The Keene Lectures 2004

'What will the world be like in 2020?'

delivered by The Rt Revd James Jones

Bishop of Liverpool

in Chelmsford Cathedral

Lecture Two:

Wednesday 10th November 2004

'The Environment, for God's Sake!'

What will the world be like in 2020?

The Keene Lectures 2004

This year we have been proud to host a series of lectures which were both expert and relevant to public interest and personal faith. Four speakers were invited to address the question 'What will the world be like in 2020?'from the perspective of their professional expertise: a futurologist, a theologian, an ecologist and an ethicist. In order of delivery, they were:

Mr Ian Pearson, Research Futurologist with British Telecom

The Rt Rev James Jones, Bishop of Liverpool

Professor David Goode, Adviser on the Environment to the Greater London Council

Dr Robert Song, Senior Lecturer in Ethics, University of Durham

The result was an array of daunting scenarios, with few guarantees that life as we know it will continue or be sustainable in the long-term. These transcripts are offered to enable further reflection and to provide a cameo of our turn-of-the-century apprehensions. As Robert Song pointed out, the future is shaped by people like ourselves. Much depends on the clarity of our understanding and the courage of our response.

We are indeed grateful for the bequest in memory of John Henry Keene which provides for these public lectures to be offered free of charge.

Andrew Knowles

Canon Theologian

November 2004

KEENE LECTURE TWO

Wednesday 10^th November 2004

'The Environment, for God's Sake!'

The Rt Revd James Jones

James Jones was a teacher and producer of audio-visual aids with Scripture Union before training for ordination at Wycliffe Hall in Oxford. After 12 years in parish ministry in Bristol and Croydon he became Bishop of Hull in 1994 and of Liverpool in 1998.

His book, 'Jesus and the Earth', was published by SPCK in 2003

Mr Dean, thank you very much for your welcome, and I bring you greetings from the diocese of Liverpool, whose generous spirit allows me to accept such lovely invitations as this.

You kindly mentioned my book. I actually wrote another book called 'Why do people suffer?'and when the proofs came back from the printer, they left out the question mark, so the title of the book read 'Why do people suffer James Jones', which is no doubt what you'll all be thinking in about half an hour's time.

I'm delighted to be here and to address this subject of 'The Environment, for God's Sake'. It is true that I've had something of an ecological conversion. It began with young people, because in the millennium year, after consultations throughout the diocese as to what I should do to mark the millennium with the rest of the diocese, a very old lady who was chair of one of the deanery synods said in one of our meetings: 'Bishop, why don't you visit schools?'which is exactly what I did.

We produced a series of short video clips just to get the discussion going, and my chaplain did some research as to what young people might want to talk with a bishop about. I had asked if I could go into the schools so that I could listen to the young people's dreads and dreams of the future, and also tell them why I thought that Christianity was still relevant 2000 years on. What was extraordinary is that every single door was thrown wide open to me to engage with young people in this way.

Well, there were three short video clips – first on the environment, secondly, on relationships and third, on the spiritual quest. After showing the video on the environment, which admittedly did contain some pretty apocalyptic scenes, I asked this question of the young people: 'To what extent are you worried about the future of the planet? '0'is 'not worried at all', '10'is 'I'm really scared'. I then said, 'Please would you put your hands up if you placed yourself between 5 and 10 on that scale. In every single one of the 16 schools, 100% of all the hands went up.

I then asked the young people a second question: 'Given your anxiety about the future of the earth, to what extent do you think we ought to do something about it', and 'please', I said, 'would you note that little word 'ought'because it's a moral word and we'll start digging around as to what and where that moral word comes from. '0'is 'don't bother', '10'is 'we really ought to do something. Please put your hands up.'I said, 'Please put your hand up if you place yourself between '5'and '10'.'Ninety-eight-ninety-nine percent of all the hands went up.

And I came away from that encounter with thousands of young people, pondering on the difference between their concerns and the concerns of the Church. I was learning something from young people about the priority and the moral imperative of the environment. And that made me go back to the Bible and made me ask this question: if the environment is so important, so central to the mission of God, where does it say this in the Bible, if at all?

