Anticipating the Feast of Creation in Christ

Creator, you have wonderfully fashioned the heavens and the earth and us in your own image. 

Teach us to discern your hand in all your works and your breath in all creatures that we may be of service in the healing of the earth, 

through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, through whom you breathe all creation into being. Amen.

 In a few days many Christian denominations around the world will enter into the Season of Creation/ Creation Time/ Creationtide. The different terms for this liturgical period from September 1 to October 4 reflect the different approaches to this period, even as the commitment to observing a time of reflection and celebration has grown. 

This year the first day of September or the first Sunday of the month will be observed as the Feast of Creation in Christ as an even broader ecumenical celebration and the United Church of Canada will join in: 

At the 2026 annual meeting of the Consultation on Common Texts (CCT), held April 20–21 at the headquarters of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship in Decatur, Georgia, an ecumenical working group’s vision came to fruition of a new festival celebrating God’s role in Creation in the church calendar. The feast, which would be added to the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL), is the fruit of an ecumenical process convened by the World Council of Churches (WCC), the Middle East Council of Churches (MECC), and various Christian world communions in recent years. 

I really like the scripture passages chosen for the three years of the lectionary cycle and the titles given for each of those years. I have included many of these readings in blog entries over the past 20 years:

Year A Holy Trinity, Creator’s many faces 

Proverbs 8:22-31 Psalm 33:1-9 Colossians 1:15-20 John 1:1-5 

Year B Creator and Creation, Genesis to Revelation 

Genesis 1:1-5 or up to full chapter or Genesis 2:4b-14 Psalm 148 Rev 22:1-5 Mark 1:9-13 

Year C Creator’s economy of abundance and web of relationships 

Job 38:4-11, 39-41 or Isaiah 40:12-17, 21-26 Psalm 104: 1-4, (10-13), 14-24 Romans 8:18-27 Luke 12.22-34

Since the 7th century, September 1 has symbolized the day of God’s creation of the world in the Byzantine tradition and has been the opening feast and "the beginning" of their liturgical year (in a parallel with the feast of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year). 

A series of ecumenical conferences, known as ‘The Assisi Process,’ has explored that rich theological symbolism and the potential of the ‘Feast of Creation in Christ’ to enrich the Christological nature of non-Byzantine liturgical calendars. In short, the feast contains four interrelated themes: (1) Creation as God’s creative act, (2) Creation as Christological mystery, (3) Creation as Trinitarian mystery, and (4) Creation as sacramental and covenantal.