Nature vs. Creation

Genesis 1:31

St. John’s United Church of Christ
Greeley, Colorado
April 23, 2023
Rev. Juvenal Cervantes

As a Christian trying to form my own understanding of us and God’s world, biblically, I take issue with a term we often use, it’s the term “nature.”

This term is more of a secular word, it’s not comprehensive enough, it’s limited. When the word nature is used it means everything in the world except humans. We like to go “in nature,” as if we were not part of nature.

It is a term that is used by the secular view that doesn’t have a place for God in all of this, there’s “nature” and “natural.” I prefer the word “Creation,” this is God’s good creation.

I prefer appreciation the creation, being out with in creation, of the beauty and goodness of creation. When we sing “Fairest, Lord Jesus, ruler of all nature” and I sing, “ruler of creation.” Then, “This is my Father’s world, all nature sings…” Creation sings and round me rings the beauty of the spheres.

I prefer “Creation” because it reflects Biblical thinking.

This world didn’t come into being on its own. The very nature of God is that God is Creator. The very first thing we hear from him is that God said, “Let there be and there was.” The title that is given to God in Scripture is “Maker of heaven and earth.” It’s who He is. It is found in the law, the prophets, the psalms, the proverbs, the gospels, the Acts, the epistles, and the book of Revelation.

This emphasis on God, as creator of all that is, it’s not a minor issue. When we confess that ancient apostles creed, we say, “I believe in God the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth. It’s God essential identify so it is our essential identity that we are part of the creation. This material world God pronounced, “Good, good, good, very good,” Genesis chapter one. It is the product of God’s hand, the product of God’s heart and mind. Nature doesn’t quite comprehend it much, creation says it.

Jesus Christ is at the center of this powerful act of Creation. In John chapter one, verse one, John says, “In the beginning was the word and the word was with God, and the word was God. All things came into being through Him and without Him not one thing came into being, that came into being.”

Jesus Christ is at the heart of this beautiful act of creation.

Colossians, chapter one, Paul says, speaking of the son, Jesus: “The son is the image of the invisible God, the first born of all creation, for in him all things were created. Things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities, all things have been created by him and for him, and he is before all things and in him all things hold together.

Jesus Christ is at the center of this beautiful, majestic creation that extends beyond our imagination out into the darkness of space. Jesus, all things came into being through him.

Hebrews, chapter one, the writer of Hebrews says, “God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets, many times in various days, but in these last days, he has spoken to us through his son whom he appointed heir of all things and through him also God made the universe.

Jesus is at the very heart of all of creation. Think for a second in this way. We read in John that God is love. Not just that God loves, but that God’s very essential, his own being, is love. It’s not possible for God to do anything unloving, in fact, everything that flows from God is an expression of who God is as love.

Now what it means in regards to creation, God says its good, its good, its good, its good, it’s very good is this: Every subatomic particle called into being at that moment of creation, every majestic galaxy, the biggest thing you can think, the smallest thing, every molecule that ultimately forms, every atom, every thing in creation is an expression of the love of God.

We are surrounded by the love of God just by being part of creation. The one who is love created his universe through his son Jesus Christ. And you and I live in a world and nature doesn’t say that for me as well.

I prefer the word creation because it reminds me and it reminds all of us that we are dependent upon God’s grace.

We wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for God. We’re a part of creation. We wouldn’t thrive or survive apart from God’s providence, providing sun and soil and water.

We sit down three times a day to eat a meal sometimes, most often thoughtlessly, about where it comes from.

Wendell Berry says, “To live, we must daily break the body and shed the blood of creation. When we do this knowingly, lovingly, skillfully and reverently, it is a sacrament. When we do it ignorantly, greedily, clumsily, destructively, it’s a desecration.”

Three times a day we’re in touch with creation in a marvelous way. Sun, soil, water, and human hands has produced the food on our plates that sustains us. We’re not for sun, soil, and water, and human hands being given to that task, we would not exist. We depend upon this earth. God’s good grace sustains us day after day after day. It’s no accident when Jesus wanted to talk about the sustaining power and meaning of his death, he took bread, given from the earth, and wine, given from the earth, let these things remind you of my sustaining power of my death and my forgiveness, my grace.

I prefer creation because it reminds me that we are dependent upon God’s grace.

I prefer creation because it comprehends it.

You and I are part of creation as well. When people say, I want to get out in creation, what they mean is I want to leave all the human beings alone and I want to go somewhere else by myself.

You’re in a restaurant, you’re with creation, my friend. The image of God is found in that person sitting next to you. You’re sixth day stuff, he said, “Let us make humankind in our image and every male and female every created bore that and bears that image of God.

When you say “nature” it is sort of sets us apart from all of that rather than seeing the human being with live with as part of that beautiful creation that God made. We’re part of it, not as adversaries, not as enemies, and that’s my point here, the earth is the home, our home for us and all of God’s creatures. God made it so and he said it was very, very, very good. And it’s the only home we know and we share it in common with every form of life anywhere in this universe.

We keep hoping for discovery. I will be exciting, I guess, discovery of life somewhere else.

