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Scripture Sunday: Creation Sings

12/24/2023

By Derrick Weston

Luke 1:46-55
And Mary said,
‘My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.
Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.
His mercy is for those who fear him
from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and to his descendants for ever.’

One of the most striking books I have read about the Advent/Christmas narratives is Kelly Nikondeha’s The First Advent in Palestine: Reversals, Resistance, and the Ongoing Complexity of Hope. It’s a stunning book that asks the readers to put themselves into the shoes of Mary and Elizabeth in an almost cinematic fashion. Nikondeha draws deep into history as well as her own experience in the Holy Land to make the birth narrative of Jesus grounded and real in a way that some may find provocative.

In the book, Mary’s song is highlighted as the act of resistance that it is.

Mary didn’t fight, she sang… Following in the footsteps of her ancestors, she composed laments, victory songs, and the range of traditional choruses in between. Songs were her work of resistance, her response to the injustice she witnessed and likely suffered

There is a stark reminder here: before we can build a new world, we have to do the work of imagining the world we want to see. The arts give us a place to express the dreams and desires for liberation that we so long for.

What would a magnificat for creation sound like? Perhaps we should sing of polluters being held to account and those who put profit over planet being made to feel shame. Perhaps we should sing of clean air and clean waters in black and brown communities that bear the undue weight of commercial waste. Perhaps we should sing of protected habitats for threatened species and a food system that works with nature instead of fighting it. Maybe what this moment requires of us is to be like Mary, casting a vision of what the world can be.

For many of us, Mary’s song is the heart of Christmas. It is a song about a grand reversal that will happen in the world. It is a song about the world being turned on its head, where the mighty are humbled and those who have been at the mercy of oppressive forces will finally know freedom. As Kelley Nikondeha puts it “Mary sings out a new social order that upends the status quo as advent begins to turn tables on those who benefit from the injustice of empires and their economies”. Perhaps the task now falls to us to sing the world we want, the one where we are in harmonious rhythm with creation, into existence.

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Scripture Sunday: Restoring Creation

12/17/2023

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by Ashtyn Adams

Psalm 126 (NRSV)

A Harvest of Joy
A Song of Ascents.
1 When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion,
we were like those who dream.
2 Then our mouth was filled with laughter
and our tongue with shouts of joy;
then it was said among the nations,
“The Lord has done great things for them.”
3 The Lord has done great things for us,
and we rejoiced.
4 Restore our fortunes, O Lord,
like the watercourses in the Negeb.
5 May those who sow in tears
reap with shouts of joy.
6 Those who go out weeping,
bearing the seed for sowing,
shall come home with shouts of joy,
carrying their sheaves.

There is such a rich spirituality within these six verses. We are brought into the psalm with a heightened immediacy to Israel’s past, “when the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream.” Some translations pick up on these “restored fortunes,” with greater specificity: “when the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion,” (KJV) or “when the Lord changed Zion’s circumstances for the better” (CEB). For the Israelites, fortune is freedom and liberation from slavery and Empire, not a greater consumption of material possessions. Indeed, they were like the dreamers, that is the prophets, the messengers of human oracles, the medium through which the deity reveals themselves. Dreams don’t simply give insight into the future, but they set the future in motion. From Joseph in Genesis to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the ones who dream draw people into an awakened world marked by more life. There is a spirit of delight and excitement the Israelites recall during this time that one can only long for as this Christmas season approaches: mouths filled with laughter, tongues shouting with joy, people gathered telling stories about how God has made them new, and, as we will see, a healthy and fruitful Earth at the center of it.

