On having dirty hands: Clean Up Australia Day

Sermon preached at St Matthew's Anglican, West Pennant Hills
On 1st March 2015, St Matt's held a joint service for all congregations after many parishioners had spent the morning cleaning up local parks and streets as part of Clean Up Australia Day.

Scripture readings: Psalm 104 and Romans 8.18-27.

When I was growing up not far from here, I had zero interest in my parents’ garden. For me, it was too much hard work - tending, watering, weeding - for too little payoff. With the impatience and selfishness of youth, I expected my efforts to result in immediate tangible personal benefits.

But now, I have a garden of my own: citrus trees, a blueberry bush, passionfruit vine, basil, tomatoes, zucchini, silver beet, basil, kale, leeks, capsicum, various herbs (including basil), a compost bin, a couple of worm-farms, some basil and a beehive. I love it! And I'm trying to inculcate an interest and appreciation in my two little kids that I never managed to gain until I was almost 30.

Some things take time to recognise. The patience, attentiveness, humility and willingness to get my hands dirty that I spurned as a youth are now things I cherish and seek to foster in myself, ever mindful of how fragile my grasp on them is.

Soil is now something I have learned to love. The opening chapters of the Bible speak poetically of humans being fashioned out of the soil. Indeed, even the name ‘Adam is a Hebrew pun, being the male form of the female word ‘adamah: soil, dirt, ground. ‘Adam from ‘adamah. The pun even (kind of) words in English: we are humans from the humus, a slightly unusual word for topsoil.* We are creatures of the dirt, relying on dirt for almost every mouthful of food.
*Technically, the dark organic matter in it.

And so I’ve come to love my worm-farms and compost: watching dirt form in front of my eyes. Seeing my food-scraps return again into the nourishing foundation of life from which they came.

But my garden in Paddington is apparently built on a rubbish dump. It seems like every time I dig, I come across broken glass, plastic, old bits of metal. My two year delightedly finds bits of glass and comes running excitedly to show me and I am caught between anxiety that he’s going to cut himself and pride that he is learning to cherish the soil and wants to keep it free of rubbish.

I often find myself wondering: what were they thinking, these people who apparently smashed their bottles into the soil and dumped random bits of plastic? Were they neighbours chucking things over the fence? Was it a former resident who was particularly careless? Was it the result of some long forgotten landscaping that brought in rubbish from elsewhere?

When we moved in, the house hadn’t been lived in for almost 12 months, and the backyard was overgrown. Gradually, as the garden has taken shape, we’ve been cleaning up the mess. And it feels good to be part of setting things right, even if it is in a small, very localised way. This little patch of dirt from which I’ve removed a few dozen bits of glass and plastic, is now cleaner and healthier than it was before.

And I bet some of you have had something of a similar experience this morning: taking a small patch of land and improving it, removing rubbish, cleaning it up, making it a little bit more healthy, more right, less polluted. Maybe you’ve wondered at those who dumped stuff – whether out of carelessness, apathy or haste. Maybe you’ve even got a little angry – it can feel good to be fixing something, and when you don’t know who was responsible for breaking it, it is easy to indulge in a little self-righteous harrumphing.

It also feels good to be working with others, doing something useful as a team, making the local area a little better for everyone. This is an act of service, an act of commitment to a place, an act that affirms that as creatures of the soil, it is right and fitting that we seek to take care of our little patch of it, even trying to clean up the mess that others have made. Both gardening as well as cleaning up the land, are very human acts – they are a kind of work that affirms our connection to the humus.

And when we turn to our passages this morning, we see that they are not just human acts, affirming our creatureliness, they are also, in an important sense, God-like acts. Cleaning things up out of care for others is to be a bit like God.

Our first reading, Psalm 104, is a wonderful poem celebrating the creative and caring concern God has for all of creation. Yahweh, the God of Israel, is here revealed as being the creator and sustainer of all creatures, great and small. God’s care extends not just to humans, but to the great family of life, the community of all creation. Written long before modern ecological science or the development of the concept of biodiversity, nonetheless, this psalm celebrates the diversity and abundance of the more-than-human earth. The psalmist notices the various habitats of animals, both domestic and wild, the times and seasons of their existence, and asserts in faith that Yahweh is the source and provider of all life, feeding and watering birds of the air, beasts of the land and even the monsters of the deep that so fascinated and frightened the inhabitants of the ancient near east.

And the striking thing is, there is no hint here that God’s care is exclusively or even primarily for humans; this psalm does not give us a human-centred view that assumes everything really belongs to us and exists to be used in our projects. No, God cares for humans in their labouring during the day, but the same land is then the abode of wild beasts at night that are also in divine care. God causes grass to grow for the cattle, but God also feeds the wild lions, the wild donkeys, the creeping things innumerable that scuttle under the waves. These animals were not only outside of the human economy, but at least in the case of wild lions, actively a hindrance to it. God’s providential care embraces even creatures that make life more difficult for people.*
*This point, and the language of the community of creation, is indebted to Richard Bauckham's Ecology and the Bible: Rediscovering the Community of Creation. Highly recommended.

Now, within this community of creation we do have a particular human vocation, a weighty responsibility placed upon us to reflect the image of God, to show forth God’s own caring concern for other creatures, to manage and steward the land in such a way that the blessing multiplies and grows. We are indeed invited to be gardeners. But Psalm 104 keeps us from getting too cocky, too ambitious, too self-obsessed in this task. We are to reflect and participate in God’s loving authority, which is always directed to the good of the other. Yet this authority is to be exercised as creatures. We are not demigods, halfway between God and the rest of creation, we don’t float six inches above the ground. We are pedestrian creatures, creatures of the dirt and to dust we will return. Fundamentally, we belong with all the other creatures, under the care of God, and if we are then invited to join in that task of caring protecting, it is precisely as creatures. We care for the soil as those who are deeply dependent upon it.

