Celebrating Eucharist

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Celebrating Eucharist

• In a Time of Global Climate Change

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Our Context

• The Australian Climate calamity forecast by end
  of century
• Tim Flannery by the end of the century,
  temperatures will have risen by 3 degrees
• The cause our use of fossil fuels
• Australia burns more fossil fuel per capita and
  exports more coal than any other nation
• 3 degree rise the loss of world heritage areas
  and coral reefs and our cities under increasing
  water stress. The Murray could dry up, and seas
  could rise by up to 6 metres
• 2 degree rise loss of places like Kakadu and our
  mountain rain forests, with their fauna the
  extinction of the polar ecosystems

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Our Context

• Everyday, there are new reports and predictions
• While experts disagree about details of
  predictions, few dispute
• That it is occurring
• That it will get far worse
• And that our use of fossil fuels is a major cause
  
• The most important issue facing the human
  community of the 21st c
• For a Christian believer, committed to love for
  Gods creation and to respect for the dignity of
  every person, responding to this issue will have
  to be a central dimension of the life of faith

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Our Context

• What does all of this mean for the Christian
  community that gathers each Sunday in the name of
  Jesus to listen to the Word of God and break the
  bread?
• Some brief ideas from science - on long-term
  climate change and human-induced climate change
• Insights on the connection between Eucharist and
  creation from the West (Teilhard de Chardin) and
  from the East (John Zizioulas)
• Building on these with the theme of the Eucharist
  as the living memory of all Gods creatures

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Long-Term Climate Change

• 3 variations of Earths orbit cause predictable
  cycles of long-term climate change (known since
  the 1970s)
• One cycle, caused by a wobble in Earths rotation
  axis (precession), occurs every 22,000 years
• The others, caused by the tilt in Earths axis
  and by the shape of its orbit, occur every 41,000
  and 100,000 years
• Over the last 3 million years, these variations
  have produced a series of ice ages followed by
  warmer interglacial periods
• The last ice age was about 20,000 years ago and
  the present interglacial period (the Holocene) is
  well advanced

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Long-Term Climate Change

• Ice cores from Antarctica and Greenland provide a
  record of 400,000 years of climate change
• Bubbles in the ice reveal the levels of carbon
  dioxide and methane in atmosphere
• This work shows a close relationship between
  variations in solar radiation, size of ice sheets
  and levels of carbon dioxide and methane
• While climate change is driven by variations in
  the Earths orbit, it takes effect by altering
  the cycles of carbon dioxide and methane and the
  size of the ice sheets

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Humans as Agents of Climate Change

• Humans are now agents of climate forcing through
  the production of green house gases
• A proper level of trace gasses, including carbon
  dioxide, methane and nitrous acid, is essential
  for life as we know it
• The suns energy is reflected from the
  atmosphere, the clouds and the Earths surface
• The gases absorb some heat, preventing it
  escaping into space (the greenhouse effect)
• Result average temperature of 5-25 degrees C.
  over the last 700 m.y., allowing life to flourish
• Humans force the climate by increasing levels of
  carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere by
  burning fossil fuels and clearing land

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Humans as Agents of Climate Change

• 1992 Governments, including Australia, sign UN
  Framework Convention on Climate Change
• Under this convention, research of hundreds of
  scientists from many countries assembled in
  Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
• Its 4th report is due in 2006. Its 3rd report
  (2001), states there is new and stronger
  evidence that most of the warming observed over
  the last 50 years is attributable to human
  activities
• Human activities will continue to change
  atmospheric conditions during the 21st century
• Global average temperatures and sea levels are
  projected to rise under all IPPC scenarios
• Increase in global average surface temperature of
  between 1.4--5.8 degrees C over the century

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Humans as Agents of Climate Change

• Global average temperature increased 0.75 of a
  degree C during the period of extensive
  measurement beginning in late 1800s
• About 0.5 has occurred after 1950
• Climate modeling by CSIROs Division of
  Atmospheric Research average temperatures across
  Australia will increase 1-2 degrees by 2030 and
  3-4 degrees by 2070

