Sunday, October 6, 2024 – A New Creation is Everything!
Maylanne Maybee
How do you intend to observe this Sunday, and what readings will you choose to preach from? According to the Revised Common Lectionary of The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada, October 6, 2024 is the 20th Sunday after Pentecost. However, this year, many parishes that have been observing the Season of Creation may opt to transfer the celebration of St. Francis Day from Friday, October 4, to Sunday, October 6, as a way of marking the end of the Creation Season. (Another option, not addressed here, would be to hold a service for the Blessing of Animals found in The Book of Occasional Services of The Episcopal Church and available on line.)
Given these two possibilities, the commentaries and suggested sermons offered here are a compromise, an attempt to find emerging themes from both sets of readings as listed above: the normal lectionary for Year B, and the readings for the Memorial of St. Francis of Assisi as set out in For All the Saints: Prayers and Readings for Saints Days according to the Calendar of the Book of Alternative Services .
Commentary for the 20th Sunday after Pentecost, Year B
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For the four Sundays in October, the Year B Lectionary features sections from the Book of Job, found in the category of the Hebrew Bible known as the Writings. It is a book written in beautiful and sophisticated Hebrew, of the same order as Ecclesiastes, the Psalms, Proverbs, and the Song of Solomon. Yet it does not fit conform easily to a single genre. Many consider it at least partly historic, based on a real person of exceptional integrity. Is it a legal disputation between Yahweh and ha-satan, the heavenly Prosecutor? A lament against undeserved and incomprehensible suffering and grief? Or is it a parable, fable, a morality play with a message?
Regardless, the verses for this Sunday serve as a prologue, written in prose as an introduction to the greater drama that unfolds in the poetic pages of the rest of the book. In the first verse we meet the protagonist (“There was once a man… whose name was Job, blameless and upright, who feared God and turned away from evil.”). In the missing verses (1:2-22), he loses his camels, his sheep, most of his property, his servants, even his children. Yet in the face of such loss, he “did not sin or charge God with any wrong-doing.”
In Scene Two (2:1), the curtain opens onto the courtroom of heaven, where the Lord and the heavenly beings gather, and where ha-satan, the Prosecutor, wagers that Job, for all his upright goodness and integrity, will curse God to his face once he encounters relentless and undeserved pain and suffering. The bet is on: “Very well,” says the Lord to his opponent. “He is in your power. Do what you will. Only spare his life.” Note that the patient and long-suffering Job we meet in the prosaic chapters one and two, is in stark contrast with the anguished and indignant Job we encounter in the poetic verses that follow.
Theologian Elizabeth Johnson regards the Book of Job as a vision that offers a strong antidote to the human arrogance that views the Genesis notion of humankind’s dominion over nature as domination. In fact, it provides a completely different framework that deserves attention in our time of ecological distress, in which Job’s eyes are opened to see the action of Yahweh as something completely independent from him over which he has no mastery, but can only respond with awe and humility.
Today’s lectionary selection from Job is awkward and truncated. It sets up but does not enter into the heart of the dramatic tension relating to the great mystery of suffering, and the even greater mystery of the relationship between human beings and the Creator of the universe.
A preacher may want to speak to the overall framework of the Book of Job, in preparation for doing a sermon series on this Book over the Sundays that follow. If this is the case, it might be suitable as the first reading from Hebrew Scriptures, for the Feast of Saint Francis.
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This psalm can be read either as a temple rite for priests and pilgrims, or, like the Book of Job, as a personal crisis by one who has been falsely accused or who has encountered relentless and undeserved suffering. It opens with the psalmist’s plea to Yahweh: “Vindicate me, for I have walked in my integrity and have trusted You without wavering.” It describes the behaviour of a person of integrity: one who is careful to sit and stand and keep company with people who are good and upright, taking care not to be corrupted by the “hypocrites”, the “evildoers” and “the wicked” from the surrounding culture. A person of integrity keeps clean hands, circles the altar, sings songs of thanksgiving, tells of God’s wondrous deeds, stays where the Lord dwells and his glory abides.
We can read this psalm as a reminder that as a priestly people, our worship is meant to honour and reverence the living God in the living temple of God’s creation, saying with the psalmist: “O Lord, I love the house in which you dwell, and the place where your glory abides.”
