A New Creation

Because Earth Day was the day after Easter this year, I plan to focus on honouring creation this coming Sunday instead. We seem to be daily hearing more doomsday news about how badly the environment is doing and how short a window we have until the point of no return for survival of life on our planet. I have to admit I’ve been struggling with tone and approach for this service.

Our Creator made a perfect and unblemished world and since Genesis 2 human beings have tarnished it. We are called to be stewards of all that God made and not to trample the rest of creation for our own benefit. There is plenty for us to read about the many issues facing us - pollution, waste management, plastics, water protection, species extinction, and rainforest depletion, to name a few. There are alarming statistics and a resulting sense of guilt and often powerlessness for those who care. Then there are those who are tired of hearing about it, in denial, and loathe to accept responsibility or to change their lifestyle.

As I start serious planning, |’m trying to bridge these two extremes. I’m considering how to ensure that this remains a worship experience and not an information session or call to arms; a time to be reminded of God’s power and awesomeness and our needed response. We have the promise of a new creation - a new heaven and a new earth coming at the end of time as we know it because of Jesus’ sacrifice. In this season of Easter we celebrate the new beginnings we can claim and not by anything we have done. Even with our dirty hands, our doubt, our denial, our desertion of who God asks us to be, we find that we are offered mercy and new direction.

So I think this Sunday will be a celebration of our good artist God who ingeniously created a world that is inter-dependent and resplendent and beautiful and sustainable for us to enjoy. I think we will celebrate the wonderful sense of humour of God shown in some of the creatures with whom we share this world. I think we will reflect on how we are made in God’s image and how we should be reflecting God’s nature and care. I think we will confess our failure to value the role of being stewards not lords of the earth, to see the other species as equally as important as us, to hear our calling to honour God’s handiwork.

When the ark’s inhabitants were finally safe to leave their floating home, God made a covenant not just with Noah and his family but with all the creatures. God’s promises are shared with every living being, not just us humans. We need to repent of our sense of entitlement and return to a sense of responsibility and humility for this task to which we are called - stewarding creation. And we need to learn how to dialogue with each other, even when we disagree about what stewarding entails.

We are empowered and emboldened to be partners in creation. Despite our greed and self-centredness, God is still relying on us to enjoy and protect and enrich all of the creatures and plants around us which sustain us. In Colossians 1 we read that all things were created in and through Christ, the first-born of creation, and that in Him all things hold together. He has reconciled all things to Himself and is able to present us without fault before God if we continue in faith. I love that Paul writes that the gospel has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven.

Even as we are afraid and feeling guilt and shame about the state of the planet - the species already extinct or being used and abused, the loss of good agricultural land, the glorious rainforests and coral reefs - still God provides the promise of Jesus’ reconciling power for those who believe. We have an escape plan from our failures and short-sightedness.

This news of grace and redemption should challenge us to respond in gratitude to our amazing God who knows us so well. It should cause us to want to live in a way that honours what God made and the calling we have. My prayer is that we will take our lead from climate champions like Greta Thunberg and listen carefully for how God is calling on us to respond for all the generations coming after us, human and otherwise.