Sermon at St Columba’s Uniting Church, Braddon ACT,
Sunday 8 September 2024, Robbie Tulip
The theme I will focus on today is the need to question our presuppositions. We all bring existing values, assumptions, prejudices and beliefs to bear when we make judgements and decisions. Our emotional instincts tell us to accept these beliefs rather than assess them in the light of reason. Our texts today call us to reverse this instinctive attitude and instead ground our ethics in logic and evidence, in a way that looks to long term impacts rather than immediate and obvious effects. These are important themes for my work in the multi faith chaplaincy at the Australian National University.
The Epistle of James gives a great example. Prejudice in favour of the rich and against the poor can be a natural sentiment for a church, or for any institution, who ask what a newcomer might bring. The contrasting receptions that James describes for rich and poor visitors show how easy it can be to live by prejudice, when we assume that a wealthy person can bring money and skills and connections and growth, while a poor person can only bring burdens and work and risk. The evidence of our senses sees the rich as worldly heirs, and as usually more educated and articulate and popular than the poor. James describes the reaction of partiality, welcoming the rich and ignoring the poor. This is an attitude we can easily understand, if not endorse.
Even when James insists that God has chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom, there is a frequent tendency to discount this teaching. The gospel calls us to an inversion of worldly values. Instead, Jesus argues that material wealth corrupts the relationship between rich people and God, in ways that are sometimes obvious but are also sometimes quite hard to detect. These are complex questions that invite us to reflect on what sort of a world we want to create.
Our reading from Proverbs provides more examples of how the Bible challenges our biases. Secular values find it hard to believe Proverb 22:8, “Whoever sows injustice will reap calamity, and the rod of anger will fail”, and 22:9 “Those who are generous are blessed, for they share their bread with the poor.” So often we experience the opposite of these Biblical teachings. The blessings of comfort are given to those who are selfish, while perpetrators of injustice often get away with it. These proverbs are sometimes seen as pious platitudes, wishful comfort without a basis in fact or reason.
Against such cynicism, we can observe that these proverbs have profound meaning and truth, but the timeframe they work on is slow. The calamity reaped by the unjust is often deferred or transferred. The spiritual benefits of generosity can be hard to discern, but some reflection can show its importance for both giver and recipient. God asks us to see the big picture, looking to the eventual overall consequences of different courses of action. That ethical framework is a difficult perspective to achieve, seeking to stand under the eye of eternity. A starting point can be a rigorous questioning of our beliefs. Do we hold beliefs just because they are comfortable and familiar, or do we try to find a coherent approach, without hypocrisy and contradiction? This problem of working toward a consistent vision should be a central moral question, and it was this call to integrity before God that inspired Jesus to walk the way of the cross to his resurrection.
The conversation between Jesus and the Syrophoenician woman, also known in Matthew’s account as the Canaanite woman, picks up this problem of careless prejudice in the most vivid way. Tribal thinking is an instinctive human trait. We have evolved to see belonging to our clan as the basis of identity. Community loyalty and trust are core tribal values. In this story, we see Jesus recognising the pitfalls of instinctive tribal thinking, and instead reviewing his emotional response against a higher vision.
At first, Jesus just ignores the woman’s pleas on behalf of her sick daughter. He seems exhausted after a long day, and just wants some privacy. Then, in a line in Matthew, missing in Mark, he tells her “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” indicating that he is unwilling to help because the sick girl is not Jewish. The woman’s continued efforts earn the rude racist dismissal from Jesus, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”
Calling foreigners dogs is entirely out of character for Jesus, out of line with his central teaching of love of God and neighbour. It is a demeaning racial slur that today we would see as illegal and offensive. The idea that the salvation of God is freely available to all is so central to Christianity that this line from Jesus appears shocking and inexplicable. Christianity regards Jesus as perfect and without sin, making this incident very surprising. Theologians try to explain it away by claiming Jesus did not mean what he says, but I see it differently. It is more about the high moral value of learning to listen and respond with care.
Perhaps we need to revise our assumptions about perfection? If we see Jesus as fully human and fully divine, then surely his ability to see that he has made a mistake and to change his mind in light of evidence is an essential part of his humanity?
Jewish exclusivity was a major theme of messianic expectations in the Old Testament. The Messiah was envisioned as a descendant of King David who would reign over Israel as a righteous, earthly king, bringing a return to Jewish sovereignty. As we know, these assumptions came to be dramatically questioned in the theory of salvation brought by Christ, with his central focus on love, truth, equality and justice. However, this story suggests that Jesus had initially assumed and accepted these Jewish ideas about exclusivity, without properly thinking them through.
Jesus’s first responses to the Canaanite woman seems to align with traditional Jewish exclusivity. His comments about dogs and the lost sheep of Israel reflect the common Jewish expectation that the Messiah’s primary mission was to the Jewish people, the descendants of Abraham, and that God’s promises were centred around the restoration of Israel.
The continued insistent pleas for help from this poor foreign woman, someone with no social status, seem to cause an epiphany for Jesus, a sudden realisation that his attitude was wrong. Jesus changes his mind, marking a decisive shift. He recognises that salvation cannot be confined to a tribe but must be universally available for all, through the grace of God.
Again, Matthew’s account expands on the story we read in Mark. Jesus is listening and learning and changing his mind, not just proclaiming a dogmatic evangelical doctrine, the kerygma. When he says “O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire”, at Matthew 15:28, the old idea of the messiah as a Jewish warlord breaks down. The daughter is healed because of the mother’ faith in God. Sincerity and humility, not ethnicity, become the basis for receiving God’s blessing and healing. The story highlights the universal nature of Jesus’ mission, which transcends ethnic boundaries and the traditional messianic focus on Israel alone.
It seems that Jesus has changed his mind. This is something politicians are taught never to do, as it makes them seem weak and indecisive. Napoleon’s advice was to never retreat and never retract. Refusing to admit any error might create a public image of perfection, but it conceals numerous flaws, as Napoleon himself discovered during his disastrous retreat from Moscow.
The form of perfection we find in this story from Jesus is quite different. In this story, Jesus values inclusive principles of respect, listening, dialogue, equality, forgiveness, mercy and human dignity. It is often the case that we assume things to be true that careful reflection and dialogue can reveal to be flawed. That is how our social values evolve. The dialogue between Jesus and the Canaanite woman is a parable for the importance of courteous listening and reflection.
Jesus took this inclusive principle to an extreme with his call in the Sermon on the Mount to love our enemies. The situation in the world of his time was that previously separate cultures were thrown together, creating what we call the common era. Christianity emerged as a way all those different communities could live together with mutual respect, although this was only partial. The Empire needed to retain Roman primacy, and so the creeds simplified and distorted the original gospel, losing some of the sublime transforming message of love.
We are now in a world situation somewhat similar to the early Roman Empire, with different cultures learning to live together. Jesus was able to transcend his own instinctive prejudices to recognise the universal dignity of our shared humanity. We can look now to how our tribal instincts govern our decisions and values, and we can challenge our own presuppositions. The healing mercy that Christ showed to helps us see the universal saving love of God as the basis of a transformed and liberating ethical vision.
Lectionary Texts
Proper 18 (23)Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost Sep 08, 2024
A sermon I gave at Kippax Uniting Church on 1 September 2024, using the texts Song of Solomon 2:8-13, Romans 8:18-25, and Revelation 11:18; 15:2-3; 22:1-2
Saint Paul tells us at Romans 8:22 that the whole creation is groaning together in the pains of childbirth. He says the creation waits in eager expectation for the revelation of the children of God. This is a remarkable Christian vision of the integration of care for humanity and care for nature, what Pope Francis has called an integral ecology. Paul saw the expectation of faith and hope and love for humanity in the message of Christ as somehow mirrored in the expectation of the cosmos itself. The idea that the whole creation is suffering provides a starting point to discuss how God is both present and absent in the world and in the cosmos.
In comparing the created order to a woman in labor, Paul implies that the world has an inherent divine purpose, that our planet is pregnant with divine intent. He looks to a goal of planetary transformation that will bring a complete change of our perception. Once a child is born, its relationship to the world around it transforms completely compared to when it was in the womb. Paul teaches that the world will be transformed through broader understanding of how God relates to nature and to humanity, as a new world is born from the womb of the old.
A baby is not seen until it is born. Similarly, the reign of God is largely invisible, seemingly absent, but ready and waiting to be born when the world is ready.
A main difference between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the world is that God’s reign is orderly, while worldly politics and culture are chaotic and fallen from grace. Paul saw the reign of God reflected in the perfect eternal order and stability of the visible heavens, the whole created order of the cosmos. God calls us to shift from chaos to order, from fall to redemption, grounded in moral principles of love, truth and justice.
These principles of divine order are eternal, extending beyond human society to encompass the whole natural creation. We speak of a fall from grace as occurring when a person loses their previously stable position, status and purpose and is disgraced. The analogy with a state of divine grace as imagined in Paul’s creation theology can see the whole planet as having a stable position, status and purpose, as distinct from our confused and corrupted human condition. In modern climate science, this sense of a state of planetary grace can be understood through study of fields such as Earth System Stability, Complex Adaptive Systems and punctuated equilibrium.
