Creation Care

Have you ever had the experience of reading something and suddenly all kinds of connections start going off in your head? I had that experience a few years ago when I first read about the Dish with One Spoon Wampum, the covenant that held together the Indigenous peoples of the Great Lakes before settlers appeared. This wampum seemed to echo and affirm material that I had been teaching on creation. I would like to explore the parallels and their implications briefly with you.

“It has been 1,606 days since Flint has had clean water,” declared Flint Rising director Nayyirah Shiriff after introducing herself to me and a group of about 30 other “Healing Waters” retreat participants in the last days of summer 2018 at the Colombiere retreat center in Clarkston, Michigan. Nayyirah’s statement brought a silent wave of grief over the room.

The morality of any society can be judged by how it cares for people and how it cares for God’s gift of creation.

The Clean Water Rule, put forward by  the Environmental Protection Agency in 2015, provided long-sought clarity about the application of the Federal Clean Water Act. As noted recently by Pope Francis, clean water is a basic human necessity and a gift God has given to humanity to safeguard.

This summer, I had the opportunity to participate in a learning tour with the Canadian Aboriginal Ministry Committee, World Renew, and the CRC Office of Race Relations focusing on places of racism, resistance, resilience, and reconciliation within urban Indigenous communities in southwestern Ontario. One of the places we visited was Aamjiwnaang First Nation, located on the St. Clair River, within the Sarnia city limits.

As we sat in the fireside room at A Rocha’s property, Sir Ghillean Prance, a small group of volunteers and I (a stay-at-home mom) we felt a sense of awe that this man, who had been knighted by the queen for his work as a botanist, was so down to earth and hope-filled. One thing he said has stuck with me. When asked what gave him hope over his long career –he knew about and was working towards combating climate change already 20 years ago – his answer was: “Christ’s resurrection and human ingenuity”. 

This year for Lent I was thinking about something a friend of mine, Karen Wilk, had been talking about in the lead up to Lent. She noted that often people give things up in order to focus more on God and try to drop something that may cause distraction to our lives. Karen suggested that a similar action could be done to draw closer to God by picking up a new discipline over Lent, to form something new in us. So with that in mind, I decided to give up eating fruit and I decided to add reading theology from a different cultural context than my own.

The Creation Care Preaching Challenge submissions are in! Thank you to everyone who participated for helping us to reflect on the Bible's teachings about creation care.

The Creation Care Preaching Challenge submissions are in! Watch Do Justice this week and next to read more submissions. Thank you to everyone who participated for helping us to reflect on the Bible's teachings about creation care. This is a portion of a submission from Kory Plockmeyer. You can read the full sermon here. 

Texts: Romans 8:18-27

The Creation Care Preaching Challenge submissions are in! Watch Do Justice this week to read more submissions. Thank you to everyone who participated for helping us to reflect on the Bible's teachings about creation care. 

Texts: Colossians 1:15-20, Psalm 24 

From the very beginning of God’s walk with his people, the blessings they enjoyed because of their relationship with God were meant to overflow. “All peoples on earth will be blessed through you,” God promised Abraham.