Roll On, Beloved Rivers of Grace - Second Sunday of the Season of Creation (Rivers/Waterways)
Author: Pastor Scott Schul
September 15, 2024
Nearly every Sunday at Grace we recite the Apostles Creed, a statement of faith which developed over the first few hundred years of the Christian Church. It’s a distillation – a summary – of the teachings of Jesus’s first apostles. When we recite it, we are not only proclaiming what the apostles taught but we are saying that we believe it too.
Structurally, the Creed is very simple. It’s just three paragraphs long, with one paragraph devoted to each member of the Holy Trinity: God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Focus for a moment on that first paragraph, regarding God the Father. Imagine trying to summarize what the Church believes about God. Libraries full of books have been written on that subject over centuries and centuries. How could anyone possibly sum up God’s most important traits or actions? If you were writing God’s resume and had to boil things down to just a few brief lines, what would you include and emphasize as of primary importance?
Well, of all the things the early Church could have said about God’s limitless power and majesty, the single, solitary thing the Church included in the Creed was that God is the “creator of heaven and earth.” That should tell you something about the importance not only of the Creator but of Creation itself. That, my friends, is why this Season of Creation we are
marking this year is so foundational to our faith as Christians.
Bernard of Clairvaux was a medieval monk; he died in 1153 but is still regarded as one of the greatest theologians and thinkers in all of Christian history. He was a brilliant, learned scholar. And yet one of his most treasured textbooks wasn’t a book at all, but creation itself. He once wrote, “You will discover things in the woods that you never found in books. Stones and trees will teach you things that you never heard from your schoolteachers.” Indeed, Creation reveals so much about who God is, and
creation teaches us what it means to be truly, authentically human.
And so with all that in mind, today I invite you to spend a few minutes pondering one very specific aspect of creation: rivers and waterways. To do that, I want to tell you about a tiny waterway that has seized a huge part of my heart. Right across the road from my home is a little freshwater stream called Halfmoon Creek. Every day I check-in with the creek. It’s only a couple feet wide, but it tells me a lot. When the levels are low, I know we desperately need rain. And when it overflows its shallow banks, I have the assurance that my well is nicely topped off.
My affection for Halfmoon Creek isn’t merely functional though; it’s also a source of entertainment. Occasionally the little herd of cows across the street will frolic and jump in and out of the creek. You really haven’t lived until you’ve seen cows frolic! But it’s at night when my love for Halfmoon Creek burns brightest. Late in the evening, just before heading to bed, I like to go out on my front porch, where everything is pitch black except for the stars in the sky. With little to distract me visually, I can listen with heightened attention. That’s when I can hear the creek, steadily, relentlessly running and splashing over and along the rocks, stones, and pebbles. It’s like the creek is singing me a little lullaby before I sleep, a simple song which reminds me of God’s presence, God’s beauty, and God’s constant provision for me. As Martin Luther observed in his Small Catechism, God provides us everything we need, out of pure, parental, and divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness of ours. 1 For
me, Halfmoon Creek sings that song of God’s grace.
The little miracles of grace happening across the road from me are of course just one small portion of Halfmoon Creek’s story. That story begins just a few miles away from my house. Appropriately enough, that beginning, that source, that headwater is located near Gray’s Cemetery on State Route 550, down a gravel street named (you can’t make this stuff up!) Genesis Drive. There, runoff from melting ice, snow, and rain on Bald Eagle Mountain gradually gathers and starts to run.
After the creek passes my home, it slowly gathers strength until it joins Spruce Creek, and then the Little Juniata River, and finally the Juniata River. The very water which begins as a trickle in the hills not far from me wanders and meanders, seemingly guided by God’s loving but invisible hand, eventually becoming one with the Susquehanna River (not far from Harrisburg), and then rolls on into the Chesapeake Bay, where 150 rivers and streams come together to form the largest estuary in the US, a body of water that ultimately joins with the Atlantic Ocean. It’s a remarkable journey that exemplifies the interconnectedness and interdependence of all creation. It’s amazing to think that a drop of water trickling past my house might one day crash against the shores of Europe.
But what does this little geography lesson have to do with our faith lives? Well, as the great theologian Thomas Berry once noted, “We are most ourselves when we are most intimate with the rivers and mountains and woodlands, with the sun and the moon and the stars in the heavens.” 2 You see, the course of our lives is a lot like the course of my beloved Halfmoon Creek. Your true beginning, your source, the very headwater of your existence began, just like that creek, with a little trickle of water. It was in a baptismal font much like this one. Perhaps it was this very font!
There, you were bathed in God’s love and mercy. You were equipped with the invitation to forgiveness for the times when your path might stray, and the hope-filled promise that whenever your life might seem to wander and meander with little purpose, God’s loving, invisible hand will always be near you, guiding, directing, and occasionally correcting you so that you might reach your ultimate destination, something bigger, better, and more magnificent than you ever dared to dream.
But friends, I’m not only referring now to eternal life. A river has an importance that transcends the place where it begins and the place where it ends, because all along its route it brings nourishment, life, and even delight. Though I can’t promise you that cows will frolic in your presence, I am certain that the waterway of your life has blessed and will continue to bless many people as you wind your way through this world.
But there’s one more essential thing we should note as we ponder waterways in this Season of Creation. If you possess a map that’s sufficiently detailed, you’ll notice that just about every bit of running water has a name. Stream, creek, run, tributary, branch – the list is nearly endless. But they all have a name, something timeless that identifies them.
The same is true for you. You see, at your baptism, as God’s Word and God’s grace-filled promises converged with the crown of your head and a few droplets of creation in the form of ordinary water, something extraordinary was proclaimed across time and space. You were given a timeless and eternal name: beloved child of God. Your belovedness wasn’t conditioned on baptism; it was true from the beginning of creation. But at your baptism it was proclaimed in word and deed so that all the world, and especially you, might never forget who you really are. You are beloved.
So what comes next? Follow the example of my little creek. Let your life sing a song of praise to God. Psalm 104 expresses it so beautifully: “I will sing to the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praise to my God while I have my being.” So roll on, my beloved rivers of grace. Roll on. Amen.
Citations
1 See Luther’s Small Catechism and his commentary therein on the First Article of the Apostles Creed.
2 Thomas Berry, The Sacred Universe (2009), p. 25.
Copyright Rev. Scott E. Schul, 2024 All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission.
Matthew 3:13-17
13 Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. 14 John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” 15 But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented. 16 And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. 17 And a voice from
heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
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