Creationtide Sermon | 6 September 2026
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PREACHER
The Revd Kathryn Fleming | Canon Precentor
It’s not often that you find yourself preaching on a brand new festival…The feast of Christ in Creation is being celebrated by the Church of England for the first time this year – and it has, for me at least, gained added significance as we reflect on the experience of a summer of red alerts for dangerous heat…of parched grass and wild fires…of premature leaf-fall making August like October on our streets.
What price the joy and exuberance of creation “clapping its hands”? Of thorn and briar replaced by cypress and myrtle when we intent on creating a wilderness?
Can we celebrate a festival at all or should we actually be engaging in a season of lament?
Truthfully, I think we need to do both. In our penitential prayers at the start of the service, we celebrated God’s creative genius but balanced that with humanity’s failures – and at this present time we seem to be all but engulfed by those.
Like the disciples that day on Lake Galilee we are buffeted by a storm that loses none of its power simply because it is of our own making – and Jesus? Well, it feels very much as if he IS fast asleep, unwilling to take any action to save us.
Perhaps, though, this is because we can – and must – do more ourselves. In preparing for this sermon, I returned to Pope Francis’s great encyclical Laudate Si…which pulls no punches as it invites us to reflect on the state of the planet in the light of our God-given task as STEWARDS of creation. Here we are called to reflect on the world around us, and to respond to the signs of the times. A light is shone on contemporary 'throwaway' culture and we are asked to notice and affirm God’s presence throughout creation…which is, surely, a gospel in its own right, as Francis puts it “A caress of God” and a sign of God’s abundant love shining throughout the world. This is, of course, GOOD NEWS for the poor and it is to our shame that their poverty grows as the climate crisis worsens. But we have more than an ecological problem. For Francis, the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor are one and the only possible response is a radical change of heart, leading us to respect ourselves, our neighbours and the earth herself more deeply than ever before. We need to strengthen the conviction that we are one single human family. There are no frontiers or barriers, political or social, behind which we can hide, still less is there room for the globalisation of indifference…
This isn’t news. John Donne articulated it famously
No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main. Any man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind…
For good or ill we are in this together. We know in our hearts that each and every human person is utterly valued and loved by God. We know that God has an unwavering bias to the poor. So the question for us is surely, how we become more attentive to God’s voice speaking through the environment and through our neighbours, near and far, who are living in poverty.
You might like to reflect on how you relate to creation, even in this urban environment where so much that surrounds us encourages the belief that only humanity – and a particular segment of humanity at that – has any real significance.
Today might be the day to ask for a change of heart…for the courage to remember, even amid the excess, that it is not THINGS that matter…that we need to sit lightly to them…that “less is more”. It does take courage. Even as I write, I’m conscious of a voice in my head suggesting that REALLY I’d be much better off to focus on safeguarding my own interests – or those of my nearest and dearest. That radical change of heart doesn’t come easy.
But I want to attend to this this partly BECAUSE of my nearest and dearest. I have dreams for my grandchildren, which depend on a world that has not been changed beyond recognition..a world in which they can breathe the air, drink the water, and rejoice in natural beauty…
What about you? What are your dreams for the planet’s future. This is no time for fatalism
How might we, as a congregation and as individuals, experience a kind of “ecological conversion”, so that we are reshaped by our encounter with Jesus Christ to relate in new ways to the world around us.
This isn’t about deciding to be better at recycling…It’s not even about making a decision for vegetarianism or committing to avoiding any short-haul flights. Rather, it’s an attitude of the heart, which enables us to experience life with serene attentiveness, seeing each encounter, each moment as a gift from God to be lived to the full.
You see, if the whole world is a sacrament of God’s love, then that love encompasses each and everyone…and each and every created thing. If God has reconciled all things in Christ.. There are no frontiers or barriers, political or social, behind which we can hide, still less is there room for the globalisation of indifference.
Fine, I hear you say…but what does all of that actually mean for me? By way of an answer, let me tell you what I did last Sunday evening at Greenbelt. As the sun set, I and my grandchildren sat spell-bound on the muddy grass listening to the country’s most arrested priest Revd Sue Parfitt…Now in her 80s, Sue was one of the first women to be ordained in the Church of England. She has served in this diocese and in Bristol and has become well-known in recent years for her determination to walk the talk where the climate crisis is concerned. To date, she has been arrested a grand total of 28 times –“ but what shone through as we listened to her was nothing like militance. It was, rather, all about love.
Her talk is free online on the Greenbelt website (together with practically every talk from the past 25 years of the festival)…but let me give you a few highlights, which helped to shape my own thinking as I listened.
“My primary motivation for doing what I do”, said Sue “is out of obedience to what I believe God is calling me to…I act from obedience, not disobedience. I came to realise that God was presenting me with both the gift and the challenge, in my old age, of becoming fully part of the effort to at least try to slow down the climate catastrophe which was threatening all life on earth with the worst existential threat ever known to humankind. I feel deeply called to do what I am doing now…
We are followers of the passionate, non violent Jesus…whatever the cost. And Jesus was continually in breach of the law because he was calling out the evils of his day within the civil and religious authorities. He went to the cross directly because of his action in the temple, overturning the tables of the money changers and opposing the corruption and self-serving lifestyle of the rich.
I protest for the Global South, who are so impacted by our terrible burning of fossil fuels. We get all the benefits, and they get all the consequences; and I do it for the next generation who will have no future at all.
It’s about truth, justice, faith and love. Always love. We’re not powerless. We’re told by the scientists that even to slow the climate emergency down, to stop global warming by a fraction of a degree, will save millions of lives and huge amounts of suffering. That’s worth doing, isn’t it? “
Sue sounds like everyone’s favourite Granny…and by this point most of the audience was on their feet, cheering…but there’s no denying that, however persuasive her ardour, her approach may feel like a very big ask. Obviously even peaceful protest is not the right route for everyone...but we know that ours is a God of justice…and a God of love…and that our current world remains anything but just, and is only selectively loving. To recognise this is, I believe, to recognise a responsibility too,.
So…what should we do, you and I? It’s a process of discernment for all of us…we need to spend time in prayer seeking the will of God, recognising that quite often when we ask God to do something about the state of the world, we may find God asking us to do the same. Yes, this is a scary time to live – both environmentally and politically – and finding the needful moral courage to live our calling may not be an easy task – but there are so many to inspire us…a whole canon of courage…From Ghandi, to Bonhoeffer, from MLK to Romero…Just a year ago, this very pulpit hosted Marianne Budde, who speaks truth to power as few others have in recent times. Knowing that heartens me. Courage can be contagious and the more we practice it, the stronger we will be. You see, God is not there to solve the hard things for us. God is there in these situations with us…suffering alongside creation..alongside God’s suffering children…
Let’s go there too…for that’s where we will be sure to find him.
However we do it, I’m convinced that our calling as followers of Christ needs must involve standing up to people and organisations, government, the Church….when they are not aligned with truth, justice, faith – and LOVE.
This is the time not to lament, but to act.
May God strengthen us to do so, and keep us loving in the struggle.