This magazine appears between our celebration of the Harvest and our Dedication festival. The latter inevitably raises the question, ‘To what are we dedicated?’ The most obvious answers are that the building is dedicated in the name of St John and its people are dedicated to God. But dedication also implies being given over to, or speaking for a particular way of life and a particular set of values. And in the context of the Harvest I want to consider the ways in which we should be dedicated to the care of our environment, which is now an issue that cannot be separated from our other harvest concern for poverty and hunger. Praying for the poor cannot now be separated from praying for an end to the ravages brought about by man made climate change, since the poor mostly live in those parts of the world that suffer most from natural disasters, brought about by hurricanes, typhoons, droughts and flooding.
We do not need reminding of such disasters, even though the media paid more attention to what the winds were doing to the people of New Orleans and Houston than in India and China, where in July typhoon Haitang displaced 863,000 people and caused losses of 320 million US dollars. The melting of the ice caps, the destruction of land based species, the end of the beech woods of the South Downs, and annual deaths of 160,000 and rising, caused by human induced climate change, are part of our everyday news intake. Climate change was recently described, somewhat to the government’s annoyance, as ‘a weapon of mass destruction’ and as a far more serious threat than terrorism. It is clearly something that we should be more concerned about than we are, and the reasons for our relative lack of urgent interest are puzzlingly unclear.
We have I suspect a belief that the human race will survive at least into an unimaginable future, and that we (or rather our scientists) will always think up solutions to any problem we get ourselves into. This is perhaps a far more ‘practised’ faith than Christianity. Both we and our governments are always more inclined to take a short term view and there is even the Gospel instruction to let the evils of tomorrow look after themselves, to back up such limited vision. Any action for change, which threatens the comfort of our own life style, is bound to be unpopular we would prefer to salve our conscience by taking positive actions which don’t impact on how we live. And then there is the scale of the problem; the news coverage makes it seem so big that we feel there is nothing we can do. So where can we as a ‘dedicated’ Christian community begin?
Action often stems from a change of view, a realisation that things are not as we had imagined them to be. If we imagine things differently we begin to feel differently about them. We have lived so long now as the masters of nature that we have lost sight of our natural place in things. As Mary Midgely has pointed out, the thing that shocked people most about Darwin was not that he seemed to have left out our relationship with God, our creator, but that he had related us too closely to apes and all the other animals. As a philosopher she is much attracted to the Gaia principle, the idea that we are all part of a vast system of life that is self-maintaining and self moving. We are not independent separate and superior beings (as some elements in the Christian tradition seem to suggest) but a tiny part of a vast system a part which needs to learn its proper place. The Biblical Wisdom tradition says something similar. It encourages us to see the world as part of God’s communication with us something we need to listen to, attune and relate to rather than giving primacy of attention to what is going on inside our own heads a principle of not speaking until you are spoken to which we have always found very difficult.
Another scriptural approach to rethinking our place in creation is suggested by Rabbi Lionel Blue, who encourages us to think of God as not only our creator but also our employer. And if that sounds vaguely impious just think of the number of times Jesus talks about God as the owner of a vineyard. And, as our employer, God pokes his nose into every aspect of the job. A close reading of the Old Testament would show us how concerned God is with sowing, ploughing, birds’ nests, shopping scales, and pots and pans. God the creator is passionate about the way in which we should care for matter. So the Rabbi goes on to suggest that the board-room and the shop floor are just as much a setting for a righteous company of holy workers as is the monastery or the parish church. But if God is our employer then our work must be seen as something we do to help nurture and care for creation. If God is our employer then our work must not be done at the expense of other peoples’ unemployment. If God is our employer then what we produce must be for the common good of all our neighbours, be it next door or on the other side of the world.
All of which leads to a reconsideration of what we mean by development. Of all the species on the planet we are the only one to take from nature more than what we need to survive. As a result of which the most dangerous thing you can do in many parts of the world is to breathe the air or drink the water. (cf Tom Lehrer’s Pollution Calypso: ‘Fish gotta swim and birds gotta fly, but they don’t last long if they try.’) So as we pray to be forgiven our trespasses (in Matthew’s gospel ‘our debts’) our ecological debt is getting bigger and bigger. Much has been written of the 9/11 terrorist atrocity, which killed 3,000 people but what are we to say of the ecological terrorism of the developed world which is responsible for 15,000 deaths every day? Which leads us back to the question of development and its relationship to what is sustainable? Can we go on and on developing our way of life as our principle concern or should we think of development only as the tool for sustaining life on this planet in a way that is durable, equitable, and environmentally secure?
There are clearly important political questions here, relating to the problem of the undemocratic, unchallenged trans-national corporations with budgets considerably larger than many national economies, and with the power to influence governmental decision making, particularly in the USA. More immediately important for us as a Christian community is the question about what we should be doing, however small in scale, to match action to belief. There are many organizations now to provide churches with an environmental audit which will help us to look at our use of clean energy, to cut green house gas emissions, reduce waste and encourage recycling. Every diocese has an environmental officer who can call on governmental subsidies to provide workshops on these issues and to help us explore the ways in which we can as householders as well as church members do more for the environment. We have a Parish Outreach Group which should be considering these issues which you might feel inspired to join,
The New Testament talks about the priesthood of all believers. The role of a priest is to help make sense of what our world is telling us and to bring about reconciliation and healing where things fall apart and all is bleared and smeared by human greed and thoughtlessness. Here then is a priestly task to which at this time of year we dedicate ourselves in faith and hope.
With my love and prayers,
Father Stephen
The Vicar Writes
Stephen Tucker