And this is a good reminder to us on Clean Up Australia day. It is so easy, especially in a modern industrial society, to act as though we are above or outside of the rest of life on the planet, rather than intimately connected to it in a vast web of life. Getting our hands dirty today hopefully did some local good, helped make a little part of the world somewhat better. But as we look at our dirty hands, this can also re-ground us as creatures of the soil and we can remember again our dependence upon crops growing, rain falling, soil remaining healthy, biodiversity remaining robust, pollutants being minimised, climate being stable. We have never before in history been so powerful, never before had such amazing technological wonders; but never before have we had such a massive, and largely detrimental, effect upon the habitability of the planet as a whole. There isn’t time this morning to recite the familiar litany of statistics, but they are indeed dire. I’ll just pick one: that as best as we can calculate, the number of wild vertebrates living on the planet has declined by about one third during my lifetime. There are all kinds of factors contributing to this: habitat destruction, hunting, overfishing, climate change, but our stewardship is failing if we are squeezing out these creatures, who are also dear to the one who created us.

And so there is a darker side to today. Our second passage hints at this. In Romans 8, the apostle Paul paints a vivid picture of creation groaning, as though in childbirth, in great pain, in bondage to decay.

If you have the passage in front of you, you’ll notice that there are actually three things groaning. First, there is creation itself, waiting with eager longing, yearning for the day when the current conditions of frustration and decay are no more. Just pause there for a moment and notice the content of Christian hope in Paul’s vision: “the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God”. The creation itself: this is not a salvation that is purely for humans. We are not to be whisked off a dying planet away to a heavenly realm somewhere else. The creation itself is groaning, yearning, hoping. The creation itself is to participate in God’s great renewal, of which the resurrection of Jesus was the first taste. The Christian hope embraces earth as well as heaven – which ought to be no surprise to those of us who regularly pray for God’s will to be done "on earth as it is in heaven".

The second thing groaning is “we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for […] the redemption of our bodies”. Again, the Christian hope is bodily – we hope for a bodily resurrection, just like Jesus'. But more than this, groaning is a normal, healthy part of the Christian life. Paul is no triumphalist, who thinks that discipleship consists of ever-greater thrills and bliss. No, we follow a crucified messiah and our fundamental experience is of frustration, which is the necessary precondition for hope, for who hopes for what is already present, already manifest? Groaning is spiritual – not grumbling, mind you – but groaning, a deep yearning desire for all that is wrong to be set to rights. And that deep desire is inspired by God’s Holy Spirit, since it is those who have tasted the first fruits of that Spirit who groan. There is way in which being a Christian ought to lead us to being less content, less satisfied, less ready to make our peace with a broken world as though such brokenness is acceptable.

But if we keep reading our passage, we find that not only is creation groaning, not only are we groaning, but the Spirit also groans. In verse 26, where the Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words, it’s the same Greek word Paul used earlier for our groaning: this discontented yearning for the renewal of all things, this deep desire for the resurrection of Jesus to be expanded and applied to all creation, extends into the heart of God. God too groans.

We are again, therefore, invited to be godly. If Psalm 104 helped us to be a little like God in caring for a community of life that extends beyond human projects, Romans 8 teaches us to be a little like God in yearning for the renewal of all things. These two passages give us a way of looking at the world in which the rest of creation is not merely a backdrop to an exclusively human drama. We discover wider horizons as we come to see ourselves as creatures in a community of life, as sharing with all life a fundamental dependence upon God’s provision and interdependence with other creatures. And we are invited to see ourselves as sharing with all creation a fundamental frustration, a desire for our brokenness to be healed, our pollution cleaned up, a desire grounded in God’s own desire that all things be made new in Christ.

Because the pollution degrading our lives isn’t just the rubbish dumped in a local park, it isn't even just the rubbish we’re collectively dumping into the oceans and atmosphere, largely out of sight and not as easily cleaned up with a pair of gloves and some elbow grease, pollution that is altering the very chemistry of the air and water, changing the climate, acidifying the oceans. Even more than these, the pollution degrading our lives is also the rubbish we allow into our hearts when we place ourselves at the centre of our own lives, when we live as though we were something other than creatures in a vast web of life, when we pretend that salvation doesn’t include the rest of creation. All this needs to be cleaned up too.

And so in the context of these passages, our efforts today become far more than just being good citizens, or kind neighbours, or taking pride in our local area, or seeking to make some amends for times we may have trashed the place. In the grace of God, they can become a little taste of the Psalmist’s vision of true creaturehood, a little taste of Paul’s Spirit-filled discontentment with disorder. In God’s hands, our efforts today can become another step on a journey into following Jesus with our whole lives, a journey that may break our fingernails, that may break our hearts, but which is the only path towards true joy.

On supporting a friend with cancer

After my own experiences of cancer diagnosis, treatment and remission, I more or less regularly receive requests from people whose friend, family member or colleague has just been diagnosed asking for advice on how they might best care for them. I thought I would post one of my answers (with permission) in case it is of some benefit to others.

Hi friend,

Good to hear from you, though sorry to hear about this news.

I guess the first thing I'd say, which may actually not sound very helpful at all, is that cancers are very different and the experiences of cancer patients even more diverse, so I would be quite hesitant to extrapolate too much from my own story.

Having said that, it is still possible to say a little more. Grief and suffering come in many forms (even in the same person) and bring with them various needs and opportunities. At times, silence is the best support; at others, the chance to talk to a sympathetic ear; at others, a word of comfort; at others, an act of silent service. In general, I guess I'd suggest that responsiveness is therefore key, being willing to play whatever role will be a blessing to those in need. While at times grief needs space, I suspect it rarely needs absence, so as a start, simply indicating your willingness to be there for them and to grieve with them is probably the best bet. If they have practical needs, then offers of help from trusted friends may well be appreciated (babysitting while parents go to some of the endless appointments these things seem to involve? Doing some housework? Frozen meals? The latter can probably be safely brought without being asked, as long as you stick to any known dietary requirements). Some people may find themselves with little energy for daily tasks like these. Others might throw themselves into them as a distraction and comfort.

