Of Bees and Humans

A foraging honeybee

Address given at St Mary's Nenagh and Killodiernan Church on Sunday 10th August 2025, the 8th after Trinity

What wonderful creatures honeybees are!

I used to keep bees myself, but now I find lifting the hive boxes too much for me. I have given my hives away to a kind friend and neighbour, Caleb Clarke, who keeps a hive in my garden. I can still enjoy the bees visiting the flowers, and he gets a harvest of honey.

Wild bee colonies have become scarce in Ireland, killed off by the Varroa mite, an alien species inadvertently introduced from overseas. This is one of many examples of how human actions are damaging biodiversity. Our actions threaten to unravel the wonderful web of life which God has created on this planet through evolution, which is the mechanism God uses to continuously create new life.

Because of Varroa, beekeepers must treat their domesticated hives with bee medicines to keep them healthy. I have just come back from a holiday on the Isle of Man, which remains Varroa-free. The Manx government is making strenuous efforts to prevent its introduction. I hope they will succeed. Here in Ireland there are some hopeful signs that honeybees are evolving over time to resist Varroa infection.

We all love honey of course, and the finest church candles are always made from beeswax, but even more important is the service bees give the rest of creation by pollinating flowers.

Bees have evolved in an intricate three-cornered dance of life with flowering plants and animals including ourselves. In this dance, plants provide pollen and nectar to sustain bees, which in return pollinate the flowers so that they can produce fruit and seeds. These in turn sustain animals, which in wonderfully ingenious ways distribute seeds to start a new generation of plants.

God’s purpose in creating bees, I think, is simply that they should be good bees, playing their part in the dance of life alongside all the other creatures he has created to sustain the web of life. Their scarcity should shock us out of complacency. We thwart God’s purpose if we do not protect them.

In God’s eyes, I think, we are not so very different to honeybees!

Surely God’s purpose in creating us is simply that we should be good human beings.

Like bees we are small, vulnerable creatures, short-lived, subject to disease. Unlike bees, we are made in God’s image, as souls with consciences. We are able to reflect on what is right and wrong, and to plan for the future, in a sense to be co-creators of it with God. But with this privilege also comes our susceptibility to those spiritual diseases which we call sin - spiritual diseases like greed and selfishness which all too often lead us to hurt our fellow human beings and damage God’s creation.

Today’s readings tell us much about how to be the good human beings God wishes us to be - and how to resist our innate susceptibility to sin.

In the OT reading, Isaiah (1:1,10-20) proclaims a great insight.

God has no use for empty rituals and sacrifices, says Isaiah. From the dawn of our species people have sought to placate, even manipulate, gods they have seen as angry and untrustworthy, to benefit themselves – as many still do today. But all this is folly: ‘What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the Lord; … I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity’.

Instead, Isaiah tells us, the one true God wants us to ‘cease to do evil, learn to do good’. God will bless us when we behave as good human beings should, treating others as we would want them to treat us, if our circumstances were reversed – a principle often called the ‘golden rule’, which we Christians share with many others of different faiths and none. We are to ‘seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow’.

In the NT reading (Luke 12:32-40), Jesus reveals deeper truths.

Jesus understands that people are often selfish and greedy because they are anxious and afraid for the future. So he tells the disciples – and through them, us – that we should put aside such anxiety. God knows what we need, and God will give us all we need when we work for his kingdom – in other words, when we try to be the good human beings God wants us to be. ‘Do not be afraid, little flock’, he says, ‘for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom’.

God has given us all that we have in order that that we may be generous with it, not hoard it. What we give away, to those who need it more than we do, is ‘an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys’. If we want to be good human beings we must focus on that kind of spiritual wealth, rather than accumulating material wealth, ‘for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also’.

And we must be alert for opportunities to respond generously, as and when God prompts us to do so. As Jesus puts it, ‘Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit’. We should not put off calls on our generosity, waiting perhaps for a better time or a more pressing need to come along. We are mortal – we do not know when God will knock on the door to call us out of this life. ‘You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour’, says Jesus. And it would be shameful, quite shameful, when he does come knocking - as we know he will - to admit that we wasted the opportunities he gave us, the opportunities to act like the good human beings he created us to be.

One opportunity to be generous you might consider is this - to support our Templederry parishioner John Wallace as he walks the entire Beara-Breifne Way – 550km from West Cork to Cavan. John and his family lost their father William to suicide in 2015, a tragedy many here will remember. John is taking on this journey in his father’s memory to raise funds for mental health charities Aware, Jigsaw, and Pieta House. He’ll be walking between 30 and 50 km a day, unsupported, carrying his own supplies and relying on the kindness of local communities for food and accommodation, seeking to publicise the message: ‘Help is out there if you’re willing to ask’. You can support John by donating through iDonate – just google ‘Miles for Minds John Wallace’.

Of course there are so many other worthwhile causes, opportunities to respond generously to God’s generosity to us, but whatever you choose to support, ‘be dressed for action and have your lamps lit’!

Let me finish with prayer:

O God, grant us the grace 

to cease to do evil and learn to do good;

to be unafraid and generous with your gifts,

so storing up unfailing treasure in heaven;

to be always alert for opportunities

to be the good human beings you created us to be.

We pray in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen