An ecological Christian theology: a story with three parts

At the recent multi-faith Spirit of the Environment conference hosted by Inner Space in Oxford I was asked in a few minutes to offer a Christian theology of the environment. In such a short space of time this was no mean feat! But what follows is based on that theological sketch, offered by someone from within the Anglican Church. Naturally I cannot claim to speak for every Christian, and the particular language I use may not be what other Christians would choose to use. Nevertheless in broad outline many Christians would probably recognize what follows.

Introduction

Christianity can be understood as a great story. Like all narratives it has a beginning, a middle, and an end. For Christianity these three parts are the 'myth of creation' (the beginning), 'the myth of salvation' (the middle), and the 'myth of the eschaton' (from the Greek for 'final' or 'ultimate' things: the end). Naturally with over two billion people currently inhabiting this story, there are potentially significant ecological repercussions if we talk about these three myths in ways that devalue matter, the 'stuff' of life.

The Myth of Creation

The Christian 'myth of creation' draws, among other things, on the book of Genesis. In historical context those ancient Hebrew narratives were once very good news. The standard Babylonian account of the creation of the world, the Enuma Elish, was based on the story of the murder of the goddess Tiamat. Earth and sky were made by ripping her body apart. Humans were created from the blood of her murdered husband to serve as slaves. Insignificant and occasionally irksome, they are at the mercy of the gods.

By contrast the magisterial Hebrew account of creation over six 'days' puts humans at the apex of a stately series of divine creative acts, lovingly fashioned by a benign God. At a deep level Genesis says matter is 'good' and that human life has value and dignity. Seen in that context the old Judeo-Christian creation myth looks very habitable.

Unfortunately we rarely read the Genesis account now against its original background. Instead it is easier to slip into reading it in terms of humans being given 'dominion' over the Earth, and from an environmental point of view this can sound pretty bad news. Without care this can give the impression that humans are essentially created to be separate from the planet.

In the better tellings of that kind of dominion-story humans emerge with a kind of benign museum-curator role, looking after a world entrusted to them. In the worst ways of telling it, humans can come to appear to possess a license to abuse the Earth in whatever way they wish since in the end (and this view sometimes goes hand-in-hand) there is a belief that humans are all going to 'heaven' anyway and that the Earth is of no ultimate value.

There are though other ways to tell this first part of the Christian story. These draw on the wider biblical store of images, from the poetry of Job and the Psalms, to the theology of Paul, to emphasize creation as a continuous process.

To speak of creation is thus not merely to say what happened at the chronological start; it is to talk about what is always going on: we're always being created. The source of that creation is God; God is the one who is creating life. And further, to speak of humans being 'in the image of God' is to say something about us, as material beings, being invited to participate in the act of creation from within the world, as co-creators (as it were), sharing that awesome power and responsibility. We are participant-actors, rooted within the environment, and yet also with a mysterious capacity to see beyond it.

The Myth of Salvation

The middle of Christian story concerns salvation and what Christians call 'the incarnation'. It deals with how we talk about Jesus and what we think his importance is. This too can be spoken of poorly from an environmental perspective.

We could talk about Jesus in effect merely being a human container for divinity: a sort of space-suit christology which in the early Church was known as 'gnosticism'. His humanness in those tellings was purely accidental, an inessential part of his being. This though would be to take a highly demeaning view of matter.

We would be on safer ground environmentally to talk about Christ as being the image of a fully divinized human being. His divinity is the way he does his humanity.  What is God like? Christians answer that God is like this particular flesh-and-blood person and the life he led with others.

Lurking behind the 'space-suit' Jesus is a hidden anthropology, namely an idea that 'I am a material thing that has a soul', that my own body is merely a container for something more precious (a space-suit anthropology!). This seems a poor way to talk about a human being. Should we not rather say 'I am a soul'? The way I do my being, is my 'soul'-ness (so to speak). My body and its connection to the Earth is not an insignificant adjunct to me, it is me.

A better telling of the middle of the Christian story would thus to be wary of absolute dualisms of matter and spirit and instead to tell a story about how flesh-and-blood human lives, bound up with their social and natural environments, are being transformed. The 'spiritual' is not what happens 'inside' us as individuals, it concerns how we do the whole of our living.

In some of the most startling poetry of the New Testament the opening of St John's Gospel speaks of Jesus as the 'Word becoming flesh', and the rest of the Gospel shows the ways in which flesh-and-blood humans choose to participate in being transformed (or, indeed, choose not).