Is it possible for the whole world to return to a state of grace? That is the astounding promise of salvation in Christ presented by Saint Paul in his Letter to the Romans.
The orderly nature of the cosmos is seen in the stable patterns of the stars and the solar system. We can also see stable order in the durable productive cycles of ecological systems, except that climate change is disrupting and corrupting the existing order. Jesus calls in the Lord’s Prayer for the will of God to be done on Earth as in Heaven. He implores us to see the unchanging and eternal as the model for what our constantly changing temporal world could become.
Paul envisages a change akin to childbirth. He describes the creation itself being set free from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. His call for patient hope for what we do not yet see invites us to imagine the presence of God among us.
The Song of Solomon celebrates the presence of God in nature as the season changes from winter to spring, as we celebrate the first day of spring today with Wattle Day, Father’s Day and Creation Sunday. Solomon compares God to the Sun, “leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills”, looking in our window of winter to call us to a new year as the spring flowers appear on the earth and the time of singing has come.
Celebration of the natural cycle of the year was central to the agrarian communities of Biblical times, seeing God in the cycle of the seasons between times of action in the warmer months and reflection in cooler months. Religion set the timing of festivals to accord with the seasons, using astronomy to watch the movement of the Sun and Moon against the stars.
Birth is difficult. The Book of Revelation imagines a time when the wrath of God will destroy those who destroy the Earth, at Chapter Eleven Verse Eighteen. This is a remarkable ecological vision that imagines God transforming our planet through Christ, like Paul’s vision of the birth of a new creation. John of Patmos, the author of Revelation, invites us here to think about who today is destroying the Earth and how they stand with God. To return to a state of grace is not compatible with destroying the Earth. Instead the Earth must be held sacred. And yet that destruction may be our planetary trajectory, if global warming is not reversed. The Revelation imagines a cosmic war between good and evil, fought over whether our Earth has a future of grace or of corruption. This can be partly understood by seeing the divine blessing upon natural Earth systems and divine wrath upon those who destroy them.
Revelation 15:2 describes those who had conquered the beast and its image and the number of its name, standing beside a sea of glass mixed with fire. In line with the previous statement about divine wrath, this difficult image of victory over the beast of the apocalypse, seen as the embodiment of evil, can be understood to refer to God’s victory over everything that destroys the Earth.
In a beautiful image of the Kingdom of God, Saint John next tells us “They were holding harps from God, and they sang the song of God’s servant Moses and of the Lamb: “Great and wonderful are Your works, O Lord God Almighty! Just and true are Your ways, O King of Ages!
This title King of Ages is often mistranslated King of Nations or King of Saints. The focus of King of Ages is on God’s eternal timeless nature rather than authority over nations. This sense of eternal divine sovereignty accords with an ecological vision of the world, seeing a deep time context of what the ancients meant by Ages. My view is that the ancient concept of Ages derived from astronomy, watching and measuring the slow movement of the stars against the seasons.
The cosmology in our texts today is about creation history, from the original good creation, then the fall of man, looking toward redemption in Christ as a return to a state of divine grace. In iridescent poetry, John expands on this vision of grace. He tells us the angel showed him a river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the main street of the city. He says on either side of the river stood a tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit and yielding a fresh crop for each month. He comments that the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.
This vision of the tree of life has much to tell us about the theology of creation. The tree of life first appears in the Bible at Genesis 2:9, where it represents life and God’s eternal providence. It is distinct from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, from which Adam and Eve are forbidden to eat. The return of the Tree of Life in Revelation 22 at the end of the Bible marks the promise of a return of humanity to a state of grace, coming home from the exile of the fall.
An intriguing thing about this image is its fit to observation of the heavens. Here is an artwork I made to explore the analogy between the pure crystal river of life and the Milky Way, and between the Tree of Life, with one fruit for each month, and the position of the Sun against the stars over twelve months. A clue to this reading is the statement that the tree grows on both sides of the river. No earthly tree grows on both sides of a river, whereas the twelve zodiac constellations traversed by the Sun are on both sides of the great celestial river of the Milky Way Galaxy.
Using astronomy software, I made a map of the stars along the Milky Way as viewed looking south from Australia in autumn. Scorpio is on the lower left while Sirius is at top right. From Sirius, the Milky Way goes through Argo the ship, then the Southern Cross, the Centaur including the Pointers, the Dark Emu, Norma the Carpenter’s Square, and flowing out into Scorpio.
The tumbling river of life starts at Sirius and goes through the tree of life before falling over two waterfalls and reaching Scorpio after pooling at the Dark Emu and Norma. I have drawn the tree of life based on the Southern Cross as the trunk, adding roots and branches. The twelve signs of the zodiac above the tree are shown to symbolise the tree of life growing on both sides of the river of life. The Large Magellanic Cloud is shown as a turtle, Argo as a flying goose, and a circle marks the South Celestial Pole, the point around which the whole heavens revolve.
This next picture is again an astronomical sky map I made, showing how the Milky Way bisects the circle of the zodiac. The constellations from Taurus to Sagittarius are to the south of the Milky Way, while those from Gemini to Scorpio are to the north. This star map includes the southern heavens, with the brightest stars Sirius and Canopus pointing toward the Large Magellanic Cloud and the South Celestial Pole.
The ancients were far more aware of visual astronomy than we are today. Watching the stars provided the celestial context for the message of the Gospels, seeing God present in the order of the visible heavens, great and glorious and gracious, unchanging and eternal.
Seeing this eternal order of the stars as a framework to understand time can be compared to the theory of time in the Bible with its majestic story of creation, fall and redemption.
The study of deep time enables us to understand how fragile and sensitive our living planet really is. Climate change is our biggest danger. Humans have added a trillion tonnes of carbon to the air, which is now like a ticking time bomb waiting to explode. At least four times in geological history, rising carbon has caused mass extinctions. Defusing this risk requires rigorous scientific assessment. While carbon is the big climate problem, the best way to treat it in the short term, in my view, is to rebrighten the planet, using global cooling technologies to reflect more sunlight back to space and increase what is known as planetary albedo, also called reflectivity or brightness. Earth’s albedo has darkened by nearly 2% in this century, a major contributor to heating. Higher albedo would reverse this trend.
Global cooling requires immense care and cooperation. This step would change the relationship between humanity and our planet, opening a need for global climate stewardship. Wise governance is essential to ensure decisions are safe and acceptable and effective. International governance of research and planning can enable coordinated use of sunlight reflection, on the model of world cooperation in many sectors of the economy and culture and science.
However, there is much opposition to this proposal. Governments recently prevented the United Nations Environment Programme from studying it. Sceptics should weigh the risk of research into rebrightening the planet against the much worse risks of unchecked climate change, even with emission reduction. An emerging scientific consensus agrees that the likely benefits of rebrightening justify research, aiming to mitigate the adverse impacts of excess heat, such as sea level rise, loss of biodiversity, extreme weather and systemic disruptions. The UK Royal Society estimated the cost to cool the Earth by increasing planetary albedo as 1000 times less than the estimated cost of equivalent cooling from cutting emissions.
Conflicts around the world are worsened by impacts of global warming and extreme weather on food security and forced migration. Climate is a security problem. Discussions on rebrightening the planet would encourage global cooperation for peace, aiming to reduce the climate drivers of conflict. Unfortunately, this line of thought is largely excluded from discussion at the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I hope that will change.
As we return again to Paul’s vision of the whole creation groaning, we pray for our groaning world with eight billion people and collapsing ecosystems, with no clear path toward a sustainable future. The clear hope of Paul for a redeemed creation, where he says in Romans 8 that the creation itself will be set free, is reflected in the beautiful image in revelation 22 of the leaves of the tree of life for the healing of the nations. Healing is better with a good diagnosis. Trying to understand the thinking in the Bible about the theology of creation can help us to heal our world.
July 22, 2024 at 10:11 pm
· Filed under Uncategorized
I led a worship service on 21 July 2024 at Kippax Uniting Church. Here is my sermon, reflecting on threads of love.
Threads of Love: Weaving Christ’s Love across Cultures and BoundariesRobbie Tulip, Kippax Uniting Church, 21 July 2024
The Uniting Church has just completed its 19th National Assembly, held last week in Parramatta. Our incoming President, Rev Charissa Suli, chose as the theme for the next three years, Threads of Love, Weaving Christ’s Love Across Cultures and Boundaries. This theme is celebrated today across the Uniting Church for Intercultural Neighbouring Sunday, honouring the many different cultural traditions who contribute to the Uniting Church.
Rev Suli brings her Tongan heritage of the practice of weaving traditional fala mats in community to guide this shared vision of the church. Weaving is an activity of love, of cultural belonging, and of shared identity, nurturing our moral vision. The love of Christ enables us to weave together a future where unity is celebrated, where diversity is cherished and where every thread of our communal tapestry resonates with the boundless love of Christ. This metaphor of weaving as a way to see the divine action of God in the world describes how the church gathers together to recall and constantly rebuild the unity we have in Christ’s love. Each thread retains its distinct identity while joining with all the others to form a larger and stronger whole.
