Readings: Genesis 1:1-2, 26-31. 2:1-3; Luke 12:16-31
`In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth`. This portrays creation as a past event. Yet time progresses and theories advance and from a modern perspective we should read it as: `In the beginning God began to create the heavens and the earth` for creation is both in the past, in the present and into the future. Being created in God`s image, we are co-creators with God in the on-going process of creation.

On creation`s sixth day of creation, humankind is charged to: `Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it`. This is truly prophetic as Humankind has spread to all corners of the world. We have increased from a few million people to over 7 billion. The fossil fuel consumption of the affluent nations has raised atmospheric CO2 to unprecedented levels and global temperatures are rising. Our rainfall is declining, our wildflower season is becoming earlier and earlier, our tropical fish are moving further south each year and our coral reefs are dying.

As if anticipating this human predicament, on the final and seventh day of creation God set aside a time of rest. In Deuteronomy, Exodus and Leviticus, these times were prescribed for each seventh day, each seventh year and each seven x seven years to restore the balance of society and of nature. But like the rich young farmer in Jesus` parable our society has become so focused on wealth creation and pleasure seeking that we are in danger of not having the time to address our individual, communal and global needs.

Global Warming is not something new. The role of CO2 in the atmosphere was discovered 150 years
ago, the impact of doubling atmospheric C02 on global temperatures was predicted 100 years ago and the hard climate evidence of global warming has been with us for the last 30 years. The long delays between when the science was settled and our taking action, is empirical evidence that something is seriously wrong in the way we receive and process important information, scientific and biblical. `Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind` so it would seem (Albert Einstein).

`We have been feasting on the earth`s riches as if it is one giant banquet. Hundreds of millions of people come to eat. They eat and drink to their hearts` content - eating food that is better and more abundant than at the finest table in ancient Athens or Rome, or even in the palaces of medieval Europe. Then one day, a man arrives, wearing a white dinner jacket. He says he is holding the bill. Not surprisingly the diners are in shock. Some begin to deny that it is their bill. Still others deny that they partook of the meal. One diner suggests that the man is not really a waiter, but is only trying to get attention for himself or to raise money for his own projects. Finally, the group concludes that if they simply ignore the waiter, he will go away.

For the past 150 years, industrial civilisation has been dining on the energy stored in fossil fuels, and the bill has come due. Yet, we have persistently sat around the dinner table denying that it is our bill, and doubting the credibility of the man delivering it. We have experienced prosperity unmatched in human history. We have feasted to our hearts content thinking the lunch was free. But in not paying we have been stealing from future generations and from people in poorer countries - stealing in a big way.

It is not surprising that many of us are in denial. After all we did not know it was a banquet, and we didn`t know there would be a bill. However now we do know. Global warming, rising sea levels, acidification of the oceans, more extreme weather of cyclones, droughts and flooding rains, species extinction and destruction of wetlands. These are the environmental costs of living the way we citizens of the wealthy, developed nations have lived since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Now we either have to pay the price, change the way we do business, or leave future generations and the poor to suffer what is predicted to be terrible consequences?`

Professor Noami Oreskes research reveals how `The Merchants of Doubt` have successfully fed our capacity for self deception. These Merchants began as disaffected scientists from the USA Nuclear Weapons program who feared that cutbacks in production of Nuclear Weapons was endangering national security. From these beginnings they moved onto the Tobacco Industry after medical research indicated the need for regulation. They have since become an expanding industry of think tanks here in Australia and the USA, funded by large Corporations and wealthy individuals to counter environmental regulation and preserve our freedom to pollute as we see fit. They use sophisticated methods to seed doubt in the minds of ordinary citizens as an anti-dote to the inconvenient truths of Science. Persuading us successfully to think we could ignore the waiter while we haggled over the bill?

In the parables of the rich farmer, Jesus addresses the `Merchants of Doubt`. He speaks of an alternative reality being created anew from the very people and elements of nature present as he spoke. In his parables Jesus reassures the poor but warns how fraught with difficulty and how sad even, life will become for the rich if they fail to embrace the alternative reality of God`s providence experienced in Nature which cares for all birds, flowers, grasses and human beings. This insight of Jesus confirms our current scientific understanding of the interdependence of all life on earth marvellously expressed in Aboriginal Spirituality as: `The earth is our mother, for if we destroy the earth, we destroy ourselves, whether that is part of our spirituality or not.`

Given the moral limits of the free market that has brought us untold riches, can Christianity find a message for a society which has decided that it can do without religion? Original sin - if understood as our capacity for denial and self delusion is one of the most plausible concepts within the Christian package, corresponding all too accurately to our present dilemma. One great encouragement to such sin is our absence of a sense of Awe and Wonder at God`s providence evidenced by the amazing self organising and self sustaining capacity of nature - echoed in Jesus` parable today. Instead of Awe and Wonder we appear to be creating a synthetic world of make believe through reconfiguring our brains with countless hours of TV, Video Games and other interactive Gizmos.
If we repent from such sin - that is change the way we think and approach life it would be very surprising if Christianity, so youthful, yet so varied in its historical experience, has yet revealed all its possibilities.

Ecclesiastes in his book of Old Testament wisdom, where Jesus would have drawn inspiration for his parables, concludes with these profound words, still relevant for us today:

Stand in awe of Nature and do what it requires of you, for this is the whole duty of mankind.
For everything we do Nature will bring to judgement, even everything hidden, whether it is good or evil.

In a society where the word God no longer has significance - this novel translation by a leading Biblical Scholar brings us back to the ultimate reality of human existence.

Recently over 60 people came to a Forum on Climate Science at All Saints Floreat, many were impressed that it was being held in a Church. At this year`s Floral Carpet in early September - with the theme of Living Water and caring for our precious rivers and wetlands, many from the wider Community participated and asked the same questions. What answer will you be giving them?

Through the laws of nature, God not only calls us to account, but gifts us the capacity, the technology, the science, the wealth, and bounteous amounts of renewable energy to arrest and reverse the process of Global Warming.

The Church, this Church and its people has the power of the Creator`s Spirit revealed in Jesus Christ to go out and proclaim this Good News and - To God be the Glory.


References
John D. Crossan, 2007, God and Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now.
Robert W. Funk, 1996, Honest to Jesus: Jesus For A New Millenium.
Lloyd Geering, 2011, Such is Life: Close encounters with Ecclesiastes.
Diarmaid McCulloch, 2009, A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. Penguin Books.
Michael J. Sandel, 2012, What Money Can`t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets.
Noami Oreskes,2012, Merchants of Doubt.
Roger Williamson, 2011, www.bellagioinitiative.org/2011/10/the-price-of-everything-and-the-value-of-nothing/
Albert Einstein, 1941, www.quotationspage.com/quote/24949.html