Season of creation: Why it’s an important time for churches

“The structural tools we use to preserve the earth as a blessing will need to be developed, but we know we need to.”

September is set aside in the church year as the ‘season of creation’, for many different Christian traditions. Photo: Darren England

September is set aside in the church year as the 'season of creation', for many different Christian traditions.

This is a relatively new movement in the life of the Church, it started in 1989 in the Orthodox Church, and through the work of the World Council of Churches became a truly ecumenical movement.

I wanted to say two things about the season of creation, in light of 2020.

The first is that I believe this is an important time for churches.

In the past many Christian communities did not take seriously the implications of a theology of creation which understood ourselves as a part of the created order.

Nor did we take the idea that in Jesus Christ God demonstrated a deep love for creation, and that we should act in ways that reflected that, in much the same way many Christians have started hospitals as a continuance of Jesus' healing ministry.

The structural tools we use to preserve the earth as a blessing will need to be developed, but we know we need to.

The second thing I thought was worth saying is that this is part of what makes me grateful for the varied voices in the Bible.

At times it would be nice if the bible was simple, with simple answers to everyday questions, but it isn't, it requires work.

What it does have however are many varied voices and those voices continue to tell stories that we can work with, to find approaches that honour scripture and respond to the circumstances in front of us.

I have no idea what the future holds, and I can't imagine a 16th century peasant could ever have imagined a world in which humanity had the technological capacity to make the planet uninhabitable, but I believe that whatever the 24th century holds, the bible will help those Christians navigate it.

Rev. Andrew Schmidt, Good Shepherd Anglican Church

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