Season of Creation

 14 September 2025

Readings

Jeremiah 4.11-12, 22-28

ps 14

1 Timothy 1.1-2, 12-19a

Luke 15.1-10

I was reminded, when I looked at the readings the lectionary gives us for this week, that the wider Church in Australia - the Orthodox, Catholic, Anglican and Uniting Churches - observe every September as the Season of Creation. This month, the reflection is on God’s beauty and goodness reflected in the natural world, and on the human vocation to love and care for all that God has made. And it’s in this context that the late Pope Francis observes, in his confronting and groundbreaking 2015 encyclical, Laudato Si - that everything in the human and natural worlds is connected. As Genesis informs us, human life is interwoven and inseparable from the web of creation, which God also blesses, and on which all life depends. And when we ignore that, then, as the Pope puts it in his blunt encyclical, ‘We are broken’.

Pope Francis points to the multiple ecological crises affecting our modern world, and writes that what is broken is the web of relationships that should connect and strengthen us - as people living in community, as human beings living in the context of a more-than-human ecology, and as people living in relationship with God. We have become like a ring-barked tree; we are dying because we have lost connection to what sustains us. The word for this is alienation. We are in a state of alienation from the sustaining relationships within the community of creation that can make us healthy and keep us connected. 

Francis attributes this to the culture of individualism in our Western societies, the myth that we are sufficient to ourselves and that we can make decisions by and for ourselves without considering the effect of everything we do on other human beings and the non-human world around us. He is talking not just about ecological destruction, the pressure human activities are putting on natural systems, the loss of biodiversity and the slow-moving disaster of climate change, but also toxic capitalism or the economic fantasy of never-ending growth that treats everything as a commodity. This fantasy drives the destruction of human rights and relations of trust between people and nations, and erodes belief in the common good which is the ultimate foundation of human society. We are broken, the Pope writes in his encyclical, and we must repent. 

Our readings from the Bible this morning speak to us about this contradiction, about human brokenness and alienation on the one hand - and on the other hand, God’s desire for wholeness and flourishing, which the Hebrew Bible calls shalom. This morning, we read from Jeremiah, chapter four, the prophet’s wake-up call to a people living on borrowed time. And the language that Jeremiah uses is language that resonates - or should resonate - for modern people sleep-walking into environmental disaster. A hot wind is bearing down from the desert, Jeremiah writes. The earth is stripped bare, the light of the sun has dimmed, the earth is shuddering, the birds of the air have vanished, and the good fertile earth has turned into a desert. 

The prophet is warning that the people’s sin, and their turning away from covenant faithfulness, their seeking of security in things that are worthless - can only lead to disaster. And that the earth itself will die. He is using language that references the account of creation in the Book of Genesis, and shockingly, he is claiming that the systematic sins of the people - the economic sin and the sin of injustice, the sin of failing to attend to the relationships that sustain life - is going to bring creation itself undone. Creation will be reversed. The very land that God gave them in exchange for covenant faithfulness will turn against them. He is invoking the imagery of famine - crops will fail, the land will become a desert and human habitation will lie in ruins. And Jeremiah predicts - in the verses just before today’s reading - that people will deny that their own actions have brought about such serious consequences. The government, he says, won’t have the courage to face up to it, religious leaders will be utterly shocked at the simple truth that when we disconnect ourselves from the relationships that sustain us, then we begin to die. That’s chapter 4, verses 8 to 10, and yes, I paraphrased it, but not very much, actually. If this reading isn’t chastening in an age of climate anxiety, I don’t know what could be.

Our second reading this morning from the first letter to Timothy points out a very powerful home truth. Which is that the first step in healing and forgiveness is to acknowledge the truth. Here in Australia, we are often suspicious of a leader who in the face of something going wrong is reluctant to say the simple words, ‘I’m sorry’. We recognise that honest acknowledgment and taking responsibility are the only ways to restore a broken relationship. We are broken, and we need to repent. We need to turn back to what gives us life. 

All too often, in our reading from the Bible, we focus on individual wrongdoing and repentance, the private sins of selfishness or immorality and the need to correct the course of our individual lives by turning back to God. And while this is a good lesson, in the context of the Season of Creation, we can’t overlook the consistent focus of the Hebrew prophets like Jeremiah on collective sin - the sin of the whole people - and the consequences of collective sin and economic injustice in the suffering of the poor and in the suffering of the land. For example, to acknowledge our own responsibility as Australians addicted to fossil fuel extraction for the rising seas afflicting our poor Pacific neighbours and turning their good agricultural land to salt marshes. To acknowledge that the bleaching of coral reefs, the shrinking of polar icecaps, the collapse of humble and beautiful species of insects and birds and fish are all signs that the earth that is our common home is in distress.

In the Gospel reading this morning, we see the true force of the tension between our brokenness and God’s desire for shalom - for reconnection with what gives life, for the restoration of relationships. Actually, Jesus is talking in these parables precisely about our human habit of getting lost, and the generosity of God whose greatest priority is in finding and restoring us. We know this, because the very next passage in Luke’s Gospel is the very pointed story of the prodigal son. And because even though we lose our way all the time, and we put possessions and power at the centre of our lives - things which can’t possibly give us life - and even though we refuse to live out of the true centre of our lives, which is God -  God still searches us out. God is persistent in searching for us until we run out of places to hide, and restores us to life by bringing us back into right relationship with God and with one another. The point of these simple stories in St. Luke’s Gospel is that God delights in us and yearns for us, not just after we’ve turned back, but even when we wander.

The sheep that wanders away from the mob is not just lost, but in danger. From predators, from the elements, from lack of feed and water. It is cut off from what sustains its life, from the companionship of its fellows and from the loving care of the shepherd. The parable reminds us that the characteristic way that leads to our being broken is our human habit of turning our back on what we can only find in a community of care. When we forget that our lives are connected, when we start to imagine that we are sufficient to ourselves. When we fall for false mythologies like the economic one that insists dollars and cents are most important, and makes an idol out of possessions and consumer goods - while neglecting compassion and the duty of love that we owe to our neighbour. Alienated from the gives us life, we begin to die. We wander off, and God’s mercy and love calls us back. 

The theme of the Season of Creation in the Australian Church is reconnection with what gives us life. And the encyclical, Laudato Si, reminds us that all living things give praise to God in the voices that are uniquely theirs, that as human creatures created in the image of God we are called to love all that God loves, and that our own lives unfold within the human and ecological communities that give us life. We are called to turn back, and to repent.