Day 25, Sat., 10 March: Eph. 2.1-10
One of the subliminal reasons for writing this daily lenten blog is, strangely enough, that I'm trying to finish writing a textbook on ecotheology. It seems to me that unless the team of Australian and Indian authors succeeds in communicating both the utter seriousness and, from a human perspective the hopelessness of the situation that climate change and ecological degradation is forcing upon the world; BUT also the hope that is intrinsic to the bible's message, there's little use in writing the book at all. For if Christians continue to think that our only hope lies lies either in some self-fix or in our disembodied souls being taken beyond this physical world, then there is no motivation to love this world as God does (John 3.16). So we can't just write ecotheology; we have to relate that to theology as a whole.
But where is hopelessness and hope to be found? Well, the Bible Gateway website lists 165 instances of "hope" and its cognates in the Bible. Clearly hope is a significant topic. that means that the bible must deal in hopelessness too. Equally clearly, however, this is not the place to explore all of these texts, so I'll just give a couple of instances.
While ministering in Sweden in the early to mid 90s one of the youth group's favourite choruses was based upon Jeremiah 29.11:
"' For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the Lord, 'plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.’”
One might well ask why young people from one of the world’s absolutely finest countries need to be reassured that God has a future and a hope for them. Yet this song was one of their favourites. The context of this promise that the song held was Judah’s babylonian captivity. In 587 BCE the idea and the reality of Israel were dismembered; Jerusalem’s ruling clique were taken into captivity in Babylon. The prophet Jeremiah, who had been prophesying doom and gloom, now changed his tune. Funnily enough, for the prophet whose name has generated the term "jeremiad", meaning, roughly, "a litany of misery", Jeremiah has given us the title "The Hope of Israel" for God (14.8). In the last days of Judah he even bought land! (Jeremiah 32)
Neither Jeremiah 14.1-9, which we looked at several days ago, nor Jeremiah 29.11 are about climate change or environmental degradation per se. But even if I am convinced that these are the worst problems humankind faces that doesn’t mean that that we cannot learn from the experience of other problems faced. In fact, it’s possible to become arrogant by wearing ecological blinkers! The recently deceased Billy Graham dedicated his life to bringing others into a saving relationship with Jesus Christ. For him and many other Christians the main problem humankind faces is the prospect of spending eternity cut off from the presence of God. For other Christians the main problem humankind faces is poverty, caused and exacerbated by injustice. For still others the epidemic of depression and other mental health issues may be. The corruption endemic in many places is a terrible problem. War and the fear of war, particularly nuclear war is clearly a huge blight upon humankind. And so on…
However, 14.1-9 is about drought and human misbehaviour, and about hopelessness and hope in God. And 29.11 is about growing hope from hopelessness. As such they give us a way into this whole, difficult topic.
From a different angle, so does Ephesians 2.1-10. Traditionally, this is a passage we would probably associate more with Billy Graham and his ilk than with those whose major concern is with the state of creation. However, I think that Paul’s analysis of the human condition, laid out in these verses (as well as in many others) explains why, fundamentally both the human condition and the situation of the planet are hopeless, except for the hope we have in Christ.
First, Paul says that his readers were dead because of their offences and sins; they followed a way of life that was in step with this world’s “present age”, and also with the ruler of the power of the air (another title for Satan). As usual Paul was being incredibly dense, so an illustration may help. I wrote some of this blog while on a train trip home from a city several hours’ travel from Sydney. I shared a carriage in the late afternoon with a group who were already drunk and disorderly, and who had already attracted the attention of the police. They seemed determined to be “rude, crude and totally undesirable”, as one of my female school friends used to put it. While I changed trains in a major city I noticed that another rowdy, disorderly crowd had already gathered around a nearby hotel, that police had already attended the scene, and that the railway station had put on extra security.
“Actually,” wrote Paul, “that’s how all of us used to behave, conditioned by physical desires. We used to do what our flesh and our minds were urging us to do. What was the result? We too were subject to wrath in our natural state, just like everyone else.”
Yet because of the grace and mercy and love of God, wrote Paul, a wonderful future awaits us: "For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life." And if I understand the theology called "new creation" properly, some of those good works will involve being God's gardeners in the reunified heaven and earth in which God Himself will dwell. What that will look like and how it will all work I do not know. The best clue we have is that Jesus' resurrection body is the first and so far the only instance of God's restoration of planet earth.
There is SO much to think about here!
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