Transcript Celebrating Eucharist

Celebrating Eucharist
In a Time of Global Climate
Change
Our Context
• The Australian: “Climate calamity forecast by
end of century”
• Tim Flannery: by the end of the century,
temperatures will have risen by 3 degrees
• The cause: our use of fossil fuels
• Australia burns more fossil fuel per capita and
exports more coal than any other nation
• 3 degree rise: the loss of world heritage areas
and coral reefs and our cities under increasing
water stress. The Murray could dry up, and seas
could rise by up to 6 metres
• 2 degree rise: loss of places like Kakadu and our
mountain rain forests, with their fauna; the
extinction of the polar ecosystems
Our Context
• Everyday, there are new reports and predictions
• While experts disagree about details of
predictions, few dispute:
• That it is occurring
• That it will get far worse
• And that our use of fossil fuels is a major cause
• The most important issue facing the human
community of the 21st c
• For a Christian believer, committed to love for
God’s creation and to respect for the dignity of
every person, responding to this issue will have
to be a central dimension of the life of faith
Our Context
• What does all of this mean for the Christian
community that gathers each Sunday in the
name of Jesus to listen to the Word of God and
break the bread?
• Some brief ideas from science - on long-term
climate change and human-induced climate
change
• Insights on the connection between Eucharist
and creation from the West (Teilhard de Chardin)
and from the East (John Zizioulas)
• Building on these with the theme of the
Eucharist as the living memory of all God’s
creatures
Long-Term Climate Change
• 3 variations of Earth’s orbit cause predictable
cycles of long-term climate change (known since
the 1970’s)
• One cycle, caused by a wobble in Earth’s
rotation axis (precession), occurs every 22,000
years
• The others, caused by the tilt in Earth’s axis and
by the shape of its orbit, occur every 41,000 and
100,000 years
• Over the last 3 million years, these variations
have produced a series of ice ages followed by
warmer interglacial periods
• The last ice age was about 20,000 years ago
and the present interglacial period (the
Holocene) is well advanced
Long-Term Climate Change
• Ice cores from Antarctica and Greenland provide
a record of 400,000 years of climate change
• Bubbles in the ice reveal the levels of carbon
dioxide and methane in atmosphere
• This work shows a close relationship between:
variations in solar radiation, size of ice sheets
and levels of carbon dioxide and methane
• While climate change is driven by variations in
the Earth’s orbit, it takes effect by altering the
cycles of carbon dioxide and methane and the
size of the ice sheets
Humans as Agents of Climate Change
• Humans are now agents of climate forcing
through the production of green house gases
• A proper level of trace gasses, including carbon
dioxide, methane and nitrous acid, is essential
for life as we know it
• The sun’s energy is reflected from the
atmosphere, the clouds and the Earth’s surface
• The gases absorb some heat, preventing it
escaping into space (the greenhouse effect)
• Result: average temperature of 5-25 degrees C.
over the last 700 m.y., allowing life to flourish
• Humans force the climate by increasing levels of
carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere
by burning fossil fuels and clearing land
Humans as Agents of Climate Change
• 1992: Governments, including Australia, sign UN
Framework Convention on Climate Change
• Under this convention, research of hundreds of
scientists from many countries assembled in
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
• Its 4th report is due in 2006. Its 3rd report (2001),
states: “there is new and stronger evidence that
most of the warming observed over the last 50
years is attributable to human activities”
• Human activities will continue to change
atmospheric conditions during the 21st century
• Global average temperatures and sea levels are
projected to rise under all IPPC scenarios
• Increase in global average surface temperature
of between 1.4--5.8 degrees C over the century
Humans as Agents of Climate Change
• Global average temperature: increased 0.75 of a
degree C during the period of extensive
measurement beginning in late 1800’s
• About 0.5 has occurred after 1950
• Climate modeling by CSIRO’s Division of
Atmospheric Research: average temperatures
across Australia will increase 1-2 degrees by
2030 and 3-4 degrees by 2070
Humans as Agents of Climate Change
• A recently released report commissioned by the
Australian Government
• Accepts that further climate change is now
inevitable
• And will need to be adapted to in all decisions
made by Australian governments and industry
• Points to some regions that are highly vulnerable
to climate change: Cairns and the Great Barrier
Reef, the Murray Darling Basin and south west
Western Australia
Humans as Agents of Climate Change
• The danger of melting of ice sheets and the
need to preserve coastlines puts a low limit on
human interference with climate
• The oceans are already storing excessive
amount of heat
• Danger of changing the ocean system, the
Global Ocean Conveyor
• Christians who gather for eucharitic assemblies
in Australia – brothers and sisters in Kiribati,
Tuvalu, Bangladesh and many other vulnerable
people
Insights from the West – Teilhard
• Return to Teilhard: scholars and church leaders
• John Paul II: Gift and Mystery (1995):
• The Eucharist “is celebrated in order to offer ‘on
the altar of the whole earth the world’s work and
suffering’ in the beautiful words of Teilhard de
Chardin” (73)
• Ecclesia de Eucharistia (2003):
• Every Eucharist has a “cosmic” character: “Yes
Cosmic! Because even when it is celebrated on
the humble altar of a country church, the
Eucharist is always in some way celebrated on
the altar of the world. It unites heaven and earth.
