About fifteen years ago, I watched an elderly woman step softly into a cool Suffolk church. She laid a small posy of violets on the Lady Chapel altar, paused for a moment, and then returned to the sunshine, seen only by God, and by me.
It was a contemporary ‘widow’s mite’: not grand or costly or arranged to be admired, but simply faithful.
What has stayed with me is this: she gave what she had. What was local. What was precious. What was true. And in doing so, she made of it a prayer.
That, I believe, is the heart of Sustainable Church Flowers.
We give what we have, and we honour what God has already placed into our care. This is not about making the Church narrower, but about making our witness clearer
The Church is called to offer beauty to God - beauty that is truthful, shaped by justice, and mindful of creation. For beauty and integrity are not rivals; in the economy of God, they belong together.
And truth asks questions of us - questions which, in church life, we are sometimes very good at asking of others, and rather less good at asking of ourselves:
Do we know where our flowers come from?
Do we know whose hands have grown them?
Do we know what has been asked of the soil, the water, and the communities that sustain them?
From the opening pages of Scripture, humanity is not placed in creation as a consumer, but as a gardener - entrusted with the care of what ultimately belongs to God. The earth is not simply a resource for our worship; it is a gift we are commanded to cherish, tend, and hand on with reverence.
To neglect that calling, is to thin our witness. To honour it is to proclaim, gently but clearly, that every part of creation matters to the Creator.
Flowers are not mere decoration; they are theology in colour and scent, and signs of creation still radiant with the memory of Eden.
St Francis de Sales took the sunflower as his emblem because it turns, throughout the day, toward the light. And so the question before us this evening is a simple one: are the things we place before God turned toward that Light?
This motion is not about limiting beauty, but about deepening it.
Not about guilt, but about integrity.
Not about perfection, but about direction.
These may seem like small choices. But small choices form holy habits, and holy habits shape the witness of the Church.
So let us be a Church whose beauty is radiant because it is rooted in truth; a Church whose worship reflects not only the glory of the Creator, but our care for all that the Creator has made.
And if that elderly woman could recognise that even a handful of violets was worthy of God, then surely we, too, can offer what is faithful, what is just, and what leads the world - gradually but unmistakably - toward the Light.
Let us turn toward the Light together.
The fifth Mark of Mission of the Church of England states:
To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth.
Without this mark at the heart of our common life as a people trying to live with integrity, the command of God to tend and care for the earth is ignored.
In every service of baptism, confirmation and the renewal of baptismal promises there is a commission where the whole people of God promise to live out our everyday faith.
The commission is a well used and familiar part our liturgy. However, it contained nothing about the vital importance of our care for the environment.
In 2022 the bishops of the diocese of Oxford, mindful of the primal biblical call to humankind for environmental care, called for a liturgical addition. Thus this question to the congregation is now inserted:
"Will you strive to safeguard the integrity of creation, and sustain and renew the life of the earth?
With the help of God I [we] will."
A proactive response to any given call of goodness is driven both by a personal belief in its intrinsic merit and its benefit to society as a whole.
Each member of the Church is called back by their baptismal promises to regularly review their own practices and adjust their habits and lifestyle choices, with the support and cooperation of the wider community and the guidance of the Holy Spirit who leads into all Truth.
Therefore, that which each Christian individually practises , finds its fulfilment corporately so that 'I' and 'we' can, together, make a difference, and continue the task of building God's kingdom.
Sustainability is a call on individuals to consciously protect and nurture the environment not just for our own benefit but for the benefit of those who stand beside us and those who follow after us.
Being sustainable doesn't just mean not taking away from, or decreasing, natural resources; it means that the potential for long-term future growth and availability is not violated. And the decisions we each make will make a difference.
Holy Scripture is full of examples of the calling of God - often through his prophets - to return to God's way of living. This call to repentance, when heard and acted upon, always led to God being merciful, and averting the inevitable destruction that was headed for.
Jeremiah 26.3 is an example of this:
"Now therefore amend your ways and your deeds and obey the voice of the Lord your God; and the Lord will change His mind about the misfortune which He has pronounced against you."
So it can be in our age. Our world - at the current rate of resource abuse - may be headed for ecological collapse and the destruction of civilisation as we know it, but there is hope.
The prophets of our own day - be they scientists, women & men of faith, eco-warriors or laity with a passion for the environment - need to be listened to.
Maybe, just maybe, disaster will be averted.
Father Benji Tyler, 2022
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