Season of Creation 2 - The Land

 

Last week we explored how the Season of Creation is an annual opportunity to stop and take stock of our relationship with God’s creation and climate change. We read again the vision of the Kingdom of Heaven, God’s reign of justice and peace for all, found in the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount.  This year we are gathering in our homes because of the far-reaching effects of the global COVID-19 pandemic which is a symptom of this broken relationship. In too many places the ones paying the heaviest price are the poorest and most vulnerable. This last year has revealed the need for just and sustainable systems built on God’s compassion, generosity, and justice. We are invited to yearn for the moral imagination that accompanies both the beatitudes and the Year of Jubilee.

Last week we were invited to celebrate the Forests of the earth, and this week the theme is Land. In an article exploring the sacredness and goodness of creation as affirmed in scripture, Barbara Rossing talks about the wonder of astronauts as they saw Earth for the first time from space, and their grief on recent visits as they saw the vastly reduced ice caps, the scars on the land from the felling of forests for short term economic gain, and the brown water fanning out to sea filled with irreplaceable soil. She concludes,

“God’s love for creation in Genesis 1 invites us to explore complex ethical questions, to listen to one another, and to take bold, prophetic action to care for the whole of creation as our neighbor. Creation is endangered by human sin, as astronauts are seeing. “How good!” expresses God’s love for each element of creation. That love that sees the earth in all its brokenness and beauty is the same love the compels us to act today.” [1]

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[1] And God Saw That it was Good: Reflections on Theology of Creation by Barbara R. Rossing