Let the Earth Rejoice

“God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,

so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

John 3:16, NRSV

As a child I sometimes wondered why, among all the holidays and holy days in the year, Christmas seems to involve the most animals and outdoor scenes.

Easter gets a bunny, eggs, a few butterflies, and baskets full of plastic grass. Meanwhile, year after year Christmas crèches, greeting cards, churches, homes, and places of business are bedecked in snow and starry nights, braying donkeys and baby-gazing oxen, trees and pine boughs and magi on camels silhouetted against a setting sun.

What is it about Christmas that draws the attention of the whole creation? Can it be that the Word become flesh somehow hallows every created thing and the whole world – the entire cosmos – responds with praise?

That most familiar of passages says it so quietly that it’s easy to overlook: God so loved the world (Greek: “κόσμον” = kosmon = cosmos) that God gave his only son. As it turns out, Christmas is not just about us humans; it’s about God’s love for the whole cosmos.

Cataloochee National Park, North Carolina

Listen carefully to the scripture readings during the four weeks of Advent, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Listen especially to the readings from the Older Testament and the Psalms. Listen deeply for references to sun and moon, animals and plants, fields and trees. Every part of creation is called to attention, is promised redemption, and offers praise. In fact, if you listen carefully and make a list of the references to creation that you hear these holy days, I am confident that by Christmas Day your list will be longer than the most ambitious child’s list for Santa.

Then, let your listening move you to look. Take a break from the season’s busyness to look around your days, every Advent one of them. Look for the ways that God comes to you in and through every ordinary bit of creation…like family and friends, animals in the house and outside the window, swaying trees and blustery snow, wrapped gifts and tinseled trees, rising sun and glowing moon, bread and wine and water and word. In ways so ordinary it’s easy to overlook, God draws near, whispering love, working wonder, Emmanuel, God with us.

Having listened and looked, then lift your voice and with “all the world give back the song which now the angels sing.”[1]

Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice;

let the sea roar, and all that fills it;

let the field exult, and everything in it.

Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy before the Lord;

for he is coming.

Psalm 96 (appointed for Christmas Eve)

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[1] “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear” (v. 4) #282 Evangelical Lutheran Worship