Sermon on 31 July at SJB - Gaia Service - The Revd Canon Giles Goddard

The miracle of life. It bursts out all over!  I have a few pots in my back yard. We water them using washing up water, mostly, and they live on that and air and sunshine. Up they grow, and at this time of year there are new flowers every morning.  Even there, in the depths of Waterloo, the biodiversity is wonderful. There is a scarlet bug that feeds only on lilies, and it finds its way there every time the lilies start to flower. And on Monday I saw an amazing fly, looked like a hornet, huge and baleful – and now, as I write this, I’m watching the bees flock (if bees flock!) towards the agapanthus and the petunia… And if I have that level of abundance in Waterloo, imagine what the rest of the world could be like! 

The miracle of life is reflected in the readings we have heard today, that great poem which is at the start of the Hebrew scriptures, written in Babylon in the fifth century before Christ. It’s a wonderful piece of literary beauty – with that constant refrain – ‘and God saw, and it was good.’ You can tell that the writer of Genesis was awestruck by the world around them, and wanted to communicate their sense of wonder. 

The Genesis creation story sets the tone for how the relationship between humankind and the world ought to be-  celebrating beauty and treating with respect. 

But it has all gone horribly wrong, hasn’t it. The UK is one of the most nature depleted countries in Europe – the diversity of our landscapes has been destroyed by extreme use of pesticides and overgrazing – we all experienced the heat wave last week, with the highest temperatures ever, and across the world people are dying from drought, floods, fire and excess heat. 

We are reaping the whirlwind of human arrogance. There is a very simple and clear connection between climate change and biodiversity loss and fossil fuels. It’s not always widely understood that the earth used to be much, much hotter – too hot for life to survive in any meaningful way. It gradually cooled, over millions of years to the point where life could begin to flourish. How did it cool? Because, initially, bacteria evolved which removed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere… and then plants evolved, and died, and gradually became compacted as oil, gas and coal. As the CO2 reduced, life could flourish. And we are now putting the CO2 back into the atmosphere, with the result that the world is heating up again. We are, literally, reaping the whirlwind – experiencing directly the result of our actions. 

 How do we get out of the mess we are in? 

 I suggest there are three areas we need to look at  – three r’s – 

Repentance, Respect, Resurrection 

 First, repentance.

Repentance isn’t a very popular word – and in this context, perhaps even less so! It wasn’t our fault, people say – I do what I can to save the planet – what do I have to repent of?

But we bear, especially those of us who have benefited from the exploitation of the world’s resources, a heavy responsibility – collectively, and individually. Collectively, because we all participate in the global economy which has brought us to this place – and, for many years, we knew about the consequences but many people preferred not to acknowledge it, not to take action to bring about the necessary changes. 

There has certainly been great and deliberate wickedness, too. If you are in any doubt about that, watch Big Oil v. The World – the documentary series on BBC2 at the moment. It records with great clarity that the big oil companies knew, way back in 1970’s, that there was a real risk of global heating: and they used their vast resources to muddy the waters, to stop the world taking action. Former Vice President Al Gore says this: 

I think it’s the moral equivalent of a war crime. The consequences of what the oil majors have done are almost unimaginable. 

There are particular organisations and people who have helped to bring this situation about. Look, too, at the way climate change is reported in the media – especially the media owned and controlled by billionaires. For example, the Times yesterday implied that glacier melting in the Alps is a good thing because it’s opened up a new route up Mont Blanc –  but we are all, in different ways, complicit. We have all fed this fossil fuel addiction. To bring about the changes necessary, it’s important to acknowledge our part in it. 

The word translated at ‘repentance’ is ‘metanoia’ – which literally means, ‘beyond mind’ – so it’s really saying let’s move into a new place!

 And that new place is one of respect – the second of my three r’s. 

Part of the problem is the little depth charge we find in the passage from Genesis 

Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.  

That word, translated as dominion, has been used to justify human exploitation of the planet since we began to realised that coal, oil and gas could be used to create unimaginable wealth; since we as human beings, especially in Europe and America, began to realise how much power we could amass, and how rich we could become.   James Watt, who is credited with inventing the steam engine, said he wanted to ‘find out the weak side of nature and to vanquish her.’  Huskisson – who was the first person to  be killed by a train when he died during the first run of Stevenson’s Rocket – described the steam engine as ‘the most powerful instrument in the hand of man to alter the face of the physical world.’ 

We have acted with a lack of respect – not just for the world, but for our fellow human beings. Another word for respect is justice: treating people, and the world, with respect is treating them justly. 

Justice is, according to Martin Luther King, the outworking of love. When we act without love we act without respect – and the way to change that is to rediscover respect for our planet, and to live out respect for the rest of humanity. 

Like many people, I am very excited about rewilding – about regenerative farming – about the way that people are now talking about using the land which gives us food. I have been to the estate in Sussex which is being rewilded – it’s an extraordinary landscape, beautiful and weird, and crammed with life of all kinds- nightingales, storks, purple emperor butterflies, so much, it’s extraordinary and wonderful. It treats the land with respect. 

But it is very much not only about plants and animals. Climate change is a justice issue – biodiversity is a justice issue. The poorest people in the world are the ones most at risk, and they are the ones who did least to cause the problems we face. Drought and famine in Africa, land loss in the South Pacific – hunger because of over fishing, exploitation of land. 

Through my work with Faith for the Climate, an interfaith climate organisation, I hear heartbreaking stories of people whose seeds are washed away by unseasonal rain, of people whose staple food – fish – is being taken by great fleets of factory trawlers bringing the fish back to Europe or to China. What we learn, above all, from the challenges facing the planet is that everything is connected – no one is safe – but the most unsafe are the poorest. And respecting them means respecting the planet. 

Respecting means working out how we can move to being a genuinely zero-carbon world, putting the poorest and the most vulnerable right at the centre. Respecting them means loving them – and loving one another – and loving the world we have been given!

It’s especially appropriate as we remember the death of James Lovelock, the creator of the Gaia theory, who died last week. Because at the heart of his theory is that the earth stays in balance regenerate itself, and that the biosphere of which we are a tiny carbon-based part is able to renew itself, constantly. 

You may be wondering when I’m planning to talk about God. Well, of course, this whole sermon is about God – because God is the life-force underlying everything. But, to be more specific:

My third word – resurrection – is about hope, and hope is about transformation. As Christians, we celebrate on Easter Sunday morning the triumph of life over death, of hope over despair, of love over hate. 

I think that’s what Gaia teaches us – that, in the words of Bishop Desmond Tutu, 

Goodness is stronger than evil.
Love is stronger than hate.
Light is stronger than darkness.
Life is stronger than death.
Victory is ours through Him who loved us.

As we look to the future, despair is not an option, and it’s also not necessary. The Gaia theory tells us that – but so does Christianity! 

I think of  the amazing richness of my tiny patch of pots and paving in Waterloo. 

I think of the wonderful vision of hope which we at Faith for the Climate are helping to create around the world – the Zoom calls we have with people from Africa, the South Pacific, Australia, South America, Europe, the United States – all working together for a better world, all inspired by their faith to make a difference.  

I think of the witness of activists and scientists, of so many who are working for a world where we are not taking out more than we put in, where we are not greedily helping ourselves to the abundance around us, where we are genuinely sharing, genuinely living simply, genuinely working for justice.  

That is what resurrection is about – the radical inbreaking of new life. The challenge for us, as Christians, is to live the resurrected life, to work with God to renew the world instead of destroying it. 

So my advice to you is – never despair, always repair, so that together we can celebrate the wonderful and constantly new gift of creation. 

And God saw, and behold, it was very good!