Environment Sunday

Yesterday I got my first chance in ages to preach and preside at communion at our local Anglican/Methodist LEP church. I've not done either for several months and it was great to be able to exercise gifts and calling in that way again. I knew it was UN Environment Sunday and the set gospel reading was the Calling of Levi from Matthew's gospel.
I felt that it was important to remind ourselves that Europeans tend to consume about 2-3 times our fair share of the planet's resources and that changes in climate may interfere horribly with our capacity to grow food as climate zones change. Also sea levels rising will mean displacement of milions of people and we appear to be ill-equipped to deal with the migration and refugee matters arising. IT's like that over optimistic ending of 'The Day After Tomorrow' -if soemthing like that really did happen, what is Mexico going to do with 200 million USAmericans, how are they going to be fed and housed and what kind of political trumoil is such a migration going to spark off, particularly with the history between them? I'm not saying that TDAT is a really probable scenario [quite the reverse] but that the kind of scenario is real for other populations in other climate-change circumstances.

Christ called Matthew from a relatively secure and well-off occupation and today, in the kind of global situation we are in surely Christ's call is to love our neighbours -including those still to be born- by living in a way that takes account of the impact of our lifestyles and ways of life so dependent on fossil carbon and to follow Christ is surely to begin that journey of lessening our dependence on fossil fuels for the sake of our neighbours and for the sake of the beautiful world God has lent to us.

On a slightly different tack, I don't normally find the pronouncements of Tory shadow ministers very enlightening, but I do urge you to read what Oliver Letwin says/writes in the article I have referenced in the header. "Mr Letwin will argue that the environment debate is dominated by "apparently technocratic problems", while the poverty debate is about "flesh and blood".
He will say the removal of beauty from the political vocabulary is one reason why the environment debate is "desiccated" and why so many people dislike politics."
Some interesting imagery and he seems to be setting out his stall for a new kind of Tory politics which could actually be pretty interesting and helpful if they followed through.
Telegraph | News | Beauty matters, says Letwin: "question whether people are really engaged by the environment debate."