All You Sea Monsters: Liturgy for All Creation
abby mohaupt
abby mohaupt is the director of the Garrett Collective at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois.
What is liturgy? So often the answer is “the work of the people in worship,” and I’ve argued here already that we have
to see this as the work of all creation, not just people.
Others, experts in worship and liturgy, explore how liturgy (the order of worship) is the work of the people. Some of these experts have sought to make sure that the people who are at the heart of liturgical work are as diverse as possible.1 As an eco-theologian, I return again and again to the words of Genesis 1:1 (and following) as a starting point for liturgy and a guide for faith—as a way to map whose work it is to create and be part of liturgy. There in the text, we read that “in the beginning, God made the earth and the heavens.”2 God started with the earth. And then, in Genesis 2, God took the topsoil—“the healthiest, hardiest, best, and darkest soil”3—and made a human. Then God breathed God’s own breath into that first human. The human came to life! And then, because that human needed a home and a task, God set the human down in a garden, with other plants and animals made from the same topsoil. Those plants and animals were the first human’s family, because they all came from the topsoil—and then God told the first human to farm and care for the garden.4
I imagine God looked at that fresh-eyed, brand-new human and said, “Make it your home. Make everything your family. Love it with your whole self, because you are made of the same stuff of the plants and animals around you.” And that was the first task of our first ancestor: love the earth and care for creation—creation who is our very family.
In the context of those beginning stories, liturgy enacts praise to God, for the benefit of and alongside all creation. While I’m going to focus here on how we talk about all creation in terms of how to include non-people, that conversation also has to be in connection to making sure that all people, no matter the kind of people, are welcomed into the community of God, into the congregations that love and serve God. Liturgy is the work of all creation, in creation’s beautiful diversity.5 In this article, I mean to tell the story of how a congregation and I brought creation into the liturgy, how liturgical practice can recognize nonhuman participants in worship, and how we might faithfully break down the human/nonhuman dichotomy.6 In doing so, we are stretched to imagine how we might praise God with and in all creation.
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There we were in our little chapel. “That didn’t really work, did it?” The words came out of my mouth as we finished the prayer of confession and set our rocks aside. “Not really,” said a member of the congregation, with more whimsy than critique. This conversation became part of the liturgy of that particular day in worship. My second ordained call was to serve Puente de la Costa Sur, a nonprofit that connects and supports farmworkers and their families on the South Coast of California, in Pescadero, about an hour south of San Francisco. My role in the organization was to connect faith communities nearby to the mission and to support the well-being of staff and participants, to invite faith communities into just action. I also became one of the faith leaders who rotated through the community church that started Puente.
When all the pews were filled, about fifteen people were in that chapel. This group was used to innovation and trying things out. The community was up for anything; each faith leader brought their own idiosyncrasies. And so, the liturgy was the work of an open-hearted, flexible group of people. Whenever I came, then, I felt free to try out something creative. Sometimes I was the musician as well as preacher and celebrant. Sometimes we set up prayer stations as a response to the sermon or text. Sometimes the sermon was a conversation.
The gift of this community meant that I would stretch myself as a worship planner. How many of the five senses could we engage? What would count as readings? And music? How many elements of creation could we evoke? And so, one August I thought: Let’s see if we can bring creation into worship with us.
We based this work on an ongoing reading and enactment of Psalm 148. In the text, all creation is called into a liturgy of praise, a chorus that includes all living and nonliving beings, all that is created in the world. The psalm says:
1 Praise the Lord from heaven!
Praise God on the heights! . . .3 Sun and moon, praise God!
All of you bright stars, praise God!4 You highest heaven, praise God!
Do the same, you waters that are above the sky! . . .7 Praise the Lord from the earth,
you sea monsters and all you ocean depths!8 Do the same, fire and hail, snow and smoke,
stormy wind that does what God says!9 Do the same, you mountains, every single hill,
fruit trees, and every single cedar!10 Do the same, you animals—wild or tame—
you creatures that creep along and you birds that fly!11 Do the same, you kings of the earth and every single person,
you princes and every single ruler on earth!12 Do the same, you young men—young women too!—
you who are old together with you who are young!
(Common English Bible)
As I’ve noted above, I have struggled as a worship planner to think about liturgy as the work of the people. Who gets to decide who we mean by “people”? Who counts? Which people? And, with a biblical example like Psalm 148, how can we possibly say that the worship is just the work of the people?7
The text invites us to stretch into who is part of liturgy. Not just “every single person” but the stars, waters, elements, animals—wild or tame—and even the sea monsters. I like to imagine that the writer of Psalm 148 thought they couldn’t put a limit on who or what could praise God, so they threw in sea monsters as a catch-all for all that was yet to be discovered. Likewise, theologian D. Cameron Murchison writes that all creation is summoned to praise God and that somehow God is bigger than whatever parts of creation we can list.8 He writes that “the overarching cosmological climate of Psalm 148 is that the purpose of all that exists, known and unknown, seen and unseen, is to give adoration and praise to God.”9
That spirit of stretching spurred me on in the liturgy-that-didn’t-quite work. We came together in worship by singing and then creating a windstorm with our voices and hands. In the prayer of confession, we banged rocks against the pews as we lamented how the world has been cracked open with and in pain and sin. We lit candles as we heard God’s forgiveness and passed the peace. Wind, earth, fire alongside our human bodies in silent reflection and prayer, interpersonal conversation and connection, movement of bodies in sitting, standing, and passing the peace.10 Much like what Reverend Jennifer L. Lord says in the first article of this journal issue, “to worship God was an act of total commitment, an all-in declaration.”
