Where are you?

Sermon ideas on the climate crisis in light of the Fall

By Ruth Jarman

Ruth gave this sermon to St Mary's Alverstoke in November 2009. Use it as inspiration, a template for your own sermon on Genesis 3:1-13.

“Where are you?”

1. And the Lord God called to the man and said to him “Where are you?”
The incarnation, that we are soon going to be celebrating with our worship of stuff and our over-consumption, tells us that God is still walking in the garden. Is he asking us too – “where are you?”, or, more precisely, and more shockingly, “Where is your heart?”

Although I learned about the theory of climate change while reading chemist at Oxford 25 years it wasn’t until relatively recently that my heart became involved – and that happened the moment I realised that my Christian faith and my environmentalism were profoundly connected.

2. The more I read the bible, the more I see it speak to us today, at this time of climate crisis. The story of the fall is particularly true for us because it’s about unrestrained consumption, isn’t it? It is about the command to "leave something be" and humanity's refusal to do so. At this critical time in history (and I will go on in a minute to briefly explain why it is so critical), I believe we are each of us called to ask ourselves "How can I live now, with integrity and hope, in a world falling towards climate catastrophe?“ or, more fundamentally “how can we be most fully human, knowing what we know about the state of God’s earth?”
And to help us think through all this, I thought we’d try to use a cycle, suggested by the CEL chair Paul Boddenham, "see", "grieve", "hope", "act".

3. To live with integrity we need to “see” where we are. We need to be aware of the state of the earth.
We have a problem - Our ice cap is melting. Within the next decade or two the arctic could be ice-free in summer.
And this matters because of 2 things – this is the science lesson:

i. Firstly, the white poles keep the earth cool by reflecting back 90% of the suns energy that falls on them because they are white. When it is no longer there, the dark sea will absorb about 90% of the suns energy. This will warm the waters and cause more ice to melt, which causes more of the sun’s rays to be absorbed and so on – a positive feedback effect.

ii. Secondly, there is another positive feedback that is even more serious. The land around the arctic ocean contains 1000 billion tonnes of carbon –  more than twice the total cumulative emissions from human activities. As the land warms, the permafrost is beginning to release it’s carbon.

 4. If we lose artic icecap for any length of time the world is likely to fall into irreversible warming – much of the planet will be unable to support life – there will be a mass extinction and billions will die.
We are living at an extraordinary time in history – a time, when we still have an ice cap, a time when there is still hope. And in 2 weeks time in Copenhagen, world leaders will meet to decide whether to avert catastrophic climate change. Scientifically and politically, now is the time to act, leave it until we have an ice-free north pole – and it’s probably too late.
Let’s think about why this matters.

5. Why does creation matter? Something else we need to “see”, I think, is our place in creation, and we need to be taken down a few pegs. Which is what God does to Job when he speaks out of the whirlwind, saying

Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation?
Tell me, if you understand.
………"Look at the behemoth, which I made along with you..”
Bill McKibben, in his concise and profound book, the Comforting Whirlwind, talks about Job and says that God is saying to Job, and to us today “it’s not all about you”.
We need to see ourselves as a part of creation, not apart from it. We need to re-find our position in the cosmos with humility?

6. In the first creation story, at the end of each day God saw that it was good – before humans were created. Creation has innate value that has nothing to do with its usefulness to us or its cute-and-furryness. It’s not all about us.

So it matters if the whole arctic ecosystem ceases to exists. It matters if the Amazon rain forest burns up – which is on the cards currently. This doesn’t just matter because it is the lungs of the earth and will intensify global warming, this does not just matter because there are possible cures in the plants that will be wiped out. It matters because every species is God’s creation, and God sees that it is good.

The story of the fall that we just heard is about humanity refusing to leave the sacred tree to be what it is, the erroneous belief that it, like everything else, is there for our exploitation. God says “no” – everything is not just there for you.

But we humans are a part of Creation too, and the poor of our world are already suffering due to the beginnings of climate change.

7. We are called to love our neighbour.
What does loving our neighbour mean when we, in the UK, produce 50 times as much CO2 as a Bangladeshi, yet it is his home and his land that will be drowned by sea-level rise and intense storms. 10 million people live only 1 m above sea level in Bangladesh well within what is predicted this century.
What does loving our neighbour mean in the face of this scale of injustice?

Our neighbour also lives in Cockermouth, and although, of course, you can never say that any single weather event is due to climate change, this sort of weather is bang in line with what the scientists are predicting.

8. Do you have mission partners in Africa?......how are their countries coping weather-wise? Do they know when to plant their crops? So many countries in Africa are seeing climate change now – month after month of drought and then so much rain on one period that everything is washed away. This is what the scientists have predicted, and people are living and dying with it now.
What does loving our neighbour mean when we know that?