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Humans as Agents of Climate Change

• A recently released report commissioned by the
  Australian Government
• Accepts that further climate change is now
  inevitable
• And will need to be adapted to in all decisions
  made by Australian governments and industry
• Points to some regions that are highly vulnerable
  to climate change Cairns and the Great Barrier
  Reef, the Murray Darling Basin and south west
  Western Australia

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Humans as Agents of Climate Change

• The danger of melting of ice sheets and the need
  to preserve coastlines puts a low limit on human
  interference with climate
• The oceans are already storing excessive amount
  of heat
• Danger of changing the ocean system, the Global
  Ocean Conveyor
• Christians who gather for eucharitic assemblies
  in Australia brothers and sisters in Kiribati,
  Tuvalu, Bangladesh and many other vulnerable
  people

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Insights from the West Teilhard

• Return to Teilhard scholars and church leaders
• John Paul II Gift and Mystery (1995)
• The Eucharist is celebrated in order to offer
  on the altar of the whole earth the worlds work
  and suffering in the beautiful words of Teilhard
  de Chardin (73)
• Ecclesia de Eucharistia (2003)
• Every Eucharist has a cosmic character Yes
  Cosmic! Because even when it is celebrated on the
  humble altar of a country church, the Eucharist
  is always in some way celebrated on the altar of
  the world. It unites heaven and earth. It
  embraces and permeates all of creation (8)

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Insights from the West Teilhard

• J. C. Ratzinger The Spirit of the Liturgy
  (2000)
• Teilhard went on to give a new meaning to
  Christian worship the transubstantiated Host is
  the anticipation of the transformation and
  divininization of matter in the christological
  fullness. In his view, the Eucharist provides
  the movement of the cosmos with its direction it
  anticipates its goal and at the same time urges
  it on (29)

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Insights from the West Teilhard

• 1916, while a stretcher bearer in the trenches
  Teilhard wrote his first important essay
  Cosmic Life
• Already communion is central communion with the
  Earth, communion with God
• To this he would add the deeply held conviction
  that union differentiates
• Unable to celebrate the Eucharist, he wrote The
  Priest near the Aisne River in 1918
• The Mass on the World in the Ordos Desert
  (Western Mongolia) in 1923
• A central text revealing the heart of Teilhards
  thought Thomas M. King Teilhards Mass Mlle.
  Jeanne Mortier

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Insights from the West Teilhard

• Since I have neither bread, nor wine, nor altar,
  I will raise myself beyond these symbols, up to
  the pure majesty of the real itself I your
  priest will make the whole earth my altar and on
  it will offer you all the labours and sufferings
  of the world
• All the things in the world to which this day
  will bring increase all those that will
  diminish all those too that will die all of
  them, Lord, I try to gather into my arms, so as
  to hold them out to you in offering. This is the
  material of my sacrifice the only material you
  need

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Insights from the West Teilhard

• Over every living thing which is to spring up, to
  grow, to flower, to ripen during this day say
  again the words This is my Body
• And over every death-force which waits in
  readiness to corrode, to wither, to cut down,
  speak again your commanding words which express
  the supreme mystery of faith This is my Blood

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Insights from the West Teilhard

• It is done. Once again the Fire has penetrated
  the EarthWithout earthquake or thunderclap the
  flame has lit up the whole world from within
• Through your own incarnation, my God, all matter
  is henceforth incarnate
• Now, Lord, through the consecration of the world
  the luminosity and fragrance which suffuse the
  universe take on for me the lineaments of a body
  and a facein you
• So, my God, I prostrate myself before your
  presence in the universe which had now become
  living flame beneath the lineaments of all that
  I shall encounter this day, all that happens to
  me, all that I achieve it is you I desire, you I
  await

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Insights from the West Teilhard

