This is an exciting day in the ecumenical Christian world: Churches across the globe have agreed to observe September 1 as the Feast of Creation in Christ. This is the first truly ecumenical feast—appearing in both Eastern and Western church calendars—since the fourth century. While worldwide ecological concerns lay behind the impetus for this project, it is not another Earth Day. It is a christological festival at which to recognize and celebrate the creative work of the triune God (see cover story, p. 40). Indeed, as indicated by the psalm the lectionary has assigned, this is a day for cosmological praise. Psalm 148 calls on a long series of all the elements of the universe to “praise the Lord!”
This new set of lectionary texts includes one that is assigned for all three years: John 1:1–5. This reading brings out the christological emphasis of “Creation in Christ.” It proclaims that “all things” came into being through the Word (Logos) of God who was “in the beginning . . . with God” and who “was God.” Many commentators believe that the whole prologue to the Gospel of John (1:1–18) is based on an early Christian hymn that has little to do with the substance of the gospel. “In the beginning was the Word” places the Logos before creation. There can be no speculation on how the Logos came to be; it simply “was God.” What came to be through the Logos was, generically, “life.” Psalm 33:6 indicates that by “the word of God” and “the breath of God’s mouth” the heavens and all things were made. Creation was a trinitarian undertaking.
Paul, in his address to the Greeks at the Areopagus, notes many temples of local gods in Athens but proclaims a God who made heaven and earth and needs no temple made with hands. Nevertheless, the God whom Paul proclaims is not far from those who search for God because, as a Greek poet said, “In God we live and move and have our being.” To find God we can look at the creation around us and within ourselves. Consistently, the God of the scriptures is both transcendent and immanent.
