Celebrating Eucharist

In a Time of Global Climate Change

Our Context

• The Australian: “Climate calamity forecast by end of century”

• Tim Flannery: by the end of the century, temperatures will have risen by 3 degrees

• The cause: our use of fossil fuels• Australia burns more fossil fuel per capita and

exports more coal than any other nation• 3 degree rise: the loss of world heritage areas

and coral reefs and our cities under increasing water stress. The Murray could dry up, and seas could rise by up to 6 metres

• 2 degree rise: loss of places like Kakadu and our mountain rain forests, with their fauna; the extinction of the polar ecosystems

Our Context

• Everyday, there are new reports and predictions• While experts disagree about details of

predictions, few dispute: • That it is occurring • That it will get far worse• And that our use of fossil fuels is a major cause • The most important issue facing the human

community of the 21st c• For a Christian believer, committed to love for

God’s creation and to respect for the dignity of every person, responding to this issue will have to be a central dimension of the life of faith

Our Context• What does all of this mean for the Christian

community that gathers each Sunday in the name of Jesus to listen to the Word of God and break the bread?

• Some brief ideas from science - on long-term climate change and human-induced climate change

• Insights on the connection between Eucharist and creation from the West (Teilhard de Chardin) and from the East (John Zizioulas)

• Building on these with the theme of the Eucharist as the living memory of all God’s creatures

Long-Term Climate Change

• 3 variations of Earth’s orbit cause predictable cycles of long-term climate change (known since the 1970’s)

• One cycle, caused by a wobble in Earth’s rotation axis (precession), occurs every 22,000 years

• The others, caused by the tilt in Earth’s axis and by the shape of its orbit, occur every 41,000 and 100,000 years

• Over the last 3 million years, these variations have produced a series of ice ages followed by warmer interglacial periods

• The last ice age was about 20,000 years ago and the present interglacial period (the Holocene) is well advanced

Long-Term Climate Change

• Ice cores from Antarctica and Greenland provide a record of 400,000 years of climate change

• Bubbles in the ice reveal the levels of carbon dioxide and methane in atmosphere

• This work shows a close relationship between: variations in solar radiation, size of ice sheets and levels of carbon dioxide and methane

• While climate change is driven by variations in the Earth’s orbit, it takes effect by altering the cycles of carbon dioxide and methane and the size of the ice sheets

Humans as Agents of Climate Change

• Humans are now agents of climate forcing through the production of green house gases

• A proper level of trace gasses, including carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous acid, is essential for life as we know it

• The sun’s energy is reflected from the atmosphere, the clouds and the Earth’s surface

• The gases absorb some heat, preventing it escaping into space (the greenhouse effect)

• Result: average temperature of 5-25 degrees C. over the last 700 m.y., allowing life to flourish

• Humans force the climate by increasing levels of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels and clearing land

Humans as Agents of Climate Change• 1992: Governments, including Australia, sign UN

Framework Convention on Climate Change• Under this convention, research of hundreds of

scientists from many countries assembled in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

• Its 4th report is due in 2006. Its 3rd report (2001), states: “there is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities”

• Human activities will continue to change atmospheric conditions during the 21st century

• Global average temperatures and sea levels are projected to rise under all IPPC scenarios

• Increase in global average surface temperature of between 1.4--5.8 degrees C over the century

Humans as Agents of Climate Change• Global average temperature: increased 0.75 of a

degree C during the period of extensive measurement beginning in late 1800’s

• About 0.5 has occurred after 1950

• Climate modeling by CSIRO’s Division of Atmospheric Research: average temperatures across Australia will increase 1-2 degrees by 2030 and 3-4 degrees by 2070

Humans as Agents of Climate Change

• A recently released report commissioned by the Australian Government

• Accepts that further climate change is now inevitable

• And will need to be adapted to in all decisions made by Australian governments and industry

• Points to some regions that are highly vulnerable to climate change: Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef, the Murray Darling Basin and south west Western Australia

Humans as Agents of Climate Change

• The danger of melting of ice sheets and the need to preserve coastlines puts a low limit on human interference with climate

• The oceans are already storing excessive amount of heat

• Danger of changing the ocean system, the Global Ocean Conveyor

• Christians who gather for eucharitic assemblies in Australia – brothers and sisters in Kiribati, Tuvalu, Bangladesh and many other vulnerable people

Insights from the West – Teilhard • Return to Teilhard: scholars and church leaders• John Paul II: Gift and Mystery (1995): • The Eucharist “is celebrated in order to offer ‘on

the altar of the whole earth the world’s work and suffering’ in the beautiful words of Teilhard de Chardin” (73)

• Ecclesia de Eucharistia (2003): • Every Eucharist has a “cosmic” character: “Yes

Cosmic! Because even when it is celebrated on the humble altar of a country church, the Eucharist is always in some way celebrated on the altar of the world. It unites heaven and earth. It embraces and permeates all of creation” (8)

