Living Peaceably With Creation
The following is a sermon I preached last Sunday about Jesus' invitation to live peaceably with God's creation. And please don't miss the invitation below the sermon to a live webinar with some friends coming up next month!
25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? 28 And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 31 Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ 32 For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 33 But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
34 “So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today. (Mt. 6:25-34)
Here’s something I believe is true about every single one of us: our experience of peace increases when we spend time in creation. I’ve mentioned this before, but most Tuesdays, my weekly day off, you’ll find me walking slowly through Jackson Park for 2-3 hours. I cross Cornell Drive and walk behind the MSI, before coming to the Bobolink Meadow. And as I approach the meadow, I can feel my body relaxing; my breathing slows down and I start noticing the sights, sounds, and smells of the forest and the grassland. The worries I’ve been carrying start to shrink.
The crowds listening to Jesus in the Galilean countryside had worries of their own. An occupied people, they lived under the constant threat of violence and coercion. The empire had taxed many of them into poverty. Spiritually, they wondered whether God would ever come to rescue them. Observing the wildflowers dotting the hills and the birds flying above their heads, Jesus told the crowd not to worry because they held an honored place within creation.
Now, I realize that not all of you share my enthusiasm for nature walks through Jackson Park. Every time I mention birdwatching, I catch a few of you rolling your eyes. But I stand by my belief: our experience of peace increases when we spend time in creation. You see creation includes more than the beaches of Lake Michigan, the paths through Washington Park, or the trails at the Indiana National Lakeshore. We are each a part of creation. It may not be a quiet walk through a Forest Preserve that brings you peace; maybe it is a meal prepared with fresh ingredients with close friends. Maybe it’s turning off all the screens in your home for a family game night. Maybe it’s spending Saturday mornings at the community garden, weeding, planting, and harvesting. God’s created world comes in many forms.
During this Easter season, we’re going to consider some of the implications of God’s new creation which was inaugurated by Jesus’ resurrection. This morning we’ll look at what happens as we live in harmony with God’s creation, the creation which has been renewed in Christ. So, here’s the big idea: Experiencing God’s peace includes living peaceably with God’s creation. I’m using the word peaceably today, instead of peacefully because peaceful can sound passive whereas peaceable assumes an active participation. Living peaceably with creation requires our action, as we’ll see.
As he encouraged the crowd, Jesus twice told them to carefully consider different aspects of God’s creation. First, he said, “Look at the birds of the air…” The word for look could be translated, “gaze at in the face.” Second, he invited the crowd to, “consider the lilies of the field…” The word for consider could be translated as, “examine.” In other words, Jesus is not telling those anxious men and women to take a quick peek at creation or to occasionally and quickly remember their place within God’s creation. Instead, we should hear Jesus inviting us to meditate deeply on God’s creation, to live harmoniously with God’s creation. Experiencing God’s peace means living peaceably with God’s creation.
How do we do this? How do we live peaceably with creation in ways that lead to more peace in our lives? In this passage we see three forms of meditation which help us live peaceably with creation. We live peaceably with creation by meditating on creation, by meditating on our interdependence with creation, and by meditating on our creator.
We experience God’s peace when we live peaceably with creation by meditating on creation. The idea of meditating on creation might conjure images of some beautiful place on a screensaver, or one of those generic inspirational posters at your office, or someone’s Instagram photos from their vacation. But Jesus directs the crowd not to a generic illustration of creation but actual birds and flowers. They are invited to gaze at and examine specific examples of the local creation.
There are proven benefits to this kind of creation medication. Researchers have found that twenty minutes in nature can improve concentration and reduce the need for ADHD/ADD medication in some children. Time in nature improves cognitive function and memory. We are more likely to exercise regularly if our exercise takes place in nature. Thirty minutes in nature improves heart health, circulation, and lowers cholesterol. Just five minutes in nature improves mood and self-esteem while regular exposure to creation can reduce anxiety and depression.
The crowd was familiar with this sort of proximity to nature in ways that many of us are not. About this harmony with creation, Pope Francis writes that in God’s loving plan, “every creature has its own value and significance… and can only be understood as a gift from the outstretched hand of the Father of all, and as a reality illuminated by the love which calls us together into universal communion.”
Our contemporary society can hide from us our connection with this universal communion. For example, try to identify the origins of everything on your plate at lunch today. What plants are represented? Do you know what they look like in the field? And where did each item come from? For most of us, our separation from creation is so thorough, this will be an impossible assignment.
But despite this separation, it is still possible to meditate on God’s creation. A member of our church recently told me about her experience helping with a community garden. She told me it was the process of gardening that was so powerful for her. The way the seed started so small, submerged in the dirt; how it looked so much better once it began growing; how it went through pain and struggle but still became what God intended. She specifically mentioned how planting garlic taught her about God’s timing: garlic gets planted in the fall and overwinters in the hard, frozen soil before finally sprouting in the springtime.
So, even though we may have forgotten our place withing God’s universal communion, we can still choose to remember by meditating on creation. But to do this, we need to see creation and to see creation we need to name it. Choose to learn the name of one tree, flower, or bird this week. See how learning the name of just one aspect of nature can help you begin seeing – and loving – more of God’s creation.
We experience God’s peace when we live peaceably with creation by meditating on our interdependence with creation. Jesus and the crowd understood their connection with the land. Jesus’ parables were full of examples of this connection; wildlife, farming, baking, and other natural examples fill these stories. While we are prone to forget our dependence on nature, Jesus and the crowd understood where their food, water, and shelter came from. In fact, interdependence was built into the Jewish law.
