The Season of Creation—Expanding the Christian Calendar?
by Daniel Benedict
Can a new season be added to the church year? By the Spirit, Christians always find ways
of celebrating and proclaiming the gospel in the face of emerging challenges. The church
calendar and lectionary with which we are familiar have a long development and a cherished
history. The distinctive seasons and special days of the Christian liturgical calendar emerged
in response to tensions with or within the surrounding culture.
For example, there is no firm evidence of the celebration of Christmas until the late fourth
century. While we cannot know for sure why Christians began to celebrate Jesus’ birth at the
end of December, one hypothesis is “counterattraction,” which proposes that they were
countering the pagan feast of “the birth of the invincible sun” at the winter solstice with the
birth of “Sun of Righteousness” (Mal 4:2) who brings light and life.(1)
Could there be present-day circumstances in which the gospel is in tension with the
culture that call for the addition of a season? The Uniting Church and other churches in
Australia see in global warming, pollution of the environment and unsustainable consumption
a challenge that calls for liturgical innovation and Christian witness through observance of
what they have called the “Season of Creation.”
These churches offer a tangible invitation—indeed, an urgent call—to the churches in
other nations to celebrate and honor God’s creation in gratitude and fresh awareness. This
is much more than a flimsy idea; they have developed a rich and ample array of resources
for local churches to use in observing the season. (Go to www.seasonsofcreation.com.)
Why a Season of Creation?
Since the NASA provided us with pictures of our planet, our consciousness of where we
live has changed. We live on an orbiting gem—a fragile, finite planet circling the sun in the
vast expanse of interstellar space. Sally McFague calls it the Body of God.(2) However, this
global consciousness has not yet translated into responsible stewardship. So, all of us on
the planet are now entering the storm; reaping the whirlwind of what we have sown for two
hundred years of over consumption, based on economic models that left the ecosphere out
of the equation.(3) This is God’s wake up call to the steward creatures (Gen. 1:28; 2:15).
Perhaps we Christians are numbered with the pagan Athenians that Paul addresses on
Mars Hill when he says,“While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now God
commands all people everywhere to repent…” (Acts 17:30). Perhaps twenty-first century
affluent believers have devalued the mission and redemptive intent of Christ Jesus. Perhaps,
by his mercy, there is still time. God is at work by the risen Christ in the power of the Spirit to
give us new eyes to see and new hearts to treasure the creation and to reenter the mystery
of the gift that is ours to steward.
Respecting and honoring other religious traditions and even those who hold to none, in
baptism we Christians are called to renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness, to reject the
evil powers of this world, and repent of our sin. And we continually embrace the “freedom
and power God gives…to resist evil, injustice and oppression in whatever forms they present
themselves.” (See The United Methodist Hymnal, p. 34.) The question is how do we ritualize
and enact this with respect to God’s creation?
What is the Season of Creation?
Planet Earth is in peril. All creation is suffering. By concentrating our worship on God's
creation and our relationship with God present “on earth as in heaven,” we can seek ways to
heal rather than exploit creation. The Season of Creation aims at congregations journeying
in grateful awareness and hopeful care for our planet home.
The season’s rationale is straight forward in the context of our current church calendar:
Along with the rest of humanity, the church has had a blind spot when it comes to God’s
call to stewardship of the planet. We have cast the gospel as if God’s sole concern was for
the redemption of human beings without recognition that the Bible is clear that God, the
Creator, seeks the redemption of the whole enchilada! See Genesis 1 and 2, Revelation 21,
Isaiah 40-55, and Psalms 8, 46, 148, and 150 as just a few of the sources for listening to the
story of God’s creation, care and vision for the whole of the created order.
What would the calendar of this season look like?
How does it fit into late Ordinary Time?
The Season of Creation, as proposed by the Season of Creation website (hereafter
“CoS”), would be scheduled in the early fall (spring in Australia and the southern
hemisphere). It is an insertion into the calendar and lectionary that many of our churches
follow (The Revised Common Lectionary) and replaces those six Sundays with six Sundays
focused on specific features of creation. This “Creation Time” in Ordinary Time looks like this
for 2008.
leave to you, the reader, to search the CoS website for all that is well laid out and easily
accessible there.)
