Imagining, Praying for and Creating

 Gate Pa – Year B – 26^th Sunday of Ordinary Time - Season of Creation 4

26^h 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.

Increasingly around the world Anglican churches are talking about the role of colonialism in creating our current crisis. British colonialism was built on the assertion that the Englishman was superior to all others – especially to non-white people. That attitude is alive and well today.

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.