Today we celebrate a proposed new festival in the church year – Creation in Christ. We mark this day with other Christians throughout the world to honor God’s creation.
This observance is the fruit of years of ecumenical convergence. September 1 has been celebrated as the day of creation as well as the beginning of the liturgical year in the Eastern Orthodox Churches since the 7th Century. This has some parallel with Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, around this time of year which also celebrates the anniversary of creation. In the past several years, the World Council of Churches, an international ecumenical organization, has developed a liturgical season of creation in the early fall. This day, the festival of Creation in Christ, is now commended to us for use by the World Council, the Lutheran World Federation, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Another ecumenical effort, the Consultation on Common texts, has appointed biblical passages for use on this festival day. In short, there’s a lot of ecumenical cooperation that is behind what we celebrate today.
One of the realities motivating the establishment of this new festival is that there is no liturgical day in the Western church that celebrates God’s creation of the world. There are plenty of festivals celebrating Christ, the second person of the Trinity and the focus of the second articles of the Apostles and Nicene Creeds. And there’s Pentecost which celebrates the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity and the third article of the creeds. But the first article of the creeds focusing on God’s creation has been without its own dedicated festival. This day, thus, seeks to fill a gap in the liturgical calendar.
And it’s essential to note also that this new festival comes at a time of climate crisis when God’s good creation is at risk and we are beckoned to recommit to our caretaking of Mother Earth to save her from degradation.
So, let’s jump into exploring the meanings of this day, focusing on the appointed biblical passages. First off, the title for this day is significant: Creation in Christ. When we think of God creating the world, we usually think of God the Father, not Jesus.
But today’s gospel reading from John reminds us that Jesus Christ, the word of God made flesh, was present at the very beginning of creation. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.” In short, Jesus Christ according to John is central to creation.
Moreover, in the story of creation in Genesis chapter one, the Holy Spirit was also present at creation as a wind from God – or the Spirit of God – blew over the face of the deep. So, all three persons of the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, shared in creating the world. This is one of the truths that we celebrate today, Creation in Christ.
Another truth we celebrate today is that our stories and understandings of God creating the world are not just for Christians, or Jewish people, but are meant for all of humanity, people of all faith traditions. The apostle Paul makes this clear in today’s second reading from Acts when he addressed the Greeks living in Athens who believed in many gods. Paul proclaimed: “From one ancestor [God] made all peoples to inhabit the whole earth, and [God] allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps fumble about for him and find him – though indeed [God] is not far from each one of us. For ‘in him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we, too, are [God’s] offspring.’”
In short, all human beings possess an innate capacity to search for ultimate transcendence, for the divine, for God. Thus, when it comes to celebrating God’s creation, and experiencing creation, we are all in this together. We share one humanity. All human beings are in the same boat. We sink or swim together.
Which brings us to another truth that we celebrate today on the festival of Creation in Christ. We human beings were created in order to care for the creation. God created the Garden of Eden so that human beings would steward that garden, caring for all the trees and plants, and caring for all the birds and animals.
That’s what we hear from today’s first reading from the story of creation in Genesis chapter two. “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.”
It’s important to note that the affirmations of the human role in creation in Genesis chapter two, serve as antidotes to some of the sayings in the first account of creation in Genesis chapter one, where we hear that humans are to have dominion over all creation and that we should “fill the earth and subdue it.” This is language that has been misused to allow for the exploitation and destruction of creation for greedy human gain. No, in Genesis two, we are called to be loving caretakers of creation.
Of course, we know that things did not go well for the first humans, Adam and Eve, in the Garden of Eden. They disobeyed God and ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This disobedience was the beginning of sin and suffering and death.
But this reality brings us back to Jesus Christ. For God the Father ended up sending the Son, Jesus Christ, to the earth to take on human flesh and to live and love, and die and be raised to new life for us and for our salvation.
Jesus Christ thus became a new Adam to begin a new creation with his death and resurrection. For Christ’s death and resurrection free us from the power of sin and death which have plagued humanity since our first disobedience in Eden. And by the gift of God’s grace in Christ, we return to the paradise garden of salvation in him.
We enter into that new creation in Christ when we are baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit who created all things and who continues to create and recreate us and all that lives.
And we eat of the fruit of this new creation when we share in the sacrament of Holy Communion, imbibing the bread and the fruit of the vine, themselves gifts of creation, which also impart to us the real presence of Christ, the new Adam, the new creation, the incarnate gate for entering a new paradise garden in him.
Thus fed and strengthened in faith and courage, we are sent into the world in the power of God’s Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father, through the Son, to care for all people and indeed all of creation. And we continue God’s ongoing works of creation in giving life and love to all people and all creatures. That’s our missionary work as new creations in Christ.
All of this is what we celebrate today on this proposed new festival of the church year, Creation in Christ.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
