Psalm 104; Luke 13:1-9; Daily Mail Saturday 14th November 2009
I want to be green this morning, so I'm going to begin this sermon by recycling part of a recent article from the Christian thinktank Ekklesia. This is what it says.
In a few weeks time, the fateful UN climate-change summit in Copenhagen will take place. There is a mounting sense of urgency. We are in a race against time to save the planet. The consequences of failure would be disastrous. What is at stake here is nothing less than the survival of the human race as we know it.
It is hard to dispute the facts. Industrialisation has increased the world's temperature by something like 0.75 per cent, and is set to increase it by roughly the same amount again, as the consequences of past carbon-dioxide emissions make themselves felt. We have known about the rising temperature for a couple of decades, but have done little to stop the production of more and more carbon dioxide. Most scientists now think it impossible to hold the temperature rise at two per cent. Then the ice will melt and the sea will rise and swallow millions of square miles of land. The central part of the world will turn into a desert, pushing people further north and south. Untold numbers of bird and animal species will be made extinct. Wars will be fought over dwindling resources. Our grandchildren will live in a world unrecognisable to us today.
So why is the climate-change campaign failing to change hearts and minds? Or perhaps it is chang¬ing hearts and minds (we all do our little bit: recycling, green toothpaste, and so on), but is failing to affect our fundamental thirst for energy which drives the deeper changes that are taking place. Why?
One explanation is that many climate-change campaigners sweat gloom about the future. That hardly gives them a Henry V leadership style. It can sometimes seem as if their message is that, if we try extremely hard, then we can just about stop any more changes. In other words: let's make huge sacrifices in order to make nothing happen. With that message, it is hard to imagine how you might persuade someone to get out of bed. At Lambeth Palace last fortnight, religious leaders got together to press a different message. We are the generation that is being called on to be heroes, to make a difference, to save the planet.
Now that is the right emphasis. The climate-change campaign needs a sense of can-do enthusiasm. It would be really something if that was what faith leaders - and, I would add, people of faith - were able to add to the mix.
Now you're back to hearing me, but as usual in a sermon I'm still in conversation with several points of view: this morning from Luke's Gospel, the Daily Mail online and Thomas Campion, the author of our anthem this morning, Never weather-beaten saile. To take the last first, it might be possible for us as Christians to think, Why worry about the earth at all? After all, listen to Campion: Ever blooming are the joys of heaven's high Paradise,
Cold age deafs not there our ears nor vapour dims our eyes:
Glory there the sun out-shines; whose beams the Blessèd only see:
O come quickly, glorious Lord, and raise my sprite to Thee!
Doesn't it sound attractive? Joys that don't fade, a body that never wears out, glory brighter than the sun - heaven seen as a more beautiful version of earth, with our relationship with God closer than ever before. So why get bogged down in the affairs of this planet, that won't last for ever anyway?
But if we take seriously the beginning of Genesis, God called the earth and everything in it very good. Even after the Flood, God is described as promising never again to destroy everything on earth. If God takes that much of an interest in it, should not we? And as the author of Psalm 104 makes quite clear, we do: not only in those aspects of the natural world that tend to our own comfort, producing food for us to eat, but also in the lyrical descriptions of springs gushing out in the valleys to quench the wild donkeys' thirst, rocks where the coneys can take refuge, and seas where great Leviathan can play. Still today natural beauty brings forth praise in people who would never consider going near a church, but worship their Creator by appreciating creation.
You may be wondering why the Daily Mail has come into our conversation this morning. Partly it's because a great Reformed Christian, Karl Barth, always recommended preaching with Bible in one hand and newspaper in the other. Partly it was God at work through coincidence while I was preparing this service.
I had a lovely time looking on the Internet for images of natural beauty, but
I also had to show the destruction of nature. I found pictures you will have seen in the news: floods in the Pacific, where rising sea levels are already destroying people's housing; floods in New Orleans, where the richest nation on earth failed to help the poor among their own people; even floods in Sheffield, two years ago, when our own church boiler was drowned: good parallels to Noah's story, but none of them struck home. Then I found a picture of melting icebergs that stopped me in my tracks. As the Mail article says, though most scientists believe the evidence for global warming being caused by human activity is overwhelming, not all people are convinced that it is our fault. But look at that melting iceberg - whatever its causes, the problem is there. And the Mail article, posted on the Internet just yesterday, underlined that fact. There should just not be melting icebergs off the Australian coast. And melting ice will cause seas to rise, which in turn will cause floods greater than Noah's.
Maybe some of our reluctance to take global warming seriously comes from a feeling of disgruntlement. For centuries people have been using the earth's resources with no problems. Why are we the generation that has to foot the bill? Yet like every disaster, the question Why me? has to come to the conclusion Why not me? As Luke's Gospel records Jesus commenting, in his day, about Roman atrocities and manmade disasters, it's not that the people whom global warming has already affected are any worse than us; but unless we change our behaviour, we are liable to suffer a similar fate, as global weather conditions become more extreme. So what can we do? We can accept our responsibility to look after God's earth, and resolve to rethink our priorities in church and at home. We can pray for a change in values that will make good use of earth's resources, not endless purchase and consumption, the norm. We can ask our Prime Minister to go to Copenhagen and accept cuts in power station CO2 emissions that will help address the problem. But just as important, we need to experience the natural world locally, whether in Ecclesall Woods or our own back gardens. That will motivate us to take the necessary steps to protect it.
Our sermon was followed by making origami arks of petitions to send to Downing Street, asking Gordon Brown to make a good deal on climate change at the Copenhagen Summit on 6th December.