The Bishop of Lichfield's New Year Message
We had more carol
services at Lichfield last week than ever, and more people came to
most of the main Christmas services. But it’s noticeable that carol
services have a tendency these days to play down the tough parts of
the Christmas story and to hasten on to the joyful bits. We often
miss out the Fall in Genesis 3 – the story of our ancestors’
disobedience to God’s gracious instruction – and the damage this has
done not only to the human race and but also to the environment.
It’s not comforting, but to omit this part weakens the story.
There’s not much point in recounting the birth of a Saviour if we’ve
forgotten what the world needs saving from.
Even if the Christmas services played that bit down, Boxing Day
brought it all into our lives. It was quite extraordinary to be
sitting at home watching the pictures of the terrible tsunamis as
they destroyed lives and property all round the Indian Ocean and at
the same time watching the advertisements for sofas in the seasonal
sales. Which will I spend my money on? There was a horrible
similarity between the ruined goods littering the resorts of Sri
Lanka and the items we were being summoned to buy at the big stores.
(It is not surprising that the usual advertisements for holidays on
palm-fringed breezes were absent from our screens over the holiday).
We all suddenly woke up this week to the power of nature: what seems
beautiful and benign can be terribly hostile and dangerous.
Surprisingly both Old Testament and New Testament link the Fall of
humankind with a Fall in the natural world. Our ancestors’ rebellion
against a loving Creator has affected everything, including the
environment. The Genesis story puts it in terms of thorns and
thistles that make life a struggle. The Letter to the Romans speaks
of the whole created order being in bondage to death and decay. Both
Genesis and Romans hint to a future when Christ liberates the sons
and daughters of God from the power of evil in such a way that the
whole creation will also be liberated from decay. That is the
Christian hope, the hope that we experience whenever people accept
responsibility for what we can do to help when disaster strikes.
This hope means that there is much for us all to do this next year.
We are heading straight into a number of conflicts and
opportunities. The trade rules of the world are skewed in favour of
the rich polluters. It is not entirely coincidental that the poor of
the world die more in natural disasters. This year the G8 summit
will be in the U.K. and we have the presidency of the EU. It will be
a great opportunity for the people of these islands to let our voice
be heard, to finish the job of Jubilee 2000, to make the trade rules
fair again, and to release the poor nations from the unpayable debts
we have imposed upon them. We can also keep up the pressure on the
USA to ratify the Kyoto agreement and on our own government to keep
its environmental promises. We can give generously to the disaster
aid funds that will help rebuild countries like Sri Lanka and tackle
some of the longer term disaster areas of our world. Above all we
can pray that we will be part of the solution to the world problems
we face, not part of the problem, as we “wait with eager expectation
for the whole creation to be set free from its bondage to decay and
to obtain the glorious freedom of the children of God.”
Jonathan
Gledhill
Bishop of Lichfield.