9. Now we have “seen” the impact of climate change, can we see how we got here?
A lot of people have realised that climate change is not actually the problem, it is but a symptom of a deep spiritual problem. A problem of not understanding our place in creation, and our purpose of being. Like Adam and Eve, instead of wondering at nature, we want to take and own without limit; instead of striving for his kingdom we strive for material possessions; instead of serving God, we want to be as God. Humanity is consuming and wasting the earth because our desires have been corrupted by the serpent of consumerism. Where we could be finding true fulfilment in God, we are chasing after more and more of what will not ultimately fulfil. And so we continue to consume, to covet, to crave at the expense, not only of the earth, but of our own humanity.

And God wanders in the cool of the day asking us “where are you?”, or, as Jesus might out it, “where is your heart?”

Now we have “seen” where we are, and why we are here, what do we do? How can Jesus possibly be speaking to us today when he says “do not worry”?! But maybe he is. Maybe our response should be not to worry, but instead, to grieve. Grieve is an uncomfortable word today, isn’t it? But it is something that is deeply biblical and something that I think we need to do to be able to move on.
The first action of love for neighbour is to grieve with them. Our first response to loss of nature, to grieve with God and to repent our complicity. But somehow we must try to grieve without despairing…because…”There is nothing more comforting than despair. Then one can go on and enjoy life.” Saunders Lewis

10. It is hard to grieve. It is so, so much easier to give in to either despair, or denial, to just go and make a cup of tea and talk about the football. But God will keep asking us “Where are you? Where is your heart?” I get a constant reminder to grieve.

11. We have children. Our son’s favourite toy is a large cuddly polar bear. I am constantly reminded that he is likely to see the extinction of polar bears in the wild, with the implications of what a melted ice cap means for his future. I have this constant reminder to grieve. To remember that no country will be spared the environmental, financial and social collapse, not to mention the accompanying military consequences, that threatens. I tell you it gives meaning to my bedtime prayers.

But by allowing ourselves to grieve we can then move on to hope. But, you may say, isn’t it unrealistic to have any hope?

12. Jurgen Moltmann said that “Hope alone is to be called realistic, because it alone takes seriously the possibilities with which all reality is fraught.” We have to remember that hope is not the vague optimism that everything will be OK, but instead a belief that things need not be as they are.

And we have a Gospel of hope, don’t we? A Gospel that calls us to live hopefully. Kathy Galloway, the leader of the Iona Community was leading a CEL retreat a couple of years ago. I asked her about my despair about the future, hoping to be comforted, to be told everything would be OK. But instead she told me that “Despair is a western luxury.” She told me of visiting mothers in Africa who did not know if there would be food to feed their families tomorrow. But yet they lived hopefully because they chose to. We, also, can choose to hope.

And scientists are in agreement that it is possible technically to save the earth from climate change. We could do it if we really wanted to. And I can’t help feeling hopeful about the Copenhagen Summit coming up. The pledges offered by the US and China are no where near enough, but I feel there has been a shift in how seriously world leaders are now taking climate change. This is a hopeful time!

And the most important way to hope is to…..

13. Just do it! To choose to live out that hope. Be the change you want to see. Because action is both the outcome of envisioning hope and necessary to enable hope to flourish and grow! If we are truly aware of the neighbourliness of creation, if we have grieved the loss of creatures, the pain of future generations, if we have chosen to hope, then the only possible response must be to act.

So, what do we do?

14. We all know things we can all do….but can I recommend the most important thing? To calculate your carbon footprint! Will tell you i) the things that are really worth doing and ii) that we can never do enough – it is practically impossible to live in the UK and live within the limits of this planet - government has used up our carbon allocation before we get out of bed in the morning – I have found that I cannot live with integrity unless I am doing things that work towards changing the system that is destroying the earth.
 

15. This is the time to be a climate campaigner! Educate, encourage and urge your church and your community to be downwardly-mobile with their carbon emissions.  Support local and national initiatives to cut the carbon.

 16. We need to pray! For wisdom and courage for our leaders and intervention in the hearts of us all. The climate change day of prayer materials are on the ON and the CTBI web site - please use them to help your community to pray.

17. And finally, our motivation for caring for creation should primarily be obedience and love. But we have to be honest with ourselves. One day we will be asked, by God and by our children “What is this that you have done?” Gen 3:13. Will that question be asked of our contribution to the destruction of creation or will it be asked of our actions to save it? That is the choice that is open to each of us to make now, and every day of our lives.