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A New Heaven and A New Earth, by Rev. Dr. John Chryssavgis

Church and Environment: Theological and Spiritual Insights
by Rev. Dr. John Chryssavgis
 

ALLOW ME TO TAKE YOU BACK ON A JOURNEY TO THE moment of creation. Whenever we think of the Genes is account, we tend to ignore our connection to the environment. Perhaps it is a natural reaction - or perhaps it is a sign of arrogance - but we often overemphasize our creation "in the image of God" (Genesis 1 :27) and overlook our creation from the "dust of the ground" (Genesis 2:7). Yet our heavenliness should nor overshadow our earthliness. Most people forget that we human beings did not get a day to ourselves in Genesis. In fact, we shared the sixth day with the creeping and crawling things of the world (Genesis 1:24-26). There is a binding unity and continuity that we share with all of God’s creation; it is helpful - and humbling - to recall this truth.

Of course, in more recent years, we have been painfully reminded of this truth by flora and fauna extinction, soil and forest clearance, as well as air and water pollution. However, our concern for the environment does not result from any superficial or sentimental romanticism. It arises from our effort to honor and dignify God's creation. It is a way of paying attention to the mourning of the land (Hosea 4:3) and the groaning of creation (Romans 8:22).

This is the reason why the Ecumenical Patriarchate has organized, among other initiatives, a number of international and interdisciplinary symposia over the last decade near bodies of water: in the Aegean Sea (1995) and the Black Sea (1997), along the Danube River (1999) and in the Adriatic Sea (2002), in the Baltic Sea (2003), on the Amazon River (2006), as well as in Greenland and the Arctic (2007). Like the air we breathe, water is a source of life; if it is defiled, the very essence of our existence is threatened.

Tragically, however, we appear to be caught up in selfish lifestyles that repeatedly ignore the constraints of nature, which are neither deniable nor negotiable. There will unfortunately be some things we learn about our planet's capacity for survival which we will discover only when things are beyond the point of no return.

 

Three Ways of Perceiving the World

One of the hymns of the Orthodox Church, chanted on the Feast of Theophany, a feast of renewal and regeneration for the entire world, eloquently articulates this tragedy:

I have become the defilement of the air, the land and the water.

 How, then, are we to restore within ourselves a sense of wonder before God's creation? Our theology presents us with three helpful ways:

• icons (the way we perceive creation);

• liturgy (the way we celebrate creation);

• asceticism (the way we respect creation).

 

1. The Iconic Vision of Nature

A sense of the holy in nature implies that everything that breathes praises God (Psalm 150:6); the entire world is a "burning bush of God's energies," as Gregory Palamas claimed. When our heart is sensitive to this reality, then "our eyes are opened to discern the beauty of created things" (Abba Isaac the Syrian). Seeing clearly is precisely what icons teach us to do. The world of the icon offers new insights; it reveals the eternal dimension in everything we experience. Our generation, it may be said, is characterized by a sense of self-centeredness toward the natural world, by a lack of awareness of the beyond. We appear to be inexorably trapped within the confines of our individual concerns. We have broken the sacred covenant between ourselves and our world.

The icon restores and reconciles. It reminds us of another way of living and offers a corrective to the culture we have created, which gives value only to the here and now. The icon reveals the inner vision of all, the world as created and as intended by God. Very often, the first image attempted by an iconographer is that of the Transfiguration of Christ on Mt. Tabor. This is precisely because the iconographer struggles to hold together this world and the next, to transfigure this world in light of the next. For, by disconnecting this world from heaven, we have in fact desacralized both. The icon articulates with theological conviction our faith in the heavenly kingdom. It does away with any objective distance between this world and the next, between material and spiritual, between body and soul , time and eternity. The icon speaks in this world the language of the age to come.

