A Liturgy of Creation: Creation and Christian Formation, Part 3

Creation is liturgical because Scripture indicates as much. Creation is aimed at a certain love. It is purposed towards a particular desire. Much more than Smith’s secular cultural liturgies, creation closely shadows gathered Christian liturgy in that, like Christian liturgy, creation worships. We read in Psalm 19, "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork." In the first chapter of Genesis each of the days and their contents are uniquely oriented towards God. He spoke and they were created – not centrally for our use (we are but "creatures of the late sixth day" as some have argued) – but for His glory, His purpose, and His delight. The creation account itself in Genesis 1 is a kind of ordered liturgy in which the disparate pieces of creation are each given form, shape, and purpose to enact a certain element as a part of the whole; a certain element or ritual or practice that they daily enact and ever have since the moment they were created.

This complex and ordered liturgy is heard as a song. The wilderness writer Sigurd Olson writes of "a singing wilderness" and Scriptures speaks similarly when in Psalm 148 all the individual members of creation are summoned before the Lord in praise. It begins, "Praise the LORD! Praise the LORD from the heavens; praise him in the heights! Praise him, all his angels; praise him, all his hosts! Praise him, sun and moon, praise him, all you shining stars…" All of creation is joined together in this song of praise.

Scripture interprets the language of that song for us for we do not speak the language of Silver Maples, Cherokee Purple Tomatoes, or Red Wattle hogs. We see in the pages of Scripture and then through our own eyes that creation is not simply singing a song to a generic and distant Supreme Being or Divine Spirit or some other such mysterious and otherworldly god. Further, creation is also not simply singing songs of praise to its Creator. For in Genesis 3 the song changes. Scripture tells us that creation’s song contains lyrics of longing for a future day of redemption. For creation is broken and is not as it one day will be. We hear a liturgy of lament through the Apostle Paul when he writes of a "groaning creation" in Romans 8. In Psalm 96 the Psalmist records a creation that sings for a God who comes to bring justice as judge, "Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; let the sea roar, and all that fills it; let the field exult, and everything in it! Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy before the LORD, for he comes, for he comes to judge the earth." Isaiah writes of creation’s response to the future day of consummated justice and redemption when he writes, "For you shall go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands." Of that future day John writes in The Revelation, "And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them saying, ’To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!’" The aim, the desire, the longing heard in creation’s liturgy – interpreted through the pages of Scripture – is for the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ. Jesus is the love towards which creation is aimed.

When we intentionally enter into practices engaged in and with this liturgy of creation we too are aimed, primed, and purposed towards this greater love. Through these practices we are formed to be a certain kind of people who desire that which this liturgy is intended, who hunger for the same nourishment, whose affections are tuned to the same embrace. Through the practices of this liturgy we become a people who long for Jesus.

This liturgy of creation has been sung since the beginning but is today in need of formal recognition and articulation because our lives have become so distant from its song. I am not advocating a "back to the land" movement here (although my own rural Iowa desperately needs more people to "work and keep it," but that is another topic). Cities can be beautiful things of human creativity and do, I think, contain elements themselves of what Eric Jacobsen has called "Common Grace Liturgies." However, the separation that city life, when unbalanced, can engender between our lives and creation coupled with an insidious utilitarianism means that we rarely hear the song and when we do we think the song is about us.

Our vanity not withstanding, creation was not made to serve us but is strategically oriented in all its diversity and fecundity to glorify God (Colossians 1:16b). If we are to be a people who sing to the Lamb wholeheartedly and with great love and affection then we need entrance into creation’s song.

Part 4 to come…