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Today the lectionary also offers another introduction, this one to the Book of Hebrews. As a credal statement, this passage can form the basis for a sermon about the unique status of the risen Christ. Jesus of Nazareth, “a prophet mighty in word and deed” (Luke 24:19) walking the roads of Galilee and Judea, is now the risen Son by whom God has spoken, the imprint and stamp of God’s essential being, the agent of creation through whom God created the worlds, the sustainer of all things, the radiation of God’s glory, the high priest who brings forgiveness and purifies the sins of humankind. And just as God’s Son is the “exact imprint of God’s very being”, so the natural world itself bears the imprint of God, leading us to recognize, love, and praise God as their Creator and ours.
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More than one commentator has proposed that this difficult passage on divorce (Mark 10: 2-12) should not be read in church unless it is going to be the subject of the sermon. I agree, and do not expect anyone preparing to preach from an eco-theology perspective to refer to this passage. But I still think some attention should be given here to its potential meaning.
When some religious leaders ask Jesus whether it is lawful for a man to divorce his wife, Jesus answers their question with a question: “What did Moses say?” They reply that Moses in fact permitted a man to divorce his wife. But rather than end the dialogue here, Jesus shifts the discourse, saying “It is because of your hardness of heart,” suggesting that by limiting themselves to the legalities and exceptions of marriage and divorce, they are refusing to see the bigger picture. This encounter with religious leaders resembles a former teaching about the Sabbath and its fundamental purpose -- what does it protect, and what does it allow?
Jesus reminds his listeners that in the beginning, God created human beings to be male and female, causing them to leave their parents and joining them together into one flesh. Later, he explains to his disciples that the onus is on both parties to not commit adultery (i.e. leave their spouse to marry another): if a man divorces his wife and marries another, he commits adultery. If a woman divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery. The Jesus in Mark’s gospel positions man and woman side by side as equal agents, created alike in God’s image and likeness.
By recalling the text from Genesis, was he talking about the fundamental kinship human beings have with one another and all living things? Was he suggesting that the very act of creation connects us irrevocably to each other and to other creatures in a kinship that cannot be undone? Relationships among humans, creatures, and creation, are sacred, something to be taken very seriously. And no human being, man, woman, or parent, has the right to turn aside or dispose lightly of any other human being or creature to whom we are kin.
Denis Edwards, in his introduction to Ilia Delio’s book on Care for Creation, put it like this: “…We (all of God’s creation) are fellow creatures, each uniquely loved and valued by God. This means… that we cannot treat any of our fellow creatures as if they exist without value. In spite of all the distinctions between us, we are family. In my view,” he writes, “both kinship and the call ‘to till and keep’ creation (Genesis 2:15) are fundamental to locating the human vocation within the wider creation before God.”
Jesus’ welcoming of children (2:14-16) extends this ethic of connection to include the most marginalized and vulnerable among us, then as now. Children are not to be rejected because they are children. They share in the same creatureliness as everyone else, but do not share the same social protections and agency as adults. Taking children into his arms and laying hands on them is not only a gesture of blessing, but also one of healing, an example and summons to all in his audience – religious leaders, disciples, parents – to receive and be received into the Kingdom of God to which they all belong, and to begin the work of healing any and all the bonds of connection that have been broken.
Commentary for the Feast of Saint Francis
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The Epistle to the Galatians is one of seven epistles known to have been written by Paul of Tarsus himself. The verses we read here were written in his own hand. His purpose in writing is very specific: to address the grave disturbances among the Christians of Galatia caused by factions of “Judaizers” who insisted on circumcision once a (male) person is baptized, and who sought to strengthen their cause by attacking Paul’s credentials.
Paul’s responding argument is to emphasize the centrality of the cross as the true mark of being in Christ, and as the means by which he had separated himself from the values and norms of empire. He had died to that world, following instead God’s call to deliver the message of a crucified and risen Lord to the Gentiles.
And so, Paul’s handwritten conclusion does not include the usual affectionate salutation found in other correspondence. Instead, he insists passionately that the only bodily marks that counted for him were ones that replicated Christ’s own crucifixion, received in the service of the gospel. Indeed, in his ministry to the Gentiles he would travel far and wide; he would pitch and vomit on boats; he would be shipwrecked three times; time after time, he would lie awake hungry and cold, floating on wreckage or hiding by the road as bandits passed. He endured beatings, abuse, and imprisonment.
Yet throughout, Paul knew he was in Christ, that belonging to Christ meant sharing not only in his suffering and death, but also in bringing about a new creation, “which is everything.”
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The psalm for St. Francis’ Day serves as a Biblical precursor to his Canticle of the Creatures, with the difference that in the canticle Francis addresses God directly, mediated by the mute voices of his brothers and sisters – sun and moon, wind and water, fire and earth, even bodily death which for him was so near.