Depending how wide and deep the pre-existing support networks of this family are, it may be that they are initially swamped with offers of help and sympathy. If you think this might be the case, you (or someone else) could perform the service of coordinating the practical support (putting together rosters for babysitting or frozen meals, etc.).

Don't neglect the partner of the patient, whose grief is double: grief for their partner's sake and for their own (potential) loss. And depending how old the kids are, they may need extra support from trusted family friends.

Again, depending how well you know them, then make your level and form of contact fit the relationship. If you are not close friends, then make contact through forms that can be ignored or noted and replied to later (email, letter, card, SMS). Only call if you know them well, because they might receiving a string of calls and probably don't want to be having the same conversation with dozens of people.

If my experience is anything to go by, they are likely to find themselves the target of more unsolicited advice than at any time outside of pregnancy. Although I know everyone meant well, I'd suggest keeping any crank miracle cures you've heard of or stories of amazing recoveries to yourself. It is actually not very encouraging to be told about someone's aunt who was cured simply by prayer and faith or someone's grandfather who drank only goji berry juice and lived to 100. Such stories are (a) irresponsible (I'm not a big fan of alternative medicine, nor of purely faith-based healing, for both scientific and theological reasons) and (b) sometimes contain an element of accusation in them ("if only you had enough faith, you too would be healed like my cousin").

Many cancer treatments become complex, and there is often a high volume of information to share with those concerned. One suggestion that a friend made to me (more unsolicited advice from a guy I didn't know well at the time, but of all that I received, almost the only piece of pure gold I got) was that it might be a good idea to set up a blog where interested family and friends can self-medicate on as much or as little information as they wish. This means that rather than having the same conversation fifty times after each appointment, I could simply write out a summary once and post it on the blog, then direct people to the blog. Mine is here (only updated very infrequently now).

I would also suggest keeping your theological comments minimal unless they raise it. I was probably unusual in that I'd just written my 4th year paper on suffering and the problem of evil just weeks before being diagnosed and so was (usually) quite happy to discuss theology with anyone who wanted. But not everyone is in that place, and for many, just retreating into survival mode is all they can handle for a while (once treatment started, my willingness to talk dropped rapidly as I just had little energy for anything).

I could write reams about my experiences of treatment, but here, the specifics of the cancer become most stark and what I say may bear little or no relevance to their situation.

They may or may not find it helpful to meet with other cancer patients, though I suspect that such groups will be available through the hospital, so you probably don't need to worry about that.

Finally, I'd suggest taking this tragedy as an opportunity to reflect upon your own mortality. Our society has hidden death and dying as far from view as possible and here is one place that the gospel truly does have good news (though not always easy news). Of all that I read, wrote and heard during the intense few months after diagnosis, the best was undoubtedly this talk by Stanley Hauerwas. It may or may not be appropriate to share with your friends (that is for you to judge), but it is almost certainly worth an hour of your time (if you can get past his braying cackle and Texan twang).

It hardly needs saying, but when words and wisdom falter, groans are also part of a faithful response to serious illness.

Grace & peace,
Byron

PS If you don't mind, I might post my reply (omitting your name and any other identifying details) on my blog since I have been asked this question quite a number of times (not that I mind being asked!) and putting it there will mean I can refer to it in future. Let me know if you'd rather I didn't.

God wants you to be healthy, wealthy and happy

How does God make our lives better? By calling us to poverty, persecution, fasting and the curiously patient "ineffectiveness" of prayer. How does God bring us joy? By teaching us to abandon false hopes, to mourn and groan and yearn for his kingdom. How does God bring us peace? By telling us to take up our cross. How does God give us life? By calling us to die.
I don't pretend this is a full account, simply a small counterweight to overly triumphalist baptisms of our present comfort.

Both sides of the brain: 2010 in retrospect

To complement the twelve doomiest stories of 2010 I linked to a few days ago, Desdemona has now also posted fifty doomiest graphs (for the left side of the brain) and fifty doomiest photos (for the right side). Of course, such links don't highlight various pieces of good news from this year, but they have been relatively few and far between in comparison with our developing grasp on our deteriorating global situation.

Abandoning false hopes is part of what it means to take up our cross and follow the man of sorrows. As 2010 draws to a close and 2011 dawns, possibilities for faith, hope and love remain abundant. But we must pursue them in the real world, which is increasingly filled with groans and sighs - as well as the promise of the coming glory of God.

Perplexed but not in despair: Christian pessimism III

In two previous posts, I have been reflecting upon Karl Rahner's account of what he calls "Christian pessimism" through a reading of Paul's self-description in 2 Corinthians 4.8 as being "perplexed, but not in depair". The first post summarised Rahner's take on what it means to be perplexed and how this is a universal human condition, not dissolved by Christian belief. The second post highlighted his asking the question of whether such a condition is at all compatible with Christian hope that rejects despair. And in this post, we shall briefly examine Rahner's attempted resolution of this difficulty.

Rahner's response to the experience of perplexity is to push it back into the Christian experience of God, even into the content of eschatological hope, to make it the crux of the beatific vision:

"[Christians] experience their radical fall into the abyss of divinity as their deepest perplexity. They continue to experience this darkness, always more intensely and more bitterly, in a certain sense, until the dreadful absurdity of death. They see that this experience of darkness is confirmed by the fate of Jesus. At the same time, in a mysterious paradox, they feel that this very experience is sent to them by God and is the experience of the arrival of God near them. The perplexity and the fact that it is lifted by God's grace are not really two successive stages of human existence. God's grace does not totally remove the perplexity of existence. The lifting, the ouk exaporoumenoi, accepted and filled with grace, is the real truth of the perplexity itself.

"For if it is true that we shall one day see God as he is, immediately, face to face, and if he is seen there precisely as the ineffable, unfathomable mystery that can be accepted and endured only in love, that is, in a total yielding up of self, the fulfillment for Christians is the height of human perplexity. Compared to it, all our riddles, our ignorance, our disappointments are but forerunners and first installments of the perplexity that consists in losing ourselves entirely through love in the mystery that is God. In the bliss of accepting the infinite mystery, that is, in absolute perplexity, all our partial perplexities, bewilderments, and disappointments disappear. The reverse is also true. As we expect and accept this end of our existence, our present perplexities are not removed, but encompassed. We are liberated, because they no longer dominate us. They have become the occasion and the mediation of our welcoming of the unfathomable mystery that gives itself to us and causes to accept it in love.