The psalmist pleas for God to restore these fortunes. Yet, this is no fanciful romanticism of the past, no “make Israel great again” message, nor is it a stagnant pessimism that “the best days are behind us.” As my supervisor Derrick Weston has poignantly said, the restoration that’s being dreamt of is going to have a direct representation in creation. The Sitz im Leben is suspected to be the Autumnal Festival or the Feast of Tabernacles as the heart of the psalm, 4b, rests on the description of the Negev. Every summer the Negev region was dried out, but every year, it is transformed into a fruitful grain-yielding area, providing a wondrous environment for life to flourish. The power Yahweh displayed on the national stage, freeing the Israelites from Egyptian slavery, culminates as the same power in the everyday agricultural experiences of the people. V. 5-6 are originally considered folk-wisdom songs about farming life that were attached to the liberation song to center the daily life of the community into the liturgy, to recognize that although the sorrow of slavery was behind them, the cycles of toil and survival were still present, and still ahead. Somehow, the mighty seeds of the past become the very womb of the future. In candor, they name their sorrow, and then they voice to God the concerns of the ordinary workers of the field who see God in creation, and who yearn for a restoration that revives the land and the bodies dependent on it. Our restoration as humans is intimately interwoven with something like a harvest festival, where we see creation has not just been restored, but restored in fullness.

Our restoration as humans is intimately interwoven with something like a harvest festival, where we see creation has not just been restored, but restored in fullness.

The community sings their thanksgiving in the tension of celebrating their liberation from Egypt while yearning for it in full as their agrarian community rebuilds and works out a new relationship with creation in the post-exilic period. It is also the tension present in Advent, as we search in the dark for the coming Messiah in the virgin’s womb, and dare to dream once more about how his arrival might re-make our world, how his saving power in us might bring redemption to creation. The final two stanzas present repetitions of tears and joy, tears and joy, ending with the note of faith that all will carry their sheaves. Perhaps we can learn to speak with the same kind of honest hope, naming the state of things in the Anthropocene, but envisioning how it might be otherwise, and petitioning to the God of the harvest that their liberating acts might be done anew.

Ashtyn Adams is a Seminary Intern at Creation Justice Ministries. Ashtyn earned her B.A. in Religion from Pepperdine University and is currently pursuing a Master’s in Divinity at Duke University.

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In Him All Things Hold Together: An Artist’s Statement

12/12/2023

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By: Grace McMullen

During Advent, Creation Justice Ministries is featuring artist Grace McMullen of Table Top Prints.

Grace created a linocut print especially for us and reflects on its meaning in this post. As we prepare for the celebration of the incarnation on Christmas Day, we find special meaning in how she communicates the interconnectedness within creation and with God.

Between now and then end of the calendar year, we are happy to send a 9” x 12” print of this piece to people to give $100 or more to support our programs. You can donate here.

I was delighted to create this piece for Creation Justice Ministries. It was inspired by Colossians 1:15-20, particularly verse 17, which ends with, 'in him all things hold together.'

He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
Colossians 1:17

Lately, in my artwork, I've been exploring themes of interconnectedness, and nothing illustrates this theme better than the created world we live in.

I've also been thinking about the Cosmic Christ, and I wanted to illustrate Christ containing all things -- the visible and invisible web of life in the universe. The piece also contains imagery of communion, which is so rich: death and life, mourning and joy, being poured out and filled up, the community of life that made the bread and wine. All of these abide within and through the person of Christ.

...death and life,
joy and mourning,
being poured out and filled up

The piece also contains imagery of communion, which is so rich: death and life, mourning and joy, being poured out and filled up, the community of life that made the bread and wine. All of these abide within and through the person of Christ

Grace McMullen
Table Top Prints
@table_top_prints

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Scripture Sunday: Comfort for Creation

12/10/2023

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by Ashtyn Adams

Isaiah 40:1-11 (NRSV)
1 Comfort, O comfort my people,
says your God.
2 Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and cry to her
that she has served her term,
that her penalty is paid,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand
double for all her sins.
3 A voice cries out:
“In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord;
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
4 Every valley shall be lifted up,
and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
and the rough places a plain.
5 Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
and all flesh shall see it together,
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”
6 A voice says, “Cry out!”
And I said, “What shall I cry?”
All flesh is grass;
their constancy is like the flower of the field.
7 The grass withers; the flower fades,
when the breath of the Lord blows upon it;
surely the people are grass.
8 The grass withers; the flower fades,
but the word of our God will stand forever.
9 Get you up to a high mountain,
O Zion, herald of good news;
lift up your voice with strength,
O Jerusalem, herald of good news;
lift it up, do not fear;
say to the cities of Judah,
“Here is your God!”
10 See, the Lord God comes with might,
and his arm rules for him;
his reward is with him
and his recompense before him.
11 He will feed his flock like a shepherd;
he will gather the lambs in his arms
and carry them in his bosom
and gently lead the mother sheep.