Alongside this we may find we need to expand the range of metaphors we use to unpack the concept of 'salvation'. The Greek verb behind this (sozein) can be translated as 'to save', 'to make whole', 'to heal'. Often when Christians tell the middle part of the story they talk about being saved from something (from sin, for example). But perhaps in an environmental context we ought to broaden this range of meanings to include the idea of being 'made safe', in the same context as we speak of an explosive device being 'made safe'. We humans are powerful - as our continuous creation myth tells us - and potentially destructive. The middle of the story is about how we are being made safe for one another, and for the planet.

The Myth of the Eschaton

Finally what is the 'end' of the Christian story? Where does it lead us? Again in an environmental context there are some poorer ways of telling the end of the story. Often we fall into the trap of focusing on an individualised post-mortem heaven. The 'end' of the story collapses down into an account of what happens when we die, and the danger with this is that it sees the Earth as merely a precursor, a kind of second best.

Curiously Jesus rarely spoke about heaven in that sense. In Matthew's Gospel he talks most of all about the 'kingdom of heaven'. But we need to recall that Matthew, being a pious Jewish-Christian, used the word 'heaven' as a circumlocution for 'God'. Luke's Gospel simply has 'kingdom of God' throughout. Jesus actually taught mostly about the coming of the kingdom of God which he explored by telling stories (the parables).

We might unpack the metaphor by speaking of the 'kingship' of God, or the 'community' of God, or to choose another political term the 'administration' of God.

To talk about the end of the Christian story as the 'coming of the kingdom' is therefore not to talk about what happens to that little spiritual bit inside me after I die. It is actually to talk about how we are invited to participate in the coming of a new way of being fully alive that starts here and now. Yes, Christians say that this doesn't stop when we die, but this statement is only a part of the end of the story, not the whole of the end of the story.

The final book of the Bible, that strange visionary text we call Revelation, speaks of a 'new heaven and a new Earth', but this doesn't seem to be a vision of the replacement of matter by something better, so much as of the transformation - the renewal - of life itself.

Conclusion

How Christians speak about their beginning (their creation myth), their middle (their salvation myth), and their end (their eschatology) matters deeply, for it informs and reinforces the attitudes Christians take towards God, others, their own bodies, and their environment. If we tell the story in ways that demean material life it is possible that this will overflow into a failure to value, or even a license to abuse it.

To tell the story more carefully encourages us to think about dynamic transformation, about our calling to participate in what St Paul imagined was a world 'groaning in childbirth', always in the process of bringing forth new life: painful, uncertain, risky and yet with the ultimate promise of joy.

Further reading

I have drawn on the ideas of many writers (and some of my own!). But here are some suggestions for further reading.

The liberation theologian Walter Wink builds on the contrast between the Babylonian and Hebrew creation stories, and in the New Testament on Jesus's and Paul's teaching about the kingdom, to articulate a political and social activism than rejects models of domination. A summary of his ideas can be found in his The Powers That Be: Theology for a New Millennium (1998) and here.

Marcus Borg in various volumes writes about Jesus and his teaching about the kingdom, for example: Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time: The Historical Jesus and the Heart of Contemporary Faith (1995), and see here.

Paula Gooder, Heaven (2011) explores the kind of biblical idea of heaven I've tried to express. And here.

There are lots of books on ecological Christian theology. Here's a recent provocative collection of essays blending ecology, theology, activism and economics: Darby Katheen Ray (ed.), Theology That Matters: Ecology, Economy, and God (2006).

Practical initiatives for churches: For Creed and Creation view online here.

Godly Play: Holy Spirit Script

Various scripts exist for the wonderful Godly Play (a religious teaching resource for children's work based on Montessori style educational techniques). Over the years I've used it with all age groups from 3-90, including University professors!

However there isn't a script for exploring the concept of the Holy Spirit, so I've written my own. In outline, here it is.

You need:

• 7 (or more) golden boxes. Can be of any size, based on whatever has to fit inside them.
• 7 (or more) objects. Currently I have: water in a bottle and a glass; candle and matches; olive oil in a container; a red-painted heart-shaped box containing a stone; some lego; a battery; a baby's cuddly blanket; a small portable hand-help electric fan. But you could adapt/add your own. Place one in each box.
  
