This message was intended to be given during worship this weekend, however, with some miscommunication, I did not end up preaching as planned. That said, I think the message worthy of sharing, so this is offered now for those who wish to enjoin with it regardless if I was able to deliver it this weekend.
Love for All Creation
Acts 11:1-18; Psalm 148; Revelation 21:1-6; John 13:31-35
(White)
Key Verses
6 As I looked at it closely I saw four-footed animals,
beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air. 7 I also heard a voice saying
to me, ‘Get up, Peter; kill and eat.’ 8 But I replied, ‘By no means, Lord, for
nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’ 9 But a second time the
voice answered from heaven, ‘What God has made clean, you must not call
profane.’ – Acts 11:6-9
5 Let them praise the name of the Lord,
for he commanded
and they were created.
6 He established them forever and ever;
he fixed their
bounds, which cannot be passed.[a]
7 Praise the Lord from the earth,
you sea monsters
and all deeps,
8 fire and hail, snow and frost,
stormy wind
fulfilling his command!
9 Mountains and all hills,
fruit trees and
all cedars!
10 Wild animals and all cattle,
creeping things
and flying birds! – Psalm 148:5-10
1 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first
heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2 And I
saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God,
prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. – Rev 21:1-2
34 I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.
Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. 35 By this everyone
will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” – John
31:34-35
Message
“Grace and peace to you from
God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”[1]
Let us pray. “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation
of my heart, be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and redeemer.”[2] Amen.
Good afternoon and welcome to
the eve of summer. This week’s weather
certainly made it clear that winter is past and we are in for a very warm
period ahead. In ruminating on the
appointed scriptures for this week, I couldn’t but be pulled towards and
underlying theme that permeated through them.
There are also several contemporary events and shifts that spoke to me. So, as I dive in here, I wish to beg some
forgiveness if I go a bit too deep into what I am hearing here and maybe you
are not. To me, this set of lessons is
all about God and His creation, specifically God and His creation and our role
and how we are to view it and act within it for his glory and the glory of all
He has made. As you may be well aware,
one of my core passions is related to sustainability and care for creation, and
as such, this, again, may be “tickling my ears” in some sense. I hope that what I share, however, resonates
with what the Spirit is calling us all to hear.
Let’s begin with the oldest
of the scripture readings this week, which, of course, is not the first lesson,
but the Psalm. The psalms are too easily
forgotten as lessons to us, but they too are a part of the scripture. Martin Luther famously leaned on the psalms,
especially Psalm 118, during his imprisonment at Coburg Castle. As Stephen J. Nicoles puts it, “Luther loved
the Psalms, first lecturing on them in 1513–1516. His immersion in the Psalms
certainly impacted the events of 1517. After the Ninety-Five Theses, Luther
returned to the Psalms again and again. He started a practice of reading the
Psalms through the day at seven designated times. This enabled him to read
through the Psalter in two weeks. He kept disciplined at that practice
throughout most of his life. He read the Psalms hundreds of times. He studied
and lectured on the Psalms. He translated the Psalms into German. It is fair to
say that Luther lived in the Psalms.”[3] To that, we ought not forget that the Psalms
speak to us as scripture as much as any other part of the Bible, this week’s
selection being a case in point.
Psalm 148 is clustered at the
end of that book and is among the “praise psalms” that bring these numerous
ancient songs, poetry, and canticles to a conclusion. What is striking here to me, if we look back
at the verses, is how this litany of praise centers heavily on the nature of
creation and the created order.
Specifically:
“5 Let them praise the name
of the Lord,
for he commanded and they were created.
6 He established them forever
and ever;
he fixed their bounds, which cannot be
passed.[a]
7 Praise the Lord from the
earth,
you sea monsters and all deeps,
8 fire and hail, snow and
frost,
stormy wind fulfilling his command!
9 Mountains and all hills,
fruit trees and all cedars!
10 Wild animals and all
cattle,
creeping things and flying birds!”[4]
Alongside angels and the
heavens, are “creeping things and flying birds.” More than half the verse speak directly about
creation and about how creation is itself a demonstration of God’s glory and
grace in the world. And it makes clear
that creation is fully part and parcel to every single aspect of life, the life
he gives and calls us to live.