What was important for me in this encounter with young people is that I myself was learning from them. I believe if we're talking about a church where there is true mutuality in giving and receiving, then we ought to be a church that not only teaches young people but also is prepared to learn from young people.

I wrote a booklet for the Bible Reading Fellowship, called 'Following Jesus'. One of the cartoons is of confirmation, in which you see the candidate kneeling before the bishop. As you look closely you notice that there's an 'L'plate pinned to the back of the candidate, making the nice point that when you're being confirmed, you are becoming a learner. It's not a destination, a point of arrival, but is a point of departure. Here is the learner, the disciple, learning Christ. But the really nice touch is that if you look very closely, you'll see that there's an 'L'plate woven into the bishop's mitre. If ever we stop learning, then we should stop leading, because what we require in the body of Christ in the world at large are learning leaders.

At the same time as meeting with all these young people, I was asked to review a book by Andrew Kerr called 'What is Mission?' I commend it to you. It's the first book on mission that devoted a whole chapter to the environment, including that marvellous African proverb which says: 'We have borrowed the present from our children'. One of the stories that I never cease to tell when I'm going around schools, particularly, is of Isaac Newton who had on his desk in his study a model of the universe with the sun in the centre and the planets circling it. As well as being a famous scientist, he was also a Christian. One day a friend who was an atheist, also a scientist, came into his study, saw this marvellous model on Isaac Newton's desk and asked Isaac Newton who had made the model. Well, Newton being a good Christian, siezed his opportunity and said: 'I'm terribly sorry, I don't think I heard your question. Did you ask who made the model?''Yes', said the friend. I said, 'Who made the model?'' And Newton said: 'Well, what a ridiculous question, because I just came down here this morning, I opened my study door, and it just appeared out of nowhere, ex nihilo, overnight.'Of course, the friend knew that he was being taken for a ride, got very angry and said: 'Don't be stupid, Isaac. Who made the model?'Newton said: 'My dear friend, if you refuse to believe that this model exists on my desk without a maker, how foolish of you to believe that the real thing, billions and billions of times greater, could exist without a Creator.'

That, of course, doesn't prove that there is a God, but what it does suggest is that it is not fanciful to believe that creation has what that word implies – a Creator. The question for Christians is: is the Creator still concerned with the creation that he has made and is sustaining?

Well, all these things combined at a time when I was about to go off on study leave. I went back to my old theological college, Wycliffe Hall, and the subject I took was simply this: Jesus and the Earth. I re-read the Gospels with an environmental awareness, asking myself this question: If the environment is so important, why is it that Christians go mainly to the Old Testament, hardly ever to the New Testament, seldom to the Gospels and never to the teaching of Jesus? If the environment is so important, did Jesus not say something about it?

Every day I kept reading and reading the original text of the Gospels, at the same time as reading in the field of theology and ecology, and enrolling in the School of Theology and Oxford's course on Islamic Theology. I took myself off to meet the Chief Rabbi, to find out what a Jewish as well as a Muslim ethic on the environment was. And all the time reading the Gospels, so conscious that when we read the Gospels, as we do any text, we bring to it not just psychological prejudices but a lot of cultural baggage. I took my specs off, as it were, and cleaned them as much as possible, to rid myself of all this baggage and to see what the text actually said about the environment.

I asked the Chief Rabbi a number of questions. He, interestingly, put a question to me: 'Do you know what the three most extraordinary words in the Gospels are?'This is the Chief Rabbi asking the Bishop! Sorry, give up. He then said: 'The three most extraordinary words in the Gospels are Jesus saying 'But I say”. Apparently there is no evidence in any Rabbinic literature prior to the time of Christ of any Rabbi saying 'But I say”. You've heard it said, you've heard it told, you know it's written, 'but I say”. Indeed the authority of Jesus is predicated upon those three words. When I took the Chief Rabbi to the Old Testament, to Genesis, to ask what the Jewish ethic of the environment was, he dismissed that approach. 'Oh, James, that's a very Christian way of reading the Bible'. Apparently Jewish teachers go not to Genesis, but to Deuteronomy, and to that little verse which tells the Israelites that they must never, ever, destroy a fruit-bearing tree.¹ Upon that command is built the Jewish ethic of the environment.

