the rest of creation. How we grow food, use energy sources, create and produce, build, transport, and discard affects the resilience of planetary systems, and the capacity of the Earth to heal itself and sustain life. And this includes so many people whose lives are being destroyed both by production methods, but also by land use, pollution, and climate change.

Abraham and Sarah’s tent was tent is open on all sides. It offers an image of life-giving relationships with all. It offers an image of welcome, shelter, refuge, and safety for all. It offers an image of life sustaining relationships among all who share our common home as members of God’s oikos

5. James

For the next few weeks, we will be listening to the Letter from James. This letter is about lived faith. It was an invitation to live in such way that his brothers and sisters, wherever they were in the world, would bring healing and health to their communities. This week James is calling attention to the ways his hearers, including us, we live out our faith, especially towards the most vulnerable. To use the metaphor of the tent, He is pointing out that the sides of the tent have been rolled down and we are pretending we lived isolated. What relationships do we need to repair? It is time to roll them back up again and to see how our lives affect others around the world, and all our borhters and sisters in our common home.

In the theme for the week, I quoted Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, from his address to the international faith leaders on 4th February 2021. He concludes his address,

“To live out my Christian faith is to follow Jesus. That must include standing alongside the most vulnerable and marginalised on the frontlines of the climate emergency. As faith communities, my prayer is that we might stand together, emissaries of hope and love, calling for God’s justice and peace upon this precious world. Now is the time for action.”

So, for the rest of this Season, I invite to you to prayerfully consider how we might offer a place for all creatures and people who share our common home or oikos by praying this prayer each day, written for this Season of creation.

6. Invitation to pray -Season of Creation 2021 Prayer

Creator of All,

We are grateful that from your communion of love you created our planet to be a home for all. By your Holy Wisdom you made the Earth to bring forth a diversity of living beings that filled the soil, water, and air. Each part of creation praises you in their being, and cares for one another from our place in the web of life.

With the Psalmist, we sing your praise that in your house “even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young.” We remember that you call human beings to keep your garden in ways that honour the dignity of each creature and conserve their place in the abundance of life on Earth.

But we know that our will to power pushes the planet beyond her limits. Our consumption is out of harmony and rhythm with Earth’s capacity to heal herself. Habitats are left barren or lost. Species are lost and systems fail. Where reefs and burrows, mountaintops and ocean deeps once teemed with life and relationships, wet and dry deserts lie empty, as if uncreated. Human families are displaced by insecurity and conflict, migrating in search of peace. Animals flee fires, deforestation, and famine, wandering in search of a new place to find a home to lay their young and live.

In this Season of Creation, we pray that the breath of your creative Word would move our hearts, as in the waters of our birth and baptism. Give us faith to follow Christ to our just place in the beloved community. Enlighten us with the grace to respond to your covenant and call to care for our common home. In our tilling and keeping, gladden our hearts to know that we participate with your Holy Spirit to renew the face of your Earth, and safeguard a home for all.

In the name of the One who came to proclaim good news to all creation, Jesus Christ. Amen.