"Season of Creation: Blessing ALL Creatures - Bring It!" Sermon, September 30, 2018
Community UMC,
Quincy
“Season of
Creation: Blessing ALL Creatures – Bring It!”
Rev. Andrew Davis
September 30, 2018
Psalm 124
Whenever God’s creatures and wildlife around us comes to
mind, all of the hymns we are singing this morning pop into my head, including
this one back to my childhood…
All
God’s critters got a place in the choir,
Some sing low, and some
sing higher,
Some sing out loud on a
telephone wire,
And some just clap their
hands,
As
we conclude this series, “A Season of Creation,” we have talked about the
importance of creation care, particularly God’s
non-human creations, along with stewardship or how we take care of God’s
creations around us ranging from the mountains and sky; the trees and fruit;
and all of God’s creatures, great and small. As we have been working through
this series, we have been challenged, as anytime we get into the environment,
climate change, creation care, and such, it can come across a little on the
political side of things or touch a nerve here and there, mostly in part to our
different experiences, backgrounds, and ways of understanding how we see the
world and environment. Even if this
series has been challenging at times, according to the staff at BlessedEarth, a
group that studies how faith and the environment intersect with each other
(this is a long quote),
Scripture emphasizes care for God’s creation, and
helps people start the journey. Once
people begin the journey, God works through the efforts and helps [everyone]
along the journey of faithfulness around stewardship of creation.
People inevitably learn how interconnected humans
are to the created world. Nothing in
creation is isolated...Care for creation and all creatures ultimately comes
back to care for humanity.[ii]
Everything
ultimately comes full circle. A little
over six years ago at the UMC of Rancho Cordova, our music directors at the
time, Jim and Jean Strathdee wrote a choral work in the mid-1990’s called “A
Mass for the Healing of the Earth.” For Earth Day 2012, our choir at UMCRC led
the worship service in “A Mass for the Healing of the Earth” and one of the
most profound movements happens first is the Kyrie, which in the Catholic,
Episcopalian, and Lutheran traditions use as a call to repent of sins and seek
God’s mercy. In the Kyrie for “A Mass for the Healing of the Earth,” the
traditional Latin text of “Kyrie Eleison”
(meaning Lord, have Mercy) was chanted while a slideshow of images of how harm
is done to our planet and all of God’s creatures and I admit, it was hard to
sing. Yet this Kyrie was a call to
repentance of how we may intentionally or unintentionally harm the earth and
its creatures. In the midst of a call to
repent for harming the earth, the staff of Blessed earth further explains that
When we exercise our dominion [or how we dwell on
the earth] in a way that does not demonstrate good stewardship, then all of
creation suffers, including humanity.[iii]
This is definitely some challenging
stuff to consider and may not feel
like good news necessarily, especially for generations after us. On the other hand, we have seen natural
changes happen on the earth over time and I know that not everyone is going to
look at things the same way in how we care for creation or live amongst
creation.
As we engage with our text this morning, I admit
that while doing my prep-work earlier in the week, I wrestled with how Psalm
124 fits into the context of all creatures, until you get to the last line “our
help is in the Lord who made heaven and earth” (Psalm 124: 8, NRSV). It seems like we have destruction and battle
imagery in the text of the Psalm here, along with the imagery of birds being
trapped and being prey; yet, by turning to the various commentaries and aids in
helping interpret the scripture, we’re dealing with an overall “unsettled
creation” in this Psalm.[iv] It’s quite timely too, given the fires that have
ravaged a good part of our state that have caused destruction of homes and
displacing wildlife (although fire has been around for ages and caused by
lightning before), or back East, seeing the damage of Hurricane Florence, or
other hurricanes that have ravaged the East coast and Gulf Coast, or the heavy
rains that have fallen on the East Coast causing flooding, along with drought
that has gripped us on the West Coast in recent years, earthquakes, or
tornadoes in the Midwest. There are
times when things are unsettled and all God’s creatures get caught in the
middle.
When we delve a little bit deeper in
how creation can be unsettled, look at the Gospel account in Mark, Matthew, and Luke where the disciples are caught in
a boat as a storm rages on Lake Gennesaret/Sea
of Galilee when Jesus comes walking on the water. Jesus invites Peter to step out of the boat
and
while Peter remained focused on Jesus, he was
able to do the impossible, walk on water.
Once he focused on the storms around him, he began to sink. [In Psalm 124] David saw the storms around
him [as reflected in the unsettled creation].
He felt the waves crashing around him and felt like a bird caught in the
snare. Yet as he reminded himself, “had
the Lord not been on our side.” He had hope that the storms would not overtake
him, that the snares could not hold him.
As long as he kept his focus on the Lord who was with him, then who
could be against him?[v]
David
is in the midst of how all God’s creatures and creation are interconnected,
through the storms, and through the imagery of being caught in a snare or being
prey. Even today, with God on our side,
we can say bring it as we walk through times of unsettled creation and as we
think about how we care for all of creation, from the mountains, trees, skies,
and all of God’s creatures!! That’s the
good news right there, having God on our side when we believe and trust in God,
even when we feel like we too are in storms or feel like prey, or birds trapped
in snares.
Likewise, when we practice good stewardship with
all of God’s creation (heartening back to the book of Genesis where God gives
humankind dominion over every living thing), we too can bring on creation care,
even if we may differ on how to be stewards and even when we’re not sure where
to start. Nevertheless, we can start
somewhere, as “our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth” (Psalm
124: 8, NRSV). God made us and all of
the creatures, while giving us as humans a responsibility to bring it and take
care of all that God has created, as we return to how we are all
interconnected. When we engage in the
overall care of creation and God’s creatures, “the creation longs for the day
when the people of God are restored to being the image bearers of God who
exercise proper dominion, as first envisioned in Genesis 1.”[vi]
So how do we bring it, and engage in
the care of creation? That’s the question we have before us as we go forth
from this season of creation and into our next series of embracing the mystery
of God. How do we see the world around
us when we spend time with creation and nature?
How do we protect and care for our mountains, forests, trees, waterways,
streams, and all of God’s creatures for future generations to enjoy and spend
time in? More importantly, how do we see
the renewal of creation? Last Sunday,
we sang an Easter hymn reminding us that “because of the Easter event [and] God’s
ongoing work of redeeming the world, we help in a small way to release creation
from its groanings” when we see to caring for all of God’s creation.[vii] The task of creation care may feel overwhelming
at times, but look beyond the larger scale and start in a small way when it
comes to bringing it and taking care of all of God’s creations and the
creatures of the earth by practicing such stewardship, as we do it with God on
our side.
In
the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, let the church say, AMEN!
[i] "All God's Critters". 2018. Peterpaulandmary.Com.
Accessed September 26 2018. http://www.peterpaulandmary.com/music/24-10.htm.
[ii] Ministries, Discipleship. 2018. "Nineteenth
Sunday After Pentecost 2018 — Preaching Notes -
Umcdiscipleship.Org". Umcdiscipleship.Org. Accessed September
26 2018.
https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/worship/september-2018-post-pentecost-worship-planning-series/september-30-nineteenth-sunday-after-pentecost-year-b/nineteenth-sunday-after-pentecost-2018-preaching-notes.
[iii]
Ibid.
[iv]
Ibid.
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