Sermon given by Revd Sue McCoan 5th May 2024
Readings Psalm 98; John 15: 9-17
Many years ago, Jamie and I went to visit my brother in Australia and stayed on for a holiday. We had a wonderful time, including, in Queensland, a trip on a glass-bottomed boat over a coral reef. It was amazing. We saw the colours in the coral, the sea anemones, the shoals of tiny fish darting in and out. It was just full of life.
If you have been paying any attention to the problems of climate change, you will be aware that coral reefs have been under serious threat. Rising sea temperatures, and a corresponding increase in the acidity of the water, have bleached the coral and left the reefs dying – with all that that implies in terms of loss of habitat and biodiversity.
But in the last couple of weeks, there has been some very good news from scientists working to preserve the reefs. Corals reproduce by releasing egg and sperm cells into the water where they fertilize each other, then divide to form an embryo. The embryos float until they find a surface they can settle on and grow. The scientists have discovered how to harvest millions of these microscopic coral embryos which they can then help to grow into larvae. They have also discovered that when the larvae are searching for a surface, they use sound to identify a good place to live.
A healthy reef not only looks beautiful, it also sounds full of life. A dying reef has a poor range of sound. But here’s the clever thing. The scientists have found that if they play the sounds of a healthy reef, even on a dying one, they can entice the larvae to establish there. The corals mature and lay down a tiny cup-like skeleton, which is what makes up the reef. The coral attracts fish and other creatures, and so it builds up the health of the reef again.
Here are scientists, singing a new song to these millions of tiny baby corals, and making a fresh start not just for the corals but for the life of the reef, and indeed the life of the ocean.
In our first reading, from Psalm 98, the psalmist calls on all creation to sing praises to the Lord, to sing to the Lord a new song.
Sing to the Lord a new song
Jesus came singing a new song for the world. He took the familiar words and tunes of the Hebrew Scriptures, of Creation and Commandment, of Exodus and Exile, and wove them into a new song of compassion and grace, living out and making visible the song his mother sang at his birth, of lifting the lowly, deposing the mighty, feeding the hungry and sending the rich away empty-handed.
Jesus sings of a world where God’s blessing is on the poor, not the powerful, where each person is valued regardless of their age or health or status in life. And the music he makes brings life and health and draws people together. Now, in today’s reading, he sings a new song for the disciples, one they will be able to sing together when he is no longer there. His new song, his new commandment, is of love – that they are to love one another, as he has loved them.
In this song of love, the disciples are not to go looking for another teacher when he is gone. Nor are they, yet, to look for disciples of their own. They are to be teachers to one another, mulling over his words, musing on his meanings, practising the music and the message until it is so much a part of them that they can sing the song by heart, wherever they are and whatever befalls them.
In this song of love, the disciples are to serve one another. Jesus has just set the example of washing their feet, the job of the lowliest servant. This goes beyond the odd bit of kindness; this is costly service, requiring them to put themselves out for the other person, putting the other’s needs before their own comfort. They will need this when times get tough, when they have difficult decisions to make about the church fellowship and who else can be included.
And in order to sing this song of mutual teaching and serving, it follows that they will need to get to know one another. Some of them, of course, already do. Peter and Andrew are brothers, as are James and John, and all four fished the same part of Lake Galilee so are work-colleagues too. But what might they, as simple fishermen, have in common with Levi the tax collector? And how would a tax collector, someone who worked for the Roman empire, even begin to get on with Judas who is thought to be a Zealot, a member of a resistance movement?
The other day, I went on a Racism Awareness course. It was set up for people who serve on the Assembly Commission for Discipline, and I was expecting it to focus on the damage of discrimination and the problem of unconscious bias, which obviously matters in a disciplinary hearing. But Professor Anthony Reddie who was leading the day, a renowned black theologian and a lovely man, said he didn’t want to start from there. Those things tend to make people feel guilty, and guilt is not a helpful starting point for learning.
Instead, he got us to think about the uniqueness of each individual, including our own uniqueness. If we truly want to create community, we have to recognise the individuality of each person. Otherwise, we are in danger of creating conformity, when some people will feel pushed into a mould or a role that is not helpful or maybe even not safe for them.
For the disciples to love one another, they had to know one another – especially to know the people with whom they didn’t have much in common.
We have inherited this song of love that Jesus sang, the commandment to love one another. It’s not a new song now, but it is one that we need to keep on singing. So, then, what about our own new song?
Going back to the coral reef. In its own right, it is a wonderful story of hope, in all the concern about climate disaster. It also has a parallel with our churches. Congregations that were once thriving are now fading, getting smaller, not being bleached but definitely getting more grey. Churches find it difficult to attract new life, and some are closing. It’s easy to sing a song of decline. But we are not called to sing a song of decline; we are called to sing a new song.
In order to find our new song, we need to go back to our core values, to the heart of our calling. We find those values in the song of Mary that I mentioned earlier, of lifting the lowly, deposing the mighty, feeding the hungry and sending the rich away empty-handed. We find them in the life of Jesus, meeting people where they are, valuing people as they are, making welcome the outsiders and spreading grace and love. We find them in our care for creation.
The song we sing with these values is a song of hope. It connects us to one another, and it goes beyond these walls. As we sing, we find other people joining in harmony, people from other churches, and people who are not part of the church at all. It is wonderful to have this building, and for as long as it serves our mission we will continue to maintain it and be thankful for it, but we are not bound by it. We may become less like a formal choir and more like a community singing group. It may not be a perfect song, but it is a song of life.
The coral reef scientists play their song of life, the sounds of a healthy reef, to attract the coral larvae, to encourage them to become part of creating the health they hear. When we sing our song of life, when we make common cause with people who share our values of justice and peace and care for creation, then together we can create the wellbeing that we long to see.
And if this sounds too fanciful, too vague, too difficult, if it makes no sense, then we might think what it was like for the scientist who first suggested that playing recorded sound could affect the lifecycle of a microscopic larva. Yeah, right. And we might also remember that we have a loving God cares for us with every bit as much devotion and love as those scientists care for the coral and gives us all the hope and all the song we need.
Amen