“While we are thus freed from every enslaving power and domination, the world remains what it is: the task, the challenge, the battlefield, with its victories and its defeats, as they succeed and overlap each other. We are unable to control them completely; we must accept them with their own perplexities. Within the ultimate freedom and even serenity of those for whom night and day, defeat and victory, are encompassed by the reality of God who is for us, nothing seems to have changed. We remain the aporoumenoi. And even the fact that we are more than saved and liberated aporoumenoi remains mysteriously hidden from us (often or forever, I do not know). But even then the fact remains that our perplexity is redeemed.”

- Karl Rahner, "Christian Pessimism" in Theological Investigations XXII
(trans. Joseph Donceel; London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1991), 161-62.

Rahner's argument assumes that the human experience of God is not just similar to all the other perplexing aspects of human existence, but that it is the ground for them all. Life is perplexing because God himself is perplexing. The cross then becomes the revelation and confirmation of what we apparently already knew: that God's is dark and mysterious, his ways unfathomable and eternally strange.

And so the groaning of creation, which echoes the groaning of the Spirit, is no passing condition, but is itself the foretaste of what all communion with God is always like. We will never really know; we can just become content in and with our ignorance. We may never actually be liberated from the frustrations of existence; we will simply make our peace with them. Or even if we don't, there is some sense in which we are already redeemed because to be perplexed is itself to be redeemed.

I find this account initially tempting, as it seems to embrace a radical theologia crucis. The vanity and frustration of inexplicable injustice are brought into the very heart of God. Yet pushing the groaning of creation into the eschaton and into the being of God, Rahner has actually capitulated to despair. We are redeemed, but we might never know it. The mystery of the universe is that the universe is a mystery. And the same goes for God, but more so.

There is no room here for liberation in anything but our perspective. Liberation means coming to see that my trifling little puzzles are as nothing compared to the all-surpassing divine puzzle. It is a council of despair that builds not resistance but capitulation to the injustices of the world. It treats the incarnation and death of Christ as revealing something we more or less already knew (namely, that the mystery of God cannot be known, only experienced, accepted and endured). It largely overlooks the resurrection as a divine promise of transformation. It makes the unknowability of God more fundamental than his drawing near to us in Fatherly love, fraternal humility and Spiritual illumination.

Of course, this short piece can’t be expected to say everything that needs to be said even on the topic of Christian pessimism, but there is a worrying Gnostic flavour to his comments here. Taken on their own, they imply that salvation consists not in the world being changed, merely our gaining an insight into the secret truth lying at the heart of it, or rather into the fact that we shall never know and can’t know the central mystery. It is a redemption of our mind and eyes, or perhaps just a lowering of our hopes and aspirations, but the world stays largely as it is. The cross reveals but does not seem to atone.

Rahner's concept of Christian pessimism is an important one, but his account of how this pessimism is to be integrated with not giving way to despair is too neat. Paul can face his perplexity without despair, not because perplexity is already a taste of God, but "because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus, and will bring us with you into his presence." (2 Corinthians 4.14). This is what keeps him going on the difficult road of his apostolic mission. This is what makes Christian pessimism possible. Our life might look and feel like taking up a cross, denying ourselves, following Jesus into anguish, loss, difficulties, threats we cannot overcome and death. But God raises the dead.
Image by CAC.

On being evangelical: a question of loyalty

The gospel is a critical agent in human hearts and history. To be evangelical (to be a gospel person) is to affirm God's good world through cross and resurrection: that is, not simply and straight-forwardly to say "yes" to everything as it is, but to see it through the double lens of cross and resurrection, in which human pride and culture and institutions and traditions and "evangelicalism" (and "post-evangelicalism" and "anti-evangelicalism") are judged and found wanting, but then also raised to God's new life. To be a gospel person is to be against the world, for the world. It will also sometimes mean being against "evangelicalism" for the sake of the gospel. The good news of Jesus doesn't let us sit comfortably where we presently are, but draws us forward into the future promised by the cross and resurrection of Christ. And so to be evangelical means being open to critique, open to new light breaking forth from God's good news, which remains good and remains new. To be evangelical is to accept and offer "critique from within" and to allow my own proud stance of wanting to view things critically from the outside to be itself crucified.

If we belong to God and his coming future, and to the future of this world, we groan at the inadequacies of this world and at the inadequacies of all attempts to anticipate the resurrection of the dead.

This conception of being evangelical is not defined by loyalty to particular cultural traditions or to one party on certain contested social and ethical disputes, far less by loyalty to a particular political movement. It is not even defined by loyalty to the Holy Scriptures, at least not directly. To be evangelical is to be loyal to the Christ who meets us in and with the good news of the kingdom of God and to allow that loyalty to shape all our affections and desires, our fears and hopes, our identity and destiny.

A prayer of Luther

"May Christ our dear God and the Bishop of our souls, which he has bought with his own precious blood, sustain his little flock by the might of his own word, that it may increase and grow in grace and knowledge and faith in him. May he comfort and strengthen it, that it may be firm and steadfast against all the crafts and assaults of Satan and this wicked world, and may he hear its hearty groaning and anxious waiting and longing for the joyful day of his glorious and blessed coming and appearing. May there be an end of this murderous pricking and biting of the heel, of horrible poisonous serpents. And may there come finally the revelation of the glorious liberty and blessedness of the children of God, for which they wait and hope in patience. To which all those who love the appearing of Christ our life will say from the heart, Amen, Amen."

- Martin Luther, W.A. 474f. (cited in Barth, CD I/2, xi).