He then drew my attention to something which I did already know, which many of you will know, that the only title that Jesus ever takes for himself is 'the Son of Man'. Of course, Jesus blesses people if they see that he is Lord and God, he affirms them if they call him Messiah, the Christ, although he's cautious in their use of that title. But when speaking of himself, he only ever speaks of himself as the Son of Man. Now, you'll know as well as I do that not only have books but shelves, and indeed libraries, have been written on the meaning of this word. Does it have any particular meaning when Jesus says that he is the Son of Man? Is this just a circumlocution, a fancy way of saying 'I'or 'Me'? If the Son of Man does have some meaning, then where do we find that meaning? Is it in the Old Testament? Is it in the Book of Daniel or the Book of Ezekiel? What does it actually mean? In my conversation with him, the Chief Rabbi drew my attention to the Hebrew. Son of Man is 'Ben Adam'and 'Adam'('Adom'in Hebrew) comes from the Hebrew for the Earth, which is Adoma. So when Jesus called himself the Son of Man, was he in any sense describing himself as 'the Son of the One hewn from the earth', which is what Ben Adom means literally?

That particular revelation made an impact upon me. Here was I, reading the Gospels over and over again, asking myself whether Jesus had anything to say about the earth and the environment. And here was this discovery that the only title that he ever uses of himself is indeed 'Son of the One hewn from the earth', The question is, did Jesus have any understanding, when he used that title, of a relationship with Adam the first hewn from the earth? We know that Paul clearly understood there was a connection between Jesus the second Adam and Adam the first Adam. If Paul knew it, did Jesus know it? And, interestingly, if you look at the beginning of Luke's Gospel, 'Jesus, Son of Adam, Son of God', is the climax of the genealogy.

So the question is, does Jesus'use of the title Son of Man have any resonance with Adam or any resonance at all with the earth? Back in my study, reading through the Gospel text, every time I was coming across the phrase Son of Man I was writing it down and underlining it in red marker pen. My thinking was going in a particular direction when, out of nowhere, this question came into my head: Are there any times when Jesus talks about himself as the Son of Man, 'Son of the One hewn from the earth'and at the same time, in the same context or even in the same breath, talks about the earth? I discovered there are at least seven occasions when Jesus talks about himself as the Son of Man and in the same breath talks about the earth. And my little book, 'Jesus and the Earth' includes a plea in the preface that it might fall into the hands of an aspiring PhD student who one day might like to make a study of this collection of Son of Man/earth sayings. I know of no such study, and in 2000 years of Christian theology that's rather a remarkable thing to say.

I think there are seven verses, at least seven, in the Gospels where you find the Son of Man, 'Son of the One hewn from the earth'and the earth mentioned in the same place. Most people's attitude to the earth is formed by the opening chapters of Genesis, where we're told that humankind is to have 'dominion'. That word dominion, taken out of context, does in fact lead to an exploitation of the earth. But that word 'dominion'in Genesis Chapter 2 is balanced by another word which is translated in various ways – 'to care for'is one of the ways – but in fact the Hebrew word is 'to serve the earth'. So Adam, who is created from the earth, is called to have dominion and at the same time to serve the earth. The earth is not there for humankind to exploit, and indeed any notion that the whole of creation is come into being for us, for humanity, is in the end to dethrone Christ and is a blasphemy. St Paul makes it clear in the Letter to the Colossians that all things have come into being through and for Christ, and to suggest that this has come into being for us, as indeed you might well hear some Christians say, is to displace Christ.

There are other verses in the New Testament in the Gospels that mention the earth. For example, we're told by Jesus: 'Do not swear by heaven for it is God's throne, nor by the earth because it is God's footstool.'² When I've seen those verses in the past, I've rather imagined that the earth is there being trampled underfoot by God, as if God is there, Atlas-like, with fist on forehead, knee bent, and the earth beneath his feet. But the word footstool is used in the Old Testament, for example, in 1 Chronicles 28 and in Isaiah 66. The footstool is the word that is actually used of the Ark of the Covenant, which is the place where God is sensed to be on the face of the earth. Rather than the footstool being a demeaning concept, there is actually something very elevating about it. 'Don't swear by heaven, which is God's throne, nor by the earth, because that is where God is present and to be found'.