As I am sure you are well
aware, we now have a new Pope in Rome, Leo XIV who is the successor of Pope
Francis. Leo, like his predecessor, has
already made clear that caring for creation is an imperative of Roman
Catholics. This is evident and made
clear in Francis’ first encyclical, “Laudato Si”: On Care for Our Common
Home. While not a Lutheran document, and
admitting that encyclicals can have their issues, this one has so much that
transcends denominational boundaries. To
that, Francis echoed Psalm 148 when he offered that, “The entire material
universe speaks of God’s love, his boundless affection for us. Soil, water,
mountains: everything is, as it were, a caress of God.”[5] This was certainly presaged when the ELCA
adopted the Social Statement, “Caring for Creation: Vision, Hope and Justice” back in 1993. This earliest of social statements of our
church offers that “Scripture witnesses to God as creator of the earth and all
that dwells therein (Psalm 24:1). The creeds, which guide our reading of
Scripture, proclaim God the Father of Jesus Christ as “maker of heaven and
earth,” Jesus Christ as the one “through [whom] all things were made,” and the
Holy Spirit as “the Lord, the giver of life” (Nicene Creed).”[6] It goes on to say that “God blesses the world
and sees it as “good,” even before humankind comes on the scene. All creation,
not just humankind, is viewed as “very good” in God’s eyes (Genesis 1:31). God
continues to bless the world: “When you send forth your spirit, they are
created; and you renew the face of the ground” (Psalm 104:30). By faith we
understand God to be deeply, mysteriously, and unceasingly involved in what
happens in all creation. God showers care upon sparrows and lilies (Matthew 6:26-30),
and brings “rain on a land where no one lives, on the desert, which is empty of
human life” (Job 38:26).[7]
This is evident in the first
lesson for today and the dream sequence that Peter experiences. Peter still caught up in his Jewish identity,
has been focusing on what is “clean and unclean” to the exclusion of the call
by God to recognize all of his creation was created good. In this dream God shows Peter a host of
creatures that Judaism and their misapplication of the Mosaic codes had
declared “unclean”. “… four-footed
animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air.”[8] God instructs Peter to “Get up, …; kill and
eat.”[9] Peter’s reply? “By no means, Lord, for nothing profane or
unclean has ever entered my mouth.”[10] It seems that Peter forgot to hear Jesus when
he “… called the crowd to him and said to them, ‘Listen and understand: it is not what goes into the mouth that
defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles.’”[11] Peter however is reminded in this dream that
“What God has made clean, you must not call profane.”[12] No, instead, that what God has created is
“good” and not profane. And we have a
calling to both remember that and act accordingly.
On this topic, Luther, in his
Large Catechism, speaks emphatically about creation and our role in it. He offers “For even though otherwise we
experience much good from men, still whatever we receive by His command or
arrangement is all received from God. For our parents, and all rulers, and
every one besides with respect to his neighbor, have received from God the command
that they should do us all manner of good, so that we receive these blessings
not from them, but, through them, from God. For creatures are only the hands,
channels, and means whereby God gives all things, as He gives to the mother
breasts and milk to offer to her child, and corn and all manner of produce from
the earth for nourishment, none of which blessings could be produced by any creature
of itself.[13] In another place Luther offers, “Now, since
all that we possess, and, moreover, whatever, in addition, is in heaven and
upon the earth, is daily given, preserved, and kept for us by God, it is
readily inferred and concluded that it is our duty to love, praise, and thank
Him for it without ceasing, and, in short, to serve Him with all these things,
as He demands and has enjoined in the Ten Commandments.”[14] “For if we believed [this] with the heart, we
would also act accordingly, and not stalk about proudly, act defiantly, and
boast as though we had life, riches, power, and honor, etc., of ourselves, so
that others must fear and serve us, as is the practice of the wretched,
perverse world, which is drowned in blindness, and abuses all the good things
and gifts of God only for its own pride, avarice, lust, and luxury, and never
once regards God, so as to thank Him or acknowledge Him as Lord and Creator.”[15]
In other words, God exists,
in with, and through all of creation, and what we do to and with creation is an
expression of what we believe about God.
