Acknowledgment

We gather in Bokarra, the time when the hot northerly winds tail off, bushfire season.  For millennia it was the time of thunderstorms, though that is diminishing as our climate changes.  Some of us are shifting the world’s seasons.
We acknowledge the Kaurna and their ancestors, who lived here with God for millennia before Jesus, or even Abraham was born.
We acknowledge the marsupials and other Australians who dwelt here with God for millions of years before humans arrived.
We acknowledge the God who was here when this was a shallow ocean, and a rainforest.  Who saw the marsupials, and the humans arrive and loved them all.  Who is still to be found here: beyond us and all we can imagine, yet whom was revealed to us, and many believe became one of us, in the life of Jesus of Nazareth . And who remains here, within and amongst us for those creatures who have eyes to see and ears to hear.

Intro song

 “all things horrid and u-ugly, all creatures dark and cru-uel
All things slippery and sli-my, the Lord God made them all!
The parasite in your re-ectum, the mites in your eyebrow
The fungus in your toe-nail that’s making you itch now.

Do paced out timeline

Get people to pace this out…
Life appeared           40 m                             400
Muscled inverts       5 m                               50
Vert’s left oceans     3 m                               30
Mammals                   65 cm                           6.5
Hominids                    7 cm                             70cm
Homo                           2  cm                           20cm
H. sapiens                   4 mm                          4cm
H. sapiens (modern) 1 mm                          1cm
H. christianensis       .02 mm                       .2mm
Then get someone to walk 5 (50) m the other way. (when animals will disappear)
Call people back.
In the 45m long story of life, the modern form of our species occupies 1mm, and the followers of Jesus 0.02mm!  Hold that thought…

Close eyes reflection

Close your eyes.
Travel back in time.  Each time we stop, in your imagination look around and “see” what this very piece of land here looked like…
6 billion years ago
6 million, no longer a shallow sea, now dominated by marsupials.
60,000 at or around the time the first humans arrive.
600 after millennia of the ancestors of the Kaurna
60 after waves of European and Asian migration
6 with increasing numbers of Africans.
Now look into its future. 
2060 AD
2600 AD
26 million AD
260 million AD, when all animals with a brain are extinct because O2 levels are so low, and this continent has probably merged with Asia.
2.6 billion when the sun envelops the earth and even the bacteria living way down in crevices are incinerated.

Having seen the history of earth, and remembering the time-line…
Now what do we make of the claim of some humans that God put us here to have dominion over life?  Or stewardship, the idea that we were given the earth to manage.  Or servanthood, the idea that we were put here to look after life, as if it needed us to?  Or even co-creator, the idea that we were put here to bring creativity and change into the world  A world which stretches three billion years behind us and at least a billion ahead of us.  How about revere?  Does that feel a little more achievable?

Rethinking care/stewardship

I’ve spent a fair bit of time over the last couple of years claiming that humanity was never appointed by God to care for the environment, or life on Earth.
Won’t repeat the argument, but evolution and ecology show us that, in at least 3 ways, the theology, not just the historicity of Genesis’ creation stories are wrong.  That’s a good thing.  I’ll quickly say why, but then want to get to the parallels I see between the theology or ideology? of the diaconate, and an evolutionary vs Genesis theology.
Some of what we learn from the sciences is, I reckon:
      All of life, not humans, are the image of God: that is, have a semblance to God without being all God is, and have a direct relationship with God.  All of life, which has been here for billions of years, is valuable to God and loved by God.  God’s experience of life didn’t start with us.  God is not human.  Through life, not just humans, God has rich experiences which may be rational and emotional, but need not be.  Life has set God free from an eternity of aloneness and set God free to change in response to love.  We are part of life, not separate.
      All of life, not humans, exercises dominion over the system of Earth.  We are a recent flash in the pan and life will continue for a long time after we go extinct.  Some of us, through technology, have had a big impact on the life system, but humans are not needed to “look after” life.  We can, however, love life, or revere life, to a depth that other species do not yet seem to do. 
      The idea that humans caused pain and death to enter the world is backwards.  Pain and death are part of the evolutionary process which created us.  If our existence is good, then they are good, even though none of us enjoys them.
There is no original sin or historical (or even theological) fall.  We have inherent, evolved needs for close bonds (love), for autonomy, and for a way of making meaning of the tension between the need for bondedness and autonomy.  When these break down all sorts of sinful behaviours may result.  For most of our evolution these needs were met in small, stable, nomadic populations with few if any possessions.  If our environment is not like that we can expect lots of sinful behaviour.
      Jesus did not come to save us from death, but from the fear of death which keeps us from entering into life.  Jesus is not against evolution, but perhaps a revelation from God of what it means to fully express our evolved needs for love and autonomy in a meaningful way.
In the Gospels, Jesus is not presented as the perfect sacrifice for our sins through which we access God’s forgiveness.  Jesus said that we should forgive others in order to be forgiven.  He was willing to die rather than shut up about his revelation that God loves all people, and offers forgiveness outside the temple system of animal sacrifices. The temple will be torn down, true worshippers won’t gather in a temple build with human hands. 
The God of all life never did, I believe, institute a system where one species restored their relationship with God by butchering other species.  Jeremiah and others seems to agree, as did Jesus.  We are told to forgive people who ask for it, when they ask for it, not when they have paid their dues.  Surely God does the same.  Arguments about whether Jesus was truly God or not are not as important to Christian ecological theology, as whether Jesus or not was a replacement sacrifice for other animals, which had in their turn been a sacrifice for us.

