Sermon: Season of Creation
Week 3 – The Family of God in our Common Home
19 August 2021 –
Archdeacon Mark Long
James 3:13-4:3,7-8a,
Psalm 1, and Mark 9:30-37; NRSV
I’m appreciating that this Season of Creation is asking us to rethink how we engage with our world, with the systems and structures that direct and control our society. This is an important conversation, and we need to acknowledge that it is also a difficult conversation for us as people of faith. We live in an age that demands we apply the principles of our faith differently to how they have been applied in the West for close on two millennia. The Church rose to power during the reign of Constantine and managed to control Western society in one form or another for almost a millennium and a half. Beginning in the 14th century the Renaissance saw substantial social shifts begin to impact on the Church’s influence that were strengthened by the first industrial revolution in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, a period that saw revolutions in France in the late 18th century and in Russia in the early 20th century. Over the course of the 20th century a tombstone was raised marking the end of the Church’s social, political and economic influence on a global scale. This is what makes it a difficult conversation: much of our theology, our thinking, our expectations are still marked by what was, by a Church all-powerful, but in a 21st century context where the Church is largely sidelined and insignificant and needing to redefine its purpose in the world. Benedict J. Groeschel, C.F.R., in a prologue to a commentary on St Benedict’s Rule, comments, “… many thoughtful people are wondering if we are on the threshold of a second Dark Ages, and some even more thoughtful people are trying to discern how we can survive the collapsing foundations of western civilization and even the decline of all humanizing culture.”[1]
This is where the focus of these first three weeks of the Season of Creation are so helpful: in an age when a strongly secular culture would have the Church remain silent, and where even people of faith may encourage keeping our heads down while questioning the validity of any social, political or economic engagement, the Season of Creation themes offer a helpful foundation for engaging and participating in the world in which God has placed us. Today’s reading from the book of James encourages us to act out of wisdom[2], and we can only do that if we take time to reflect, to build a strong foundation of understanding, and to be open to renewed perspectives. By taking us back to the root meanings of terms we largely assign to social structures external to our faith – economy and ecology – these themes provide us with a broader picture of our social sphere and provide renewed opportunities for us to engage beyond the walls of the Church with confidence and purpose. The overall theme of this Season is that Creation (and our world in particular) is a “Home for All”[3]. There are rules for this home (economy)[4] and we need to understand the home’s “… integral web of relationships that sustain [its] wellbeing …”[5] (ecology). Today’s theme of ecumenism takes us a step further, and offers us “… a theological alternative to the concept of globalisation[,]”[6] the whole inhabited world as a place “… seeking justice, equity, reconciliation and the flourishing of the whole of creation” (ecumenical).[7]
In the context of Church the word ecumenical is normally associated with interdenominational engagement, for example with the Methodist or Roman Catholic Churches. Today we are asked to embrace a broader understanding of ecumenism as reflected in the translation of the Greek word oikoumene as ‘the world’ in Agabus’ warning in Acts 11:28 of a great famine all over the world. The world, not just the Household of God is the place of God’s ongoing mission of reconciliation.[8] Part of the difficulty of the conversation I mentioned earlier is that we generally draw boundaries to limit our discomfort or to protect us from that which we fear. Today the conversation between the Roman Catholic Church and the Protestant Churches remains complex; we still struggle to accept other faiths such as Islam or Hinduism as legitimate routes to relationship with God. The level of ecumenism today’s theme calls us to is even more challenging as it is asking us to accept that “The calling of the church is to uphold the radical inclusivity of the household of God, in which all are invited to sit at the family table as equals.”[9] In terms of engaging with our world this requires us as the Household of God, as people of faith, as the Church, to “… be a constant witness against the economies of exclusion, which takes God given resources of the Earth and the labour of the poor and delivers them into the hands of wealthy shareholders.”[10] When we speak of the Church being political it is not on the grounds of party politics, but in challenging the injustice of our times. It is in seeking to bring about the reality of reconcilliation won through Jesus’ Resurrection that still remains so illusive to humankind. Our Eucharistic prayer for this Season reflects this longing:
Therefore, O God, we who seek your reconciliation; we who need reconciliation one with another; we who hope for reconciliation with all of creation, [we] draw close to this mystery.
This is no denial of the reconciliation won through Jesus’ Resurrection; it is a heart-cry to see it active in our relationships and in our world. It is a recognition that God’s gift of reconciliation – and with it justice and equity – is available to us in the mystery of the Sacrament of Holy Communion, to which we draw close. This is underscored by this morning’s Gospel reading: we get caught up on our own importance – both as individuals, but also as the Church – and our human tendency is to then become exclusionary, and exclusion is at the heart of injustice. At the heart of the Gospel interaction is the disciples’ inability to understand the comment Jesus makes about his looming betrayal and death and resurrection, and instead allow themselves to be distracted by their own desire for power and control. Intriguingly, Jesus doesn’t berate the disciples, but introduces a child – a person of no account in the context of their ambition – and turns the conversation on its head. What has been a cause for argument is now an opportunity for reconciliation as the social values of their time are “… shaken up and re-shaped into a mindblowing ‘whoever wants to be first must be a servant and must welcome a child and when they do that they actually welcome me and the one who sent me’ … crazy.”[11]
To be truly ecumenical is for us to embrace the fullness of God’s Creation, remembering that in Genesis 1 we read that as God created God declared all creation ‘good’ and the creation of humanity ‘very good’. We don’t always see that goodness, but it’s at the heart of Creation; we don’t always see the results of God’s gift of reconciliation, but it is at the heart of the Resurrection. Rowan Williams says, “… our worship is about God coming to be in our midst, but also about God coming to deal with the wholeness of who we are.”[12] Goodness and reconciliation are not only available to those who acknowledge and seek a conscious relationship with God, it is also there for those who are asleep to it. Our responsibility is to awaken our world, and we can only do that if we engage; and we can only engage if we believe in Resurrection, or in Rowan Williams’ words, if we “… believe that the world can change, that God can turn history on its pivot, … that in all sorts of human situations it is possible for things to be different.”[13]
To awaken our world requires that we are active in the systems and structures of our communities and our broader society, but active in an upside-down kind of way: serving, welcoming; committed to authentic reconciliation based on justice and equity. Our vocation as people of faith is to obedience; it is to offer ourselves to God as a living sacrifice in Jesus Christ our Lord, and in the power of the Holy Spirit to live to God’s praise and glory.[14]
I close with a prayer for reconciliation by Irish Theologian and Poet, Pádraig Ó Tuama:
Let us pray,
Amen.[15]
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