Of course, your church will adapt this scheme to suit its needs and style. For example,
your church may already have a tradition of “Blessing the Animals” on October 4, regardless
of the day of the week on which it falls. Or, you may decide that observing the Season of
Creation would be better observed in the Spring, on the Sundays following the Day of
Pentecost (early in Ordinary Time), for example May 25-June 22, 2008.
Thick resources
If you are concerned that titles for the Sundays such as “Forest Sunday” or “Wilderness
Sunday” would leave musicians, pastors and planners scrambling, don’t worry. The Season
of Creation website is thick with resources from a complete table of lectionary readings for
each Sunday, a more and a less liturgical order of service with full text, theological and
homiletical reflections, Bible studies, children’s sermon suggestions, and photo gallery for
slide projection.
I will confess that one of the “turn ons” for me was to discover that the project director and
primary architect behind the Season of Creation was my “old friend,” Norman Habel, a
Lutheran Old Testament scholar. His creative and spunky little book for youth, Are You
Joking Jeremiah (1967) was favorite in my work with youth. Habel and the resources on the
Season of Creation website provide passionate and provocative guidance for local church
leaders of congregations whatever the size and location.
A dimension that comes through these resources is the shift from treating earth and its
creatures as “things” to “others” with whom, through liturgy, we engage in conversation and
with whom we share in the praise of God. Addressing the storm, the ocean, the rivers and
the forests as sacred bearers of God’s presence enriches our prayer and worship in ways
that build our sense of relationship with them.
The Season of Creation invites us to move deeply into this liturgical enactment. Here is
how the website summarizes the liturgical action envisioned in these services for the season:
(italics for emphasis)
In our worship during the season of Creation we:
The readings are designed to provide a three-year cycle corresponding broadly to the
years of Matthew, Mark and Luke in the Revised Common Lectionary. Each series follows a
broad pattern of creation, alienation, passion and new creation. The readings also give
special attention to the story of Earth, which complements the story of God and the story of
humanity in the Scriptures.
In a very real sense, I think that churches that decide to observe the Season of Creation will
find their challenge in planning will be not so much how to create resources, but how to
adapt and contextualize the resource given. They are excellent and spiritually formative.
Binoculars and Boots: Guidelines for Worship Team Planning
Creation time worship requires preachers and planners with metaphorical binoculars and
boots.(5) Anticipating how the themes, scriptures, and liturgical texts will be shaped and how
these radical reorientations of worship and relationship will be received will require planners
and preachers with binoculars to keep the horizon in view—the ability to listen and see in
terms of the big picture. Putting the services together, including the necessary ways of
making each worship service specific and offering opportunities to which people can put feet
to the prayers and to embodying creation awareness in daily life requires boots.
Here are some general approaches to planning:
“Season of Creation: An Ecumenical, Global Observance for September 2008”
Music in our resources
The Season of Creation website offers a range of hymns and songs created for the
season. These resources move well beyond praising God and emphasize the range of
liturgical actions listed above (“Celebrate…Confess…Embrace…[etc.]). Of special interest
are those that “groan with creation and the Spirit in creation” and “singing songs of praise
with our kin in creation.” This stanza of “We Invite Creation” by Norman Habel is particularly
appealing for those of us who live near the ocean:
familiar tunes.
To supplement what the Season of Creation website offers, most denominations will find
more familiar and equally useful resources in their hymnals and supplemental collections.
There is an especially good selection of hymns in the new Upper Room Worshipbook (2006)
—see the section “Praising God with All Creation.”
Being here, being now—incarnation, redemption and (consumption—oops!)
consummation
Peter Storey, the South African Methodist bishop, pastor and prophet, said of much of
preaching [and worship] in his country during the time of apartheid, “Every Sunday, their
sermons said everything, and nothing; they could have been preaching [praising and
praying] anywhere in the world, or nowhere in the world. They told the old, old story of Jesus
and his love as if it happened on another planet.”(6)
By our birth and baptism, we live on this planet with this vocation of embodying the gospel
in God’s wild and wounded creation. In Jesus Christ God joins the biological web of life. In the
cross the crucified God suffers in and with creation. We confess that the crucified and risen
Jesus is the cosmic Christ who reconciles and restores all things in creation. Entering and
celebrating the Season of Creation is a here and now way of joining the earth and all it life
forms in praising God and crying out in hope for the future of the cosmos. It joins us to the
liturgy of this planet before God.