Jesus and climate change VIII

But what’s the problem?
Now, I’ve been speaking of how good God’s world is, but that’s only part of the picture. Things have also gone dreadfully, tragically wrong, as we can see with climate change, if we hadn’t already noticed it elsewhere. Instead of humanity caring for God’s world, receiving his gifts with thanks and sharing them with others, all too often our experience is of a me-first world, both in our attitudes and in how we have set up our societies. Many of us presume that we deserve our standard of living, or vote for politicians who will maintain and increase our affluence before all other considerations. We are often greedy and envious, wanting to hoard and consume more things than our neighbour. Or we might be apathetic about the suffering of others. Or just unthinkingly wasteful. And so often we are simply thankless.

Jesus said that our life is more than the abundance of possessions (Luke 12.15), that loving God and our neighbour are more important than financial security or chasing our dreams or the perfect romance or the pursuit of happiness (Mark 12.28-33). Yet our society often assumes that bigger is better, that everything must be sacrificed to economic growth, that the creation is merely a pile of ‘natural resources’ to be exploited for increasing our material comfort and affluence.

In fact the climate crisis that we face today is a classic symptom of what the Bible calls ‘sin’. Sin is a bigger problem than simply the actions of any one individual. It is an addiction, a deadly habit, found in each of us and woven into our social fabric. Climate change is a classic symptom because like many of the world’s problems, it is not simple. There is no single cause and no magic bullet solution. Instead, we’re faced with a complex series of related problems arising out of many causes, such as the small actions and inaction of millions, habits based on ignorance, pig-headed short-sightedness, greed or fear that refuses to see size of the problem, the desire to maximise our short-term gain without regard for the future. Or simply false beliefs: that the planet’s resources and ability to adapt is effectively infinite, that human actions don’t add to much, that the problem and its solution lie elsewhere. All these contribute to a mega-problem.

Richard Chartres, Bishop of London, has said ‘Sin is not just a restricted list of moral mistakes. It is living a life turned in on itself where people ignore the consequences of their actions.’ Abuse of the natural environment is a consequence and symptom of human sinfulness. It is a symptom of disobedience to God’s command to care for his world. This is both a personal and a collective failure. It is something to which we all contribute and yet something from which we all suffer, into which we were born and raised without being consulted. We are all both perpetrators and victims. And we are not the only victims. Creation itself is groaning in intense pain like a woman giving birth because of its bondage to decay (Romans 8.19-22).
Photo by ALS.
Series: I; II; III; IV; V; VI; VII; VIII; IX; IX(b); X; XI; XII; XIII; XIV; XV.

On prayer

Prayer begins in silence. This is because we do not know God unless he speaks first. There can only be a conversation because he has taken the initiative. Left to ourselves, we invent gods of our own wishes and fears, but the good news is that God has spoken to us in his Son. We are not left in the dark, but can respond to his gracious invitation to relationship with him as our heavenly Father. If he had not reached out to us in our need, then we would be ignorant of both the true nature and depth of our need and the identity of the one whom we might call upon to help.

Of course, sometimes our needs are so pressing that all we can do is cry that most basic of prayers: ‘Save me, Lord!’ And the Scriptures promise that ‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved’ (Joel 2.32; Acts 2.21; Romans 10.13). Yet it is not just any lord to whom we fly in our distress, but to the God and Father of Jesus. As we come to know him, we also grow in our understanding of ourselves and the depth of our dependence upon him.

Our prayers are profoundly shaped by our conception of God. If God is a cosmic Santa Claus, we will bring our shopping list. If he is a harsh and distant judge, then our pleas will be fearful, brief and infrequent. And so to grow in prayer, it is important to remember again the good news about Jesus and allow our prayers to be moulded by God as he truly is.

First, God is the creator to whom we owe our existence and all we have. Every good thing comes from him, and so it is right that our prayers be filled with adoration. And not just when things are good. The Psalms are filled with examples of David and others continuing to praise God in the midst of danger and suffering (Psalms 5, 73, 77, 86 and many others).

When we face our own strife and failure it is usually partially self-caused and partially the result of circumstances outside our control. To the extent that we are at fault for our own pain, it is God whom we have ultimately offended and so it is also right that we confess our errors in our prayers: whether large or small, public or private, in word or deed – or even through not doing what we ought to have done. At this point, knowing the heart of God to whom we confess makes all the difference. This is the one who is ‘merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness’ (Exodus 34.6), the one whose Son lived, died and rose to secure our forgiveness.

Not only has God given us life and all the good things we enjoy, but in Jesus he has also brought new life to all of us living in the shadow of death. This includes both release from guilt and the gift of the Spirit to set us free from the compulsion to do evil. In Christ, we are adopted as God’s children and let in on God’s plan to set everything right through Christ. We have so much for which to give thanks in our prayers and so it is no surprise that Paul tells the Thessalonians to ‘Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.’ (1 Thessalonians 5.16-18)

Yet we know that everything is not yet right. Jesus has risen from the dead and we follow his path with the help of the Spirit, but death still interrupts, sins still entangle. Paul told the Christians in Rome that the whole world groans for the day when what was begun at Easter for Jesus is finished for all creation (Romans 8.18-23). And we also groan, yearning for the day when Jesus will return to bring life and peace once and for all to his dying and war-torn world. Such prayers might consist of ‘sighs too deep for words’ (Romans 8.26-27) or they might simply cry ‘Come, Lord Jesus!’ (Revelation 22.20)

And so that leaves us today, cleansed from our past, eagerly waiting for the future, and living each day relying on God for all our needs. Consequently, we ask for daily bread from the one who fed Israel in the wilderness and who gives good things abundantly even to those who ignore him (Matthew 5.45). We need not be embarrassed about asking from one who loves to give. But neither ought we fear asking: ‘Take delight in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart.’ (Psalm 37.4) If our delight is in God, the desires of our heart will be shaped to be his desires and so he will satisfy them with more than we can ask or imagine.

There is power in prayer, but it is not ours; it is God’s. Prayer is not a magic formula giving us access to a secret and mysterious force. Prayer is an admission of our impotence and need, and of God’s generosity and strength. The more we know him as we hear and obey the good news about Jesus, the more our prayers will be filled with adoration, confession, thanksgiving, groaning and requests.

