Whale Song: When Creation Praises God
Friday Nudge: Look for the Holy Spirit in the Earth Community
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Friday Nudge
We celebrated the resurrection of Jesus Christ on Sunday. Christ is risen! Alleluia!
There are many meanings to the resurrection story, different theological interpretations of what Jesus’ death on the cross and his rising to life three days later mean for us as Christians. What is broadly agreed upon is that it means that God is alive now! The Holy Spirit, that part of the Trinitarian God that empowers and enlivens us, was sent by Jesus to move through and among us. I know that I experience the presence of the Holy Spirit every day. And I am pretty sure that, for every time I do notice Her1 in my life, there are many more times that I don’t.
Christ is alive! As Christians, we witness that truth by paying attention to and believing in the power of the Holy Spirit. One of the places where I look for and notice the Holy Spirit is her presence in and among the natural world, the Earth community in which we are interconnected and interdependent. The idea of panentheism is an orthodox Christian understanding that God is present within, but not limited to, the natural world. (Pantheism, which is not Christian, recognizes the Divine as present exclusively in nature).
In her book The Body of God: An Ecological Theology, Sallie McFague explains it this way:
Everything that is is in God and God is in all things and yet God is not identical with the universe, for the universe is dependent on God in a way that God is not dependent on the universe.2
What this means, then, is that Easter is not only for us human beings; the resurrection of Jesus Christ is for the whole world! For all of God’s creation! For the entirety of the Earth community.
We need this truth more than ever, now. The Earth is suffering from every aspect of the climate and ecological emergency. If ever there was a part of the world that needed the truth and reassurance that death doesn’t have the final say, that life wins out over death, that hope wins out over hopelessness, and that good will triumph over evil, it is the Earth itself.
Just as in human suffering we still need to look for the truth of the resurrection, so it is in the Earth community. And so my Friday Nudge for you today is this: Look for the Holy Spirit active in the Earth community, empowering and enlivening the Earth for healing and hope. Look, witness, and testify that the God of Life, the resurrected Christ, is within the whole of God’s good creation. Look for signs of the resurrection!
Where do you see signs of the resurrection within the Earth community?
Whale Song: When Creation Praises God
A Sermon on Psalm 98, preached in the Season of Creation, September 2022.
Scripture Reading:
1 O sing to the Lord a new song,
for he has done marvellous things.
His right hand and his holy arm
have gained him victory.
2 The Lord has made known his victory;
he has revealed his vindication in the sight of the nations.
3 He has remembered his steadfast love and faithfulness
to the house of Israel.
All the ends of the earth have seen
the victory of our God.4 Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth;
break forth into joyous song and sing praises.
5 Sing praises to the Lord with the lyre,
with the lyre and the sound of melody.
6 With trumpets and the sound of the horn
make a joyful noise before the King, the Lord.7 Let the sea roar, and all that fills it;
the world and those who live in it.
8 Let the floods clap their hands;
let the hills sing together for joy
9 at the presence of the Lord, for he is coming
to judge the earth.
He will judge the world with righteousness,
and the peoples with equity. (Psalm 98 NRSV)
Let us pray:
God of Life, May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our minds and hearts lead us to deeper understanding of you and the love you call us to live. AMEN.
On this day in the Season of Creation, we are being asked to listen to the songs of nature, the various ways in which the non-human world sings praise to God through their ways of being in the world.
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