The Word in Reflection and Texts: All God’s Creatures

Contemporary reading                                                                      Sir David Attenborough

“The fact is that no species has ever had such wholesale control over everything on Earth, living or dead, as we now have. That lays upon us, whether we like it or not, an awesome responsibility. In our hands now lies not only our own future, but that of all other living creatures with whom we share the Earth”.

From the BBC documentary series Life on Earth, 1979

“If working apart we are a force powerful to destabilise our planet, surely working together we are powerful enough to save it…in my lifetime I’ve witnessed a terrible decline. In yours, you could and should witness a wonderful recovery.”

On the urgent need for greater collective climate action at the COP26 UN climate conference, Glasgow, 2021.                             

Reflection Part A

Hands up those who woke up this morning with a cat or a dog on your bed? Who had to get up and feed an animal this morning? Who amongst us feeds the birds in the back yard, or takes pleasure in watching the tuis feed on the kowhai flowers at this time of year?

Today our theme is animals in the Season of Creation series. All God’s creatures. I am going to talk about our pets, who are part of our lives and also a little about wild animals and wild places, which are crucial to our planet. Sir David Attenborough in his documentary A life on Our Planet explains that quite simply, wild animals and their environment are key to biodiversity and maintaining biodiversity on earth is key to the stability of the finely tuned system called the living world.

But first let’s focus on our domestic animals, our pets. Many of us derive huge enjoyment from our pets – cats, dogs, guinea pigs, horses, and all manner of animals that are part of our home environments, sometimes quite by serendipity. I grew up in Whanganui on the edge of farmland. When I was very small, one year during lambing season the local farmer, our neighbour, presented me with an orphaned lamb and showed me how to bottle feed her. I named her Bimbo (after a popular song of the times) and it was my twice daily task to feed her until she was big enough to return to the paddock with her flock. I recall that experience with much affection. It was perhaps my first lesson in caring for an animal. Pets provide companionship, love and comfort and much pleasure in our lives. Our pets connect us to nature and the natural world. They keep us grounded. That can be especially important if we live in the city. Today is a time to celebrate our pets, and all that they symbolise as part of the Season of Creation.

I want to turn now to the wider natural world. In June this year Ben and I had the good fortune to visit friends who live in Botswana. I want to share that experience with you today, as part of celebrating animals.

Three things stood out in Botswana:

• The wild animals are prominent and are awe-inspiring, some are very large, some are quite dangerous, and they are visible everywhere.
• The people of Botswana are very proud of their animals and conservation is hugely important.
• Botswana is a harsh environment to live in, water is scarce and people have learned to live and work in harmony with the animals and the natural environment. We noticed a palpable interdependence between them.

With some exceptions, the animals roam at will – there are few fences – and we learned to be respectful, drive carefully, stay in our vehicle, and keep an eye out for crossing zebra and other creatures. We also learned never to get between a mother elephant and her baby. Keeping our distance from a family of rhinos out for a Sunday stroll was the best approach. Villagers in the remote north do not keep domestic animals because the lions and leopards roam at night. Those same villagers are especially vigilant about buffalos which can charge at the slightest provocation.

By way of background, the political leadership in Botswana (formerly Bechuanaland) has been strong since independence in 1966 when Sir Seretse Khama, a tribal leader of consequence, was elected President. Democracy has been grafted on to a sound tribal system, which is still honoured today. Discussion by the people at the kgotla or public meeting (similar to a hui on a marae) is key to reaching good decisions and they adhere to the principle of the collective good. The government cares about its people and about its animals. Every adult is eligible to be given a plot of land and materials for a house that they can build themselves. The university was established by crowd funding – every family gave what they could whether it was a cattle beast of part of a crop.

Some years ago the government set up hectares of farms and silos in the northern part of the country where crops are grown and grain stored. The biblical idea of seven years of bounty and seven years of famine has currency. Botswana is a very dry country and is currently in drought. It remains to be seen whether current weather patterns will stretch resources to breaking point, whether the animals can survive. A visit to the Okavango Delta, where they were waiting for the annual water flow from Angola to fill this huge inland delta, was salutary. Tourism is supported to show off their animals but respectfully and sustainably. The government appears to have grasped the need for change. It is investing heavily in solar power. The decision not to mine a huge coal resource recently discovered underlines just how seriously they are taking climate change.

Protecting wild animals is a high priority. The countryside is peppered with nature or game reserves. During our three weeks we visited eight of these all over the country. Several are privately owned and the rest are run by the government. The highlight for me was Chobe National Park in the north and soon we will see some of the photos I took of the animals there and elsewhere. The wild animals are magnificent. One of my favourite sights was that of a beautiful lioness with her three adorable cubs. They quietly strolled up alongside our safari truck less than a metre away from me and then lay down under a tree for the lioness to suckle her cubs. I was so awestruck that I didn’t manage to get my camera out until fully several minutes later as she continued on her way. It was an unforgettable moment.