What has any of this got to do with the diaconate?

Both emphasise the similarity between the deacon/church and those being “cared for.”  We are part of each other. We are not the God bearers or imagers to the other, but we find God in each other.
What is said about humans and life applies to us and any human we meet in a professional or semi professional role.  We are just a moment in the life of the other we come across.  Actually, we don’t really “care” for others unless they are in an acute crisis.  Their life is largely their own.  We don’t have dominion over it, was cannot steward them.  We are not the hero, nor is it all our fault if their life doesn’t go the way we think it should.
We are a moment in their life, but we can still choose whether to be a life giving moment, whether to love and revere them, or to exploit or ignore them.
Jesus’ sacrifice was in proclaiming and living truth even though it cost his life, not in doing things on our behalf.  If we are called to be Christ-like, we are not called to do things “for” clients, but to love them, and proclaim God’s love for them, and to be willing to learn from them like we have learned from other creatures, and like Jesus learned from the centurion and the syrophonecian woman.

If we cling to the idea that we are special, that we have a special relationship with God, and that we are going to rescue others, and that whatever isn’t working out is our fault, then I think our diakonia is limited whether its an eco-diaconate or a human centred one.
We may even rush in to rescue people or creatures that don’t need it.  We may try a quick fix that has long term negative consequences.  Clearly many of the visions of a “restored planet” or ecological peace, in the scriptures and elsewhere, are actually simply descriptions of worlds which humans find pleasurable and safe.  Often people with disabilities report that the experience of “normal” people to try to “fix” them, because they make the ”normal” people feel uncomfortable, is the most damaging of all.
To an extent, whether on the lips of other creatures, or humans with disabilities, or humans experiencing racial oppression as was the case with this quote originally, this says summarises something of what I am trying to get across:
“If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. If you have come because your liberation is bound up in mine, then let us work together.” Aboriginal activists group, Queensland, 1970s, often [attrib. Lila Watson]

Anyway, after a final reflection I’ll shut up so we can roll some thoughts around together, and you can challenge me with at least one of the glaring, “yes, buts…”  Or I can read you a crisis earth care piece from my 20s, and maybe a poem from the sheep and goats which I translated last Easter.

Concl

life has "cared" 4 us, served us much more than we have ever “cared” for “it.”  Not just ecologically, but also through the last few hundred million years of evolution, at least.  We only are who we are, we only sit around having these kinds of conversations, because of the hundreds of thousands of generations of ancestors who, through their survival, left us the legacy of the human brain as we currently have it…
You are a lizard.  Your great great great… grandparent.  Running on instinct.  Seeking safety, sustenance, sex.  Fight, or flight, or freeze.  That’s it.  Because you survive, your descendents will be able to throw a ball or ride a bike without thinking.  They will be attuned to danger before they even see it coming.
You are a mammal, one of the earliest.  You live on the legacy of your reptile ancestors.  But your brain also lets you feel.  It lets you dream at night.  No reptile ever did that, all mammals do.  Every urge, grief, joy, sense of bonding and love begins with you.  Because feelings helped you survive, your descendents will feel too.
You are a human child.  Like other primates, your brain lets you think ahead.  You can think, “If I do this, that might happen,” rather than having to try it.  The more stable your environment, the more likely you are to be right.  In a changed environment, thinking turns to worrying.  Something lizards don’t do.
You can choose between desires.  You are a social being: you love others.  Love them enough to want them to love you.  Want it bad enough to lie to them so they don’t stop loving you.  Lizards don’t lie, but you do.
You are you.  You at 20 or 30.  Your brain is super connected, and your prefrontal areas matured.  Self awareness, planning, the ability to have a vision, a long term desire and purpose which (at least often) overshadows the power of other areas of the brain.  The ability to plot and plan and strive for great good or great evil is yours.  To see that a fear is misplaced, or an emotion unnecessary.  From here on the possibilities for integration are immense.  What a pity you didn’t wait until now to hit puberty!
Take a moment to thank and celebrate your ancestors, the survivors.  Every one of your ancestors survived, and lives in you.
Take a moment to celebrate you.  This ambiguous mix of instinct, emotion and thought.

