sermons

Something New

A Theology of Creation – Ours and God’s

Steve Watson

May 10, 2026

The sanctuary that we’re in right now – or that we’re watching online – was built nearly 125 years ago by the French Canadian immigrants who established their own Catholic parish here. And a lot of those founders who built this church worked in the area’s brick-making industry. I wonder if they built this church with the very bricks they made with their own hands. We are so grateful for what they built. Thank God for the work of those who came before us.

Now a lot of that brick-making industry centered around a big clay pit down the street, right next to the New England Brick Company factory that operated in some form for about a 100 years. 

That clay pit must have been a really loud and dirty and messy place. I bet that generations of workers came home with the stains and the smell of that place on their clothes, like I used to come home from my shifts as a waiter at Denny’s when I was 17, stained with catsup and reeking of cigarette smoke.

After the brick company closed in 1952, the city used the cite as a dump. 

People in cities make a lot of trash, and American people in American cities make an especially large amount of trash, and it all needs to go somewhere to get compacted and piled up or buried or burned. And for a couple decades, until the early 70’s, a lot of Cambridge’s trash went to the old clay pit – now the city dump – just down the street from here. 

It must have been about as loud and dirty as it ever was as a clay pit. And I can imagine how the smell would have carried around the neighborhood on a hot, humid, windy day. Our spiritual ancestors in this room might have  prayed their prayers sometimes with the reek of garbage floating through the windows just a little bit. Thank God for incense.

Around the time I was born, the MBTA was starting to expand the Red Line south to Quincy and north up here to Davis and Alewife, and they needed a construction staging area, and a cite to dump their dirt and debris. And so the city moved their dump elsewhere, probably trucking waste outside of town, and let the MBTA use the old clay pit and city dump for construction waste until they were done by the mid-80’s.

And then Cambridge had this huge chunk of land with mounds of old clay, mining debris, trash, dirt, and junk and had to decide what to do with this messy, dirty pile of land.

And what they did is this:

They built the biggest city park in Cambridge, full of walking paths and athletic fields, and grass, and wetlands, and playgrounds, and public art, and a dense forest of native shrubs and trees. It is really so beautiful. 

I hope you’ve been there before. It’s called Danehy Park, just across the train tracks from our sanctuary. I’ve walked and talked there with many of you, because it’s a beautiful place for that. It’s a green treasure, really, for play and rest and memory making and oxygen making. 

And given all the other things this land was before it was transformed into a park, it’s an incredible story of redemption and of new creation. All that is possible when together we say yes to God’s calls to ever-increasing creativity, novelty, and beauty. All that is possible when we partner together in new creation.

 This Mother’s Day, during our spring series Something New on co-creating with God, I want to thank God for everyone and everything that has co-created life for us, and I want to encourage us all to look for and step into our many opportunities to be co-creators and re-recreators as well.

We know something about this. Because ever creating and recreating is what our moms did for us, to the best of their ability. To be a mother is to co-create life with God, after all. And even when it wasn’t our moms who did this, it was other nurturers in our lives. No matter how blessed or bleak your childhood and young adult years, I am sure that at least sometimes, someone was noticing you as you were and looking to encourage and nurture the best that was possible there. 

Someone’s done this for you, and most likely, if you’ve learned to be a nurturer at all – whether you’re a mom or a dad or a teacher or a friend, or a partner or mentor to someone else at all, you’ve tried to do this as well. To notice the way things are in someone or something, and be a part of nurturing and recreating something more. 

A great example for us is the most famous mother in our faith tradition, Mother Mary. I want to notice Mother Mary as an example of partnering with God in recreation, ever creation, creation out of the depths, as a model for our personal lives.

And then I want to end with a call and a prayer for recreation in our public lives – in the great cultures and systems that are decreating our societies and our earth as we speak.

Mother Mary is the 5th most named person in the Bible’s biographies of the life of Jesus, and her story begins with some very strange circumstances her life offers her. 