And the more we will pray.
Twelve points for the first to correctly name the location of the each photo.

Hart on learning to see

Sometimes we don't see what's under our noses. Sometimes we see but do not perceive. Having one's eyes open and head pointed in the right direction is no guarantee of correct vision. Hart makes an excellent point about the labour of vision that is required in order to see straight in a world bent out of shape:

[A]ll of nature is a shattered mirror of divine beauty, still full of light, but riven by darkness. ... [T]o see the goodness indwelling all creation requires a labour of vision that only faith in Easter can sustain; but it is there, effulgent, unfading, innocent, but languishing in bondage to corruption, groaning in anticipation of a glory yet to be revealed, both a promise of the Kingdom yet to come and a portent of its beauty.

- David Bentley Hart, The Doors of the Sea:
Where Was God in the Tsunami? (Eerdmans: 2005), 102-3.

Learning to see creation rather than merely 'nature' does not mean closing our eyes to the pain all around (and within). Instead, it is to look thankfully not fearfully, seeing abundance rather than scarcity. It is to look caringly rather than instrumentally, seeing beauty before usefulness. It is to look hopefully, seeking glimpses of the glory yet to be revealed.

Psalms and lament

How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever?
   How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I bear pain in my soul,
   and have sorrow in my heart all day long?
How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?
   Consider and answer me, O LORD my God!
Give light to my eyes,
   or I will sleep the sleep of death,
and my enemy will say, “I have prevailed”;
   my foes will rejoice because I am shaken.        - Psalm 13.1-4

Our willingness to expose our pain is the means God gives us to help identify and respond to evil and injustice. For creation is not as it ought to be. The lament is a cry of protest schooled by our faith in a God who would have us serve the world by exposing its false comforts and deceptions. From such a perspective one of the profoundest forms of faithlessness is the unwillingness to acknowledge our inexplicable suffering and pain. ... "[Lament] leads us to the dangerous acknowledgement of how life really is. [It leads us] to think unthinkable thoughts and utter unutterable words. Perhaps worst, [the psalms of lament] leads us away from the comfortable religious claims of ‘modernity’ in which everything is managed and controlled. [We believe] that enough power and knowledge can tame the terror and eliminate the darkness. But our honest experience, both personal and public, attests to the resilience of the darkness."

- Stanley Hauerwas, Naming the Silences: God, Medicine,
and the Problem of Suffering (Eerdmans: 1990), 82-83.
Internal quote from Brueggemann.

We have a problem. Too often, we jump forward to the solution in an effort to avoid the full seriousness of our predicament. Too many attempts to discuss suffering end up making light of it, by making it merely a means to a beneficial end: it will teach us perseverence; it will build our community; it will chastise our faults; it will enable us to minister to others who suffer; it will bring glory to God. Any or all of these may be true - or true at least some of the time - yet any attempt to make positive outcomes into the purpose and meaning of all suffering is cruel. And it makes God cruel. There is no need to justify suffering through recourse to a 'greater good' that is served by it. God may bring from it greater - or lesser - goods, but these are not its meaning.

So let us first simply acknowledge that it hurts and is wrong, and let us lament and protest. The God we worship 'is not a God who needs protection from our cries and suffering.' (Hauerwas, 84)

Would Jesus vote green? VI

Sorrow
Once we move beyond systematic denial of environmental destruction, we reach the second common response: sorrow.

Upon coming to accept (at least some of) these claims as true, we are filled with sadness. It is sad that human action (and inaction) continue to cause so much destruction and senseless waste. This is a natural and right response, since we’re really losing things of that are of great value. In particular, I find the rate of extinction very sad, because while most other forms of environmental damage are reversible, (sometimes only in the very long term), with the extinction of a species, once it’s gone, it’s gone for good.

It is not only the animals and plants that suffer from our environmental irresponsibility. Humans suffer too, especially those too poor to move and too marginalised to have a significant political voice. Poisoned rivers, degraded soil, more frequent and more severe extreme weather patterns – these and more cause incalculable human suffering too. This is far more serious than not being able to water your garden or having to pay a little more for electricity.

Sorrow at what is lost and sorrow at what it costs those least able to afford it – this response resonates with a deeply Christian way of viewing the world. We only grieve the loss of what is valuable. Fundamental to Christianity’s take on the environment is that the world God made was good, very good. Grief is the natural correlate of love, when the object of love is harmed or threatened.

And our sadness also accords with a second basic Christian belief: there is something deeply wrong with God’s world. The beauty is marred. There are cracks in the abundant diversity. The health of the planet is threatened by a global disease.

The Apostle Paul teaches that to follow Christ, to be filled with his Spirit, is to grieve over the plight of creation, to groan in shared pain, to be discontent with the fractures in the world. Following Christ is not a recipe for a mindlessly happy escapism; we follow the one called the man of sorrows.

Yet grief alone is insufficient, not least because despite our best – or perhaps our worst, or simply our mediocre – efforts, despite pollution, soil degradation, climate change, the squandering of finite resources, mass extinction, despite all this, the world remains a good gift from God, filled with delight and things worth celebrating. Unless we take the time to stop, notice, enjoy and give thanks for all that surrounds us, we lose the very reason to grieve because we lose sight of the goodness of this gift.
Series: I; II; III; IV; V; VI; VII; VIII; IX; X; XI; XII; XIII.

Fear

The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?

- Psalm 27.1

Does the imminent approach of a large and unknown danger make our daily worries pale into insignificance? Do our quotidian, pedestrian worries fade away at the approach of a new and greater terror? On the contrary, the daily battle against insecurities and anxieties is where the action is at. A thousand little fears can shrink our lives far more effectively than an illness or tragedy.

Why is it possible not to fear? Because the LORD is my light: not the comforting night-light to hold back the shadows of the dark, nor 'the lantern which a traveller in the dark carries in his hand - but the glow on his face of the coming dawn' (Lesslie Newbigin). It is because we believe in this one that fear no longer makes sense.

