Please see Styx thread on the Registered Shipmates consultation for the main discussion forums - your views are important, continues until April 4th.
Purgatory : how would you feel about a sermon on Climate Change on Ash Wednesday?
For the last 2 years, my place of worship has had a wonderful Ash Wednesday service, with the imposition of ashes. It was spiritual and intimate, and very moving. This year it included a sermon on Climate Change. I'm not a CC denier, but it felt horribly out of place. The Lent series of discussions will be using a booklet 'suitable for adults, young adults and children', on CC. So I'll be missing that.
Oh yes, a few weeks back we had a whole sermon on Safeguarding.
A new leader has started, and it seems this is the result.
I just feel so alienated from the place I loved.
Oh yes, a few weeks back we had a whole sermon on Safeguarding.
A new leader has started, and it seems this is the result.
I just feel so alienated from the place I loved.
Comments
Good points
It is hard to speak about any sermon without having the original source.
@FloRoss, well done to your minister for tackling it (of course, I can't comment on how well the sermon was delivered, as I wasn't there). A sermon on Safeguarding seems harder to work into the life of the church, unless there has been a problem there or in your local community, but again I can see occasions where care for the vulnerable is an entirely appropriate subject to focus on in our worship and that could include Safeguarding.
Re safeguarding, the Church of England has certainly been concerned with this in recent months, and it may be that that particular sermon was preached as a result of that concern - perhaps along the lines suggested by @Baptist Trainfan ? The C of E also tries to put the subject in a Christian context.
Definitely made me think, and that is the purpose of a good sermon. And if it's the chosen theme for Lent at your church, that would explain why you had a sermon on that theme for Ash Wednesday as well.
@FloRoss , did your Ash Wednesday service (you don't tell us what denomination you belong to - but please don't feel you have to!) still include some sort of Liturgy of Penitence, and the Imposition of Ashes?
The mention of safeguarding makes me think that we are talking about an Anglican, or possibly Roman Catholic, church here.
I don't know what FatherInCharge praught about on Ash Wednesday, as I wasn't there, but I expect it was about keeping Lent faithfully, and quietly, without boasting about it (as per the Gospel). I went to the Cathedral's lunchtime service, which was 'by the book', and included NO sermon. The words of the liturgy were allowed to speak for themselves, which for me was a refreshing change!
To Wipe, or not to Wipe? That is the Question...
I know our Lent course is on stewardship, but in what context I won't know until Thursday.
Fr Mandarin preached on the idea of ashes being a sign of destruction used as a sign of renewal, as well as the usual exhortation to keep a good Lent. Although he mentioned Australia he didn't link the bushfires to climate issues.
I can take sermons on climate change and safeguarding as they're going to always be a step up from being harangued several weeks running in the church I attended at uni about what financially dire straits the place was in.
I can see how people might feel such a sermon feels out of place on Ash Wednesday, or that looking at climate change is more a corporate issue than the personal reflection often emphasised on this service, but I would welcome it.
Also, as others have said, the Archbish’s Lent book is Ruth Valerio’s Saying Yes to Life, which is all about care for the planet and tackling climate change, based around the creation story, so perhaps the preacher was using that as a starting point.
In our Deanery there will be a few churches who can easily afford the measures to reduce their carbon footprint, but many like St Quacks where the needs of improving outreach and paying for essential maintenance work, on top of day-to-day running costs eat up what money is available, and the costs of replacing heating and insulating a Victorian barn without spoiling the aesthetics will need careful consideration and a LOT of fundraising if the wider CofE isn't prepared to dish out grants.
I suspect many churches will face objections even to the idea of solar panels on the roof from the wider public and the listed buildings bodies, although the vicarage in the parish where I live has them.
Our architect did explore roofing insulation in connection with major repairs we are currently undergoing, but found it would necessitate a complete rebuild in order to deal with some critical dimensions.
The value of our heating would be considerably improved by some large ceiling fans-but that’s not going to be permitted either IMO.
For those who like statements (I'm not actually very interested in them) as a mark of mission, insisting on putting some highly visible solar panels on a Grade 1 listed building would be a valuable and significant message.
