Category: Liturgy for the end of the world (as we know it)

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Will we faint with fear and foreboding?

I wrote this post just before my precious dad died. He was an inspiration; passionate about justice and a brilliant gardener. Here he is with his magnificent onion harvest.

Luke 21:25-28 ‘There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see “the Son of Man coming in a cloud” with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.’

When I read this passage this morning, I couldn’t help noticing the parallels with our current situation. Although this passage is part of the ‘mini-apocalypse’, which refers to the catastrophic fall of Jerusalem in AD 70, it resonates today in its description of a world falling apart and people’s reactions to it. In addition to the seas roaring, the sun, moon and stars, whose patterns are so reliable that they were used for calculating the calendar and for navigation, would be shaken. People’s distress over these environmental convulsions and fear for the future would lead to paralysis.

If we take the data seriously, what is coming upon the world over 2000 years later is to be feared. The description of people ‘fainting with fear’ rings true in our time and I am sure is a factor in the mental health crisis amongst the young. But Christ calls us to ‘stand up and raise [y]our heads’, standing up is contrasted with fainting, it implies action to be taken, an engagement with the situation, facing into what is to come rather than retreating from it.

Of course, there are more possible responses than the two mentioned here, and a multitude of motivating factors, but we cannot hope for the continued ‘success’ of consumer capitalism, which is built on injustice, extraction and oppression. Our ultimate hope cannot be in calm seas and predictable waves, we are far too far along for that.

So where will we find strength to stand up and face what is coming? We are to ‘raise our heads’, a symbolic looking to ‘heaven’ where God is, which we might understand as seeking union with the Divine. We are to do this because our ‘redemption is drawing near’ – I understand this as the moment of full union with God in Christ as we leave the physical body at our death. This is no pie in the sky when you die, no escapism from everyday reality, rather, with this as our ultimate destination, we draw strength to live our daily lives as Christ as calls us to, being engaged for the good of others: animal, vegetable and mineral.

Excitedly looking forward to the end of the world because this is when Christ will return (‘the son of Man coming in a cloud’) is a twisted way of reading this. Any end of the world that we might envisage is going to come at a terrible cost to the whole of creation, and is something to be grieved (blessed are those who mourn, Matthew 5:4) and alleviated as far as possible (for I was hungry and you gave me food, Matthew 25:31-46).

In any case, if we look a bit more carefully, the son of Man is coming with power and great glory, and when was Christ glorified? On the cross (John 12:20-26)! This is not power and glory as usual. I don’t know what ‘the son of Man coming in a cloud’ means but, at the very least, it sounds like Christ hasn’t forgotten us, that somehow he is still with us, and that through his suffering on the cross will be with us even in our very darkest moments.

We are facing the end of the world as we know it
And we are terrified.
This is the moment to look to God
Resisting paralysis, by standing up to act
Strengthened by our hope of union with God.
Let us follow Christ in compassion, justice and peace
The rest we leave in God’s hands.
Great is the mystery of faith.
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A statement of faith for the end of the world (as we know it)

Rescued from the slugs, but will they ripen before they rot?

The creeds of the church were written to summarize core beliefs and engaged with the great theological questions of the day. In that spirit, I have had a go at writing my own statement of faith. It is not meant to be exhaustive, but is what speaks to me at the moment. See what you think.

I believe that in the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

All things came into being through the Word, refined over countless aeons, from the simplest microbes to complex mammalian life.

Life evolved to self-awareness and human creativity blossomed, but in our arrogance, we have struggled to live within our means.

God loves us too much to control us, and has let us take a path to self-destruction.

I believe that the image of the invisible God was born in human likeness, into a suffering people oppressed by empire.

Jesus the Christ revealed that God is love and that the kingdom of heaven is within us.

This threatened the powers that be, who tortured him to death on a Roman cross.

In Christ, God identified with our suffering and the suffering of all things through all time.

But death was not his end and will not be our end.

On the third day Christ rose again.

I believe that we are Christ’s body now, that the Holy Spirit dwells within us, and that we are the light of the world.

In this time of unravelling, we will live as Christ did, loving our neighbours and our enemies, and hoping beyond hope.