Just as the fala mat has its own identity, the church is more than the sum of the parts that form it. Whenever we build one another up in faith we are weaving invisible threads of love, rebinding and nourishing community. We create the ligaments of religion in our relationships, connecting one another in Christ, just as the ligaments of our skeleton hold our own body together. Love is the thread of the complex invisible tapestry of relationships in Christ, grounded in the ultimate truth of the grace of God as the source of all vital connections, creating universal order and shared purpose.
Our New Testament reading today is from the letter from Saint Paul to the young church in the Greek city of Ephesus. Ephesians 2:12-22 speaks to this vision of weaving the threads of love as the source of unity across cultural boundaries. Describing a time when the church was split by factions as it expanded from its Jewish origins into the wider Greek world, Paul found profound hope in the unifying love of God that Christ brought to the world. In Paul’s vision, the love of God enables us to openly discuss and reconcile our differences, to establish and maintain strong relationships, building communities of love and openness and forgiveness. Even where groups of people see themselves as entirely separate from each other, the spirit of peace in Christ, revealed in the story of the cross, has a reconciling power to overcome difference and create unity. As Paul says, “in his flesh Christ has made both into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.” Part of the problem with reconciliation is that it requires mutual respect, honouring the truth in differing perspectives, requiring transparent and accountable negotiation to ensure the settlement is not an unfair victory of one side over the other.
Our world today sees steadily growing hostility and division between conflicting political views. A lack of respectful dialogue and conversation produces lack of understanding of differing perspectives, building walls of indifference and ignorance. Whether it is social media algorithms and echo chambers that tell people only what they want to hear, and so reinforce their prejudices, or the terrible wars in Gaza and Ukraine, or the extreme political polarisation between progressives and conservatives, the world is on a dangerous path toward worsening conflict. The social contempt that drives separation is opposed to the love of Christ, who always works to bring people together as one, weaving all our threads into a larger whole infused by the grace of God. Paul describes the mission of Jesus as to create in himself one new humanity in place of the two who disagree, thus making peace, reconciling both to God in one body through the cross, thus putting an end to hostility.
The reconciling power of the cross of Christ speaks of the great guilt of humanity, that when a perfect man appeared among us the public response was derision and murder. In the ancient world the story of the cross of Christ hung heavy on the consciences of both the Roman Empire and the Jewish authorities. They had colluded in the execution of a blameless man who sought to make the world a better place through the love of God. The reconciling meaning of the crucifixion of Jesus stood as symbol for the many thousands of crosses that the Romans used to execute their political opponents. Christ was one for all, enabling forgiveness of sin through the ministry of reconciliation. We can see a similar story in Australia as we consider the challenges of reconciliation surrounding the deep trauma of Indigenous people.
The passion story of Christ presents a stinging rebuke to the worldly values of psychological and political corruption and depravity. This rebuke remains as important today as it was two thousand years ago, calling us to an ethic of reconciling love, grounded in truth. When Paul tells the Ephesians that Jesus is our peace, he summarises the message of the incarnation of God, that real peace requires that our society is woven together in love. This message struck fear into the worldly authorities, who insisted instead that they were the only source of peace, defined as military and religious control, and had no interest in the saving transformative values of love proclaimed by Christ.
Our reading from Jeremiah 23:1-6, A righteous shepherd for Israel, foretells the problems of hypocrisy, error, incompetence, rejection and false prophecy that Jesus confronted in the Gospels, notably in his condemnation of the scribes and pharisees in Matthew 23. When shepherds destroy and scatter the flock, as Jeremiah describes here, they are not real shepherds. Operating under false pretenses, they were employed to protect the sheep but instead caused them harm. This was a parable for how Jeremiah saw the leaders of Israel in his day. They failed to fulfil their duty to protect the people through the wisdom and fairness and clarity that comes from authentic faith in God. Jeremiah’s prophecy of a righteous shepherd looks forward to the advent of Christ, as a wise and just king of love, weaving society together according to values of respect and dignity and truth.
These two readings from Jeremiah and Ephesians point toward two different approaches to Christianity that can be described as messianic and imperial. The idea of Messianic Christianity is highly controversial, focused on saving the world. A messianic approach seeks to follow the way of Christ in the spirit of truth, proclaiming the transformative and liberating message in the story of the cross, challenging the cross as a symbol of the repressive power of sin and death that is overcome in the resurrection. Imperial Christianity, by contrast, converts the cross from an instrument of oppression and control into a symbol of stability, and uses faith as a basis for worldly power, distorting the Gospel call to save the world into an endorsement of existing social structures.
The divine order of God is the fabric of the universe. We participate in this sacred fabric as we weave the threads of love and light in our community, growing our connection to God and to each other, deepening our spiritual identity and vision, honouring the mission of Christ as our true source of peace.
The Stone the Builders Rejected Will Become Head of the Corner
Palm Sunday, 24 March 2024
Robbie Tulip
Kippax Uniting Church
The stone the builders refused will become the head of the corner. This line from verse 22 of Psalm 118 is celebrated in Christianity as a foundation for systematic theology. I will reflect today on how this great Biblical teaching can continue to serve in witness to Christian faith.
The paradox of the stone the builders refused describes a key ethical problem explained by Jesus in the Gospels, that some things we reject can turn out to be most important, and things that seem the most important to worldly values are often of least importance for God. In the Psalm, accepting the rejected stone leads to the teaching that will later be repeated on Palm Sunday, Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the LORD. The cornerstone was lost and has been found in the person of Christ.
Saint Mark tells us Christ enters Jerusalem on a colt that has never been ridden, as his disciples proclaim the words of the psalm, Hosanna in the Highest, Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the LORD. In Luke’s version, Christ goes on to say to the pharisees, if these ones were silent the stones of the fields would cry out, invoking the image of rejected stone in the psalm. By coming to Earth in the name of God, Jesus is the stone the builders reject, a reflection on both the power of God and also the great power of sin to influence our values and ethics.
In this metaphor, let us first look at the stones the builders accept. In stonemasonry, the builders will use even square cut stones for a bridge or arch, setting aside the remaining uneven broken pieces to choose a final cornerstone to hold the whole in place. You might recall our former Minister Rev Gordon Ramsay taught us about this usage. More broadly, the builders are us, whenever we reject Christ as our cornerstone. The stones accepted by the builders symbolise everything that worldly human values can fit within our regular cultural and legal priorities. Our laws and social values seem to build our world, often without reference to God. In our construction we choose to accept some things while rejecting others, but the Bible teaches that much that we reject has enduring and eternal value.
The Indigenous Voice Referendum was rejected, seemingly because the demand for immediate Constitutional change was too sudden for success at this time. An underlying message of the referendum is that the rejected status of Indigenous people is changing, and they will become a cornerstone of Australian identity.
The stone the builders reject symbolises those things that our society ignores as not worth our interest, but which actually have great enduring value. This is particularly central to the Christian faith that Saint Paul expresses in his Letter to the Philippians. Paul tells us the seemingly worthless slave is actually the King of Glory, that Christ emptied himself of all but love to represent God on Earth. Jesus was a pariah messiah.
This union of opposites in Christ the glorious slave provides a rational underpinning for Christian ethics. The slave as king reveals the eternal within time, inverting social values. Paul tells us to “let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited or grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.”
In taking the form of a slave, Christ lived under the eye of eternity. He found security in spiritual vision of God. Here we can see a difference between accepting and rejecting Christ as our cornerstone. Material things provide the physical security needed to focus on higher goals. Problems arise when we imagine that ownership of more things is an end in itself, rather than a means to a higher spiritual goal. We forget the stone the builders refused. This forgetfulness generates a traumatic failure to engage the eternal. It means many people have lost the ability to comprehend eternal values – the good, the beautiful and the true; salvation, grace and justice; faith, hope and love.
Our inability to live under the eye of eternity leads to a Christian critique of human nature and the world, that people care about things that are meaningless and ignore things that are crucial. The cross of Christ stands as a symbol for everything crucial that we ignore. One of the most interesting reflections on this loss of eternal values is from the Greek philosopher Aristotle, who held that life is widely infected by a decadence that refuses to take anything seriously. Overcoming this decadent unserious infection of life requires that eternal values should be the cornerstone of our ethics.
We often cannot see the eternal, and as a result we pretend that our temporal values, often selfish and short-sighted, are enough. Jesus calls us to go beyond our limited perspective, and instead see that a new Earth and new Heaven are possible. A starting point, expressing the same theology as the transformative centrality of the stone the builders refused, is his teaching in the Beatitudes at Matthew 5 that the meek will inherit the Earth. This teaching is clearly true in the context of climate change, where failure to show some meekness before the power of natural planetary systems is not sustainable. A change to a meeker attitude will be needed to find the rejected climate strategies that will become the cornerstone.
The arrogance that ignores the many rejected stones of our world cannot endure. Christ expressed his rejected stone theology in the Last Judgement at Matthew 25:31, teaching that salvation is through the dignity of the rejected, through mercy to the poor, hungry, thirsty, imprisoned, estranged and sick, treating the least of the world as first in the kingdom of God, seeing these rejected stones of society as crucial cornerstones of our salvation.
