Delight and service in the nature of things: more down to earth preaching for the Season of Creation

September 22nd 2024

Imagine this. Whatever we do affects everything and everyone else, if even in the tiniest way.

Whatever we do affects everything and everyone else. That’s what Norton Juster wrote in his children’s book The Phantom Tollbooth published in 1962. “Whatever we do affects everything and everyone else, if even in the tiniest way. Why, when a housefly flaps his wings, a breeze goes around the world.”

This has become known as the butterfly effect – exploring the possibility that a butterfly flapping her wing might eventually cause a tornado half way round the world and weeks later. Whatever we do affects everything and everyone else, if even in the tiniest way. The effects caused by a butterfly’s flap of a wing might be tiny in their first instant, but then grow and grow. Of course, we don’t know, but the theory underlines the importance of cause and effect AND just how interconnected everything is.

In the garden where the trees are, in the garden of connections, Eden – there we were made. We were made for this world of connections, part of this world of connections. Formed from the dust of earth it just took a breath of God to breathe life into us. Having made one he made another from the rib of the other. Made for each other they were, forever relational we are – NOT as we may think these days, made for nuclear family life, husband, wife, children living away of their private bit of land behind locked doors – disconnected. We were not made for that. We were made for the garden where we’re all connected. 

In those first days of creation gardeners were obviously hard to find. Genesis 2:5 – “there was no one to till the ground”. The one made from dust and the one made from his rib were made to be gardeners, to till the earth, to keep it, to serve it and sustain it.

Someone asked me last Sunday whether I believed the creation stories in Genesis. I absolutely do. I don’t get the sense that we are reading God’s diary entries – you know, on this day this happened, the next day this, and you’ll never guess what happened on the sixth day. No, it’s not history we are reading when we read Genesis. Some truths are more important than historical truth and scientific facts. What is most important is the deep spiritual truth that sees God in everything. I love the poetic imagination that sees God in our beginnings, that sees us made from earth alongside everything that there is, and that sees everything made in terms of love and goodness. These are the truths to treasure. They give us an everyday sense of vocation and down to earth purpose.

There was no one to till the earth till man and woman standing side by side started helping one another in the garden. 

There are two ways of looking at this gardening job. In the first creation story (Genesis 1:26-28) God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and the birds of the air …..” This language of dominion has led us up the garden path into the frame of mind of domination – thinking it’s all for us, misleading us into a sense of entitlement and into behaviours which have exploited and abused those to whom we are supposed to be lovingly connected. As a result we see rivers choked, earth stripped bare, forests on fire, coastlands flooding, icecaps melting and the extinction of whole species.

The other way of looking at the job is in the language of “tilling the earth”. The Hebrew word translated as tilling is abad. The most common meaning of that verb is serve. Human beings were created to serve Earth – the whole world and all its connections rather than dominating creation and overruling all other species of creation.

We are in the liturgical Season of Creation. This is the fourth Sunday in the Season of Creation which began with a day of prayer for the preservation of the natural environment on September 1st and ends on the Feast of St Francis of Assisi on October 4th. It’s a relatively new liturgical development intended to turn the liturgical dial the crises we see all around us, and is the result of an initiative begun in the Orthodox Church and taken up by the World Council of Churches, the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion.

We haven’t always taken the time to celebrate creation with all our connections and patterns of nature. We haven’t always taken the time to reflect on the consequences of our actions. What is life, if full of care, we take not time, to stop and stare at the wonder of our creation, the wonder of our nature and the awesomeness of the responsibility we have for one another. What is life if we don’t bring our wonder into our worship, our remorse into our prayer? This Season of Creation gives us time for all of this, and time for us to turn our commitment to our vocation and responsibility to till the earth, to serve and sustain all that is.

When we look into nature we see an instinct to nurture. Many of us are transfixed when we see nature programmes such as Springwatch looking through cameras at the ways bird nurture their chicks. We’re bowled over by the way commitment of emperor penguins incubating their eggs for months on end. We can scarce take it in that trees communicate with each other and care for each other through their own underground broadband fibre network in their wood-wide web.

Wherever we look in nature we see love. It’s a love that makes sacrifices, a love that nurtures new life and makes new connections. It’s a love that is divine and seems to many to be the very image of God – ourselves included. Love is the heart of creation. Whatever love does affects everything and everyone, even if only in the tiniest way.

In these times of Earth’s suffering we need our times of wild swimming, of tree bathing, of country walks. We need our times with animals, our time working the land. We need the time to witness the awesomeness of nature with all of its nurture and abundance of love. Immersing ourselves in nature refreshes us. It’s good for our mental health. And nature needs to make that connection with us for her own sake. If we don’t give her the opportunity to remind us constantly of her love then she easily gets forgotten by us who have the responsibility and calling to be her servants and sustainers.

And we need something like this Season of Creation
to refresh and inspire our wonder in our human nature,
to commit ourselves to the safekeeping of the whole of creation

and to reshape our worship of God
whose delight was and is In the beginning of all things
and whose delight is in our tilling and serving of all that is.