Insights from the West – Teilhard• J. C. Ratzinger: The Spirit of the Liturgy (2000):

• “Teilhard went on to give a new meaning to Christian worship: the transubstantiated Host is the anticipation of the transformation and divininization of matter in the christological “fullness.” In his view, the Eucharist provides the movement of the cosmos with its direction; it anticipates its goal and at the same time urges it on” (29)

Insights from the West – Teilhard

• 1916, while a stretcher bearer in the trenches Teilhard wrote his first important essay – “Cosmic Life”

• Already communion is central – communion with the Earth, communion with God

• To this he would add the deeply held conviction that union differentiates

• Unable to celebrate the Eucharist, he wrote “The Priest” near the Aisne River in 1918

• “The Mass on the World” in the Ordos Desert (Western Mongolia) in 1923

• A central text revealing the heart of Teilhard’s thought – Thomas M. King: Teilhard’s Mass; Mlle. Jeanne Mortier

Insights from the West – Teilhard• Since… I have neither bread, nor wine, nor altar,

I will raise myself beyond these symbols, up to the pure majesty of the real itself; I your priest will make the whole earth my altar and on it will offer you all the labours and sufferings of the world

• All the things in the world to which this day will bring increase; all those that will diminish; all those too that will die: all of them, Lord, I try to gather into my arms, so as to hold them out to you in offering. This is the material of my sacrifice; the only material you need

Insights from the West – Teilhard

• Over every living thing which is to spring up, to grow, to flower, to ripen during this day say again the words: This is my Body

• And over every death-force which waits in readiness to corrode, to wither, to cut down, speak again your commanding words which express the supreme mystery of faith: This is my Blood

Insights from the West – Teilhard• It is done. Once again the Fire has penetrated

the Earth…Without earthquake or thunderclap: the flame has lit up the whole world from within

• Through your own incarnation, my God, all matter is henceforth incarnate

• Now, Lord, through the consecration of the world the luminosity and fragrance which suffuse the universe take on for me the lineaments of a body and a face—in you

• So, my God, I prostrate myself before your presence in the universe which had now become living flame: beneath the lineaments of all that I shall encounter this day, all that happens to me, all that I achieve it is you I desire, you I await

Insights from the West – Teilhard

• Teilhard sees the risen Christ as united to the God who is immanently present to all creatures, enabling them to exist and to evolve

• This presence of the risen Christ at work in the universe is a prolongation of what is already begun in the eucharist

• The Eucharist is an effective prayer for the transformation of the universe in Christ

• It points towards and anticipates the divinization of the whole world in Christ

Insights from the East – John Zizioulas

• Ordained from the laity: Metropolitan of Pergamon, Ecumenical Patriarchate (1986)

• Series of lectures in Kings College London, “Preserving God’s Creation” (1989)

• From 1994, director of the annual seminar on Halki sponsored by Ecumenical Patriarchate and World Wide Fund for Nature

• His theology: Being as communion• It is “communion which makes things be”;

“Nothing exists without it, not even God”

Insights from the East – John Zizioulas• The ecological crisis cannot be met simply by

arguments based on reason or ethical arguments

• More is needed if we hope to change priorities and life-styles

• What is needed is different culture and ethos• As a Christian theologian, Zizioulas is

convinced that what is needed is a liturgical ethos

• This can provide a unique and profound foundation for a genuine ecological ethos

Insights from the East – John Zizioulas

• Humans are called by God to be “priests of creation”

• Their call is to be like Christ fully relational beings

• This involves being relational rather than self-enclosed, able to go out of self to the other, in what Zizioulas calls ek-stasis

• Humans beings are called to relate in a personal way to God, to other humans and to other creatures. in a truly personal way

• Humanity and the rest of creation will come to completion in Christ though each other

Insights from the East – John Zizioulas

• In the East, the Eucharistic Prayer is known as the Anaphora, which means the lifting-up

• The Eucharist is the lifting-up of creation to God• The Holy Spirit is invoked to transform the gifts

of creation into the Body of Christ• This priesthood involves all the baptised faithful• The connection between Christian and Jewish

prayer forms: blessing the gifts of creation, and thanksgiving for both creation and salvation

Insights from the East – John Zizioulas• This “lifting up” of creation is not only in the

liturgy, but in the whole of life• The “lifting up” of creation is to be played out

around the planet continually by every human being

• Zizioulas holds that it is “the culture created through the living ethos of a vibrant Christian community, centred on the Eucharist” that offers the most powerful long-term resource for ecological commitment (Pat Fox)

• “All this involves an ethos that the world needs badly in our time. Not an ethic, but an ethos. Not a programme, but an attitude and a mentality. Not a legislation, but a culture” (Zizioulas)

Eucharist: The Living Memory of All God’s Creatures

• Eucharist as the living memory of creation and redemption in Christ

• Sacrament of the risen Christ at work in the whole of creation

• Participation with all God’s creatures in the Communion of the Trinity

• Solidarity with the victims of climate change

Living Memory of Creation and Redemption

• Bouyer on the anamnesis: every Eucharist is a thanksgiving memorial for creation as well as redemption

• Jewish and early Christian eucharistic prayers are always a memory of God’s good creation and a thanksgiving for the gifts of creation.

