Today sees the debut of the Festival of Creation in Christ, on the first Sunday of September. A few words for a new festival: about words we have lost, the Word that was there in the beginning, and the grace of the world that sustains us. Scripture for the day is Colossians 1:15-20 and John 1:1-14.
Creation in Christ
Here’s a question.
When did the Word first become flesh?
Was it just at the birth of Jesus,
as John the Evangelist writes?
Was it in our very beginning,
with the creation of human life?
Or was it that great fifth day
when God created the great sea monsters
and every living creature that moves
of every kind,
with which the sea waters swarm,
and every winged bird of every kind?
Was it that day?
When God saw that it was good.
So good that he blessed them,
saying,
Be fruitful and multiply.
Was it that day,
that day,
with those four first days all leading up to it,
the creation of Day and Sky,
the gathering of the waters
to make the earth,
the earth producing vegetation,
and then those two great lights,
Sister Sun
and Brother Moon,
Was it that day
that the word of creation
became flesh?
And what was that word?
The Word in the very beginning.
And what did that word mean
when the Word was first spoken?
We do well to wonder
in the world of today,
with the earth as it is,
broken,
Stolen
abused
by greed and exploitation,
and repaired
protected
and cherished
by those who love it.
Today we celebrate
the Festival of Christ in Creation.
This is a new festival.
It is making its debut TODAY
of all days
and comes with the backing
of all the major denominations of the Church.
Think about that.
We are here for the very beginning
of a festival we are going to celebrate
the first Sunday of September every year.
So, here we are,
at the beginning of something new,
being invited to look again
at something very old,
as old as time itself.
Creation.
Christ.
The Word.
Flesh.
And perhaps we are going to need
some new words
to help us see it again
in these trying times of climate change,
when we’ve lost words,
the names of species who’ve disappeared
or we hardly see,
when so many of our youngsters despair
at the inactivity of governments,
and the carelessness of institutions,
with the rise of climate protest,
sometimes violent and desperate,
and the obstinacy of climate-change deniers.
How are we going to navigate this change?
How are we going to get through this valley
without voices to guide us?
Voices that live with
the problems and challenges.
Voices that won’t run away.
Voices that will help us find new words
and new ways of seeing.
We praise Christ in creation
in the hymn called The Servant King.
There is that wonderfully poetic line
about the hands of Christ:
Hands that flung stars into space.
I thought I’d mention a few of those stars,
stars flung into our space
by the hands of Christ,
the Word who was there
at the very beginning.
This is a constellation of poets, artists and theologians.
Stars to help us see.
I don’t have the whole constellation.
There are so many stars to discover.
You will have some stars of your own.
But here are a few stars
who have helped me to see differently.
I want to point them out to you.
Two old stars, both Davids.
First, there’s David Attenborough
who seems to have spent his life
dropping his voice
to let other species speak,
warning us of the dangers they face
as he witnesses the wonders of creation.
Then there’s David Hockney,
who spent his life helping us see
the joy and diversity of changing landscapes
in his paintings of Yorkshire, California and France.
There’s Robin Wall Kimmerer.
She is a scientist and a Native American,
a botanist exploring indigenous wisdom
and the teaching of plants.
She explores the ways in which
the earth loves us and cares for us.
She taught her daughters to garden,
so that they would always have a mother to love them,
long after she was gone.
She writes about ther native Potawatomi language
where the word for plants
can be translated as
“Those who take care of us.”
Think about that.
Plants.
Those who take care of us.
And then there’s Andy Goldsworthy,
the sculptor who takes us out walking
to see what can be made
of earth and dust,
tree and stone
and leaves us in wonder
with his standing figures
taking in the view
of far horizons.
And Robert MacFarlane
with his beautiful books
recovering lost words
and broadening our vocabulary
to describe the wonder and scope
of the natural world,
working with ancient, indigenous wisdom
to argue for the right to life
of all that has been brought to life,
including the earth and her rivers.
He is helping us recover a way of paying attention
and find some of the words we have lost for creation.
Photo by Dwight Sipler
And then there is Michael,
an 80 year old gardener
who has an allotment across the road from mine,
who went out of his way
who thrilled my 3 year old granddaughter
by showing her
that some tomatoes are yellow
and not just red.
And there are the poets,
so many of them.
I single out two.
Mary Oliver.
She had a difficult home life,
and was “saved by the beauty of the world”.
Her poetry comes from the margin of things,
focused on the quiet of nature,
reminding us of our place “in the family of things”,
as in her most famous poem Wild Geese
where she acknowledges loneliness and despair
and the belonging we find in nature:
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
And Wendell Berry,
a farmer and poet from Kentucky
who died just this last week (monday).
He knew despair
and what to do when it grows.
He wrote in
The Peace of Wild Things:
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in the beauty of the water, and the great
heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Something rather strange has happened
in this sermon
for the first Festival of Christ in Creation.
It’s as if we’ve started a theological experiment,
hearing voices we may never heard before
in our preaching and teaching –
the voices of poets, and artists,
scientists and botanists,
voices from ancient wisdom,
native, indigenous voices
so often drowned out by progress,
the sound of still waters,
the earth and rivers,
the cry of the geese,
the rest of the wood drake
the mountains, hills and trees
and the despair of our children.
And perhaps that is what a theological experiment does.
It makes us hear the familiar differently.
So we bring all those voices
back to the two voices
with which we began:
John and Colossians.
And suddenly,
“All things”
sounds different.
All things came into being through him.
All things were created through him
and for him.
All things hold together in him.
The Word was there
when the stars were flung into space.
The Word was there
when the earth was formed,
when the rivers ran,
when the trees took root,
when the geese first lifted their wings.
And then,
astonishingly,
the Word became flesh.
Not just flesh in the beginning,
but flesh now.
Flesh that walks among us,
flesh that knows our despair,
flesh that asks us to look again,
to listen again,
to wonder again,
to love again.
Because this is the good news
at the heart of Christ in Creation:
the world is not simply there for us.
It is through Christ,
and for Christ,
and held together in Christ.
And if Christ has not abandoned
anything he has made,
then neither can we.
Think about that.
Perhaps that is why
we have gathered here today,
at the very beginning
of this new festival:
to see the stars again,
to hear the voices again,
and to discover,
perhaps,
that the grace of the world
has been here all along.
A poor life this, if full of care,
Grits and Grains 