Choosing Life

 Choosing Life

Notes for Sermon preached at St Ann, Belfield 2022 and used in much abbreviated form in a short reflection given in the High Court in my hearing after breaking the North Warwickshire injuction.

Why would any of us knowingly do something very likely to hasten our death ? If there was a cliff edge just ahead of you, and experts said there was a cliff edge, would you keep on walking ?

If your leaders said “Keep going, don't worry about the cliff, trust us not those who know all about what happens when you walk off a cliff, would you believe them ? 

And when some people started falling off the cliff, and you saw pictures on the TV, would you keep following the leaders ?

Of course You wouldn’t ! 

Yet that is exactly what is happening today. We are heading towards disaster. Professor Sir David King, the former government chief scientist, says what we do in the next three to four years will determine the future of humanity. He’s talking about our survival as a species. 

But still our leaders are walking us towards the cliff edge.

Leaders of nations have made these reckless choices before. The words of Deuteronomy 30.15-20 cry out to us. 

See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity.  If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I am commanding you today, by loving the Lord your God, walking in his ways, and observing his commandments, decrees, and ordinances, then you shall live and become numerous, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to possess.  But if your heart turns away and you do not hear, but are led astray to bow down to other gods and serve them,  I declare to you today that you shall perish; you shall not live long in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess.  I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him; for that means life to you and length of days, so that you may live in the land that the Lord swore to give to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

What will we choose ?

Wendy and I were arrested last week. Wendy spent just under 12 hours in  Chelmsford Police station. I went to Basildon Police Station. This happened because we sat  on an access road to an oil refinery. As we did that, we later learned, some others had been tunnelling under the same road. Astonishingly they are still there having spent 10 days underground. The purpose was to block access to the depot which distributes oil and petrol. This has not been achieved because the authorities have decided to continue to run 70 ton trucks overhead even tho’ there are people underneath, no supports or boarding. 

Why risk your life in a tunnel ? Why sit on a road in front of an oil tanker? The papers often label such people as mad or bad. Please try and suspend your judgement and hear me out. Just Stop Oil has the simple demand that there should be no new oil projects. Respected scientists, the UN, the world bank all say there should be no new oil, gas or coal. But our government is planning over 40 new oil and gas projects.

They are saying come on, let’s walk faster. And like zombies we are following !

See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity. 

Our vocation - as human beings, made in the image of God, is to choose life.

I interviewed the bishop of Bolton a few weeks ago. You can see it on YouTube. He spoke about his granddaughter. He wondered what sort of world she would grow up into. I wonder the same for my children and especially for my one grandchild.

The reading from Deuteronomy goes on to say that if we obey the commandments of the Lord ourGod, then we shall live and become numerous and the Lord will bless us.

There are good choices to be made.  There is another way to live. We do not have to choose this path of death and destruction. The economy can be changed, redirected for life. Human beings can do great things. Consider how nations coped with COVID, supporting the weak, protecting the vulnerable. Or how the US economy was changed from making cars to aeroplanes and tanks to face the threat of war.

We do not have to be bewitched by the leaders who are leading us onto the cliff overhang. There is a way to a new life. It begins when each of us chooses life and resists the walk off the cliff edge.

Our Father in heaven loves us so much. How he must weep when he sees what we are doing. How we are held in mental captivity by false and dangerous gods. When I was arrested recently in April it was for holding a banner that had the words “Jesus Wept”.  Many are weeping now because of the deaths that are caused in a hotter world.

Dorothy Soelle begins her book Choosing Life talking about the exile that Israel experienced in Egypt. They rather enjoyed the fleshpots of Egypt. They were slaves but they had sort of got accommodated to it. We in the wealthy industrial West do not feel that we are exiled from God, we have adapted ourselves to such an extent that in the very midst of Egypt under the domination of Pharaoh we feel quite at home. Referring to the passage from Deuteronomy 30:19 she says choosing life in the face of death means chiming in with the great yes to life that is God. She goes on to say that choosing life is the very capacity for not putting up with the routine destruction of Life. That routine cynicism that we are expected to follow.

Conclusion

(I’m not sure how I finished this sermon. Perhaps you, dear reader, can write/think of a conclusion that speaks to you ? )

This Little Light of Mine

 This Little Light of Mine

Sermon preached on Sunday 5 February 2023 at St Ann’s Belfield

In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven. (Matthew 5.16)

It should have been a delicious meal. All the ingredients were good. It looked delicious on the plate. But it had no flavour ! All it needed was salt. But there was none on the table. And I couldn’t say anything. I didn’t want to offend my kind host. 

