by Tanya Marcovna Barnett, preached at the Bayview Manor [Seattle, WA] chapel service, fall 2002.
Texts: Psalm 148, Colossians 1:17, and Romans 1:20
Good evening! Thank you for having me with you in worship during this beautiful, early fall sunset. Let us take just a moment to again be aware of God’s presence in this place and in our hearts and minds.
We just heard one of my favorite psalms: Psalm 148. I can’t think of a more beautiful psalm for our worship celebration this evening. (How appropriate that we would have such a praise-filled psalm to echo the music we just enjoyed from the choir.) As with choral music, most biblical psalms were originally sung by a choir of people. Even many psalms that appear to have been sung by individuals were probably (according to most biblical scholars) sung by specific families or clans. And just as we can praise God vicariously through the choir here today, the ancient Israelite singing groups, families, and clans would have served as mouthpieces for their entire communities – expressing to God the community’s deep pain, fear, and joy. What I find to be particularly inspiring about Psalm 148 is that it seeks to radically broaden the circle of who is included in the choir or family. In every line of this psalm, the singers reach out across the bounds of their own little group. They exhort “rulers of the earth and all peoples, young men and women alike, old and young together!” to praise the Lord – to join in this joyous family sing-along, of sorts. But the invitation for other singers does not stop there! The psalmists go on and on exhorting: “You heavens; you angels and hosts; you sun, moon, and shining stars; you highest heavens and waters above the heavens; sea monsters and all deeps; fire and hail, snow and frost, stormy wind; you mountains and hills; you fruit trees and all cedars over there; wild animals and all cattle, creeping things and flying birds – all of you together, join in this ecstatic chorus of praise to our Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer!” This is the image of an amazing, diverse, creation-encompassing praise choir – a choir, a family, which can and should praise God, “for God commanded and they were all created. God established them forever and ever …” All that God creates and sustains are witnesses to God’s glory and should announce this fact. It’s not just our smaller human family that enjoys this blessed witness and the duty to bear witness.
The theologian, Terence Fretheim, in his article Nature’s Praise of God in the Psalms, wrote, “it is only as all creatures of God join together in the chorus of praise that the elements of the natural order or human beings witness to God as the ought.” This insight calls human beings “to relate to the natural order in such a way that nature’s praise might show forth with greater clarity.” Just imagine the beautiful choir that we heard today with only sopranos who could sing within a three-note range – the tune might be intriguing, but the group could no longer call itself a choir. In a similar vein, Fretheim might suggest that a hymn of praise that only includes human beings – and excludes creeping things, sun and stars, angels, trees, or any part of creation – would create a monochromatic musical picture, and a substantially less glorifying one, for certain. The 4th Century prayer of St. Basil the Great laments this sad picture:
“O God, enlarge within us the sense of fellowship with all living things, our brothers the animals [and all creatures] to whom thou gavest the earth as their home in common with us. We remember with shame that in the past we have exercised the high dominion of humans with ruthless cruelty; so that the voice of the earth, which should have gone up to Thee in song, has been a groan of travail. May we realize that all creatures live not for us alone but for themselves and for Thee, and that they love the sweetness of life.”
Again, St. Basil prayed these words in the 4th Century – how much more powerful and relevant they are today when 11% of the world’s bird species, 25 % of mammal species, and 34% of all fish species face immediate danger of extinction as a result of human-created habitat loss, pollution, and global warming (according to the Worldwatch Institute). And in the words of the World Wildlife Fund, “Every species loss diminishes the diversity of life on Earth with untold consequences for the web of life. Yet, at present rates of extinction, as much as a third of the world’s [plant and animal] species could be gone in the next 20 years.” And the most fragile part of this web of life surely includes the poor of the earth: those people whose well-being is immediately and directly connected to the well-being of creation. This is the heart-breaking news: humankind is, knowingly and unknowingly, muting the “voice of the Earth,” which, indeed, should go up to our God in song, rather than in a groan of travail.
With such losses, not only does God miss out on the opportunity to be glorified by all of creation, but we also miss out on hearing the unique expressions of what God is doing throughout creation. Romans 1:20 reads, “Ever since the creation of the world, God’s eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things God has made.” Where have you witnessed God’s eternal power and divine nature? Our God is a God who became flesh, a God who is present throughout creation and “in [this God] all things hold together” (Colossians 1:17) – ours is not only a transcendent heavenly host. I love this quote from the very frank, 15th C. reformer, Martin Luther; he wrote: “Do you think God is sleeping on a pillow in heaven? …God is wholly present in all creation, in every corner, behind and before you.” Luther also wrote, “God writes the Gospel, not in the Bible alone, but also on trees, and in the flowers and clouds and stars.” We shouldn’t miss the opportunity to hear the Gospel in its entirely.