• 7 (or more) Bible verses which mention the spirit (listed below or pick your own), one placed in each box with the related object.

How to do it:

(Start with the basic Godly Play beginning of gathering the participants in a circle sat on the floor, perhaps removing shoes first. You are sat on one side of the circles with the boxes in front of you. Arrange it so everyone sat in the circle can see you. Welcome everyone with a smile.)

Leader (modify as you wish...): "Today we're exploring the Holy Spirit, but this isn't very easy because God's Spirit can be rather difficult to imagine. People could see Jesus, and we can read stories about him, but the Spirit is rather different.

Fortunately the Bible gives us various images for the Spirit, and we're going to explore those today. Now I wonder who'd like to start by opening a box?"

(Choose a volunteer to pick a box and to open it. You may need to help them describe the object. Some objects can be 'used', e.g. light the candle, feel/smell the oil, pour and taste some of the water. Then get the volunteer to put the object on top of the close box in the centre so all can see, and to read out aloud the Bible verse.)

Example: a person chooses the box with the candle and matches.

(Encourage the person to examine, feel, smell the object as appropriate.)

Leader: "So what have you got there? Can you tell people? Now, could you light the candle? (may need help or have the matches yourself!) Thank you - can you place it on the box, and read the verse, please?"

(Volunteer reads the verse)

Leader: "I wonder why fire is a good image for the Spirit?"

(Encourage and prompt the group, using reflective and affirming responses. Ideas might emerge such as "it gives warmth", "it stops darkness"; thinking more laterally ideas of cooking (changing the unpalatable into something edible); its entrancing nature; its riskiness; purifying etc. may emerge. With each idea, reflect back the image/idea to unpack what it adds to our understanding of the Spirit e.g.  "I wonder how the Spirit give you warmth...?")

(Work through all the boxes one by one with the verses below. Some may be more difficult than others - the Lego can be particularly interesting, raising the idea that all creativity, whether acknowledged as such or not, originates in God. At the end you might finish with a question:)

Leader: "I wonder if you have a favourite image for the Holy Spirit?"

(The session then might continue with craft...)

Supplementary Material:
(change verses and translations as appropriate; use these or other objects)

• water in a bottle and glass - "For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour my spirit upon your descendants, and my blessing on your offspring." (Isaiah 44:3)

• candle and matches - "And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit." (Acts 2:2-4a)

• olive oil in a container (I use my silver oil stock for anointing the sick) - "Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the presence of his brothers; and the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward. (1 Samuel 16:13)

• a red-painted heart shaped box containing a stone - "A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh" (Ezekiel 36:26)

• some lego - "I have called ... Bezalel  ... of the tribe of Judah: and I have filled him with divine spirit, with ability, intelligence, and knowledge in every kind of craft, to devise artistic designs, to work in gold, silver, and bronze, in cutting stones for setting, and in carving wood, in every kind of craft." (Exodus 31:2-5)

• a battery - "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you" (Acts 1:8a - or 2 Timothy 1:7)

• a baby's cuddly blanket - "But the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you." (John 14:26 NB various other translations have advocate etc.)

• a small portable hand-held electric fan - "The spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life." (Job 33:4) and/or "The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit." (John 3:8).

Poem (apophatic)

Not, the bejewelled whiteness of water drops
     lantern lifted, simply offered on soft stems.
Not, the silken lines of spider threads lifted on the air.
Not, the soft brown brush of
     tall-columned trees beneath high clouds.
Not, the noble singing gleam of quartz-cut stone
     reflecting light.
Not, warm kissing of skin by majestic
     sun in blessed blue sky.
Not, clear cold air crisp-entering nostrils.
Not, warm touch of flesh-embrace, blushed skin
     met, enfolded.

None; of these glorious things are you.



Written on retreat at Cold Ash Franciscan community, Nov 2012.

(Note: the poem is an attempt to marry Franciscan and Carmelite traditions. 'Apophatic' theology emphasizes that God is beyond all description - for 'not' cf. John of the Cross's nada. And yet NB the semi-colon on the last line, and the ambiguity of the word 'of'...)

Jesus: How human was he?

On our Chaplaincy Facebook site we've been talking about the recent discovery of a Coptic manuscript that contains the sentence, "Jesus said, 'My wife....'".
All the Da Vinci Code / Mary Magdalene conspiracy theory chatter has been reignited!