It embraces and permeates all of creation” (8)
Insights from the West – Teilhard
• J. C. Ratzinger: The Spirit of the Liturgy (2000):
• “Teilhard went on to give a new meaning to
Christian worship: the transubstantiated Host is
the anticipation of the transformation and
divininization of matter in the christological
“fullness.” In his view, the Eucharist provides the
movement of the cosmos with its direction; it
anticipates its goal and at the same time urges it
on” (29)
Insights from the West – Teilhard
• 1916, while a stretcher bearer in the trenches
Teilhard wrote his first important essay –
“Cosmic Life”
• Already communion is central – communion with
the Earth, communion with God
• To this he would add the deeply held conviction
that union differentiates
• Unable to celebrate the Eucharist, he wrote “The
Priest” near the Aisne River in 1918
• “The Mass on the World” in the Ordos Desert
(Western Mongolia) in 1923
• A central text revealing the heart of Teilhard’s
thought – Thomas M. King: Teilhard’s Mass;
Mlle. Jeanne Mortier
Insights from the West – Teilhard
• Since… I have neither bread, nor wine, nor altar,
I will raise myself beyond these symbols, up to
the pure majesty of the real itself; I your priest
will make the whole earth my altar and on it will
offer you all the labours and sufferings of the
world
• All the things in the world to which this day will
bring increase; all those that will diminish; all
those too that will die: all of them, Lord, I try to
gather into my arms, so as to hold them out to
you in offering. This is the material of my
sacrifice; the only material you need
Insights from the West – Teilhard
• Over every living thing which is to spring up, to
grow, to flower, to ripen during this day say again
the words: This is my Body
• And over every death-force which waits in
readiness to corrode, to wither, to cut down,
speak again your commanding words which
express the supreme mystery of faith: This is my
Blood
Insights from the West – Teilhard
• It is done. Once again the Fire has penetrated
the Earth…Without earthquake or thunderclap:
the flame has lit up the whole world from within
• Through your own incarnation, my God, all
matter is henceforth incarnate
• Now, Lord, through the consecration of the world
the luminosity and fragrance which suffuse the
universe take on for me the lineaments of a body
and a face—in you
• So, my God, I prostrate myself before your
presence in the universe which had now become
living flame: beneath the lineaments of all that I
shall encounter this day, all that happens to me,
all that I achieve it is you I desire, you I await
Insights from the West – Teilhard
• Teilhard sees the risen Christ as united to the
God who is immanently present to all creatures,
enabling them to exist and to evolve
• This presence of the risen Christ at work in the
universe is a prolongation of what is already
begun in the eucharist
• The Eucharist is an effective prayer for the
transformation of the universe in Christ
• It points towards and anticipates the divinization
of the whole world in Christ
Insights from the East – John Zizioulas
• Ordained from the laity: Metropolitan of
Pergamon, Ecumenical Patriarchate (1986)
• Series of lectures in Kings College London,
“Preserving God’s Creation” (1989)
• From 1994, director of the annual seminar on
Halki sponsored by Ecumenical Patriarchate and
World Wide Fund for Nature
• His theology: Being as communion
• It is “communion which makes things be”;
“Nothing exists without it, not even God”
Insights from the East – John Zizioulas
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The ecological crisis cannot be met simply by
arguments based on reason or ethical
arguments
More is needed if we hope to change priorities
and life-styles
What is needed is different culture and ethos
As a Christian theologian, Zizioulas is
convinced that what is needed is a liturgical
ethos
This can provide a unique and profound
foundation for a genuine ecological ethos
Insights from the East – John Zizioulas
• Humans are called by God to be “priests of
creation”
• Their call is to be like Christ fully relational
beings
• This involves being relational rather than selfenclosed, able to go out of self to the other, in
what Zizioulas calls ek-stasis
• Humans beings are called to relate in a personal
way to God, to other humans and to other
creatures. in a truly personal way
• Humanity and the rest of creation will come to
completion in Christ though each other
Insights from the East – John Zizioulas
• In the East, the Eucharistic Prayer is known as
the Anaphora, which means the lifting-up
• The Eucharist is the lifting-up of creation to God
• The Holy Spirit is invoked to transform the gifts
of creation into the Body of Christ
• This priesthood involves all the baptised faithful
• The connection between Christian and Jewish
prayer forms: blessing the gifts of creation, and
thanksgiving for both creation and salvation
Insights from the East – John Zizioulas
• This “lifting up” of creation is not only in the
liturgy, but in the whole of life
• The “lifting up” of creation is to be played out
around the planet continually by every human
being
• Zizioulas holds that it is “the culture created
through the living ethos of a vibrant Christian
community, centred on the Eucharist” that offers
the most powerful long-term resource for
ecological commitment (Pat Fox)
• “All this involves an ethos that the world needs
badly in our time. Not an ethic, but an ethos. Not
a programme, but an attitude and a mentality.