But it didn’t quite work. We did our best, as human parts of the choir, to bring other parts of creation into worship. Where we failed, I think, was to take seriously where creation is and who humanity is in it. We brought creation into the liturgy, but we were still insisting that we humans were setting the stage and that we must control the narrative. We were still separating ourselves from the rest of creation and seeing creation as “other.”
In his exegetical commentary of Psalm 148 in Feasting on the Word, J. Clinton McCann Jr. notes that there is no mention of dominion in this text. And, unlike in the creation stories, there is no division that sets humans apart from the rest of creation.11 This is at odds with what we are used to, perhaps. Many of us have grown up in a culture that has divided the world and spirit. This division sees the world not through the lens of our original and foundational creation story—where we and all that exists are made from earth and spirit—and instead this division says the world is on one side of the equation and spirit is on the other side with a great big gap between the two.12
What’s more, this division has historically put God on the side of spirit only, and wherever God goes in this division, there goes power too. People who have power put people of color, women, people who are poor, people who are LGTBQ on the side of the world and say that they do not matter. And we put men and whiteness and money on the side of spirit and say that this is what matters in the world.
But what the Genesis texts of our creation tells us is that earth and spirit are bound up together in God’s making of all things, and Psalm 148 reminds us that we belong in the same choir as all parts of creation. There is no division. And so, matter—the earth—matters as much as spirit to bring all that is into the world. The earth matters, so women matter. The earth matters, so Black lives matter. The earth matters, so people who are LGBTQ matter. The earth matters, so people who are poor matter. Everyone and everything is made up of God’s breath and the topsoil—everything and everyone matters. It means when we talk about a big inclusive love from God—we really are saying that all kinds of life matter.
What is liturgy? So often the answer is “the work of the people in worship,” and I’ve argued here already that we have to see this as the work of all creation, not just people. But there’s another binary implicit here, one that Psalm 148 and the Genesis creation stories demand that we reject in worship. If all creation is called to praise God, wherever creation exists is an opportunity to worship.
The Rev. Colleen Earp, who is one of the directors at Massanetta Springs Camp and Conference Center, took on a practice during COVID to get to know her nonhuman neighbors. She says that she started the practice from a place of intellectual curiosity, which then connected her to spiritual practice. She says that
during the pandemic, I was one of the only people still going in-person to my work [at my previous camp]. It became a practice to walk through the pollinator habitat there every day, to see what I could notice. I didn’t know the names of many of the wildflowers, so it became my pandemic hobby to learn them. Later in the pandemic, I shifted to chaplaincy, serving a children’s hospital. Newborn babies’ names weren’t recorded in the charts, but posted at the bedside. I had to actually go visit the NICU and look for each baby to figure out their names, much like getting to know the wildflowers in the field. It made me appreciate getting to know my “neighbors” in a new way, which has extended to all of creation around me that I come across.13
To get to know the wildflowers by name would mean it would be possible to love them, to see them, to recognize them as other voices in the choir of creation. Such a practice—getting to know creation by name—is a little like what the writer of Psalm 148 is doing. Calling each part of the choir by name to praise the Creator. And, getting to know the other voices of the choir and going to be at the bedside of creation stretches us as part of the community of God. The author of Psalm 148 flings wide who is in the choir to praise God. Liturgy is thus the work of all creation.
But further still, our role as humans who are part of the “family of things”14 is to be open to what it might mean to join the rest of the choir where they are. To not just say from our sanctuaries, “Praise the Lord from the earth, you sea monsters and all you ocean depths,” but to go to the oceans and praise God with the wild whales and the dolphins and crashing waves. To climb mountains and thank God for the striations and ecosystems, and every single cedar. To see the stars, and like my child, Juniper, say “Wow! The stars!” as she insists that all the grownups around her stop and tilt their heads back to take in the deep dark sky pinpricked with light from the cosmos, all the bright stars and highest heavens. If all creation is part of the liturgy, then all the world becomes a sacred place in which to praise God. Make everything your family. Love it with your whole self, because you are made of the same stuff of the plants and animals around you. And then praise God, all of you, wherever you are, no matter if you are human or sea monster.
A Liturgy by All Creation15
Singing Together
Come, All You People, UYAI MOSE, GTG 388
Opening Prayer
Cry out with joy to God, all the earth.
Worship God with gladness.
Come into God’s presence with singing!
Call to Worship: creating a windstorm
The leader starts with one of the body parts, and the community follows. The leader should start with number 1 and move through 2, 3, 4 and then back down through 3, 2, 1 and then hold silence.