Luke 1:38 (Common English Bible)

38 Then Mary said, “I am the Lord’s servant. Let it be with me just as you have said.” Then the angel left her.

Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be.

God invited Mary into a life she hadn’t been looking for – an untimely pregnancy, too soon, too young, too much responsibility. The beginnings of her family life on very different terms than she would have wanted, a lifetime of rumors and scandal. Impossibly beautiful and holy upside, to bear and birth and nurture a child of God with a powerful call upon his life. But no doubt impossibly heart-wrenching challenges and loss as well.

Mary’s call was utterly unique in one sense, but also a kind of magnified version of every parent’s call. 

This will be inconvenient and it will cost your body and your heart and your resources more than you might imagine. You aren’t good enough. You will fail. But it can also be glorious and good beyond words. Will you say yes?

And Mary says:

Yes, let it be.

She gives consent to the possibility of co-creation with God. 

To re-create takes our consent to what is now today – however hard, however de-created, as well as to what is possible tomorrow – however unlikely. 

To be part of recreation takes realism and hope. It takes acceptance and dreams, and the will to be part of making them so. 

Luke 2:21-22 (Common English Bible)

21 When eight days had passed, Jesus’ parents circumcised him and gave him the name Jesus. This was the name given to him by the angel before he was conceived.

22 When the time came for their ritual cleansing, in accordance with the Law from Moses, they brought Jesus up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord. 

Mary prays for Jesus, and along with her husband Joseph, she dedicates/baptizes him in the temple, her version of our child dedication or baptism in the church.

She’s nurturing the small seeds of what is possible. Asking for God’s help and support, and the help and support of her community. 

There’s no recreative power without faithfulness in small beginnings. 

If your mamma prayed for you, or sang to you, or read to you, then someone was faithful to the creative possibilities of your life. Somebody fed you, or you wouldn’t have made it to where you are today. And somebody has loved you – however imperfectly – or you wouldn’t be in this room today either. Thank God to everyone who has been faithful in our small beginnings. 

And friends, when we are faithful in small beginnings, we stay open to playing a part in God’s great creative possibilities. No dream, no change, no great deed or love story ever happens without showing up the first and second time, writing down the first and second word, trying again after we’ve failed, praying for help when we don’t have enough.

John 2:1-5 (Common English Bible)

1 On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee. Jesus’ mother was there, and

2 Jesus and his disciples were also invited to the celebration.

3 When the wine ran out, Jesus’ mother said to him, “They don’t have any wine.”

4 Jesus replied, “Woman, what does that have to do with me? My time hasn’t come yet.”

5 His mother told the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”

Jesus grows up, but he’s living a quiet life, a private life, until this. Mary encourages something more beautiful. She’s a holy nudge in her son’s life. She gives that little push out of the nest.

Do what he tells you. My son’s got a light that’s got to shine. 

I want to know what neighbors around here smelled that trash heap and thought, you know what would be great on this site – a green, garden paradise. Or what Cambridge bureaucrat looked at that dump of an MBTA storage mound and thought: I see soccer fields. We can do it.

We don’t create out of nothing. Ever. We re-create out of something that came before. Which is mostly how God creates and re-creates as well.

If we’ve got a century’s worth of trash and toxins on a 50 acre spot of urban land, we don’t pray – God, make it go away. Make it clean. Make it beautiful.

That would be asking for God to create something out of nothing. And we don’t think God or us works that way. So instead, we might pray – God, can you inspire us for what’s possible here, and give us the resources and creativity and strength to make it so. 

And together, we recreate those 50 acres into Danehy Park. That’s creation out of the depths. That is ever creation. Transforming what is fallow, or even what has been torn apart through decreation, through beautiful acts of recreation. 

This is what our Ever Creator God does. And it is one of the highest calls for humanity as well – to join God in ever-creation. To look at the stuff in our land and our lives and our cultures that has lain fallow or has been torn about through decreation, and with the help of God and friends, to recreate it into something new and beautiful. 

