All Saints Day
By Claire Foster, Sunday 2nd November, 2008
May I speak in the name of God: Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier.
We need not think that environment and climate change are a bandwagon we Christians have only jumped onto because it is a current issue and it helps us feel we are relevant. Deep within our Christian tradition there are insights; wisdom that has always been there, that we can draw upon today for a fresh engagement with an issue that concerns everyone. By drawing on these Christian perceptions, we can both find a solid basis for environmental concern, one that will sustain our efforts to change our behaviour and be prophetic witnesses to those in power; and we can contribute something distinctive.
There are four insights, or perceptions, that I want to share with you this morning. They are: teaching about the covenant with all creation; the sacrament of creation; the priesthood of humanity; and the Sabbath feast of enoughness.
There are several covenants mentioned in the Old and New Testaments; the one I’m talking about here is the one described after the flood, and it is made not just with humans but with all creatures. It is the covenant that binds us all – all living things – in a web of interrelationship under God. It reflects an understanding of the reality and importance of biological diversity, centuries before scientists were describing it. Think of eco systems, food chains, our total dependence on the activities of millions of creatures, especially bacteria and insects, green growing things, the humblest actors in God’s lively creation. Think of our own uniqueness and how we interact with each other. We need each other, and we need each other to be different. Without diversity, there is sterility, as those attempting to farm just one chemically fertilised crop over and over again, have learned.
In the thirteenth century, Hildegard of Bingen said: ‘God has made all things in the world in consideration of everything else.’ Seeing all creatures as part of an interconnected web in which every action of every player affects everyone and everything else makes us behave differently, more carefully, less selfishly.
The sacrament of creation is the insight that there is not one inch of creation that God does not love, and that is not sustained continually by his Spirit. There is nowhere called away where we can throw things. There is no one so unimportant that we can exploit them as instruments for our own ends. God is creation’s true inwardness, and, crucially for Christians, God himself took on a human form, became creaturely matter, as Jesus Christ. We should reverence matter, not as earth worshippers, but because it is the means of grace for us. As it says in the offertory prayer: ‘Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation: through your goodness we have this bread to set before you, which earth has given and human hands have made: it will become for us the bread of life.’
There is nowhere called away where we can throw things. Every minute movement of creation is to be respected as loved by God.
The priesthood of humanity, our third insight, addresses this question: Are we, as some commentators have suggested, merely rapacious bipeds, at best irrelevant and at worst a dreadful blight upon the planet, causing devastation and harm wherever we show up? Or do we have a valid and needed part to play in the web of life and in God’s purposes?
The evidence for our wreaking havoc is undeniable, especially during the 20th century when our numbers increased and our technological skills were such that we had a significant and damaging impact on the atmosphere; the water cycles or hydrosphere; the land or pedosphere and lithosphere; and the biosphere. From one point of view, the worst thing that happened in the 20th century was the discovery of penicillin, because it gave the human species the edge over all other species, who found it increasingly difficult to co-exist with us as we wrenchingly changed our environments to suit our own wants and needs.
But Christianity calls us to live another way and confirms that we are not irrelevant. Standing between heaven and earth, we can speak the praise of creatures to God and we can be instruments of God’s love and care to creatures. Like ikon writers, we can take the things of the earth: gold, wood, egg tempura, and use them to glorify God. We can be instruments of transformation of earthly things, as we are about to be in the eucharist celebration this morning. And on this, All Saints Day, we can join with all the community of saints in singing our praise of God and all his works. Isaiah testifies that when the songs of praise on the lips of the people dry up, the earth itself withers. And like Adam, we can till and keep the earth, as its servant, not its master. The word for ‘till’ – abad – means servant, and it also means worship. Tilling and keeping the garden was Adam’s liturgy and we, too, can live sacramentally, seeing and receiving all things as gift, not possession.
Finally, the perception of the Sabbath – feast of enoughness – flows from the Genesis teaching that the crown of creation is not humanity created on the sixth day but the Sabbath, established on the seventh day, the day on which God himself took a rest (and we do not imagine he did so because he was tired). Sabbath rest is enjoined on all of us, not just to rest ourselves but to give creation a break from our demands, like leaving land fallow so it can, as it were, regain its strength and fertility. And our rest is not just a break from consuming. It is a deep dive into God’s peace, so we can know where our true source of happiness and sustenance is. ‘I have been dipped in God and new created’, wrote DH Lawrence. Silence and stillness and simple contemplation of the majesty of God and his creation can restore ourselves and our perceptions, restrain our voracious appetites, help us see that we need, materially, really very little, stop the hurrying busyness that makes us impatient of others and disrespectful of the creation. Just stopping; just looking; just feeling – now – the air on our faces and hands, the weight of our bodies on our seats, just listening to all the sounds … and the silence beyond the sounds, just allowing the connection to be made with the whole of creation, no boundaries between us, and God. Amen.
