In the beginning
Feast of Creation in Christ
6 September 2026
The Rev’d Devin McLachlan
John 1.1-12
“Egg is orb, globe, song-maker, earth-shaker, alchemist and conjuror….Yes, Egg is a most perfect thing – but to fulfil its task it must be destroyed as if it never mattered. Perfection cracked, a planet shattered….
Egg’s last act is selfless. As the time for hatching nears, chick absorbs shell’s calcium to build its bones. Chick grows stronger, Egg weaker, and a tooth forms on chick’s upper beak – a file slipped to the prisoner in a loaf of bread. Chick hacks out and Egg cracks: is shunted aside, falls to pieces, now unwanted. Thus the bitter-sweet joy of finding two parts of a shell at the foot of a hedge or the base of a tree: the death of a moon and the dawn of a sun – an artwork broken and a life begun”
from Robert Macfarlane, Egg (1)
Hidden in the usual way I open sermons —
“in the name of God, our creator, redeemer, and sustainer”
is a seed of potential theological heresy:
The temptation to think of each Person of the Trinity
— Father, Son, and Holy Spirit —
as the sole executor of three of God’s mighty works:
creation, redemption, and the persistence of grace.
But our Creed makes clear —
okay, ‘clear’ is overstating it badly…
Our Nicene Creed points to a better, deeper theological reality:
Each person of the Trinity is co-eternal
interpenetrating and present in all the works of God,
so that Christ is also Creator and Sustainer:
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father;
through him all things were made. (2)
Through him all things were made.
Today’s Feast,
the Feast of Creation in Christ,
is the newest Feast in the Christian calendar,
but it marks the oldest great Festival:
The dance of Creation,
the great Beginning, when all things came into being
through the the Word,
who was with God and who was God.
and without whom not one thing came into being.
As as the gospeller tells us,
What has come into being in him was life,
and the life was the light of all people.
The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness did not overcome it.
And scattered across the wonderful, complicated richness of that life,
were left signs for us of Christ’s redeeming work:
Thus the bitter-sweet joy of finding two parts of a shell at the foot of a hedge or the base of a tree: the death of a moon and the dawn of a sun – an artwork broken and a life begun
Or, as we would come to see in the mystery of the cross,
the death of a son and the dawn of the sun – an artwork broken and all life begun.
It’s hard to imagine how much more clearly the signs were drawn for us,
from egg to chrysalis to the carbon cycle,
that the Universe has renewal and redemption at it’s heart.
Christ’s redemptive work in creation
has taken on new meaning in our lifetime.
As the Archbishops’ Council teaches us:
“On a Christian understanding of the environmental crises of our time,
the human causes of those crises
– and the resistance and inertia of so many nations, corporations, communities and individuals to mitigate them –
must be seen, ultimately,
as expressions of humanity’s attempt to break with God their Creator.
They express a defiance of our creaturely dependence on the Earth…
and a rejection of any responsibility for Creation.
The Bible calls this rebellion ‘sin’….
a rupture between humanity and God, the source of all life…
[and a corresponding] rupture between humans and nature….” (3)
Not only through our action (and inaction)
to care for the environment
for which God made us stewards from the beginning —
our theology has grown sadly estranged from Creation.
Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is an annual read for me,
a series of Thoreau-like essays on nature
but in places with surprisingly affectionate and honest appraisal
of how horrifying nature can be —
violent, wearing, extravagant, shocking:
“I am not washed and beautiful,
in control of a shining world in which everything fits,
but instead am wondering awed about on a splintered wreck I've come to care for, whose gnawed trees breathe a delicate air,
whose bloodied and scarred creatures are my dearest companions,
and whose beauty bats and shines not in its imperfections
but overwhelmingly in spite of them…” (4)
Think Francis and the Wolf.
Benedict and the Raven.
Think of Macfarlane’s Egg:
“Yes, Egg is a most perfect thing –
but to fulfil its task it must be destroyed as if it never mattered.
Perfection cracked, a planet shattered….”
Conservationists know the importance of charismatic species —
we’d much rather save a seal than a parasitic wasp.
But Christian environmentalism needs to be for more than saving pretty spaces.
We live in a world that is both fallen, and full of signs and wonders.
We do not live in a world put together for our entertainment,
to be disposed of when we want to move on to shinier things,
a disposable planet, divided up and then discarded.
Restoring to Christian environmental consciousness
the truth that has been present in Scripture all along:
We live in a world of relationship.
Relationship of Creature to Creature,
of Creatures to Creator.
All things bright and beautiful.
But indeed also all things, as Monty Python reminds us
dull and ugly.
“All creatures short and squat
All things rude and nasty
The Lord God made the lot”
For the world was made through the Word,
Christ our Redeemer, who shines out in the darkness,
who breaks open the shell and breaks open the tomb,
in order to make life even more abundantly.
Christ who sees beauty, redeeming beauty and wonder
even in us,
even in us,
the strangest and most violent of his creatures.
He has been reaching out to us, through Creation, all along.
To commit ourselves to care in turn for that Creation,
faithful stewards and lovers of what God has called Good,
through prayer, through policy, practice and prophetic ministry,
for the restoration of the Earth and its environment
is to respond with love to the one who loves us always.
1 . from Robert MacFarlane, ‘Egg’, The Book of Birds (2026)
2. John 1.3-4
3. Hope for All Creation: A theological response to the environmental crises, © The Archbishops’ Council 2026
4 Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Line breaks are mine; do be sure to also read her later work, Holy the Firm