The Season of Creation

A Preaching Commentary

Rev. Norman C. Habel

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780800696573
• eBook ISBN: 9781451416589
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

PART ONE

THEOLOGY, LITURGY, BIBLE

ENGAGING THE SEASON

One

Introducing the Season of Creation

A Special Season of the Church Year

The Season of Creation is an optional season for the church year. For the most part, the seasons of the church year follow the life of Jesus: Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, and Easter. The remainder of the church year encompasses Pentecost season (or Ordinary Time), which celebrates life in the Holy Spirit. Of course, there are many special days and occasional services throughout the calendar of the church year, such as Christ the King Sunday and Rogation Day. God is celebrated throughout the entire church year. And God the Creator, Christ the Redeemer of creation, and the Holy Spirit as Sustainer of life are integral to worship throughout the church year. We hope that caring for creation is a vital dimension of every worship service.

There is no focus in the church year on God the Creator, however, no opportunity to reflect in a concentrated way on the foundation of redemption and sanctification, namely, the very creation itself that is redeemed and sanctified. For centuries, our theology, our ethics, and our worship have been oriented in two dimensions: our relationship with God and our human relationships with one another. Now it is time to turn our attention to God’s relationship with all creation and with our relationship with creation (and with God through creation). The experience of a Season of Creation through four Sundays in the church year alone will not bring the transformation in consciousness we need to address the ecological problems we face today in God’s creation. Yet unless we can see what worship can be like in a season devoted fully to Creator and creation, we will probably not adequately incorporate care for creation into worship throughout the rest of the year. A Season of Creation has proven to be valuable in its own right. Yet we also need the Season of Creation to wake us up and show us another way to do worship all the time.

For four Sundays in the church year, you can join in a wholehearted experience of celebrating the mysteries and wonders of creation with God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit. In a special way, the Season of Creation follows the lead of the psalmists who exhort us to celebrate together with creation—with the forest, the rivers, and the fields who praise the Creator in their own way. We celebrate Earth, the garden planet God has chosen as God’s sanctuary and as our home. We celebrate with the creatures God has created as our kin on this blue-green planet. As we celebrate, we are conscious of the crisis that creation faces because of human greed, exploitation, and neglect. As we celebrate, we empathize with those parts of creation—human and nonhuman—that are groaning because of human crimes against creation. And, especially, we celebrate the Christ, whose death brings forgiveness for our sins against creation and whose risen presence is the cosmic power at work in reconciling and restoring creation.

The Season of Creation is a relatively new season of the church year, a season that is also known in the church bodies of some countries as “Creation Time.” As an optional season, the Season of Creation can be celebrated at different points in the church year. Most commonly it has been celebrated between Creation Day on September 1 and St. Francis of Assisi Day on October 4. In this scenario, the four Sundays in September are the core Sundays of the Season of Creation. Nevertheless, the Season of Creation can be celebrated appropriately in the Easter Season or at other times in the Pentecost Season. Some congregations have spread the celebration of the four Sundays throughout the church year.

The Season of Creation is not simply a harvest thanksgiving festival writ large nor a four-week affirmation of the wonders of creation, though these themes do indeed play a role. Nor is the Season of Creation primarily designed to redress the relative lack of emphasis contemporary Christians have placed on the first article of the Apostles’ Creed in their worship, though surely this deficiency needs to be overcome. Moreover, the Season of Creation is not introduced first and foremost as an ecclesiastical program to encourage Christian engagement in the current environmental movement, though this may indeed be a significant outcome of participation in this Creation Season. In response to the ecological crisis, many congregations throughout the world quite appropriately celebrate a secular occasion such as Earth Day or World Environment Day with Christian worship. We applaud these occasions for worship. At the same time, the Season of Creation goes further. It brings the celebration of Earth fully into the orbit of Christian worship as a natural and integral part of the church year. And it extends over a period of four Sundays as a means to enable a much richer and deeper expression of worship.

Fundamentally, the Season of Creation recognizes that our relationship with the rest of nature is a religious and spiritual matter that views life as “creation.” The Season of Creation challenges us to reorient our relationship with creation, with the Creator, with Christ, and with the Holy Spirit. While this challenge may have been provoked, in part, by the current ecological crisis and a growing awareness of our place in the web of life, the origins of our reorientation lie deep in our Christian tradition, both in our biblical roots and in our theological heritage. We are challenged to return to our biblical and theological traditions to rediscover our intimate connections with creation and with Christ and the Holy Spirit in creation. We return to see ourselves again as part of the very Earth from which we are made.

