Take a look at two brilliant resources to help make Lent and Easter an opportunity to do right by our planet and environment.
What is the connection between lent, easter and climate justice?
I am especially moved by an understanding of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ from the Orthodox Christian tradition. Specifically, it’s an interpretation of what is known as the Harrowing of Hell or the Harrowing of Hades – the moment between the crucifixion of Jesus and his resurrection. In the interfaith ethos that is our hallmark at Faith for the Climate I, a Muslim, first encountered this perspective of Orthodox Christian theology through the writings of Father Richard Rohr, a Roman Catholic priest.
According to Father Richard, visual depictions of the Resurrection in Western Christianity have tended to emphasise its individualistic character. Jesus is often depicted walking alone out of the tomb carrying a white flag. In Eastern Orthodox iconography, however, Jesus is surrounded by multitudes, with ‘chains, bolts, and locks flying in all directions’ – see, for example, the fresco above. In other words, the Resurrection in the Eastern church represents not only individual salvation but corporate, universal redemption.
As Father Richard puts it, ‘if we don’t believe that every crucifixion – war, poverty, torture, hunger – can somehow be redeemed, who of us would not be angry, cynical, hopeless?’ The crucifixion is therefore not simply a precursor to the salvation of individual people but a story of collective, cosmic liberation.
As ever, I relate these insights not for theological point-scoring. The question, rather, is how can these specific pieces of wisdom from specific traditions nourish our faith for climate justice?
For me, it’s about believing that what we all do matters, because the work of justice, healing, and liberation is always mutual and interconnected. It resonates so deeply with what I discovered in an Ash Wednesday service many years ago to mark the beginning of Lent and came across the following passage from the Hebrew Scriptures:
Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin? (Isaiah 58: 6-7).
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(Adapted from our monthly newsletter)