What does it mean to not fear? It is to trust this Lord to do his will, not mine. It is to love those around me without being lost in self-absorption, to give myself wholeheartedly to my neighbour and not hold back in case the potential loss is too painful. It is to remain thankful despite great loss and refuse the easy temptation of bitterness. To refuse also the pull of despair and instead to groan in hope; to look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the age to come.

Let us fear not. This is our task and prayer.

MLK and the apple tree

Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree. - Martin Luther King, Jr.

This quote illustrates a hope in God in the face of disaster that I find quite inspirational. Every small enacted hope requires faith in the God who raises the dead and calls into being the things that are not (Romans 4.17). Such a faith neither desperately clutches at the present out of fear of change and loss, nor does it need to reject the present as irrelevant in the light of impending catastrophe. The good gifts of today can be celebrated without idolatrous hoarding or thankless world-denial. Although Stoic thought (and some forms of Eastern philosophy) would counsel us to minimise our desires to avoid the pain when (as is almost inevitable) they are frustrated, Christian hope is free to love deeply, to mourn keenly, to yearn fearlessly.

Blessed

Blessed are the poor in spirit,
          for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn,
          for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek,
          for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
          for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful,
          for they will receive mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart,
          for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers,
          for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake,
          for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

- Matthew 5.3-10

As Jesus spoke to Israel once again gathered around the mountain, the future so overshadowed the present that what was yet to be determined the meaning of the present. The triumph of the second half of each line is not to make the first half redundant or marginal. On the contrary, it is the very yearning woven into the condition of the first half that is to be abundantly satisfied. Our desires are not ignored, replaced or marginalised by God's promise. In the light of the coming future, it is not our desires that need to go, but our fears.

Heaven: not the end of the World XV

Series summary
[Photo by Adrian Smith]
This series began by raising the question: "what does heaven have to do with the Christian hope?" Although many Christians think of going to heaven when you die, I suggested this is to significantly misunderstand the scriptural witness. 'Heaven' most frequently simply means that part of God's creation located physically above us; this is then often extended to refer symbolically to the location of God, and then to be a kind of reverential shorthand for 'God'. In this last sense, 'heaven' (i.e. God) is the origin or agent of our hope, but 'heaven' (as other or extra-worldly location) is not our destination. This, I suggested, might be what Paul meant when he called Christians citizens of heaven. The final chapters of the Bible picture heaven coming to earth, that is, God coming to live with us, rather than vice versa. For this to happen, the entire created order needs some drastic renovation. In particular, our physical bodies will be raised from the dead and transformed. This image (resurrection) - while not the only one - is, I think, the most important because this is what happened to Jesus. By it, we can understand 'new heavens and new earth' as new in quality, not in number. This means that we are left eagerly waiting for this future, groaning for and with a world in which everything falls apart. We are aliens in such a world, not because we belong elsewhere, but because we belong to its future. In that future, perhaps it will be through and in a raised body/renewed creation that we will see God, as Augustine once suggested.

What does this matter? What difference does it make? Why should we care? There is still more to come...
Series: I; II; IIa; III; IV; V; VI; VII; VIII; IX; X; XI; XII; XIII; XIV; XV; XVI.
Ten points for the first to link to the other post on this blog with a photo by the same artist as this one.

Heaven: not the end of the world XII

Spirituality as groaning
I have been arguing that going to heaven (either at death or at the end) is an inadequate way of expressing the Christian hope for the resurrection of the dead. Christ's resurrection was the first fruits, the model and ground and proof of a coming universal restoration, a renewal of all things. Having made a good universe (summed up in the phrase 'heaven(s) and earth'), God doesn't intend to abandon it. Perhaps the lengthiest expression of this theme is found in what is rightly the most famous chapter of the New Testament:

I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. - Romans 8.18-27

Paul personifies the created order as a woman in labour pains, frustrated by bondage to decay, yearning and waiting and groaning - in pain, but hopeful. Each of the rich images he uses here could be explored at much greater length, but I'd like to briefly pick up the idea of groaning.

This groaning, an expression of 'eager longing', is the only activity available to the prisoner, to the woman bearing a child. The primary focus is on the imminent future, and the knowledge of the difference between now and then ironically serves to make the present pain simultaneously trivial and much worse.

Trivial, because in comparison to the glorious anticipated state, the sufferings of the 'now' pale into insignificance. When the child arrives, the sweat and tears have all been worth it (or so I am told...). At the first breath of freedom, the years in chains fade into a bad dream.

And yet - not yet. The night, though far gone, is not yet over. And so the inescapable failings of the present are exacerbated by the knowledge that they will not last. One must not become accustomed to them, to explain them as just the way things are. There is a possibility, a promise, of something different. Moltmann puts it like this:

[F]aith, wherever it develops into hope, causes not rest but unrest, not patience but impatience. It does not calm the unquiet heart, but is itself this unquiet heart in man. Those who hope in Christ can no longer put up with reality as it is, but begin to suffer under it, to contradict it. Peace with God means conflict with the world, for the goad of the promised future stabs inexorably into the flesh of every unfulfilled present. (more...)

- Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope, 7.

And so it is not just creation that groans. We too, who have the first taste of freedom, in whom the Spirit has begun the miracle of making a heart of stone beat again, who with our first gasping breaths of new air cry "Abba, Father!", we too groan and yearn and cry and wait with eager longing for a world made new. Such groaning is part of spiritual maturity. The more we get a sense of the scope and sheer grace of God's intended liberation, the more fervently we strain against the present chains.

Indeed, this maturity is precisely spiritual, because the Spirit also groans with 'sighs too deep for words'. Our hope-filled discontentment is thus not only deeply in tune with the earth itself, it is also divine.
Series: I; II; IIa; III; IV; V; VI; VII; VIII; IX; X; XI; XII; XIII; XIV; XV; XVI.
For ten points, pick the city, which is the same as here and here.