I'm not clear what being in a National Park has to do with this. Over 30 years ago I saw some pretty cheapo plastic sheeting removable supplementary glazing in a village church which is in a somewhat exposed position in one of our higher altitude National Parks.
I'd class saying something that either addressed that or sought to stretch it is the most pressing issue for a major festival.
On Ash Wednesday, though, it would depend on how Climate Change was spoken about whether I'd regard it as just the subject to speak to or spoiling Ash Wednesday.
It's primarily an occasion for people already members of the household of faith. It's not the sort of time when many occasional conformists are likely to turn up. As many have already pointed out on this thread, a Christian's approach to stewardship of the earth is very much the centrally promoted theme for the 40 days this year. So, I'd have thought that a sermon on that, was entirely appropriate. However, if the sermon was just something worthy or hectoring that any secular person, such as say George Monbiot, could just as easily have said, then I'd agree with you @FloRoss. Otherwise, I wouldn't.
So are you grumbling that the service wasn't something 'holy', with the atmosphere you missed from last year, but at heart a bit pietist, or that what you got was a missed opportunity, without the theological element, and as I said, no more than the sort of thing George Monbiot could have said, without the need either for holy orders or theological reflection?
* I'd add that on a general note, preaching will always be in a Christian context - if there's no Christian context then you're delivering a lecture not preaching a sermon.
For me, Ash Wednesday plays an important role in framing Lent as does the Ash Wednesday sermon. I'm not going to rule out the possibility that a good Ash Wednesday sermon could also focus on the issue of climate change, but honestly I think it would be a challenge not to give a sermon where the tail ends up wagging the dog. With the first Sunday of Lent only days around the corner, why not wait till then?
IYSWIM.
The number of peeps attending (say) the Lent Study Group at Our Place, in proportion to our Sunday congregation, is very small indeed.
Whether we like it or not, the Sunday sermon/homily/address (and there are many ways in which this can, could, or should, be presented), is still the main vehicle for 'on-the-spot' (often using the day's Bible readings) instruction/explanation.
Anyway, climate change is hardly contentious these days except among the tribe of oddities.
Which, if it be so, makes it all the more imperative for the churches to address this issue, and others affecting the People generally.
I can easily imagine a sermon on climate change. I cannot as easily imagine one based on the readings traditionally heard on Ash Wednesday.
A hugely important subject, yes of course.
But not part of traditional Christianity.
So I can see an argument that the traditional highlights of the church's year - Christmas, Easter etc - should be left to mean what they have always meant. And breaking new ground - developing a new understanding of the church on the modern world - is better done in ordinary time.
That "Traditional Christianity" has missed this for so long is part of our collective failing.
...and this is where non-conformists sound egotistical and arrogant.
The point of the lectionary, to my mind, is that the whole church is moving through it together. Each congregation, each preacher will bring their selves, individual and collective, to it and get different things out of it. No shoehorning required; just openness.
Nevertheless I do worry that, in churches which use a lectionary but where preachers quite rightly want to focus on a pressing issue of the day, a lot of eisegesis may be going on: i.e. the squeezing of meanings out of the set text which really aren't in it. That to me isn't really being faithful to Scripture.
I'm not a Roman Catholic, but I think your post, Simon, aptly sums up what most Christians would see as the purpose of the Lenten period. My problem is that the liturgical construction of Lent severely truncates the significance of Christ's ministry. When Easter is early, the Magi have hardly left the stage before Ash Wednesday and Lenten Cross make their appearance. We are left with the impression that the death of Christ was the only purpose of the incarnation. Lent, with its emphasis on sackcloth and ashes, pushes out the declaration of Jubilee.
Oh let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long be the weeds and the wilderness yet.
Did he think he was no longer writing about "traditional Christianity" just because in that particular poem he doesn't explicitly mention God or Jesus?
Traditional Christianity relates to everything or it is nothing.
To my mind it is being faithful to the place of scripture in the life of the church. A sermon brings the bible to life in the context of the community receiving that scripture. It cannot therefore be excessively eisegetic to bring the scriptures heard to bear on where that community is.
Fixed broken quote code. BroJames Purgatory Host
The question I would want to ask is how a centrally constructed lectionary can determined which passages of scripture "bring the bible to life in the context of the [numerous and varied] communities receiving that scripture."