IN early August this year, I accompanied Reverend Dr Tevita Banivanua, president of the Methodist Church in Fiji, to the British High Commissioner’s residence to meet the Anglican Church’s Archbishop of York, the Most Reverend Dr John Sentamu. Archbishop Sentamu was on a visit of Samoa, Tonga and Fiji to lead a series of leadership reflections on climate change at the invitation of the Most Reverend Dr Winston Halapua, the Archbishop of Polynesia.

According to Archbishop Halapua, this was, “the first time that the Archbishop of York has come to this corner of the Earth and our nations will be blessed by their enrichment and encouragement in our common mission. One of the global issues which is impacting our region requiring a clear voice from the Church is the issue of climate change and sea level rising”.

A year ago, as the G20 summit was being held in Brisbane, Australia, Archbishop Halapua spoke on the issue of climate change during his sermon at St Augustine’s Anglican Church in that very city.

“Humanity’s greed and merciless abuse of the planet earth, our only common home, is causing immense damage. Climate change is impacting on the sea level rising, and causing unpredictable storms, uncontrollable floods,” said Archbishop Halapua.

“For some of us from the Pacific Island States, the truth is as plain as writing on a wall, our land and livelihood are drowning while others refuse to see. How can we say to our grandchildren, the home you were to inherit and were told about is destroyed? Where is justice for them and for others?”

For his part, Archbishop Sentamu called on Pacific leaders to speak in union against the excessive carbon emissions of industrialised countries.

In reflecting on his visit to the South Pacific, Archbishop Sentamu wrote, “For many, across the Pacific islands, there remains much scepticism ahead of this December’s Paris Climate Change Summit. No matter what is decided in a faraway European city, it will feel like much too little, too late. It was too late last year for the villagers of Vunidogoloa, who had to relocate their whole community two kilometres inland to higher ground.

“Within a few decades we are likely to see some small islands in the Pacific and Indian oceans being submerged. In such a context, worldwide debates about the ethics of recycling, of reducing our carbon footprint, and of challenging our ‘throwaway culture’ seem remote — across the Pacific Rim, it has become a matter of survival, and above all, addressing the plight of those most vulnerable.

“I stood on the beach with those who said ‘the tides never used to come this far, there used to be plants here that now don’t grow anymore because of the salt’. They know that they cannot control the sea coming in, but they can plant mangroves along the sea front to act as a barrier and to prevent further loss of land. I was bestowed a chief or Matai To’osavili in the village of Poutasi in the district of Falealili and joined in planting mangrove seedlings on the coastline of Pangaimotu Island.

“The fact is, wherever you are, Poutasi in Samoa or Pickering in the great vale of Yorkshire, the ground of God’s earth is holy. On ground, on land that is the meeting place of earth and heaven, a place of encounter with the living God. Where heaven touches earth surprising things happen. For our gracious God makes the impossible possible. But friends, around the globe we are waking up to a new reality. Our sleepy eyes are opening.”

Archbishop Sentamu noted Pope Francis’ Encyclical — Laudato Si: Praise Be: On the Care of the Common home — following the Canticle of the Creatures, in Francis of Assisi, made climate change centre stage for the church.

Why? Because “climate change is a global problem with grave implications and represents one of the principal challenges facing humanity in our day”. (p.14ff). And quoting the New Zealand Catholic Bishops Conference statement on environmental issues, Pope Francis recently asked, “What the commandment ‘Thou shall not kill’ means, when 20 per cent of the world’s population consumes resources at a rate that robs the poor nations and future generations of what they need to survive’.

“The Church of England at its July Synod sessions welcomed the new climate change policy adopted by the church’s investing bodies and backed a call for world leaders to seek to limit the global rise in average temperatures to a maximum of 2 C – widely considered to be the threshold above which the impacts of climate change will be the most severe.”

In his reflections, Archbishop Sentamu spoke of “being pilgrims, strangers and sojourners on this earth”.

“We have reached a great moment of opportunity and challenge — will the nations of our global village wake up to our shared responsibilities? The implications of the Gospel are all the more clear — we are to love one another as God in Christ has loved us.”

He called on the church to be a church of the poor with a Gospel of hope.

“I love Ethopia’s Amharic word, which means ‘It is possible’: Yechelaler — it should inspire hope in us all. May God give us grace in our time to know and treasure the holiness of the earth he has made us stewards of, and the ground he has set us on, so that we may meet with him, and be gathered up into his purposes in and with the whole of creation.

“We met a people who are resilient, in spite of the threatening rise in sea levels and rising temperatures. People who had lost relatives when the tsunami struck and some islands now destroyed by climate change. And yet we met a people who told us that, ‘The risen Christ comes to the sad, the depressed, the frightened, the weary and the confused and says with you. I am with you always’.

“I believe that the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth is more than a miracle. An event that makes possible a radical style of new life. Closed worlds are broken open, and old perceptions of what is plausible and possible are shattered. So, may we all not give in to what seems to be apparent defeats.”

In the words of Archbishop Sentamu: “Let us create communities that will heal our divisions, overcome our fears; fear in economics, fear of violence – and enable us to tackle conflicts in the world, poverty, injustice and global warming.”

“Simplicity, serenity, spontaneity.”

* Reverend James Bhagwan is an ordained minister of the Methodist Church in Fiji and a citizen journalist. The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily represent the views of this newspaper or the Methodist Church in Fiji. He can be contacted on padrejames@gmail.com.