Sermon - 6 June - Climate Sunday

Alistair speaks on climate change:

Sustainability, green issues, climate change, environmentalism – words such as these have increasingly dominated the discourse of our leaders, politicians, governments and business – desperate to show their environmental credentials. But the Christian community seems like it has been playing catch-up. Somehow the church has not, until recently, viewed these issues as such a priority. This must change.

The evidence for climate change seems to be unequivocal. I’m not going to lay it out today. But if you would like to find out more, our greatest source for evidence comes from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that is made of up of work from over 2500 scientific experts from over 130 countries. The evidence shows amongst other things, a recent and unprecedented globe rise in temperature, a global rise in sea levels, and global rise in greenhouse gas concentrations.

Whether it’s plastic pollution littering seas and the poorest communities, or species going extinct at record rates, or the climate crisis making droughts, floods and storms more frequent and severe, we’ve misused and damaged this beautiful gift of God. We’re feeling some of the effects in the UK, but the impacts are hitting people in poverty the hardest.

As we consider our own impact on climate change we can have some unhelpful motivations. For example:

- Financial – the government makes it more expensive to pollute by taxing fuel and flying. My car tax will go down so I’ll get a more efficient car.

- Family - think how terrible it will be for my grandchildren.

- Fear – think about how bad it will be for us if we don’t do something.

- Fashion – environmentalism becomes fashionable and we therefore need to look good in front of others.

But, the thing about all of these is that they play on my selfishness to make me change – the love I have for my money, my family, my future, or my image.

But God gives us real and authentic motivation to care for the environment by showing us what our relationships should be with both creation and its Creator.

We are called to be righteous – to have right relationship with others, right relationship with the physical world and creation and right relationship with God. But all of these have been broken. If we are called to bring God’s kingdom here on earth, we should seek to bring restoration to all these broken relationships.

Climate change should concern Christians because it moves our focuses away from our own individual concerns to the needs of our brothers and sisters around the world. 

As Western Christians we can so too easily ignore the impact of climate change. If it does seem to be getting warming, then surely that’s a good thing with climate here in the UK? It seems that for a lot of Western Christians we simply do not understand the impact of environmental damage on our brothers and sisters around the world. As we continue to consume here in the UK – our lifestyles are having a negative effect on our neighbours in the poorer parts of the world.

Tearfund have numerous stories of individual lives impacted by climate change. Meet Andrew, for example, who lives in Malawi - in a village hit by floods that meant he lost his harvest and he therefore struggles to feed his family. In recent years drought has shrivelled Andrew’s crops before floods washed the next harvest away. In another year their land became a sandpit: the river flooded, dumping 12,000 tonnes of sand on their soil.

He says: Our land was like a river: water brought all this sand. Now we have to dig down a metre to find good earth. In the past, food would last all year round to the next harvest. But these days, because of droughts and floods, we never harvest enough for the whole year.

 Andrew’s life is determined by his environment, by the cycle of the seasons. Extreme weather – the result of climate change – doesn’t just mean bad weather, it can also mean starvation.

It is the world’s poorest people who bear the brunt, who are affected the most by climate change. As God’s people we are called to act justly, to love our neighbours and to care for God’s creation. Our lifestyles are contributing to climate change and impacting the lives of our brothers and sisters around the world.

Rev Nicky Gumble, of the Alpha Course and Holy Trinity Brompton:

 'Climate change is, without doubt, the biggest environmental challenge facing our world – and as a Church we are called to act. Why? Because of love. God loves us and he expects a response of love firstly for him, but also for our neighbour and particularly for the poor, who are the ones most hit by damage to the environment. Christians should be at the forefront of the environmental movement because in our care for God’s creation we reflect our love for the Creator.'  

The Bible gives us three events within the storyline that reveal God’s concern for the physical world:

- God created physical

- God became physical

- God’s hope is physical

God created physical.

Our passage today is from Genesis 1. We hear a resounded message that what God created was good! It wasn’t created out of destruction, or brokenness, it was created good.

