The focus of the Service is the Great Blessing of Water. According to the rubric of the Service, after the celebration of the Eucharist, the entire congregation processes to a body of water. After recounting the great works of God evident in the creation, the waters are exorcised, and a blessing in the name of the Trinity is pronounced over them. Water, as the prime element of creation, stands symbolically for the whole of creation as it does in the first chapter of Genesis. And through the sanctification of the waters, the entire creation is now made holy. It becomes capable again of being a means for communion with the Creator.
Matter is not viewed instrumentally. Water and all of creation is restored to its original nature, uncorrupted by the effect of sin. There is no theology of "transubstantiation" where grace is being added to matter in order that it become something supernatural. Rather, the blessing of the water restores its natural and original properties. The purposes for which one would normally use water are the very same as those for which the blessed water is used: washing, drinking, and cleansing. However, the intended objective of Jesus' baptism is deeper than a simple restoration of the pristine beauty. It is the restoration of harmony within creation, and between the creation and the Creator. It is redemption.
There are three categories of hymns specifically relevant to this discussion. The first describes the restoration and liberation of creation by Christ's baptism in the Jordan. The second describes the creation's participation in the work of salvation. And the third expresses the joy all creation feels toward the Creator and his great economy.
Fr. Schmemann in Of Water and the Spirit notes that: "the liberation of [the hu]man begins with the liberation, i.e. the purification and redemption of matter, its restoration to its original function: to be a means of God's presence and, therefore, to be a protection and defense against the destructive 'demonic' reality." In one hymn we read that "the prince of this, world ... is choked and destroyed" by Christ's baptism by which he has "granted freedom ... to the creation which he [the devil] had enslaved." In a troparion of the Forefeast Kanon, the significance of the Divine Economy of the Incarnation is explained, but along with it the effect that this has on the entirety of creation. "The earth has been sanctified, O Word, by Your holy birth, and the heavens with the stars declared Your glory; and now the nature of the waters is blessed by your baptism in the flesh, and humankind has been restored once more to its former nobility." Another troparion says that "the Word who preserves all things has cleansed the creation in the flowing waters.'
Another theme is the salvation of the non-human elements of creation which is necessarily prior, or rather is the proper starting-point, for the salvation of humans. This is not to posit a separation between human and environment, rather it fits the conception of creation as an organically interrelated hierarchy with the human as both microcosm and mediator. We hear in one hymn the Jordan telling John the Baptist to: "Suffer the Lord, who cleanses the whole creation by fire and Spirit, to be baptized, for behold, for this cause He has come to sanctify the elements of earth and water."
Human salvation is tied together with that of the material creation. If humans are a composite of both the visible and invisible creation-mediators in the sense of standing in between-then both aspects of human nature need to be restored. Christ, the Incarnate Word, is the 'physician' who administers remedies appropriate to every aspect of creation. This is expressed in another troparion: "Through the Spirit You make souls new and through the water You sanctify our body compounded from the elements, forming the human afresh as a living being." The restoration of matter has spiritual effects. There is an interrelationship, an interpenetration of the two. In a hymn attributed to Patriarch Germanos we hear that Christ "brings sanctification to the water and it becomes a cleansing for our souls... Salvation comes through washing, and through water the Spirit: by descending into the water we ascend to God."
The vision that eastern Christian theology presents draws humans out of a fragmentary world view where the elements of 'nature' are seen as autonomous and semi-autonomous, toward a world view where humans are called to unite and sanctify the creation through communion with the Creator. Matter is not an object to be used or abused, it is a manifestation of and becomes a true means of communion with God. Obviously, this is not a perspective that finds easy acceptance in the world today. The essentially anthropocentric philosophical bent of the scientific world view biases us toward objectifying not only 'nature' but other human persons as well. The way in which the environment is speaking to us reveals a deep spiritual reality. This 'environmental feedback' shows us that by poisoning the very medium in which we live, we poison ourselves. There is a fundamental spiritual principle at work. When we objectify nature, when we refuse to see the creation as a gift of God of which we are a part, then it becomes possible to exploit it. Exploitation of the environment is based on greed. Greed is based on pride. And pride, by definition, is total self-centeredness. No one culture is exempt from this sin. No theological perspective, academically embraced, can make one immune. Pride, self-centeredness, is overcome only in the love of the other. The call of God to abandon our selfishness and come into a loving relationship with Him draws us closer to Him as well to our fellow humans and to the creation that glorifies God. It is this relationship of love that perfects the creation. And we find this relationship in worship.
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What is Creations Joy? And what is Green Orthopraxy? Creations Joy! is a publication, now preparing for its third issue, with news, essays, and information about the Orthodox Church and the Environment.
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