______________________
Endnotes
1. See Daniel T. Benedict, Jr., Patterned by Grace: How Liturgy Shapes Us (Nashville: Upper
Room Books, 2006), p. 74-75.
2. The Body of God: An Ecological Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993).
3. Sallie McFague, Abundant Life: Rethinking Theology and Economy for a Planet in Peril
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001).
4. From the Season of Creation website: http://www.seasonofcreation.com/about/what/ This
quote reads “four” but, as we will see, the plan calls for six in all with two Sundays inclusive of
Oct. 4 following.
5. I am indebted to Lee A. Schott for this imagery, which she uses in her article “Preaching
the Church to Robustness” in Doxology (Volume Twenty-Four—2007), p. 108ff.
6. Peter Storey, With God in the Crucible: Preaching Costly Discipleship (Nashville:
Abingdon, 2002), p. 16.
This article has been edited and revised from its original publication in Worship Arts (March-
April 2008), the magazine of the Fellowship of United Methodists in Music and Worship Arts.
by Daniel Benedict
- Numbers in parenthesis are endnotes.
Can a new season be added to the church year? By the Spirit, Christians always find ways
of celebrating and proclaiming the gospel in the face of emerging challenges. The church
calendar and lectionary with which we are familiar have a long development and a cherished
history. The distinctive seasons and special days of the Christian liturgical calendar emerged
in response to tensions with or within the surrounding culture.
For example, there is no firm evidence of the celebration of Christmas until the late fourth
century. While we cannot know for sure why Christians began to celebrate Jesus’ birth at the
end of December, one hypothesis is “counterattraction,” which proposes that they were
countering the pagan feast of “the birth of the invincible sun” at the winter solstice with the
birth of “Sun of Righteousness” (Mal 4:2) who brings light and life.(1)
Could there be present-day circumstances in which the gospel is in tension with the
culture that call for the addition of a season? The Uniting Church and other churches in
Australia see in global warming, pollution of the environment and unsustainable consumption
a challenge that calls for liturgical innovation and Christian witness through observance of
what they have called the “Season of Creation.”
These churches offer a tangible invitation—indeed, an urgent call—to the churches in
other nations to celebrate and honor God’s creation in gratitude and fresh awareness. This
is much more than a flimsy idea; they have developed a rich and ample array of resources
for local churches to use in observing the season. (Go to www.seasonsofcreation.com.)
Why a Season of Creation?
Since the NASA provided us with pictures of our planet, our consciousness of where we
live has changed. We live on an orbiting gem—a fragile, finite planet circling the sun in the
vast expanse of interstellar space. Sally McFague calls it the Body of God.(2) However, this
global consciousness has not yet translated into responsible stewardship. So, all of us on
the planet are now entering the storm; reaping the whirlwind of what we have sown for two
hundred years of over consumption, based on economic models that left the ecosphere out
of the equation.(3) This is God’s wake up call to the steward creatures (Gen. 1:28; 2:15).
Perhaps we Christians are numbered with the pagan Athenians that Paul addresses on
Mars Hill when he says,“While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now God
commands all people everywhere to repent…” (Acts 17:30). Perhaps twenty-first century
affluent believers have devalued the mission and redemptive intent of Christ Jesus. Perhaps,
by his mercy, there is still time. God is at work by the risen Christ in the power of the Spirit to
give us new eyes to see and new hearts to treasure the creation and to reenter the mystery
of the gift that is ours to steward.
Respecting and honoring other religious traditions and even those who hold to none, in
baptism we Christians are called to renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness, to reject the
evil powers of this world, and repent of our sin. And we continually embrace the “freedom
and power God gives…to resist evil, injustice and oppression in whatever forms they present
themselves.” (See The United Methodist Hymnal, p. 34.) The question is how do we ritualize
and enact this with respect to God’s creation?
What is the Season of Creation?
Planet Earth is in peril. All creation is suffering. By concentrating our worship on God's
creation and our relationship with God present “on earth as in heaven,” we can seek ways to
heal rather than exploit creation. The Season of Creation aims at congregations journeying
in grateful awareness and hopeful care for our planet home.
The season’s rationale is straight forward in the context of our current church calendar:
- In the seasons of Advent, Epiphany, Lent and Easter we celebrate the life of Christ. In the season
[after] Pentecost we celebrate the Holy Spirit. Now, in the season of Creation, we have an opportunity
to celebrate God, the Creator.
