Creation Care Sermon

About: This is a sermon I delivered at Freedom Plains United Presbyterian on Creation Care Sunday. I seek to explain why we care for creation (it’s a gift to us from God).

Introduction

It happened at sunset on a hillside just off the Pacific Coast Highway.

Several months after moving to the Bay Area for seminary, I found this spot in the Marin Headlands, which are the coastal mountains on the north side of the Golden Gate Bridge.

There’s a rise where three mountain ridges fold down and hug the coast. You can sit on any of those three ridges and see it all—the Pacific stretching westward, the Golden Gate behind you, and San Francisco beginning to twinkle to life.

I went there after work one evening to watch the sunset. Hundreds and hundreds of others had the same idea.

Marin County at that time was only 2% Christian according to the US Census. Most were nones and Dones—those with no religious affiliation, or who had tried and walked away. 

But that evening – something happened.

I parked at a nearby dirt lot, took my seat on the first ridge which gave me a view of the two other ridges in front of me, between me and the ocean. For the first 45 minutes, it was noisy—people laughing, chatting, enjoying the view.

But then, as the sun lowered, so did the volume. Chatter faded. The crowds grew quiet. The people around me stopped talking and just watched.

The people on the ridges ahead of me were silhouettes against the sinking sun. All facing west. Not a word.

And then it happened: the final sliver of the day’s light disappeared beneath the ocean’s edge. The wind stilled. It was darkening. It was orange. It was sacred. It was silent.

After a moment of hush, in a burst of spontaneity, those hundreds and hundreds of people jumped to their feet and the hillside roared to life. People were cheering, clapping, shouting, “Yeah!” and “Bravo!” like they had just seen a great performance. Arms raised. Joy overflowing. 

No sermon was preached. No choir sang. And yet everyone seemed to understand—they had just witnessed glory.

There was no steeple, but creation took us to church.

Creation does that. It speaks. It preaches. Not in paragraphs but in beauty. In rhythms, grandeur, and grace. “The heavens are telling the glory of God,” Psalm 19 says. “The skies proclaim God’s handiwork.”

And so today, as we think about creation care, we are going to do so not through scolding, guilt, and moralistic pressure. It’s not about guilt. It’s about remembering why we care in the first place. Why Christians, of all people, should be among the most wonderstruck—and therefore the most watchful—when it comes to this world.

Because before the earth is a problem to be solved, it is a gift to be received. Before it’s a project, it’s praise, and praise always comes first.

The Voice of Creation – Psalm 19:1-4

Psalm 19 says that creation has a voice, but it doesn’t begin with a demand. It begins with a declaration. The skies aren’t scolding us. They’re singing.

The psalmist says that creation has a voice, even without speech. Day after day, night after night, the created world is pouring out wordless praise. It’s preaching a sermon older than any of ours. And what does it say? Not “do better.” Not “Feel guilty.” It says: God is glorious. God is generous. God is here.

And most people—whether they believe in God or not—have felt that sermon. That’s why people take engagement photos at the Grand Canyon, why families scatter ashes at the ocean, and why kids of all ages stare in awe when they see a rainbow in the sky. Something in us recognizes the sacred in beauty. We have a connection to nature that is deeper than sight. It is love. 

What We Already Know – Romans 1:19-20

“For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them . . . “

Paul, writing to the early Christians in Rome, echoes an ancient truth: even those who’ve never opened Scripture have access to the open revelation of God in nature. The world itself is a kind of scripture—what John Calvin once called “the theatre of God’s glory.” Nature isn’t God, but it isn’t silent about God either.

Creation tells the truth about God, not by force, but by splendor. The stars don’t argue, the trees don’t preach, and the oceans don’t plead. Yet, all of them proclaim.

And this is a good starting point. We should value creation because it talks to us about God. Just as we reverence Scripture as sacred revelation, so too we can honor creation—another form of God’s self-expression.

That can inform how we interact with creation. This isn’t moralistic environmentalism. It’s worshipful stewardship.

But here’s where we need care. Paul also warns that humans suppress what we know. We forget. We distort. We distract ourselves. We worship the created instead of the Creator.

And in our culture, that suppression can show up in two extremes.

-On the one hand, apathy: the feeling that this world is disposable, that pollution and ecological harm are worth it every time because we need to feed our desire to consume or to have higher stock prices.

-On the other hand, panic: the belief that everything depends on our frantic efforts to fix it.

Both miss the point. Paul reminds us: God is not hiding. Creation is not mute. And so we are not alone in the work of healing.

So we care for the world not because we’re saviors of it, but because it’s been speaking to us of its Savior all along.

If creation reveals God’s glory, then what does it mean to live as someone entrusted with that glory?

The First Command: Genesis 2:15

I want to now talk about the next step. We appreciate earth as a gift, now how do we steward it well as part of our life and worship? Well, it’s likely no accident that the opening pages of Scripture begins with humans in a garden.

In Genesis 2 we read, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. 

This is the Bible’s first job description. Before sin. Before commandments. Before covenants. The human calling is to care.

The Hebrew verbs used to speak of tilling and keeping are not about domination. They are about serving the land and guarding it. The same words are used later to describe how priests care for the temple. That’s what Eden was: a sanctuary without walls where we commune with God.

Tilling and keeping the garden is how we live our spiritual lives in the temple of the world, not apart from it. Creation care is soul care. Ecological health is human health.

This matters, especially for people who feel overwhelmed. So many times we hear well-intentioned advocates say, “You need to modify this, this, and this about your life,” and some of us are so stressed and busy with career, caring for family members, trying to maintain our own health that we say, “I can’t. I’m out.”

But this passage about tending and caring reminds you that not every ecological hero carries a posterboard and a Sharpie. Caring for creation doesn’t have to be heroic. It can be as simple as tending. Honoring. Noticing. Choosing not to waste. Choosing not to look away. Small steps are still steps.

It's one step at a time. Do what you can now. Normalize it in your life. And then take the next step. We all walk at different paces, but we walk in the same garden. Any step you can take in caring is improvement.

This is too important to do perfectly. Anything worth doing is worth doing imperfectly. Learn as you go.

Creation’s Kindness

We don’t care for the earth out of shame. We care because through the earth we’ve been cared for.

The hills have fed us. The rivers and streams quench our thirst. The trees have sheltered us. The morning sun has pulled us out of despair more times than we can count.

Creation has been so kind to us. And kindness calls something positive out of us. It’s as if Creation itself is a good Presbyterian –it leads us not to guilt but to gratitude. Not pressure but praise.

So whether or not we can put up solar panels –and maybe today your attention and heart has been grabbed by that—whether or not we can compost or drive a hybrid, what matters first is not how we care, but why we care. We care because we love the Giver.

We care because we believe God is not done blessing this world.

The hills are still speaking.

They speak when no one is listening. They sing when no one is watching, but how much so when someone is.

Maybe that’s the call today: not to fix everything, but to face it. To look and listen again. To remember the sunset hush. The gift we’re standing on. The sermon beneath our feet.

The world is not just our responsibility. It’s our reminder.

It reminds us that glory is not a concept—it’s something you can feel in your chest when the wind stills and the sky burns orange, red, pink, and yellow. It reminds us that faith doesn’t just come from words but from the wonder of the world.

So walk in this world.

Watch closely.

The world is not waiting to be saved by us. It’s waiting to be noticed.

And wherever you go this week – may you go like someone who has heard the sermon the hills are preaching.