sermonoats

Sunday, October 3, 2021

Creation Sunday

Psalm 24: 1-2

The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof;

the world, and they that dwell therein.

For he hath founded it upon the seas,

and established it upon the floods. (KJV)

To God the Father, who created the world;

To God the Son, who redeemed the world;

To God the Holy Spirit, who sustains the world;

Be all praise and glory, now and forever. Amen.

(David Adam. The Rhythm of Life: Celtic Daily Prayer. London: Triangle/SPCK, 1996. 26.)

About 795 years ago a poor little man died in central Italy, surrounded by friends he called his “little brothers”. Worn out with work, travel, illness, and excessive self-deprivation, he died exhausted, as he had driven his frail frame beyond its ordinary powers.

Indeed, at the end of his life he admitted, “I’ve been too hard on Brother Ass.”-- He called his body Brother Ass, like an overburdened burro.

He called all created things his brother or sister, not just humans, though surely those, but the sun, the moon, the elements, animals … and at last even death.

He himself was known to his friends as Brother Francis, though as soon as he died he was acclaimed as a saint.

Saint Francis is known for several things: his passion for the gospel, his embrace of poverty, his leadership of the religious orders known as Franciscans, his love for creation, and of course birdbaths.

We celebrate Creation Sunday on a Sunday close to October 4th, the feast of Saint Francis.

And it is only right. As we look at creation around us, all creatures, each other, ourselves, we look at them in part through Francis’ eyes.

He regarded all things through the lens of his devotion to his Lord and because of that he embraced what is holy in all things.

This was not an easy road.

Early in his career he asked God to grant him to know the pain and the love Jesus felt on the cross. And perhaps he did.

What we remember today - without forgetting the pain of the passion - is the love that surrounds it.

The love of the passion: paradoxical, all-embracing.

Today that love we particularly remember as we look with gratitude, hope, guilt, and a deepening desire to care, upon our fellow creatures, especially this fragile earth that is our home, and our creaturely neighbors, from fish and birds to sky and sea.

How can we love our fellow creatures as God would have us love them - as family? Maybe seeing through the eyes of the little poor man of Assisi - Saint Francis - will help.

And so our hymn of the day - that we will sing together shortly - is based on his own song, the Canticle of the Creatures.

This morning we:

Offer praise and gratitude for the ways God’s creation inspires, nourishes and heals us.
Name our laments for the ways creation’s current crisis affects us and we pray for its healing.

Here is one such lament:

“Our Burning World” is a cry for help and a call to action about the global climate crisis, by Malcolm Guite:

Our burning world is turning in despair,

I hear her seething, sighing through the air:

‘Oh rouse yourself, this is your wake up call

For your pollution forms my funeral pall

My last ice lapses, slips into the sea,

Will you unfreeze your tears and weep from me?

Or are you sleeping still, taking your rest?

The hour has come, that puts you to the test,

Wake up to change at last, and change for good,

Repent, return, re-plant the sacred wood.

You are my children, I too am God’s child,

And we have both together been defiled,

But God hangs with us, on the hallowed tree

That we might both be rescued, both be free.’

Performed by Jonathan Rennert and the Choir of St. Michael's, Cornhill.

Music (c) Rhiannon Randle 2019-2020.

Text (c) Malcolm Guite 2019. Read more about the poem here: https://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/2020/02/15/our-burning-world-a-collaboration-with-rhiannon-randle/

The hour is late. The world is changing. And yet there is hope.

Among the poems that celebrate Creation, there is one that stands out.

By Gerard Manley Hopkins, it is called “God’s Grandeur”:

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.

Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J. [1844 (Stratford, London) – 1889 (Dublin)]

https://www.poetry.com/poem/15857/god's-grandeur

https://youtu.be/HaFXYPGVcs8

https://soundcloud.com/rhiannonrandle/our-burning-world-live

As much as we despair of further individual or common action to save our planet from the worst of extreme weather events, changing times of drought and flood, of hot weather and cold, indifference will not insulate us.

There is hope. The game is not over yet. There is action we can take.

And so this morning let us carry forth into the world our resolve to:

Explore spiritual practices that help us notice God’s presence in our interaction with the outdoors.
Consider ways that God may be calling us to be a part of restoring health to our planet, whether air, water, soil, plants, or animals.

[Some things to consider beyond celebration this morning (courtesy Elaine Dent, https://www.lss-elca.org/event/a-day-with-creation-as-companion/)]

I’d like to ask you to join me in a litany, a proclamation of our care for creation:

Whatever befalls the earth befalls the children of the earth.