Secular authorities

How are Christians to think of 'secular' authorities?
In a comment from a recent post about political authorities, Matheson asked: what does it mean for our attitude towards participation (which Drew encourages us to take up responsibly) that these are merely secular authorities, in the sense that they are of this "age"?

This, of course, was a leading question.

Secular is derived from the Latin secularis, which is from seculum, meaning 'age or generation'. It was a term used by the medieval church to denote what belonged to the sphere of the 'world', or at least of the world of this age, as opposed to what pertained to the age to come. Thus, by calling political authorities 'secular', this was not primarily a way of designating a 'separation between church and state' (though this idea is thoroughly rooted in Christian conceptions of authority, despite its frequent misunderstanding and abuse in much contemporary debate).* Instead, such authorities are secular because their authority is temporally limited. Their existence will continue prior to the eschatological victory of Christ in which he will 'destroy every ruler and every authority and power' before handing the kingdom over to God the Father (1 Corinthians 15.24). Thus the primary Christian stance towards secular political authorities is freedom, knowing that they are passing away, that their authority is limited and temporary. The primary political duty of the church is to bear witness to the coming rule of Christ, reminding governments that their role has a use by date and that they are not to pretend otherwise by setting themselves up as absolute authorities. Within this freedom, the Christian is liberated for joyful obedience to these provisional structures while awaiting the resurrection of the dead and with it, the destruction of the ultimate resort of every tyrant: death.
* See Oliver O'Donovan The Desire of the Nations (and presumably also The Ways of Judgment) for this argument. Indeed this post is a brief summary of one thread in his thought, as Matheson was well aware when he made the comment.Since Matheson's comment sparked this post, I thought his smiling face should end it. Five points for the first to name the thing behind Matheson. Ten points for the institution in the first shot that is being turned into a mere silhouette by the rising Son. (Yes, groan all you like; I know you're sitting there wishing you'd said it first. And yes, I know the sun is actually setting - poetic licence).

The good is not (always) the enemy of the best

Ought we despise the day of small things? When the promises made to those in Christ are so overwhelmingly gracious, does this make 'the things of this world grow strangely dim'? Does Christianity lead away from the everyday and the issues of the moment, trumping them with what is eternal and bigger and more important? Quietism or quotidian quests?

Paul does consider his present sufferings not worth comparing to the glory that is to be revealed in us (Rom 8.17), but this leads him into consideration of this groaning world, bound to decay as it presently is (Rom 8.18ff). The solution for which he hopes is indeed the resurrection of the dead, the defeat of death and thus the liberation of all creation along with the children of God. But where does this leave us now? Ignoring irrelevant 'worldly' concerns and trying to save as many souls from this sinking ship as possible? No, the Spirit groans for this world - and so those who are Spiritual also groan. This hope leads not away from creation, but into suffering solidarity with it. It's cry becomes ours, because it is also God's longing.

So, is the good the enemy of the best? Should Christians abandon their day jobs to throw themselves fully into gospel ministry as the only task that really matters for eternity? No and no. The continuity (despite discontinuity) between Jesus' corpse and resurrection body is for me a key anticipatory vindication of (and promise for) this world. So I don't think that the work we do in the Lord - which is not futile (1 Cor 15.58) - can be limited to evangelism and helping Christians: that way leads to a new clericalism and a retreat from concern for the very world that Christ died to reconcile (Col 1.18-20).

There's obviously a lot more to say here, and one day I might get round to saying some of it (if others don't get there first in comments). I'll conclude for the moment by noting that perhaps here we have the link between recent discussion of futility and posts mentioning global warming and peak oil.
Ten points for naming the location from which this pic was taken.

Theodicy & eschatology VI

This will be the final post in this series (unless I have more thoughts...) on why any attempt to speak of God in the face of evil must be both evangelical - focused on God's action in Christ that is truly good news to those who walk in the valley of the shadow - and eschatological - leaving space for more to come in God's response. We yearn and wait and groan because (i) the cross and resurrection display God's settled opposition to all that opposes life in his good world (and not just display, but are the decisive step in turning the tide) and (ii) because we do not yet see the conclusion of these divine actions. Without (i) we would be without hope; without (ii) we would no longer need to hope: who hopes for what is seen? We groan because we know something of the future of Christ, but it remains future.

BUT in Christ, in the Spirit: the future has begun. Thus the believer is not left merely groaning; we groan with God’s Spirit. The disciples were not left orphaned, with simply the knowledge of God’s decisive victory and the promise of its completion. For once Jesus departed, the Spirit arrived (John 14:16-18). Since Jesus pours out this Spirit, and it was this Spirit who raised him from the dead, this Spirit also connects us to the risen Jesus. In his Spirit, we are ‘in Christ’. That bit of the world that has been raised and created anew, is now the location of our hidden identity (Colossians 3:1-4).

So it is now that we can trust, love and hope in the face of evil, but since God has not yet ultimately solved the problem of evil, we still grieve and groan. In Christ by the Spirit we have the down payment, the pledge, the guarantee of God’s promised future, but we do not yet have that future. Or at least not in its fullness: the Spirit as first fruits (Romans 8:23) is more like a kiss than an engagement ring. Both promise the future, but while a ring is a somewhat arbitrary sign, a kiss is an actual taste of what is coming.

Hope for the resurrection of the dead is in one sense a comfort, but it is also an intensification of the problem. It is because we have hope that the world will be different that we can’t stand to see it as it now is. It is because we know that God will rid the world of evil that we can live in the light of that future: trusting, loving, hoping.

This is an intensely practical and personal problem for each and every human. Rather than seeing it as an apologetics ‘issue’ that needs to be ‘solved’ (or sidestepped) so that people will listen to the gospel, I propose that it is itself the very problem to which the gospel is such good news. The problem of evil is the primary reason I am a Christian. Or rather, I am a Christian due to the fact that in the death and resurrection of Jesus, in which I see the destiny of the world and my own destiny, I can hope that one day there will be a real, existential, moral, social, cosmological, theological more-than-intellectual solution. Come Lord Jesus. Amen.
Series: I; II; III; IV; V; VI.