As it happens, the Manuscript is looking increasingly likely to be a forgery (see Mark Goodacre's blog for scholarly opinion). That aside - how human do we want Jesus to be?

Christians speak of Jesus as God incarnate, God in human form. What does this mean?
One thing it doesn't mean is that Jesus is simply an all-powerful God wearing a human-suit.

It is not the case that if you scratched him you'd find God "underneath".
No - he is fully human. After all, the Letter to the Hebrews even speaks of Jesus having to "learn" things.

To speak of God Incarnate, means to speak of Jesus as God translated into human form.
Take an English sentence, translate it into French. There is no English left, only French, and yet the meaning remains. A mystery...

For me, Jesus is what God looks like when translated into a human life. Gone is the transcendence, all you can see is immanence - a glorious human life containing fear, confusion, puzzlement, joy, excitement and hope.

And those are the emotions I currently see around me in the new and returning faces of students and staff.
So this is good news, for Jesus is therefore "God-on-our-side", sharing our stuff and doing something amazing in it.

"For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.
Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need." (Hebrews 4:15-16).

(Chaplaincy "Thought for the week")

"Divine not human things..."

Preparing a sermon for the past Sunday I was working with the story of Jesus and Peter at Caesarea Philippi.

Jesus tells Peter "you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things".

I wanted to suggest that Jesus was not suggesting Peter ought to be thinking more about angels and less about bank accounts. Rather the contrast is more like Paul on "flesh" and "spirit".

There are two ways to live: an earthly way, based on a closed-system view of relationships, and a transcendent way.

These alternatives are particularly pertinent in dealing with conflict, whether personal or social (and the original context of the Jesus-Peter conversation is about Messiahs - those figures who promise "save" us from whatever we feel is threatening us).

An "earthly", "human" response to an attack is to strike back. It is the natural response. The system remains closed.

A "divine" way, although rarely clear in advance, is an attempt to break out and transcend a closed cycle with a creative response. It may involve humour, forgiveness, imagination. It will be uncertain in its outcome, surviving on promise and hope. It will look rather akin to what Gandhi called Satyagraha.

The transcendent, divine way will also involve a cost to the self. This may be a swallowing of pride, an absorption of pain (rather than the returning of it), and a declining of satisfaction.

This is why, I suggested, the passage ends with the famous call "if any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me".

The cross was the punishment uniquely reserved for rebels. There will be a cost for following the "divine" way, for "rebelling" against the closed system.

Image and Glory

[written in late 2011 at the time of the Occupy movement's settlement at St Paul's Cathedral]
I've been thinking a lot recently about 'image'

Recent events at St Paul's Cathedral have been reported in the press in terms of the image of the Church as a whole being 'tarnished'.

'Image' is a central concept now in out culture - for politician, celebrities - and even the Church.

But the task of projecting a 'good image' is a hard master, a dominating idol. Get it wrong and you commit public suicide (like the clergy at St Paul's).

Keeping your image involves for celebrities surgery and botox; for politicians it involves constant looking in the mirror of polls and newspapers editorials.

But where in the securing of 'image' is there space to be human: to be wrinkly, old, sometimes wrong, eccentric, undecided?

In religious language there is a word: 'glory'. When I hear it I think of golden halos, Christmas cards and a warm feeling... But what glory really means in the Greek of the Bible is 'image' (actually it means 'rumour' - what people say about someone else).

When Christians and Jews say that we should not glory in anything or anyone but God - that should mean that we let go of 'image', that we are to be freed of its domination.

The chasing of image makes us less than human, glory is for God alone.

Sermon: Sherlock & Gift

I confess with some embarrassment that I am a late convert to Sherlock. For those of you even less with it that I am, Sherlock is the name for the recently revitalized Sherlock Holmes BBC series which reworks Conan Doyles's hero into a C21 London format.

One of the main engines of the series is the frisson of unrequited love: John Watson is struck with awe and wonder for his friend Sherlock (all first names here) and John is ever concerned for Sherlock’s welfare. Sherlock though continues to process case after case, with all the emotional intelligence of a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, oblivious to John's affections or indeed the interest of Molly Hooper, a plain Jane forensic scientist.

Sherlock's intellectual powers place him far above other mortals enabling him to see through the schemes of his enemies, but this same gift unwittingly separates him from human company too.

