Connected to Creation

Psalm 104

Roger Lynn

August 7, 2016

Breakfast on the Pass

(there is no audio this week)

Well, here we are again. We shut down operations in town and moved worship to the great outdoors. It’s a lot of fun, but it’s also a lot of hassle. We have to make sure the event gets heavily advertised, so that people don’t show up at church expecting to find us there. Some people just can’t make it out here, so they miss church today. Why, then, would we do this? Just because it’s fun is probably not a good enough reason.

One of the primary reasons why I think it is a good idea is to maintain and nourish our connection with creation. There is such a risk in the way most of us live our lives for losing touch with our connection with creation. We live in our climate controlled houses, from which we drive our climate controlled cars to shop in climate controlled stores. Even when we go outside to places like our local farmer’s markets and other urban activities they takes place on pavement in the middle of the city. Please don’t get me wrong. We live where we live and I’m not suggesting that we all need to move back to the farm. And I’m not at all trying to say that we are somehow anti-environment. We simply lose touch. And in a particular sort of way we often run the risk of losing touch with creation when it comes to our spiritual lives. Our formal worship experiences occur almost exclusively in buildings. And when we lose touch with the natural world around us we lose touch with a part of who we are. I spend a great deal of time preaching about the importance of our connection with each other. Community is an essential part of what it means to be human. And in the same way, our connection with all of creation is vital to living as fully and richly as we are meant to live. One of the central convictions of our faith tradition is that everything that is has come into being out the heart of the divine. It is not a matter of finding connection or creating connection. It is a matter of remembering the connection which already exists. 

Several years ago I had an experience which I know many of you have also shared. My dog, Henri, died. It was a painful time, with lots of tears, because there was a true and genuine relationship of love and connection. It didn’t matter that we weren’t the same species. What mattered was that we had spent time sharing life on this planet and we had experienced connection. Please note that such a connection is only possible because the potential, at least, already exists. It is not something which we artificially manufacture. It is already here, waiting for us to experience it. 

So we gather for worship among the trees, here in this rural setting, to remember what so much of our living conditions us to forget. We are connected, not just to each other, but to everything that is. The God we worship is more than just the God of humans. The divine presence to which we seek to be open is woven into the fabric of the Universe. The sense of the Holy which takes our breath away and gives us meaning and purpose extends beyond the limitations of our human experience.

And remembering this powerful truth has implications beyond our wildest imaginings. When we really begin to live as if this were true, deep down in the core of our being true, then the ways in which we relate not only to each other, but to the planet itself, change dramatically. I saw a bumper sticker recently that said, “When we begin to see ourselves in others, who is left to hate?” And when that reality is taken to the next level and we begin to see ourselves reflected in all of the rest of creation, what is left to exploit and destroy? It’s about being fully human. It’s about being truly faithful. It’s about recognizing the presence of the sacred in all that is. We share a connection with the rest of creation, and we ignore that connection literally at our own peril. May we remember here in this place. May we carry that remembering with us as we return to all those other places where we live.