Judith Russenberger

Counting on … 149

23rd September 2025

The economic systems that predominate globally with their focus on growth (of GDP) and determined by the pursuit of profit (for the share holders) is a cause of growing inequality and with that (as outlined over the last few weeks) come problems such as climate change, biodiversity loss, social injustice etc.

The economic theory that underpins this is flawed. There is no trickle down effect by which one can justify growing wealth for the already wealthy. The economist Kate Raworth has proposed an alternative model known as Doughnut Economics. Its basic premise is that there is on the one hand an outer limit to our economic activity which is determined by the limitedness of the Earth’s resources – planetary boundaries. And on the other hand a lower limit determined by what is needed to ensure the needs of each individual – food, water, housing, healthcare, education, mental well being. These inner and outer boundaries thus encasing the doughnut of economic activity.

In other words we would ensure consumption levels stayed within the boundary of what the Earth can provide – and than would include not putting more waste/ pollutants, including carbon dioxide , into the Earth’s systems than can be absorbed. It would mean reining in total consumption to that which one planet can sustain – ie bringing back Earth overshoot day back to 31st December.

And it would mean ensuring a fair and equitable distribution of resources so that everyone has enough – reining in the excessive levels of income and wealth currently accruing to a minority – and by so doing this will enable everyone contribute from the their full potential rather than being constrained by the limits of poverty, ill health etc.

https://doughnuteconomics.org/about-doughnut-economics

Counting on … day 148

22nd September 2025

Lack of political will can also worsen the impact climate change. Ilan Kelman, Professor of Disasters and Health, UCL explains it thus: “The IPCC’s summary entirely avoids the phrase “natural disaster”. This reflects decades of work explaining that disasters are caused by sources of vulnerability – such as unequal and inequitable access to essential services like healthcare or poorly designed or built infrastructure like power plants – rather than by the climate or other environmental influences.

“The [2022 IPCC] report states, with high confidence, that “climate change is contributing to humanitarian crises where climate hazards interact with high vulnerability”. In other words, vulnerability must exist before a crisis can emerge. Climate change is not the root cause of disaster. The report explains that places with “poverty, governance challenges and limited access to basic services and resources, violent conflict and high levels of climate-sensitive livelihoods” are more vulnerable to climate change impacts.”

“The report explains that disaster risk and impacts can be reduced by tackling fundamental issues which cause vulnerability, no matter what the weather and climate do. It places high confidence in risk management, risk sharing, and warning strategies as key tasks for adapting to climate change.” (1)

(1) https://theconversation.com/ipcc-report-how-politics-not-climate-change-is-responsible-for-disasters-and-conflict-178071

Proper 20 14th Sunday after Trinity

21st September 2025

Reflection with readings below

This passages from Jeremiah seems to express both the grief and frustration of God and of Jeremiah – and it is not always clear to the listener which of the two is speaking. But that shouldn’t be surprising as a prophet is someone who is tuned into what God feels and desires, and what God is saying. The closeness of the relationship is both a joy and a stress: joy from sharing in God’s presence; stress from knowing God’s grief over the waywardness of humans. For both God and prophet it is not black and white. It is not as simple as God hating and dispensing with the one who sins, nor as God loving and rewarding the one who is righteous.

In last week’s gospel we noticed that the sinner rescued by God was no different from the ones who didn’t need rescuing. They were all sheep of which one had gone astray. They were all coins of which one had been lost. Nor is either sheep or coin discarded: both are retrieved and loved with an overriding passion. We should not then be surprised to read in Letter to Timothy that Jesus ‘gave himself a ransom for all’. Salvation is salvation for all – not just a few, not just most – but for all.

Knowing that salvation – healing – for all has always been God’s desire. Again from the Letter to Timothy ‘God our Saviour … desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.’

All and everyone is more than just humankind, but envelopes all that God has created. We should not imagine that salvation in just for humans and that other creatures, other living beings – and even ecosystems – are not part of God’s vision of healing and restoration. Indeed if only humans were rescued, life would be very bleak. What delights would we have to eat? What fresh waters would be there for us to drink? What flowers and trees would be there to delight our eyes? What sounds of bird song would enchant our ear?

And yet we humans often live as though all the other parts of creation were of no value and can be ignored, wasted and discarded with no repercussions. We seek to consume ever increasing amounts of the Earth’s resources as if there were no limits to supply. We seek to discard what we don’t want as if the Earth could endlessly absorb our waste and are surprised when that waste returns to pollute our rivers and coasts! We seek to take more and more land away from wildlife and still expect our fields, hedgerows and gardens to be abounding with wildlife. We seek to fill the atmosphere with more and more carbon dioxide and yet are surprised when this upsets the Earth’s natural balance, triggering rising temperatures and extreme weather events.