Our biblical mandate starts in Genesis – where the biblical narrative kicks off as God creates the heavens and the earth and pronounces it as good! He creates it as a reflection of His glory and majesty. God has made creation – it is His first and foremost, created to worship Him.  And he then commands His people, who are made in His image, to “work and take care of it” as in Genesis 2:15. Or another translation says to ‘serve and preserve’. This is what it means for God’s people to rule creation faithfully. As servants of the one great king, God himself, we have been given responsibility for tending His garden the earth as an act of service and worship towards Him. The Genesis text tells the story of a beautiful and bountiful creation with abundance for all, but one that depends on the faithful vocation of its human caretakers. We are called to carefully and responsibly manage God’s creation that has been entrusted to us - exercising stewardship and service over the rest of His creatures in a way that reflects His character. Not through brutality and carelessness, but with love and compassion and service.

Secondly, God became physical

The word become flesh and dwelt among us. God steps into the physical world. As the apostle John writes in his letter: ‘we have seen with our eyes… we have looked at and our hands have touched’ (1 John 1:1). Jesus cares about the physical. He speaks to and heals people’s physical sickness as well as their spiritual. His physical body is resurrected. Thomas is allowed to touch his wounds – to put his hands on the marks of the nails. God become physical and bore a physical death for our redemption.

As Jesus healed the physical needs of others so we must as Christians do all we can to heal the physically needs of our sisters and brothers who are suffering the most because of climate change. We will next week continue our series on the book of James. As we explored three weeks ago, James makes it very clear:

‘14 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? 15 Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. 16 If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it?’

Our response to climate change is part of our faith with deeds. Climate change, as we heard from the story of Thomas, is causing starvation - it means that our brothers and sisters are going without daily food. We must do something to help them.

Thirdly, God’s hope is physical.  

The physical creation is not merely temporary. The Biblical hope for the future is very real and physical. Our biblical understanding of creation and the environment will only go so far unless we have a renewed eschatology – a renewed theology relating to the end times. Basically, if we think that God to just going to destroy this old world and create a new one why should we bother doing anything to save it?

 The Bible speaks of a “new heaven and a new earth” – a renewal and transformation of this creation. The theologian and Christian environmentalist Ruth Valerio puts it like this: ‘the emphasis of the word ‘new’ is on transformation rather that destruction, indicating newness in terms of quality rather than of something new that has never been in existence’.

 The new creation is not a replacement but a fulfilment and renewing of the old – going back to the ideal of Eden and God’s first creation. And creation awaits in expectation for this to take place.

 As we heard from Romans 8v19: ‘The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it....creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.’ 

As we start to bring God’s Kingdom on earth in the here and now, we can start to see creation renewed and redeemed.

As God’s people living today, we live in the now and the not yet – in a place where God’s kingdom is here in part but not in full. A situation where we are continually praying that God’s kingdom would come on earth as in heaven. Like Jesus, our role is to proclaim and demonstrate the gospel; the new Kingdom; to model a new humanity; to bear witness now to the total redemption that God will one day bring about. The world is crying out, but God is at work and we’re invited to join him in a ministry of reconciliation – reconciling people to their Father, but also reconciling people to the creation we’ve been given to steward, and seeing it restored. This is the fullness of the gospel, not a side issue.

In response to the changing climate, we need to examine our lives and role in this before God. We must change the way we live to have less impact on the earth and our neighbour. We must consider the things that we buy and the lifestyles we take for granted and what we are doing to contribute to climate change.

Our consuming is seriously affecting the environment. So maybe the next time you are thinking about buying a new pair of shoes, or a new TV, or a new car, or a new piece of clothing, you can ask yourself how much energy has been used to make it? How many miles did it have to travel to get into the store?

In the last year, one of the significant changes that Catherine and I have made has been to reduce the amount of meat we eat have learnt more about the environmental impact of producing meat.

It is not so much as an action that we do, but more of a lifestyle. We must live by example to the world around us by the way that we outrageously care for the environment and seek to stop climate change.

And as we do this, we become a part of God’s redeeming story not just for mankind but also for the whole of creation. Jesus is calling his people – the church is the hope for the whole earth – to live our lives in a way that, not only has care and compassion for the least, the last and the lost… but also His creation. And out of this we should see the missional lifestyle of care and stewardship of God’s creation because our future hope gives us the motivation for how we live today, in active expectancy and anticipation. Amen.