In a moment, we’ll go back to our choir – one that might be called “The Hymn of All Creation, Family Singers.” Either now or when you leave worship today, I ask you again to ponder this question: where have you witnessed God’s eternal power and divine nature? (pause) Earlier this year, I posed this same question to at a mini-retreat hosted by a women’s group from a local church. I invited the women to share any experiences of perceiving the God through the created world. The pessimist in me expected sheer silence. But, the surprised and joyful child in me received more than I could have hoped for. Almost every one of the 20 elder women shared her experience of feeling the presence of the holy in the natural world … not inside of a cathedral, shopping mall, or office building. The women shared feelings of greater connections with loved ones, trees, animals, the wind, and with God. One woman wept as she described a trail in the Cascades that she and her husband hiked dozens of times while he was still alive. She recounted the way the light shimmered through the ancient trees, how she felt restored to her soul and to Christ, and how much she longed to walk the trail with her husband just one more time. Another woman spoke of a geranium plant on her porch that had survived at least ten winters. Every spring she marveled at the plant’s persistence to put on new buds, leaves, and flowers and at its tenacity just to live. This year was different in that this woman suddenly became almost completely blind during the winter. She told the group about how, one day this past spring, she bent down to the geranium, gently counted the buds with her fingertips, then brought her eyes almost in direct contact with the newly forming flowers. She too cried when she described her gratitude to God for being able to see small specks of red and for giving life to the plant for yet another year. In this way, the women deeply blessed one another by talking about their sacred experiences within the broader community of God’s creation.
Now let us return to the image of the choir that sings the hymn of all creation. Perhaps it is difficult to hear this hymn in its fullness today – what with many different forms of environmental destruction and our society’s separation from the rest of creation. Many great people in the Christian tradition, have also lived in similar, affluent times in which huge gulfs laid between the rich and the poor, and between humans and the rest of creation. Some of you may be familiar with St. Francis of Assisi. Francis was born in the 12th Century, the son of a very wealthy merchant family in Italy. In his youth, he was known for his extravagant, bawdy, consumptive lifestyle. But as he entered his 20s he began to hear callings from God that would change his life. The callings came as he witnessed true poverty and disease and when, in a time of prayer, he heard a voice say, “Go, Francis, and repair my house, which as you see is falling into ruin.” Francis took this message very literally at first and gave up all he had (including some of this father’s possessions which he sold for funds) to repair a few churches that lay in ruins. He wed himself to “Lady Poverty” in order to remain focused on his ministry to God’s house here on earth – to not be distracted by his former acquisitive pursuits. He soon realized that God’s house, was actually God’s household or oikos, from the Greek root “eco” which forms words like ecology, economics, and ecumenical. Gradually, Francis saw that this household consisted not only dilapidated church buildings, but also included the poor, the creatures of the earth, the afflicted, everyone and everything. God’s household included all of creation, and the most vulnerable parts of creation especially revealed, to Francis, the vulnerable and beautiful face of Christ. Francis truly had nothing, but in emptying himself, he realized that he shared a home with the moon, sun, stars, water, fire, flowers, children, elders, birds, and even “sister bodily death.” Francis believed that this home rested in the hollow of God’s hand. And to all who shared this home, Francis called brother and sister – not stranger, but family – and he always compromised his own comforts to protect and provide for his family members. In Francis’ opinion, first among the responsibilities of all family members (including himself) was to praise the Source and Sustainer. His biographer Thomas of Celano wrote,
When Francis would come on a vast field of flowers, he would preach to them and exhort them to praise God as if they could understand his words. He would likewise exhort cornfields, vineyards, stones, fields, springs of water, green plants in gardens, earth, fire, and water to a praise and love for the Creator. In short, he called all creatures by the name of brother and sister and, in a manner that few can understand, he saw the simple things of creation with the eye of one whose heart had already attained to the blessed liberty of the children of God [in the words of Romans 8].
We live in a time when, I believe, in which it is so crucial to remember that we believe in a God who nurtures all that lives, moves, and has being – not just a few select individuals, clans, nations, or species. Thank you again for welcoming me into your community tonight and I leave you with a few stanzas of Francis’ version of Psalm 148. May we join our hearts in this hymn of all creation:
Praised be You my Lord with all Your creatures,
Especially Sir Brother Sun, who is the day through whom You give us light. And he is beautiful and radiant with great splendor. Of You Most High, he bears the likeness.
Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars. In the heavens You have made them bright, precious and fair.
Praised be You my Lord through our Sister, Mother Earth! Who sustains and governs us, producing varied fruits with colored flowers and herbs!
Praise and bless my Lord, and give thanks to the Lord, and serve the Lord with great humility. Amen.