This week we had an interactive service at St Peter’s, with a little bit of everything thrown in.
In our music and liturgy we recognised Te Reo Maori week, and with an intentional focus on the theme of creation we listened to a selection of readings reflecting on creation in relationship with human beings from a variety of voices and through the centuries:
Irenaeus of Lyons (120-202), Against Heresies
The initial step for a soul to come to knowledge of God is contemplation of nature.
By choosing to create, fill and sustain all things, our God is a God who is intimately connected to God’s creatures.
St. Athanasius (296-373), On the Incarnation
For no part of creation is left void of God: God has filled all things everywhere.
St. Augustine (354-430), De Civit Dei, Book XVI
Some people, in order to discover God, read books. But there is a great book: the very appearance of created things. Look above you! Look below you! Read it. God, whom you want to discover, never wrote that book with ink.
Instead, he set before your eyes the things that he had made. Can you ask for a louder voice than that?
Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179)
We shall awaken from our dullness and rise vigorously toward justice. If we fall in love with creation deeper and deeper, we will respond to its endangerment with passion. Glance at the sun. See the moon and the stars. Gaze at the beauty of earth’s greenings. Now, think. What delight God gives to humankind with all these things. All nature is at the disposal of humankind. We are to work with it. For without it we cannot survive.
A Reading attributed to Meister Eckhart (1260-1328)
Apprehend God in all things, for God is in all things.
Every single creature is full of God,
and is a book about God.
Every creature is a word of God.
If I spent enough time with the tiniest creature—
even a caterpillar—
I would never have to prepare a sermon,
so full of God is every creature.
Julian of Norwich (1342-1423), Revelations of Divine Love
I saw three properties in the world: the first is that God made it. The second is that God loveth it. The third is, that God keepeth it. But what beheld I therein? Verily the Maker, the Keeper, the Lover.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), Walden
Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.
Sandra Steingraber (b. 1959), biologist, author, and environmental activist
We are all musicians in a great human orchestra, and it is now time to play the Save the World Symphony. You are not required to play a solo, but you are required to know what instrument you hold, and play it as well as you can. You are required to find your place in the score. What we love we must protect. That is what love means. From the right to know and the duty to inquire flows the obligation to act.
Rebecca Solnit (b. 1961), Hope in the Dark
Hope is not like a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. Hope is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency. Hope should shove you out the door, because it will take everything you have to steer the future away from endless war, from the annihilation of the earth’s treasures and the grinding down of the poor and marginal. Hope just means another world might be possible, not promised, not guaranteed. Hope calls for action; action is impossible without hope. To hope is to give yourself to the future, and that commitment to the future makes the present inhabitable.
Hear what the Spirit is saying to the church.
Thanks be to God.
The readings acknowledged how available God is to us, how the door into awareness of God’s presence is wide open to us, how wisdom and insight are revealed through the simplest and smallest of things, how natural the rising of both prayer and action are from moments of contemplation in creation…and so we turned to our own praying, and gathered in groups to brainstorm what we knew of prayer through six people’s stories in the bible – Hannah, Daniel, Jonah, Mary, Jesus and Paul.
From our short conversations, we moved into a crafty response.
Creative responding
The invitation was to take a stone and paint a word or a symbol that would remind or inspire us to pray – a prayer touchstone to return the heart to be anchored in God’s presence, to adjust course or simply as a reminder to Be Here, Now.
We closed with a fresh take on the song Morning has broken, and a beautiful blessing in Te Reo, led by Mike…words may appear here at a later date!
You can watch the recording of the service here.