There is a lovely verse where Jesus says: 'Are not two sparrows sold for a penny yet not one of them falls to the earth without the Father'.³ Most translations have 'without the Father's knowledge'or 'Without the Father's will'. But in the Greek there is no mention of either will or knowledge. It is simply 'Are not two sparrows sold for a penny, yet not one of them falls to the earth without the Father.'Where is the Father to be seen, to be encountered, but on the face of the earth? So the earth in the mind and teaching of Jesus is sacred because the earth is graced by the presence of God.

Let me take you to some of those verses where we find the Son of Man and the earth mentioned together. First, the Son of Man, says Jesus, 'has authority on earth to forgive sins'.⁴ What value is added by that little phrase 'on earth'? It would have been outrageous and blasphemous enough for Jesus to say the Son of Man has authority to forgive, so why 'the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins'? It appears, if there is to be any connection between the Son of Man and Adam, we are taken to Genesis and to Adam's own sin. The question must be put: what happens to Adam and what happens after Adam has sinned, when we are told in Genesis Chapter 3, verse 17: 'Because of you, the earth is cursed.'Adam's successor, the Son of Adam, the Son of Man, comes to relieve the curse on the earth by bringing forgiveness to Adam's successors. The Son of Man doesn't just have authority to forgive sins, he has authority on earth to forgive sins. 'Because of you the earth is cursed', and now because you're ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven, the earth is also relieved of its curse. You don't have to be a Christian or a Muslim or a Jew to believe that it's because of human disobedience and sinfulness that the earth is cursed. Every single environmental lobby group believes that the earth has no chance of survival unless humanity repents - changes its mind - about its relationship with the earth. Sir Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal, has just published a book saying that he gives the earth a 50-50 chance of surviving the 21^st century.⁵ What's his reason? Human behaviour. How will the earth survive if humanity, the children of Adam, do not change their ways? So Jesus the son of Adam, the son of the one hewn from the earth, comes into the world and as he does, brings God's forgiveness and relieves the curse on the earth. The Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.

When I came across those verses and started exploring them, I got very excited. I'd read these verses so many times and never seen their environmental significance before. It's one of the glories of reading scripture, that familiar passages can come alive with a different paradigm shift.

Let me try you with another one. Jesus says: 'Just as Jonah was in the belly of the whale three days and three nights, the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth'.⁶ Not just 'the Son of Man will be in the earth', but 'the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth'. Jonah is a motif of judgement, and again if you take the Son of Man back to the Old Testament, back to Genesis, back to Adam, what is another consequence of Adam's disobedience? Not only is the earth 'cursed because of you', but, he is told, 'to the earth you shall return.'So Jesus, the Son of Adam, comes into the world retracing not just the disobedience of the children of Israel through the desert, but retracing the steps of Adam himself, who was returned to the earth because of his disobedience. The Son of Man will also be laid in the heart of the earth as he vicariously takes upon himself the disobedience of Adam so as to redeem the human family.

Well, then, what happens when they lay the Son of Adam in the heart of the earth? It quakes at the crucifixion. And what happens to the earth when God raises the Son of Man from out of the heart of the earth? It quakes again. Now I've often preached upon the Cross of Jesus Christ and invariably preached about that other outstanding and dramatic event, namely the tearing of the temple curtain from top to bottom. I have seldom ever preached about the quaking of the earth. But the earth is more eloquent than the temple curtain, because the earth quakes twice, at the crucifixion and at the resurrection. Apparently in the Orthodox liturgy on Good Friday, when they tell the Passion story and they get to the earthquake, everybody grabs the chairs and shakes them! If there's a chandelier in the church, they swing the chandelier, and if there are crates of wine in the cellar, they go down and shake the crates of wine. The whole place reverberates to recreate this quaking of the earth. An Orthodox person told me that that's nothing compared with what they do on Easter Sunday, when the earth quakes at the resurrection of the Son of Man.