This is why the doctrine of the Divine Incarnation is at the very heart of iconography. For in the icon of Jesus Christ, the uncreated God assumes a creaturely face, a beauty that is exceeding (Psalm 44:3), a "beauty that can save the world" (Fyodor Dostoevsky). And in Orthodox icons, faces - whether of Christ or of the saints - are always shown frontally; two eyes always gaze back at the beholder. The heart becomes "all eyes," as the desert fathers like to say, eternally receptive of divine grace. Christ is in our midst, here, Immanuel (Matthew 1 :23). A profile view signifies sin; it implies a rupture in communication. "I see" means that "I am seen," which in turn means that I am in communion. This is the powerful experience of the invisible and the immortal , a passing over - a Passover, or Pascha - to another way of seeing and "a different way of living," as our Paschal hymns proclaim.

In this respect, the entire world is an icon, a door opening up to this new reality. Everything in this world becomes a seed. "Nothing is a vacuum in the face of God," wrote St. Irenaeus of Lyons; "everything is a sign of God." Thus, in icons, rivers have a human form; so, too, do the sun and the moon and the stars and the waters. All of them assume human faces; all of them acquire a personal dimension-just like people; just like God.

2. The Liturgy of Nature

What an icon does with matter, the liturgy does with time. If we are guilty of relentless waste in our world, it is perhaps because we have lost the spirit of worship. We are no longer respectful pilgrims on this earth; we have been reduced to mere tourists. Our original sin lies perhaps in our prideful refusal to receive the world as a sacrament of communion.

By liturgical, however, I do not mean ritual. I mean dynamism and direction. This world is a never-ending movement toward the Kingdom. Indeed, it is profoundly and intimately related to the heavenly kingdom. This means that what we do on earth matters in terms of what we believe about heaven. The way we relate to other people on earth reflects the way we pray to "our Father in heaven." And, by extension, we respond to nature with the same sensitivity and the same tenderness with which we respond to human beings. We have learned not to treat people like things, because they are created "in the image of God." We must now learn not to treat even things like mere things, because they, too, contain the very trace of God.

Liturgy, then, is precisely a commemoration of this innate connection between God and people and things. It is a celebration of the sense of communion, a dance of life. When we recognize this interdependence of all persons and all things - this "cosmic liturgy," as St. Maximus the Confessor described it in the seventh century - then we may begin to resolve the environmental crisis. For then we will have acquired, as St. Isaac the Syrian noted in the same century, ''A merciful heart burning with love for all of creation - for humans, birds, beasts, and demons - for all God's creatures."

The world in its entirety comprises an integral part of the liturgy. God is praised by trees and birds, glorified by the stars and moon (Psalm 18:2), worshiped by sea and sand. There is a dimension of art and music in the world. This means, however, that whenever we reduce our spirituality to ourselves and our own interests, we forget that the liturgy implores God for the renewal of the whole polluted cosmos. And whenever we narrow life to our own concerns and desires, we neglect our vocation to elevate creation to the Kingdom.

3. The Way of the Ascetics

Of course, this world does not always feel - or even look - like heaven; a quick glance at the suffering inflicted by wars alone is sufficient to bring us to our senses. Nonetheless, St. Paul writes, "[Through Christ, God was pleased] to reconcile all things to Himself, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross" (Colossians 1 :20).

Reference here to the blood of the cross is a clear indication of the cost involved in this reconciliation. There is a price to pay for our wasting. And this is the value of ascesis; for only a spirit of asceticism can lead to a spirit of gratitude and love, to the rediscovery of wonder and beauty in our relationship with the world. So the ascetic way is a way of liberation. The ascetic is one who is free, uncontrolled by attitudes that abuse the world, characterized by self-restraint, as well as by the ability to say "no" or "enough." I often wonder why it is that we human beings don't have the basic discipline that my pet Pomeranian dog has to know exactly when enough is enough. The goal of asceticism is moderation, not repression. Its content is positive, not negative: it looks to service, nor selfishness; to reconciliation, not renunciation. Without asceticism, none of us is authentically human.

