19th Sunday after Pentecost (B), Graham McGeoch

30 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

Lectionary reflections

to advocate for an interdependent understanding of our cosmos. Geology is not subordinate to human history, and the story of salvation is not ‘save our planet to save ourselves (or even our children’s children)’.2

Christianity in Brazil is deeply impacted by narratives of conquest. The conquering of the Americas, the conquering of souls for Christ, the conquering of the flesh by the spirit, and so on. Conradie’s proposal, and the wider challenge from climate change and climate justice, is for Christianity to change its narrative to one of co-operation: co-operation with the cosmos, co-operation with other religions, and co-operation with other genealogies and ancestors. In Homage to the American Indians, the Nicaraguan poet, priest and politician, Ernesto Cardenal, wrote about listening to the ancestral voices of the trees, the stones and the waters.3

The debate and action about climate change is about the future; it is also about the past. We are invited to discover the many and varied ways that God spoke to our cosmological ancestors.

Collect

Earth God, we are of the Earth. We honour the Earth as a place of living beings. We praise the Earth for its beauty and biodiversity. We recognise a shared responsibility to care for, restore and replenish the Earth. Speak to us through the Earth, now and forever.

(Based on The Letter of the Earth, Rio 1992)

Question

Who are our ancestors? Do the trees, the stones and the waters transmit the faith through geological ages?

32 Living Faithfully in the Time of Creation

Action

I live beside the beach. We have a collection of shells. On holding each shell to our ear, we hear a different sound or voice. Find a place to sit in your own environment. What noises do you hear? Which of those noises do you associate with climate change and which with climate justice? Is there any action that you can take to change the sounds of your environment?

Graham McGeoch

Graham McGeoch is a minister of the Church of Scotland. He lives in Brazil and teaches Theology & Religious Studies at Faculdade Unida de Vitória.

Notes

1. ‘The Brazilian Landless Workers Movement (MST) works to create solidarity and collective identity among its members through a variety of pedagogical practices.

One such practice is mística, which is at once a public, expressive dramatic performance and, drawing on Christian mysticism, a way of making contact with a transcendent reality. Mística draws on Christian theology generally, and specifically on the practices of the Christian base communities associated with liberation theology which were key in the emergence of the MST. It fortifies activists with the high commitment needed to engage in land occupations and the creation of farming communities through which the MST pursues its central goal of agrarian reform.’

From Mística, meaning and popular education in the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement, by John L Hammond, www.mstbrazil.org

2. An Ecological Christian Anthropology: At Home on Earth?, Ernst M Conradie, Routledge, 2017

3. Homage to the American Indians, Ernesto Cardenal, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973