In an earlier Wild Lectionary commentary, Peter Elliott laid out three categories of Psalms proposed by Hebrew scholar Walter Brueggemann: psalms were written either from a place of orientation, or a place of disorientation, or a place of re-orientation, corresponding to different levels and stages of human experiences.
Psalm 148 has all the appearance of being a Psalm of orientation: everything makes sense, all creation is in harmonious co-existence, the heavens and earth and their elements are aligned with one another and with their creator.
The psalm also names the powerful and dangerous side of nature: the sea-monsters, tempestuous winds, and wild beasts. With or without human aid, nature can confront us in ways that seem ruthless and cruel. Great suffering can come about from earthquakes, tsunamis and wildfires. Indeed, God is unevenly revealed in God’s creatures, though God is also always present wherever there is suffering whether by natural or human hands.
The final verse, “The Lord has raised up strength for his people and praise for all loyal servants” suggests a re-orientation, a time of reversal, when God has lifted us up and where we find ourselves “full of gratitude and awareness”, looking towards a new creation with a new song.
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These verses come at the end of a chapter that has highlighted John the Baptist’s passionate style of ministry – announcing God’s judgment, proclaiming repentance, provoking conflict and sharpening divisions, sometimes with waves of violence and force. “Among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist,” Jesus says, “yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.”
Jesus does not repudiate John’s mission, but rather gives thanks that the secrets of God’s presence and power have been hidden from the “wise and intelligent” and revealed instead to to infants, literally to those on the margins, those without voice—the poor in spirit, the merciful, the sick, the lame, the lepers, the possessed, tax collectors and sinners. Among these we might also include the more-than-human world of dumb creatures.
To these vulnerable ones and those who walk with them, Jesus offers a Jubilee invitation: “If you are weary from bearing a heavy load, come to me and I will give you rest.” Debra Rienstra, in her book Refugia Faith, gives a poignant description of how the earth teaches us that extreme disturbances can be survived after a time of rest. She points to research that has shown that following the eruption of Mount Saint Helena in 1980, contrary to all expectations, the mountainsides bounced back in less than forty years with rich pockets of flora and fauna, little pockets of safety in the small spaces beneath rocks and trees called refugia. Rienstra uses this phenomenon as a metaphor for the kind of faith that arises in small, humble, hidden spaces. “The refugia model,” she writes, “calls us us to look for the seed of life where we are, concentrate on protecting and nurturing a few good things, let what is good and beaufiul grown and connect and spread.”
Surely this is the rest that Jesus is talking about and inviting us into and that Francis so radically accepted: a discipleship that is humble and easy on the soul, a yoke that constrains, yes, but with great gentleness and lightness of heart.
Teaching and Preaching Ideas
Assisi – Finding Our Place in God’s Creation
A preacher might want to create a word picture from the life of Saint Francis of Assisi that will inspire and enliven the imagination of their listeners, inviting them to become more curious about the specifics of their watershed, encouraging a spirit of attentiveness and gratitude, and awakening a desire to love and care for the part of the world they were given by the Creator.
“I love the house in which you dwell, the place where your glory abides.” (Psalm 26:8)
“My foot stands on level ground; in the great congregation I will bless the Lord.” (Psalm 26:12)
Many saints are identified by the place they came from. The spirituality of Francis was deeply influenced by the hills of Assisi and the valleys of Umbria. The world where he grew up--his family and social background, his schooling and work, what he saw, where he spent time, the watershed that nurtured him and what it felt like--all had a profound effect on his relationship with God and creation.
Anyone who has visited Assisi would readily describe it as a “thin place” – a place where God’s presence is visible and palpable. The earthy colours, the hills, the breathtaking vistas, the quality of light and air, the songbird and blossoms in spring, the nearness of caves and grottos, the fields with olive trees and vineyards, the rainbows seen in their full arc, arising from the interplay of sun and rain.
The stories of his life show over and over again his love for and intimate relationship with Assisi and his created surroundings–preaching to the birds, taming the wolf of Gubbio, fasting in the snow, retreating into caves. It is said that Francis must have spent at least a third of his lifetime outdoors. Even at his death, he asked to be stripped of his habit and placed directly on the earth so that he might die with nothing he could call his own, united at once with God and the earth.
We are told that his schooling did not train Francis as an intellectual. He did not absorb a hierarchical view of God and the world, the idea of spirit over matter found in the writings of Augustine and others. In many ways this allowed for a kind of Franciscan renaissance that became an invitation to see the material world and its individual creatures through the eyes of children, saints, and mystics.
