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.

A Historian looks at Climate Change

 

 

(The inspiration for much of this sermon comes from “Europe in Crisis 1598-1648” by Geoffrey Parker)

 

Now may the words of my mouth and the thoughts of all our hearts be now and always acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.

 

The month of September is Creationtide, which we always celebrate here. So the Ministry Team has decided that three of the St John’s Green Ginger Group, will preach during the month. Eleanor Harris at Evensong next week, Andrew Wright at Eucharist on the 26^th, and myself now. Incidentally, one of the things we are doing in anticipation of COP26, the United Nations Climate Change Summit, is mounting a social media campaign. So please on Facebook do follow Earth Be Glad, and read our Earth Be Glad blog, which has had several new articles in the last month.

When you are preaching you get sent the readings in advance. What an overwhelming set of texts I have been given. One could write a book about every verse. However, I can take comfort from the first verse of the first reading: “The Lord has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word.” So the line I am going to take is “A history teacher looks at climate change.”

The Seventeenth Century was unusually troubled, all across the world, even for the bad old days. The Thirty Years War devastated the German lands, as armies campaigned across Europe bringing disease, death, rape and murder. The population of Germany fell from about 21 million to about 13 million. There were revolts and rebellions all across the world – Sri Lanka, China, Mexico, Moscow – the list goes on. The witch craze, which seems so crazy and savage to us, reached its peak. The series of dreadful civil wars in the British Isles had a catastrophic impact on Scotland, on Ireland and on England for twenty years.

Michael Lynch, in his history of Scotland describes the human cost on Scotland of the wars as “incalculable” so I had better not try. But he does say that in 1645 perhaps one of every five town dwellers in Scotland died of plague, the most severe outbreak for two centuries.  As Verse 2 of today’s psalm said: “The cords of death entangled me; the grip of the grave took hold of me; I came to grief and sorrow.”

Where does Climate change come into this? Well, in 1756 the French thinker Voltaire, looking back on the troubled century, wrote: “The three things that exercise a constant influence over the minds of men [are] government, religion, and climate.”

Looking all across the world now, 2021, there are many pretty bad governments, just as there were in the seventeenth century, who seem to put selfish power and wealth ahead of the common good.

We can also see all too clearly how the influence of religion over people’s minds now can have the most dreadful consequences as it did 400 years ago.

But our theme, as COP26 approaches, is climate. The seventeenth century should warn us, if we are still in doubt about it, what an overwhelmingly serious matter it is.

Voltaire did not have the means of measuring meteorological data that we have, but observations included heavy frosts in South China that put an end to orange-growing in Kwangsi province, the dates when grapes could be harvested, the advance of Alpine glaciers, parties on the frozen Thames, and eternal snow on the Cairngorms. The observations of sun-spots carried out at the new Observatories at Paris, Greenwich and elsewhere offer more than anecdotal data. Modern tree-ring analysis tells the same story. There was a decline in solar energy. The average annual temperature of the globe fell by about one degree. Not very much? Well, it will have shortened the growing season by about three weeks, and reduced the maximum altitude at which crops will ripen by about 500 feet. About 90% of the world’s population depended for food very directly on local agriculture.  We can easily appreciate why there was a world crisis brought on by climate change.

For example, there was a dreadful famine in Scotland at the end of the seventeenth century.

“For want some die on the wayside, some drop down in the streets.”

The change in the seventeenth century was probably about one degree. The COP26 summit hopes to limit our climate change now to one and a half degrees. Let us hope they manage. You’ll find all this on their web-site; do look it up. Achieving this, and coping with it, is a supreme challenge of our time. Similar disasters to those of the seventeenth century are already happening across the world and, as Voltaire noticed, climate is part of the cause. Flood, drought, famine and multiple political consequences, many of them very bad.

Climate Change. We all know the sorts of things to do. It’s a case of doing it – whether it is cutting down on driving when we can, using buses or bicycles or simply legs. Or only using aeroplanes when we have to. Or saving energy at home by improving insulation and putting on a woolly vest instead of turning the heating on.  Or reusing and recycling at every opportunity. Or eating less red meat. There is lots of good advice out there. 

And governments must be held to account, to keep the pledges they will make at COP26 and the ones they have made already. You will have heard of the Art Exhibition that the Edinburgh Together Churches (that includes us) are holding in St Cuthbert’s at the end of October. Part of that will be a postcard writing campaign, so make sure you come to the exhibition and while you are there, write a card to one of the powerful decision-makers.

But return for a moment to the seventeenth century. What might we learn from those years of revolt, starvation, plague, war – and climate change behind them all? The figures I remember most from the seventeenth century are very different from the horrors. Henry Purcell of course. Isaac Walton, going fishing. Perhaps above all, George Herbert. Here is an extract from Walton’s life of George Herbert:

‘In another walk to Salisbury he saw a poor man with a poorer horse that was fallen under his load. They were both in distress, and needed present help. At his coming to his musical friends in Salisbury they began to wonder that Mr George Herbert, who used to be so trim and clean, came into that company so soiled and discomposed; but he told them the occasion; and when one of the company told him he had disparaged himself by so dirty an employment, his answer was, that he thought what he had done would prove music to him at midnight. He said: “Though I do not wish for the like occasion every day, I would not willingly pass one day of my life without comforting a sad soul or showing mercy. And now, let’s tune our instruments.” '

What about those readings for today? Well, they do include one of the most powerful sentences from Christ’s teaching. It is a strong message to all of us, individuals, corporations, governments, if ever we think some economic benefit – especially a selfish one – ought to get in the way of necessary action to combat climate change. You can read the verse in your service sheet, near the end of the second lesson. The version in the King James Bible, that I grew up with is:

 

“For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”

 

And now, choir, let’s tune our instruments. (There followed an anthem.)

 

 

Creationtide Explained

 

I have been asked to explain Creationtide. This in my capacity as a member of the Green Ginger Group, which exists to force the decision-makers of St John's to consider environmental issues every time they face a choice. Some churches, I have noticed, call it Creationtime.

One strand in Western thinking, frequently the dominant strand in Christianity, has been to regard Creation as a pyramid with the human race at the top. Everything exists to help the human race. The value of everything is measured by it usefulness to the human race. It is possible to derive this wrong interpretation from a misreading of the Book of Genesis. It received a considerable boost in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, for the science of those days sometimes seemed to be about humanity establishing control over Creation.

This was never the only strand of thinking. In the wonderful last section of Book of Job, for example, the complete independence of God's Creation from human convenience is asserted. This is one of the messages to be found in the story of Jonah, which we studied in Lent. And the twenty-first century scientist, like the modern ecologist and the modern theologian, is more likely to see the value of every item of Creation for its own sake, the unknowable vastness and complexity of Creation, the inter-relationship of all the pieces and so on. It was not an accident that our theme in 2013 brought forth respectful praise of midges and ticks as well as of pretty, lovable animals.

Scientists now are in broad agreement that the human race (and much life on Earth) is experiencing a massive ecological crisis, facing mass extinctions caused by pollution, climate change and so on. We have to improve our relationship with Creation, and get rid of short-term selfishness.

Creationtide, devised in 1989 is adopted by more and more churches all over the world. It is September 1 to October 4^th , climaxing in Harvest Festival and in the Feast of St Francis. All the resources of the church are used to get us to think responsibly about Creation. More knowledge, less selfish attitudes, mutual respect, wonder and changed behaviour are all part of it.

Every year at St John's we have a theme to focus our studies. This year, 2021, it is Climate change, in the run-up to COP26. By the time you read this Creationtide will be well advanced. Do take advantage of this inspiring season, to be part of making things better.