• Teilhard sees the risen Christ as united to the
  God who is immanently present to all creatures,
  enabling them to exist and to evolve
• This presence of the risen Christ at work in the
  universe is a prolongation of what is already
  begun in the eucharist
• The Eucharist is an effective prayer for the
  transformation of the universe in Christ
• It points towards and anticipates the
  divinization of the whole world in Christ

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Insights from the East John Zizioulas

• Ordained from the laity Metropolitan of
  Pergamon, Ecumenical Patriarchate (1986)
• Series of lectures in Kings College London,
  Preserving Gods Creation (1989)
• From 1994, director of the annual seminar on
  Halki sponsored by Ecumenical Patriarchate and
  World Wide Fund for Nature
• His theology Being as communion
• It is communion which makes things be Nothing
  exists without it, not even God

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Insights from the East John Zizioulas

• The ecological crisis cannot be met simply by
  arguments based on reason or ethical arguments
• More is needed if we hope to change priorities
  and life-styles
• What is needed is different culture and ethos
• As a Christian theologian, Zizioulas is convinced
  that what is needed is a liturgical ethos
• This can provide a unique and profound foundation
  for a genuine ecological ethos

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Insights from the East John Zizioulas

• Humans are called by God to be priests of
  creation
• Their call is to be like Christ fully relational
  beings
• This involves being relational rather than
  self-enclosed, able to go out of self to the
  other, in what Zizioulas calls ek-stasis
• Humans beings are called to relate in a personal
  way to God, to other humans and to other
  creatures. in a truly personal way
• Humanity and the rest of creation will come to
  completion in Christ though each other

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Insights from the East John Zizioulas

• In the East, the Eucharistic Prayer is known as
  the Anaphora, which means the lifting-up
• The Eucharist is the lifting-up of creation to
  God
• The Holy Spirit is invoked to transform the gifts
  of creation into the Body of Christ
• This priesthood involves all the baptised
  faithful
• The connection between Christian and Jewish
  prayer forms blessing the gifts of creation, and
  thanksgiving for both creation and salvation

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Insights from the East John Zizioulas

• This lifting up of creation is not only in the
  liturgy, but in the whole of life
• The lifting up of creation is to be played out
  around the planet continually by every human
  being
• Zizioulas holds that it is the culture created
  through the living ethos of a vibrant Christian
  community, centred on the Eucharist that offers
  the most powerful long-term resource for
  ecological commitment (Pat Fox)
• All this involves an ethos that the world needs
  badly in our time. Not an ethic, but an ethos.
  Not a programme, but an attitude and a mentality.
  Not a legislation, but a culture (Zizioulas)

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Eucharist The Living Memory of All Gods
Creatures

• Eucharist as the living memory of creation and
  redemption in Christ
• Sacrament of the risen Christ at work in the
  whole of creation
• Participation with all Gods creatures in the
  Communion of the Trinity
• Solidarity with the victims of climate change

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Living Memory of Creation and Redemption

• Bouyer on the anamnesis every Eucharist is a
  thanksgiving memorial for creation as well as
  redemption
• Jewish and early Christian eucharistic prayers
  are always a memory of Gods good creation and a
  thanksgiving for the gifts of creation.
• When we come to the Eucharist we bring the
  creatures of Earth with us
• We remember the God who loves each one of them
• We grieve for the damage done to them. We feel
  with them and for them an ecological ethos

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Living Memory of Creation and Redemption

• We bring creation to the table, bread and wine,
  fruit of the Earth and the work of human hands
• Creation and salvation He is the Word through
  whom you made the universe, the Saviour you sent
  to redeem us (2nd E. Prayer)
• We lift up creation to God All creation rightly
  gives you praise (3rd E. Prayer) In the name
  of every creature under heaven, we too praise
  your glory (4th E. Prayer)
• In Christ, we remember Gods good creation the
  14 billion year history of the universe, the
  emergence of life in its diversity and beauty
• We remember the vulnerable community of life on
  Earth today and bring this to God

