A reflection on climate justice - originally prepared for the third Sunday of lent

‘ His hands have moulded the dry land' (Psalm 95)

The popular perception of Lent is still one of a season in which we 'give things up, as the Jesus we meet in the wilderness has fasted for 40 days. Today, we might not simply explore the spiritual virtues of doing without, but recognise that our unhalted consumption is raising questions about the sustainability of our planet.

The desert landscape is a stark reminder of what can happen, even to fertile places when they are exploited and over-consumed. The discipline of fasting and sacrifice invites us to consider what we might manage to curtail on a more permanent basis. It invites us to remember that this earth is not ours, and we have no more claim on its resources than any other generation - past or future.

You call us to the desert,
And in its vast and barren landscape,
We recognise this earth’s true fragility.
When parched and hungry, we inhabit a land that cannot sustain us.

Confronted by the emptiness of this scorched and ravaged place,
We learn to be thankful again for the bounty
That, too lightly, we dismiss as routine expectation,
And recognise more deeply the sufficiency of knowing you.

Teach us to loosen our grasp
On what the habits of privilege have taught us to call essential.
Set us free from the tyranny of consumption,
That even in the wilderness, contentment might be found.

For at the dawn of time,
You did not simply breathe out the life of your Spirit,
But breathed it into the dust of the earth.
We are yours; yet belong in, and are sustained by your creation.

And so we come to recognise
How easily we have forgotten the privilege of being its guardians;
The desert places become a stark foretaste
Of what can become, and is becoming, when we neglect this planet’s care

You did not come to exploit and consume the resources of this world,
But to redeem and reclaim – to reconcile all things;
Pointing us to that full salvation, for which all creation groans.
Help us walk in its direction, casting the light of hope across this ravaged earth.

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