• When we come to the Eucharist we bring the creatures of Earth with us

• We remember the God who loves each one of them

• We grieve for the damage done to them. We feel with them and for them – an ecological ethos

Living Memory of Creation and Redemption

• We bring creation to the table, bread and wine, “fruit of the Earth and the work of human hands”

• Creation and salvation: “He is the Word through whom you made the universe, the Saviour you sent to redeem us” (2nd E. Prayer)

• We lift up creation to God: “All creation rightly gives you praise” (3rd E. Prayer); “In the name of every creature under heaven, we too praise your glory” (4th E. Prayer)

• In Christ, we remember God’s good creation: the 14 billion year history of the universe, the emergence of life in its diversity and beauty

• We remember the vulnerable community of life on Earth today and bring this to God

Sacrament of the Risen Christ Transforming Creation

• The Christ we encounter in the Eucharist is the risen one in whom all things were created and are reconciled (Col 1:15-20); “to gather up all things in him” (Eph 1:10)

• Christ’s death: we remember a creature of the universe freely handing his whole bodily and personal existence into the mystery of a loving God

• His resurrection: we remember part of our universe being taken up into God, as the beginning of the transformation of all things

• This is not only the promise but also the beginning of the glorification and divinization of the whole of reality (Rahner)

Sacrament of the Risen Christ Transforming Creation

• We are brought into a living relationship with Christ, in whom the universe is being transformed in the Spirit

• The Eucharist is the sacrament of Christ who is the promise and the beginning of the transformation of all things

• It is both sign and agent of the transforming work of the risen Christ in the whole of creation

• In this vision of things, all that respects and celebrates the life systems of our planet is one with the work of the risen Christ

• Knowingly destroying the living systems of our planet amounts to a denial of what we celebrate when we gather for Eucharist, of Christ

Participation with All Creatures in the Communion of the Trinity

• In every Eucharist we are taken up into God. We participate in the divine Communion

• All things spring from this Communion, and in as wy. In a way that is beyond our imagination and comprehension, all things will be embraced in it

• In the Eucharist we participate in anticipation in the fulfillment of all creation in the divine Communion of love

• “The most intense moment of our communion with God is at the same time an intense moment of our communion with the earth” (Tony Kelly)

• We are taken into God and into God’s love for the creatures of our planetary community

Participation with All Creatures in the Communion of the Trinity

• “The Eucharist educates the imagination, the mind, and the heart to apprehend the universe as one of communion and connectedness in Christ” (Kelly)

• In and through this Eucharistic imagination and distinctive ecological vision and commitment can take shape

• We can see the see the other creatures of Earth as our kin, as radically interconnected with us in one Earth community of life before God

• We can begin to see critically – to see more clearly what is happening to the Earth

• A eucharistic imagination leads to an ecological ethos, culture and praxis.

Solidarity with the Victims of Climate Change

• Johannes Metz speaks of the memory of the passion as a dangerous memory

• The cross is a challenge all complacency before the suffering of others. It brings those who suffer to the centre of Christian faith

• It constantly challenges ideological justifications of the misery of the poor

• The resurrection offers a dynamic vision of hope, but does not dull the memory of the suffering – the wounds of the risen Christ

• This dangerous and critical memory provides an alternative way of seeing. It can lead to solidarity, to alternative life-styles and to personal and political action

Solidarity with the Victims

• The WCC points to areas, especially in the Southern hemisphere that are particularly vulnerable to climate change: “Though their per capita contribution to the causes of climate change is negligible, the will suffer from the consequences to a much larger degree”

• Climate change aggravates social and economic injustice. To contribute to this destruction “is not only a sin against the weak and unprotected but also against the earth-God’s gift of life”

• Solidarity involves personal and political commitment to the two strategies of mitigation and adaptation

Solidarity with the Victims• Adaptation: re-ordering society, budgeting for

disasters and hospitality to refugees • We gather in solidarity with Christians in Kiribati.

We gather in solidarity with those of other faiths• We remember those displaced from the homes

and the threat to millions of people• Mindful of Australia’s contribution to greenhouse,

of our wealth created by coal, of our use of motor vehicles

• Praying that our Eucharist “advance the peace and salvation of all the world” (3rd E. Prayer)

• We commit ourselves again to discipleship, to an ecological lifestyle, politics and praxis as people of hope and commitment