Sermon for the 12th Sunday after Trinity – 4th September 2022: Deuteronomy 30, 15-end.
Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens
‘See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity’. (Deut 30, 15). These are stark choices – it is difficult to get more polarity than this.
We do seem to be living in times of great polarity – in Pakistan devastating floods, and in parts of Africa murderous drought. Wild fires seem to be in the news alongside melting glaciers, burgeoning population growth alongside food shortage and issues of sustainability. It looks like an Earth in something of a crisis just as America sends a rocket to the moon so that a station can be set up form which travel will become possible to Mars. Isn’t this just what the planets need? Humans!
Global catastrophes are called ‘apocalyptic’ or ‘of biblical proportions.’
No one nowadays is unaware of the issues facing the world and her populations; no-one is unconscious of environmental challenges, or the effects of global warming – even though some choose to deny it. I don’t and I’m sure you don’t – even though we must exercise some caution about ‘global warming’ being the default position for everything that goes wrong. You know what I mean.
Environmental change is on everyone’s lips but not in the change of most of our lifestyles. There is little real commitment to radical choice change. We expect to switch on our lights; we assume that there will be fuel for our cars; we are disappointed when we can’t get what we want in a supermarket; and all of this as cheaply as possible, no matter what the impact is in our consumption of oil, electricity, food. We are hearing daily, or seeing on the news, things that challenge us, but it seems we don’t quite have the language to express how we want to change, or how we feel sorry for what we are doing to the planet. I would propose that as Christians we can supply some of the powerful language that the world seems to need.
For the last few decades the Church of England has designated the period of September 1st – October 3rd as Creationtide – a period when we can reflect on the very nature of Creation and our relationship with God the Creator. Belief in a Creator God is essential to us as Christians, and the Creed we say Sunday by Sunday affirms that ‘We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.’
Our psalms, our worship abound with the images of a creation and a Creator bound together as one – with the creature in praise of the Creator.
O all ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord; praise him and magnify him for ever.
O ye waters that be above the firmament, bless ye the Lord; praise him and magnify him for ever.
O ye sun and moon, bless ye the Lord; praise him and magnify him for ever.
O all ye green things upon the earth, bless ye the Lord, praise him and magnify him for ever.
O all ye beasts and cattle, bless ye the Lord, praise him and magnify him for ever.
All these and so many other verses of creation’s praise for the Creator, all found in the canticle we call the Benedicite, omnia opera – all God’s works, seen and unseen, in divine praise.
The theme for this year’s Creationtide has been called ‘Listen to the voice of creation’. This is a compelling theme as God’s creation groans under the duress of human excess and exploitation. Humanity needs deep repentance and spiritual renewal if it is once again to be in harmony with the rest of creation.
Recently the church lost one of its great voices. Bishop Kallistos Ware’s death is a great loss to English speaking Orthodoxy, and a friendly voice in the world of church ecumenism – though never a compromiser. Bishop Kallistos, as well as his work in translating the Fathers of the Church into English, and other theological an spiritual input, was an ambassador the needful communion of humanity in relation to God’s creation, and God the Creator. He advocates that the issues facing our world today are a result of sin, of our disunity with God, and the need for repentance to heal the rift between mankind and the world.
In his book, The Orthodox Way p53, Bishop Kallistos says, ‘Consciously and with deliberate purpose [man] can do two things that the animals can only do unconsciously and instinctively. First, man is able to bless and praise God for the world. Man is best defined not as a “logical” but as a “Eucharistic” animal. He does not merely think about it and use it, but he is capable of seeing the world as God’s gift, as a sacrament of God’s presence and a means of communion with him. So he is able to offer the world back to God in thanksgiving: “Thine own from thine own we offer to thee, in all and for all” (Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom)
The condition of our world is in large part due to a ‘fallen humanity’, a humanity that is out of step with the Creation and with the Creator. Of this fallen humanity Bp. Kallistos says (p59), ‘The original sin of man, his turning from God-centredness to self-centredness, meant first and foremost that he no longer looked upon the world and other human beings in a eucharistic way, as a sacrament of communion with God. He ceased to regard them as a gift, to be offered back in thanksgiving to the Giver, and he began to treat them as his own possession, to be grasped, exploited and devoured’.
In this year of ‘Listening to the voice of creation’ we are all obliged to be more sensitive to the cries of the world, to the groaning of natural phenomena as they slowly die due to the capriciousness of human consumption, to the lament of species on the brink of extinction, to the sea life overshadowed and choked by flotillas of our plastic waste.
The call is for us to rejoice once again – to rejoice because of our place in God’s creation, and alongside the rest of Creation. It is our calling to be the ones who give thanks for all of this, not to be ones constantly depressed and anxious for what we are doing. This is not our vocation; this is not what is meant to be truly human; true humanity is as co-worker with a Creator God, and thanks-giver for the gifts of creation. Listen to the voice of creation.
All creatures of our God and King,
Lift up your voice and with us sing
Alleluya, alleluia!
Thou burning sun with golden beam,
Thou silver moon with softer gleam:
O praise him, O praise him,
Alleluya, Alleluya, Alleluya!
‘See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity’. (Deut 30, 15).
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