Sermon Archive
Earth Be Glad: Chairman Mao and the Butterfly
Sermon preached by John Armes at Holy Communion on 11 September 2005
Exodus 14:19-31 ; Romans 14:1-12 ; Matthew 18:21-35
What’s the difference between Chairman Mao and a butterfly?
I’ve just been given a lovely pocket watch by someone who has recently returned from China. When I flick it open I am confronted by Chairman Mao waving his hand in time with the seconds. I’m afraid I can’t help wondering whether he is still waving when the lid is shut. I suppose it doesn’t really matter. In the end, Chairman Mao is only there to tell me the time, so the important thing is that when I do open the lid there he is. How the real Chairman Mao would have loved to be immortalised in this way!
When I walked the Southern Upland Way on my sabbatical I was often quite on my own – just me, my blisters and abundant wildlife. One day I remember a feeling of exaltation just to see a beautiful butterfly for, I realised, I alone, of all human creation, was a witness to its beauty. Of course, it was identical, for all I could tell, to any other butterfly of its type and gender, but I was the only witness to this particular creature. Therefore, I alone could give God thanks for it.
Part of our calling as human beings is to give meaning to the world we inhabit – to acknowledge and celebrate beauty and majesty in the universe, to make sense of how things work. This is expressed in the bible by Adam’s task of giving names to all living things. Part of the understanding too was that by giving something a name we acquire a kind of power over it. This power, or ‘dominion’ as it is called in Genesis, is the same kind of power the Kings of Israel were expected to wield – to treat their people with as much kindness as God treated them.
The reality of human stewardship of created things has been much different from this, as we know. Not royal dominion, but at times rampant exploitation. Yet the truth is that the world is not just there to delight us. As the Old Testament also points out, flowers bloom in the desert with no one to see them. And my relationship with the butterfly was two way. It existed before I walked by, and after. But I as a human being was able to give it an extra significance and meaning – and indeed, as a human being that is what I am supposed to do – it is part of my contribution to the world both I and the butterfly belong to.
Unlike Chairman Mao who, when the lid is shut may be not waving but frowning, for all I know, the butterfly, when I am not looking has its own job to do regardless of me. And the fact that millions of butterflies and other gorgeous insects live and die with no one to notice them, does not lessen their importance.
Indeed, it is quite possible for us to conceive of a world in which human beings have foolishly wiped themselves off the face of the planet. The evidence suggests that the rest of creation might pay as little attention to this as we seem to do as we wipe out unknown numbers of species of life in the rainforest. Of course, other animals can engage in frenzied destructiveness but what sets modern human beings apart is the scale of our potential destructiveness and the fact that we are able, if we want to, to see what we are doing and to find a way of stopping it.
James Lovelock, in his book Gaia cheekily suggests that one way of conceiving of human beings is as hosts to the anaerobic organisms that live in the our gut. His point is really to propose that we are integral parts of Gaia – his name for earth as a complex, self-sustaining eco-system. Human consciousness, therefore, is Gaia’s consciousness. He also suggests that there is an elasticity and resilience to Gaia that allows her to repair and heal destructive influences on our planet, whether created by human beings or other destructive forces.
But Lovelock’s 1979 hypothesis should not make us blasé. Gaia is already able to do what Jesus asks of his followers, it can forgive us seventy seven times, or even seventy times seven, for the wrongs we do. For Gaia has the capacity, over millions of years to absorb the irritation of one rogue species. Ozone layers can be repaired over time, ice ages come and go, polluted oceans can slowly be cleansed – but that hardly offers us comfort, as creatures who live and die in the blink of an eye.
In Siberia the permafrost is melting for the first time for thousands and thousands of years – and it’s happening because of global warming. This in turn will release tonnes of methane into the atmosphere, thus escalating the effects of global warming, melting ice caps, diverting ocean currents, like the gulf stream, dramatically altering the climate and weather conditions of the planet.
Yes, it’s the scale of our destructiveness that sets us apart. But also, our ability to recognise, analyse and change what we are doing. The challenge is, are we able to act together?
This is the context of our journey through Creation-tide this year. As people who worship God our creator, how can we stand back as God’s creation is exploited? As people who believe that we are called not to pious feelings but to loving action, how can we turn our backs when quite clearly it will be the poor who suffer most from climate change – as we see already in the terrible floods around the world.
St Paul elucidates an excellent principle that where we disagree we must each gladly obey our conscience, not seeking to condemn others but to give honour to God. If you eat meat given to idols, eat it to the Lord; if you abstain from this meat, abstain to the Lord.
His point is not to let us off the hook and say, ‘Do what you like.’ He is saying simply that each of us is accountable to God. Each one of is required to live as best we can, obeying the call and challenge of a conscience informed by faith.
This means that we should expect to find ourselves standing shoulder to shoulder with all sorts of likely and unlikely allies, and in pursuing a common cause to cherish the world God has given us. I emphasize that our place is not to be self-righteous, angry, miserable or guilt-ridden but to find joy in the task of making a difference.
This is something we want to do as a community. So, during this month each individual, household, group and committee in the church has been asked to decide how it, how you can do something to benefit the environment, to write the resolution on a green paper leaf and to hang it on a tree for Harvest Sunday.
This is no woolly minded, tree-hugging alternative to Christian believing, it belongs to the heart of faith in the God whose creatures we are. That we should do our best not only to let the earth be glad, but also to express the gladness that we too are part of this world – a world God has shared with us, a world for which Christ died.
Earth be Glad: Environmental issues at St John's
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