Pictures at an exhibition

We've mentioned a few times now the exhibition that the Together churches have organised to help people engage with the issues around climate crisis. In fact, I was in a school earlier today and overhead some of the staff talking about the exhibition and how good it was for people to have their work exhibited in the city centre - as it happens, they were mounting work from the school's own children on the same theme at the time. It seems word has spread, which is marvellous! 

Well, they say a picture is worth 1000 words - so here are some snapshots taken during the mounting of the exhibition. 

The exhibition is open all this week from 10am-5pm in St Cuthbert's Church, Lothian Road

Creation as an act of Love

 [Sermon preached on 26 September by Andrew Wright]

May the words of my lips, and the thoughts of all our hearts, be now and always acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer.

 

I wonder if you’ve ever been in love. I don’t mean really liked something, such as a fabulous musical or a fine single malt, but really been head over heels IN love. The kind of love that gives you butterflies and can make your whole being ache. Conversely, I wonder how many of us have been the object of such love. Just think about that for a moment, and, if you can, bring to mind some of the feelings that went with it.

 

It’s a funny thing is love – it can lead to absolute ecstasy or complete devastation, to triumph or to tragedy. In his book, Love’s Endeavour, Love’s Expense, William Vanstone suggests that authentic love has 3 defining marks or signs. It’s perhaps easiest to illustrate these by considering the impact of when any one of them is absent.

 

Firstly: If we learn that someone who claims to love us has in fact been keeping something back; a secret maybe, that they have been unwilling to share; then it causes deep hurt. We may know, in our head, that we have no right to whatever this may be, but in our heart the fact that the love given to us has only been partial means that we doubt its authenticity. A love which is limited is merely kindness, and not love at all. Authentic love, says Vanstone, must imply a totality of giving, by which he means: the complete giving of oneself.

 

Secondly: If a person claims to love us but at the same time tries also to control us in some way then, again, the authenticity of that love is brought into question. Love is always activity for the sake of another, and something which is controlled ceases to be independent and its ‘otherness’ is denied.  When we reach out in love, we reach beyond ourselves and in doing so always risk that love not being recognised or received. Authentic love is a precarious endeavour. 

 

Finally: if a person is unaffected when the love they offer is not recognised or, even worse, rejected, then what they offered was not real love at all. If we’ve ever been in a situation where we’ve questioned whether we matter to someone it is because they appear to be completely detached and unaffected by us. Our own experience tells us that when we genuinely love we make ourselves vulnerable and allow another a certain power over us.

 

We have seen, then, that when love is limited, controlling or detached it is not real love at all, and from this we can begin to paint a picture of what authentic love is. We can loosely define authentic love as limitless, as precarious and as vulnerable. Just let that sink in for a moment, authentic love is: limitless, precarious and vulnerable.

 

Well, so what? What has the nature of authentic love got to do with Creationtide, or indeed with the readings we have heard this morning? Put simply, we believe that God is Love. We hear and say it in our liturgy, and we sing it in our hymnody. Furthermore, we believe that, whatever the process, God created the heavens and the earth and all that is in them. Creation then, is an act of God, an act of Love.  

 

So let’s just take a moment to think about what that actually means. If what William Vanstone has to say bears any truth, and I believe it does, then this means that Creation was no half-hearted time-filler for a wet Wednesday afternoon. This was not God wondering what to do with all this stuff that was lying around needing to be used up, or a little something to entertain and ease the boredom of being. No. Creation was an act of complete and utter self-giving. A perfect act of authentic Love. An act of Love that is not under the control of its creator, for if it were it would not have been created in love. An act of love in which the creator willingly became vulnerable. Just let that sink in… God did not create the world for us. We are a part of God’s creation, along with everything else that is the evolving result of a perfect act of authentic love. Infinite Love, creating an infinite universe.

 

When we become aware of the love that has been expended in anything it changes our relationship to it. That object, whatever it is, takes on a new and added significance. Think, for example, of a gift that is given in love. When we know of the love with which it was given, and recognise that love for what it is, then the object itself becomes much more than its material substance. When we recognise in creation the Love that brought it into being, then every thing that is becomes much more to us than merely its material substance. 

 

This must affect the way that we choose to live within this creation of which we are a part. It cannot do anything else. 