Not only that, we also seek to live as if we were the only ones that mattered. That our actions will not affect the lives of others. Bizarrely we seem to believe that if those who are rich get richer, that growing wealth will not make others poorer. Bizarrely we seem to believe that if the rich get to buy more and bigger houses, more and bigger cars, that that will not mean fewer and smaller houses, and fewer transport options for those who are poorer. Bizarrely we seem to believe that if larger companies take bigger and bigger profits, that smaller companies will not struggle to earn a fair share. Bizarrely we seem to think that if the rich can pay to lobby governments and authorities to shape the world to suit their wants, that those of us who can’t afford to pay lobbyists, will not find their needs excluded from decision making processes.

Yet everything could be so different.

This week saw the CEO of Barclays calling on the government to curb public sector pay and resist calls to increase taxes in banking profits – this the same Venkatakrishnan, who can ‘earn’ a maximum annual package worth £14.3m, up from £9.8m previously. The average UK income was, in 2024, £37,430 although research suggests that a comfortable income for a family of two adults and one child is around £60,000.

Would it not be more equitable for everyone to have a sufficiently generous income?

A report by the Guardian last week revealed that through the privatisation of publication services – such as water, buses, mail, rail and energy – around £200bn has been paid to shareholders, diverting wealth from the common society to a private elite. In effect privatisation has cost £250 per household per year.

Would it not be better for public services to be owned by and run for the benefit of society as a whole?

We need to use wisdom and discernment, honesty and compassion, if we are to live equally good lives one with another. Truly it is because of God’s wisdom that we are told to love our neighbours as ourselves. Unless we can act with generosity towards one other – both human and non human beings, unless we can work cooperatively with one another, unless we can live within the limits of the Earth’s resources, we are not to find salvation. To live in this way is to truly love God.

This past week the daily reflections from the Centre for Action and Contemplation have been on the theme of love: https://cac.org/daily-meditations/the-work-of-grief-and-love/

Jeremiah 8:18-9:1

My joy is gone, grief is upon me,
my heart is sick.

Hark, the cry of my poor people
from far and wide in the land:

“Is the Lord not in Zion?
Is her King not in her?”

(“Why have they provoked me to anger with their images,
with their foreign idols?”)

“The harvest is past, the summer is ended,
and we are not saved.”

For the hurt of my poor people I am hurt,
I mourn, and dismay has taken hold of me.

Is there no balm in Gilead?
Is there no physician there?

Why then has the health of my poor people
not been restored?

O that my head were a spring of water,
and my eyes a fountain of tears,

so that I might weep day and night
for the slain of my poor people!

Psalm 79:1-9

1 O God, the heathen have come into your inheritance;
they have profaned your holy temple; *
they have made Jerusalem a heap of rubble.

2 They have given the bodies of your servants as food for the birds of the air, *
and the flesh of your faithful ones to the beasts of the field.

3 They have shed their blood like water on every side of Jerusalem, *
and there was no one to bury them.

4 We have become a reproach to our neighbours, *
an object of scorn and derision to those around us.

5 How long will you be angry, O Lord? *
will your fury blaze like fire for ever?

6 Pour out your wrath upon the heathen who have not known you *
and upon the kingdoms that have not called upon your Name.

7 For they have devoured Jacob *
and made his dwelling a ruin.

8 Remember not our past sins;
let your compassion be swift to meet us; *
for we have been brought very low.

9 Help us, O God our Saviour, for the glory of your Name; *
deliver us and forgive us our sins, for your Name’s sake.

1 Timothy 2:1-7

First of all, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity. This is right and is acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour, who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For

there is one God;
there is also one mediator between God and humankind,

Christ Jesus, himself human,
who gave himself a ransom for all

— this was attested at the right time. For this I was appointed a herald and an apostle (I am telling the truth, I am not lying), a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth.

Luke 16:1-13

Jesus said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. So he summoned him and said to him, `What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.’ Then the manager said to himself, `What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.’ So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, `How much do you owe my master?’ He answered, `A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ He said to him, `Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.’ Then he asked another, `And how much do you owe?’ He replied, `A hundred containers of wheat.’ He said to him, `Take your bill and make it eighty.’ And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light. And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.

“Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”

Prayers for peace

20th September 2025 – tomorrow is the UN day for world peace

Turn from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it. Psalm 34:14

You Lord, are the source of all good things:

We praise you.

You bless us with a world that is good

and look to us to be peace makers and peace keepers:

May we strive to do your will.

You have made us as brothers and sisters:

May we live together in peace.

Reading Micah 4: 2- 5

  And many nations shall come and say:
‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
    to the house of the God of Jacob;
that he may teach us his ways
    and that we may walk in his paths.’
For out of Zion shall go forth instruction,
    and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

He shall judge between many peoples,
    and shall arbitrate between strong nations far away;
they shall beat their swords into ploughshares,
    and their spears into pruning-hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
    neither shall they learn war any more;

but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees,
and no one shall make them afraid;
for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken.

For all the peoples walk,
each in the name of its god,
but we will walk in the name of the Lord our God
for ever and ever.

We cannot read these words today and not weep with distress and anger at what we have seen and heard these last two years in Gaza and Israel.

Lord of mercy and healing,

be a source of comfort to all who are suffering,

all who are in pain, all who terrified and fearful,

all who feel lost and without hope.