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4.22.18 Rev. John Bell (guest)

New Year 2016

            New Year 2016 was one of the most sober experiences I ever had.

Scottish people call the 31st December HOGMANY. They stay up to

midnight, and when the New Year dawns, they ring bells, set off fireworks,

go visiting to neighbours, kiss people they don’t know and party until the sun

comes up.

But not for me when 2015 turned to 2016. Because New Year’s Day was a

Sunday, and I had been asked to preach live on the main BBC radio station from

a church in Manchester.

So, the night before on my own in a small hotel bedroom I waited up till midnight

and then toasted the new year with half an inch of red wine, to ensure my mind

would be clear the next day…because there were some things I wanted to say

in my radio sermon which I thought were important.

 

Gentle, Meek and Mild

I began by saying that in a so-called Christian country, an amazing number of

people knew little about Jesus apart from that he was born and that he died on

the cross.  And if asked to give adjectives about him, they would say that he was

GENTLE, MEEK AND MILD

…three words which. I claimed, we do not together in the Gospels.

Two days later I received a letter from ‘Indignant’ of Turnbridge Wells, an town    outside London. This lady was appalled that I had dare to say that Jesus was not

gentle meek and mild, when twice in the Gospels the word ‘ meek’ was used.

I replied that she was right. Meek appears twice, but when the King James Version           was written, meek meant humble, whereas in c21 ‘meek’ means spineless, unrobust.

However, my point still stood that this unholy trinity

GENTLE, MEEK AND MILD

did not appear together in the Gospels.

 

Good Shepherd Sunday

I mention this because ‘Good Shepherd’ Sunday is not a title I am familiar with.

In all the main British churches – Catholic, Presbyterian, Methodist, Anglican,

& Episcopal, the same Gospel will be read as we heard here, but we don’t give a    special name to the day.

And I am quite glad about that – not because I think that Britain has it right, but

because I fear that this is a Sunday when we could be seduced into seeing

Jesus as primarily a nice man, – pastorally sensitive

kind and considerate

full of integrity

…all of which are true.

But they are not the whole truth.

 

The Mission of Jesus

The one we call our Lord IS all these things, but he is also much more.

Because his mission and purpose was not simply to console, it was also

to challenge

to change

to contradict

to show anger at injustice

to make a difference to the world

not just its people

 

And I say this with conviction because of a phrase which we often forget,

particularly those of us who are fond of the text of John 3: 16 which can be

found emblazoned on T shirts and coffee cups.

That verse begins:   GOD SO LOVED….. what?

Episcopalians? … No

Presbyterians?… No

Christians?… No

Human Beings? … No

GOD SO LOVED …. THE WORLD …. and the word in Greek is COSMOS.

…the whole created universe.

God so loved the world that in Jesus God became part of the physical universe,

one with the stuff of the earth God had made in love: flesh or our flesh and bone

of our bone.

 

The Hebrew Scriptures

We tend to conveniently forget that. We imagine that the created order – as

outlined in the first chapter of Genesis was set up for the benefit of humanity. And after people began to walk the earth, they were God’s primary focus, and all that

had gone before – light and darkness, sea and land, plants, animals – were no

longer of any account.

Not at all

Not at all

Since St Augustine Biblical theology seems to have concentrated on

human life, and whatever humans did wrong which Jesus came to put right.

The earth was regarded as being there to be exploited so that humanity

could advance.

 

The Post Flood Covenant

            And so we dismiss the significance of great truth stories like that of the flood

through which God destroyed the earth because of God’s despair over human

behavior.

We lose sight of how when God made a covenant with Noah, it was not just

for the benefit of the surviving mortals. It was a covenant with the whole earth      because it was the destruction of the whole earth that affected God’s heart.

God threw up into the sky his weapon of mass destruction – a bow. He put

it there in glorious technicolour rather than black and white to reflect the

intentional diversity of creation which had been destroyed and was now being

willed back to life.  It was put in the sky as a sign to the smallest daisy and

field mouse as much as to the most pious believer that God would not destroy

the created universe again by divine will.

I don’t have time here to go through the Hebrew Scriptures – the law and the          prophets and the psalms to indicate how in the Bible God stands in a direct

relationship to the earth, that the earth is a friend of God.

God delights in the regularity and irregularity of nature, as if it

were an offering to God, a love song.

The life and death of a sparrow is of consequence to God

The health of earth – as God made it – is dependent on its inhabitants.

respecting their habitat.

 

The witness of Jesus.

When Jesus appeared, he did not come to say, “…all the stuff about stewardship and         care of the planet is Old Testament and therefore old hat.  Now that I’m here it’s just      humans beings that matter.”

Not at all… he comes not to abolish the law and the prophets, but to endorse, to

fulfill their teaching. He doesn’t have to restate what Isaiah and Haggai and

Jeremiah wrote, he stands foursquare on their testimony eloquent.

 

Donald MacLeod and the proposed Harris Super Quarry

 

So I want to introduce perspectives much more eloquent than anything I might say.

They constitute, for me, the most concise statement of Biblical teaching on creation

spoken not by some weirdy-beardy radical, but by a conservative Calvinist

academic and Gaelic speaker whose home island, Harris in the Outer Hebrides,

was the subject of public debate. An international civil engineering company        proposed dismantling a mountain and then digging a quarry which would be one of the largest man-made holes in Europe – all to get stone aggregate for road building             throughout the continent.

The British government held an enquiry at which the mining company made a good         case for the prospect of jobs and wealth to be created in an island which had limited     employment possibilities and a less than healthy economy.

To this enquiry came people to give evidence both for an against the proposed

destruction of the mountain. Arguably the two most distinguished contributions were             made by Chief Stone Eagle of their North American Mi’kMaq nation and Donald MacLeod, Professor of Theology at the Free Church College in Edinburgh.

 

 

Quotes

Here are just a few lines of what Donald said which, in my reading of the    environmental debates in the USA hold as much relevance here as they do

to British concerns.

 

  1. God, as creator has sovereignty over the environment

We must use it only in accordance with God’s will.

 

  1. Theologically, the primary purpose of creation is to serve as a revelation of God.

To spoil the creation is to disable it from performing this function.

 

  1. Because of the unbreakable link between humanity and the soil,

rape of the environment can result in rape of the community which lives

of the land.

 

  1. It is commonly argued that the primary purpose of humanity is to be

the ‘keeper’ or guardian of the earth.

 

But in the Hebrew language, the implication is that humanity must also be

the servant of the soil.

 

I raise these matters on this day which ends Earth Week, not because such things

are topical, but because they are true.

 

And I want you as I want myself not to patronise or be possessive about Jesus

as if he were simply our personal saviour. Rather let us honour him as the saviour of the world, the cosmos. And let our care for the earth be regarded as a legitimate

and primary practice of discipleship.

 

 

            TO THE ONE WHO MAKES THIS AND ALL THINGS POSSIBLE BE OUR

            PRAISE AND GLORY, NOW AND FOREVER.  AMEN.

Post Script:  The outcome of the super-quarry inquiry ensured that the

environmental destruction never happened. The mountain still stands.

Copyright © WGRG, Iona Community, Glasgow, Scotland.
wildgoose@wildgoose.scot; www.wildgoose.scot  Reproduced by permission.