Living Faithfully in the Time of Creation pages 3b.qxp_Summer 02/08/2021 08:12 Page 30
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Living Faithfully in the Time of Creation
19th Sunday after Pentecost (B) Reading Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets … (Hebrews 1:1–4, 2:5–12, NRSV) Reflection Frequently, children and the future frame debates around climate change. Certainly, the lectionary passages appeal to this image today. Brazil is a young country with many young people. However, its religious traditions are old. The mística1 and the ancestral traditions and voices from indigenous and African religious traditions mix with the prophetic religions of Christianity, Islam and Judaism. The lectionary passages appeal to an image of the past, too. Genealogies and ancestral lines appear throughout the biblical canon. Biblical genealogies and ancestral lines focus on an understanding of faith and the world as a human history transmitted through the generations. Moreover, of course, the generations are measured in human life spans. Climate change and climate justice invite us to consider genealogies and ancestral lines in an understanding wider than ‘human history’. Geological ages shape our biblical genealogies and our ancestral faith. Climate change and climate justice also profoundly challenge the prophetic religions’ humancentred story of salvation. The South African theologian Ernst Conradie invites us to shift from an anthropological theology to a cosmological theology when addressing climate change. Without a theology which contemplates the cosmos and the human place within the cosmos, Conradie argues, it is all too easy for theology to blindly assume the medieval hierarchy of God – humans – natural world where each ‘acts’ upon the other. God acts on humans. Humans act in the natural world in a descending order of importance. Conradie prefers