- Wind = rub hands together
- Light Rain = snap fingers (or click your tongue if snapping is something you’re still working on)
- Heavy Rain = pat lap
- Thunder/Lightning = stomp feet
Prayer of Confession: letting the earth quake
One: As we pray, let us beat our rocks against the pews and ground, letting the earth ache with us as we confess.
All: Let us pray.
One: “Life is split at the seams. No one knows the exact number of the dead. They were ours. They were yours and mine. Yet, we let them die. So, I will write a poem, and you will write a letter, and he will send some money, and she will say a prayer, but we will forget, as we have forgotten before. We closed our eyes, covered ourselves up, when this island without secrets, this island caught upside down, spread open by the great storm, went belly-up, exposing memories and guts. Disaster on disaster, mud on mud. Life is split at the seams.”16
All: We pray all these things in confession.
Singing Together
Holy God, holy and mighty, Evangelical Lutheran Worship 161
Forgiveness, Making Connections, and Passing the Peace: finding fire
One: As we remember how we are forgiven through Jesus, we light these candles.
All: Thanks be to God.
One: The peace of Christ be with you.
All: And also with you.
The community may pass the peace of Christ with hugs, handshakes, or other signs of connection.
First Reading: Psalm 148
Singing Together
Holy Spirit, Come to Us (Veni Sancte Spiritus), GTG 281
Second Reading: “When Love Is Unfashionable” by Alice Walker17
Sermon
Offering
Prayer of Thanksgiving
Thank you, God, for all these blessings. Help us use these gifts to seek justice in the world, love our neighbors as ourselves, and walk with you in humility. Amen.
Prayers of All Creation
Together, we share the prayers of our hearts. Who do we know who is sick, lonely, hurting, or discerning? Then we will pray together in singing.
Singing Together
We Are Marching in the Light of God (Siyahamba), GTG 853
Let the winds blow
Let the healing rivers flow
Let justice roll like waters
And let the day begin when new life enters in
And let your kingdom come18
Benediction
Notes
1. For example, in Unmasking White Preaching: Racial Hegemony, Resistance, and Possibilities in Homiletics, editors Andrew Wymer and Lis Valle note that there is much to do in order to decenter whiteness, especially in homiletics which has a white, European bias. They argue for a more messy and beautiful exploration of homiletics and liturgies (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2022), 5–6, 10. The God who digs into the topsoil in Genesis 2 models just how good and creative messy can be.
2. From the New Revised Standard Version. My own translation of the Hebrew of this text: “In the first phase of creating, God created the heavens and this here earth.” This translation emphasized that the (Priestly) writer of the creation story in Genesis 1 was trying to understand how the particular earth around them came to be. Thanks to G. Brooke Lester for support on this Hebrew translation. There are, of course, many different translations and re-tellings of the Genesis 1 story of our creation. See for example, the song “In the Beginning” by Matthew Black for a singing retelling that reminds us that we are made in the image of God (A Little Closer, Apple Music, 2024.)
3. This language comes from an unpublished draft of a children’s book by Theodore Hiebert, based on the Yahwist telling of creation in Genesis 2:4b–15.
4. In the Common English Bible, Hiebert translates “till and keep” as “farm and keep” to get at the Yahwist writer’s farmer connection to the earth around him. Some translations use the language of dominion, or having control, in here.
5. Just like ecosystems in nature are better when they are diverse, human ecosystems are more resilient and healthier when they have more diverse parts integrated into the whole.
6. Some of this text is adapted from a sermon preached at Trinity Presbyterian Church in McKinney, Texas, which in turn made an appearance in my dissertation, “Where Your Treasure Is: Orchestrating a Theological Social Movement on Climate Change, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), and Divestment from Fossil Fuels.”
7. My colleague Andrew Wymer notes that we can’t make preaching or worship creation a single-issue activity if we seek to be justice-seeking. We are all wrapped into collective liberation together. If we take seriously that all creation is part of the choir, where might we worship God that would insist that people with power would see God? Isn’t this why activists for a variety of causes bring communion to the streets or why clergy wear their stoles and collars to protest?
8. D. Cameron Murchison, “Psalm 148 Theological Commentary,” Feasting on the Word (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2009), 154.
9. Murchison, “Psalm 148,” 154.
10. The full liturgy is the second half of this article.
11. J. Clinton McCann Jr., “Psalm 148 Exegetical Commentary,” Feasting on the Word (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2009), 155.
12. See also Sallie McFague, The Body of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993).
13. Rev. Colleen Earp in conversation with author.
14. From the poem “Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver.
15. First celebrated at Pescadero Community Church in Pescadero, CA, on August 13, 2017.
16. Michele Voltaire Marcelin in “Understanding Haiti’s Disaster through a Poet’s Eyes,” PBS News, last updated February 5, 2010, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/understanding-haitis-disaster-through-a-poets-eyes/.
17. Alice Walker, “While Love Is Unfashionable,” in website entry titled “Wedding Ceremony: Marrying Good Men (from The Cushion in the Road), Spring 2013,” https://alicewalkersgarden.com/2013/02/wedding-ceremony-marrying-good-men-from-the-cushion-in-the-road-spring-2013/, accessed October 8, 2025.
18. “Prayers of the People” by Ben Johnson-Krase.