It is difficult to read Isaiah in a strictly monolithic manner. It is a book both deeply embedded in the historical situatedness of the Israelites, and timeless, serving as inspiration for a variety of communities and contexts. Indeed, after the Psalms, it is the second most quoted Old Testament book in the New Testament. Especially in this season of Advent, it is nearly impossible to read Isaiah 40:1-9 without associating the voice in the wilderness as John the Baptist preparing a way for Jesus, and without conjuring images of the Shepherds who are the first to receive the good news about the coming baby Messiah. However, because of Scripture’s role as the intentional medium of continuing divine revelation, a multi-level reading is not only appropriate but required for serious theological reflection. For the people of God living in the Anthropocene, Isaiah invites us to redefine our expectations of power and way of being in the world.

The text opens with a striking tone of attachment and intimacy from the mouth of God: “Comfort, O comfort my people.” Chapter forty of Isaiah is known as deutero-Isaiah, written during the exile of the Israelites. Jerusalem has been destroyed, the people are without a home. Who would dare hope for comfort? Yahweh is the one responsible for their pain, for this exile. Yet, God’s heart breaks, there is an aversion to this affliction that echoes Lamentations 3:32-33: “Although he causes grief, he will have compassion, according to the abundance of his steadfast love; for he does not willingly afflict or grieve anyone.” God is rushing to comfort Her people, She is coming from the unexpected place of the wilderness to make the “rough places a plain.”

The text concludes with divine power impressed via tenderness. God comes with the might, not of military prowess, but of a nursing mother and caretaking shepherd. We are the sheep gathered at His breast, suckling milk, finding true nourishment and comfort. The way these divine metaphors contaminate each other is quite stunning, all at once God is a warrior, mother, and attentive sheep keeper. In these three different manifestations of power, as my supervisor Derrick Weston reminded me, the power of a warrior is obvious to us, but less so that of a shepherd and a mother. Yet, these models of feminine and agrarian strength are core to how the Kingdom of God is expressed; there is no separating out creation, and the inherent femininity of creation, from our understanding of God’s power. Everywhere God is, so is the land, as the channel through which God comes in the wilderness (v.3), as the lens through which He sees His people as flowers and grass (v. 6-8), as the very foundations of His lamb's well-being (v. 11).

God comes with the might, not of military prowess, but of a nursing mother and caretaking shepherd. We are the sheep gathered at His breast, suckling milk, finding true nourishment and comfort.

Isaiah 40:1-9 reminds us that the Lord’s compassion is a well with depths unsearchable; it stretches our imagination and challenges our presumptions about the triumphant powers in the world. There is also a call to action: if the heart of God breaks for a disobedient people, how much more must it break for an innocent Earth? Out of the wilderness, our contemporary ears can hear this voice: Comfort, O comfort my Earth, says your God. The chapter instructs us in a countercultural kind of hope. In our globalized economy, for example, we practice loving our desires and are ingrained in the story that we are first and foremost consumers rather than sheep. Comfort is dispensed in the ability to purchase goods in our homogenized marketplace the instant we want it. Yet, we know the cheap, shallow nature of this comfort; it is a distraction from our deepest longings, an alienation from people and places, and a form of domination on our planet. Isaiah invites us to a reorientation of our desires, a turning towards the gentleness of God that makes all things new, that gives life and gives life abundantly to all nursing at His bosom. The power of God is that of a mothering animal. May we seek the nourishment from God that always transforms us into Her likeness, so we too might imitate the divine as a motherly shepherd, offering comfort to creation so desperate for healing.

Ashtyn Adams is a Seminary Intern at Creation Justice Ministries. Ashtyn earned her B.A. in Religion from Pepperdine University and is currently pursuing a Master’s in Divinity at Duke University.

