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Worship with Creation

Carol Soderholm

Carol Soderholm was born in New York City and graduated from Union Theological Seminary in New York. She has been a working pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America since July 19, 1987.

Days pass and years vanish and we walk sightless among miracles.
God, fill our eyes with seeing and our minds with knowing; 
let there be moments when your Presence, like lightning,
illumines the darkness in which we walk.
—from the Mishkan T’filah, “A Prayer for Shabbat”

On Friday night the Sabbath began when my grandmother lit the candles which, in every Jewish home, traditionally begins the twenty-four-hour Sabbath.

When all work is brought to a standstill, the candles are lit. Just as creation began with the word “let there be light!” so does the celebration of creation begin with the kindling of lights. . . . 1

An awareness of creation is built into the Friday night Sabbath. It is for worship and rest, rest for the land as well as people.

The Lord spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, saying: Speak to the people of Israel and say to them: When you enter the land that I am giving you, the land shall observe a sabbath for the Lord. Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard, and gather in their yield; but in the seventh year there shall be a sabbath of complete rest for the land (Lev. 25:1–4, emphasis added).

A Sunday worship for rest? The busyness of our worship makes rest seem like an intrusion.

At the home of my grandparents (Abraham and Sophie) the Sabbath began with a simple but sumptuous meal. The candles were lit, the blessings said over the wine and bread. Songs were sung. The food was eaten. The meal always included a blessing of the children. As a child, I remember it well—the aroma of foods as we walked up the stairs to their apartment above Abraham’s tailor shop. I remember the overflowing welcome, the abundant table. All of it was worship, not set apart as a distinct and different part of life but built into the very fabric of daily life. The children were even allowed free play afterwards; my sisters and I jumped up and down on the very old bed in my father’s childhood bedroom, now shut tight and much colder than the rest of the apartment. The whole evening had a worshipful feel to it.

Almost all Jewish observances reflect nature and the environment. The festival of Tu B’Shvat celebrates the birthday of trees. A birthday for trees? In Israel today Tu B’Shvat is celebrated as an ecological awareness day. Trees are planted in celebration. The festival of Sukkot is a fall harvest festival. And Shavuot originated as an agricultural festival celebrating the beginning of the wheat harvest.

There is no separation between worship and nature. All God’s blessings are acknowledged as from the earth, the wheat in the challah and the grapes in the wine.

From where else would blessings come?

It was natural for Jesus, as a Jewish teacher, to use nature for his teachings: mustard seeds, lilies, the sea, a lake, sheep, vineyards, fig trees, well water, grains of sand, sparrows. Creation itself provided a metaphor for his teachings: farming, fishing, shepherding. He went to wild places to be alone and pray. He used natural settings to teach and to heal—a well, the sea of Galilee, the wilderness, the Jordan River among others. Jesus was deeply connected to the natural world.

Christians are too, perhaps not fully realizing it. In the elements of bread and wine, we honor Jesus and take him into ourselves as a symbolic lover. In the wheat and grapes, we take fruits of the earth into ourselves as a holy remembrance. The earth gives herself to us in love. We become one not only with God in Jesus Christ but with creation as well. 

By what miracle does this cracker
made from Kansas wheat . . . turn into Me?
My eyes, my hands, my cells, organs, juices, thoughts?2

Can we re-member the earthiness of our practice of Holy Communion, our intimacy with God in union with the earth? Can our practice be about much more than our personal salvation, about all creation gathered into the heart of God as worship?

As Julian of Norwich suggests,

Be a gardener.
Dig a ditch,
toil and sweat,
and turn the earth upside down 
and seek the deepness
and water the plants in time.
Continue this labor
and make sweet floods to run
and noble and abundant fruits to spring.
Take this food and drink
and carry it to God 
as your true worship.3

Let’s unite our Sabbath Sunday with an embrace of creation. Have worship outdoors. Use a tree stump for an altar. Have the grapes instead of wine. Baptize in a local stream. Have a birthday for the trees. Plant a tree as worship. Have Lord’s Day worship in someone’s home—or on a farm, or on a prairie. Worship at night and consider the stars and the wonder of night.

We know so much about our world at this time in history. We know about the cosmos in a way we didn’t years ago. Can we weave the splendor of creation into our worship and spend more time in silence? In awe? 

Notes

  1. Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1951), 66.
  2. Judith Morley, quoted in Earth Prayers from around the World, ed. Elizabeth Roberts and Elias Amidon (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991), 357.
  3. Julian of Norwich, quoted in Earth Prayers, 305.
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