There are four earthquakes in Matthew's Gospel: when Jesus dies, and when he rises from the dead. Another earthquake you'll be hard put to find, because it's nowhere translated as an earthquake. It's translated as a storm: that storm after Jesus says the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. 'The foxes have holes in the earth, the birds of heaven have their nest, but the Son of Adam has nowhere to lay his head'⁷. He gets into the boat to go across the Sea of Galilee, and if you have a Greek New Testament you'll see there is a seismos, from which we get the word seismological. There is an earthquake, which accounts, of course, for the wave swamping the boat, which is what happens when there's an earthquake at sea or on a lake. And prompts the question: who is this? What sort of person is this? So the earth begs the question as to the identity of the Son of Man, and indeed it's after the earthquake at the crucifixion that the centurion declares: 'Truly, this was the Son of God. Truly, this is a righteous man.'⁸

The earthquakes in Matthew's Gospel belong to the birth pangs of the new age. The earth is a witness to the identity and to the ministry and to the mission of Jesus the Son of the one hewn from the earth. When the earth quakes, we might well ask the question: Is this part of the chorus of groaning to which St Paul refers when he says that 'the whole creation groans waiting for its liberation from its bondage to decay',⁹ which it knows somehow is bound up with the liberation of the children of God as Jesus the Lamb of God takes upon himself the sins of the whole cosmos?

Well, we might well ask what will happen to the earth. Here, I think, you will find some Christians parting company with many of the prophets of doom that are so evident in the environmental movement. The New Testament speaks in two ways about the future of the earth. I refer you to John Polkinghorne's book, 'The God of Hope and the End of the World', for this discussion.¹⁰ He says there is the language of discontinuity and the language of continuity. In some scriptures it looks as if the earth is going to come to an end and be supplanted by a new reality. In other places it looks as if the earth will be caught up in a great act of renewal and transformation as God fulfils his promise through the prophecy of Isaiah of creating 'new heavens and a new earth'. I believe that the bodily resurrection of Jesus is important, not just because of the veracity of scripture, but because in the end the body, the bodily resurrection, shows that, in a phrase of John Polkinghorne's, 'matter matters to God'. God isn't concerned just with our souls, with our spirits. God is concerned with the redemption of the whole of creation, material as well as spiritual.

It fell to me a couple of years ago to preach for one of the televised Christmas midnight services. I came to the familiar text of the shepherds and, in my preparation, asked God to show me some new dimension to this story. As I prayed, I asked myself what would it have been like for the shepherds out in the fields that night? What would they have been thinking, feeling, fearing, listening for? Of course, they would have been listening for the wolves, because they were out there to protect the sheep. What you need to know is that in the time of Jesus, shepherds were disreputable characters; that they were not trusted. They were not allowed to give evidence in a court of law. They were so notoriously distrusted, that I think that's one of the reasons that Jesus never said that he's the shepherd. He always prefaces it by saying that he's the 'good'shepherd, as if it couldn't be taken for granted in his day that a shepherd was a good person. Rather in the same way in our society, we can't always use the word Father in an unqualified way because some people's experience of fatherhood has been bad, and therefore instead of abandoning the word father, we have to qualify it by referring to God as the Good Father.

Jesus thought about himself as the Good Shepherd because in his day shepherds were not trusted. This is one of the reasons that I believe in the historicity of the birth narrative in Luke's Gospel, because why would anybody invent a story of shepherds being given the good news by the angels? In the time of Jesus the shepherds were disregarded. Who would ever make up a story of this news delivered to people who weren't even trusted to appear in a court of law and to give evidence?

Well, what were these shepherds listening for when they heard the angels? As I said, they were having to listen for the wolves who would come to devour the lambs. And there they heard the angels singing: 'Glory to God in the highest heaven and peace on earth to people of goodwill.'What do you think peace on earth would have meant for those shepherds? What would heaven on earth have meant to those shepherds? I should imagine it meant not having to be out there in the depth of winter and in the dead of night, having to look after sheep. Indeed, their view of heaven on earth, their view of peace on earth, would have been where they didn't have to protect lambs from wolves. The moment that thought comes into your mind, you're taken to Isaiah and the prophecy: 'Behold, I am creating new heavens and a new earth where the wolf will lie down with the lamb.'¹¹ So the good news comes to the shepherds to show that a new world is coming, that there'll be a new relationship even within the animal kingdom.