If we abuse the world, the creation, we are abusing God, we commit
sin. Instead, we are called to respect,
love and tend to the garden, the creation, that God has blessed us with. Yet, if we are paying attention, we are not
doing that very well. This is clearly
evident in the continuing climate crisis that, and as my colleague Curt Stager
at Paul Smiths says, “The truth is, the overwhelming consensus — from climate
scientists, the U.S. military, global insurers and even Exxon’s own researchers
— is that human-driven climate change is real, it’s mainly being caused by the
combustion of fossil fuels, and it’s already reshaping our world.”[16] Curt, a climate scientist, and former human
caused climate change skeptic, has been accumulating one of the most robust
sets of local climate data we have on record.
From temperature change to when ice goes in and out on St. Regis Lake,
to days of snow ground cover, to changes in local plant and animal species, he
has demonstrated with clear evidence that the warming of the planet is having
effects on all of us here and now. As he
says, “The science behind human-driven climate change is so strong now that
denying the central role of greenhouse gases is a waste of time that serves
nobody but the fossil fuel interests who continue to fund such naysaying.
Moving forward to find solutions with the support of the best available science
is both a responsibility and a path to empowerment. It’s about choosing to be
well informed, to care for our communities, and to protect the people and
places we love.” While not using the
language of faith, he is saying the same thing Francis, and Luther, and
scripture itself tells us, we have a responsibility to care for creation.
But for how long are we to
care for creation? To what end? Those are great questions. And we get a
glance at that in our second lesson today.
John of Patmos, in his cataclysmic vision, helps us to understand the
end-game for God and his creation. AS it
is written there: “… I saw a new heaven
and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and
the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down
out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.”[17] It goes on to say that “See, the home of God
is among mortals. He will dwell with
them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them and be their
God; …”[18] And it offers that God is “… making all
things new.”[19] What John is seeing here is that creation
itself has a huge role to play in the end times and the finality of all
things. We are not going to be whisked
off to some far off heaven, as the false throey of the rapture would have you
believe. No, this very creation we live
in, itself, will become a new thing. God
will remake it, come down and make it wholly restored. This is precisely what we are praying for
when we pray in the Lords prayer that “May your kingdom come. May your will be
done on earth as it is in heaven.” So we
are to care for creation, be its good stewards, and take part fully as we go
headlong into the end times, the times we are in today.
God, knowing we needed signs
and tangible markers of his truth. So he
did indeed, come down from heaven, and became a human, in our likeness as the
creeds tell us. Christ, God incarnate,
was and is, and ever will be our guiding light to understand what God’s glory
means for us. This is why in today’s
gospel, Jesus articulates his relationship with God and as God; glories, upon
glories, all brought together in creation itself. And it is also whey Christ instituted holy
communion, a sacrament that helps us, today and whenever we celebrate the
eucharist, tap into this God-power of glorious grace and love. God distills out of the meekest parts of his
creation, grains of wheat and fruit of the vine, a corporeal instance where he
is intimately in touch with us through his body and blood. He is declaring, through this sacrament that
He is “through, with, and under” all of creation, but especially in this
celebration, for the forgiveness, and ultimate unwinding of sin.
So, as we continue on our
journey, it is upon us that we listen to and do what we can to steward those
things we have been given, ourselves, our time, and all of creation. All creation is a sign of God’s unending
love. As he implores us in the gospel
today, we need to love one another, each person, each plant, each animal, each
stone. We need to love as God has loved
us. We are to be visible signs, just as
much as the signs we see in the incarnation of Christ and in the eucharist, for
the world. We need to be seen by everyone
that we are His disciples. And to do
that we have to have love for one another.
Let us go out, then, and demonstrate our love for all of creation. Amen.
[1]
2 Corinthians 1:2
[2]
Psalm 19:14
[4]
Psalm 148:5-10
[5]
Laudato Si, 84
[6]
Caring for Creation: Vision, Hope and
Justice, ELCA, 1993, pp. 2
[7]
Caring for Creation: Vision, Hope and Justice,
ELCA, 1993, pp. 2
[8]
Cf. Acts 11:6
[9]
Cf. Acts 11:7
[10]
Cf. Acts 11:8
[11]
Cf. Matthew 15:10-11
[12]
CF. Acts 11:9
[16]
Source: https://www.adirondackdailyenterprise.com/opinion/guest-commentary/2025/04/this-climate-change-has-not-been-going-on-forever/
[17]
Cf. Revelation 21:1-2
[18]
Cf. Revelation 21:3
[19]
Cf. Revelation 21:5