G.K. Chesterton pointed out paradoxically that “Saint Francis was not a lover of nature!” Meaning that he was incapable of loving in the abstract. “St. Francis was a man who did not want to see the wood for the trees. He wanted to see each tree as a separate and almost a sacred thing, being a child of God and therefore a brother or sister of man.”
The verses from Psalm 26 and selected stories from the life of Francis are a perfect opening for reflecting with our community on what house we dwell in, what grounds and watersheds we stand on, and what congregations, human and more-than-human, we are part of.
The Mystery of Suffering – Receiving the Good and the Bad
“I carry the marks of Jesus branded on my body.”
A preacher may want to tread carefully on the subject of suffering, but may feel called to address it if recent events, local or global, have raised the question. Accounts of Job, Paul, and Francis may present an opportunity to reflect on the disproportionate suffering caused by the climate crisis – to vulnerable populations and to the earth itself.
Suffering takes many forms and afflicts us for many different reasons. The suffering of Job was relentless, undeserved, and devastating. It is portrayed as a testing ground for the strength of his integrity and moral mettle, and also as a drama about the chasm between Yahweh, who laid the foundations of the earth, and the community of creation of which Job is a tiny part.
For Paul of Tarsus, the “marks of Jesus branded on my body” may have refered to the physical abuse he endured from the beatings, imprisonment and persecutions inflicted on him as the “apostle to the Gentiles.” Paul’s wounds and suffering had meaning because of his unshakeable conviction of being called to be evangelize the Gentiles, and because of the affinity he felt between his own wounds and those of the crucified Christ.
Francis of Assisi suffered in body and mind, plagued by illness, blindness, and bodily deprivations as well as by the heartache and stress of managing conflicts among his disciples and followers. Like Paul of Tarsus, Francis embraced his suffering as a mystical identification with the suffering of Christ, made tangible in his experience of the stigmata.
For victims of violence, war, environmental devastation, sexual and physical exploitation, or grinding poverty, suffering is not a spiritual or mystical experience, but a daily reality that marks their bodies.
How then, are we to think about the causes of suffering? What are we to think of the broken systems in our country and world? What is our own responsibility for personal and systemic suffering? What choices do we make that benefit or harm ourselves and our world?
The Church of Scotland website suggests these questions to help prepare for a sermon on this topic:
Who is suffering in your community, and how might the stories of Job or Paul or Francis of Assisi sound to their ears?
What hopes in situations of distress and poverty, or challenges in situations of affluence and privilege, arise from the text?
What adversities create stumbling blocks for personal or communal action?
A Feast of Creation?
“Praise the Lord from the earth…”
If you have been celebrating the Season of Creation, you might want to provide an overview of its origins and meaning, and consider an ecumenical Feast of Creation as a way of deepening the church’s vision of creation, and awakening a sense of hope and possibility in the face of the climate crisis the world is experiencing.
The idea of a Season of Creation had its origins in 1989 when Ecumenical Patriarch Dmitrios proclaimed September 1 as the Orthodox Day of Prayer for Creation. In fact, the Orthodox church year begins on that day with a commemoration of how God created the world. As the idea took root, the World Council of Churches issued an invitation in 2008 to the ecumenical community to observe a “Time of Creation”, running from September 1 to October 4, the feast of Francis of Assisi, as a season for prayer, education, and action focusing on the care of creation.
In 2015, Pope Francis published his Encyclical, Laudato Sí: On Care for our Common Home. What was remarkable was how it departed from the commonly held Christian view of the natural world as created for human use, emphasizing instead that other creatures of the more-than-human world, have their own intrinsic value before God. (This was the view upheld in the Book of Job and cherished by Francis of Assisi.)
Building on the momentum of that document, the Laudato Sí movement hosted a conference this March in Assisi, Italy along with the World Council of Churches, the Anglican Communion, the Lutheran World Federation, and other partners, bringing together about one hundred theologians, liturgists, and activists to share their insights and perspectives on the idea establishing a Feast of Creation in our churches’ liturgical calendars. (For background reading, see The Feast of Creation: An Ecumenical Dream to Mark the 1700 Years of Nicaea; and A Liturgical Opportunity: An Ecumenical Kairos—An Emerging Consensus to Enhance the “Feast of Creation” and Honour the Creator.)
As one who had the privilege of attending this event, here are some key takeaways:
To make the distinction, more apparent in Italian than in English, between the act of creation (la Creazione) and the manifestation or outcome of creation (Il Creato). There is a tendency to equate the idea of “creation” with nature, and usually nature at its most breathtaking and beautiful, rather than to see it as God’s continuing and eternal action of creating, of making all things new.
