Season of Creation – Week 1 

Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Introduction

As we enter this new Season of Creation, today’s readings set the scene.

Song of Songs 2:8-13

This most beautiful love song is one of the two books in the Bible which do not mention God. But here God is all around because the song is all about love. It is unashamedly about the passionate love between two people, the desire they have for each other, the longing – and this is God’s very nature. God is love and those who abide in love abide in God and God in them. 1 John 4:16b.

And this human love song is set within the natural world. It is full of the colours, scents, seasons, and fertility of the Creation. The sensuality and the joy with which the two lovers engage is mirrored in the land as it puts forth its song of Creation, in the flowers which bloom, the call of the doves, the fruits and blossoms of the trees… it is as if the whole Earth joins in this love song. The humans are set within the landscape, a part of it.

All caught up in the greatest love of all – the love of the Creator for this beautiful blue-green marble floating in space, and all that it contains.

Psalm 45

The sensual theme continues in the psalm, and it is accompanied by the theme of blessing. The oil of gladness flows on this chosen king: his robes are heavily scented with rich spices and perfumes, the musicians play, the nobles are assembled and the queen is adorned with finest gold. God is pleased with this king.

But in the middle verses, we suddenly hear of God’s might and majesty, expressed not with a show of power and military prowess, but with a sceptre of equity. Here is God who loves righteousness and hates wickedness; who will not stand for abuse of power and position. This king must have been chosen for more than his looks, his dress sense or his musical appreciation. He is to be the instrument of God’s justice, the working out of God’s love for the world, especially those who are victims of our human failings and cruelties.

James 1:17-27

The scene has been set: a beautiful world, created out of love; a God who cares about justice and equity, and now we come to the deep challenge of this passage from James.

There is a gap between knowledge and wisdom. It’s one thing to know about God, and to see what God’s love steers us towards (to be hearers of the word), but it’s quite another to go and do something about it (to be doers of the word). Head knowledge is simply not enough. We must allow God’s wisdom to inhabit and shape us, and then enable us, with God, to re-shape the world. This takes courage and perseverance. We can’t do this by ourselves but only because of the generosity of God (v.17) in re-birthing us into a new understanding of truth and a new determination to live it out.

So we must get rid of all that soils us and holds us back. We must free ourselves from greed and selfishness, from thinking only of ourselves and our own comfort, and open our arms and our hearts to the power of God’s presence and truth; to God’s love for the world; to God’s care and concern for the most vulnerable. The world is full of temptations which draw us away from the task of building the Kingdom. But the call of the King is a call to action.

Mark 7:1-8,14,15,21-23

Jesus gets to the nub of it here. In the face of complaints about his followers’ lack of hygiene (which to our modern ears sound perfectly sensible) and lack of observance of ritual, Jesus rounds on the religious leaders and blasts them. They have completely lost sight of what is important. They may be offended by this carelessness; (and indeed they may even get sick if they eat from dirty dishes), but the greater sickness by far is the sickness of the heart. This is the tendency of human beings to put ourselves, our pleasures and satisfactions, our needs and wants, our desire for more and more stuff to satisfy our greed, pride and foolishness, right at the heart of our existence. It is this, above all else, which disconnects us from the world around us. Not only from our sisters and brothers across the world, but also from the rest of creation. We act as if everything revolves around us, just as once we believed that the universe revolved around the Earth.

Sermon Notes/ Outline

-The readings speak vital truths to us, across the centuries, through many cultural frames, political and economic contexts

• • • • The world is created out of God’s love and the whole creation is the manifestation of it
      • God is a God of justice and equity. Earthly power, status, favour always combines with great responsibility, especially for those who are vulnerable and disadvantaged
      • We need to be alert to the sickness within us, our greed and self-centredness, our pride and desires. These disconnect us from each other and creation
      • We must allow God’s wisdom to inhabit and shape us, and then enable us, with God, to re-shape the world and our relationship with it.

– Our world is more and more controlled by algorithms, social media, online transactions. We are in danger of losing our connection with each other, and of being  manipulated by lies and false claims. But we can also use technology to increase our connection with, and knowledge of the lives of our sisters and brothers, and the challenges they face.

– God calls us not only to hear his word, but to act on it.

• We must pray, not with our own agenda, but with open hearts and minds. Pray for wisdom and humility
• Then we discern how to act for good, for justice, for equity in relation to issues of creation care and climate justice.

– How can we make this Season of Creation a time to act?

• What one thing can we do to help ensure God’s desired future for the world he loves?
• What small shift in our own behaviour can we make to become more connected with creation, to take better care of it?

Additional material

“We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world…We have been wrong.  We must change our lives, so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption that what is good for the world will be good for us.  And that requires that we make the effort to know the world and to learn what is good for it.  We must learn to cooperate in its processes, and to yield to its limits.  But even more important, we must learn to acknowledge that the creation is full of mystery, we will never entirely understand it.  We must abandon arrogance and stand in awe.  We must recover the sense of the majesty of creation, and the ability to be worshipful in its presence.  For I do not doubt that it is only on the condition of humility and reverence before the world that our species will be able to remain in it.”

(From ‘A Native Hill’ in Wendell Berry The World Ending Fire, pp. 22-23)