Octopuses are fascinating creatures. They are just about as weird as it gets. They have three hearts, a brain in each arm, and blue-green blood, and they can squeeze their bodies through a hole as small as their own eyeball. In fact, researchers tell us the octopus DNA is the closest thing they can get to studying alien DNA. Yet octopuses are still highly intelligent, and scientists believe they may help them prove that animals possess some kind of consciousness.
While each of God’s creatures are precious in themselves and full of God’s glory, one thing is certain, the consciousness of animals is very different from our own. Take the donkey that Jesus rode into Jerusalem. She would’ve been tied up after the triumphant entry and would’ve been quite happy to stand there for hours on end, waiting for the next person to jump on her back. But if you tie me up outside my local church and leave me to stand for many boring hours, I know I’d act very differently!
After all, we humans have been gifted this amazing, developed consciousness – a profound awareness. We are thinking beings, who can even think about ourselves thinking. Thought, consciousness, awareness – they are all amazing things. While it is mind blowing that we are living on a planet that is hurtling through space, travelling around the sun at 67,000 mph, it is even more astonishing that we know we are living on a planet that hurtling through space, travelling around for sun at 67,000 mph!
Consciousness, though, is also our curse. Our thoughts and awareness can hold us captive. Worry, anxiety, grief, pain, and suffering can keep us chained. All of us struggle personally in one way or another. And then we turn on the news and we see others facing simply terrible situations, whether through war, illness, disability, natural disaster, or grief. There is no sugar coating any of this – life can be harsh and exhausting, and our minds can very easily descend into despair.
But this incredible thing called consciousness also holds the key to the prison in which our minds can become incarcerated. Our consciousness can certainly be a curse, but it can also be an amazing blessing that God has gifted to us. Today, more than any other day, that fact is brought wonderfully home to us. It is Easter Sunday, a day of hope, a day of joy, a day of resurrection, a day of new life. Today we are offered a reassurance and a life-affirming hope that no octopus can ever grasp or comprehend.
God can, though, open the minds, hearts, and lives of us “thinking humans” to this mind-blowing event. And, by doing so, we are offered liberation from the chains of our daily concerns. Our burdened minds are freed to recognise God’s presence in our often-turbulent lives. We open our eyes, our ears, and our hearts to truly appreciate the small moments of joy breaking into our lives each day – new life moments – Easter moments. These are moments when sunshine breaks through the darkness we are facing. These are moments when God’s light dazzles us in unexpected ways, sometimes even in our ordinary, mundane events – an uplifting stroll in the countryside, a meal with your family, a walk with your pet dog, laughter shared with a friend, an act of kindness, a supportive word, a simple smile. Sometimes, as we face the storms of this broken world, it’s not easy to rewire our minds away from worry, anxiety, and pain. But, carried by God’s strength, we Christians are able to attest that this wonderful gift of life is beautiful.
Holy Week, culminating in Jesus’s crucifixion, affirms the reality of suffering and reassures us that God knows what it’s like when we are facing the storms of life. He knows pain, he knows loss, he knows tears. Easter Sunday, though, affirms the reality of hope and reassures us that the grave is not the end of the journey, that there is a kingdom all around us that will last forever, and that the light of that kingdom will break through whatever darkness we are facing.
We are often reminded at our churches about the hope that Easter brings to humankind, both in the future and the present. Rarely, though, do we hear about the hope that Easter brings to the whole of creation. Yet the biblical narrative insists this is the case and our Easter traditions are littered with reminders of this fact. In Jesus’s first appearance, he is even mistaken for a gardener, and Christians have long used imagery from nature to remind us of his promise of new life – eggs, lambs, bunnies, and chicks. And that is before we consider the New Testament’s insistence that, in Christ, the natural world finds its completion. “Behold I make all things new”, as Revelation puts it (21:5). In other words, the most important moment in our faith, the resurrection, speaks directly into the most pressing challenge to our generation – climate change.
It was inspiring this week to see the reaction to the tragedy of the fire at Notre Dame Cathedral. In the flames that we all witnessed in our screens, we had a symbol of helplessness, loss and sorrow – a crucifixion, if you like. On the streets of Paris, there were tears and lamentation, with the realisation that something sacred was about to be lost to future generations. The horror and the disbelief, however, was soon transformed into something very different – a refusal to consign beauty to ashes and a desire to rebuild and give life to the smouldering, sacred ruins. It may take many years, but the cathedral will again became a symbol of hope, new life, and resurrection. Notre Dame will rise again. “Behold, I make all things new!”
But, of course, one majestic Cathedral is not “all things”. Many other things are still broken in the world, and many other things are being destroyed daily, not in accidental fire, but through greed, exploitation, and avarice. These things are being lost at a rate that is staggering and heartbreaking – rainforests, glaciers, whole species of insects, animals, fish, and birds. And the crisis, in changing our world’s climate, is now also threatening human life across the world. My wife recounts the words of an RE teacher in her school in Germany: “we say to our grandparents “why didn’t you do any thing when the holocaust was happening?”, but our grandchildren will say to us “why didn’t you do any thing when the environment was dying?”” As in the burning Notre Dame, God’s groaning, suffocating creation is another symbol of tragedy, loss, and sadness – another crucifixion. Something sacred is again about to be lost to future generations.
Today is all about good news, and there is good news here – it is not too late and resurrection is hardwired into nature. Plant a tree and things already start to change and be renewed. Yes, we desperately need wholesale changes by businesses and governments to combat climate change. But we also need to remember that our own little acts make a difference. As Pope Francis put it, in an encyclical on climate change that he presented as a gift to a visiting President Trump: “an integral ecology is also made up of simple daily gestures which break with the logic of violence, exploitation and selfishness”. He then lists some of those little acts that can make a difference, that can help bring new life, hope, and resurrection to the natural world – using public transport, car-pooling, planting trees, turning off lights, recycling, and so on. As the activist Howard Zinn wrote: “we don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change – small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world”. This is the mustard seed principle (Mark 4:39-32) – small acts can lead to big change. After all, a snowflake never feels responsible for an avalanche, but every snowflake is making a difference.
Today is Easter Day, tomorrow will be Earth Day, as it is every April 22nd. Both days speak of new life and new hope. A BBC News report earlier this week said of Notre Dame: “this gift to all humanity will rise again”. And that is true. Within a decade, that wonderful cathedral’s bells will ring again, worship and praise will again resound from its pews, and its art and architecture will again speak to people of God’s glory. But we are called to ensure that creation, God’s ultimate gift to humanity, will also rise again. That is our mission, that is our challenge. By acting as God’s hands and feet, even in our smallest actions, we can affirm that all things will be made new. As Eric Liddell, who won gold in the Paris Olympics in 1924, detailed in the Oscar-Winning film Chariots of Fire, wrote: “God is not helpless among the ruins… God’s love is still working. He comes in and takes the calamity and uses it victoriously, working out his wonderful plan of love”. Behold God makes all things new. He is risen. Alleluia!
Trystan Owain Hughes 