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Scripture Sunday: Waiting with Creation in Advent

12/3/2023

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by Ashtyn Adams

Isaiah 64:1-9 (NRSV)
1 O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence--
2 as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil-- to make your name known to your adversaries, so that the nations might tremble at your presence!
3 When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect, you came down; the mountains quaked at your presence.
4 From ages past no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who works for those who wait for him.
5 You meet those who gladly do right, those who remember you in your ways. But you were angry, and we sinned; because you hid yourself we transgressed.
6 We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.
7 There is no one who calls on your name or attempts to take hold of you, for you have hidden your face from us and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.
8 Yet, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.
9 Do not be exceedingly angry, O Lord, and do not remember iniquity forever. Now consider, we are all your people.

This Sunday marks the beginning of the Church’s calendar year, Advent. It is a liturgical time from now until December 24th marked by anticipation and expectation for the coming infant king. The lectionary text offers us a passage from the prophetic book of Isaiah to begin our disposition for the season. In these nine verses, humans and creation stand before the Lord, in hope, waiting. As Barbara Brown Taylor once said, “whether it is a seed in the ground, a baby in the womb, or Jesus in the tomb, it starts in the dark.”

Isaiah begins with an act of remembrance, recalling the unexpected, awesome acts of God (v. 3). Memory and storytelling function as a way through the darkness for the Israelites. There is a repetition of nations and mountains quaking and trembling at God’s disclosure of the divine presence, emphasizing the newness and power that is inherent to God’s character. The opening verses also establish a kinship between humans and their environment who both experience God’s presence as creation; there is an in-this-together-ness before the Creator. The passage moves to the present moment, where the Israelites confess: “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.” The people turn to creation like a mirror that can faithfully reflect who they are in the covenant with Yahweh. Their practices of marginalization and injustice they identify in the fading leaf, their iniquities in the wind. We might learn to confess our sins in a similar way this Advent season as we meditate with creation: all our righteous deeds are like acid rain, we fade like the biodiversity around us. In order to hope for healing we must first come to terms with the violence we unleash, with our practices that harm the Earth. Comparisons could abound and ought to if we are to cultivate the kind of awareness required to “take hold” of God, to find His face, to seek Her deliverance (v.7).

After taking stock, the Israelites in the final two tricolons may finally articulate their hope: “You are our father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.” The Israelites continually demonstrate their deep understanding of our inter-relationship with the land that begins in Genesis: Adam created from the Adamah, the earthing from the Earth. Now the idea is presented anew, that we are clay, the substance coming from the ground, made from minerals, plant life, and animals. God is the potter and parent, who lovingly and creatively shapes and forms all things into being. God as eternal Creator means that God can re-shape and re-form our broken and crooked ways, even when it all seems too far gone, when we have been delivered into our own inequity (v.8). We can call on the Lord: “make us the work of your hand, just once more.”

Advent shirks individualism. We may wait for ourselves, but never only for ourselves. The text closes with the implore to God, “now consider, we are all your people.” The waiting is done together, in whole before the Creator. This advent season, as we wait in private and for our communities, we must also wait for creation, which groans, longing for freedom and restoration. The darkness of the Anthropocene surrounds us, but the only way out is through; the living word God has for us in this Scripture passage may be to remember our place among things, to repent and make reparations for our climate sins, to hold ever more firmly onto the loving-kindness of God that wills corporate peace and flourishing. Though this time of waiting for change and redress may seem long, perhaps at times unbearable, we press on, knowing in the words of Henri Nouwen, “The Lord is coming, always coming. When you have ears to hear and eyes to see, you will recognize him at any moment of your life. Life is Advent; life is recognizing the coming of the Lord.”

Advent shirks individualism. We may wait for ourselves, but never only for ourselves.

Ashtyn Adams is a Seminary Intern at Creation Justice Ministries. Ashtyn earned her B.A. in Religion from Pepperdine University and is currently pursuing a Master’s in Divinity at Duke University.

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Scripture Sunday: Creation Sings

Scripture Sunday: Restoring Creation

In Him All Things Hold Together: An Artist’s Statement

By: Grace McMullen

Scripture Sunday: Comfort for Creation

Scripture Sunday: Waiting with Creation in Advent

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