In the ancient world, having your own source of light at night was essential. If your light went out you were stuck. If there was a knock at the door you would not be able to see if it was friend or foe.  There wasn’t much sympathy if your light had gone out because you had been careless and had not topped up the oil. Who are you going to ask for a light ? Of course neighbours are happy to help but … well.. It is a bit embarrassing.

The two Biblical images of salt and light are very familiar, and make perfect sense in any age. We can imagine our Lord speaking to the people who gathered to listen to him about being salt that has flavour, and not hiding your light under a bushel basket. (Matthew 5.13-14)

 

Homely though they sound, salt and light became for Jesus images of human resistance. They invite us to take the courage to stand up against hunger, exclusion, poverty, greed and all that hurts and harms God’s children. In a world where fellow human beings are made distant objects so we come to believe that their death is not our concern, the salt reminds us that small acts of love, small acts of resistance against death, really matter. The light tells us not to give up but to look at the light still shining.  To keep oil in your lamp.

You may know the Gospel/children’s song “This little light of mine”. It’s become for me a mini song of resistance. When I was court a few weeks ago, it was often on my lips. Especially when the bombast of court was at its loudest.

How do we live in the middle of these crises ? Professor Sir David King, the former government chief scientist said in 2021 that what we do in the next 3 to 4 years “will determine the future of humanity.” But our government plans to add fuel to the fire 

At such a time we cannot spend all our energy making shopping lists of our minor sins. Our collective folly needs to be tackled. As Walter Wink said “The issue is not, "What must I do in order to secure my salvation?" but rather, "What does God require of me in response to the needs of others?" It is not, "How can I be virtuous?" but "How can I participate in the struggle of the oppressed for a more just world?" (Walter Wink, Jesus and Nonviolence: A Third Way)

We invest our energies in establishing our own purity in the eyes of God. There is a secular version of this privatised spirituality, which the talk of carbon footprints plays into. As a church, even in our response to the existential emergency, others, we succumb to "a satanic temptation to die with clean hands and a dirty heart.” 

I was in court in January. As I try to stand up against the destruction of the world, I feel almost crushed by the darkness. It was hard to hear the prosecution define what I had done as “causing chaos.” My intention was, and still is, for us - as humanity - to avoid chaos.

It was not a small thing to decide to block a road. I wish there was another way. But I and others have tried over many years to bring a stop to the murderous fossil fuel emissions, by lobbying Parliament, signing petitions, etc. I could not speak about my motivation in the court in January. Because of the nature of the offence we were charged with, we were silenced. I could not make reference to science, or the floods in Rochdale, or how I worry for my grandchild. Or that we have very short time to act.

The darkness may be great but it has not overcome the light. I sat there humming silently this little light of mine. I sat there in quiet contemplation of  the love of God for each one of us. I thanked God for my co-defendants. I prayed for the judge and the jury.

I could not run from this situation. Like many of us, I have often tried to keep calm and carry on. We human beings are very good at avoiding the darkness.

Jesus stood up for love with every part of himself. The Light of the world faced the darkness head on - with mind, body and spirit - with love, with sorrow. Remember how he wept over Jerusalem ? He kept his light, God’s light, shining in the darkness. That’s what I hope to do.

In the film Gandhi we see a powerful depiction of the Salt March in India in 1930. You may remember the  image of Indian protesters dressed in white stepping forward to be beaten by soldiers with big sticks. A growing number of non violent protesters walked 239 miles from Gandhi’s Ashram (place of prayer) to the coast. It began with 78 followers and resulted in 60000 Indians being jailed for breaking the law. The empire could not stop people making salt from sea water. It took some time but this and other acts of stubborn, loving resistance led to the end of British rule.

Today, we face a great darkness. The forces against us are rich and powerful. They are here there and everywhere. They have captured the minds and hearts of many talented people. 

Remember how Jesus struggled with the devil in the wilderness. He knew the power of the Roman empire. They had their gods, their technological power, their confidence and conviction. But in its heart it was rotten; the Roman Empire ran on slavery and violence.

There is a very clear parallel with us in the UK. There are massive vested interests in fossil fuel extraction. They have captured the media. 

But in spite of all this evidence, in spite of all the doom, we are a people of joy.

• Because we have experienced that light shining in the darkness

• We have seen it shining in others, they are truly “glorifying God” by their lives of courage, love and service

• We know we are called to be light too

• We know that light is desperately needed

• And that when it shines empty empires crumble to dust.

May the light always shine in you