Consider one example of asceticism in our tradition, namely the discipline or rule of fasting. We Orthodox fast from dairy and meat products for half the year; that in itself is a symbolic way of reconciling one half of the year with the other, secular time with the time of the Kingdom. Yet what does fasting imply? To fast is to learn to give, and not simply to give up. It is not to deny but, in fact, to offer; it is learning to share, to connect with human beings and the natural world. Fasting means breaking down barriers with my neighbor and my world: recognizing in others' faces, icons; and in the earth the face of God. Ultimately, to fast is to love, to see clearly, to restore the original beauty of the world. To fast is to move away from what I want to what the world needs. It is to liberate creation from control and compulsion. Fasting is to value everything for itself, and not simply for ourselves. It is to be filled with a sense of goodness, of godliness. It is to see all things in God and God in all things.

THE CRISIS WE ARE FACING IN OUR WORLD IS NOT PRIMARILY ecological. It is a crisis concerning the way we envisage the world. We are treating our planet in an inhumane, godless manner precisely because we fail to see it as a gift inherited from above; it is our obligation to receive, respect, and in turn offer this gift to future generations. Before we can effectively deal with ecological problems, we must change the way we perceive the world. Otherwise, we are simply dealing with symptoms, not with their causes. We require a new worldview if we are to desire "a new heaven and a new earth" (Revelation 2 1: I). This is our calling; indeed, this is God's command. We must hear and heed it now. As his All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew declared jointly with the late Pope John Paul II:

“It is not too late. God's world has incredible healing powers. Within a single generation, we could steer the earth toward our children's future. Let that generation start now, with God's help and blessing.” (Venice, 2002)

Let that generation start with us!

Fr. John Chryssavgis studied in Athens (Greece) and Oxford (England). The author of many books and articles on Orthodox theology and spirituality, he has also taught in Sydney (Australia) and Boston (USA).

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The Wonder of Creation
A short excerpt from the book
Encountering the Mystery: Understanding Orthodox Christianity Today
by His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew
Doubleday, 2008

“WHEN GOD SPOKE TO MOSES IN THE BURNING BUSH, communication occurred through a silent voice, as Saint Gregory of Nyssa informs us in his mystical classic, The Life of Moses. Nature is a book, opened wide for all to read and to learn. Each plant, each animal, and each microorganism tells a story, unfolds a mystery, relates an extraordinary harmony and balance, which are interdependent and complementary. Everything points to the same encounter and mystery.

"The same dialogue of communication and mystery of communication is detected in the galaxies, where the countless stars betray the same mystical beauty and mathematical interconnectedness. We do not need this perspective in order to believe in God or to prove His existence. We need it to breathe; we need it for us to simply be. The coexistence and correlation between the boundlessly infinite and the most insignificantly finite things articulate a concelebration of joy and love. This is precisely what, in the seventh century, Saint Maximus the Confessor (580-662) called a 'cosmic liturgy.' There are 'words' (or logos) in creation that can be discerned with proper attentiveness. They are what the Church Fathers called 'The word (or logos) of things,' 'the word (or logos) of beings,' and 'the word (or logos) of existence itself.'

"It is unfortunate when we lead our lives without even noticing the environmental concert that is playing out before our eyes and ears. In this orchestra, each minute detail plays a critical role, and every trivial aspect participates in an essential way. No single member - human or otherwise - can be removed without the entire picture being deeply affected. No single tree or animal can be removed without the entire picture being profoundly distorted, if not destroyed. When will we stop to hear the music of this harmony? It is an ongoing rhythm, even if we are not aware of it. When will we learn the alphabet of this divine language, so mysteriously concealed in nature? It is so clearly revealed in the created world around us. When will we learn to embrace the awesome beauty of the divine presence on the body of the world? Its contours are so markedly visible...

"Our age is faced with a unique challenge. Never before, in the long history of our planet, has humanity found itself so 'developed' that it faces the possible destruction of its own environment and species. Never before in the long history of this earth have the earth's ecosystems faced almost irreversible damage. It may be that future generations will one day view the senseless eradication of the magnificent repositories of genetic information and biodiversity in our age in much the same way as we view, in retrospect, the burning of the library in Alexandria in 48 B.C.E. Therefore, our responsibility lies in accepting the need to respond in a unique way in order to meet our obligations to the generations that follow."