Again, when you think about it, it was an extraordinary sign to give the shepherds as we come up to Advent and Christmas: This will be a sign: you shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, wrapped in baby clothes. How on earth could that be a sign to anybody of a baby that was special, that they were wrapped in baby clothes? You would expect a babe to be wrapped in swaddling clothes. No, this is the sign: 'And you shall find this babe lying in an animal feeding trough',¹² because nobody in their right mind would put a newborn baby in the trough where the donkey and the goat and the dog fed. Too dangerous. Except this child is anointed and different and heralds a new relationship between the human family and the animal kingdom. And this will be a sign: you shall find this babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger, in an animal feeding trough.

One of the great things about the Bible is that you can hear people like me who have these conversions and come and share their insights and you can go back to the Bible and see for yourself whether or not it is there. What I'm aware of, as I conclude, is that the Church has for a very long time been disconnected from the earth. Not always in its history; in fact some great prophets have spoken out about the relationship between Christianity and the earth. And I've pondered – why is it that we as Christians are so disconnected? I think there are a number of reasons, and when we come to questions you might want to press me on it, or may have your own insights to share.

One of the reasons, I think, is liturgy. Listen to how the Lord's Prayer is prayed. 'Thy will be done – pause – on earth as it is in heaven.'In our great cathedral in Liverpool, leading the liturgy is like steering a great liner, and I'm trying to pray the Lord's Prayer in a different way: Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. That is the petition at the heart of the Lord's Prayer: a prayer for the earthing of heaven. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Indeed, I rather like the Book of Common Prayer rendition of the Lord's Prayer, which has 'Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven', giving that sense of the will of God as being done not just on the surface of the earth but in and through the earth.

I conclude with a story. Imagine that somebody one day says to you they're going to give you the treat of a lifetime and take you on a cruise. All you've got to do is get to Liverpool, to the pier head and then I'm going to give you this treat. There are a couple of conditions: you're never to ask where we're going, and you're never to ask when we're going to get there, but sign yourself off from whatever you're doing and I'll look after you. You get to the pier head and there is this amazing ocean liner. You get on board, you're shown your suite on 'A'deck; it takes your breath away. You've never seen such luxury. The food is out of this world, and within a few hours you're sailing in the sun. You think to yourself, if there's a heaven, it can't be much different from this. After six weeks of sailing around on this amazing ship, the question does pop into your mind – well, I wonder where we're going, and I wonder when we're going to get there? I wonder when this is all going to come to an end? But you've given your promise and you carry on enjoying yourself. After six months of sailing around on this ship nobody has said anything about the destination, and you can hold the question in no longer. You say to your host, 'I'm terribly sorry, I don't want to appear ungrateful or anything, but I just wondered if you could possibly tell me where we're going and when …''Is there a problem? Are you unhappy? Is something not to your liking?''No, no', you say, 'I'm just having the most wonderful time.'He says to you, 'Well, eat, drink, be merry. Have the time of your life.'So you do your best. After ten years of sailing around on this wretched ship, this dream cruise has become a nightmare. You scream at your host: 'Please, please, tell me, where are we going!'

Ridiculous? No. Here we are on this planet earth, like a ship, cruising through space, and every traveller at some stage in their life asks that question: where are we bound? Where will it end? What's it for? Imagine you say to your host: 'Well, how many are there on this ship?'He says: 'Guess.'Well, you can't guess. You say: 'Well, two hundred?'He says: 'Well, I thought you'd say that.'He said: 'Actually, there are a thousand people on this ship.''A thousand! You must be kidding. It only feels like two hundred.'He said: 'Yes, that's what it will feel like to you because, you see, here on 'A'Deck, there are only two hundred, but for the last ten years, in the hold of this ship, there have been eight hundred people sailing with us and they've been on bread and water.'Ridiculous? No. Because here on this ship called Planet Earth, 20% of us are on 'A'Deck and 80% are in the hold of the ship, and the water that they're drinking isn't even pure. Indeed, it's reckoned that each year probably two million children alone die from drinking contaminated water. Is that a matter of indifference to Jesus, the Son of Man who spoke about the regeneration of all things? Who said: 'Inasmuch as you did not do it to the least of these my brothers and sisters, you did not do it to me.'¹³ All that is part of our environment and that's why as the title I was given says: It is the environment, for God's sake.