Jaime Wright’s Sermon
On Sunday 22nd September 2024 the Reverend Dr Jaime Wright, Assistant Priest at Old Saint Paul’s, preached this sermon at St Vincent’s:
The Entire Season of Creation in 10 Minutes
May I speak in the name of God, Source of All Being, Incarnate Word, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Introduction
Wisdom that leads to envy and selfish ambition is not from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, devilish. But the wisdom from above is pure, peaceable, gentle, yielding, and merciful (Jas 3.15,17).
Although the point here in James is about contrasting secular and spiritual wisdom, even the suggestion—as written—that the wisdom of the Earth could be somehow antithetical to the wisdom of God, provides a provocative hook in order to bring us face-to-face with the titular topic of Creationtide.
It can prompt us to ask: Just what is the wisdom of the earth? Where is God according to this wisdom? And who are we according to it? And how do we respond to such wisdom?
Worldview: What is the Wisdom of the Earth?
James describes the wisdom from below as marked by envy, selfish ambition, disorder, wickedness, and full of conflicts.
Indeed, the modern capitalist society in which much of humanity now lives is built upon a commodity economy, which emphasises individuality, consumerism, and the commodification of anything and everything. It is a society that thrives on scarcity and leads us into isolation. We act as if we must unendingly consume in order to whole, and we put up boundaries and barriers to protect what is ours, leading us into an Age of Loneliness (Ryan, Global Sustainability), isolated from other people, isolated from the natural world, even isolated from our true selves or from God.
When it comes to the natural world, we are seeing the consequences of such a widespread worldview in the form of anthropogenic climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss.
Reciprocity (Interconnectedness)
In her book, Braiding Sweetgrass, weaving together science, spirit, and story from a North American indigenous perspective, Robin Wall Kimmerer spends a lot of space reflecting on the different environmental impacts of worldviews dominated by consumeristic capitalism and worldviews based on gift economies. The currency of a gift economy, according to Kimmerer, is, at its root, reciprocity (28). Because a gift creates an ongoing relationship (26): when something is given to us as a gift, we tend to care for the item (often even if we don’t really like it), because it has established a feeling-bond between us and the gift-giver.
Gratitude
Our gift in return is gratitude. Gratitude for the gift; gratitude to the gift-giver; gratitude to humans and to the earth and to the Creator. And gratitude is a powerful antidote to the all-consuming destruction of the commodity economy, for ‘[g]ratitude’, says Kimmerer, ‘plants the seed for abundance’ (376).
Abundance
Indeed, starting from a place of gratitude reminds us every day that we have enough. And ‘[r]ecognising abundance rather than scarcity undermines an economy that thrives on creating unmet desires’ (111). Gratitude can give us courage to refuse to participate in an economy that destroys the beloved earth [and the wellbeing of so many] to line the pockets of the greedy, [and] to demand an economy that is aligned with life, not staked against it’ (377). ‘Respect one another. Support one another, bring your gift to the world and receive the gifts of others, and there will be enough for all’ (132).
So we might say that the wisdom of the Earth is about the interconnectedness of Creation and the dynamic flow of energy within it (Horan), as well as the genuine possibility of sustainability once we live within that flow, giving and receiving, rather than selfishly exploiting others.
Theology: Where is God?
But where is God in this wisdom of the Earth?
Most Christians working at the nexus of ecology and theology, espouse a particular view of God and Creation called ‘panentheism’, literally meaning all-in-God, or that God pervades all things. Therefore, God exists within all created things—not just Jesus, as the Son of God, not just us humans, not even just us animals, or even just us living beings, but even down to the tiniest quark within the tiniest atom—there too is God.
Panentheism thus combines the doctrines of creation and incarnation, such that the incarnation— God being manifested amongst us—is much bigger and much more deeply rooted than that of the baby Jesus born in a manger. Rather, the incarnation is understood to acknowledge that God has been with us since the first instance of Creation, when God joined the Divine-Self in unity with the physical cosmos, becoming the spark of divinity inside everything. The incarnation then becomes about the continuous opportunity to encounter God in creation. On a planetary scale this is referred to as ‘deep incarnation’. On a cosmic scale it is the ‘Cosmic Christ’—the divine Logos spread throughout—and the dynamic flow of energy is the breath of life of the Holy Spirit.
Anthropology: Who are You?
And who are you in this vast network of divinity and creatures, matter and energy, life and death?
In a damning 1967 article on the historical roots of our ecological crisis, Lynn White Jr. lays the blame for exploitation of the earth on the anthropocentrism—or human centredness—of Western Christianity (Drees, Global Sustainability, 20). This applies to both the dominion model of creation, in which humanity is seen as being given dominion over other-than-human creation to do with as it sees fit, per Genesis 1, and the stewardship model, which is currently the dominant paradigm within the Christian tradition that tends to present other-than-human creation as God’s household or home for humanity, for which humanity has a vocation of duty of care arising from divine mandate (Horan 33). Both models perpetuate human separatism, suggesting an inflated view of the human as a necessary intermediary between God and other creatures, such that other-than- human creation does not have its own relationship with its Creator or its own integrity (Horan 68).
There do exist other models of creation within the Christian tradition that successfully de-centre the human. Daniel Horan, for example in his book All God’s Creatures, proposes what he calls a ‘postcolonial Franciscan theology of creation’, in which he proposes a ‘kinship model’ and a ‘community of creation theology’, thus alluding to our inextricable place as creatures always- already situated within the cosmic community of creation. Looking outwith Christianity, we find Robin Wall Kimmerer, for example, claiming that the unique role of the human is to express gratitude, as mentioned earlier. According to Kimmerer, language is our gift and our responsibility; we may not have wings or leaves, but we humans do have words: words to remember old stories, words to tell new ones, stories that bring science and spirit together to nurture our becoming a sustainable people part of a sustainable community (347).
Prayer Practices: How Do We Respond?
If the epistle of James is remembered as distinct about anything, it is about the significance of our actions.
The wisdom of the Earth leads us to ground our spirits in the rhythms of nature. It involves (1) learning to observe—or how to hear—other-than-human creation, (2) coming to understand something about how the natural world works, (3) learning to speak—to communicate back—to the living beings around us, and (4) to act in practical ways that transform our way of living to be more in harmony with the earth (Starhawk 12-13).
I think the vast majority of us—myself included—are only at the first step, still learning how to hear. And so I leave you with one practical suggestion of how you might respond to the wisdom of the Earth, putting your faith into action:
Go outside and create a relationship with a space; use your five sense to observe; perhaps keep a journal of your observations; maybe take something from the space (as long as it’s already dead or lose on the ground or something meant to be eaten, like a berry) or leave gifts there (making sure it is appropriate and safe to the context, such as being biodegradable). Fall in love with other-than-human creation through your presence, your attention.
Practice your gift of gratitude, allow it to draw you into relationship—into reciprocity, and encounter the true bounty of creation.
Or, as James might put it: find that ‘harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace’ (3.18); ‘draw near to God, and he will draw near to you’ (4.8).