Festival of Creation in Christ: Archbishop preaches at Selby Abbey

Archbishop Stephen was at Selby Abbey today to preach during the service to celebrate the newly created Festival of Christ in Creation. His sermon follows in full.

"All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people." (John 1. 3-4)

New festivals don't appear in the Christian calendar that often. But today is one such occasion: the first time in the Church of England that we have celebrated this Festival of Creation in Christ.

Its origins can be traced back to the Jewish feast of Rosh Hashanah, celebrating creation and marking the beginning of the new year, which this year begins at sundown on 11 September and ends at dawn on 13 September.  

In ancient times this time of year marked the beginning of the agricultural year. We are, after all, entering into the season of our own much loved harvest festivals. In Roman-Byzantine times it was the beginning of the civil and fiscal year.

You might also be interested to know that the Byzantine “Creation Era” calendar (Anno Mundi system) used by the Ecumenical Patriarchate from the 7th to the 18th century, stated that the cosmos was created on September 1, 5509 BC!

This tradition of celebrating the creation at the beginning of September lives on in the east. On 1 September 1989, the Ecumenical Patriarch Demetrios invited the entire Christian world to offer “every year on this day prayers and supplications to the Maker of all, both as thanksgiving for the great gift of Creation and as petitions for its protection and salvation.” This invitation began the process of the ‘Institution of the World Day of Prayer for Creation’.

In recognising the climate emergency we now are living through, in seeing creation care as central to the Christian vocation, and in giving thanks to God the creator - and therefore the Triune God as creator and therefore of creation in and through Christ, the Church of the east has always been ahead of the church in the West.

After his election in 1991, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew convened an ecological gathering in Crete, opened by Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, and in the following year, Patriarch Bartholomew called a meeting of all Orthodox Patriarchs and Primates, inviting all Orthodox leaders to inform their churches about the critical significance of this issue for our times.

The World Day of Prayer for Creation was endorsed by the Conference of European Churches (KEK) and CCEE (Council of Catholic Bishops' Conferences of Europe) in 1997, and by the World Council of Churches in 2002.

In 2015, Pope Francis issued his encyclical Laudato si' (24 May 2015) focusing on care for the natural environment and for all people. It is movingly addressed to “every living person on this planet” and is another key part of this ongoing dialogue in the Church and with the wider world, recognising the ecological and the ecumenical significance of creation care.

In March 2024, an ecumenical conference in Assisi explored the vision of elevating the World Day of Prayer for Creation into a liturgical feast or festival shared across Western Christian denominations with a common calendar. The Anglican Communion was well-represented.

Thus it is that the Liturgical Commission of the Church of England prepared resources A Time for Creation | The Church of England for the observance of this feast.

They were officially accepted and incorporated into the Church of England’s calendar at the General Synod meeting in York in July 2026.

And so, we are here, celebrating this new festival.  As A Time for Creation puts it, this new Festival is ‘an ecumenical gift’ and that ‘the desire for a worldwide Christian feast of this kind has emerged through significant conversation amongst churches, drawing especially on the ancient and continuing witness of the Christian east and on a growing common desire of western churches to honour God as Creator more intentionally in their calendars. The Church of England’s reception of the Festival belongs within that wider Christian discernment. It is a sign that the doctrine of creation can unite Christians in praise even as it summons them together to renewed responsibility for the life of the world.

‘The need for such prayer is plain. We live at a time when the beauty, abundance and interdependence of the world are both more visible to us and more threatened by us. But a Christian understanding of how to react to the challenges of our age must begin with praise for what God has done in creation, and in the new creation in Christ. The new Festival invites the Church to recover the doctrine of creation as a living source of worship. Creation is the gracious act by which God gives being to all things, the continuing generosity by which God sustains all things, and the theatre in which the mystery of Christ is revealed. The Father is maker of heaven and earth; the eternal Word is the one through whom all things were made; the Holy Spirit is the giver of life. When the Church celebrates creation in Christ, it is drawn into the praise of the Holy Trinity.

‘In the risen Christ the new creation has already begun: our broken world is being renewed, and creation itself waits with eager longing for the glorious liberty of the children of God. The Church looks back to the beginning, beholds the world held together in Christ, and looks forward to the renewal of all things in him. Without that last intention, care for creation can become anxious, burdensome or moralistic. With it, such care becomes an act of hope, a sign of reconciliation, and a participation in the renewing work of God.’

Only last month in his Message of the Holy Father on the occasion of the 11th World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation [1 September 2026] (15 August 2026), Pope Leo spoke of the ‘path of ecological conversion’ and said ‘the effects of our encounter with Jesus Christ become evident in our relationship with the world around us’. That we should ‘imagine a world in which the energies currently invested in war are directed towards human development, overcoming poverty, protecting human dignity and reconciling divided peoples’, and that ‘we allow our hearts to be renewed, so that we might seek peace and care for creation’.

This is what this Festival is about. This is why it is so important.

In 1981, the Japanese sociologist Yoneji Masuda wrote that the coming Information Society, what we now call the digital age, whether it be for good or for ill, what he called a computopia, or a compudystopia, both had this in common: ‘the path towards them had already led humanity to neglect the need for coexistence with nature while our impact on nature had grown immeasurably’.  

In other words - and we can see this so clearly today in devastating forest fires, in flood and drought, in melting ice and consequential mudslides, in the mass migration of peoples, in conflicts over water, in so much rapid and existential change that the increased automation and digitization of the world that has arisen from other so-called advances  - we no longer have that close relationship with the land which has, for most of human history, been so much a part of who we are and how we understand ourselves. And in neglecting the need for coexistence with nature we are even failing to notice the terrible impact we are having on nature itself.

Or as is probably the case today, we see the impact all too clearly, but have stopped believing anything can change and simply opt to pull up the drawbridge on our neighbours in other even more environmentally devastated parts of the world, not able to find the political will to do what must be done.

We need the hopeful vision that People Leo speaks of and that this important new Festival bears witness to.

The creation has its being in and through Christ. ‘In him,’ says St. Paul to the Colossians, ‘all things in heaven and on earth were created... through him and for him.’ (Colossians 1. 16)  It is his planet, not ours. ‘What has come into being in him,’ says St John, ‘is life. And this life is the light for all people.’ (John 1. 4) His teaching and his way of peace can, therefore, show us how to live sustainably on the earth, and although the path towards a greener and more sustainable way of inhabiting the earth isn't easy, actually the way is clear. We see it and receive it in Christ.

Let us therefore through the celebration of this Festival commit ourselves afresh to walk lightly and peaceably in the way of Christ, for we are his creation.

His light shines in the darkness, even the darkness of environmental catastrophe. And the darkness cannot overcome it. (see John 1. 5)