Friends, so much in our lives looks plain and ordinary or maybe worse. Used up, wasted, unremarkable. And so much in our world looks the same – kind of unremarkable nothing, or maybe used and torn down – decreated. Re-creation sees differently. Re-creation sees holy possibilities in everyone, and everywhere, and everything. 

And since it’s hard to do this for ourselves – see the holy possibilities in our own tired lives, I suggest we try to be like Mother Mary – and see it in someone else every day. Be the holy nudge that encourages someone else’s good work and small beginnings and holy possibilities. 

We need a lot more of us saying:

I see you, I believe in you, you’ve got this, I’m proud of you. 

Because without faith in God and faith in ourselves and faith in one another, we don’t get much re-creation. Thank God for whoever has mothered and encouraged our possibilities – we can do it for someone else too. 

Mark 3:20-21, 31-32 (Common English Bible)

20 Jesus entered a house. A crowd gathered again so that it was impossible for him and his followers even to eat.

21 When his family heard what was happening, they came to take control of him. They were saying, “He’s out of his mind!”

31 His mother and brothers arrived. They stood outside and sent word to him, calling for him.

32 A crowd was seated around him, and those sent to him said, “Look, your mother, brothers, and sisters are outside looking for you.”

Sometimes we can exert too much voice, too much control, and faith means stepping back and trusting people to themselves and trusting them to God. 

Here Mary and the rest of Jesus’ family learns a hard lesson, that they don’t understand the path that Jesus is on and how he’s walking it. Here Mother Mary learns she has to adapt to young adult Jesus. She has to direct less. And she has to listen and accompany more. 

That’s a hard lesson for every parent as our kids go through the teen and young adult years. To keep showing up, to keep accompanying, but to talk less and listen more, to trust people to themselves and to God, whether or not it looks like it’s going well.

To say:

I’m here for you, but to be OK when your help doesn’t seem wanted. 

Mary gets it, though. Like a good parent, like a good leader or boss or coach too, she’s able to lean in but also to lean back, which is why she’s still welcome, still there at the end of things, or at least what seemed like it was the end of things, as her son was crucified.

John 19:25 (Common English Bible)

25 Jesus’ mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene stood near the cross.

A stranger in the temple once told Mary that because of this special son of hers, a sword will pierce her heart. And here it does, as a sword pierces the heart of her son. Every child’s wound is a parent’s wound too. Because when we’re parents, a piece of our hearts stay with our kids forever. 

And so being a co-creator means suffering. There’s no other way. And sometimes suffering isn’t redemptive at all. It’s just pain.

But sometimes suffering and death are the compost of new life, and so it is here. Since Jesus’ death on the cross had power for reversal and new life almost no one saw coming. 

An image of love, a human and divine act of solidarity, a Roman attempt to shame a victim which ends up so shaming the empire that this crucifixion becomes the seed of which this very practice is banned and eliminated. Jesus is writing a story with God that will teach forgiveness and redemption and God’s recreative power even over death. 

And again, for Mary and Jesus, this is very much a unique story, but it’s not the only version of this story. 

In smaller ways, when we walk with people and suffer with them and stay with them when things are heard, we never know what might be true on the other side of the trouble. And that’s true when we let people suffer with us and walk with us as well. 

Friends, I share and celebrate Mother Mary’s beautiful story of co-creating with God today because I want us to celebrate the life in our bones and the possibilities in our tomorrows and to give thanks to every mother and every co-creative force who has been part of our stories in the past.

Thank you God for everyone who has believed in us, who has walked with us, who has suffered with us, who has taught us and trusted us and encouraged us.

And I share and celebrate Mother Mary’s beautiful story of co-creating with God because I want us to believe that we are called to this kind of nurturing love as well, and whether we are young or old, or have children or not, or whether we are anyone’s mentor or boss or friend or not, it is meant to be part of our story.

