7.6.25 - Sermon written and preached by Leigh Rachal @ FPC Abbeville

Today, we’re continuing our sermon series on some of the basics of our faith. 

In the first week, we remembered that at the heart of everything, God is love.

Last week, we explored how that love creates a beloved community - a vision of human relationships rooted in dignity and compassion.

This week, we’re widening the circle even further.

Because God’s love isn’t just for humans. 

It embraces all of creation - the earth, the creatures, the rivers, and the sky.

This world is not a disposable backdrop for the story of humanity. 

The entire world is sacred ground.

It is all beloved.

According to Genesis, in the beginning, when God shaped the dust into a living being and planted a garden, the story of Genesis says that God placed the human there to till it and keep it.

Not to exploit, not to discard, not to Lord over it,

but to belong to it…

to steward and tend what God had called good.

Maybe that’s why I’ve always been drawn to learning about the world itself.

I’ve always loved to read and most of the time, I read theology - books about faith, scripture, the long history of people trying to understand God.

But every so often, when I need to clear my head

or when the questions feel too heavy,

I reach for something different.

That’s when I read science books – any book about how the world works.

Physics, biology, astronomy, books about galaxies and microbes and everything in between.

And I realized not long ago that even when I’m reading about the expansion of the universe or the daily life of snails, I’m still reading about the same things:

Who is God? Who are we? And what are we all doing here?

Science and Theology are just two ways of asking the same questions.

Two ways of trying to remember that this world is more than just useful. 

It is holy.

I’ve also found that some of my best sermon inspirations aren’t found in books at all.

They happen when I’m just walking around our yard, paying attention.

Watching the crickets and frogs hopping about,

or the turtles slipping into the coulee,

or the fish rising to the surface for a moment before disappearing again.

Sometimes I take pictures and post them on Facebook—just to share a little of that wonder.

It’s a kind of preaching without words.

A way of reminding myself, and anyone who cares to look,

that this world is shimmering with God’s presence

if we’ll only slow down long enough to see it.

Some of the great theologians have said that God has given us two books—creation and scripture.

That the beauty and order of the world are like a first language in which God speaks to us.

And that Christ and the scriptures are the second expression of who God is.

John Calvin called creation “the theater of God’s glory,”

and said it shows us glimpses of the divine, if only we will look.

Our story in Genesis insists that we are not separate from creation.

We are formed from the humus—the same root as the word “humble.”

We are earthlings made of earth, breathing God’s own breath.

We were never meant to live as conquerors on this planet.

We were meant to live as part of God’s Sacred World. 

But even in that first garden,

there was a tree whose fruit was not for us to take.

Creation has always held both beauty and consequence.

The goodness of creation was never the same thing as the absence of danger.

From the beginning, the world was alive—full of possibility, full of risk.

God’s intention was never that the garden would be a safe little enclosure for our convenience.

It was a place of freedom and choice,

where love meant respecting limits that we did not set ourselves.

Sometimes the same sun that makes things grow will scorch the fields to dust.

The same life cycles that give life will also take it away.

But that doesn’t mean the world is bad.

Or that it is disposable.

It means that the world is dynamic.

That, like us, there is good and bad within it.

It also means that it is not ours to control.

If we look back over the long arc of history, it’s clear how often the mindset of domination has shaped the world.

Empires have set out across oceans, claiming new lands as their own, often without a second thought for the people or the creatures who already called those places home.

Forests have been burned to the ground to harvest a single crop.

Rivers have been dammed or poisoned or drained dry to feed our hunger for more….. more land, more profit, more power.

But is this what God intended for us?

Is this what it means to be formed from the dust, to be given breath and placed in the garden to till it and keep it?

Or is there another way? One rooted not in conquest but in care,

not in endless taking but in gratitude and respect?

We have often forgotten that the same Word who became flesh, was the Word through whom all things came into being. 

The Gospel of John says it as plainly as any scripture can: All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.

If that’s true, then every leaf and river, every creature and cloud carries the fingerprint of Christ. Creation isn’t disposable. It is beloved.

And the story of salvation is not just a story about saving individual souls.

It’s about God’s love poured out for the entire earth.

The rivers and the fields, the creatures and the soil….

God’s redeeming work stretches as wide as creation itself.

Romans 8 speaks of creation groaning - as if in labor pains - for this redemption. 

And we don’t have to look far to hear the groaning. Just a few days ago, the Guadeloupe River rose up in the dark of night…. Wreaking havoc and heartbreak in its path….

The world is groaning. And so are we. Because we are part of this creation, woven into its beauty and its sorrow.

When we see tragedies like this, it is tempting to turn away or to give up.

But even in our heartbreak, our calling has not changed.

We are still invited to live as people

who tend and keep,

who watch and protect,

who love and honor this earth and all who call it home. 

We can’t stop the flood or quiet the storm,

but we can stand with those who mourn.

We can remember that our care for creation is also a way of caring for each other.

We can ponder our own place in this beloved creation:

Are we part of it? Formed from the dust, breathing God’s breath, endowed with a calling to steward and tend?

Or do we see ourselves as something set apart, with license to use the earth as we please?

It isn’t always simple.

The choices aren’t always clear-cut.

Sometimes what seems like tending in one moment might later reveal unintended harm.

Sometimes what looks like dominion is done out of fear or need.

And yet, the questions remain:

What would it look like to live in a way that sustains life beyond our own lifetime?

What would it look like to give back to the land and water that nourish us, so that others (human and non-human) can flourish too?

What would it look like to stay present to suffering, even when it’s inconvenient, to remember that our neighbors’ pain is part of our shared life?

In a world that often tells us to take and consume, what would it mean to remember that we belong to each other—and to this earth?

There are many ways to live.

Some treat the world as disposable, as something to conquer or control.

Others remember that this is sacred ground.

That we are guests here.

That our calling, as best we can discern it, is to care.

The good news is that the same God who formed us from the dust and called us to tend the garden is still at work.

Still redeeming. Still reconciling all things.

The Word became flesh not to help us escape this world but to heal it.

To dwell with us in the midst of it.

To show us what love embodied looks like.

So we don’t have to live by the myth of domination.

We don’t have to keep pretending that more consumption and more exploitation will somehow satisfy us.

We don’t have to keep pretending that the world is here for our taking instead of our tending.

Instead, we can remember that creation is a gift: God’s first gift to us.

We can choose to live like it matters.

We can learn again to delight in the beauty around us,

to grieve what is broken,

to hope for what can still be restored.

Because this world - this fragile, aching, stunning world - is not disposable.

It is the beloved work of God’s hands.

And we are not its masters.

We are its caretakers and its stewards.

May we have the courage to live as if that is true.

Amen.