GOD, WHOSE FARM IS ALL CREATION

I joined the church choir at 3pm on the first Wednesday of September 1936. When I arrived in the choir room I found five other boys had been similarly summoned. All the rest were older. A few weeks later I stood in the front choir pew, just able to see over it, to behold the most wondrous sight. Everywhere, at the ends of pews, on the pulpit and the lectern, all down the main aisle of the church, on the sills of some of the great stained glass windows was the most wonderful display of everything familiar to me from the surrounding countryside, fruit: apples, oranges, melons, grapes, figs; vegetables:  cabbages, carrots, parsnips, potatoes, Brussels sprouts, beetroot, onions, various kinds of breads and buns, all made into a blaze of colour by flowers played among them. All of them making the church into a glorious picture. Mr Garrett had told us boys that everything we sang that Sunday would be saying thank you to God for all these things.

Years later in boarding school we would learn that we were celebrating an act of praise and thanksgiving that went back into the mists of time, long before the Christian faith that had named us in Baptism. We called it Harvest Thanksgiving but, for those who gave thanks tens of thousands of years before us, God - for them the gods - was in the trees above, in the great river flowing to the far away sea, in the fishes that swam in that vast ocean, in the animals and the birds that roamed in the hills and valleys that would far in the future cradle our small city. That incredibly ancient act of worship was called Lammas. And those who worshipped in that time saw themselves as creatures of Creation. 

Time sweeps us away to what seems another world but is actually the same one, our world, one of vast populations, of ceaseless invention, of  innumerable needs and desires that spawn vast industries to serve and to satisfy us, of great wonders and forces that heal us, beautify our world and delight us, of dark forces that can devastate our minds and bodies. Above all it has in recent centuries allowed us to develop illusions of ourselves as Creators, and in  this very year of 2023, in fire, flood and earthquake, we have experienced some chastening push back from the natural world around us, reminding us that we forget at our peril that we are creatures within a Creation. 

In a word we are being made to realize that what we call Spirituality and Ecology are not about different things. My own way of expressing this is to say that I think Spirituality is the spirit or attitude we bring to being creatures in the world; ecology is the scientific knowledge we bring to managing how we act out our spirituality. 

I've never heard all this expressed better than by Elizabeth Johnson of Fordham University. She’s basically saying that spirituality and ecology are not two different songs we need to sing. They are one song. Here is what she says…

"A flourishing humanity on a thriving Earth in an evolving universe, all together filled with the glory of God;  such is the theological vision needed in this critical age of Earth's distress. This moment of crises calls for a spirituality and ethics that will empower us to live in the web of life as sustainers rather than destroyers of the world. Ignoring this need keeps religious people locked ultimately in irrelevant concerns while the irreversible drama of death is being played out on the planet. But being converted to the Earth sets our personal lives and church communities off on a great adventure that expands the repertoire of love."

Instead of living as thoughtless exploiters of the Earth, we become sisters and brothers, friends and lovers, mothers and fathers, priests and prophets, cocreators and children of the Earth that as God's beloved creation gives us life. Only then can we join in praying the Sanctus with integrity. Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of power and might, Heaven and Earth are full of your glory. No more monumental challenge faces those who are led by the spirit of God…at the start of this third millennium. 

Have you noticed how in recent years and - as the pace quickens in recent months - we are expressing our  spirituality with ecological emphases? Here are three things from 21st Century spirituality that express the coming together of christian worship and ecological awareness. 

First the magnficent meditation of Elizabeth Johnson I have just shared with you. Second, a prayer from the New Zealand prayer book... 

Blessed are you,God of growth and discovery; yours is the inspiration that has altered and changed our lives; yours is the power that has brought us to new dangers and opportunities. Set us, your new Creation, to walk through this new world, watching and learning, loving and trusting until your kingdom comes. Amen.

Third, a beautiful modern hymn I have just discovered (261 in Common Praise)

God whose farm is all Creation, take the gratitude we give, 

take the finest of our harvest, crops we grow that all may live.

Take our ploughing, seeding, reaping, hopes and fears of sun and rain,

all our thinking, planning, waiting, ripening into fruit and grain. 

All our labour, all our watching, all our calendar of care, 

in these crops of your creation, take, O God; they are our prayer. 

In all three of these expressions of spirituality, note the overall tones of gratitude and humility. Perhaps we are at last beginning to learn what Mr Garrett sought to inculcate in us all those years ago - gratitude. In recent years we are slowly, and sometimes with great cost, learning humility.

IMAGE

Harvest Thanksgiving at Christ Church Cathedral, October 2019

Photo: Jane Dittrich