To consider the movement from prayer to belief to action (lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi = as we pray, so we believe, so we live) as a summons to integrate our spirituality and worship into an understanding and perception of the world so that it deeply informs our actions.
To ponder the spiritual and credal foundations of Creation as a basis for engagement in the world.
Francis of Assisi’s Canticle of the Creatures offers a spiritual foundation for seeing God in every creature. Consider printing a translation of the full text in the Sunday bulletin and recalling in the sermon that Francis wrote the canticle within two years of his death, when he was blind, ill, and exhausted. He was not just admiring the creatures of the earth, he was summoning their help in offering continous praise to the Creator.
The Nicene creed uses language to help us think about Creation (la Creazione) in light of the the full mystery of the Triune God: the Father or Source of Life, who is the maker of heaven and earth; the Son or Word, Jesus Christ, through whom all things are made; and the Spirit, the giver of life. This credal understanding of the act of creation invites to regard the created world, (Il Creato) as a book alongside the book of Scripture, a revelation that calls every creature to participate in God’s final transformation of all things.
As the Season of Creation draws to a close, people might be reminded that every Sunday is a celebration of the renewal of creation in Christ, whose resurrection and ascension recalls the “first day” when a wind from God swept over the face of the waters, and God made light, and saw that it was good.
Sources and Resources
Print Resources
Boff, Leonardo: Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor. Orbis Books, Maryknoll, NY, 2002.
Brueggemann, Walter. Spirituality of the Psalms. Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 2002.
Delio, Ilia, Keith Douglas Warner, Pamela Wood: Care for Creation: A Franciscan Spirituality of the Earth. 1999.
Edwards, Denis: Deep Incarnation: God’s Redemptive Suffering with Creatures. Orbis Books, Maryknoll, NY, 2019.
Encyclical Letter Laudato Sí of the Holy Father Francis on Care for our Common Home. Libreria Editrici Vaticana, 2015.
Johnson, Elizabeth A.: Ask the Beasts: Darwin and the God of Love. Bloomsbury, UK, 2014.
Meyers, Ched, Marie Dennis, Joseph Nangle, OFM, Cynthia Moe-Lobeda, Stuart Taylor: “Say to this Mountain”: Mark’s Story of Discipleship. Orbis Books, Maryknoll, NY, 2000.
Moorman, John: A History of the Franciscan Order from its Origins to the Year 1517. 1968.
Rienstra, Debra: Refugia Faith: Seeking Hidden Shelters, Ordinary Wonders, and the Healing of the Earth. Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 2022.
Online Resources
The Feast of Creation: An Ecumenical Dream to Mark the 1700 Years of Nicaea. https://docs.google.com/document/d/14LSl7vxhzkaEFUQe2dMefmpgwCDizCZyVR7NAM8ikFc/edit?usp=sharing
A Liturgical Opportunity: An Ecumenical Kairos—An Emerging Consensus to Enhance the “Feast of Creation” and Honour the Creator. https://drive.google.com/file/d/10rBHfy0GlJwvcyqxoS8kLmFhpqzyoQyW/view?usp=sharing
Working Preacher RCL commentaries for Year B. https://www.workingpreacher.org/
Johnson-Blythe, Liz: Commentary for 20th after Pentecost. https://www.churchofscotland.org.uk/worship/weekly-worship/monthly/2024-october/sunday-6-october-2024-twentieth-sunday-after-pentecost-year-b
Saint Francis of Assisi and God’s Share of Creation – Br. Curtis Almquist. https://www.ssje.org/2022/10/02/saint-francis-of-assisi-and-gods-share-of-creation-br-curtis-almquist/
The Feast of Saint Francis of Assisi – Br. Curtis Almquist
https://www.ssje.org/2015/10/04/the-feast-of-saint-francis-of-assisi-br-curtis-almquist/
Contributor Biography
Maylanne Maybee, deacon, is retired from ministry as a community developer, social justice advocate, and theological educator. For fourteen years she worked as mission and justice coordinator for the Anglican Church of Canada, and for a further ten years served as principal of the Centre for Christian Studies in Winnipeg, and interim principal of the United Theological College in Montreal. Maylanne lives in Montreal, Quebec where she continues to be active in projects related to the diaconate, liturgy, creation care, and community ministry.
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A View of Assisi at the beginning of the Ecumenical Seminar, March 2024
In the foreground there are green fields forming a hill. On the hill is a city, the buildings are white against a grey blue sky. A rainbow arches over the city and the fields.