The Poetry of Creation (The Feast of the Creator)

“In the beginning”. That’s how our story begins, these are the first words of our Bible from the first chapter of Genesis.

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Our story begins with Creation. The universe has not always existed, as many once thought. No, the world we live in came into being. That possibility has always raised a philosophical objection: how can you get something out of nothing? Genesis answers that objection with God. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” The universe has not always existed. The universe did not come into being through some random accident resulting from physical forces. The world we live in was created by God. This world was God’s intention. The universe was made for a purpose and created out of love.

Already you can see that the first few words of the book of Genesis say a lot!  Yet others, other poets, reflecting on the words of Genesis, realized that there was still more to be said, more that needed to be said. Because if the only poem of creation we had was the first chapter of Genesis, it would leave open the possibility that God is there and creation is here, and that there is a separation between the two. Over the centuries, many have indeed understood things in this way.

Yet the three readings that we have heard today resist that interpretation. Rather than imagining God and creation as distanced, these poems bring them back together, adding nuance and subtlety and wonder to our story of creation and to the story of our lives. These poems remind us that the divine life, the Creator, is in all of creation, and they invite us to engage in a joyful search for God’s presence in and through the world.

The poem from Proverbs starts with an echo of Genesis but then introduces a new wrinkle:

In the beginning, the Lord created . . . Wisdom.

Ages ago I, Wisdom, was set up, at the first before the beginning of the earth.

When there were no depths I was brought forth,

Before there were hills, I was brought forth,

When he established the heavens, I was there.

I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always,

rejoicing in his inhabited world

and delighting in the human race.

For the poet of Proverbs, the universe is not just created by God, it is permeated from the very beginning by this mysterious, joyful figure of Wisdom. The Wisdom of God.

John’s gospel also begins with a poem, and it’s first three words are a deliberate echo of the book of Genesis.

“In the beginning . . . was the Word.

And the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

He was in the beginning with God

All things came into being through him

and without him, not one thing came into being.

What has come into being in him was life

And the life was the light of all people.”

All things came into being through the Word, the Logos, the creative self-expression and divine ordering of God. And what has come into being in the Word is life.

Is the poet imagining that all things are alive, the rocks, the trees, the rivers, the stars in the night sky? Not alive according to the definitions of human biology, but alive with God, spiritually alive, infused with the Word, the Word who is God?

The third poem that we read this morning in Colossians is a hymn of the early church.

Christ is the image of the invisible God

         the first born of all creation.

For in him all things in heaven and on earth were created

-         things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers –

All things have been created through him and for him,

He himself is before all things and in him all things hold together,

For in him the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.

In this poem, the word ‘pantos’ or “all” is repeated ten times. In Christ all things have been created. Nothing is outside of Christ, in whom the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.

Can you see how these three poems of creation are nudging us towards a more intimate understanding of the relationship between God and creation, between the divine and all created things? Opening us to the possibility that creation is infused and permeated by the presence of God, God as Wisdom, God as Word, God as Christ.  And how if the divine infuses the universe, how if God in-dwells every thing that has been made, Creation itself is sacred, and deserving not just of our respect but of our reverence?

When we begin to see the world this way, something begins to shift in us. If the world is permeated by God’s Wisdom, then to live a good life, we must discover God’s embedded wisdom in the world. If Creation is sacred, then care of creation becomes not just a practical matter but a sacred duty. If God is present, then the world, nature, becomes the place where we encounter God - if we pay attention, if we take the time to turn aside as Moses did in the story of the burning bush last Sunday. Creation becomes our teacher; not just creation in the abstract, but each created thing, a bush, a hazelnut or perhaps even a grasshopper. Creation becomes a source of joy and wonder in our lives, and couldn’t we all use a little more joy and wonder in our lives.

Julian of Norwich, a mystic of the Middle Ages, describes her experience of holding a hazelnut in the palm of her hand.  Knowing it to be a hazelnut, small and round, nevertheless she asks the question “What may this be?”  The answer she receives is “It is all that is made”. Seeing it as small and fragile, she asks “How might it last?” And again, the response: “Because God loves it”. And in that moment of paying attention to a hazelnut, she gets a glimpse into a universe that is upheld not by physical matter and forces, but by the love of God. Julian models for us the contemplation of God in and through everything that is made. Even a hazelnut.

God is present in all things. Learn, worship, rejoice, be astonished. And pay attention.

Many of my favourite modern-day poems of creation have been written by Mary Oliver, who would tell us that “spiritual investigation requires that you pay attention to the world. And if you pay enough attention you may learn to love the world. . . I think you have to be in the world to understand what the spiritual is about; And you have to be spiritual in order to really be able to accept what the world is about.”[i]

So on this weekend which we traditionally think of as the last weekend of summer, let me leave you with one of Mary’s poems. It’s called The Summer Day.

The Summer Day

Who made the world? 

Who made the swan, and the black bear? 

Who made the grasshopper? 

This grasshopper, I mean— the one who has flung herself out of the grass, 

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand, 

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down— 

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes. 

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face. 

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away. 

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. 

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down 

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, 

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, 

which is what I have been doing all day. 

Tell me, what else should I have done? 

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon? 

Tell me, what is it you plan to do 

with your one wild and precious life?

Amen.

Feast of the Creator. Sept 6 2026. Trinity Anglican Church, Ottawa

Readings: Proverbs 8.22-31; Psalm 33.1-9; Colossians 1.15-20; John 1.1-5

Image by Rasa Vilcina

[i] from the documentary “Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World”