Bratton Clovelly, Sourton, First Sunday of Lent, 17/2/2013 [1]
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:
(1) 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;
(2) The temptation to gain power and authority over others in the world: to stop at nothing to improve our wealth and social status; a temptation which troubles our delicate relationship with others; and
(3) 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 of today brings this home: 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’. The self we might choose to believe is the individual, the ‘I’, but in reality is the ultimate ‘We’. Our life goes far deeper than perhaps we first imagine. 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. [2]
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?
Now I know that I am speaking to farmers and country folk and that from your life’s work and experiences you have a keen appreciation of these issues. But even we might find our spirits crushed by the weight of the many pressures on us to maximise our profits, to consume and to conform, we know when we and others have at times been lured by the persuasiveness of these temptations.
But the good news is that we have the power to resist; 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 and 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, permitting the Father to help us connect more keenly with soil, soul and society.
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 it in our lives we have to be alert to those things which tempt us away: 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’. (Psalm 91.8-10)
Notes
[1] This sermon was preached 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] Stuart Elliott, A Place on Earth which speaks of Heaven?, unpublished paper, 2013 (altered). Stuart is is responsible for the work in Ecology of the Diocese of St Asaph Board of Church and Society: read his diocesan webpage here and his own blog here.
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