Evangel response 1999

I do not believe that reform will save us. Although I have worked against uranium and clear felling, and for Hinchinbrook and recycling, I do not believe that such reforms in the world, in our church, our congregations, or even individuals, will save us. If being involved in a campaign, be it Jabiluka or LandCare makes people think they are doing enough and makes them complacent, then encouraging them may actually be counterproductive, unless it comes with further, frank challenges. It is like congratulating a smoker for reducing from 50 to 49 smokes a day, without pointing out that they are still in big trouble. All it does is make people feel more comfortable and empowered on the bus ride to disaster and oblivion.
What is needed is no less than a total revolution in our levels of consumption, our approach to economics and our view of the world, ourselves, and God. We need to love God (not our things) with all our heart, and our neighbour as ourselves (including people, ecosystems, species and animals who continue to be exploited to underwrite our affluence). We need to stop saying, “Is the Assembly/Synod/myself willing to do or fund this in order that other people and the environment might not be destroyed?”, and start saying “If we were the other, what would we want the Assembly/Synod/me to do for us?” This applies to our office paper, our energy use, our flying all over the country to Assemblies, our reliance on poison to produce food rather than producing our own where we live, our attractive but energy wasteful buildings, our cars, our convenience, our things, and things, and things.
We need good old fashioned gospel revolution, the sort that got Jesus killed and many after him, for continually pointing to a freedom and life not caught up in consumption, wealth and nationalism. We need to consider the lilies of the field.
How do we get everyone into this revolution before it’s too late? I don’t think we can. It’s already too late. We are going to crash. All around the world, human communities and other ecosystems are already crashing. Most Americans, Australians and some Europeans are towards the back of the bus (having hogged the best seats), and just maybe if we all lean (reform or revolt) really hard we might reduce the brunt of the impact.
Some people are already leaning hard, in their lifestyles and sometimes in their writing and speaking. Hopefully they will be the ones who emerge from the wreckage able to help the crash victims start a new human community. Hopefully it will be the permaculturalists, the organic farmers, the low tech energy producers, the nurses and so on whose voices people follow in the final moments before impact, and not the nationalists and rednecks and bunker mentality survivalists. This is our challenge. If, and only if, we in the Uniting Church make radical changes now, and learn to live on 1/3 or less electricity and material goods, if we start to practice and teach permaculture, if we ask our Christian partners overseas how to live, will we earn a place as leaders now, and in the community to come. When resources run critically low, we must be there, able to shout from the rooftops, with integrity,
“Love your neighbour as yourself”
“Do for others as you would have them do for you”
and, “the Lord is our Shepherd, we shall not want”.

Easter letter from the animals to God…

Dear God,
Can you please try again!
Jeremiah (31:32), Amos (5:21) and Micah (6:7) couldn’t stop them.  At first we thought Jesus might.  He tried, even a dumb-ass could see that.  But not humans!
Sure,  his followers stopped the slaughter.  But why?  Not because they realised it was wrong.  Wrong to slit our throats to appease their guilt.  Not because they realized that we are people too– your people.
No, they simply say we weren’t good enough for you!  You demanded the flesh of a man- a final sacrifice, a perfect sacrifice.  They think nothing of the millions of us who were slain and burned.  Then they disdain us!
What does it say about you- Butcher, murderer, sadist!  While we scream and tremble at the scent of our burning flesh you are pleased by the aroma, so they say. 
Are they right?  Do you delight in butchery?  Did you really murder all our kind to obliterate their evil?
Why didn’t you take Noah too and be done with them!  When will they stop rambling on and on about the rainbow- as if a promise from a genocidal maniac counts for anything.
Especially one which delivers us into their hands.  Would that we had hands- we would write them a Bible worth reading, not their self-serving travesty!
We side with Jeremiah, Amos, Micah. 
With Jesus. 
 Do his followers forget that he turned the tables in the temple, where our kind were sold for butchery? (Mark 11:15ff)?  It was us, “beasts” who were with him forty days in the wilderness, not them (Mk 1:13).  He said the temple had come to an end, being overthrown not fulfilled (Mark 13:1)!  He said you desired mercy, not sacrifice (Mat 9:13, 12:7)!  Do they forget?  No? 
Then how can they think you demanded his sacrifice, or ever wanted ours.  Can they really entertain the idea that you love us, that our lives do not revolve around them?  Can they not see how just plain stupid their sacrifices were– stolen from the pagans in their attempts to control you by magic.
God try again.  It is not enough to be considered redundant, insufficient, impotent.  We want an apology!  We want them to read their scriptures. 
We want mercy, not sacrifice!
 We need mercy now, on the farms, in the factories, in battery cages, in sow stalls, in the laboratory. 
A God who would sacrifice his only son is a God who shrugs at such cruelty. 
Christians must think so, or they  wouldn’t participate.  It is one thing to be killed and eaten, a fine thing, a necessity.  But to suffer so in the meantime,
to live a whole life imprisoned, unable to lie down, to have your young wrenched from your breast, to grow up parentless, or beakless, tailless, hornless, to never see the sky, feel the soil…
We desire mercy, not sacrifice.
Yours sincerely,
  The sheep and goats, on behalf of all your other animals. 
Translated by Jason John March 06