Br. James Koester

The Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 18C)

Deuteronomy 30:15-20

You may have heard that recently the Pope predicted that AI would be the next industrial revolution. At the same time, he called upon the Roman Catholic Church to apply its social teachings regarding human dignity, justice, and labour to this new AI industrial revolution as it has done consistently since a previous Pope Leo issued an encyclical entitled On Capital and Labour in 1891. That earlier Pope Leo laid the foundation for modern Roman Catholic social teaching that has endured for more than a century, and which includes Pope Francis’ encyclical On Care for Our Common Home.

If the Pope is correct, and many believe he is, then this would be the fourth industrial revolution the world has experienced since the eighteenth century, and the third since the late nineteenth century. These revolutions have seen the world shift from hand tools to steam, from steam to electricity, from electricity to the digital age, and now from the digital age to the age of AI. Underpinning these industrial revolutions were first the scientific revolution of the sixteenth century and the enlightenment of the seventeenth century. Each of these revolutions has resulted in a shift in our relationships, both with one another as humans, and equally significant, in our relationship with the rest of creation.

It is important to keep all of this is mind as we read today’s passage from Deuteronomy, for embedded in it is an understanding of creation lost to us under centuries of industrial and intellectual revolutions. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today….[1]

For our ancestors in faith, especially for those who lived before any of these intellectual or industrial revolutions, heaven and earth were not merely things, sources of raw material to be extracted, but living entities capable of laughter, joy, and praise. Where were you, God asked Job when I laid the foundation of the earth … [and] the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?[2] This is not a case of anthropomorphizing the stars. It is a recognition of, as Father Congreve of our Society said, a real fellowship of all created things, a unity of [humanity] with all creatures in the purpose to which the Creator formed them[3] which is to give praise and glory to God. In this way, Deuteronomy recognizes something we fail to see, a relationship of creatures between humanity and the cosmos which exists to praise God the Creator.

That relationship between fellow creatures, where one could act as witness in a legal sense, for or against the other in a court of law, is not simply poetry. It is a theological statement. It reminds us that we are but dust.[4] It is our dust-ness that makes us one with creation and which our Creator has declared good. For God saw everything that [God] had made, and indeed, it was very good.[5]

Yet despite our common creatureliness, our dust-ness, and our inherent goodness, there is something we do not share with the rest of creation, and that is our ability to choose. See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity…. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him; for that means life to you….[6] It is our freedom to choose life or death, good or evil, right or wrong, that both sets us apart from the rest of creation, and makes us dependent on creation in order to receive God’s immeasurable love in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ; for the means of grace, and for the hope of glory.[7]

The history of redemption from Genesis to Revelation and beyond is the story of how humanity has separated ourselves from both Creator and creation by rejecting the Creator and placing ourselves in the centre of creation and then abusing creation itself. It is also the story of how the Creator has been clothed in creation through the incarnation of the only begotten Son. As the word was made flesh[8] in Jesus, humanity’s fellowship with the rest of creation is restored and all creation shimmers with the glory of God.[9] In Christ, creation becomes a sign and sacrament of God’s very being. At the same time, as bread and wine and water are brought [to the altar] and blessed [,] Christ the High Priest takes these creatures into His hands and offers them to the Eternal Father; they become the Lord’s Body and Blood; and so they are … consecrated to become powers of eternal life, uniting earth and Heaven.[10] In that way, creation in the form of Christ’s sacramental Body and Blood, becomes for us the means of grace.

Since that first act of disobedience, when Adam and Eve reached out to grasp the forbidden fruit,[11] we have denied and rejected our fellowship with the rest of creation, believing ourselves to be the creator. Each revolution since the sixteenth century, the scientific, the intellectual, the industrial, the electrical, and the digital, while they have brought many benefits, have further alienated us from the rest of creation as we have tried to claim for ourselves the role of creator. If we are not careful, the same will be true with the AI revolution.

How different things might be, both for us and our planet, if these revolutions were the means not to destroy, but to restore our fellowship with creation and help us to see creation again as the sign and sacrament of God’s very being and to know creation to be a means of grace. If that were so, we would see in creation God’s immeasurable love for us in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ.

The thing is, such a vision of our fellowship with creation restored is possible and it begins here, at this altar. Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation, through your goodness we have this bread to offer: fruit of the earth and work of human hands, it will become for us the bread of eternal life. Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation, through your goodness we have this wine to offer: fruit of the vine and work of human hands, it will become for us our spiritual drink.[12]

As the dignity of creation is renewed and restored here at this altar Sunday by Sunday, and day by day, when creation itself becomes the Body and Blood of Christ, we have the opportunity once again to choose life, that we may live. In choosing life our fellowship with creation is restored. It no longer is a thing to be exploited. We discover it to be a revelation of God’s love, and a means of God’s grace. We hear again the morning stars singing, and the heavenly beings shouting for joy. And we come to know in all its profundity, that we and all creation have been declared by the Creator to be good, and that is a cause of hope, as God’s glory is being revealed in, and by, and through all created things, which for us, as we gather around this altar, is the means of grace and hope of glory.

[1] Deuteronomy 30:19

[2] Job 38:4, 7

[3] Congreve SSJE, George, The Fellowship of Man with All Created Things in Sorrow and In Hope, Christian Progress, Longman, Green, and Co., London, 1910, page 259

[4] Psalm 104:14b

[5] Genesis 1:31

[6] Deuteronomy 30:15, 19c-20

[7] TEC, Book of Common Prayer, 1979, page 101

[8] John 1:14

[9] See Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem God’s Grandeur

[10] Congreve, page 263

[11] See Genesis 3

[12] These are the offertory prayers of the Roman Rite and are used in some Provinces of the Anglican Communion.