Christians have long held that all of Creation is the work of a good and gracious God; in a sense that the earth and all of its creatures are an expression of God’s own self. Anglicans have talked about reading God in Scripture and in the Book of Nature for centuries. Where we have often fallen short is in recognizing this foundational aspect of faith in our worship. We have seasons that focus on the life of Jesus: Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent and Easter. In Pentecost we celebrate life in the Holy Spirit, and we talk about God the Creator, Christ the Redeemer of Creation and the Holy Spirit as Sustainer of Life in the blessings we use in church. We have thought and talked a lot about our relationship with God and our relationship with other humans. But until recently we have not had a season that focuses on God’s relationship with all Creation and what that means for our relationship with all of Creation.
Over the course of 7 weeks from October 12 to November 23 our worship will hold up different aspects of God’s Creation in our readings, hymns, prayers and preaching. We will reflect on Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Harvest, Serving and the Cosmic Christ. We will think about how we are connected to all life on this beautiful blue and green jewel of a planet and about what responsibility we bear to our fellow inhabitants on earth. Some of what you hear will sound quite different to what you normally hear in church—I encourage you to be open to the language and the images and go with them wherever the Spirit takes you. I pray that this Season of Creation will awaken each of us in some new way to the myriad expressions of God’s life in the world, to the role we humans play in creation for the good and the bad, to the ways we can strengthen our relationship with all of God’s Creation and to the wonder of that Great Love that created and lives in and through all that is.
Listen to the sermons in the Creation series: