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The Across 2000 celebrations, May 2002
We have also put up a separate gallery of photos that Gillian took, which you can see at the bottom of the page. Click here to go directly there.
During last weekend Dee visited the Eden Project, that wonderfully imaginative ecological project that has drawn visitors in their thousands to visit its domes which seek to replicate the climates, plants and vegetation of our planet. Above all it seeks to show how we as humans relate to the world in which we live. This project puts into micro-perspective both the beauty and vulnerability of our planet, and our relationship with it. Since September 11 last year a kind of cosmic gloom has settled over our world. The 'war against terrorism' seems to have become the all-consuming concern of the United States, and the unmitigating violence that has marked the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians has left us all despairing for humanity. These are indeed dangerous times, and the possibility of British service personnel being tied down for years in the hostile territory of Afghanistan, as well as Iraq, if the more bellicose voices prevail, is too depressing to contemplate.
At the beginning of the Bible story is the account of God's 'Eden Project' – God's own Galustian Garden. Here is a vision for a humanity living in harmony with creation, adn in communion with other human beings. Both creation and humanity dependent upon a God who defies all attempts at being described fully, yet nevertheless, is recognized in all encounters as loving, tender, just adn merciful. God's 'Eden Project' was by all accounts, short-lived. Humanity sought to assert itself against God, demanding for itself other perceived attributes of God: power, might, control, and even war against the 'other' – in the first place woman. Then in the story of Cain and Abel, against brother; adn ultimately in the story of Jesus against God himself.
Last week some friends took us for a few days to a remote part of Portugal. For all too brief a time we wandered through sunlit, flower-filled meadows beside a lake which was unusually full. We ate, drank, talked and slept – and I even went fishing, but like the fishermen in the bible story – caught nothing! One morning out on the lake, our hostess told me of th etrees that were emerging from the water – “they are at least thirty feet taller than that”, she enthused, “the water is so deep.” I was reminded then of the text that was quoted in our reading from Psalm 1: 'How blessed is the one who rejects the advice of the wicked... Such a one is like a tree that planted by streams, it bears fruit in season, its leaves never wither, and every project succeeds.' In some translations of this Psalm, this blessed one is described as “righteous”. All too often we associate this term with the phrase “self-righteous”, implying a kind of 'holier-than-thouness', an “I'm better than you” syndrome. in the old English “righteous” comes from two words “right”, meaning morally pure, and “wise”, meaning a way of doing things. in the Greek the word has the force of “doing justice”, and in the Hebrew, righteousness cannot be practiced without doing something for one's neighbour. Our reading from the gospel of Mark took us back to some very familiar words: “Love God...love your neighbour”. In Jesus's understanding, God cannot be loved without love for the neighbour – whoever her or she is, however obnoxious - of whatever culture, class, colour or creed. The New Internationalist magazine, a journal that concerns itself with the plight of the poorest in our world, often uses irony to advertise itself – beginning with Ronald Reagan and Maggie Thatcher, it would display a cartoon saying “Maggie doesn't get it”, and it has pursued this to the present day – “George doesn't get it.” Of course the message is ambivalent – George doesn't get the magazine; neither, of course, does he get the message about the plight of the poor. Well all too often – we Christians don't get it – the radical and deep nature and power of God's directive to 'love our neighbour'. In this period of 'cosmic gloom' it is all too easy to quote Psalm 1, to take 'a seat in the company of cynics'. To ask what can we do? To pursue the council of despair, to allow for the forces that all too easily move into destroy hope, and humanity, to have their way. It is much easier than to look around and see our neighbour, and, to use the words of Jesus 'to hunger and thirst for righteousness to prevail'.
The re-making of this garden here at St Mark's – together with the renewal of the church hall, to some small degree represents the challenge that faces all of humanity. If we simply keep it for ourselves, not seeing both church, garden and hall as vehicles for the task of reconciliation, of buildign community, then we shall have failed. Despite everything, people still expect the church to be a place where reconciliation thrives – however hard it is. Here they expect us to resolve conflict, or at least to put up with one another even when there is no agreement. People expect us not only to pray for the peace of the world, and the integrity of creation – but to work for it; to be a living symbol of it. God has communicated his remedy for humanity's ills in the person and message of Jesus Christ. All our ills stem from our refusal to practice 'love fo God...love of neighbour.' 'Hungering and thirsting for righteousness,' says one writer, 'requires dying to self in the daily struggle to overcome in oneself and in society all those things that keep us apart from each other, everything that destroys communion and community.' Pierre Gerety – 'If the law is on your side, argue the law: if the facts ar on your side, argue the facts; if neither are on your side take off your shoe and bang it on the table.' Some links:
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After an enormous amount of effort (thanks in particular to David, Sheila & Gerald) the works were completed and we were able to come together to celebrate the success. Before leaving to become Bishop of Bath and Wells, the Right Reverend Peter Price came to join us in the celebrations. His sermon is below, interspersed with some photos from the evening.
Tonight we have come to dedicate a very small garden set in the heart of Wimbledon. It is the result of vision, imagination and cooperation. It is also a symbol of willingness to compromise; the allowance by some of something that they would rather not have seen happen, for whatever reason. It is in a way our own 'Eden Project'. There among the graffiti-strewn walls, and the debris of misplaced understanding of happiness, beer cans and addicts needles, a new hope has been born. And all who have been party to the creation of the rehabilitated garden, and the restored church hall, are to be congratulated.
For God the 'cosmic gloom' descended not on September 11 (as far as we know!) but at some undefined moment in the human story when humanity failed to see God as good enough to be allowed authority over our life and behaviour towards one another and the planet upon which we live. Whatever else our dedication is about today it is in some way to symbolically address the need for reconciliation, not only between humanity adn the planet – whjich our garden project, like the Eden project, illustrates: but also between human beings and humanity and God.
In Victor Hugo's 
