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Today at the Natural History Museum in London a new exhibition is opening. Designed to give all visitors an immersive experience of the natural world, the guide is David Attenborough – who recently commented that after almost a century on the planet, he is still learning that the oceans are the most important place on earth. And today, that earth is hot: the UK will be hotter than Hawaii.

Today is also, in the Christian church, the feast of Corpus Christi. It’s a day when Christians gather around altars in churches across the world to give thanks for what is known as the sacrament of Holy Communion. Celebrations will range from public processions through the streets, to quiet gatherings in homes, at hospital beds, in prison chapels: wherever the people of God gather to mark in prayer, as is said at the service, ‘we are all one body because we all share in one bread’.

But of course we don’t. Christians are great at arguing, finding points of theological difference that mean this holy sacrament –a sign of our unity with Christ - and with the whole of the created order actually – is also a cause of division.

Until we’ve made everyone else agree with us as to what precisely it means, many Christians say, we’re not sitting at the same table.
This raises a fundamental human question that’s shared whatever our faith or religious practice. Do we believe something in order to do it, or do we do something in order to help us believe it. What is the relationship between ritual and belief?

The scientific knowledge we have now about climate change can, for some, be motivation enough to behave differently in the world. But faced with existential questions, humanity, the most influential species on the planet, seems unable to act in a unified way, for the good of the whole, for all life on earth. Greed and compassion fatigue are just two of many barriers to our unity: what Christian theology would call sin.

Holy Communion is also called the Eucharist – a Greek word that simply means thanks. On this feast of Corpus Christi then, we will gather around the altar where time meets eternity, in thanksgiving for the astonishing gift of life itself, at the same time in sorrow for the brokenness of the world made visible in broken bread and poured out wine. We will turn our gaze to the sacrificial love that is at the heart of all creation. And with others, I will pray that we will know again that we - humanity - are one body, able – and willing - to act for the common good.

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