"You shall not see your neighbor’s donkey or ox fallen on the road and ignore it; you shall help to lift it up… 6 If you come on a bird’s nest, in any tree or on the ground, with fledglings or eggs, with the mother sitting on the fledglings or on the eggs, you shall not take the mother with the young. 7 Let the mother go, taking only the young for yourself, in order that it may go well with you and you may live long." (Dt. 24:4, 6-7)
The Catholic Catechism puts it like this. “God wills the interdependence of creatures… Creatures exist only in dependence on each other, to complete each other, in the service of each other.” The many environmental crises we face tempt us to look away from this basic fact of life, but Jesus invites us to meditate on our interdependence. He invites the worried crowd to look around. “…they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.”
The worries we share with that Galilean crowd can be a form of pride. We are prone to living as though we are capable of fully caring for ourselves. With such a starting point, we can never possess enough and worry is inevitable. Marketers, of course, have figured out how to capitalize on this prideful worry; they convince us that we need the latest thing, a thing which is destined to join so many others of our needs in a landfill. Our prideful worry harms God’s creation.
But when we meditate on our interdependence, we remember that we cannot fully provide for ourselves. This simple fact engenders humility; we too are dependent on the rains, crops, seasons, and other people. Toward the end of the book of Job, God asks Job, “Have you commanded the morning since your days began, and caused the dawn to know its place? (38:12) Have you entered the storehouses of the snow, or have you seen the storehouses of the hail?” To this, Job can only humbly reply, “See, I am of small account; what shall I answer you? I lay my hand on my mouth.” (40:4)
As we meditate on our interdependence, we are experience humility and humility leads to peace. No longer do we have to have more. Our starting point has shifted from scarcity to abundance.
One of the few places we regularly recognize our interdependence with creation is before a meal, when we bow in prayerful thanksgiving. What if we were to begin applying this practice more broadly? We might pause thankfully before a glass of clean drinking water. Or after we fill our car with gas. Or when it begins to rain. These small acts of thanksgiving can help us meditate more regularly on our interdependence with creation.
We experience God’s peace when we live peaceably with creation by meditating on our creator. What is your image of God? Many of us imagine God as our lord, savior, redeemer, provider, defender, judge, etc. Jesus is also the creator whose death and resurrection has inaugurated new creation. “The earth is the Lord’s,” writes the psalmist, “and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it.” (Ps. 24:1)
The fact that everything that has been created belongs to the creator can bring us peace. You belong to the Creator. So does your family, your bank account, and so on. But this knowledge brings responsibility as well. The West Virginian mountaintop that is being blown away for the coal that powers our homes belongs to the Creator. So do the clearcut forests which provide our paper products and the Lake Michigan waters polluted by the refineries providing the gas for our cars.
Does the fact that Jesus is Creator matter to us? I’m not sure, to be honest. If Jesus were our divine Lord and Savior but not the Creator, would anything really change about how we live our faith? If not, we have to admit how far we moved from God’s desire for us. God’s role as creator was deeply important to his people in the Old Testament. To take one example, the law dictated that the “land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine; with me you are but aliens and tenants.” (Lev. 25:23) The understanding that God was Creator impacted everything, right down to their economy and understanding of private property.
God is the Creator and Jesus reveals a Creator who cares lovingly for his creation. According to Jesus, our “heavenly Father feeds” the birds and “clothes the grass of the field.” We can be prone to a deistic view of God; we view creation as a one-time act and so we toil and scheme under our own strength until, exhausted, we plead for God to intervene. But Jesus says that God feeds and clothes his creatin. Presumably the birds and the flowers are not asking to be fed and clothed. God proactively cares for his creation.
This is why meditating on our Creator is so powerful. When we do, we are pulled from the endless treadmill of our own self-sufficiency. The Creator feeds you. He clothes, shelters, defends, finds, heals, protects, answers, relieves, fills, hears, leads, surrounds, vindicates, guides, restores, hides, prospers, watches over, delivers, and blesses you! The Creator does not stand at a distance from his creation, watching as we try to care for ourselves No, whatever God’s creatures need, God the Creator will provide.
“Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.”
This week, when you pray, pray to Creator. Following the lead of our Indigenous friends who often address God in this way, choose to imagine God first as the Creator this week. Notice how this changes your posture toward the rest of God’s creation.
Our contemporary society has convinced us that we can experience peace without living peaceably with God’s creation. But friends, there can be no true harmony with God as long as we are living out-of-tune with God’s creation. The great news is that God’s creation is all around us! You’re sitting next to God’s creation. When you walk out of this building, you’ll be surrounded by God’s creation. Despite our best efforts to pave over the prairies and restrict wildlife to zoos and mitigate friendships to social media, God’s creation is still all around us.
Jesus invites us to slow down, to pause our worries, and to meditate on creation, on our interdependence with creation, and on our Creator who cares for each of our needs. Choose to live peaceably with creation this week, and welcome more of the Creator’s peace into your life.
(Photo credit: Vlad Chețan.)
To celebrate two years since Rediscipling the White Church was published, I've invited some friends to join me in May for a series of live video conversations. A lot has changed since the spring of 2020 and I want to hear what these wise friends are thinking about in the realm of racial justice. I'm thrilled that my first guests are Helen Lee and Michelle Reyes, authors of the forthcoming book, The Race-Wise Family. Helen and Michelle will join me on Friday, May 6 at 12:00 CT. You can register for the Zoom webinar here or catch it on my Facebook page.