Season of Creation
This month we begin celebrating the Season of Creation (also known as Creation Time) as part of our liturgical year. It runs each year from September 1 through Oct 4. This is an ecumenical movement to recognize the goodness of God’s creation, our call given by God to care for the earth, and the ecological crises we are faced with in the world today. In our celebration this year, each week will focus on a different part of creation and our calling to care for it. We will include the oceans, the land, forests, and rivers. The last week of the season we will be reminded of God’s promise of renewing the earth along with our call to participate in that renewal.
With a new season, you will notice some new things. The liturgical color of the season is orange, a color not otherwise found in the church year. We will begin having some orange paraments this year, but it will take time to fully shift to a new color. Orange represents harvest and abundance, and so reminds us of the abundance with which God filled the earth. Of course, orange can also be a color of caution or danger, and so can also remind us that this abundance is threatened in a variety of ways. We will also be introducing some new hymns. The ELCA released a new hymnal, All Creation Sings, about two years ago. We did not purchase physical copies of these hymnals but have printing rights to put its hymns into our bulletin. We will be using some of the creation-themed hymns this year. Many have familiar tunes but with new texts.
The Season of Creation fits within the flow of Christian traditions and doctrines, both ecumenically and from a Lutheran perspective. In 1989, Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios I named September 1 as a day of prayer for the care of creation within the Orthodox traditions of Christianity. Meanwhile, many Western church traditions recognize the importance of care for creation on Oct. 4, the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi. These two dates have come to mark the poles of the Season of Creation. It is recognized in the World Council of Churches and by the Lutheran World Federation. Lutheran World Federation assemblies have supported the need to emphasize the care of creation since 1960, with formal decisions beginning in 1977. At the 2017 assembly (the most recently completed one; there is one occurring this month in Poland), the global Lutheran churches affirmed: “the global ecological crisis, including climate change is, human-induced. It is a spiritual matter. As people of faith, we are called to live in right relationship with creation and not exhaust it.” The Season of Creation is one reminder of this call. St. Matthew discussed moving to including the Season of Creation as part of its worship life at the congregational Ministry Meeting in 2022, and it was affirmed by council in July 2022.
This month, open yourself to the newness of the season and the reminder of the ancient call that the world is full of God’s glory.
Season of Creation
St. Matthew will be participating in a new liturgical season this year, the Season of Creation. The season runs from September 1 to October 4 each year. The season helps us focus each year on different aspects of God’s creation and our call to care for it. This year we will be focusing on the following:
- Sept. 3: Ocean Sunday
- Sept. 10: Land Sunday
- Sept. 17: Forest Sunday
- Sept. 24: River Sunday
- Oct. 1: Renewing the Earth Sunday
As we kick off the fall, let us do so with gladness, celebrating the goodness of God’s creation while remembering our responsibility to be good stewards of that creation.