2 before Advent
Jesus warns that ‘the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.’
Maybe you have watched David Attenborough’s programmes on seven continents, and the introduction illustrates the point. Having seven continents is, in geological terms, a fairly new phenomenon, and they continue to move at surprising speed. At some point in geological history, enormous earth movements started to take place on a scale never before recorded on earth. The once stable single great continental land mass began to break up. We know the details today: India crashing into Asia to form the Himalayas, the Atlantic Ocean opening up, splitting Africa from South America, or, nearer to home, Labrador from Scotland. The consequence of all this was newly emerging land masses, and new environments for life to colonise, with plants able to grow on land, animals able to colonise the land, and ultimately, amongst all the variety of life, the appearance of humans.
But then, what the programmes also bring to our attention is that fact that things can’t continue in the same old way. Things have to change. We must stop cutting down rain forest to grow palm oil, stop the nonsense of using palm oil as bio fuel and pretend this is better than using oil, stop relying of cheap air travel and giving away air miles. We must stop discarding plastic. Our way of life is unsustainable.
When Jesus spoke of the end of the temple in Jerusalem, it seemed unimaginable. The Herods had created the most impressive religious edifice in the Roman world; greater than anything in Egypt, greater than Delphi or the Parthenon in Athens, a cult sustained by thousands upon thousands of sacrifices. To give an idea of its size, the Acropolis, the natural plateau on which the Parthenon was built in Athens, is about 3 hectares in area. Although Jerusalem is always spoken of as being on a hill, the natural one is insignificant in size, but Herod built had commissioned a mound 10 hectares in area, an artificial hill of immense stone blocks. We can still marvel, as Jesus’ disciples did, at the size of the stones forming the foundation for the biggest religious building in the world. As Jesus and his disciples looked at it, it was still being built and indeed, it was never finished. Within a generation, this temple, and the city of Jerusalem would be no more. Jews and Christians would be forbidden to live there. Yet, Jesus advises, this is not the end of the world. It is a warning to be resolute in the face of persecution.
Today our prophets are different, and their message is different, but it seems evident that their message is as vital to our generation as Jesus’ message was to the infant church. Our prophets might be the very old, like David Attenborough, or the young like Greta Thunberg. But what is the world doing? In some ways nations appear to be doing what the Roman emperor was doing in the days when Luke wrote his gospel. Nero was accused of fiddling whilst Rome burnt. The saying has become a byword for leaders who, in any generation, neglect the urgent needs of their people. Are our leaders, fighting over the coming election, fiddling whilst our cities and indeed our planet choke on the pollution we have made?
Some countries are taking notice. I was struck this week by the way the Dutch Prime Minister announced ways of reducing nitrous oxide emissions. His government had already frozen 18,000 road, airport and housing projects to meet EU targets on nitrogen oxide pollution. But it wasn’t enough. So the national speed limit is to be reduced on motorways from 130 kph to 100 kph between 7 p.m. and 6 a.m. And farmers have been ordered to reduce numbers of pigs because nitrogen emissions are four times the EU average. He said it was urgent because it causes asthma, brings on asthma attacks, and increases heart disease in the elderly. Quite simply, in order to heal ourselves we need to heal the whole planet. And in particular we need to heal the places where there is the highest density of population and the greatest damage to the health of people. We are changing the climate and see the results in floods at home, floods in Venice, and floods in India. We have wildfires in California, in Australia and we have had them in the Pennine Moors. And yet the papers yesterday were celebrating a non-stop flight from London to Sydney, which used 15 tonnes of fuel per passenger. Are our goals the right ones?
The planet needs healing. And, as this is a healing service, allow me to tell a story of healing services some 30 years ago and more. Someone came to the services, and she sought out healing services everywhere. She approached ministers of all churches asking for special prayers of healing. It is no exaggeration to say that I and other ministers were driven to distraction by her incessant demands. She would approach caring people violently in order to get attention.
At one healing service I had preached on a story of Jesus telling a man to get up and walk (John 5). I spelt out what the consequences of that must have been. For, if Jesus could heal him, he could no longer get charity. He would have to work for his living. When he asked Jesus to heal him, to make him stand up and walk, he knew that his entire lifestyle would change, and he accepted the challenge. Paul, in today’s epistle, commends that sort of life. The woman I mentioned had always refused to get medical help, and she was furious, as so often before, at my sermon. Her doctor, a friend who was a Reader in his parish, said, ‘Do we have a patient? He could do nothing because she refused any help.
12 years after the onset of the illness, and after I left the parish, I received a letter from the woman. Her illness had been caused by a simple chemical imbalance; she wrote. Within weeks of receiving treatment from her doctor she was back to her old self, and helping people in the community as St. Paul commended, being a blessing to all around her.
I tell this story because, as I watch David Attenborough or listen to Greta Thunberg and climate activists, I wonder, ‘Do we have a patient?’ Have we realised that our present lifestyle is unsustainable? Do we recognise ourselves as patients, do we recognise the illnesses we are causing ourselves and our planet, which can only be cured by accepting that we must live differently? Some countries are refusing to admit that climate change is happening.
The temple in Jerusalem effectively destroyed itself, because it had ceased to point people to God. When God appeared in its midst, he was rejected. We could be doing something similar on a larger scale today, larger than Nero’s fiddling while Rome burns, and refusing to recognise that our lifestyles and what we are doing to our planet are making us ill. Only then, if we change, as Malachi promises, will the son of righteousness rise, with healing on his wings.