17th September 2023
Reflection (readings below)
To be a prophet is not a popular calling. Often the message you have been given by God is not exactly the message that people want to hear. The message is often contradictory, challenging the norm; it may ask for a life-style that is counter cultural, it may be a message that counters the way people current live – and are happily living in fact, ‘thank you very much!’
Jeremiah was certainly in that position. The message God asked Jeremiah to deliver was definitely not what the people of Judah wanted to hear.
Nor was it the message the religious leaders wanted to hear.
Nor was it the message the political leaders, including the King, wanted to hear.
How is Jeremiah going to get the people to pay attention, how is he going to get them a) to listen to God’s message and b) to respond to it positively?
In the passage we have just heard, Jeremiah takes an earthware jar – a large one I’m guessing – and throws it the ground. (Push a heavy book onto the floor) SMASH! That surely got their attention! And he gives them God’s message.
Why am I telling you this? Because I see the role of the climate activist as being like that of a prophet. The climate activist has a message to deliver, a message that people do not necessarily want to hear because it is asking them to make changes in their lifestyle, to change the way they relate to other people, to change the way they relate to other creaturely beings, to change the way they relate to the entirety of God’s creation.
Is the climate activist’s message a message from God or just a repetition of what the scientists are saying? From the very beginning we are told that the earth is the work of God, that God created all that exists in its beauty and diversity, and declared it to be good. And we are also told that God specially created humans to have a very particular role within creation: to tend and care for the earth, working with and for the wellbeing of the other beings that God has created. The unfolding drama of the Bible, especially in the books of the prophets, tells us that when we live in harmony with God’s will, the earth is a place of flourishing. And when we go astray and live in disharmony with God, then the earth becomes a place of desolation – crops fail, animals and people die, rivers dry up, and warfare and illness stalk the land. For the Christian climate activist, the message they bear is definitely one from God; it is based on prayer and on the study of both scripture and scientific research.
As a Christian climate activist, I endeavour to speak God’s truth, to call out injustice, and to call on people – whether as individuals or as organisations – to pay attention to the crisis creation faces and to reorientate their way of living – shaping it as God wills. Like the prophets, I have engaged in nonviolent direct action to get the message across. I have knelt in prayer outside Shell’s headquarters, I have petitioned my MP, I have marched on the streets, I have been arrested for obstructing the highway, I have written a blog, I have preached, I have knelt in the cathedral and had my hair cut off as a sign of penitence. Other Christian activists have gone further and even been sent to prison for the non violent disruptive actions they have taken in the cause of safeguarding creation. That is something Jeremiah also encountered. At one point he was even imprisoned in a pit by his opponents.
But is disruptive action in line with the teaching, the example, of Jesus?
Think back to our gospel reading. Can you imagine the scene? Here is Jesus riding on a donkey – one that has been rather oddly purloined for him – riding slowly into Jerusalem whilst all around his followers are pulling branches from the trees and taking off their garments to cover the road. And all the time they are doing this, they and the crowd are shouting slogans, slogans that challenge the religious status quo and the political status quo! What is Jesus doing if not being disruptive? And does he stop when those in authority ask him to? No way! This is the word from God. Even if the people were to be silent, then the very stones would take up the message!!
This is one example, but throughout the gospels we see and hear Jesus carrying out actions that challenged the status quo. He healed the sick on the sabbath. He touched the unclean. He brought in the outsider. He preached a message which turned the economics of the day upside down. He fed the hungry. He inaugurated a meal that demonstrated that in him is the divine source of life. He provoked the authorities to seek his execution and even in death challenged them to see the world differently.
Prophets do not just highlight what is going wrong, they also point to what is possible, to the vision of how God wishes and desires things to be. John – the John who is named as the writer of the Book of Revelation – knows of the evils and destructive habits of the world of which he is a part, but he is also aware that God envisages something far better – a new heaven and a new earth in which no evil resides, in which all live in harmony with God. Climate activists too have a vision to share of a new and possible future. A world of clean energy. A world of homes well insulated against the cold and the heat respectively. A world in which there is enough good food for everyone. A world in which resources are shared fairly and used sustainably. Indeed a world where everyone lives in harmony just as God desires.
To be a climate activist is a prophetic calling. It is, I think, a calling that is more widespread than many people would believe. But if one looks at the state of the world, the enormity of the crisis we face, the scale of social injustice being created, then actually we should not be surprised that God is calling more and more of us to take on the prophetic role and become climate activists. Maybe this creation-tide you will find yourself moved by God to become a climate activist.
Jeremiah 19:1-6, 10-13
Thus said the Lord: Go and buy a potter’s earthenware jug. Take with you some of the elders of the people and some of the senior priests, and go out to the valley of the son of Hinnom at the entry of the Potsherd Gate, and proclaim there the words that I tell you. You shall say: Hear the word of the Lord, O kings of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: I am going to bring such disaster upon this place that the ears of everyone who hears of it will tingle. Because the people have forsaken me, and have profaned this place by making offerings in it to other gods whom neither they nor their ancestors nor the kings of Judah have known, and because they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent, and gone on building the high places of Baal to burn their children in the fire as burnt-offerings to Baal, which I did not command or decree, nor did it enter my mind; therefore the days are surely coming, says the Lord, when this place shall no more be called Topheth, or the valley of the son of Hinnom, but the valley of Slaughter.
Then you shall break the jug in the sight of those who go with you, and shall say to them: Thus says the Lord of hosts: So will I break this people and this city, as one breaks a potter’s vessel, so that it can never be mended. In Topheth they shall bury until there is no more room to bury. Thus will I do to this place, says the Lord, and to its inhabitants, making this city like Topheth. And the houses of Jerusalem and the houses of the kings of Judah shall be defiled like the place of Topheth—all the houses upon whose roofs offerings have been made to the whole host of heaven, and libations have been poured out to other gods.
Revelation 21:1-4
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
‘See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them;
he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.’
Luke 19:29-40
When he had come near Bethphage and Bethany, at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of the disciples, saying, ‘Go into the village ahead of you, and as you enter it you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, “Why are you untying it?” just say this: “The Lord needs it.”’ So those who were sent departed and found it as he had told them. As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, ‘Why are you untying the colt?’ They said, ‘The Lord needs it.’ Then they brought it to Jesus; and after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks on the road. As he was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, saying,
‘Blessed is the king
who comes in the name of the Lord!
Peace in heaven,
and glory in the highest heaven!’
Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, ‘Teacher, order your disciples to stop.’ He answered, ‘I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.’
The Green Tau 