Willow Creek Outdoor Service 2024
It is great to be here, even if only once every year. And I am happy that you could be here too. For many of you, this place (Location where Willow Creek Mennonite Church used to be) has been and will always be hallowed ground. Some of you came to this place to worship before the building that should sit there was burned.
Being out here allows our soul to take a fresh breath as we commune with nature, one another and with God our Creator.
Being here also lends itself for a special moment of reflection. A reflection about our Creator God and our place in this world God has given us to inhabit. It also lends itself to reflect on our role regarding the marvelous gift of God to us—nature. And what better passage to remind us of that than Genesis one. So, let us open our Bibles to Genesis one, verses one through chapter two, verse three.
On the basis of the Holy Scripture, we confess that God is sovereign, almighty, eternal and holy. God is complete, self-sustaining, and entirely other—not human nor an ethereal force, but a personal God. Therefore, the testimony that Genesis gives about God is that God did not want to be God alone; God did not want to be God without us. First God creates the light to separate the darkness that overwhelmed the entire space. The mystery about the light coming on the first day lies on the fact that the sun, moon, and stars only come into existence on the fourth day. Please don’t ask me how that could be! At each stage of God’s work of creation, He pauses to assess his work, thus six times the text says: And God saw that it was good, yet on the seventh occasion, it says that “God saw and it was very good.” God’s world is an extravagant gift God gave us. ”God’s work of creation was culminate with the creation of the man and woman. They are the crown of his creation by giving them to privilege to bear His image and likeness. Even when God could be entirely by himself and lacking no need of companionship, he created the world and all kinds of living creature, including humans out of pure love and to give of himself.
Nature displays the creativity, majesty, and the generosity of God. Genesis two, in the second creation story, tells us that when God formed Adam and Eve, the entire world was a wilderness, barren and empty. However, God had planted a garden in which he cradled his crown creation—Adam and Eve. This we read in chapter two verse eight to ten:
Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. 9 The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. 10 A river watering the garden flowed from Eden.
Thus, the first evidence Adam and Eve could see about God’s generosity and care for them was the paradise God gave them as home. The text says, “there were all kinds of trees and that they were pleasing to eyes and good for food.” The beauty and bounty of the natural world are always interpreted in the Bible as part of God’s shalom, that is, his desire for holistic well-being, for his people.
For instance, Psalm 65:8-13 reads:
The whole earth is filled with awe at your wonders;
where morning dawns, where evening fades,
you call forth songs of joy.
9 You care for the land and water it;
you enrich it abundantly.
The streams of God are filled with water
to provide the people with grain,
for so you have ordained it.
10 You drench its furrows and level its ridges;
you soften it with showers and bless its crops.
11 You crown the year with your bounty,
and your carts overflow with abundance.
12 The grasslands of the wilderness overflow;
the hills are clothed with gladness.
13 The meadows are covered with flocks
and the valleys are mantled with grain;
they shout for joy and sing.
But the humans God created, he endowed them with something specially reserved only for them. They were given the privilege to bear the image and likeness of their Creator God. Only to them God gave something of himself.
Oftentimes, we wonder what does it mean that we bear the image of God in us? In ancient cultures, the deities, the gods, made themselves known to their devotees through a human representative: the king. In that sense, when Genesis tells us that God decide to create man and woman in his likeness and image, beside meaning that God gave us the capacity to co-create in his world, to be able to forge and sustain relationships, to be able to distinguish between good and evil, it also means that God gave us royal status above all the thing he had created. Of all creation, humans represent the divine. We are therefore endowed with the privilege to reflect the character of God, his love and admiration he had for the created world, his capacity to create, thus becoming good stewardship of the world God gave us.
Jesus seemed to have been immersed in the natural world. So, we hear him speaking about his close observation of nature in his teaching. Look at the lilies, he says. Look at the birds of the air, he commanded. Jesus spoke of foxes having burrows to live in. He spoke of sparrows, wolves, and snakes. He spoke of rocks, of budding trees, and of clouds.
Coming here gives us an opportunity to be surrounded by the natural world. Today, when most everyone keeps looking at their screens, any time we get disconnected from technology is healthy. On six occasions we are told that “God saw that his creation was good.” It is indeed marvelous. We should take care of it. It is the home God gave humans to live. And we are grateful that our church has a space we can come out to and worship the Lord and have a great time of fellowship.
Pastor Romero