For Evensong at St Michael & All Angels, Headingley, 8 February 2026.
Text: Psalm 148, Proverbs 8:22-31 & Revelation 4:1-11
Featured image: One of a series of miniature paintings depicting St Francis and all creation praising God. Artist unknown.
This evening, I would like to offer some thoughts on all our Bible readings, starting with Psalm 148. Like many of the psalms, it focuses on praising God. What I find interesting is that in calling God’s creatures to praise him, it covers all aspects of the created order. Angels, stars, sun and moon; rain, snow and wind (we have certainly seen much of that recently!); mountains and trees; all animals whether in the air, on the earth or under the sea; and of course all people, whether royalty or ordinary adults and children.
What is creation called to praise God for? The psalm only gives two reasons: the excellence of God’s name, and the fact that he has created them. This may seem a circular argument: God creates something, then calls on it to praise him for having created it. But this seems to be at the heart of what creation means.
We cannot begin to imagine what almighty God does other than create the universe that we happen to live in, but for us at least, God seems to exist only to create the world, to sustain it, and to relate to it. All too many people still think of God as some kind of heavenly lawmaker, policeman and judge rolled into one: ‘thou shalt not do that, thou hast done that, thou shalt suffer for that’. But a true understanding of God is very different from that. God made all that is, seen and unseen, with a view to living in loving relationship with it. Not just with men and women, but with everything else – animals, plants, hills, stars and anything else we can imagine. Humanity is part of that creation, and God longs to be in relationship with us. We see that in the wording of the creation stories in Genesis. Each day, God says ‘let something be’. It comes into being, God sees it and calls it ‘good’. Everything in creation is good, and works together.
At the heart of that creation-relationship is praise. A well known 17th century document called the ‘Westminster catechism’ starts by declaring that "Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever." 'Enjoy' is used here in the sense of appreciating something's existence for its own sake, rather than seeking to use it for our own purposes.[1] It is no coincidence that many environmental campaigners (religious or not) emphasise the interconnectedness of all things, because that is what God intended. All of God’s creation is to be enjoyed, like God himself, for its very existence, its very goodness.
But we all know from experience that many things prevent us from enjoying God’s presence and praising him at all times. Chief among those is our own sin. I’m thinking here of sin, again not as a transgression against God’s laws (though it can include that), but the self-centredness and preoccupation with our own lives that constantly turns our attention away from our creator. Sin can also mean the ways in which we break the interdependence of nature, the goodness of the created order. Perhaps by the way we treat other people, or animals, or the world around us, as things to be used rather than things or persons made for God’s praise. We need something, or someone, to bridge that gap, to keep us constantly in touch with God.
Let’s turn to the reading from the book of Proverbs, one of many parts of that book that speaks of Wisdom. The prologue to the Proverbs in chapter 1 lists some of the qualities of a ‘wise’ person. They include righteousness, justice, equity, shrewdness, and prudence. These are the qualities we need when enjoying creation for its own sake and not misusing it. ‘Wisdom’ is therefore something more like the contemporary concepts of ‘life skills’ or ‘emotional intelligence’ – how to succeed in dealing with other people, rather than the knowledge needed for an exam.
Wisdom (capital ‘W’) is presented in the Jewish wisdom literature as a personification of these ‘life skills’ or ‘emotional intelligence’. Such qualities are often associated more with women than men, so it is not surprising that Wisdom is a female figure in the book of Proverbs. She is presented, astonishingly, as having existed before Creation itself. It is for that reason that Christians have often understood her to be the personification of the Holy Spirit, or of the Word of God who became incarnate in Jesus, who is acknowledged in the Nicene Creed as ‘begotten, not made ... through him all things were made’.
So, we begin to see that there is a two-way flow going on here. Wisdom is from God, and was involved with the creation, but she also works within us to give us the life skills that might make us better able to relate to other people, and therefore to God himself. If we think that we lack the ability to praise God as we ought – and I’m not talking here about singing ability, but the praise of the heart – then we should ask for an encounter with that divine Wisdom. Wisdom – whether we understand her as being the Word of God, the Spirit of God, or something different (but certainly of God and from God) – will mediate God’s love to us as she did at the start of creation, and will mediate our unworthy praise back to God.
I am reminded of Mary and her great song of praise that we always sing at Evensong: ‘My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour’. This was her immediate response to being filled with that divine Spirit of wisdom as the Christ was conceived in her, a wisdom that alone made her fit to be the God-bearer and to raise His son to adulthood. The Creator become part of the creation, and through his earthly mother offering back all creation’s praise to the Father.
Let’s now bring in our third Bible passage today, from the book of Revelation. This brings a new dimension to our thoughts about praising God. When John had his vision of heaven opened and God the Almighty sitting on his throne, he also saw God being worshipped by the elders of Israel, and by four animals. Those four beasts have traditionally been taken as symbols of the four Gospel writers, and maybe so. But it surely also reminds us that as in the Psalms, not only humans, but all of creation is called to praise God. Heaven, of course, is not just something that exists in the future, but as a parallel and greater reality that is unseen but all around us.
There is an interesting detail, though, in John’s vision. ‘Between the Throne and myself was a sea that seemed to be made of glass, like crystal’. [2] Crystal, I presume, stands for purity. There is an uncrossable sea of purity between our impure selves and the eternal God. Are we doomed forever to stand on this side of it? No, thank God, for he has sent his Son to redeem us. The following chapters of John’s Revelation go on to describe how Jesus, the Lamb who was slain, was alone found worthy to enable all living things in all creation to praise God completely, honourably, and for ever.[3] This, too, is something that is happening not just once on earth but constantly in heaven. All of nature is constantly praising God, and when we do so ourselves, we are merely joining in with that eternal song of praise: ‘Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come’.
So our praise, be it silent or spoken, is never offered in isolation. It must go hand in hand with our honouring of all of God’s creation – our fellow humans, creatures, plants and everything else that God has made for his praise. Let us pray for the Wisdom of God to enter into us once more, to turn our hearts to praise God for all that he has made and is constantly renewing.
Amen.
[1] https://www.greystoneinstitute.org/greystone-conversations/ep31
[2] Revelation 4:6, Jerusalem Bible
[3] Revelation 5:13