Imagining, Praying for and Creating
Gate Pa – Year B – 26th
Sunday of Ordinary Time - Season of Creation 4
26h September 2021
Readings:
Hebrew Scripture: Esther
7:1-6, 9-10; 9: 20-22
Psalm: 124
Epistle: James 5: 13-20
Gospel: Mark
9: 38-50
What I want to say:
In this Season of Creation to
explore the need to imagination our relationship with and place in creation –
our common home; and courage to live that out. Esther offers an example of what
reimagining your place looks like, the risks and the rewards – a story still
celebrated by Jews today at Purim. Esther also offers a chance to honestly
reflect on where we are in our current plight.
In this last reading from the
letter from James we are reminded that the basis for living our faith is prayer
– all kinds of prayer, from lament for this world, confession for our role in
climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution, pandemics and other diseases, war,
violence, poverty, etc…
Mark reminds us that God
works though many people – even though who offer us a class of water. We are
not alone in this work of reimagination.
This week we are invited to
both pray and act, for creation, for all who work to change our relationship,
for all those working at the political and scientific level, for business
leaders and farmers and those working to change how we work, and for young
people who continue to highlight the urgency of this issue in the face of reluctance
and the forces of business as usual.
What I want to happen:
To pray and act for God’s
oikos, our common home.
The Sermon
1. Introduction: Imagination
At the end of last week I was
having a conversation about why I offer the talks about the Battle of Gate Pa to
various groups. I talked about the need to change the stories we use to
describe the beginnings of the relationship between Māori, the tangata whenua,
and Europeans, particularly settlers. Often we talk about Māori being ignorant warmongering
savages, who we saved from them selves by European settlement which brought
peace, education and economic advance. There are a number of problems with that
story. It ignores the wars that Europeans fought amongst themselves in Europe (Crimean
War, Franco Prussian War), wars that they started or fought in elsewhere to
expand or cement their colonial endeavours – which includes WWI. And it ignores
the desire by Māori for education and economic advancement on their own terms,
and the role missionaries played in providing that. Before settlers arrived in Tauranga in the significant
numbers, Māori were already more educated than the average European settler
arriving here. They were already using European technology to farm and were exporting
their produce on the world market. European settlement did not bring peace and
education and economic benefit. It brought violence, land loss and
deprivation.
That story is retold around
the world. The cost to indigenous people of European colonialism has been
catastrophic in places. Museum African America History.
So we need to tell different
stories of our past to offer a different way of understanding our relationship
with each other and what the future might hold. And we desperately need
imagination in how we construct that.
That is a heavy and slightly
controversial way to start. But wait, there is more.
2.
Climate
Change and Colonialism.
European colonialism came
with an assumption of the right, even the need, for Europe to dominate, rule
and use all other people, and creation. It saw all else; people, animals,
plants, minerals, this world that we share, simply as a resource to be used for
the benefit of the colonial masters. It used the Genesis 1 command to have
dominion over all creation to justify treating God’s gift as only a source of
raw materials and a place to dump waste. I’ve listened to church leaders talk
about environmental needs playing second fiddle to economic requirements. We
still hear that today. If you lose your job blame the environmentalist! Today
colonialism has been replaced with globalisation. But the assumptions are largely
the same. We have lost our sense of
connection with this world. What happened to this world was of no importance. Our
economic advancement was all that mattered. The stories we have told that shape
our relationship with this world have lost any sense of our belonging to the
web of life or being dependant on that web for our own health. The result is
climate change, biodiversity loss and life-threatening pollution. The result is
the current pandemic we are living though. The result is drought, huge
wildfires, massive storms and flooding.
It is time to change how we
talk about our relationship with this world. And for that we need God given
imagination. We need to listen to those who have never lost this sense of
connection with creation, particularly to indigenous people here in the Pacific
and around the world. And we need to re-engage with the biblical picture of
humanity being created in the image of the creating and lifegiving God to
continue the work of creating and caring for this world, God’s gift, our common
home. And that requires reading scripture in some ways we might not be used to.
3.
Esther
So, some quick comments about
our texts.
Esther is an amazing story.
Of a young Jewish woman taken to be a wife for the Persian King. In the face of the extermination of her
people, she must reimagine her place – from object of desire with no voice, to
strong women (like that described last week in Proverbs) who has been placed in
the palace for such a time as this. She takes an enormous risk in entering the king’s
presence without being summoned. She shows wisdom and imagination with Mordecai’s
help to create a way she can tell the king what his chief advisor/prime
minister, Haman, has planned, and to turn the tables and redeem her people.
That courage, wisdom and compassion is still celebrated today in the festival
of Purim.
Esther offers us a model of
the kind of courage, wisdom and imagination needed today.
She also offers a chance to
honestly reflect on where we are in our current plight – our role in our
current story.
Are we one of Haman’s supporters
– working for death and destruction.
Are we like the King – duped to
begin with but then able to see the light?
Are we like the many Persians
in the court who could see what was happening but unable to imagine what could
be done?
Are we like those who quietly
supported the young Esther – like Harbona, one of the eunuchs in attendance on
the king?
Or are we like the unseen Jews
in this story who were oblivious to the peril they were in, or knew and felt
powerless to change anything?
4.
James and
Prayer
This is our last reading from
James. As I said 5 weeks ago for James theology is not to be thought about but
lived out. True holiness is not the absence of bad things, but living God’s compassion,
loving God, and neighbour. He wrote this
letter as 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 he finishes his letter with an encouragement to not only act but to pray.
Not just to pray for, but to lament, confess, praise, and pray prayers of intercession
and for healing.
Prayer is about being honest
with God. Being honest includes praising God for the gift of this world and it’s
wonder, expressing our joy and delight in being part of this marvellous web of
life, created in the image of the creating and life-giving God. But it also
includes lamenting what is happening in this world and our feelings of powerlessness
and maybe hopelessness
It includes confessing the
ways we have and continue to contribute to what is happening to our common home
through our thoughts and actions, what we have done and what we have not done.
And it includes prayers for
healing, for ourselves, for all those parts of creation - human and non-human -
suffering the effects of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution.
Finally, in includes praying that
creation might thrive. Praying for all those who have the power to make a
difference- political and business
leaders, and all those who are gathering for the UN conferences this year on biodiversity
loss and climate change. Praying for all those advocacy groups working to both
raise our awareness and acting to bring change, for all those working at the
political and scientific level, for business leaders and farmers and those
working to change how we work and live. It includes praying for all those who
are resisting change, either because they can’t imagine living another way, or because
of vested interests. And lastly we might pray for young people who continue to
highlight the urgency of this issue in the face of reluctance and the forces of
business as usual.
5.
Conclusion
So let us know that God is at
work among all these people. God is seeking change. And we have a role to play
in all this. WE have a role to help reimagine our relationship with this world
and providing the ground for why we need to change. And we have a role praying
and acting, with people of faith around the world helping to change the way we
describe our relationship with this world. Helping to see this world as God’s
gift to be treasures and healed so that ALL may thrive.
Finish with this music written
and performed for churches as we pray for the upcoming COP 26 conference.
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