Not a legislation, but a culture” (Zizioulas)
Eucharist: The Living Memory of All God’s
Creatures
• Eucharist as the living memory of creation and
redemption in Christ
• Sacrament of the risen Christ at work in the
whole of creation
• Participation with all God’s creatures in the
Communion of the Trinity
• Solidarity with the victims of climate change
Living Memory of Creation and Redemption
• Bouyer on the anamnesis: every Eucharist is a
thanksgiving memorial for creation as well as
redemption
• Jewish and early Christian eucharistic prayers
are always a memory of God’s good creation
and a thanksgiving for the gifts of creation.
• When we come to the Eucharist we bring the
creatures of Earth with us
• We remember the God who loves each one of
them
• We grieve for the damage done to them. We feel
with them and for them – an ecological ethos
Living Memory of Creation and Redemption
• We bring creation to the table, bread and wine,
“fruit of the Earth and the work of human hands”
• Creation and salvation: “He is the Word through
whom you made the universe, the Saviour you
sent to redeem us” (2nd E. Prayer)
• We lift up creation to God: “All creation rightly
gives you praise” (3rd E. Prayer); “In the name
of every creature under heaven, we too praise
your glory” (4th E. Prayer)
• In Christ, we remember God’s good creation: the
14 billion year history of the universe, the
emergence of life in its diversity and beauty
• We remember the vulnerable community of life
on Earth today and bring this to God
Sacrament of the Risen Christ
Transforming Creation
• The Christ we encounter in the Eucharist is the
risen one in whom all things were created and
are reconciled (Col 1:15-20); “to gather up all
things in him” (Eph 1:10)
• Christ’s death: we remember a creature of the
universe freely handing his whole bodily and
personal existence into the mystery of a loving
God
• His resurrection: we remember part of our
universe being taken up into God, as the
beginning of the transformation of all things
• This is not only the promise but also the
beginning of the glorification and divinization of
the whole of reality (Rahner)
Sacrament of the Risen Christ
Transforming Creation
• We are brought into a living relationship with
Christ, in whom the universe is being
transformed in the Spirit
• The Eucharist is the sacrament of Christ who is
the promise and the beginning of the
transformation of all things
• It is both sign and agent of the transforming work
of the risen Christ in the whole of creation
• In this vision of things, all that respects and
celebrates the life systems of our planet is one
with the work of the risen Christ
• Knowingly destroying the living systems of our
planet amounts to a denial of what we celebrate
when we gather for Eucharist, of Christ
Participation with All Creatures in the
Communion of the Trinity
• In every Eucharist we are taken up into God. We
participate in the divine Communion
• All things spring from this Communion, and in as
wy. In a way that is beyond our imagination and
comprehension, all things will be embraced in it
• In the Eucharist we participate in anticipation in
the fulfillment of all creation in the divine
Communion of love
• “The most intense moment of our communion
with God is at the same time an intense moment
of our communion with the earth” (Tony Kelly)
• We are taken into God and into God’s love for
the creatures of our planetary community
Participation with All Creatures in the
Communion of the Trinity
• “The Eucharist educates the imagination, the
mind, and the heart to apprehend the universe
as one of communion and connectedness in
Christ” (Kelly)
• In and through this Eucharistic imagination and
distinctive ecological vision and commitment can
take shape
• We can see the see the other creatures of Earth
as our kin, as radically interconnected with us in
one Earth community of life before God
• We can begin to see critically – to see more
clearly what is happening to the Earth
• A eucharistic imagination leads to an ecological
ethos, culture and praxis.
Solidarity with the Victims of Climate
Change
• Johannes Metz speaks of the memory of the
passion as a dangerous memory
• The cross is a challenge all complacency before
the suffering of others. It brings those who suffer
to the centre of Christian faith
• It constantly challenges ideological justifications
of the misery of the poor
• The resurrection offers a dynamic vision of hope,
but does not dull the memory of the suffering –
the wounds of the risen Christ
• This dangerous and critical memory provides an
alternative way of seeing. It can lead to
solidarity, to alternative life-styles and to
personal and political action
Solidarity with the Victims
• The WCC points to areas, especially in the
Southern hemisphere that are particularly
vulnerable to climate change: “Though their per
capita contribution to the causes of climate
change is negligible, the will suffer from the
consequences to a much larger degree”
• Climate change aggravates social and economic
injustice. To contribute to this destruction “is not
only a sin against the weak and unprotected but
also against the earth-God’s gift of life”
• Solidarity involves personal and political
commitment to the two strategies of mitigation
and adaptation
Solidarity with the Victims
• Adaptation: re-ordering society, budgeting for
disasters and hospitality to refugees
• We gather in solidarity with Christians in Kiribati.
We gather in solidarity with those of other faiths
• We remember those displaced from the homes
and the threat to millions of people
• Mindful of Australia’s contribution to greenhouse,
of our wealth created by coal, of our use of
motor vehicles
• Praying that our Eucharist “advance the peace
and salvation of all the world” (3rd E. Prayer)
• We commit ourselves again to discipleship, to an
ecological lifestyle, politics and praxis as people
of hope and commitment