For four Sundays in September, prior to St Francis of Assisi Day [October 4], we join in celebrating
with Christ the wonders of creation.
In the liturgy, we follow the lead of the psalm writers and celebrate with creation — with the forests,
the rivers and the fields, which praise the Creator in their own way.
Bible readings focus especially on the story of Earth, which complements the story of God and the
story of humanity in the Scriptures.
We commit ourselves to a ministry of healing Earth, with Christ and creation as our partners.(4)
Along with the rest of humanity, the church has had a blind spot when it comes to God’s
call to stewardship of the planet. We have cast the gospel as if God’s sole concern was for
the redemption of human beings without recognition that the Bible is clear that God, the
Creator, seeks the redemption of the whole enchilada! See Genesis 1 and 2, Revelation 21,
Isaiah 40-55, and Psalms 8, 46, 148, and 150 as just a few of the sources for listening to the
story of God’s creation, care and vision for the whole of the created order.
What would the calendar of this season look like?
How does it fit into late Ordinary Time?
The Season of Creation, as proposed by the Season of Creation website (hereafter
“CoS”), would be scheduled in the early fall (spring in Australia and the southern
hemisphere). It is an insertion into the calendar and lectionary that many of our churches
follow (The Revised Common Lectionary) and replaces those six Sundays with six Sundays
focused on specific features of creation. This “Creation Time” in Ordinary Time looks like this
for 2008.
- September 1 Creation Day
September 7 1st Sunday in Creation – Forest Sunday
September 14 2nd Sunday in Creation – Land Sunday
September 21 3rd Sunday in Creation –Wilderness Sunday
September 28 4th Sunday in Creation –Social Justice Sunday
October 4 St Francis of Assisi Day
October 5 5th Sunday in Creation – Blessing of the Animals
October 12 Final Sunday in Creation – River Sunday (from CoS website)
leave to you, the reader, to search the CoS website for all that is well laid out and easily
accessible there.)
Of course, your church will adapt this scheme to suit its needs and style. For example,
your church may already have a tradition of “Blessing the Animals” on October 4, regardless
of the day of the week on which it falls. Or, you may decide that observing the Season of
Creation would be better observed in the Spring, on the Sundays following the Day of
Pentecost (early in Ordinary Time), for example May 25-June 22, 2008.
Thick resources
If you are concerned that titles for the Sundays such as “Forest Sunday” or “Wilderness
Sunday” would leave musicians, pastors and planners scrambling, don’t worry. The Season
of Creation website is thick with resources from a complete table of lectionary readings for
each Sunday, a more and a less liturgical order of service with full text, theological and
homiletical reflections, Bible studies, children’s sermon suggestions, and photo gallery for
slide projection.
I will confess that one of the “turn ons” for me was to discover that the project director and
primary architect behind the Season of Creation was my “old friend,” Norman Habel, a
Lutheran Old Testament scholar. His creative and spunky little book for youth, Are You
Joking Jeremiah (1967) was favorite in my work with youth. Habel and the resources on the
Season of Creation website provide passionate and provocative guidance for local church
leaders of congregations whatever the size and location.
A dimension that comes through these resources is the shift from treating earth and its
creatures as “things” to “others” with whom, through liturgy, we engage in conversation and
with whom we share in the praise of God. Addressing the storm, the ocean, the rivers and
the forests as sacred bearers of God’s presence enriches our prayer and worship in ways
that build our sense of relationship with them.
The Season of Creation invites us to move deeply into this liturgical enactment. Here is
how the website summarizes the liturgical action envisioned in these services for the season:
(italics for emphasis)
In our worship during the season of Creation we:
- Celebrate Earth as a sacred planet filled with God's vibrant presence.
- Unite with all creation in praising the God of creation.
- Confess our sins against creation and empathize with a groaning creation.
- Embrace our kin in creation as our extended family.
- Proclaim the good news that the risen Jesus is the cosmic Christ who fills and renews
all creation. - Gather at the Eucharist to receive the healing power of Christ that extends to all
creation. - Go forth on a mission to be partners with Christ in the healing of creation.
The readings are designed to provide a three-year cycle corresponding broadly to the
years of Matthew, Mark and Luke in the Revised Common Lectionary. Each series follows a
broad pattern of creation, alienation, passion and new creation. The readings also give
special attention to the story of Earth, which complements the story of God and the story of
humanity in the Scriptures.
