Season of Creation 1 – Sunday 3rd September 2023 (St. Lucia) - The Reverend Bill Crossman
Readings: Exodus 3: 1-15; Psalm 105: 1-6, 23-26; Romans 12: 9-21; Matthew 16: 21-28
As Fr. Shane said last Sunday, for the next four Sundays we’ll be observing the Season of Creation during which we’re called to reflect upon our stewardship of all of creation. Celebration of this Season began when the then Ecumenical Patriarch established a Day of Prayer for the Creation for Orthodox Churches in 1989. The World Council of Churches then extended the celebration into the pattern we have now, so we join in worship and in prayer for Creation with Christians all around the world for the next few weeks. This week I’ll be reflecting on why we celebrate this Season, and a little about “Earth”. The following two Sundays will revolve around “Sky” and “Sea”. The theme for 2023 is Let Justice and Peace Flow. The Prophet Amos cries out: “But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!” (Amos 5:24) and so we are called to join the river of justice and peace. Maybe a musical image to keep in mind – you might know it - is the Czech composer Bedrich Smetana’s symphonic poem “the Vltava” – maybe better known by its German name “The Moldau”. It begins musically depicting two small springs, they then join to form a single stream which gradually swells and grows as the river flows through forests, farmlands, over rapids and finally as a majestically flowing river. We might think we’re just a small spring, but with Christians around the world we are part of a mighty river of peace and justice and as we join the river we’re called to make peace not only on Earth, but with Earth. And by peace, as you may well have heard me say before, is meant not an absence of conflict but shalom, a deep wholeness embracing God, the human race and the whole of creation. As Anglican Christians, we’re enjoined to do this by the fifth mark of mission of our Anglican Communion, that is “To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth”.
I think by and large, churches have come late to a modern theological and faith-based engagement with the environment and with creation. Since the middle to late twentieth century we’ve been catching up as other groups and organizations have filled the space. One of the reasons for this has been an emphasis on personal salvation at the expense of reflection on the bringing to wholeness of all of creation. St. Paul expresses the hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. He writes “We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now; 23and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.”[1] I think all of creation groans in the terrible extremes of fire, flood and hurricane we’ve seen around the world in the past few years. Another reason has been a mis-interpretation on the part of some of the creation story in Genesis Chapter 1. Humans were given dominion over creation. However, dominion has been confused with domination. They are not the same. God asked humans to take care of creation. God trusted them with it. God asked them to work with creation, in and through and alongside nature. But the human need for control meant that instead of having dominion, humans sought domination, instead of being good stewards, humans have sought aggressive, sometimes violent exploitation. God has created us for a life of abundance and intimacy with God, with one another, and with creation.
We have a scriptural call to grow in faith as we affirm that God in Christ loves, redeems, and sustains the whole of Creation, not only human beings. God the Creator pronounced the world “very good” (Gen. 1:31) and gave humans the task to “till and keep” the Earth (Gen. 2:15) as stewards and caregivers rather than owners (Ps. 24:1). Christian saints, including the prophets, Jesus, and many of our mystics, including the Desert Fathers and Saint Francis, lived in close relationship with Creation. St. Francis in his 13th century hymn “All creatures of our God and King” wrote “Dear mother earth, who day by day unfold rich blessings on our way, O praise him Alleluia! All flowers and fruits that in you grow, let them his glory also show..” As Saint Paul wrote (Rom. 1:20), humanity encounters and dwells with God through the natural world. Destruction of nature is a sign of estrangement from God: Hosea writes “There is no knowledge of God in the land. Therefore, the land mourns, and all who live in it languish; together with the wild animals and the birds of the air, even the fish of the sea are perishing,” Hos. 4:1b, 3; The Paschal mystery includes all of Creation: everything has been redeemed in the work of Jesus Christ, the Word through whom all things were made (Jn. 1:3). In Christ, Paul writes “all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross” (Col. 1:19-20; c.f. Eph. 1:10, 2 Cor. 5:19). We proclaim a Gospel of salvation that includes all of Creation, not only human beings. Jesus commissioned his disciples, saying, “Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation” (Mark 16:15). As disciples of Jesus, our mission is to bring good news in word and deed to the whole Creation. Christian hope is in the renewal (Mat. 19:28) and restoration (Act. 3:21) of all things. Our participation with God in creating a more just and habitable world and living more gently on Earth is how we share in what Archbishop Desmond Tutu called the “supreme work” of Jesus Christ, who reconciles us to God, one another, and God’s whole Creation. The good news of God in Christ is for all creatures and the whole Earth.[2]
To our readings for today as we reflect on “earth”. You may think there’s not a lot to go on. In the reading from Exodus, God has heard the cry of his people and calls Moses to the top of the mountain. There he sees the burning bush – which is a link to last year’s Season of Creation – the “Burning Bush” was the theme. In the Hebrew tradition, mountain tops were the place of encounter with God. God tells Moses to take off your sandals for the place where he is standing is Holy Ground. We could ask “Do we love the earth? Do we believe that it was made by our God our Creator God and so bears God’s fingerprints?
How often do we come in silence to listen to God on the mountain, refill our spiritual tanks to again fall in love with the wonders of this beautiful creation, to again hear the great choir of God’s creation. The American writer and environmentalist Wendell Berry has written “There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places.”
So perhaps we could reflect this week on where our sacred places are. It may not be a mountain, but a place where we can take off our shoes, feel the earth beneath our feet, sit in silence and listen. Listen to the sounds of earth – rippling breeze, running water, birdsong and who knows, an encounter with the living God. The Psalms can help us too – a few examples. Psalm 24 – “the earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it”; or Psalm 65
You visit the earth and water it,
you greatly enrich it;
the river of God is full of water;
you provide the people with grain,
for so you have prepared it.
or Psalm 74 “You have fixed all the bounds of the earth, you made summer and winter”, or Psalm 104 “O Lord, how manifold are your works!
In wisdom you have made them all;
the earth is full of your creatures………and poets, like Gerard Manley Hopkins help us reflect as well.
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
[1] Romans 8: 21-23
[2] This paragraph drawn from https://acen.anglicancommunion.org/media/503311/ACEN_Season-Of-Creation-Episcopal-Liturgical-Guide-2023.pdf
Source: Gerard Manley Hopkins: Poems and Prose (Penguin Classics, 1985)