 

Not only does this affect our understanding of the nature of creation, but also it affects the way we understand God. When an artist pours their very self into their work, we see something of them in it. I’m sure that this is something that will be most apparent in the forthcoming exhibition being organised by the Together churches. And so it is with creation. Every thing that exists was brought into being by the love of God, and in every thing we see God. Of course, when we look at a painting by Rembrandt or a sculpture by Michelangelo we may see something of the artist in their creation, but what we see will only ever be the tiniest of glimpses.  So it is with creation. When we recognise the Love of God in all that is we see the tiniest glimpse of the creator. We see, as St Paul put it, through a glass darkly. Many have tried to describe God, but nothing in our experience can ever come remotely close to doing so. An attempt of which I am fond, which has been attributed to many different people, is that God is a circle whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. God is a circle, whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. Perhaps it was this very phrase that inspired John Mason in the 17^th century to write the words of his glorious hymn, How Shall I sing That Majesty. 

In our first reading today God’s people were shocked at the audacity of Eldad and Medad when they began prophesying in the camp, and the people begged Moses to stop them. His response – ‘would that all the Lord’s people were prophets’. Similarly, in our second reading it was the audacity of someone healing in Jesus’ name that shocked his disciples. Jesus’s response? ‘Do not stop him.’ When people needed prophets, God’s people became prophets; when they needed signs and wonders, God’s people worked miracles. We live in an age where people need to be shown new ways to live. Ways that recognise and respect Love in and for creation. The question is, do we have the audacity to do it?

 

Now to him who is able to do more than all we can ask or conceive, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus, throughout all ages, world without end. Amen.

[Image: The Orion Nebula]

Is Christianity relevant in Climate Change?

Forty-three days before COP26 — is climate change relevant to Christianity? 

Is Christianity relevant in the middle of climate change? 

Daniel Sandford became Bishop of Edinburgh and built this church. It was the reward for developing a congregation from scratch over twenty-five years. He began at the height of the enlightenment, when young people were excited about science and progress of reason, and considered religion to be dangerous, outdated superstition. 

Teaching the young was Sandford’s favourite duty, and he was so successful in making religion relevant again for them, that when they grew up, they paid for this church through shares and subscriptions. 

Some of his teaching material was published, including a sermon on the text we’re about to sing in the anthem: ‘The fear of the Lord’. 

The sermon has a practical, self-help tone. To ensure we don’t go wrong, Sandford says, ‘it is necessary for us to have some rule and guide of life. Such a rule will be of easy and general application — it accompanies us every where, and is always at hand to be resorted to for the regulation of our conduct at all times and in all places.’

When I was a ‘young person’ in this congregation, our bishop called this, ’fridge magnet theology’. These days, of course, it’s a meme. 

So Sandford reveals his meme: ’Such a rule we shall find in the fear of God.’   [shrug]

It’s not self-explanatory, so Sandford goes on to explain, using phrases like ‘compounded sentiment’, ‘Divine Ruler’, ‘infinite attributes’, ‘Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnipresent’, ‘the Redeemer, the Sanctifier, and the awful Judge of man.’ [head explodes]

What may have been meaningful to young persons in 1802, is not so immediately appealing today. 

But it’s not the long words that I find most difficult. It’s a monosyllable — or rather two, which Sandford uses interchangeably and takes the meaning for granted. God. Lord.

Who is God? Christianity prides itself on having revealed a previously mysterious God. Good news! Yet in my experience, talking to people outside these walls, perhaps even inside, as far as the word ‘God’ goes, we might as well have stuck with that clouded, unpronouncable set of Hebrew letters that came to Moses from the burning bush: JWHW. 

Yet in my reading of the bible it is extremely clear. God is Love. Love is God. We are loved. God is Love three ways: 

The one called ‘Father’: True love itself, incomprehensible, infinite, the deep root and heart of the universe. Who loved us into existence. Whom we put our faith in. 

The one called Son: The history of a man in one time and place who embodied love so perfectly it changed the world. Whom we follow. 

The one called Spirit: The visible, tangible love in every moment of our lives, if we can perceive it: in our interactions with people, nature and material things. Whom notice, explore, channel and multiply. 

Love is what Christians treat as divine: the Holy Spirit. 

In his sermon, Sandford went through some other rules for life he saw in Regency Edinburgh; and I see people around me following other rules. Human reason, common amongst the environmentalists I work with — despite being human-centred. Personal happiness — often blamed by the rationalists for the environmental pickle we’ve got ourselves in. Various sorts of geographic or demographic tribalism, set against one another. 

To me, none of those rules of life ring true. They believe they’ve rejected religion for something more real; but to me, it’s simply setting up other gods, gods other than Love.

To me, the Creed we’re about to say begins, ‘I believe in True Love’. But when people who hear I go to church ask dubiously, ‘so do you believe in God?’ and I explain that I believe in Love, and that Love is, to me, God, they say: ‘Well, yes of course I can believe that,’ — but they’re convinced there must be something else — something arbitrary, dodgy. 

I don’t believe so. I find in the bible — which we call the revelation of good news — the dawning realisation that God is Love: 

from the great Genesis stories like the extraordinarily powerful one we heard in which Abraham has the insight that — contrary to the cultural norm — God does not demand human sacrifice; to the revelations of the gospels and the new testament writers reflecting on what Jesus’ life meant; to the lives of Christians through the ages, demonstrating radical kindness, forgiveness and courage out of their faith that Love is God. It’s clear, simple, and very difficult.

Try going through the service sheet replacing words for God with Love, and vice versa:

‘Almighty and most merciful Love, we have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep’. ‘Love, open our lips, and our mouths shall shew forth thy praise’. ‘My soul doth magnify Love’. ‘Love be with you: and with thy spirit’.

Does it make more sense? 

But ‘the fear of Love — that is wisdom?’ Isn’t that an oxymoron? To fear Love? 

Yes! it is. 

Some of you will remember John Burdett, pointing out from this pulpit that whenever Jesus says ‘do not’, it’s almost always in the context of ‘do not worry; do not be afraid’. 

‘There is no room for fear in love. Perfect love drives out all fear. Love is patient, love is kind. It is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it keeps no record of wrongs. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.’

Sandford preached during the French Terror, which felt like the end of the world. I’m preaching during climate change. The ecosystems which sustain us, are collapsing. If you examine the speed it’s happening, and the magnitude of the challenge required just to slow it down — which I’ve made my profession, it’s unimaginably appalling. This is very, very relevant to young people. I’m forty-three, my life will be massively impacted by climate change — and for each generation younger, the prospect is more terrifying. 

Where is good news? Where it’s always been: you can choose Love as God. On your fridge door, in your pocket, on your profile. At home, at work, online, in politics, as climate change, personal tragedy or life’s ordinary struggles unfold, Love, is your rule of life. And it’s empowering.

To paraphrase the message Isaiah heard from God: 

Don’t be afraid:

I’ve saved you, I’ve named you, I claim you;

I’m with you in drowning floods, in raging wildfire, as the climate changes.  

I am Love, True, Holy Love, 

and you’ve got one job, as you’ve always had: 

to love, as I love you. Amen. 

A sermon preached by Dr Eleanor Harris at evensong on 19 September 2021.

COP26 Exhibition - Intern Update

We asked Emily, the intern who is working to promote our COP26 Exhibition, to let us know a little bit about how she is getting on.  After hearing what she had to say we think she could have just said 'Amazingly'! Here's her response:

This is just a brief informal notice to say hello and to introduce myself in this role. My name is Emily, and I’ve been employed over July and August to help organise the Together Trust’s October exhibition for COP-26, the 2021 UN Climate Change Conference. 
 
Members of the churches have been capably organising their congregations contributions, which has been a blessing in allowing me to concentrate on outreach. Writing this from two-thirds of the way through my time on this project, I thought that I might give you an update on what I’ve been focussing on so far, and what I hope to have achieved by the time that I leave. 
 
In the first week I reached out to all of Edinburgh University’s international student societies, with positive responses from the Malaysian, Mecian, and Indian society presidents. Once student life resumes its normal pace, I’m confident that the exhibition will gain contributions that reflect these international perspectives. 
 
In the second week I created an instagram page, which I hope will allow the exhibition to reach a more general audience. This page will also serve to link the Together Trust’s exhibition with other nation-wide events for COP-26. I also ran the first of our public drawing workshops, with the second to be held outside St Cuthbert’s on Thursday 26th August, 1.30pm to 2.45pm. Please do attend if you are able! 
 
In the third week I countacted Scouting and Girlguiding groups, and in the fourth, interfaith and LGBTQ+ organisations. I had a positive response from Edinburgh’s Hindu Mandir as well as the Muslim Women’s Association, with the latter group submitting both a join banner and several individual works alongside the tapestries that were made with St John’s last year. Our Tribe, a group that supports LGBTQ+ Christians, has reserved an entire board for their groups contributions. 
 
