Acts 1:15-17, 21-26; Psalm 1; 1 John 5:9-13; John 17:6-19
This week the text of the four lectures that I gave on the subject of “The Environmental Crisis and the Church” (ISBN 978-1-9163133-1-9) went to the printers and will be published soon. This set me thinking again about a theological view of our planet and its inhabitants.
The word ‘world’, occurs 13 times in our Gospel, but in John’s Gospel it’s use isn’t always straight-forward. In John’s Gospel as a whole, one could easily be forgiven for seeing ‘the world’ as mostly scary and not very nice. Now if that isn’t how you think of it, that’s probably because the bits of John’s Gospel that we hear in Church are generally the happy parts and we tend to skip over the difficult bits. The most famous verse is probably John 3:16
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
and that’s typical of the happy bits, but what about today’s references to the world?
“While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost” and “I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one”,
not happy bits are they?
But we can’t just dismiss our ‘broken world’ as something that God doesn’t love either, because if the broken world isn’t the one that’s so beloved of God, then the lifting up of the Son makes no sense at all. Jesus didn’t need to die if He’s only in the world for the sake of the people who like him. And Jesus’ disciples won’t be in danger if they’re to ‘bear fruit’ in a sort of happy isolation huddled away. The reason that they’re to mirror the union of the Father and Son and carry God’slove for them into a world that doesn’t know God, is because God loves that world and wants it to know that love.
Today’s passage is part of an extended prayer for the disciples. Jesus is praying it out loud so that byhearing it “in the world” in which they’re being sent out to spread the good news of salvation, they should share in His joy even as He returns to His Father (an event we marked this week in the Ascension).
The world, created by God, is also a gift of God. Jesus came into the world to live God’s light. However, the world rejected that light, denied the gift, subjugated people, and pushed down all sorts of groups such as the poor, women, the oppressed, the homeless, refugees and so on. So we live in a world so dangerous that Jesus asks God to protect his people from it. This world of death and violence hated Jesus and his disciples. This world of sin tortured Jesus and put him on a cross. We may live in this world but sometimes it feels like we don’t belong, because what gives true life is constantly being attacked and destroyed and some of the things that the world sees as important aren’t.
The word ‘world’, to which we don’t belong, isn’t the whole planet. That would deny thateverything that lives on earth is a gift from God. If we’re apart from this world, what’s the point of caring for and trying to protect the life of the planet?
In order to understand the the difference between the world that we live in and must deny and the world that we live in and must work for, we could make a distinction between the world and theearth. The world is that part of our world that consists of patriarchal structures, political squabbling, inequality, violence, war, attacks on the poor, closing of borders, the rich getting richer whilst the rest become poorer, and the wholesale destruction of the earth through greed, exploitation and rampant consumerism.
The earth on the other hand is the planet that gives us life and nourishment and has to do with our most basic requirements of living, who we really are. We’re all made of dust and to dust we will return; those who live in balance and harmony with the natural world, caring for all people, foranimals and plants, for rivers and oceans, valuing and respecting that gift of God which I mentioned earlier. When Jesus becomes human, He’s both God’s gift to the earth and a part of that earth himself, just like we all are.
With this distinction between world and earth, we must be careful not to get into what thephilosopher Alfred North Whitehead called the “bifurcation of nature into two systems of reality,” namely human beings and nature. We’re not separate from nature, we’re very much part of it and can’t possibly control it. There are many possible worlds on planet earth and God’s world is just one of those.
So the message from today’s Gospel is that we must fight against a world of death and destruction that emphasises separation and thrives on putting down and trampling on others, with the power of those people who’re destroying people and the natural world in wonderful place called Earth.
The world of destitution lies in the hands of those who produce evil and do not recognise that they aren’t either as important as they think they are and are not in control of their destiny either. We do not belong to that world, the Devil or this evil, even though when we turn away from God we can be and do evil! Because of that, Jesus called us into relationship with Himself and God: sacred people living in sacred places with all forms of sacred life, without distinction. The world of destruction has desecrated the world of God, the earth, and all its creatures, including humans.
The earth of God is also in this world of death, but our work as Christians is to be sanctified, both individually and collectively, by God. Reclaiming our sanctification in God means to become one with God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, God’s people (that is all people), and the world/earth of God. All are sacred and being attacked by the desacralization of life.
The destruction of the earth can’t be equated with a sign of God’s second coming, the way in which some people interpret the Book of Revelation. We need to change our ways of living and relating to our fellow human beings and all creatures, seeing all of them as sacred and loved by God, so that Jesus’ prayer can continue to reverberate all across the earth.
Amen.