In the prophecy of Isaiah 53:3, the messiah is despised and rejected. Here we see how the most important thing for our salvation, the presence of God incarnate in Jesus Christ, is invisible to many people. And so it was that after entry in triumph on Palm Sunday, Jesus was executed on a Roman cross on Good Friday, only to show he is our true cornerstone in his resurrection from the dead on Easter Sunday. Isaiah asks us to reflect on what we reject, to revise our views on things we despise. For if Christ is among the despised and rejected, many values of our world need to be turned upside down. It is not about suddenly opening the prison gates to release criminals, but about thinking about human dignity and the consequences of our decisions, about how we can build a better world where the blessings of God extend to all.
Palm Sunday is timed for when the Sun moves from the Southern Hemisphere to the Northern Hemisphere. This is the move from winter into spring in the north and from summer into autumn here in the south. This shift of seasons at the equinox marks a natural change of planetary energy in the annual cycle of warm and cool weather. In Israel, the Passover change is from cooler to warmer months. So at Easter we in Australia now enter our cooler months.
By entering Jerusalem in the holy week before Passover, Jesus represented the despised and rejected of the world. That is not to say we should somehow accept everything, but rather that much in our world fails to take the long-term view, ignoring the perspectives of those at the margins, despising and rejecting those who have no voice. Christ is the voice of the voiceless. When Karl Marx said religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions, he in some way saw that a world with heart and soul is needed to liberate the oppressed. The vision of Christ that the stone the builders reject will be head of the corner offers the heart and soul of liberation, grounded within the eternal grace of God. Amen
Prayers for Others
Let us pray. Eternal God of all holiness and love, you are our salvation, our connection.
Be in our hearts and minds today and every day. Help us to pray for ourselves, for our families, for our church, for our communities, for our country and for our world.
We grieve for our world of confusion and trauma and violence. We pray for an end to conflicts, for your just peace to become the focus and goal for all. We pray for a focus on what is important and good.
As we reflect on your teaching that the stone the builders refuses will be head of the corner, we pray that you may help us to think about the occasions when we have ignored something or someone that later proved to be important, or when we ourselves have been ignored by others when we had something important to say.
Is it a family member or friend who was asking us to be more patient and caring?
Is it a problem in our community or our nation, where people just won’t listen to evidence and reason?
The psychology of arrogance and delusion creates formidable barriers to dialogue.
Help us Lord to find patience and calm and moments of stillness in our lives, to always hear your forgiving word of grace.
Through your presence in our lives, may your healing energy extend into our community.
Through our prayers, may we focus our attention on what is good.
In times of contemplation, may we take time to think and to hear our inner voice of conscience. Do we need to find a bigger view, or change our view, or examine our motives and priorities? Are we building a bridge that will crumble for lack of a fitting cornerstone at the head of the arch?
On Palm Sunday we reflect on the triumphant entry of Christ into Jerusalem, and the trail of tears that led him to the cross and resurrection. We pray for those who rally today for refugees and for peace, that they may be able to open up wider dialogues about our social priorities. We pray for all people who are at the margins of society, for Indigenous Australians, for the mentally ill, for people suffering bombardment in Ukraine and Gaza, for prisoners, for refugees, for those coping with trauma, neglect and abuse.
May we hear the word of hope and faith from Christ for all who suffer and are lost, the stone the builders refused will be head of the corner.
We now take a few moments of silence to pray in our hearts about our own greatest concerns.
Deep Incarnation – Comments from Robbie Tulip, 23 January 2023
Presentation to Ecological Theology Retreat, Desert Creek
The integration of ecology and theology is an essential feature of modern spiritual ethics, in recognition that systematic observation of the natural world provides the context for well-grounded thinking about religion. Indigenous spirituality based on connection to country offers a starting point for conversation with the Caring for Creation movement about Biblical ideas that call us to revere the natural world as sacred. Celebrating the sanctity of nature equally aligns to what Pope Francis described in his encyclical Laudato Si as a ‘sublime communion of creation’.
Fr Denis Edwards provided a profound study of ecological theology in his book Deep Incarnation, published in 2019. Its main theme is God’s redemptive suffering with creatures, how the presence of God’s love is the source of salvation. These are complex ideas that require some work to define and interpret. Incarnation is the Christian belief that the eternal God who created and sustains our universe was fully present in the life of Jesus Christ, who provides a unique point of connection between the eternal truth and grace of God and the lost and fallen world of humanity. Only this incarnate connection to God through Christ can save the world from its path to destruction and enable us to find a path toward healing and flourishing through ecological commitment (p124).
A problem that Denis Edwards observed in traditional theology was that it often wrongly separated humanity from nature, mistakenly interpreting salvation in terms of personal afterlife rather than seeking an integrated vision of what it could mean for God to save the world. Edwards writes that we can no longer think of ourselves as individuals whose reality ends with our skins, but rather must find our salvation through the interconnected world of all matter and energy and information (p26). Similarly, the incarnate Christ is internally related to the cosmos at large (p25). As Jesus said at John 3:17, he came to save the world, not to condemn it, meaning the world in its whole planetary reality.
Reading the Bible shows us that Christ understood salvation to mean planetary transformation, together shifting our whole community from a false vision to a true understanding of how the glorious grace of God is working to liberate us from what Saint Paul referred to as bondage to decay (Rom 8:21). Where conventional theology often taught that God could not change, Deep Incarnation sees that God can and does change, in that God’s identity is fully given to us in the story of Christ, where God fully chooses to experience all the changing feelings of life in all their complex nature (p82). God’s nature, as a basic divine attribute, to want humanity to freely flourish for ever on Earth, means that God is intimately entwined with our constantly changing world.
Deep Incarnation extends the traditional understanding of faith by seeing God’s loving presence in the whole of creation, recognising that God experiences suffering and change through radical solidarity and love for the whole world (p121). God differs from us in being eternal while we are bound within time, infinite where we are finite, all-powerful whereas we are weak, and purely good while our human motives mix good with evil. Jesus Christ, as the presence of God within the finite bounds of time and space, connects us to the infinite and eternal. Jesus brings the unconditional eternal love of God to confront the evil of the world through his sublime moral teachings, leading to his sacrificial death on the cross and the transforming power of his resurrection as an all-embracing promise of healing and fulfilment (p105).
Saint John’s Gospel tells us that the meaning of the incarnation is that the divine Word of God became mortal human flesh. Denis Edwards explores the ecological meaning of this teaching, observing that the incarnation is a cosmic event (p6), that God is limited to working with creaturely reality (p14, p125), and that God suffers together in solidarity with all nature as an expression of divine love (p15), taking the side of the victims (p24) and feeling their pain (p113). The incarnation signifies the work of God toward a peaceful and holy creation, calling all humanity to cooperate with God in enabling the natural world to flourish (p16) through the reconciliation of all things (p126).
Therefore, the theology of Deep Incarnation sees reality in evolving relational terms, as an interconnected web of life, an ecological system where everything is connected and related to everything else (p19, p112). Christ enables all creation to find unity and wholeness in relation to God (p20), with the divine Word of God supporting the complex interweaving of matter and spirit (p23). The risen Christ is the ecological centre of creation, with the Word incarnate revealed in and constituted by ecological and cosmic interconnections (p111, p113). The profound teaching of Saint Paul that in Christ all things hold together (Col 1:17) means that the incarnation enables the coherent unity of all creation (p24). The incarnation reflects the humble Wisdom of God in the world, recognising that in Christ God became as nothing in order that he might be everything (Phil 2:5-11, p115). Indigenous people can relate to the idea that God became nothing because they have so often been disregarded as though they were nothing.
The theology of Deep Incarnation draws on the ideas of the early church to observe that the Word of God provides leadership and order to govern the world (p58). However, the insatiable murder and violence that fills the whole earth (p60) shows humanity has turned away from the order of grace, creating an essential need to find a point of connection to the enduring truths of the love and goodness and care of God. As St Athanasius of Alexandria wrote, the incarnation of Christ enables us to lift our eyes to the immensity of heaven, and discerning the harmony of creation, to know its ruler, the Word of God (p61). This sense of the Word of God as providing the stable harmony of the visible heavens, like the laws of physics, presents an essential clue for us to reconcile theology and science, recognising the elegant mathematical order observed in astronomy as revealing the rational grace of God.
This same gracious mathematical order seen in the grandeur of the cosmos ultimately rules the more chaotic ecological order of our planet through the unity of all, obeying the scientific principle ‘on earth as in heaven’. Cosmic order is understood in the incarnation, with Christ as the rational mediating connection (Heb 9:15) between the seeming disorder of the world and the eternal order seen in the heavens, showing the pathway of redemption. Heaven is not just a comforting emotional fantasy, but rather a vision of the planetary transformation of the earth, which is our permanent home (p86). The Word of God teaches us to overcome the pervasive problem that we have been led astray by our senses (p62) and instead to find the deep reason within the story of grace, from Jesus Christ as the one who governs and orders the creation through wisdom (p63).