As we approach the present, I have had conversations with the president of the Scottish Arts Club and the headmistress of St Mary’s RC Primary School, both of whom are confident that their communities will have plenty to submit. I ran the first of two painting workshops with the organisation Steps To Hope, from which the exhibition gained works from Edinburgh’s homeless community. 
 
Next week I will speak to a representative from Stitches for Survival, a Craftivist collective who are keen to support our exhibition. I am also hoping to arrange meetings with the Art Department of the Edinburgh Children’s Hospital Charity, and a representative for the art programme at four local primary schools, both of whom have expressed interest over email. I also hope to make contact with Dementia groups and nursing homes in the city, as well as year-round drawing and art clubs. 
 
As I’m sure that this whistlestop tour has shown, at the heart of this exhibition are the voices of the Edinburgh community. We hope to represent the city in all of its diversity, providing a space to amplify the voices of all age groups, social backgrounds, and faiths. My role is to support the work that the committee has been doing within the churches of the Together Trust, using the resources given to me by the Edinburgh Presbytry to broaden the scope of this project. I still very much hope to see each of your individual contributions come October- whether in the form of a drawing, photograph, or musical score- but hope that through this notice I have provided some context for the works that they will be hanging alongside. By gathering such diverse voices, the exhibition can achieve its aim of representing what the people of Edinburgh have to say about the topics that politicians will be discussing fifty miles West. 

The Edinburgh Climate Strategy

 Edinburgh has a vision to reach net zero by 2030. 

That’s the ambitious target of the Draft Edinburgh Climate Strategy which is out for consultation for the next month.

While it’s fantastic to see the city set such a bold target, they haven’t made it very easy to engage in the consultation. This makes me wonder how successful they will be in achieving the huge level of citizen engagement which will be required to deliver this huge transition.

For a start, the draft Strategy is a 76 page report, the Executive Summary of 21 pages, and the consultation is a questionnaire of around 35 questions — a tall order for the average citizen who has little time and/or little expertise in critiquing climate strategies.

What are Edinburgh’s carbon emissions now?

The most interesting information in my view is the ‘baseline’. This is the picture of what our current climate emissions are and what is causing them. This is essential to set a meaningful and strategic plan for reducing them to net zero. Unfortunately they’re not in the Executive Summary, but these charts show a few key headlines:

Edinburgh’s carbon emissions are 2.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year. Almost 70% comes from ‘stationary energy’ — heating, lighting etc. A further quarter comes from transport. 

Edinburgh needs to double the rate of carbon reduction from industry and business, treble it from homes — and reduce transport emissions twelve times faster.

Electricity (in red) is increasingly from low-carbon sources like wind and solar. But the burning of gas for heating (blue) and petrol and diesel for transport (purple) urgently needs to come down.

What that these figures tell me is that there are two big challenges: buildings and transport. We need to insulate our homes, switch from gas to low carbon energy, and reduce car use drastically. 

Will the strategy deliver net zero? 

I haven’t had time to dissect all 76 pages of the strategy, but I’m concerned that it has not focused sufficiently on tackling these big problems. Too much emphasis seems to me to be placed on getting people to change, and not enough on assessing why people don’t change and making it easy for them. 

If people fail to respond to this consultation, is it because they don’t care about climate change? We know that’s not the case. Is it because the consultation is very difficult to respond to, and they lack the time, knowledge and infrastructure? Could this same problem repeat itself with calls to cycle more, insulate your home, or engage with the process through community councils or groups like churches?

I really, really want this strategy to deliver. I want to live in a net zero city by 2030. But I’m not sure how to help the Council do that. Back in 2010, St John’s Church decided to measure and reduce its carbon emissions as an institution and community, and discovered some of the challenges and pitfalls involved in doing that. Could we And other churches in Edinburgh find ways to help unblock the sticking points, and achieve the zero carbon city in which we all want to live?

What can the churches do? 

People wonder why churches prescribe prayer and worship in these situations, but throughout history the one has created the neural pathways and the other the collective pathways that create miracles. Have a look, see what you think, talk to people, attend the events or answer the questions if you can. And as churches let’s make it part of our prayer and worship too, and see if we can help to make some of those links to pull Edinburgh through this great transition. 

The IPCC and the Holy Spirit

Today the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published its latest report on the state of the climate, ahead of the COP26 summit. Global temperatures have risen 0.9 degrees. Humans are causing it. The past five years were the hottest on record. Sea levels are rising. 

