Twelfth Sunday after Trinity, 15 September 2019
Austwick, Clapham (Keasden Harvest)
Hear this parable about things we’ve lost, as we meditate on the reasons why.
A retired couple bought a new house on an estate called Skylarks. The estate agents told them it’s ‘surrounded by fresh, open countryside and natural beauty’. They thought there’d be skylarks there; but they found there’s very little birdlife, very little wildlife at all. It’s a sterile place. They since learned that before they started building, the developers covered 600 metres of hedgerow with netting to stop birds nesting – and then removed all the hedges altogether. [1]
Let’s hear some other parables. Which one of us, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, would say, ‘I haven’t time to go looking for that; I’ve still got ninety-nine; I’ll write that one off.’? And which one of us, having ten silver coins, and losing one of them, will sit back and say, ‘Oh, well, it’ll probably turn up sometime, I’ll get some more out of the cashpoint later.’?
We live in what we might call a ‘sacrificial economy’ – where we’re prepared to let some things go so that we can get on with our day; where we calculate that a one percent loss is worth conceding for the sake of progress. The ‘sacrificial economy’ connects the cheap imported beef which we scrape into our wheelie bins with the Amazonian rainforest we burn to create space for more beef crops, with beef farmers in our part of the world unable to get a fair price. [2]
In the ‘sacrificial economy’ the sacrifices are usually made by others: unnoticed, powerless others. Like the skylarks; like the salmon unable to negotiate the manmade dams and weirs peppering our rivers, preventing them from swimming upstream to reach their spawning grounds. The sacrificial economy depends on our keenness to buy polyester dresses for just £4 made by women in UK cities paid well below the minimum wage, whilst farmers subsidise the sale of fleece. The sacrificial economy is fired by our desire to have Amazon deliver quickly to our homes, at low-cost, whilst our local booksellers go out of business. [3]
Their loss is our gain.
And these losses build up – until we realise that the sacrifices which others have had to make, which the earth and the creatures and the trees have had to make, on our behalf, leave us bereft as well:
Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got
‘Till it’s gone [4]
From our favourite local butcher or baker, no longer there, to the biosystems of our whole wide earth – ‘as in the old science fiction films and tales of half a century ago, we have already landed on a harsh and unpredictable planet, all six billion of us. Climate change is already here’, today’s Earth is a different place than the one we were born into, which we’ve altogether lost. [5]
Although this ‘sacrificial economy’ has caused this loss, we have to accept it, for it is the only way that human beings can live on this earth – or so we are told. You have heard it said, There Is No Alternative but to keep on pursuing endless growth, and constant economic and technological progress. But today there are other voices telling you, it doesn’t have to be this way.
The influential philosopher Michel Serres, who died this year, once wrote that the parables of Jesus as retold by Saint Luke and Saint Matthew ‘express the principle of the non-sacrificial economy, the economy that refuses even the smallest expense, one percent, the scapegoat itself’.
In the non-sacrificial economy taught by Jesus, every last one is precious enough to seek out and to save. In the non-sacrificial economy lived out by Jesus, everybody is included, all things rejoice together, there are no executions or expulsions, the victims are returned to the fold.
By refusing the logic of the sacrificial economy Jesus positively demonstrates that what has to be done is precisely to save that which customarily, we allow to be lost.
Lost soul, lost woman, lost farm, lost forest, lost birds… Michel Serres said, ‘Economist, turn your science upside down in order to go searching purposefully for the miserable, the sacrificed. Scientist, change your logic to save the victims of progress. No! Not progress at any cost! Give back in full price the price offered up in sacrifice for progress.’ [6]
Earlier this year the most comprehensive and detailed review of the state of nature was published. It found that humans are more dependent on nature now than at any time in our history.
Over the past 50 years, as the world’s population has doubled, we have pulled more people out of poverty than ever before. But we have done it by burning, poisoning and laying to waste large sections of the most biodiversity-rich lands and oceans, killing off thousands of species and now threatening a million more. “Nature is changing in part because there’s more of us and we are consuming more,” said one of the report’s lead authors, Dr Kate Brauman. “As people become more affluent they have bigger footprints, they eat more, they drive more and they fly more.”
One key message from the assessment is that we need to re-evaluate what we mean by the idea of a “good life”. For centuries, in western culture, this has all been about accumulating wealth, working hard, making sacrifices for the benefits of our children. Progress, as defined in many families, has meant children earning more than their parents. More money, more things.
“We need to change the way we think about what a good life is, we need to change the social narrative that puts an emphasis on a good life depending on a high consumption and quick disposal,” the report’s co-chair said, “We need to shift it to an idea of a fulfilling life that is more aligned with a good relationship with nature, and a good relationship with other people, with the public good. We need to change the stories in our heads, because they are the ones that are now enacted in decisions all the way from the individual up to government.”
She added: “Changing that is not easy but this is what it would take to reach the better future for the children that are born this year.” [7]
Here the scientists are agreeing with the philosophers and with the evangelists who wrote the gospels. We may not be able to regain what we have lost – but we should turn our hearts to seek out those ways in which we can turn our losses into celebrations, our laments into Harvest songs.
Notes
[1] Based on a reading of Sandra Laville, Property developers row back on netting used to stop birds nesting, Guardian, 5 April 2019: ‘The Derbyshire Wildlife Trust … persuaded developers William Davis to remove netting from 600 metres of hedgerow which is due to be torn out for an estate called Skylarks, to the north of Chesterfield.’ with reference to the developer’s website.
[2] For the ‘sacrificial economy’ see Michel Serres, “One God or a Trinity?” Contagion, Vol. 1 (Spring, 1994), pp. 1-17. (Translated by Cesareo Bandera and Judith Arias). Referenced in Paul Nuechterlein, Girardian Reflections on the Lectionary, Proper 19C. Urgent action needed to support British beef sector, NFU Online, 27 June 2019.
[3] Robin McKie, ‘To save our fish, we must first find ways to unblock UK’s rivers,’ say scientists. Observer, 1 September 2019. Sandra Laville, The story of a £4 Boohoo dress: cheap clothes at a high cost. Guardian, 22 June 2019. Ciaran Moran, Worthless wool: ‘Prices are so low they no longer cover the cost of shearing the sheep’. Irish Independent, 2 June 2018. Alison Flood, Amazon blamed as ‘iconic’ bookshops announce closure. Guardian, 30 May 2019.
[4] Joni Mitchell, Big Yellow Taxi.
[5] Quotation from Rebecca Solnit’s review of Bill McKibben, Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet.
[6] Michel Serres, “One God or a Trinity?” Contagion, Vol. 1 (Spring, 1994), pp. 1-17. (Translated by Cesareo Bandera and Judith Arias). Referenced in Paul Nuechterlein, Girardian Reflections on the Lectionary, Proper 19C.
[7] Matt McGrath, Five things we’ve learned from nature crisis study. BBC Science & Environment, 6 May 2019.
