I am a teacher at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and have been a student of God’s creation all my life. My family and I attend Geneva Campus Church, where several years ago, Rev. Bill Vander Hoven came for three months to fill a pastoral vacancy. I saw him often during my student coffee hours at Memorial Union, as he frequently engaged students at neighboring tables. Noting the books they were studying, he would compassionately tailor the good news to their situation. I often joined his table, and as we conversed, he insisted that I take him on a field trip.
That “field trip” began before sunrise and lasted well into the night as we trekked through the wonders of the Baraboo Hills of southern Wisconsin. Later on, he said that he had truly discovered creation that day, even though he had lived in its remarkable embrace for more than sixty-five years. Following our time together, he took a full year off from his “retirement” to study creation—so he would not have to be embarrassed, as he put it, to be asked in the final Judgment what he thought of creation and could only say he had been on but a single field trip!
It is no accident that Jesus almost always taught on field trips, of course. For the One by whom all things were created, the One who holds all things together, it was a “natural” thing to do. Whether we realize it or not, you and I are teachers too. We teach indoors and outdoors; we teach with our words and by our silence, by our actions and by our inactions. Following our Great Teacher and Mentor, we may even lead others—our children, our brothers and sisters, parents and grandparents, and other “students”—along city sidewalks, across school lawns, and through fields and woodlands, teaching as Jesus did. Follow right behind me here; sit beside me as we look at this lily! Behold and see!
In our own teaching, we mirror and reflect our Teacher—bringing ourselves and our “students” to experience the remarkable testimony of creation by seeing, hearing, smelling, and touching. We may study theology and know the Bible through and through, but unless we attend to the testimony of his billions of creatures, we may still not truly know our Creator.
On our field trip together, Bill and I were refreshed in this knowledge. The creatures proclaim God’s power and divine majesty. The heavens tell the glory of God. All creation sings praise for God’s manifest love for the world (Psalm 148). And with the psalmist, we sing our grateful praise for God’s provisions for life and breath, everywhere evident (Psalm 104). So numerous and abundant, so interwoven with each other are these provisions, that we cannot give them or their Maker their proper due. God’s bountiful care is so marvelous it simply is inexpressible:
Thy bountiful care, what tongue can recite?
It breathes in the air; it shines in the light;
it streams from the hills, it descends to the plain,
and sweetly distills in the dew and the rain.[1]
“Field trips” that engage our beholding can bring us awareness of creation and God’s sustaining action in the world. But these are but a beginning of understanding. Awareness leads to appreciation of God and creation, and appreciation can lead to stewardship—stewardship of creation, its materials and energy, and God’s provisions for the myriads of wonderful creatures that inhabit the earth (including ourselves!) from awareness to stewardship:
(1) Awareness = seeing, identifying, naming, locating
(2) Appreciation = tolerating, respecting, valuing, esteeming, cherishing
(3) Stewardship = conserving, restoring, serving, keeping, entrusting
Awareness means getting out of our offices, shops, labs, classrooms, and houses and leaving the virtual “worlds” that may engage and sequester us. Getting to know and to name the creatures we see—providing ourselves and others peace and reflective times to discover and appreciate God’s marvelous work.
Appreciation means tolerating and even cherishing all God’s creatures and creation: beholding and respecting such creatures as wasps and caterpillars, wolves, hippos, birds, and toads—giving ourselves and others the opportunity to echo God’s declaration “It is good!”
Stewardship means appropriate use, caregiving, conserving, and restoring creation. It means assuring that our own and others’ actions do not damage creation but repair the damage done in pursuing and spreading right living in Earth’s biosphere.
It means serving, including before we act adversely on creation (pre-serving); serving reciprocally with creation so that its service to us by God and creation is returned with service of our own (con-serving); and bringing back to fullness and fruitfulness what has been damaged and smeared (re-serving). Restoring and reconciling. It also means helping our communities hold in trust what we and others have preserved, conserved, and restored (entrusting)—serving God responsibly by tending, caring for, and keeping God’s Word and God’s world.
Now we should not impoverish our field trips by disconnecting them from the guidebook of Scripture. The Bible provides insight into basic questions, like “Who am I?” “What are people for?” and “How can we image God’s love for the world?” Engaging ourselves with creation and Creator requires us to step out of the busyness of life, to “take up and read.” The book of creation should be joined with the book of God’s word, in which God makes himself more clearly and fully known to us. And the book of Scripture illuminates the testimony of creation by revealing our Creator as the one who personally addresses us with the Good News of God’s saving power.
Here too, awareness moves us toward appreciation and ultimately on to stewardship—bringing good news to every creature and all creation (Mark 16:15)1: inspired by the life and testimony of Jesus Christ, the One by whom God created, sustains, and reconciles all things. This book of Scripture invites us to participate in its vision of justice and peace, upholding the integrity of creation. It motivates and moves us toward fulfillment of the purpose of creation by teaching us to understand God’s love for the world and our human purpose in creation as we pray “Thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
An essay by N. T. Wright presents a helpful image.3 He has us imagine a five-act Shakespearean play for which we have the full script for the first four acts, but only the beginning of the fifth act. From the available text, we see this dramatic play building in a “crescendo of excitement” toward fulfillment in Act 5. It is such a good play that we decide to perform it. Clearly, we would continue it beyond its premature ending with actors who have made it their life’s work to carefully and thoroughly study and understand Shakespeare and thoroughly understand the available. And then, if these actors were extremely well-versed and thoroughly committed to their task, we would expect them to bring the conclusion of Act 5 to gloriously fulfill the expectation of the first four-and-a-half acts in a grand symphonic finale! Wright identifies the first act as Creation (Act 1), the second as the Fall (Act 2), and the third as Israel (Act 3). The fourth act is the New Testament Gospel (Act 4) followed by beginning of the final act (Act 5), “giving hints as well of how the play is supposed to end.”
Wright’s image helps us to understand Scripture not as a finished book but as a story that continues in our lives today. We are the players in an ongoing story of the love of God as Creator of all things and Author of the Gospel of Salvation. And now, as knowledgeable and faithful actors, we are “the people through whom this extraordinary vision comes to pass.” From this, it is absolutely clear that we need to hold together the two books of creation and Scripture coherently—both in the present and in continuity with the kingdom of God that has come and is coming.
In all of this, the Bible answers the question, “What are people for?” Together, both books anticipate “players” entering the theatrum gloriae Dei —“the theater of God’s glory” (as John Calvin calls the creation). They pick up the script and fulfill the expectation of God’s kingdom—the whole creation that anticipates “with neck outstretched” the coming of the children of God.
And yet this is but a beginning. With our beholding of birds and lilies, we also are beholding of the Lamb of God. We move from awareness to appreciation and to stewardship. And in this, we people are not mere spectators but participants who are entering the theatrum gloriae Dei. Imagers of God’s love for the world, we are active reciprocators of God’s love for us; for each other; for God’s creation. We share with joy our participation in the fifth act now in progress!
Gardener Risen: From death’s prison.
Behold and see: Bird and bee.
Two books prism: Refrain from schism.
Gardeners we: Stewards be.
Creation waiting: God creating.
Behold and see: Gardeners pray.
Word and World; Both integrating.
Thanks to thee; The light of day.
[1] cf: DeWitt, C. B. 2022. Soviet Tanks and the Good News: for Reflection on Mark 16:15. Christian Scholar’s Review blog, March https://christianscholars.com/soviet-tanks-and-the-good-news-for-reflection-on-mark-1615/
