Creation Matters - 7PM
Dear sisters and brothers in Christ grace and peace to you from Jesus Christ who loves us and frees us from our sin. Amen.
When I was about nine years old I made a purchase, one for my mom, it’s a purchase that I really shouldn’t have made but I did so with the best intentions.
While I was growing up, my mom is prone to sinus headaches, sinus infections, essentially the whole allergy related discomfort. So starting at a young age I was quite familiar with allergy and sinus medications, pills, of this very tame variety, were something I knew a little about.
Now, there was an independent pharmacy not too far from our house, and my friends and I were allowed to ride our bikes over there to get candy and snacks whenever we had a little allowance money to burn. The pharmacy had a pretty robust gift section which was replete with all the precious moments figurines one could possibly want. It also had a nice little novelty gift section.
It was the novelty section that caught my attention that fateful day. I found a basket of buttons, each one bearing a one-liner that my nine-year-old brain perceived to be all kinds of brilliant. After a few moments of sifting through the buttons, I selected the perfect one. I promptly marched up to the cash register, button in hand. The clerk looked at me quizzically, and asked, “Who’s this for?” I confidently replied, “My mom.”
Next, the clerk asked me if I knew what the button meant? I informed her that I was pretty sure, and that my mom who takes a lot of pills, would appreciate it. The clerk reluctantly sold it to me, not really wanting to open that can of worms.
I rode my bike home, and presented my Mom with my carefully selected present. It was a shiny black button, with white lettering that read, “Over the Hill and Off the Pill.”
I was trying to express my desire for her to feel better, and no longer need the sinus medication. However, I’m not sure I picked the best button to convey that message.
This week we are kicking of a new sermon series entitled “Creation Matters.” Here in Minnesota, it seems a fitting time of year to talk about creation matters, because well this is the time of year when the highest percentage of Minnesotan’s are out enjoying the world around them. Drive, walk, or bike anywhere near any of the lakes in Minneapolis these days and you encounter masses of humanity, outside reveling in the beauty that is summer in Minnesota.
Isn’t that what we think about when we hear the word creation? The beauty of nature, plants and trees, lakes and streams, singing birds and leaping fish. Isn’t this what we think about, when we consider matters of creation?
Ask most church going folks, or anybody really, where it is that they experience the strongest sense of the divine and I’d be willing to bet well over half of people polled would mention something about nature or creation, sunsets and rainbows. Don’t you think?
But part of me wonders, is this kind of thinking all that the biblical witness has to offer? Can the richness of the biblical witness to God’s creative work simply be distilled into a “the world is pretty so there must be a God” kind of theology. Is that why creation matters?
In Genesis Chapter 1, which we’ve been reading from tonight, we experience this poetic description of God’s creative activity fashioning the world. Yet, it’s important to note that this is not a story of hows and whats, but rather a story of who and why. When we try to make this a story about the mechanics of creation, we miss the shocking news of this story.1
This God who creates is one who brings order out of chaos. God creates meaning and purpose out of the deep void. Genesis bears witness to a God who brings into existence goodness where emptiness once held sway.
And what’s most striking is that God doesn’t do it all by himself. God invites the created order to participate in the ongoing generative work. In verse 11 God says, let the earth bring forth vegetation: plants yielding seed, and trees bearing fruit. The earth joins God in creating life, and calls that God. Then, the sun and the moon are given work too, God creates them and gives them authority of the day and night.
In verse 20, the waters participate in the creation of life, bringing forth swarms of living creatures. In verse 24, the earth creates more life, giving rise to animals, and once again God calls the creation’s partnership in authoring life good.
Finally, and most peculiarly God creates humanity. God creates you and me in God’s own image. Once again God invites that which he creates into partnership, into relationship with God’s own self. God invites the human creation into holy work of bringing order out of chaos, and bringing life into this world.
Yet peculiarly, humanity is given another job. Like the rest of what God creates humanity is invited to continue in God’s creative work. But unlike anything else, humanity is entrusted to protect and serve the generative work of the world God has made. We live God are invited to continue God’s labor of love, ensuring that this world can flourish.
Now this might sound like terrifyingly impossible work. You might be tempted to say, “Look around, this world is groaning under our weight of our excesses. Humanity is exploiting the world we’ve been entrusted with not ensuring it’s vitality. How can we possibly be the partners that God has asked us to be?”
But yet, the promise of this story, of the creation story is that God continues to work. The God who brings order out of chaos is still doing it. God is still bringing meaning and purpose to this world, because God has committed to being in relationship with it. And God is committed to you, each one of you in particular.
We begin our baptismal service by giving thanks and reminding one another of God’s work in creation. We say, in the beginning God’s spirit moved over the waters and by his Word God created the world, calling forth life in which God took delight. We retell this story, because in the waters of baptism God’s spirit once again moves over the water, calling each of us into a new life in Christ. And God takes delight in each of you. And God once again entrusts you with holy work, to live as God would live in this world.
Creation matters not because God once upon a time made something new, no creation matters because God remains deeply committed to acting in creative and redemptive ways on behalf of this world.
Creation matters not because the world is a beautiful place and we should try to keep in that way, but because God has given us holy work to do, God has called to be his agents in the world.
To be sure our agency is often clumsy at best. Our attempts to be God’s love in this world are fraught with miscues, we say and do the wrong things all the time. But God acts in and through our brokenness to bring healing and wholeness to the world.
We act boldly on behalf of creation, trusting that God will accomplish his purposes in and through our seemingly failed attempts to be his people. Even a tacky button, lovingly given, can communicate the riches of God’s love. God’s activity in this world in not limited by our frailty, don’t limit God’s opportunities to act through you because you’re afraid to make a mistake. My mother and I discovered that together long ago, though we regularly need reminding of that truth.
Tonight we proclaim this good news to one another. God is still creating, in and through each of us. For that we give thanks, this night and always.
Amen.
