Sunday, September 7 @ 10:00 am
The Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost | The Rev. Alex Swain
In the name of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, One God. Amen.
Welcome to this first Sunday of the Season of Creation.
The Season of Creation has its beginning with the Eastern Orthodox Church, in 1989, when Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Dimitrios 1 proclaimed September 1 as a day of prayer for creation.
Through the work of the World Council of Churches, something called the Season of Creation began to be formed. The Roman Catholics got on board in 2015, and in 2019 Pope Francis declared the optional observance of the Season of Creation, beginning on September 1 and ending on October 4, the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi.
Seasons of the Christian religious year (Advent, Christmas, Easter, Lent, etc.) call us to particular themes. During the next several weeks of the Season of Creation, sermons will focus on this year's motif: Peace with Creation. The National Episcopal Church invites us to, “consider anew our ecological, economic, and political ways of living” in the midst of this season.[1]
Today’s readings, particularly Deuteronomy and the Gospel, invite us to reassess how our relationship with God, and with one another, is intimately tied with creation as well.
Deuteronomy reminds us that there is a direct connection between our relationship with God and our relationship with the earth. The Gospel invites us to carry our crosses, and in the midst of the Season of Creation, we must ask ourselves: what are we willing to give up as disciples of Christ, in self-sacrificial love, to care for creation?
In Deuteronomy, the word Land shows up three times. The central crux of the passage involves God establishing what the consequences of right and wrong relationship with Godself entails. How we relate, or fail to relate, to the Divine has consequences not only with God and one another, but also with creation.
The LORD covenants with Israel, and states, “See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity.” And these choices have consequences with how the land, how the earth, how creation, responds.
If the Israelites obey the LORD, God will “bless you in the land” and, if they disobey, and specifically if they “bow down to other gods and serve them” then the consequence is that they “shall perish” and “no longer live long in the land.”
God sets up a relationship between the people, the Divine, and all of creation. Obeying God, right relationship with God, leads to right relationship with the land and living long therein. Disobedience with God, broken relationship with God, leads to destruction in the land.
And, to seal this covenant, God declares, “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life… so that you may live in the land.”
Creation is a witness against humanity’s actions. Choose life, God implores, and we will live, lest the land spit us out.
Is this not a haunting judgement against humanity? A divinely existential pronouncement which feels oddly relevant today as we watch the climate and the earth become ever more hostile to living in the land?
In Genesis, humans (Hebrew: adam) are made from the earth (Hebrew: adammah). In the beginning, humans are intimately connected to the earth - being formed out of it by God, and then tasked with stewardship over the world.
Deuteronomy reminds us that faithful care of the world we live in is a component of faith in God. We recall the summary of the law: to love God, and to love our neighbor as ourself. The earthy reading from deuteronomy today expands the understanding of neighbor to be not just other people - but all of creation.
Given this relationship between us and God and creation, the next question becomes: how ought we live, how ought we behave, if we desire to choose life as God would have us choose?
Today’s Gospel tells us that to follow Christ as a disciple necessitates that we carry our crosses. What is the cross except the self-sacrificial love which Christ Himself gives up everything for us?
Carrying our crosses means engaging in the self-sacrificial love which Christ Himself demonstrates. It is to pray as Christ prayed, and to do as Christ did.
In the context of creation care, we must, resourced by our fatih, stand firm in our attempts to push for larger systematic change. Pushing for policies which support green, clean energy; pushing for changes in fast fashion and electronics which don’t become obsolete in 1-2 years. This is, of course, necessary.
And, it is ambitious to try to change the whole world’s broken and death-dealing systems. And, we cannot become paralyzed by the inability to change everything.
Although we may not be able to change the global systems of commerce and economy and data center building, we can strive to choose life. We can strive to carry our crosses.
So as individuals, our faithful response is to ask ourselves: how might we recycle more, can I ride the bike more or public transportation more, or grow my own food more. Perhaps eat less meat, which is a major source of climate destruction.
Perhaps the giving up of some of our creature comforts is a beginning point for us to carry our crosses out of love for our God and the world which God calls good.
While these individual actions may not save the planet - we are reminded that Jesus asks us to feed the hungry. It is well and good and necessary to fight for the abolishment of food insecurity at the systematic level. And we are told that a faithful response to Christ is to give food to one person, to the individual, to feed the hungry person.
In Christianity, the one person matters. The singular person is loved by God. The singular person is asked to choose life and carry their cross.
During the Season of Creation, we can ask ourselves what might this look like for me?
We are reminded that our faith and relationship with God is reflected in how we interact with the land, with the earth. And, we are tasked to take up self-sacrificial actions as disciples of Christ.
In 2021 - a joint meeting between the Ecumenical Patriarch, the Pope, and the Archbishop of Canterbury about the state of Creation came out, and these three religious leaders stated that: "Future generations will never forgive us if we miss the opportunity to protect our common home. We have inherited a garden; we must not leave a desert for our children.”
We have inherited a garden; we must not leave a desert for our children.
May we strive to preserve the garden we have inherited.
Amen.
[1] - https://www.episcopalchurch.org/season-of-creation-and-st-francis-day-resources/