The southern African countries cooperate well in the conservation effort – this is necessary because the animals do not recognise borders! One initiative was to create a sanctuary for the threatened white rhinoceros of South Africa, at danger of being wiped out by poachers a few years ago. The rhinos were successfully moved to a reserve in Botswana and now rhino populations are flourishing in several reserves. Poachers are shot on sight by the Botswana Police, especially those who come across the South African border.

We could in fact learn much from Botswana about how they are facing climate change challenges.

Let’s now listen to Frank reading Genesis 1 before we consider climate change.

Genesis 1: 1-31

Part B

The two obvious champions of animals in the Bible are Noah and St Francis of Assisi. St Francis is the Patron Saint of Animals, Birds and Ecology. Professor Sir Lloyd Geering calls him the first Greenie. I’ll leave Noah for another day, but let’s consider St Francis for a moment.

Pope John Paul II declared Francis the patron saint of ecology in 1979. In 1982 he said that Francis’ love and care for creation was a challenge for contemporary Catholics and a reminder “not to behave like dissident predators where nature is concerned, but to assume responsibility for it, taking all care so that everything stays healthy and integrated, so as to offer a welcoming and friendly environment even to those who succeed us.”

Pope John Paul II was ahead of many world leaders in his thinking. I was struck by his description of how people and the natural environment are connected. That sent me looking for biblical text that recognises the interconnectedness of humankind and the natural world, and the interdependency that exists between them. It turns out that interconnections were mostly not how early Christians saw things at all. Their monotheistic view of the world – and incidentally for Islam and Judaism it was the same – was heading in a different direction. I’ll return to this shortly.

The Genesis 1 Creation story does a good job of creating connections.  It is certainly poetic and compelling – which is to say it tells a good story. Setting aside the fact that Darwin’s theory of evolution makes much more sense in the rational scientific era, (but is less poetic), the first Creation story does suggest that there is a relationship between the sky and the earth, night and day, plants, creatures and humankind. It provides something of an integrated structure to early Christian thinking. But it becomes entirely problematic when the story has God announcing that mankind will rule over every living creature.

Lloyd Geering addressed this problem in his excellent lecture series on the Greening of Christianity given at St Andrew’s in May 2005. He described how monotheism and its language about domination of the earth has allowed people to effectively turn a blind eye to the plight of the planet. Monotheism, Lloyd explained, has had a devastating effect on the earth by eschewing the structure of gods and goddesses that it replaced. The adulation of the Sky Father promoted the patriarchy and Earth Mother was effectively wiped out. The arrival of monotheism ‘annihilated the goddesses of nature so successfully that the Hebrew Bible does not contain a single word meaning goddess’.  In the new belief system, the earth, he said became diminished, with all of the sacred power that it once had being transferred to the heavenly world of the Father. Thus, the Christian, Jewish and Moslem worlds were set on a path of destruction where the earth was no longer seen as the source of all life. We need, Lloyd said, to recognise that we have now degraded the living world to such an extent that all life including ours is threatened.

As an aside, in Te Ao Māori, Papatūanuku, Mother Earth and Ranginui, Sky Father are enjoying a renaissance. It is not too much of a stretch to conclude that the gods and goddesses of the natural world, which exist in Māori mythology, give us a more balanced, healthier way of thinking about the planet than Christian mythology does.

The bible demonstrates some understanding of how the living world is connected. In Corinthians 12, the text provides evidence that the early Christians, in this case likely Paul, did understand about diversity and interdependence of the world. In Verses 14 and 15 we read about a complex body whose parts are so connected as to be inseparable:

Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.

Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body.

Then again in Verses 24, 25 and 26.

But God has put the body together, giving greater honour to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honoured, every part rejoices with it.

The body can be read as a metaphor for the natural world, of which humans are an integral part. This translates well as a message for our times.

In 2024 more than ever, people recognise that the way we live is destroying biodiversity and the natural environment. Science tells us – and we can actually see – that burning fossil fuels is causing catastrophic temperature increases creating sea level rise, wild fires and unpredictable weather patterns. Scientists like Sir David Attenborough repeatedly explain that the destruction of half of the rain forests on earth is having a catastrophic effect on biodiversity and carbon capture, and that we are overfishing and polluting the ocean, which is also critical to carbon capture.

But not enough people, especially our political leaders, are willing to take immediate measures to reverse these trends. Progress towards sustainability at the political level is agonisingly slow world-wide. Our current government is regrettably one such offender. What can we do? We can support those who do understand the challenges and are prepared to take action. As people of faith we can get more involved in initiatives such as Common Grace and the ‘no faith in fossil fuels’ demonstrations at Parliament each Tuesday. We have our own sustainability programme here at St Andrew’s and you may have one at home. No measure is too small.

Sir David Attenborough, a self-described late comer to the climate change challenge, urges us to hasten the switch to renewable energy and protect biodiversity. We must urgently re-plant the rain forests, protect the animals who live in them, create marine reserves to restore the fish in the ocean and adopt a more plant-based diet. We humans are responsible for our own future, for the future of every living creature and for the earth. To quote Sir David: “Cherish the natural world, because you are a part of it and you depend on it”. I pray that we take that responsibility very seriously here in New Zealand and everywhere.

Audio of selected readings and reflections

Audio of the complete service