The scientific, emotionless tone of the scientific report contrasts with the frantic headlines reporting it: 

‘Code red for humanity’ 

‘Major climate change irreversible’

‘1.5 degrees slipping beyond reach’

We’ve heard it all before, plenty of times, and we know it’s worse every time. 

What are the emotional response options? Despair? Guilt? Frantic activity? Eremitic or hedonistic disengagement? None of these are Christian responses. What does being a disciple of Love mean in the face of headlines like these? 

The same as it always has — although it provides a context which means we may never hear those old words the same way again. 

‘Love your neighbour as yourself’ — even when you vehemently disagree with them. 

‘Who is my neighbour?’ — when they are flooded, dying of heatstroke, or their crops have failed. 

‘Before we were yet sinners, yet Christ died for us,’ — our personal responsibility for climate change is not to be dwelt on...

‘Judge not, that ye be not judged’ — ... and nor is anyone else’s. 

‘By these wounds we are saved’ — ... and nor is our personal success in tackling climate change.

‘Do not worry about what you will eat, or what you will wear’ — in fact, it’s people worrying about all that which has got us into this state.

‘But these three remain: faith, hope, and love, and the greatest of these is love.’ — what does that mean though, in all this?

‘Come, follow me’ — we have a calling, we have the example of Christ to follow, of what it means to choose Love as your God. 

But that isn’t going to change the worl ... oh, wait. 

If you haven’t been troubled by climate change, you probably haven’t taken it seriously enough yet. But if you’ve sat and listened to the gospel every week and haven’t found in it a path through climate change, you perhaps haven’t been taking it seriously enough either. 

Climate change is a huge existential crisis caused by people like us, and threatening life on the planet. You and I are only two of eight billion people, and have no earthly power over what is happening. We need a light more powerful than this darkness to guide us through it, as long as we are around to be part of this story. 

Is our funny old, jargon-ridden, history-tarnished, unfashionable religion meaningful, relevant, and sufficient? It is to me. Climate change is going to be here every minute of the rest of my life. But so is the ever-present Love which we choose and summon as God, and call in our funny old jargon, Holy Spirit. 

Come, Holy Spirit. 

Our Precious and Precarious World

 It is a well-known cliché that a picture is worth a thousand words. Here is your chance to make a statement, worth at least a thousand words, in readiness for COP26, the United Nations Climate Change Conference 2021. 

"Our Precious and Precarious World" is an art exhibition that is going to be held in Edinburgh in the last week in October. The Conference is to take place at the beginning of November. We would like you to make work for it. It might be drawing, painting, collage, photography, fabric - as you wish. Small sculptures will also be welcome. 

A very important point about this exhibition is that it is not just for those who think of themselves as artists. Your statement will be welcome and will speak your thousand words whatever your approach. Of course, high quality work from artists will also be most welcome. But the plan is to have the exhibition space filled with expressive and thought-provoking images. Each artist is allowed up to three works, so there should be hundreds.

To find out more about it go to this link. It tells you more about what is planned and leads you on to further information about submitting works. The exhibition is going to be very exciting, so I hope you will be able to submit work. 

COP26

COP26 is the shorthand name given to the 26^th United Nations Conference on Climate Change, which takes place later this year in Glasgow. The conference has 4 goals:

 

1.     To ‘secure global net zero by mid-century and keep 1.5 degrees within reach.
In other words countries are being asked to take action to achieve net zero carbon emissions by the middle of the century, and to ensure that the planet increases in temperature by no more than 1.5degrees by 2100

2.     To ‘adapt to protect communities and natural habitats’
This includes working to enable and encourage countries affected by climate change to protect and restore ecosystems

3.     To ‘mobilise finance’
In order to achieve these first 2 goals the richer countries of the world developed countries are challenged to deliver on their promise to raise at least $100bn in climate finance per year.

4.     To’ work together to deliver’
As a group of nations we can only rise to the challenges of climate change by working together. At COP26 we must finalise the Paris Rulebook (the rules needed to implement the Paris Agreement).

 

St John's, along with the other Edinburgh City Centre Churches Together churches,  is working to organise a major art exhibition prior to COP26 as a way of informing people about the conference and encouraging them to engage with the issues it is addressing.  Further details in a forthcoming blog on here.

There will, of course, be more besides so please do keep your eyes and ears open!