The Season of Creation is part of the heritage of mainstream Christian worship. There is no break from the gospel at the core of our faith. Christ is at the heart of our celebrations. The incarnate Christ connects us with Earth. The cosmic Christ is the new life at the core of creation. In the Season of Creation we celebrate Christ together with creation, we face the ecological crisis with Christ, and we serve Christ in the healing of creation.

Why a Season of Creation?

There are many reasons! Here are seven of them:

First, because God is first and foremost the Creator of all of life. To fail to focus adequately on this dimension of God’s reality in worship is to fail to appreciate the fullness God’s work, and it is to narrow and diminish our relationship with God. Our own fullness of life depends upon our relationship with God as Creator.

Second, because we were created with the rest of nature. We came from Earth and we cannot survive without all that Earth provides. Just as Earth has creative powers, so Earth itself has restorative powers. Unless we have centered opportunities to express awareness of and gratitude for our dependence upon Earth and our relationship with other creatures, we will not be whole as human beings.

Third, because God has given us a creation to celebrate with! In recent years, much of humanity has viewed creation as a resource to be exploited rather than a mystery to be celebrated and sustained. The time has come not only to celebrate creation but to transform our human relationship to creation by worshiping in solidarity with creation

Fourth, because through worship we have an opportunity to come to terms with the current ecological crises in a spiritual way so as to empathize with a groaning creation. Worship provides a viable and meaningful way not only to include creation’s praise of God but also to engender a deep relationship with the suffering of a groaning creation.

Fifth, because a fresh focus on the wonders and wounds of creation will help us in positive ways to love creation and so care for creation as our personal vocation and our congregational ministry. Worshiping with this new awareness may well provide the impetus for a new mission for the church, a mission to creation.

Sixth, because this season enables us to celebrate the many ways in which Christ is connected with creation. From the mystery of the incarnation to the mystery of a cosmic Christ who reconciles all things in heaven and Earth, we celebrate the connection of Christ with creation. And we seek to identify with Earth in solidarity with Christ.

Seventh, because this season enables us to deepen our understanding and experience of the Holy Spirit in relationship with creation. As the “Giver of life” and the “Sustainer of life,” the Holy Spirit is the source of our empowerment, inspiration, and guidance as we seek to live in a way sustainable for all God’s creation. Being “in the unity of the Holy Spirit” encompasses our relationship with all of life. This is foundational for our worship.

Church leaders have called for a richer spiritual connection with creation. Many Christians are searching for ways to promote a ministry to care for Earth. Our precious planet is at risk. Because worship is so central to the Christian life, it behooves us to provide foundational experiences in worship to foster a deep transformation in our relationship with the rest of creation. By concentrating our worship on God’s creation and our relationship with Christ in creation, we can seek ways to heal rather than exploit creation, to care for our planet home rather than destroy it. And, as we learn what it means to celebrate God the Creator and to worship with creation in a Season of Creation, we may also come to worship God as Creator more meaningfully throughout the entire church year.

Origins and Growth

In a sense, the origins of the Season of Creation can be traced back to the very beginnings of creation. On the seventh day, according to the Genesis 1 account, God celebrated the completion of creation by resting and by blessing that day. The blessing of God, therefore, was not confined to creation as such, but also included a specific time for affirming and restoring creation. The psalmist calls on God to continue that celebration so that God can “rejoice in all his works” (Ps. 104:31). Surely, we can rejoice with God!

The Season of Creation that serves as a basis for this book originated in Australia and has been adapted for use in North America. At the same time, there are many different expressions of a Season of Creation or Creation Time in the church year celebrated in different denominations and diverse countries. Today, the celebration of a Season of Creation is truly a worldwide movement with origins in several simultaneous movements.

In 1999, the Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios I of Constantinople declared September 1 to be Creation Day, a time to offer “prayers and supplications to the Maker of all, both as thanksgiving for the great gift of creation and as a petition for its protection and salvation.”¹

In Europe, the European Christian Environmental Network chose the four Sundays of September as an appropriate time to celebrate creation and to come to terms with the current environmental crisis. They designated September as Creation Time, a season recently endorsed by the Third European Ecumenical Assembly and celebrated, for example, by the Bishop of London at ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Part One: Theology, Liturgy, Bible Engaging the Season
• Part Two: Spirit, Word, Wisdom Engaging the Sundays and Readings
• Afterword: Blessing the Animals: A Sermon | David Rhoads
• Contributors