Edwards contends that a key message of holy wisdom is that the human community is responsible for the wellbeing of all life on earth (p64), but our worship of false Gods has blinded us to this essential truth. Salvation therefore involves a new kind of relationship of unity between humanity and God and nature (p65), seen in God’s loving solidarity with suffering as opening the path to the transforming and liberating sanctification of our world, entwined in human nature (p76), revealed in the cross of Christ. Our intimate integrating connection to God arises from recognition that God shares in all good values that support the ongoing flourishing of our complex planetary wellbeing, and opposes all evil values that promote needless destruction and suffering (p77).
The theology of the cross presents the profundity of deep incarnation, firstly with the observation that in his death on the cross, Christ revealed and confronted the radical power of evil in the world, and triumphed over evil by rising from the dead. The theologian Karl Rahner saw the death of Christ in ecological terms, as an entry into the heart of the Earth, where everything is interconnected (p86). Rather than the old story of the descent of Christ to Hell, Edwards invites us to see Easter Saturday as a time when Earth is infused with divine life, with the resurrection as an embrace of the Earth (p87). Through the cross we are called to love the Earth as our mother (p89), through the loving self-identification of the crucified Christ with creation (p111). When Edwards says the cross is imprinted by the Word on the whole of reality (p122), he means God’s incarnate presence in Christ serves to reveal the sanctity of all nature.
The evolutionary framework of ecological spirituality calls us to see life on earth as oriented to an ever-increasing complexity toward spirit (p90), with the incarnation of God in Christ revealing above all that the whole of creation is one. This presentation of natural complexity as beloved by God further suggests that ecological theology has an essential role in advocating for the sanctity of biodiversity. We can see divine complexity in the ever-deepening ecological interactions of environmental systems, and can therefore see the destruction of complex natural systems as evil. The Bible endorses this view by saying the wrath of God is against those who destroy the Earth (Rev 11:18). We can justly see this moral vision in the injunction of Christ in the Last Judgement (Matt 25:40) that whatever we do to the most vulnerable things in nature we do to Jesus Christ.
In Christ, humanity can transcend our instinctive unreflective bodily situation to understand our unity with God (p93), overcoming our tribal instincts to evolve toward a higher spiritual unity. Through Christ, the world as a whole is illumined by God, through commitment to the planetary community of life, revealing Christ as the innermost secret of all the world (p97). God is not impassive, unfeeling or distant (p114). God is kind and loving and just and good, entirely present in our world for our salvation through the incarnate earthly life of Christ.
Our lectionary texts for today are from Jeremiah 28 and Matthew 10. They both focus on prophecy, a particularly difficult theme in theology. The wisdom tradition places prophetic prediction of the future in the context of understanding the signs of the times. Rather than insisting just one course of events is inevitably fated by God, a predictive prophetic approach recognises that different paths are possible, depending on how people respond to their situation. People have the freedom to listen to prophets and change their actions in response. The view of prophecy as a divine revelation from God is important, but does not have to involve supernatural or miraculous powers. Prophecy can rather be seen as arising from careful observation and analysis. The prophets of the Bible are our cultural elders and role models. They should be read with care to appreciate their powerful insights.
Jeremiah is a major prophet in the Hebrew Scriptures. Our text today from Jeremiah 28 discusses the political debate in ancient Israel about whether the nation should submit to rule from Babylon or seek independence. Popular sentiment supported independence, but Jeremiah prophesied that this path of rebellion against empire would bring sword and famine and plague. He rejected the views of the false prophet Hananiah who predicted rapid restoration of national sovereignty and return of the Jewish nobles from exile in Babylon.
Jeremiah’s assessment was that Israel was too weak and corrupt to stand up to the might of Babylon. This uncomfortable message about national security led to him being placed in stocks for public humiliation and dumped into a sewerage tank to die (luckily he was rescued). Jeremiah argued that Israel had put itself in this bad situation by its own lack of faith in God. Instead of a focus on moral principles to govern society, Israel had allowed a hedonistic and selfish culture to grow unchecked. The prophecy was entirely about the consequences of Israel’s actions, pointing out the potential for change.
As a small nation surrounded by large and powerful empires, the only hope for Israel’s national security was to foster good diplomatic relations with its neighbours so they would treat it with respect and friendship. But Israel ignored this prophetic message. The result was the captivity in Babylon. Israel failed to heed the warning from the prophet Ezekiel that the nation’s pride and aggression led to their subjugation by foreign powers.
Instead of a government that followed the divine commands of justice and mercy and love, Israel had fragmented its political unity and wellbeing by allowing the rich to exploit the poor and forgetting about God. Jeremiah saw all these problems as symbolised by the popular worship of false idols instead of the one true God. He believed that a humble and respectful discussion about religion was essential to military and political strategy and security and stability.
Prophecy is about telling the truth in a blunt and unvarnished way. It is no wonder people dislike prophets who challenge the comforting emotional myths the community has come to believe. In Jeremiah’s time, as in every time, people wanted to believe the false prophets who painted a simple rosy picture. But Jeremiah insisted the signs of the times were very negative – full of war, famine, pestilence and death – requiring a change of social priorities. It is natural that people are upset by such claims and will look for any excuse to ignore and mock people who promote them.
Despite his generally negative outlook, Jeremiah did have a positive long-term vision for the world, predicting that eventually a prophet would emerge who could call for peace. With this vision Jeremiah saw the need for a messiah, a world saviour who could proclaim the truth that will set us free and bring peace to the world. But the messiah could only arrive when world conditions were ready for peace.
How does Jesus Christ fit into this vision? The prophet Isaiah rightly predicted that Christ would be despised and rejected. Like Jeremiah, Christ came into the world in a time of war, dominated by the brutal Roman conquest. He prophesied the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, a catastrophe that Rome subsequently inflicted in 70 AD. Naturally such a calamitous prophecy was very unwelcome to the Jewish community. This must have played a part in their suspicion toward the overall message of Christ in the Gospels.
The comprehensive reformation of morality that Christ proposed in the Sermon on the Mount has a profound prophetic vision, but did not really offer a practical short term political solution for Israel in its conflict with Rome. In the long term, the difficult prophetic messages that led Christ to the cross were necessary and accurate and were vindicated in the story of the resurrection.
We can see why prophets like Jeremiah and Christ face political difficulties from rulers who found their message unwelcome, but also why the prophets were subsequently recognised and celebrated as people who brought essential information that the world tended to ignore. As Jesus says in our text today, everyone who welcomes true prophecy welcomes God into the world and is rewarded for that insight.
The most important prophecy from Christ, in my view, is at Matthew 24:14, “this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.” Jesus explains that the end of the age that he predicts will be a difficult time, but also a time of great positive transformation. He goes on to argue, if I can paraphrase, that the spread of the gospel to all nations around the whole world is an essential precursor to a planetary transformation. When the whole world is connected, the universal recognition of messianic values of Christ will become the basis of good government. His vision is of an ethical message that will eventually bring the whole world together in unity and peace and justice. Here Jesus is saying that while humanity is separated into different cultures who do not communicate with each other, war will continue, but the future age of global interconnection will enable a transformation of values. Love will rule the world, gradually repairing the damage that heedless human evil has caused.
With this prophecy of world unity, Jesus built on Jeremiah’s vision that eventually it will be possible to prophesy peace. This message is directly relevant to our world today. Our planetary trajectory is still toward destruction, separation and war, but the Gospel message tells us we have the ability to be shaken out of our delusional fantasies. We can wake up and see the truth of our perilous path, to connect with each other in a spirit of respect.
Global warming is a key challenge where a prophetic message of peace is needed today. Recent science has shown that even if we speed up emission cuts as fast as possible, which is highly unlikely, that alone can’t be enough to make a difference to climate change. The problem is that Earth system tipping points such as melting of snow and ice and loss of forests already have too much momentum, and will heat things up and overwhelm any cooling effect from cutting emissions. An emerging scientific view is that the only thing that could reverse the current slide toward even more extreme weather is global cooperation to brighten the planet by reflecting more sunlight back to space. A range of technologies have been developed for planetary brightening, technically known as albedo enhancement. Australia is leading in this work through support for marine cloud brightening to protect the Great Barrier Reef from coral bleaching.
Governments and communities are quite reasonably cautious about such new and different climate strategies. The problem is that a decision to keep ignoring planetary brightening technologies would definitely allow more dangerous sea level rise, extreme weather, biodiversity loss and system disruption as a result of warming. All these crises would be far worse than side effects of well managed new technologies. My view is that an International Albedo Authority should be established to research all the different possible methods. This would have additional benefits of creating hope for the future by enabling nations to cooperate peacefully on a shared vision. For example refreezing Antarctic sea-ice could help protect Australia from warming impacts.
Another area in need of prophetic vision is Indigenous rights. The Uluru Statement from the Heart in 2017 offered a hopeful prophetic message of how the Australian community could come together in a spirit of reconciliation and recognition and respect. Unfortunately, we are seeing a rather uninformed debate around the referendum on the Indigenous Voice to Parliament. Many in our community promote deceptive messages about supposed risks associated with the Voice, disregarding the many benefits of dialogue and the damage of spurning this carefully developed proposal.