It is part of our birthright and call as human beings to co-create and re-create with God, our Ever Creator, who creates out of the depths, and who nurtures holy possibilities out of ever fallow field and every torn down dump of a clay pit, and every life on earth – however shiny and hopeful it looks or not. 

You, my friends, are God’s co-creative partners in all this. 

Someone and somethings, no doubt a few someones and somethings, need your part in their story to encourage them, to pray for them, to build them up too. 

And friends, our country needs this too. Badly. 

250th Anniversary of the United States

In less than two months, this country is going to celebrate its 250th anniversary. 

And friends, one thing that almost all of us agree on these days is that we are not in great shape.

I think of the era of my birth, just before this country’s 200th birthday, and there was plenty that was bad in this country then. The early 70’s were not a time of big national hope and optimism. They were tumultuous and violent times. 

And yet, I look back and see all this re-creation that was going on in that era. 

• The Clean Air and Clean Water acts had just been passed.
• The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act was passed.
• The Equal Rights Amendment passed in both houses of Congress, even if all the states didn’t ratify it in the end. 
• And in 1965, one of the crowning achievements of the Black Freedom Movement in America that we call the Civil Rights struggle was passed – the voting rights act, which guaranteed equal access to voting and equal access to federal representation for all American citizens, regardless of race.

There was a sense that we were taking our nation’s founding promises seriously – of flourishing and justice for all the people, all the people.

And yet here we are, on the verge of this country’s 250th anniversary, and every one of the things I just mentioned is being put at risk, blocked and undone by federal reductions, modifications, lack of oversight, and active sabotage. Sometimes it feels like we’re living in this great age of civic decreation, where apathy and racism and fear and resentment and mean-spirited, cruel attacks are undoing so much hardfought promise and possibility in this country, still struggling after 250 years to fulfill its promises to itself and all of us. 

And friends, moments of attack and de-creation like this look like someone heaping big dumptruck loads of trash on the park we thought we were making. They look like our tender child we’ve been nurturing is getting put on the road to his crucifixion. 

These days feel like moments of despair – times to move away or just stay put and give up. 

But my hope is we can shed our tears and feel our fears and shout our frustrations when we need to, but then partner with one another and God again in re-creation. To be people who, when others tear down, say we’re going to be on the team that builds up. 

I don’t know how we re-create democracy after these times of white supremacist, autocratic rule. But I know people are organizing. This past week many thousands of leaders from the churches of America’s largest Black church denominations gathered together on calls to start organizing for the mobilization and representation of Black voters. To insist that while the Supreme Court can tear apart the Voting Rights Act and try to tear apart our communities, we will not go silently and just yield to the erasure of the Black vote in America.

And I don’t know exactly what this is going to ask from us and how we can participate yet, but friends, I know that I don’t want to just shrug my shoulders and do nothing, when my Black Christian brothers and sisters call upon our votes, our voices, our bodies to participate in this struggle. 

Building a beautiful park out of a dump, nurturing the life and call of a child – even a child like Jesus – may seem like small things compared to re-creating a tottering nation. 

But I like to imagine some of the same ingredients are there:

• Honesty about the way things are today
• A vision for the future we want to see, that we think God would want to see.
• A belief that if things have changed before, then things can change again
• And enough faith, hope, and love that we keep showing up and keep doing our part.

These days, I’m not hopeful for this country of ours. I’m not. But for most of us, it’s the only one we’ve got. 

And after all, It is part of our birthright and call as human beings to co-create and re-create with God, our Ever Creator, who creates out of the depths, and who nurtures holy possibilities out of ever fallow field and every torn down dump of a clay pit, and every life on earth – however shiny and hopeful it looks or not. 

We, friends, are God’s co-creative partners in all this. 

And this country certainly needs our part to encourage them, to pray for it, and to build it up to something better.