Look at the birds of the air

‘Look at the birds of the air,’ says Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel (6.26). We will have the chance to do exactly that during the season of Creationtide, when we have a special focus on our local birdlife. Rev’d Jess Aidley has helped us create a display under the altar of some of the wading birds that populate the Adur Estuary. The model birds, with their long legs and beaks, perfectly adapted for life on the estuary mud, have been made by Jess and members of the congregation. Sadly, many of these beautiful and quirky birds, like curlew and godwit, are now endangered because they struggle to find safe places to nest, or food to eat.

As Christians, we are called to care about all living things, a spiritual teaching that has been tragically neglected in the church until recent years. The environmental crisis has made us look again at our faith and the resources it might offer to guide at this perilous time of climate emergency and biodiversity collapse. There is valuable contemporary work going on in theology exploring the Christian faith from an ecological perspective.

Our charge to conserve

We are discovering new meaning in that popular Genesis story about Noah’s ark. In this ancient story, we see that God gave Noah a mission to build a huge ark and invite in all kinds of birds and beasts, to stay alive. God’s directive makes the meaning of having dominion clear: Noah and his family are charged with seeing to the survival of the other living creatures.

Some theologians are thinking afresh and in a deeper way about the doctrine of the incarnation. The flesh that Christ became is the same flesh that is shared with all living beings. Science now reveals to us how we are all made of the same matter, we are literally stardust all. By taking on a body, Jesus gives value to all bodies and all materiality.

In some ways, this wisdom is not new at all. Julian of Norwich, back in the medieval period, proclaimed that the goodness of God is in everything. St Francis of Assisi famously wrote his canticle of creation in which he saw our deep relatedness to the sun which he called brother, the moon he called sister and the earth he called mother. Creationtide, which runs from 1st September until the feast of St Francis on 4th October, is a time to be attentive to the natural world, to remind ourselves of its goodness and our connectedness to all life. This is something wondrous for us to consider as we look out across the estuary for precious glimpses of wading birds this autumn.