First Sunday of Lent, 14/2/2016
Queen Camel, Corton Denham
The devil roamed the moral wilderness of the international food industry, and met a supplier, hungry for profits. The devil said to him, ‘As you have the means to do it, why don’t you substitute horsemeat for beef?’ And the supplier said, ‘That sounds like a profitable idea, I’ll give it a try’.
Then the devil came across the executive of a multinational supermarket chain and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to him, ‘To you I will give their glory and all this authority, if you do things my way, exploiting the land and the poor to maximise your profits.’ And the executive said, ‘Show me the contract, I’ll get our lawyers to approve it straightaway’.
Then the devil appeared at a supermarket checkout, and said to the customers purchasing processed food, ‘If you throw yourself wholeheartedly into consuming food full of additives, fat, sugar, and calories, you have nothing to fear, for the angels of God will protect you from cancer, heart disease, obesity and tooth decay.’ And they said, ‘I believe you, here’s my loyalty card’.
The three temptations of Jesus in the wilderness are the very same temptations which we all succumb to today:
First, the temptation to turn stones into bread - or horsemeat into beef: in other words to manipulate nature for our own gain; a temptation which troubles our delicate relationship with the earth;
Second, the temptation to gain power and authority over others in the world: to stop at nothing to increase our wealth and improve our social status; a temptation which troubles our delicate relationship with others; and
Third, the temptation to jump from the temple: that is, to behave in self-destructive ways, believing that however noxious our lifestyle, we will be saved; a temptation which troubles our delicate relationship with God.
The horsemeat scandal and other recent events in the food supply industry, the need for a Fair Trade movement, the revelation that for over 25 years the Exxon corporation has buried the research findings of its own scientists and worked at the forefront of climate denial [2], the Volkswagen cars emissions cheating scandal [3] - all these bring home the point that our relationships with the earth and its creatures, with each other and with God, are deeply affected by the way we give in so readily to temptation.
The earth, each other and God are the three fundamental elements in each of our lives. They are not separate entities either, but fully intertwined. My friend and colleague Stuart Elliott talks about them as soil, soul, and society:
Soil is literally the planet earth on which we stand. Though we seldom acknowledge it, earth and its creatures provide for us everything we need to live. Our connection with this earth is vital and we must recognise our interdependence with all life on the planet, learning to tread lightly.
Soul is our ‘inner being’. We might think of ourself as an individual, as ‘I’, but in reality our selves are the ultimate ‘We’. Deeply, we are all connected at an intrinsic level to the source of life - to God, the creator and sustainer of the earth, who places us here alongside others, and this deep connection makes us the soul we are.
Society describes our interdependence with other humans and with all living things, our global neighbours. Society is what we create together. We each have responsibility for our relationships with all: humans, creatures, all living things. [4]
There is a delicate ecology which holds us together in this detailed set of relationships. The balance of this ecology is easily upset when we succumb to one or more of those three fundamental temptations.
We organise the market to turn stones into bread - to produce cheap food of poor quality, exploiting poor producers overseas or struggling farmers here, exploiting creatures, exploiting the land. These practices are an abuse of nature which primarily affect the poor, and so they are about global justice; and what does all of this do to our spirit?
The recent - and ongoing - protests over the pricing of milk show how our farmers and country folk have a keen appreciation of these issues. [5] Of course your view on this may differ if you are a shareholder in a food industry supplier or an employee of a supermarket chain; or if you are a consumer at the checkout looking for - expecting - low prices. But whatever our perspective we understand how our spirits can feel crushed by the weight of the pressures on us to maximise our profits, to take the easy option, to consume and to conform.
You might recall situations when you and others have been lured by the persuasiveness of such temptations and acted in ways which have knowingly damaged others, putting soil, soul, or society at risk. And we are all conscious of our failure to act when we have seen injustice at work, our reluctance to change our ways or challenge our system for the sake of others and the earth, our resistance towards being crucified.
Jacques Ellul, a twentieth-century Reformed theologian, wrote that
A major fact of our present civilisation is that more an more sin becomes collective, and the individual is forced to participate in collective sin. Everyone bears the consequences of the faults of others.
When, in the words of David Korten, ‘ordinary people find their choices controlled by the hierarchies of big business, big government, big education, big unions, big media’, a small gospel will seem pathetic and incredible. [6]
But the good news is that the gospel of Jesus is big enough to deal with our complicity in the corporate sins of our day.
The good news is that we have the power to resist such temptations; for Jesus has been there before us - into the moral wilderness to contest these issues with the devil. And the outcome of that contest shows us that the devil can be overcome.
And so we thank Jesus for resisting temptation by saying ‘One does not live by bread alone’: encouraging us that it is possible for us to withstand the lure of cheap and easy food, using our imagination and compassion to work out other ways in which we can feed and finance ourselves without harming the earth or others.
We thank Jesus for resisting temptation by saying ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him’: showing us that we needn’t expend our time trying to gain wealth at the expense of the truth, we needn’t expend our energy trying to gain status at the expense of others, if we commit ourselves first and foremost to deepening and strengthening our relationship with our God; to gaining our sense of self-worth from God alone, letting our prayer life affect our outward life, learning to walk this earth with integrity.
And we thank Jesus for resisting temptation by saying ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test’: helping us to see that we can repel the urge to find salvation in things which will ultimately destroy us, if we put a loving, caring God at the centre of our lives.
God’s ecology is a gentle and generous one which reunites us with the earth, with others and with our own selves.
To nurture God’s ecology in our lives we have to be alert to those things which tempt us away from it: as the Psalmist said, ‘Your eyes have only to behold to see the reward of the wicked.’ But, the Psalmist continues, ‘If you [make] the Lord your refuge, and the Most High your habitation [Then] shall no evil happen to you, neither shall any plague come near your house’. [6]
And to nurture God’s ecology in our lives we have to be alert to those things which draw us back to it: constantly, prayerfully, asking the Father to help us connect more keenly with the soil, the soul and the society which together make up our lives.
Conclude with Psalm 69 from Jim Cotter, Out of the Silence ... Into the Silence, Prayer's Daily Round:
'The earth and the people decay: we breathe but a whisper of prayer...
'The earth and the people stir: we breathe our prayer into life.'
Notes
[1] This sermon was originally preached in Devon during a period when the news was full of scandal over the contamination of meat products, see eg, Felicity Lawrence, Horsemeat scandal: the essential guide, The Guardian, 15 February 2013.
[2] Exxon: The Road Not Taken, Inside Climate News, 2015.
[3] Russell Hotten, Volkswagen: The scandal explained, BBC News, 10 December 2015
[4] Extracted from Stuart Elliott, A Place on Earth which speaks of Heaven?, unpublished paper, 2013 (altered). Stuart was at the time responsible for the work in Ecology of the Diocese of St Asaph Board of Church and Society: read his blog here. In adopting the ‘Soil, Soul, Society’ model Stuart affirms the work of some fellow-travellers: Soil Soul Society: A New Trinity for Our Time is also the title of a 2013 book by peace and environment activist Satish Kumar, expressing the vision that ‘We are members of a one-earth society, and caring for the earth and soul is interrelated!’ And similarly, Soil and Soul: People versus Corporate Power by Scottish writer and campaigner Alastair McIntosh ‘shows how it is still possible for individuals and communities to take on the might of corporate power and emerge victorious’. All excellent reading!
[5] Johann Tasker, Dairy farmers prepare to march on London, Farmers Weekly, 31 January 2016.
[6] Section quote from Brian D. McLaren, Everything Must Change: When the World's Biggest Problems and Jesus' Good News Collide, p.243-244.
[7] Psalm 91.8-10.
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