With both climate change and the Voice, the challenge we face is whether to proceed with new and innovative solutions, or to stick with current failing approaches. In both cases, the consequences of doing nothing are far worse than any risks of the proposed new approaches. The Gospel of Christ calls us to work to transform the world, taking risks and confronting debate in a prophetic spirit of love and truth. The Gospel message is that such a transformative prophetic approach can enable us to fulfill the promise of Christ that the will of God can be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.
Amen
Jeremiah 28:5-9 28:5 Then the prophet Jeremiah spoke to the prophet Hananiah in the presence of the priests and all the people who were standing in the house of the LORD; 28:6 and the prophet Jeremiah said, “Amen! May the LORD do so; may the LORD fulfill the words that you have prophesied, and bring back to this place from Babylon the vessels of the house of the LORD, and all the exiles. 28:7 But listen now to this word that I speak in your hearing and in the hearing of all the people. 28:8 The prophets who preceded you and me from ancient times prophesied war, famine, and pestilence against many countries and great kingdoms. 28:9 As for the prophet who prophesies peace, when the word of that prophet comes true, then it will be known that the LORD has truly sent the prophet.”
Matthew 10:40-42 10:40 “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. 10:41 Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous; 10:42 and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple — truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.”
I arrived in London last night, staying with Caroline in a flat in New Cross. We will go to my old friend Tony Tonks’ sixtieth birthday party on Sunday, then head to the Isle of Man, Lake District and Edinburgh. Then I have a one day climate albedo workshop at Cambridge University on 6 June and I head home on 9 June.
I spent the flight listening to Beatles albums, and then to Ummagumma by Pink Floyd and some early Dylan. Amazingly, many of the Beatle’s biggest hits were only released as singles, and were not included on albums until later compilations, eg She Loves You, Can’t Buy Me Love, I Want To Hold Your Hand, I Feel Fine, Please Please Me, Love Me Do. I also read a book about the history of sugar, so deeply entwined with slavery, genocide and environmental devastation.
On Wednesday I spent the afternoon before my flight from Sydney playing croquet and talking philosophy with my old friend David Gillings. One of the themes we explored was my idea of the disentification of God.
Here is my letter published in The Australian newspaper on 28 April 2023.
As published it read “Peta Credlin questions whether climate change is a security problem (“Lest we forget what’s worth defending”, 27/4). There is a serious risk of several metres of sea level rise this century. This change could destroy ports, beaches and coastal wetlands, and create millions of climate refugees. Climate is a core security problem. Climate security can only be addressed by international co-operation.”
The article I responded to by Peta Credlin is copied at the end of this post. It mentioned climate briefly in the bolded paragraph near the end. Ms Credlin is a leading Australian conservative commentator who was chief of staff for Prime Minister Tony Abbott and now has a regular TV program on Sky News.
The newspaper edited my letter – here was what I sent: “Peta Credlin questions whether climate change is a security problem (‘A country that’s in doubt about itself, that often thinks patriotism is a dirty word, is in no position to fight’, 27/4). There is serious risk of several metres of sea level rise this century, destroying all ports, beaches and coastal wetlands, and creating hundreds of millions of climate refugees. Extreme weather is steadily worsening. Climate is a core security problem. However, cutting emissions does nothing about temperature, only generating political polarisation and destruction of our energy system. Climate security can only be addressed by international cooperation on solar geoengineering.”
They deleted my criticism of cutting emissions, my mention of extreme weather, my numbers of refugees and my call for solar geoengineering.
On Saturday 28 April the newspaper published the following two letters in response, reflecting the conservative derision about this topic.
“I am grateful to Robert Tulip (Last Post, 28/4) for his warning that sea levels are rising. It has prompted me to look over my “tinnie” runabout, check my Wellington boots for leaks and dust off the sou’wester. Always best to be prepared.”
“Predictions of humanity’s demise by the end of this century are just baseless predictions, despite the credentials of the predictor. If governments thought sea level rise was a threat, they would not promote building developments close to current sea level – and as far as I know there’s no recommendation we should all head for the hills.People are entitled to their personal fears but we should not be forced to join the panic.”
There was a lively discussion in the online comments section, visible to subscribers only. There was no sympathy for my view. Given this universal condemnation within the conservative echo chamber, I should note prediction of over two metres rise is supported by the US Ocean Service NOAA, who stated in this 2022 report that global mean sea level rise in 2150 could be 3.7 metres. Other scientists consider the result could be even worse.
In response to a comment, I wrote:
“Security analysis of climate change should apply the precautionary principle regarding risks. The biggest risk is that focus on ineffective emission reduction efforts crowds out effective ways to cool the planet. Solar geoengineering could be deployed safely in ways that do not disrupt the economy, allowing ongoing use of fossil fuels. When CO2 was last above its current level the seas were about 20 metres higher. That is the commitment created by Earth System Sensitivity, but we cannot know the time scale, like a turkey awaiting Thanksgiving. Emissions apply constant forcing to fragile and sensitive ice systems in Greenland and Antarctica, destroying their protective sea ice and warming the ocean water. These glaciers lock up more than 70 metres of sea level rise, and are collapsing in unpredictable ways, more rapidly than consensus models suggest. Recent scientific papers have found climate impacts are bigger and faster than models predicted. A 2020 study in Nature found Greenland is losing ice seven times faster than it was in the 1990s, now melting at over 280 billion tonnes per year. Other studies show climate tipping points have cascading effects that accelerate these processes. Moving to Higher Ground, a credible scientific analysis by John Englander, states sea level rise of 2.5 metres this century is predicted, with higher levels considered possible. Security policy should take precautions against these serious risks. This requires a change of thinking. Cutting emissions only marginally slows the rate of warming, and can do nothing to mitigate these risks. The international cooperation required is for action to brighten the planet, enhancing albedo to create equal and opposite cooling to balance the warming from greenhouse gases. Research into solar geoengineering offers the most precautionary option, as a rapid, effective and cheap way to mitigate climate risk. The climate goal should be Net Zero Heating, not Net Zero Emissions.”
In response to a follow up question, I wrote
“Net Zero Heating means restoring preindustrial temperature using technology to cool the planet with equal and opposite effect of the warming from greenhouse gas emissions. It is a faster, safer, cheaper and more effective climate policy than the futile effort to achieve net zero emissions.”
Further comments included the following 40+ responses, all condemning the idea we should worry about sea level rise.
As a Coastal Scientist who started work in the 1980s, I remember all the forecasts with which almost every coastal Council required compliance, a prediction of 2m rise by 2020. The rise has not occurred, no one has been held to account for the destruction this caused to the lives of many individuals. It hasn’t even been publicly acknowledged. Don’t repeat our previous mistakes.
Sea level rises around the world at present are in the range of 2-3 mm per year, the same rate it has been for about the last 200 or so years since the end of the Little Ice Age. Yet one of your correspondents thinks there is a risk sea-level rises will be several metres in the near future, although no explanation how this might happen. Does anyone ever fact-check these extraordinary claims about the climate which are invariably shown to be completely unfounded?
The likelihood of a 2 metre+ rise in sea levels this century is on par with being invaded from outer space. Get a grip!
Did the Clown Caucus get together and agree to send in a wave of letters?
Where does Robert Tulip get his information from? Several metres sea level rise is something not even Al Gore has been guilty of spouting. After all he has a number of first class beach front properties and if there was any possibility of several metres rise surely our panic stricken and woke state and local governments would be refusing development permits on all our land adjoining our beaches.
Are sea levels rising in the northern hemisphere, if so God help Iceland and Ireland!
Robert Tulip I have been a Coogee Beach, Sydney, fan for 72 years and the water level has not changed.
If the sea levels are rising as Robert Tulip suggests, why are so many wealthy climate catastrophisers such as Michael Cannon-Brookes buying waterfront homes?
Apparently the sea level rise at Port Denison is less than 10 centimetres in 100 years.
Robert Tulip, these insane predictions have been in the mix for almost 50 years now. None have eventuated or even come close. “Climate is a core security problem” now seems to be emerging as the new alarmist’s mantra. These climate alarmists have no shame when it comes to their failed prophecies. Be gone the lot of you.
Claire Lehmann writes an illuminative piece in today’s Australian about the fragility of today’s youth as a result of progressive ideology being pushed on the young, even starting in kindergarten, frightening children about many things, especially the fear of climate change and the prospect of not reaching adulthood. It is insidious and against the evidence of the continuing failure of doomsday predictions to eventuate. The long term damage to vulnerable children is indefensible and regular writers are continuing to add to the problem with hysterical predictions.
And Robert Tulip needs to read it
Robert Tulip, you say that “There is a serious risk of several metres of sea level rise this century.” Are you serious?
Well, Mr Tulip is from the ACT.
Absolutely unbelievable! Water covers two thirds of the earth’s surface! A seven metre rise requires seven metres of extra water covering two thirds of the planet?
Considering the fact that the amount of rise in sea levels in the last Century has been so minuscule it’s hardly recordable, how in earth will sea levels rise by metres in the next 75 years? More doomsayer nonsense with zero justification.
