Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Jer 18 1-11, Ps 139 1-5, 12-18, Phlm 1-25, Lk 14 25-35

Today is the first Sunday of the Season of Creation, the season for the Church to remind us of the great gift of Creation, and of our responsibility towards Nature. The theme for this year is Peace with Creation. It’s terribly important that we in the Church publicly choose for this, and act on it together. Because at the moment, the human race is behaving as if we’ve declared all-out war on Nature. And right here in Adelaide, we’re caught in the fallout of that war. Beaches have been turned into graveyards. The sea water is poisonous. The coastal air catches in our throats like the fumes of caustic soda. And the people of the hills and foothills approach each new summer with growing dread as bushfire seasons become longer and more severe here and around the world. We need to change to make Peace with Creation.

But we’re caught in our addiction to the status quo. We expect cheap light and power at the flick of a switch. We expect to travel, and only really worry about the price of fuel or a ticket. Sustaining our carnivorous eating habits sees thousands of square kilometres of virgin forest cleared every year and seabeds everywhere trawled to extinction. Our addiction to throw-away convenience is flooding land and sea with plastics that break down and poison everything that lives with its ever-smaller particles. We are not making Peace with Creation. We are waging an unholy, suicidal war against the common home God gave to us and to all life.

God is calling us from this destructive path – God’s has always called people to live at Peace with Creation. Indigenous peoples have always known that divine call. Peace with Creation has always been embedded in the customs and lore of First Australians and Torres Strait Islanders. Whatever is taken to eat or use from Nature, traditional practice is to take only what is needed, and leave enough behind for regeneration. The scriptures of the three Abrahamic faiths share this same value, though unsurprisingly our translations and interpretations work to conceal this.

In Genesis 2.15, the Hebrew makes it clear that the first human was given to the garden to serve and protect it. It’s clear who owns Creation; God. So Christians, Jews and Muslims all have a clear call to care for Creation – to serve and protect it. And today’s readings make very clear, if it comes down to who must give way, for the sake of Peace with Creation, we’re the ones called to change; not Nature. We must change for the sake of God’s created order. This will align us with evolution, which is how we see God’s creative power, always at work integrating all life.

Evolution; change; refinement; balance; symbiosis; survival. So why am I talking about the Creation story in Genesis 2 when today’s Old Testament reading comes from Jeremiah 18. It’s because of a word in the Hebrew which both readings share. The word potter in Jeremiah is the same as the word to form in the creation story. God formed (יָצַר – yatsar) the first human (אָדָם adam) from the dust of the Earth (אֲדָמָה adamah) Gen 2.7 And God gave Jeremiah the image of God as the potter (יָצַר yatsar) – the one who forms – the very same word! And embodied in both uses of that word is change for life; evolution. In Genesis, God forms dust into an Earth-being whose purpose is to serve and protect life. And in Jeremiah, clay is an image of God’s people moulded into a vessel whose purpose is likewise to serve and protect life.

This is where it applies to us; God’s people. Our purpose is to serve and protect life. We must accept significant change, now; to be moulded into a people who no longer destroy life, but who truly serve and protect life. God spoke to all Israel through Jeremiah’s image of the potter to say they had to accept being re-fashioned; changed from a faithless people. Some even offered their own children in sacrifice to pagan gods! Jer 7.30-31 The call was to change into a people who’d serve and protect life. The parallel with us is chilling as our generation offers our own children on the altar of our on-going addiction to the status quo of fossil fuel and convenience. We must change so we serve and protect life. Jeremiah’s potter is coming for us too!

The God who created our inward parts and knit us together in our mother’s womb surely has the right to demand that we do what we were created for. Peace with Creation is only possible if we, who were created to serve and protect life, change and actually do that. The type of change required is there in the letter to Philemon. Paul asks Philemon to pardon Onesimus, his runaway slave, and set him free to be a co-worker with Paul in spreading the Gospel. That was revolutionary in Roman society. And in the Gospel, Jesus is demanding something revolutionary in his society; abandon their allegiance to family and instead give it to him.

Really big change is demanded! So what of you and me? What must we change in order to serve and protect life on Earth? I mentioned four habit changes earlier. They’re a practical starting point to practise in this Season of Creation. We must change – and encourage our nation to change – from our addictions to life-wrecking energy sources, life-wrecking travel habits, life-wrecking eating preferences, and life-wrecking plastic addiction. We must change so we serve and protect life. Amen