How should we engage with the environment crisis?

This was originally given as a sermon at St Mary’s Merton in September 2019

There is growing awareness of the huge and damaging impact of human activity on both our climate and biodiversity across planet Earth. 

The effects of this are becoming more and more obvious in our own country and dramatically more so in other parts of the world.  There have been some encouraging responses to this, such as the Paris agreement in 2015 and the recent UK government commitment to be carbon neutral by 2050. 

There are many arguments about the best approaches to achieve effective action.  Some are very supportive of the approach of Extinction Rebellion whilst others see it as a step too far. 

Some argue that we should divest immediately from fossil fuels, others that we should stay invested in the large energy companies and influence policy from within.  Whatever the methods used, there is widespread agreement that we need to take effective action, and urgently.

In the UK at the moment this also takes place in the midst of our political chaos in dealing with the issue of Brexit with all the underlying questions about the identity, values and direction of our country in the 21st-century. 

Please do pray for our politicians, especially our MPs, as they seek to grapple with this. 

The pressing issues around Brexit, important as they are, can mean that even bigger challenges which face us can fade into the background.

We are in urgent need of the values which help us navigate these complex policy and lifestyle issues in a way that leads genuinely to the common good of all God’s creation. 

For Christians our response to this is not simply a moral one, but it springs out of our whole understanding of how we see our place in the universe – our relatedness to God, the world, each other, and all of God’s creation.

It is central to the primary themes of the Gospel – creation, redemption, salvation, and the resurrection order.  As such, it needs to be properly expressed in worship, which both expresses our Christian faith and shapes our hearts and minds and the way we live. 

And it needs to be lived out in our daily lives and actions.  Looking at the central elements of the Gospel through the lens of the environment and all God’s creation can deepen and enlarge our understanding of the good news of God’s love in Christ.

The Bible translator JB Phillips wrote a book entitled Your God is too small (1952) which captured his experience of a deepened understanding of God, which came from his translation work. 

In a similar way if we learn to look at the themes of the gospel through the lens of the whole created order, then our theological understanding can deepen and give us a much larger understanding of the Gospel – the Good News of God’s Love for all creation.

Another way of expressing this is to develop a theological language which thoroughly intertwines the five Anglican Marks of Mission rather than seeing them as separate. 

The five marks of mission give a holistic view of mission which includes the encouragement and development of new disciples of Christ, together with a real concern for justice, the common good, and care for the environment.

There is a real danger that our vision and understanding of the Gospel, the Good News of God’s Love for all creation, is too small.  Perhaps centred on my individual relationship with God, or that of humanity rather than all of God’s creation. 

The current climate change and environmental crisis is an urgent call to the Church to see the Gospel in the light of all God’s creation.

In short, as has been well expressed in Pope Francis’s Encyclical, Laudato Si, we are in great need of a radical reappraisal of our culture of consumption, inner ecological conversion, and significant changes in our lifestyles.

This call to inner ecological conversion is reflected in today’s Readings.

In the Old Testament reading we heard from the prophet Amos in the eighth century before Christ. 

It was a powerful condemnation of the injustices of their time and especially the exploitation of the poor. The environmental crisis affects the poor of our world disproportionately more than the wealthy.

This has been vividly illustrated in the responses from archbishops around the Anglican Communion in preparation for next year’s Lambeth conference when the bishops of the Anglican Communion meet together in Canterbury. Broadly speaking, those from less wealthy areas had the environment and climate change at or very near their top priorities.

In our reading from Paul’s first letter to Timothy Paul emphasised the importance of remembering that ultimately it is God and his love, which can save us. That love is expressed in the life and death and resurrection of Jesus and can truly reshape our lives at every level.

In the gospel reading from Luke, we heard a parable Jesus, reminding us of the importance of good stewardship of all we have. We were also reminded at the end of the crucial importance of placing our trust in God, rather than the amassing of human wealth. We find true riches in our love for one another, for God, and for all God’s creation.

At the centre of the Eucharist is our Thanksgiving for God’s transforming love in Christ, and how that way of self giving love can transform us and all God’s creation.

From our self-centred ways to being God centred, other people centred, and with a real concern for all of creation.  God’s way of self giving love when we open our hearts to it is truly transformative at an individual, communal, national and international level.

In church life there have been some important developments in our response to the environmental crisis:

• such as the establishment of a Church of England national environment working group, on which I and others from our Diocese sit

• the crucial Eco-Church and Eco-Diocese programme run by A Rocha

• Liturgically some very good material has been produced especially for the Creationtide season, which runs from 1 September - 4 October embracing themes from Franciscan spirituality and the harvest festival season.

This is a good start, but it needs to go far deeper.

In our own Diocese there have been many excellent initiatives (supported by our Diocesan Environment Officer and Working Group, and by the Board of Education) in both parishes and schools with a growing number signing up to the Eco-Church process. 

If parishes are not already signed up Creationtide is good time to ask why not?  Importantly, the Diocesan Synod at its meeting in July has supported unanimously the move to registering as an Eco-diocese. 

This excellent initiative provides a strong and deeply Christian framework for engaging with all the challenges that the environment crisis raises. 

In the next few crucial years it will help us to think through at every level of our institutional life what our Christian response should be. 

As with the Eco-Church framework this will mean reflecting on our deep theology of creation and salvation, expressing this in our worship and prayer, and living it out in our daily actions.  I hope and pray we will all engage with this process as fully as we can.