Maybe Robert got his millimetres mixed up with his metres
‘(he) can NOT be serious!’ (apols. McEnroe, J)
Robert Tulip where is your source that would lead you to believe that there is a risk of metres of sea rise this century? That is an old trope once used by the profoundly unreliable and discredit Tim Flannery….which lead to the song of building a beach house in the Blue Mountains..humour can be devastating. Indeed climate scientist Judith Curry did a study specifically of sea rise a few short years back and concluded that the rise is completely manageable amounting to some 200mm per century…of course it will vary in different parts of the planet but that is a sound number. Being a scientist she said of course if the volcanoes under the antarctic landmass erupt it would produce different and far more dangerous results …an event she assessed as highly unlikely….and incidentally nothing to do with climate change. The great Richard Lindzen arguable one of the greatest living climate scientists made the general point a few months back (google his interviews) (in essence) that the misinformation about climate change and the reaction to unrealistic perceived threats is in many instances ludicrous…beyond parody I think he said. A thrust of his position is that people who know precious little about this hideously complex issue make absurd statements that are picked up by politicians and others who know even less about the science and yet they are the ones who usher in remedies that have no affect on the misdiagnoses. Australia’ plan to address climate change with approaching 100% renewables is a perfect example of this phenomena, indeed a few years back Lindzen opined (in essence) ..what are the aussies doing? The western world is in a period of collective madness and until good engineering, good science and sound economics are respected as they should be, we will continue to be at the mercy of the modern version of snake oil salesmen who have no answers but they will fool a lot of people a lot of the time.
“Several metres” of sea level rise this century? Let’s say “several” means more than two, and actually means three or more. So 3000 mm in the next 75 years? That equates to 40mm per year every year beginning today. The best estimate is around 2mm per year. Mr Tulip needs reminding that using hyperbole runs the risk of derision.
It is ludicrous and most people have absolutely no idea of reality in this very important issue.
Well deserved derision.
Robert Tulip, I don’t believe that any of those wealthy, woke, believers in global warming who seem to readily snap up properties sitting just a meter above high tide marks on the ocean shore would agree with you.
Not just properties by the shore – I’ve read quite a few are buying islands! As if they would spend millions on land that just won’t be there in a decade or two!
I see a few of the technical fairies have emerged from the bottom of the garden in todays letter page. When the lights do go out could we see a few more letters telling us we told you so. Sea level rises of metres before the end of the century, really, I won’t be here but I’ll probably be still laughing from my grave.
Robert Tulip: I suggest you move to the summit of Black Mountain, & wait for it to happen, But don’t hold your breath. We were promised sea level rise two decades ago!
Robert Tulip we have been told for four decades that catastrophic sea level was imminent. Show us the evidence.
There is NO risk of several meters of sea level rises this century.
Robert Tulip, I’m waiting and watching the shoreline weekly. Sea level rises have been mooted for a couple of decades and clearly government policy makers and investors don’t believe it given the ocean shore and river bank development occurring across Australia. An interview with two Antarctic scientists i watched this week had the southern ice cap growing, not shrinking.
Mr Tulip. If sea levels are going to rise by several metres this century our new submarines will need longer periscopes.
Hopefully the 3 metre sea rise will cover Canberra. Is that Mr Tulips concern?
I have it good grounds to believe that Canberrans are snapping up Braidwood property to get sea views.
Robert Tulip says that international cooperation is needed for climate security. Then why are countries around the world building more than 1000 coal fired power stations and Australia is getting rid of its remaining six to save the planet. Methinks Australia is no longer the clever country. It is quickly sinking into energy poverty because of the madness of renewables. Only when the lights go out will the climate zealots see that we are going down the wrong path. And by the way nothing Australia does makes one skerrieg of difference to the climate but then better to believe in a false climate narrative based on ridiculous climate modelling.
the zealots will never see that we are going down the wrong path. Don’t imply that they can understand anything.
I think someone is tiptoeing through the tulips. The ocean is not going to rise by metres. Wheres your facts. Stop scare mongering.
Robert Tulip claims there is a serious risk of several metres of sea level rise this century. That is about 10 times the predictions by the IPCC which are on the high side because they are based on models that overestimate the effect on temperature of increased CO2. Half the rise since 1700 occurred before the industrial revolution and that natural rebound from the Little Ice Age is likely to still be influencing temperature much more than CO2.
Relax. The rising sea level prediction will never eventuate. Just like the myriad of past predictions that bit the dust
Mr Tulip – there is no credible prediction of several metres of sea rise by the end of the century. It would be helpful if you cited your sources. The IPCC has made no such prediction as yours. Sea level rises in Australia since 1900 are negligible. A 1.1 degree temperature increase since 1860 is not a basis for alarmism and frightening young and impressionable minds.
The CCP can’t have got this message or it might not have produced the man made islands in the South China Sea.
why do so many politicians buy waterfront properties if the sea is going to rise so much? How can the sea rise in one spot and not all over? Remember, we were told the dams and rivers would never fill again…..
Robert Tulip, 5 years ago we bought a house 1.5 metres above sea level on the beach in Geographe Bay for $1.3m. Today the beach is as far away as it ever was and the property is valued at $1.6m. I reckon the real world thinks your fears of “several metres” of sea level rise is wrong. Stop reading the models, start reading the real world. Calm down, it’s not as frightening as you think.
Robert Tulip, a climate change “expert” stated in a newspaper in 2000 that my home town would be under water by 2020. Obviously it’s still there, with no noticeable rise in water levels. Given every prediction so far by the “experts” has been wrong, I think we should stick with reliable 24/7 power until the scientists actually understand the “science”.
And my Palm Beach Q, beach, refuses to do anything different, and insists on acting like a beach. Tides are the same since the Jellurgal people fished it, with a slightly higher Christmas tide, every year. The Jellurgal people can be found on the north side of the Tally Bridge, they share great knowledge about their land, so if on the Goldie, pop in and see them. They make a great coffee, but good luck with trying to convince them, anything has changed.
Article by Peta Credlin Published in The Australian
‘A country that’s in doubt about itself, that often thinks patriotism is a dirty word, is in no position to fight’
“This week the paradox of modern Australia was on full display. With hundreds of thousands of spectators cheering them on, tens of thousands of veterans and serving military personnel marched on Anzac Day to honour everyone who has fought for our country.
On that day, though, the Australian War Memorial’s new chairman pledged that the memorial soon would honour the Aboriginal warriors who’d fought against the British settlement of this country, even though such recognition would be more appropriate in the new $316.5m Indigenous centre called Ngurra, to be situated opposite the AWM on Lake Burley Griffin.
Yet again, it looks like popular enthusiasm versus official ambivalence when it comes to being positive about Australia.
So what’s it to be: pride in our country or shame? Is the Australian War Memorial – which World War I historian Charles Bean intended as the Anzacs’ shrine “in the heart of the land they loved” – now to be turned into a place of division and embarrassment?
It should be possible to come to a nuanced appreciation of our strengths and weaknesses as a nation. Yet it’s hard to be optimistic about getting this balance right in an era so given to fretting about toxic masculinity (even though it’s strong men who have kept us safe in the past and likely will again in the future); the history wars; claims that it’s racist to vote No to giving Indigenous Australians a special say in government based on ancestry; and the tendency to deny those with a uterus the right to be called women while biological men can, if that’s what they choose.
Former Labor MP Michael Danby says the Defence Strategic Review is a “damn squib” and “very disappointing”.… “If you can’t identify the problem, then the Australian people aren’t going to know why we’re spending all of this money,” Mr Danby told Sky News host Peta Credlin. “I thought More
All this matters because the Defence Strategic Review the government released this week says that not since the end of World War II have we been so close to major conflict.
Yet a country that’s in doubt about itself, that often thinks patriotism is a dirty word, is in no position to fight.
In his Anzac Day address this week, Governor-General David Hurley, the former defence force chief who commanded the Australian contingent in Somalia, said what had most concerned his men was not the risk of getting hurt but the worry that they might fail to be worthy of the example of their forefathers.
That’s the key question: if called upon, would we live up to their example? And do we believe in our country and our values enough to fight for it as our veterans did?
For current and former military personnel, obviously the answer is yes. And for the hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, who attended dawn services and marches around the country this week I suspect the answer is also yes. But for others, I wonder.
These days we spend so much time acknowledging “country” – with the inference that it’s really the country of only 4 per cent of us – rather than the country of all of us. Among the official class and elites, we spend so much time in angst about our past and rewriting history, even though ordinary people still sense that, in terms of freedom, justice and a fair go, Australia remains the best country on earth and has to be worth defending. But how long will this hold?
There were some very important messages in this week’s DSR. That we can’t count on 10 years’ notice of major conflict. That China’s militarisation of the South China Sea is a direct threat to Australia’s national interest. That our armed forces on their own need to be able to defeat any adversary – China included – that seeks to attack Australia. And, most worryingly, that we’re not ready for armed conflict, on any serious scale.
Shadow Assistant Defence Minister Phillip Thompson is “making an issue of the wrong thing” by criticising the… timing of the Defence Strategic Review’s release rather than its contents, says Sky News host James Macpherson. Mr Thompson on Tuesday slammed the Albanese government for releasing the review the day before More
But it seems that the review, as usual, dances around some of the really important issues. As just about every defence analyst now says, communist China is getting ready to attack Taiwan. Because democratic Taiwan is never going to submit to communist rule, that means an assault on Taiwan is all but inevitable.