Christ was before all things, Christ is holding all things together, and all things will end in Christ’s embrace.

Inspired by John 1, Colossians 1, Philippians 2, Luke 17, Romans 4.
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A form of daily prayer

My first-ever baby cucumber!

I have been meaning to put together a simple form of morning and evening prayer for a while now, and have finally managed to get it finished. I have unashamedly chosen my favourite passages and modified them to fit the pattern of the liturgy. I hope you find them helpful.

I have mainly focused on passages that explore the glory of God as seen in creation, to help encourage a sense of awe, but have also chosen passages that point us to ultimate hope.

Since there are fourteen separate sets of prayers, I have put them as individual tabs on a separate page. You can access them here, or even download them as a PDF for printing, (print them as a ‘booklet’.)

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Does God love us more than the dinosaurs?

When my children were small, I felt that in order to be a ‘good mother’ I ought to take them swimming, even though I didn’t really want to. It was always such a joy when the pool was unexpectedly closed, because that meant we could pop over the road and spend the afternoon in the local natural history museum. The dinosaur section remains our favourite, and we aren’t the only ones who feel that way: a friend’s son said that he couldn’t believe in a God who would let the dinosaurs be wiped out. That got me thinking… there are hints in the Bible about a future restoration of heaven and earth, but we have no idea how or when, so what follows is neither theology nor palaeontology, but just where my imagination takes me!

Why do we assume that God loves us more than the dinosaurs? Do you know how much longer they lived on the Earth than we have done? 600 times! They roamed an abundant planet filled with horsetails and ferns, giant millipedes and dragonflies, and mysterious creatures that the fossil record only hints at.

And yet, God did not spare their majesty from the comet’s strike. She surely wept over this devastation, such great loss of diversity, curiosity, and life – but God picked up the pieces and started again. She nurtured the beings hidden in refugia that were spared the worst of the calamity. These persistent threads of life not only survived, but thrived as God guided their evolution into ever-widening variety, spreading to fill every ecological nook and cranny until the Earth was teaming with life again; and God saw that it was good.

One particular ape caught God’s eye. She called them up onto two legs and taught them language, love, and art. She gave them the freedom to choose good, the capacity for reason, and a desire for union with the divine. Since God had called them out of the primordial earth, she named them earth creatures – Adam – reminding them of their connection with the soil. But Mother Earth did not give Adam an easy time, there were poisonous plants and dangerous animals, the heat, the cold, and conflicts with other humans. These struggles against the forces of nature were the crucible in which we grew and developed, learnt to master our surroundings, and made our lives more comfortable – but as the balance of power shifted too far, the price was paid by other humans and by the rest of the natural world.

God saw our increasing alienation from her, from the earth, and from each other. She spoke in many ways, but we struggled to hear. In Christ, she communicated directly by becoming human, and showed the way for us to live in harmony with all things. But still we struggled to hear.

In time, we discovered vast stores of gas, coal, and oil, made from prehistoric plants and plankton buried deep underground millions of years before even the dinosaurs made their appearance. We were cold, and we knew no better than to burn them, precipitating our own extinction, and the extinction of most of everything else. God is not sparing her reflected majesty in us, but is surely weeping over the loss of so much diversity, curiosity, and life. Perhaps one day, she will pick up the pieces of what survives in the refugia and start again? Lovingly storing us, and everything we have dragged down with us, deep underground. Then, in millions of years, with characteristic patience, who knows what new life God might draw out of the earth?

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Deep Rising

We sang the hymn Eternal father strong to save at church this evening. According to Wikipedia, it was written in 1860 by William Whiting, who was inspired by the dangers of the sea described in Psalm 107:

Eternal Father, strong to save,
Whose arm does bind the restless wave,
Who bids the mighty ocean deep
Its own appointed limits keep;
O hear us when we cry to Thee
For those in peril on the sea.

I wanted to change the preposition in the last line from ‘on’ to ‘in’, because having seen the film Deep Rising, I have become aware that the extraordinary creatures living on the deep ocean floor are under threat from devastating mining operations for the ‘green’ energy revolution. The extraction of metals from the seabed for electric battery technology is having catastrophic consequences for the creatures living in this fragile and mysterious ecosystem.