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Sacrament of the Risen Christ Transforming
Creation

• The Christ we encounter in the Eucharist is the
  risen one in whom all things were created and are
  reconciled (Col 115-20) to gather up all
  things in him (Eph 110)
• Christs death we remember a creature of the
  universe freely handing his whole bodily and
  personal existence into the mystery of a loving
  God
• His resurrection we remember part of our
  universe being taken up into God, as the
  beginning of the transformation of all things
• This is not only the promise but also the
  beginning of the glorification and divinization
  of the whole of reality (Rahner)

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Sacrament of the Risen Christ Transforming
Creation

• We are brought into a living relationship with
  Christ, in whom the universe is being transformed
  in the Spirit
• The Eucharist is the sacrament of Christ who is
  the promise and the beginning of the
  transformation of all things
• It is both sign and agent of the transforming
  work of the risen Christ in the whole of creation
• In this vision of things, all that respects and
  celebrates the life systems of our planet is one
  with the work of the risen Christ
• Knowingly destroying the living systems of our
  planet amounts to a denial of what we celebrate
  when we gather for Eucharist, of Christ

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Participation with All Creatures in the Communion
of the Trinity

• In every Eucharist we are taken up into God. We
  participate in the divine Communion
• All things spring from this Communion, and in as
  wy. In a way that is beyond our imagination and
  comprehension, all things will be embraced in it
• In the Eucharist we participate in anticipation
  in the fulfillment of all creation in the divine
  Communion of love
• The most intense moment of our communion with
  God is at the same time an intense moment of our
  communion with the earth (Tony Kelly)
• We are taken into God and into Gods love for
  the creatures of our planetary community

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Participation with All Creatures in the Communion
of the Trinity

• The Eucharist educates the imagination, the
  mind, and the heart to apprehend the universe as
  one of communion and connectedness in Christ
  (Kelly)
• In and through this Eucharistic imagination and
  distinctive ecological vision and commitment can
  take shape
• We can see the see the other creatures of Earth
  as our kin, as radically interconnected with us
  in one Earth community of life before God
• We can begin to see critically to see more
  clearly what is happening to the Earth
• A eucharistic imagination leads to an ecological
  ethos, culture and praxis.

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Solidarity with the Victims of Climate Change

• Johannes Metz speaks of the memory of the passion
  as a dangerous memory
• The cross is a challenge all complacency before
  the suffering of others. It brings those who
  suffer to the centre of Christian faith
• It constantly challenges ideological
  justifications of the misery of the poor
• The resurrection offers a dynamic vision of hope,
  but does not dull the memory of the suffering
  the wounds of the risen Christ
• This dangerous and critical memory provides an
  alternative way of seeing. It can lead to
  solidarity, to alternative life-styles and to
  personal and political action

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Solidarity with the Victims

• The WCC points to areas, especially in the
  Southern hemisphere that are particularly
  vulnerable to climate change Though their per
  capita contribution to the causes of climate
  change is negligible, the will suffer from the
  consequences to a much larger degree
• Climate change aggravates social and economic
  injustice. To contribute to this destruction is
  not only a sin against the weak and unprotected
  but also against the earth-Gods gift of life
• Solidarity involves personal and political
  commitment to the two strategies of mitigation
  and adaptation

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Solidarity with the Victims

• Adaptation re-ordering society, budgeting for
  disasters and hospitality to refugees
• We gather in solidarity with Christians in
  Kiribati. We gather in solidarity with those of
  other faiths
• We remember those displaced from the homes and
  the threat to millions of people
• Mindful of Australias contribution to
  greenhouse, of our wealth created by coal, of our
  use of motor vehicles
• Praying that our Eucharist advance the peace and
  salvation of all the world (3rd E. Prayer)
• We commit ourselves again to discipleship, to an
  ecological lifestyle, politics and praxis as
  people of hope and commitment