All but inevitable, that is, unless the free world makes it clear to Beijing that any assault on Taiwan wouldn’t be just giant China against tiny Taiwan but dictatorship versus democracy.
Deterrence through strength is the only way to raise the stakes enough to deter Beijing because anything other than the status quo would be a catastrophe. A successful Chinese assault on Taiwan, unresisted by the democracies, would up-end the world order as we know it as countries arm themselves to the teeth against Beijing or roll over and make the best accommodation they can with the communist superpower. But helping Taiwan risks a war between the superpowers, with all that entails, in terms of sending the world back towards the Stone Age.
There’s not much in this review, at least in the unclassified version, about how Australia might work to maintain the peace across the Taiwan Strait even though the US would certainly expect our help. What there is, though, is yet more reviews: a further review into our fuel security, given that we have just a few weeks of onshore fuel reserves; and a further review of the surface fleet. There’s plenty of talk about more missiles but, again, no hard dates for their acquisition.
In fact, the only specific commitments to come out of this review are to scrap the acquisition of most of the new infantry fighting vehicles and not to go ahead with the purchase of more self-propelled artillery. Even though the lesson of history is “to expect the unexpected”, as we’ve seen with the rise of Islamic State and the Russian assault on Ukraine.
There’s the obligatory reference to climate change, which the review says is “amplifying our challenges”. Seriously? With China commissioning hundreds of new coal-fired power stations and engaged in the biggest military build-up in peacetime history, we need to get our head out of the sand on energy security being critical to our national security and drop this climate obsession within the bureaucracy.
THEAUSTRALIAN.COM.AU05:04 Defence Strategic Review is govt’s ‘cannibalisation’ of Australia’s army capability
The Defence Strategic Review is the government’s “cannibalisation” of Australia’s army capability, says Shadow… Defence Minister Andrew Hastie. “The government has promised a lot with this DSR but what we’re seeing is no new money, we’re seeing cost-shifting and we’re seeing cannibalisation of army capability,” he told Sky News More
The Albanese government deserves credit for sticking with its predecessor’s plan for nuclear-powered submarines under AUKUS. But like its predecessor, it seems better at delivering words than at delivering actual military capability. For the most part, the plans are good, but there’s no real urgency at putting them into practice and no real attempt to persuade the public that spending on the armed forces might actually be a higher priority than, say, the NDIS. Probably because the government itself is unpersuaded.
If the situation is as serious as the government says, deeds must better match words. The other thing that really needs to change is how we think about ourselves. We can’t honour Australia and Australians on Anzac Day only to spend the rest of the year denigrating our country and undermining the rationale for defending it. Maybe that explains why it’s so hard to recruit the young people our armed forces need. Whatever the reason, let’s hope we all wake up before it’s too late.
Peta Credlin AO is a weekly columnist with The Australian, and also with News Corp Australia’s Sunday mastheads, including The Sunday Telegraph and Sunday Herald Sun. Since 2017 she has hosted her successful prime… Read more
The warming effects of climate change could be offset with equal and opposite cooling measures.
Albedo is the measure of how much sunlight the Earth reflects back to space. It is a significant factor in global warming due to the growth of darker surfaces that retain more heat.
The loss of albedo increases the imbalance known as radiative forcing. Due to human influence, the excess of incoming sunlight over outgoing radiation is worsening.
Increased radiative forcing due to greenhouse gas emissions is partly reduced by anthropogenic cooling, mainly from aerosols that interact with the stratosphere and clouds to increase albedo.
Overall, the world is darkening due to the loss of snow and ice, soot pollution and decreased ocean cloud cover.
The melting of sea ice is a major albedo loss. Satellite and lunar reflection data show more than 0.5% decline in total albedo this century.
Many new technologies have been proposed to enhance albedo. Marine cloud brightening would make salty mist from sea water to increase the albedo of ocean clouds, cooling the water beneath and reducing cyclone intensity.
Australia has led the world in field testing of marine cloud brightening to reduce coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef.
Stratospheric aerosol injection could mimic the cooling effect of volcanic eruptions, adding about 1% of the highly reflective sulphur dioxide that used to come from burning coal without scrubbers.
These and other geoengineering methods could mitigate climate impacts such as sea level rise, biodiversity loss and extreme weather.
Importantly, they could help avoid climate tipping points, while promoting international cooperation.
Advocates contend that research shows the cooling benefits will justify deployment if these technologies are well governed.
Challenges include the need for international governance to ensure deployment is safe, equitable and based on the best science, while overcoming the political hurdles in the transition from fossil fuels.
Risks include disrupting weather patterns, international disputes, sudden termination and allowing ongoing failure to address CO2 impacts such as ocean acidification.
The IPCC is opposed to action to increase albedo, mainly on the view that brightening the planet would undermine decarbonisation. This view ignores the security risk that tipping points such as ice melt could cause sudden cascading warming feedbacks in the Earth system.
The practical impact of neglecting albedo is highly risky, allowing ongoing warming while emissions continue.
Action to cut CO2 will take decades, whereas brightening the planet could have rapid cooling effects, especially by refreezing the Arctic.
Using technology to increase albedo may be the only feasible way to mitigate global warming in the short term.
Unlike Net Zero Emissions, a climate goal of Net Zero Heating achieved by enhancing albedo could stabilise the planetary system quickly and cheaply, by balancing the warming effects with equal and opposite cooling.
Sermon delivered at Kippax Uniting Church, 23 April 2023
Luke’s gospel tells the story of two disciples walking from Jerusalem to Emmaus on the day Jesus rose from the dead. Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him (Luke 24:15-16). This inability of his friends who knew him personally to recognise the risen Christ indicates that Jesus was in some way invisible to them, that the disciples simply could not see him in his glorious reality.
Why this would be is what I wish to talk about today. Jesus Christ represents the powerful saving force of God. The love and grace and humanity of Christ incarnate the presence of God in the world. This message of the truth of the kingdom of God confronts the false stories of the kingdoms of the world. Human thought is so conditioned by our worldly situation that the voice of God can barely break through. There is something so unacceptable about the transformative liberation preached in the Gospels by Christ that his society resorted firstly to crucifixion, and then to blindness in the face of the resurrection.
A first level of difficulty appears in the Gospel teachings to love enemies, to be poor in spirit, to be generous to those who are least and to care. These involve too much personal energy for most people to give enough time and attention. The Christian message sounds impossible, a transformation of values to bring in the reign of God. When the impossible ethics are wrapped in a seemingly impossible literal story, the broader society sees a lack of coherent vision within Christianity.
And so, when Christ walks with the disciples to Emmaus, after hearing their stories of the cross, he responds, “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.” (Luke 24:25-27)
Here Jesus suggests the visible events of the resurrection point to deeper truth of the nature of God that is revealed in prophecy. His statement that the cross was necessary for his glory rests upon the interpretation of scripture, of how the need for a Messiah was a central idea in Judaism, and how he had fulfilled this vision, how redemption and salvation emerge from suffering.
In this conversation Jesus calls the foolish disciples slow of heart to believe. Many of us may have wished we might have been a bystander listening to the discussion on the road to Emmaus, as Christ brought together all the scriptures to explain their inner meaning. The nature of God as Father of the world, exercising patient love for the flourishing of life, is a story that rests upon the heart to believe.
It is quite a challenge to try to reconstruct what Jesus may have said, and easier to blot out this question at the core of faith. The Old Testament prophets provide a vision of the necessity of a messiah, so the interpretation by Christ of the prophetic explanation of the world must have sought a coherent justification of his identity as only Son of the Father.
My view is that a central part of this Christology of Emmaus, this personal explanation by Christ of his own necessity, rests upon a deeper ancient cosmology that is now only dimly seen. Astronomy was central to ancient religion, with the visible heavens seen as the orderly presence of the power and glory of God. Reconstructing how Christ saw his own divinity therefore can place the gospel message against the possible visions of the stars in the prophetic tradition.
In the Lord’s prayer, Christ tells us to pray that the will of God may be done on earth as in heaven. One way to read this is to ask how the will of God is done in the visible heavens of the Sun and stars. The spangled night sky is vast, stable and orderly, combining the seemingly unchanging stars with the constantly changing planets. Finding the order in the cosmos is the central goal of astronomy.
For Christ, this visible cosmic order of the heavens could have provided the source for reflection on how our chaotic planet could aspire toward participation in the cosmic order of grace. The eternal stability of the stars reflects the infinite and eternal stability of God, against the fragile and confused mentality of humanity. If our minds could reflect the grandeur of the heavens, we could begin to fully understand what it means to be made in the image of God.
The Christian story is about how we connect with God. As such it differs from astronomy which only describes the universe in factual terms, without asking how the human soul connects to the universe as a source of meaning and value. Our connection to the universe should be understood as a big part of our connection to God. Stories in the Bible show God is deeply mysterious, revealed in creative harmony and beauty. Our connection to grace, to the orderly harmony and beauty of God, begins with our connection to the presence of God in our natural universe.