We keep getting pictures back from mars and the little robots running around like the vacuum cleaners around mars, trying to find evidence that once upon a time there was life there, perhaps there was. But life as we know it and have known it for a very long, long time, requires a particular, intricate, delicately balanced system of life of water and heat and coal and soil, and air and chemicals and physics that are found so far as we know only here on this planet. Now it may be elsewhere, we may be able to discover it. But I want to say, this is our home, God made this for us. He said, “It is very good.” 

Elsewhere in the universe, wherever we’ve gone so far, we find desolation, frozen desert or arid deserts, nothing that fits who we are. Here we have a perfect home of beauty, of abundance, that is ours to share with each other and to share with the other creatures that live in this planet. It’s god’s gift to us and our neighbors, all 8.7 million species them.

And how easy it is to take it for granite. It is so easy. I don’t know much about what goes on in a fish’s brain, but I suspect that fish don’t pay much attention to the water, they just live in it, it’s their environment, it’s their home, it’s where they swim. I could be totally wrong. Fish could be swimming around just in absolute awe of the reality of water, every single day. I don’t know, but I’m a human being and I’m somehow typical of my species and I know that we are not very good at that. That we live in this beautiful place and we take it for granite, day in and day out. We get occasions when we’re struck with sunrises, sunset or cloud formations or mountain ranges or ocean views occasionally, but on a daily basis we tend to take for granite so much that is ours in creation.

I breath in and out about 24,000 times a day, without giving a thought to that thin layer of atmosphere, precisely composed to sustain life in this body to keep me alive. It’s perfect for my life, except when I help to poisoned it.

I drink about 180 gallons of clean water a year and about an equal amount of brewed coffee beans, I think. All total I use about 30,000 gallons of this liquid water a year and I seldom pause to reflect, how perfect it is, how blessed I am to have it.

There are 780 million people who do not have access to clean water in this world and yet I take it for granite, I pour it out and live as if I’m not amazed.

I sit down and I eat more than 1,000 meals a year and I’m thankful. But I thank God for the food as he had it shipped to King Soopers. I forget the way that every single meal is rooted deeply on the creation, the sacrament of shed blood and broken body of the earth, the product of soil and biology and chemistry and meteorology, wind, sun rain, and heat and cold, all of those things work together so that I can sit down to my bowl of food and I take it for granite.

I look at the ground and I see dirt, but it is not dirt, it is soil. Soil is a living world of its own. It’s made out of minerals, rock, clay, sand, silt, air, mostly, water, organic materials, things that are there from dead plants and dying plants, animals. And soil provides a place for plants to set their roots and draw their nutrition, access the water and nutrients. It’s a home for lots of animals, insects, spiders, centipede worms, animals, bacteria, and many others and they all contribute to the soil that gives life. I look at it and I see dirt and yet that’s what sustains me and you day in and day out.

I look into the night and I am not startled much anymore by the expansive sky, I take it for granted.

Concrete and glass and asphalt surround me. Human construction has obscured the creation that I just don’t notice it as much as I should. I take it for granite, and yet this is our common or uncommon home that God made for us.

The common home goes unnoticed and I thought of what I need to do to stay in touch with this beauty that God has given us.

Here are some things that I have found helpful and that I work on:

I need to pay attention. Just to notice every day. These people, that dog, that cat, these creatures that share my home with me. This food, this water, that breath of air, those trees, those birds that fly overhead, every single piece of the creation is worthy of notice and amazement.

I need to notice, I need to pay attention, I need to be more mindful of what I’m surrounded with and let it take my breath away a little bit.

I need to be reminded of my dependence of it.

Maybe grow a little bit of it, just to be reminded that food comes from soil. Even a small pepper plant by the window, that would be helpful.

I need to learn what I can about God’s creation.

Truthfully, the less I know about a thing the less I appreciate it, but the more that I know about it, the more I appreciate it. And the thing that grows out of that appreciation is affection and the thing that grows out of affection is care for it. I want to take care of it.

I need to learn the names of my neighbors and also the names of the little creature on this planet.

I need to express my gratitude to God more and more. Creation is God’s art work.

I need to be out in the wild, get out to town. I need to be reminded of God’s beautiful world and I find that doing that being out in it, there is a renewal that comes to life and body. Where it’s out in the garden or where it’s out in the mountains, the woods, or park or some really wild place, perhaps a place that you found yourself at one time or another.

It’s easy in this world to get pounded by news again and again and to have a sense of despair about things and to think that it’s all running a mock and that It’s all falling apart and to lose hope and to lose sight.

But there is something outside in creation that reminds us that God is still ruling and reigning and that God is involved in all the intricate of this whole ecology we call earth. He is making all things work together, giving life and giving breath to all things, giving life, intricately and providentially involved in all of this and sometimes we need to be out in the middle of it to be reminded of it.

I referenced Wendell Berry and here is a poem that I like very much. It is called “The Peace of Wild Things.”

When despair for the world grows in me
And I wake in the night at the least sound
In fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down and where the wood drake rests in his beauty of the water,
and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.
I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light.
For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and I’m free.

This uncommon home of ours is something that we’re a part of, not something we’re separate form. We are participants in it, we live our lives in it, we draw our lives from it. We have a part to play in its health and wellbeing, as it does in ours. It is God’s good and beautiful gift to us. Thanks be to God.