Peace within Creation
Season of Creation - Week 1
Scripture: Isaiah 32: 14-18
Rise up, you who are at ease, hear my voice;
For the palace will be forsaken,
the populous city deserted;
the hill and the watchtower
will become dens forever,
havens for wild animals,
a pasture for flocks;
until a spirit from on high is poured out on us,
and the wilderness becomes a fruitful field,
and the fruitful field is deemed a forest.
Then justice will dwell in the wilderness
and righteousness abide in the fruitful field.
The effect of righteousness will be peace,
and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever.
My people will abide in a peaceful habitation,
in secure dwellings, and in quiet resting places.
REFLECTION
To listen to the reflection via Youtube, click here
The Season of Creation is a six week period in the church, stretching from the beginning of September through to Thanksgiving, during which we seek with intention to renew our relationship with God as Creator and with all creation.
Celebration
One of the ways we do this is through celebration.
And there is of course much to celebrate about the beauty and diversity and the complex web of mutual relationships in creation which sustains all life on the planet, including our lives.
For progressive christians, we celebrate too that the entire natural world is also revelatory - that it shows, or reveals the divine image of the Creator.
And so we started the service in celebration: giving thanks for the beauty of creation; singing a song of praise to the maker. We have symbols in the sanctuary to help us celebrate the natural world, of which we are a part.
Conversion
But we know, don’t we, that celebrating nature isn’t enough. Which brings us to the next intention for Creation season: conversion.
The theme passage for this year’s SoC is Isaiah 32:14-18, which we heard read today by Mary Al.
And oh my, if we were in celebration mode, Isaiah’s words certainly bring us down to earth:
“For the palace will be forsaken, the populous city deserted”
as “the hill and the watchtower” become taken over as animal dens.
The “near future” picture painted by Isaiah is a tough one:
This description of devastated cities and wastelands poetically yet profoundly stresses the negative impact that human destructive behaviours have on the environment.
The people are displaced; cities are barren wastelands or are overtaken by wild animals.
In fact, listen to these verses that come just before the passage we heard:
For fools speak folly,
and their minds plot iniquity:
to practice ungodliness,
to leave the craving of the hungry unsatisfied,
to deprive the thirsty of drink.
and to ruin the poor with lying words,
even when the plea of the needy is right.
Tremble, you who are at ease;
shudder, you complacent ones;
for the vintage will fail;
the fruit harvest will not come…
We hear in those words that justice relations between the people and the well-being of creation are connected.
For Isaiah, Creation becomes desolate because of the broken relationship between God and humankind (ungodliness) and between humans (leaving the hungry unsatisfied and depriving the thirsty of drink.)
+ + +
Peace with(in) Creation
The 2025 theme for the Season of Creation is “Peace with Creation.” It’s a nice, gentle sounding phrase - but the conviction behind it is fierce:
Creation will only find peace when justice is restored.
This conviction takes us to the heart of things: to the intersectionality of climate & environmental justice and other forms of justice (economic, food security, the right to peaceful existence, and to one’s cultural and religious identity)
For example, climate change - which is largely caused by emissions by huge corporations owned and making profits for the most wealthy, increases droughts, floods and heatwaves which disproportionately affect the poorest and most vulnerable populations and regions of the world which can’t afford to rebuild after infrastructure is destroyed, or pay high prices for food when the food supply is affected. Farmers are literally losing their livelihoods.
Huge corporations, as well as some governments, in their pursuit of wealth and control of resources, exploit workers and displace communities (we heard some examples last week of this happening in the Philippines) and destroy forests which are desperately needed to capture carbonated clean the air.
Of course, we also know all too well the tragedy of countries invading each other and warring with other countries, and people fighting each other all over the world has tragic consequences for both human communities and the environment, producing massive social and economic injustices, as well as harming ecosystems and the fertility of the land, and reducing species diversity of plants and animals.
These are just a few brief examples of the intersecting injustices that need to be acknowledged and addressed if the world - if creation is to know peace and we are to know “peace with creation”.
I might even suggest that the goal/vision shouldn't be “peace with creation” but “peace within creation”.