Verse 4 of this hymn is my prayer for all the inhabitants of the seabed:

O Trinity of love and pow’r,
Your children shield in danger’s hour;
From rock and tempest, fire, and foe,
Protect them where-so-e’er they go;
Thus, evermore shall rise to Thee
Glad hymns of praise from land and sea.

Author: William Whiting (1860)
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Can we call a truce with nature?

Slugs 1 - 0 Inner Gardener

I am often tempted to idealise nature. However, after a recent trip to the forest I realised that I had brought a passenger home with me, a tick that was potentially bearing encephalitis, which got me thinking about the perfectly good reasons that set us on the path to our current alienation from the more-than-human world. Here are some musings.

Untamed nature has always tried to destroy us – think wild animals, pests and diseases. She doesn’t give up food for us to eat easily. We have had to tame her, to become gardeners, to clear the weeds and manage the fertility of the soil, to make a safe space to feed ourselves and to rest. It has been a constant battle against slugs and aphids, ergot and blight. But we mostly subsisted.

Revolutions agricultural and industrial raised many of us out of the mire into a, by many measures, far better standard of living. But they were also apocalypses of a kind, destroying ecologies, damaging mental health, and making us into cogs in a machine.

But even that wasn’t enough. We pushed on, wanting to protect ourselves entirely from the forces of nature. We further mechanised and digitalized. Those of us who could hid ourselves away in semi-sterile boxes, while the rest of humanity and the more-than-human world paid the price for our comfort. But nature keeps coming for us in dry rot and black mould, in vermin and viruses, in coughs, cancer and cholera.

We can’t escape our vulnerable flesh. Even though we have forgotten it, we are a part of nature, nature that is designed for balance, for birth, death and resurrection. Resurrection of our organic flesh means composting, as our bodies decay and feed the worms, the atoms that compose our bodies are brought back into the cycle of life. We resist the call of the compost bin before it is ‘our time’ – but who decides when that is?

Can we call a truce with nature? In any case, she won’t leave our efforts untouched, but keeps showing herself, as weeds breaking through cracked concrete, lichen on fences and sodden moss on untrod tarmac.

If you found this helpful, I highly recommend that you read Window Poems by Wendel Berry

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Like a tree planted by living water

This is a prayer based on Psalm 1, which is my favourite.

God of creation, beautiful, nourishing and wild,
Make us like the Psalmist’s trees, planted by streams of living water, with deep roots searching for the source of life.
When we reach the living water, refresh us and make us fruitful.
Grow in us humility, compassion, and the desire to serve you wherever you plant us.
Teach us the difference between light and darkness, that we might delight in your ways and flee from paths of wickedness.
Help us to let go of those broken and unhealthy parts of ourselves that are like the chaff the wind drives away, knowing that your judgment is permeated with mercy.
And when the drought comes, we trust that our lives will not wither, but that in all the ways that really matter, we will prosper.
In the name of Christ, Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end,
Amen.

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Sour grapes

Reflecting on the fact that the people most impacted by climate change are the ones who have done least to cause it, I thought of Jeremiah 31:29-30. Here’s my reworded version:

The rich have eaten sour grapes, and the teeth of the poor are set on edge.

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Funeral for a blackbird

My daughter was inconsolable after witnessing the murder of a blackbird by a Magpie. I tried to console her a little with this:

We are all part of the same good earth, that springs up in different forms at different times, animated by the breath of God. In time, we all return to the earth and our breath is reunited with God.

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Do not fear, o soil

I was deeply struck by this verses from Joel (2:21-22), and wondered how to interpret them for our times. Here I’ve tried to express something about hope beyond hope, and trusting in God for who He is, not for what He might do. Do not fear, O soil; be glad and rejoice, for the Lord has done great things! Do not fear, you animals of the field, for the pastures of the wilderness are green; the tree bears its fruit, the fig tree and vine give their full yield. This is what I came up with.

Do not fear, O soil; be glad and rejoice, for the Lord has done great things! Do not fear, you animals of the field, even though the wilderness is barren; the tree is empty of fruit, the fig tree and vine yield nothing. The Lord is God, and even this ending is in his hands.