(Spoiler alert) Last week's episode, the final in the series, saw Sherlock facing his nemesis Moriaty with Sherlock unwittingly falling into a trap of his own creation. Moriarty succeeds in making Sherlock alienate public opinion by his arrogance, and persuades the police that Sherlock himself has all along been the mastermind behind the crimes he has apparently so miraculously solved. Sherlock’s powers of deduction are shown to have taken him into a dead-end: he is stuck.

It is the plain Jane character, Molly, who notices Sherlock's hidden anguish. 'If there’s anything at all, anything you need, you can have me...’. Sherlock is baffled: 'what can I need from you?'.

But later in the story, when the web of his own arrogance has drawn tight around him, Sherlock finally realizes his need of friendship and recalls her offer:

‘If I wasn’t everything that you think I am - that I think I am - would you still want to help me?’ he asks her. ‘What do you need?’, Molly replies instantly. ‘You’ says Sherlock.

Here is a moment where the gracious offer of one person to another, where deep gift, breaks through an impasse to bring liberation. And in the rest of the episode Molly’s gift cascades on through Sherlock himself to the point where the detective gives himself, apparently dying so that John can be spared from the threat of death.

To reinforce the theological territory the series has strayed onto, the writers even furnish us with a final scene featuring John (Sherlock’s beloved disciple?) visiting a garden tomb.

Christians ought to recognize what’s being alluded to: Generous, unexpected, unmerited gifts by one person can bring transformation and liberation to others. This is how Christianity interprets Jesus and the way he did his living - and dying - for others.

My long digression into Sherlock is not entirely self-indulgent: for the theme of transforming gift is found in today’s readings.

First we have that peculiar passage about Abram: Abram has just returned from a battle having rescued his nephew Lot from captivity. The story is unique, for Abram is otherwise never described as being involved in warfare (good to know the ancestor of the world’s three great monotheistic faiths is not a war-monger).

Here the story seems to intimate that only reluctantly has Abram intervened into a squabble among local kings in order to extricate a family member, and in the process he has liberated stolen possessions and taken prisoners. One of the protagonists, the King of Sodom, gleeful at the result, offers to carve up the spoils of the recent war with him: ‘you keep the loot,’ the king offers, ‘I’ll have the slaves’. Abram though will have none of it, coldly refusing to become part of the economy of balance-sheet conquest.

It is the mysterious visitor Melchizedek’s easy-to-overlook gift of bread and wine to the (probably) exhausted Abram that captures the story-teller and Abram’s interest. An unexpected gift of thanks, a moment of generosity, engages Abram so much that in return he offers a tenth of all he has. It is a gift that brings his change of heart.

It’s no surprise that early Christians, like the author of the letter to the Hebrews, saw in Melchizedek a fore-taste of that other generous gift-giver who offers bread and wine: Jesus himself.

And so again in John’s symbolic Cana story we also find the theme of gift and transformation. Jesus’s rich and unexpected, overflowing gift of intoxicating, delicious wine, fills to the brim the cold, empty stone vessels, relieving the stuck awkwardness of life and bringing joyful release. This happens on the ‘Third Day’ hints John: this story is symbolic of all that Jesus is and does: his self-giving resurrects us, raises us up, liberates us from being stuck.
Gift transforms.

We glimpse this mystery in our ordinary lives: even at the smallest of levels. Haven’t we all had moments when we have felt lonely, useless or neglected: but then the gift of someone else’s attention, their interest in us and what we’re doing, can suddenly transform and revitalise us. I suppose the mystery is found at its most obvious in romantic love: we may roll our eyes at those who are ‘in love’, but what we’re seeing is how the gift of one person’s being to another can bring intoxicating transformation, and with it self-confidence, liberation and joy to the one who is loved.

The gift of self, transforms.

But - but as much as we know this can be true: it is not always so. I wish this mysterious transformation always happened, but it does not. Sometimes a gift of love is rejected; sometimes the gift is abused or taken advantage of; and sometimes the gift is withdrawn.

One of the hardest moments in my ministry so far, was in supporting a woman who was contemplating leaving her husband who was an abusive and violent heroin addict. Should she continue to offer the gift of her love in the hope of his transformation, despite the many times he had relapsed, or should she get out?

Yes, there are these difficult ethical questions about how we are to live our lives as gifts. They remind us that this power is ultimately God’s, while we are fallible humans with limited choices...

Nevertheless in the end the truth about the transforming power of gift remains. The call to follow Christ is the call to explore how we can live our lives as gift to others and be signs in the world of God’s glory.