Sermon by the Bishop of Liverpool, the Rt
Rev James Jones
BBC Morning Service
3 September 2006
John 1 v 1-5
Six weeks ago I was the Amazon with the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople for a seminar on Religion, Science and the Environment we were seeing for ourselves what’s happening to the rainforest. The forest is massive, almost the size of Europe, and year on year they’ve been losing an area the size of Wales. You don’t have to be a scientist or even an environmentalist to know that this can’t go on without having a disastrous impact on the rest of the planet. The Amazon amounts to a quarter of the earth’s rainforest. The trees are the lungs the liver and the kidneys of the earth’s body. And there’s only so much punishment the body can take.
The problem is that the people most immediately affected are the least able to do anything about it, whereas those of us with the power to act are the last to feel the consequences of our raping the planet. That’s bad news for the earth – and for Christ.
Why? Because as the gospel tell us “All things came into being through him and without him not one thing came into being.”
It warns that the environment is his, not ours. Christ stands at the centre of all and everything surrounds him, not us. In fact, to talk about ’our environment’ is to take Christ’s place at the centre of the universe. The world is his environment.
I was in another seminar recently with some politicians from America, some of whom were Christians. One of them challenged what I was saying about caring for the earth,. “Bishop”, he interrupted, “Doesn’t the Bible say that it all came into being for us to enjoy?” I heard him out and said “But the key passages in the New Testament (in John, Colossians, and Hebrews) all tell us that everything came into being for Christ! Therefore, to say that it’s all there just for the human race is to dethrone the Son of God which is surely nothing short of blasphemy”
As the discussion grew more heated someone suggested in effect that because (according to their view of the Bible) the earth would one day end up in a ball of flames we could therefore milk the earth for all its worth while we’ve got time!
You can see how some could read a few of the verses of the Bible that way. But the thrust of the teaching of Jesus is that he came into the world to rescue and to redeem the earth that’s been blighted by sin.
This makes a big difference to how we view and treat the earth. If it’s destined for some great cosmic combustion you can see why some people couldn’t care less about what we do to the planet now. If, on the other hand, its very molecules are going to be renewed and transformed then we need to respect the earth. After all, Genesis tells us that God made a covenant with the earth – he made it; and it has an original and essential goodness. In a word, it’s sacred.
Listen to what Jesus says later on in John’s gospel.
“I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day”.
This salvation is not just of people, but of everything that belongs to him. As Paul emphasised in Colossians it’s through Christ that “God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross”.
You don’t have to be a person of faith to know that it’s human sinfulness that’s to blame for so many of the environmental disasters. It’s through our greed and selfishness that so much of the earth is being exploited and abused. It’s as if the earth is under a curse. The only way for that curse to be lifted is for the human family to think again and to seek God’s forgiveness. Then with humanity ‘healed, restored and forgiven’ the earth can be freed from this curse, from this ‘bondage to decay’. It’s through the cross that we find forgiveness and the earth is set free and transformed
This is why Jesus Christ is the bringer of Good News for all and why in the end the whole earth and not just individual souls rejoice in his coming,.
When I left Brazil and was flying over the Amazon I could see beneath me the deep green density of the forest. I could see too the scars of the ‘slash and burn’ where soya was being grown for export to Europe and China to feed cattle and chickens. I could see where we were literally eating into and eating up the forest.
It was an intense thing to experience this map of destruction etched below me. I kept repeating to myself in a form of meditation:
“All things have been created through him and for him”
The words sank into my heart with a sadness at what we’re doing to his world.
But then as the plane banked over the ocean and turned towards Africa I told myself that the future lay ultimately in God’s hands and not ours, and I prayed for the blessing of the river with a prayer I had written early one morning as I watched the sun rise over the Amazon:
You O Lord are the beginning and the end
The Alpha and Omega
And from you alone flows the river of life
Whose waters gleam in the morning sun bright as a crystal
We give you thanks for the waters of the Amazon
Which drop from the heavens
Showering your blessings upon the Earth;
We give you thanks that on these banks
Grow all kinds of trees for food
Whose leaves are for the healing of the nations
We give you thanks that wherever flows the River of Life
You the Giver and Lover of Life
Bring life in all its fullness
Bless this river, Bless all your creatures
Who live in and on and by these waters
Bless the Amazon and make it a blessing for the Whole Earth
To the Glory of your Name in all the world.
Amen