As if we were not part of the very thing we as a species are causing harm to. When we harm each other, we harm the whole creation. When we harm “creation”, we harm ourselves.
When we speak of creation, we need to be able to understand that as the entire world - the entire planet.
Which includes us. Except that the level of consciousness humanity has obtained has given us the power to act outside of the “natural flow of things”, to envision ourselves outside of - and therefore act as if we are outside of - the natural paradigm of interconnection and interdependence.
And given this messed up relationship between humanity and the rest of creation, humanity now needs to heed to call to do the work of re-attuning to and (re-aligning) with the natural flow of things. To honour the interconnection and interdependence we have with all created beings.
This is the CONVERSION part of the equation.
Commitment
Back to Isaiah:
For the palace will be forsaken, / the populous city deserted;
the hill and the watchtower / will become dens forever,
havens for wild animals, / a pasture for flocks;
Notably, in Isaiah’s vision, animals move in and claim parts of what was once an exclusively human habitat, as if human settlement had deprived them of sufficient space. While the joy of a pasture for animals [Isaiah 32:14] is undoubtedly a good thing in itself, it comes at the cost of human displacement.
Though God’s plan for Creation is rooted in justice and peace, human sin disrupts this, leaving Creation and the places of the people in ruin.
And then comes Isaiah’s vision of peace and justice, as God’s spirit is poured out. When this happens, says Isaiah:
Then justice will dwell in the wilderness
and righteousness abide in the fruitful field.
The effect of righteousness will be peace,
and quiet trust forever.
My people will abide in a peaceful habitation,
in secure dwellings, and in quiet resting places.
It’s a beautiful vision which is rooted in the ancient concept of shalom - which extends beyond just the absence of conflict to the full restoration of broken relationships. This restoration encompasses our relationship with God, ourselves, the human family, and the rest of Creation.
CALL TO ACTION
But here’s the catch: in a progressive concept of God’s activity, God doesn’t just send God’s spirit down into the world to do stuff. God’s spirit is sent to indwell - to help us incarnate snd embody God’s love and be agents of its transformative power.
So - this pouring out of the spirit Isaiah is talking about - it needs to happen in and through us!
This is the commitment part of the equation. Committing to act for justice and for shalom: committing to working to restore equitable and right relationships.
This is a tough one. Not just because we can get overwhelmed by the scale of the issues and challenges, but because to act we need to have HOPE.
So… a quick word about hope: Biblically, hope is active—it involves prayer and action and solidarity. And as far as those take root in us, so God’s peace emerges.
Or, in the words of writer and activist Rebecca Solnit:
"Hope is the confidence that it is worth trying
because the future is being made in the present.
CALL TO ADVOCACY
So back to the present - this year, the Season of Creation movement is asking people to pray and to be active - in particular, to prophetically call on our leaders to take action on the global debt crisis, where the costs of climate breakdown and government debt in low-income countries are colliding to trap millions of people in poverty and crisis worldwide.
The call to action is three-fold:
1. Debt relief for low income countries, without economic conditions.
2. A fairer global debt system in which the build-up of unsustainable.
debt (especially in the global South) is prevented in the first place.
3. Adequate financing to address the climate crisis and mitigate global warming.
We’ll be providing more info on this advocacy in our upcoming E-News.
SIgns of Peace
I want to finish by talking briefly about the symbol for this year’s Season of Creation, which is a dove carrying an olive branch bringing life to the Garden of Peace.
In the Biblical story of the flood, the dove plays the role of the blessed messenger: The dove sent out by Noah returns to the ark with a fresh olive branch in its beak, signalling that the flood is receding.
As the flood story begins with a situation where “the earth is filled with violence” (Genesis 6:13), the return of the dove with the olive branch came to be known as a sign of a new peace for all creation.
Friends, we are now called to be signs of God’s new and promised peace.
Where two or three are gathered; where justice is pursued by protest and political advocacy, where literal gardens are tended in war zones and in solidarity (Shadia will be speaking about this next week); when we celebrate beauty and turn from our human-centric and individualistic ways and commit to collaborating together - then we become signs of God’s new and promised peace.
May it be so. Amen.