Living Simply for Creation
You can listen to this sermon here
Psalm Psalm: 139:1-6, 13-18
Second Reading Philemon 1-21
Use the Lambeth Call on Environment and Sustainable Development to introduce this year’s Season of Creation. Explore the burning bush logo and introduce some thoughts around living simply. Finish with listening to our local eco system and the TSSF video
What I want to happen:
People to reflect on what stops us taking Climate Change more seriously
The Sermon
1.
Lambeth
One of the reasons I was away was to attend a
couple of things happening around the edge of Lambeth Bishops in Canterbury in
the UK. They were very much on the edge. Security was tight and I was allowed
in once to meet the bishop protectors from around the world for all of our Franciscan
orders.
This year’s conference was organised around a series
of “calls”. They are published in one booklet and are freely available online on
the Lambeth website.
- Mission and evangelism
- Safe church
- Anglican identity
- Reconciliation
- Human dignity
- Environment and sustainable development
- Christian unity
- Inter faith relations
- Discipleship
- Science and Faith
Each day, after morning prayer and a bible
study, the bishops would spend part or all of the day focussed on one on these
calls. Along with input from variety people they acted as conversation starters
for the bishops to discuss in small groups.
The same small groups they had been meeting on
zoom during the months leading up to the conference. It was a chance to listen
to each other and to deepen the “bonds of affection”, rather than try to convince
each other of the rightness of their position.
The Call on Environment and Sustainable
Development lays out the existential threat posed by climate change,
biodiversity loss and pollution and calls on the bishops, and us all to respond
to this crisis.
- In over 160 countries
- Among those who involved in the life of the Anglican communion are
o Some of the poorest and most affected by climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution, and who have been increasingly impoverished over the last few years. These are people whose voices are not heard or are silenced.
o Groups of indigenous people around the world whose relationship with God’s world is different from those in the West. They have much to teach us about how to live in ways that all people and all creation can thrive. Indigenous groups are again among those whose voices are not heard or are silenced.
o People who can help the voice of those who are often silenced be heard in the places they need to be heard.
o Some of the richest people who benefit from the industries and ways of life that are creating the crises of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution and resulting poverty. These people are also in positions to effect change.
o Significant investment funds that can make difference in the ways they are invested
o People around the world working hard to find new ways producing and living.
As a worldwide communion we can and are making
a difference.
But it is also important that we do not just
add to the fear. One thing we can offer is hope – a hope based on our faith in
the God who is creating heaven and earth, and who defeats death to bring life. This
hope needs to be centred on God’s desires for God’s world. And as our gospel reading
from Luke reminds us, Jesus invites us to place that at the centre of our lives.
Today we are baptising Colin into this movement of people who are seeking to live out God’s compassion and love for all people and all creation
2. Season of Creation
Colin is also being baptised into whole worldwide church, and not just eh Anglican church.
Today is first Sunday in Season of Creation, that Ecumenical season from September 1 to October 4, the day we remember St. Francis of Assisi, which offers us an opportunity to pay attention to our relationship with creation and all who share this world with us. Catholics, Orthodox, Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist, and others. All acknowledging that God’s desires for God’s gift of creation as central to Christian belief. We hear again the invitation to join God’s creative work renewing God’s gift, our common home.
This year the theme is the burning bush. This image reminds us of the many places who have been or are experiencing much more frequent and intense fire seasons – all a consequence of increased temperatures, droughts, tinder dry vegetation. All a result of climate change.
This symbol symbolises other consequences of climate change including; failed crops, floods, much more intense and destructive storms, rising sea levels. It is a symbol of the human and environmental cost of how we have lived over the last 150 years
But it is also a symbol we find in Exodus, and the story of Moses and the burning bush that was not consumed. It is a symbol of the life sustaining presence of God. It holds the promise that God hears the voice of the suffering Israelites and will deliver them from slavery. This burning bush also created holy ground and Moses had to remove his sandals in reverence of that.
Today this symbol reminds us that this world is holy. And it reminds us of God’s promise to hear the voice of all who are suffering, human and non-human.
3.
Potting
Our first reading this morning comes from Jeremiah. Another great image, this time of God as the potter and we are the clay. I have usually read this as about what God desires for me. Which is OK. But it is not what Jeremiah was talking about. As I read it this year, I realised this is about the people of Israel and God’s desires for them as people of God. It is an invitation to trust God in the process of being moulded, and Israel’s deep reluctance to trust, and their deep reluctance to change how they saw the world and how they lived their lives. They couldn’t see how to live God’s compassion and justice, and that led to a crushing defeat and exile. Jeremiah is pleading for leaders and people to listen.
Today he pleads with us to listen.
4.
Listening
Listening was the central theme at Lambeth; listening to God, listening to each other. Also listening to this world, to the voice of indigenous people and all who are suffering.
The theme for the Season of Creation this year is also listening- Listening to the voice of creation
- Listening to voice of indigenous people here and around the world
- Listening to the voice of all who are suffering the effects of climate and biodiversity crisis.
Today we are invited to wonder with Jeremiah:
- What kind of world would God create if we were willing to listen
- What would we need to change if we were to listen.
And I used this video made by TSSF made last year https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmxnP-kL7cs&authuser=0
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