- Year 1, the Spirit Series (Year A of Matthew) concentrates on those texts where the
Spirit is breathing life into creation, suffering with creation and renewing all creation. - Year 2, the Word Series (Year of Mark) focuses on those texts where the Word is the
impulse that summons forth creation, evokes praise from creation and stirs life in
creation. - Year 3, The Wisdom Series (Year of Luke) includes those texts where Wisdom is the
designing force behind creation and the impulse that enables the parts of creation to
fulfill their roles.
In a very real sense, I think that churches that decide to observe the Season of Creation will
find their challenge in planning will be not so much how to create resources, but how to
adapt and contextualize the resource given. They are excellent and spiritually formative.
Binoculars and Boots: Guidelines for Worship Team Planning
Creation time worship requires preachers and planners with metaphorical binoculars and
boots.(5) Anticipating how the themes, scriptures, and liturgical texts will be shaped and how
these radical reorientations of worship and relationship will be received will require planners
and preachers with binoculars to keep the horizon in view—the ability to listen and see in
terms of the big picture. Putting the services together, including the necessary ways of
making each worship service specific and offering opportunities to which people can put feet
to the prayers and to embodying creation awareness in daily life requires boots.
Here are some general approaches to planning:
- Be sure to see “Planning Worship Guidelines for Worship Teams” on Season of
Creation website - Set your dates
- Review the liturgies and adapt them to your local context
- Select and prepare music (from your sources and those on the website)
- Plan and prepare visuals (digital, graphic and staging)
- Rehearse
“Season of Creation: An Ecumenical, Global Observance for September 2008”
Music in our resources
The Season of Creation website offers a range of hymns and songs created for the
season. These resources move well beyond praising God and emphasize the range of
liturgical actions listed above (“Celebrate…Confess…Embrace…[etc.]). Of special interest
are those that “groan with creation and the Spirit in creation” and “singing songs of praise
with our kin in creation.” This stanza of “We Invite Creation” by Norman Habel is particularly
appealing for those of us who live near the ocean:
- We invite the oceans to worship with us.
We invite young seals to dance in the waves,
Old whales to trumpet their spray,
Electric eels to rejoice
And manta rays to pray.
familiar tunes.
To supplement what the Season of Creation website offers, most denominations will find
more familiar and equally useful resources in their hymnals and supplemental collections.
There is an especially good selection of hymns in the new Upper Room Worshipbook (2006)
—see the section “Praising God with All Creation.”
Being here, being now—incarnation, redemption and (consumption—oops!)
consummation
Peter Storey, the South African Methodist bishop, pastor and prophet, said of much of
preaching [and worship] in his country during the time of apartheid, “Every Sunday, their
sermons said everything, and nothing; they could have been preaching [praising and
praying] anywhere in the world, or nowhere in the world. They told the old, old story of Jesus
and his love as if it happened on another planet.”(6)
By our birth and baptism, we live on this planet with this vocation of embodying the gospel
in God’s wild and wounded creation. In Jesus Christ God joins the biological web of life. In the
cross the crucified God suffers in and with creation. We confess that the crucified and risen
Jesus is the cosmic Christ who reconciles and restores all things in creation. Entering and
celebrating the Season of Creation is a here and now way of joining the earth and all it life
forms in praising God and crying out in hope for the future of the cosmos. It joins us to the
liturgy of this planet before God.
______________________
Endnotes
1. See Daniel T. Benedict, Jr., Patterned by Grace: How Liturgy Shapes Us (Nashville: Upper
Room Books, 2006), p. 74-75.
2. The Body of God: An Ecological Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993).
3. Sallie McFague, Abundant Life: Rethinking Theology and Economy for a Planet in Peril
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001).
4. From the Season of Creation website: http://www.seasonofcreation.com/about/what/ This
quote reads “four” but, as we will see, the plan calls for six in all with two Sundays inclusive of
Oct. 4 following.
5. I am indebted to Lee A. Schott for this imagery, which she uses in her article “Preaching
the Church to Robustness” in Doxology (Volume Twenty-Four—2007), p. 108ff.
6. Peter Storey, With God in the Crucible: Preaching Costly Discipleship (Nashville:
Abingdon, 2002), p. 16.
This article has been edited and revised from its original publication in Worship Arts (March-
April 2008), the magazine of the Fellowship of United Methodists in Music and Worship Arts.
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