All the Earth
The Seventh Sunday After Pentecost, Year A • Track 2 • July 12, 2026
Isaiah 55:10-13 • Psalm 65 • Romans 8:1-11 • Matthew 13:1-9,18-23
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
During my first two years of seminary, I lived a short hike away from Lake Cheston, one of the many reservoirs on Sewanee’s campus but one that was popular for fishing, swimming, and as a trailhead. A trail encircles the lake, clinging close to the water’s edge, and branching off to the larger trail system.
For this reason, most of my hikes included at least a brief stop at Lake Cheston. One spring Saturday, I decided to stop along the edge of the lake and say Morning Prayer. There weren’t any other people around, but it was far from quiet. Birds and wind disturbed the leaves of the trees; crickets chirped; and occasionally a fish would break through the surface of the water and make a splash.
It was in this context that I began saying the Te Deum, one of the traditional canticles recited at Morning Prayer:
We praise thee, O God; we acknowledge thee to be the Lord.
All the earth doth worship thee, the Father everlasting.
“All the earth doth worship thee.” That line had never stuck out to me until this moment, when I could suddenly hear, see, and feel it to be true. Though I was saying Morning Prayer alone, I sensed that the trees, the earth, the water, and all that inhabited them were praying in their own way and even praying with me.
The Psalmist says “they have no words or language, but their sound is gone out into all lands” [Ps. xix]. In this moment I felt that I was adding my voice to all creation in its praise of God, worshipping with and alongside the whole earth, joining in their eternal song which is beyond words or language.
I’m still not sure whether I was leading or being taught. Was my use of human language—and Elizabethan English at that—giving voice to creation, or simply using my limited human gifts to access the worship that comes naturally to the more-than-human world?
Nature has a lot to teach us about how to worship, and our reading from Isaiah today shows us what that can look like. God’s Word is for us what rain and snow are for the plant kingdom: the essential nourishment we rely on, the source of life. So our response to those blessings is the same:
you shall go out in joy,
and be led back in peace;
the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song,
and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
Our psalm even describes the earth as being clothed in splendid apparel as it worships:
May the meadows cover themselves with flocks,
and the valleys cloak themselves with grain; *
let them shout for joy and sing.
It’s like the earth is guiding us along in our response to the nourishment we receive from God’s Word: the trees lining our path and clapping their hands (!), the mountains and hills, adorned in their vestments of sheep and wheat, reshaping themselves in front of us, showing us the way and inviting us to join in their song.
All of this joy and richness is a response to the abundant blessings of God: the rains that water the earth, and the Word that comes forth from his mouth. The natural world lacks the ability that we have to forget that those blessings always come from God. There is nothing they, or we, do to earn or deserve them, but rather they are a free gift. God’s providence sustains us and the entire world we live in, and we need only look to creation to be reminded of this beautiful and humbling reality.
This is part of why we have so many symbols of nature—however restrained—in worship. Flowers and greenery, bread and wine, oil and water, are some of the ways creation leads us in worship even inside the church. Our candles are made of beeswax, a gift provided by bees to help us praise God. Not to mention things like woodwork, stained glass, and vestments: the reshaping of nature to glorify God through their use in our worship. Our worship here in this holy place, in what the Psalmist calls “the beauty of holiness” [Ps. xcvi] ought to remind us, then, of God’s abundance revealed in creation, and inspire us to join in the song with the whole earth.
After Communion today, we will sing a hymn that dates back to the first century, from a text called the Didache which is one of the earliest texts about Christian worship. The hymn we sing is a translation of the postcommunion prayer, which thanks God for the gift of Christ’s presence in the Eucharistic bread:
Father, we thank thee who hast planted
thy holy Name within our hearts.
The agricultural imagery of planting here connects us to the earth, and to our readings today that play on the themes of planting and harvest. In this image, we are the fertile soil in which the Word of God—the Name of Jesus—takes root and grows and bears fruit. In the second stanza, we ask God to preserve and unite the Church:
As grain, once scattered on the hillsides,
was in this broken bread made one,
so from all lands thy Church be gathered
into thy kingdom by thy Son.
Here we are invited to contemplate that image of the valleys and hills cloaked with grain, which is then gathered into the Eucharistic bread we break and share. This image of gathering and dispersing is a mirror of what we do week by week, gathering in the church as the body of Christ and then dispersing to do the work God has given us to do. And at length, when sacraments shall cease, as another hymn says, we will be gathered along with the whole Church across the world that final time, by our Lord, into the kingdom of God.
So as we worship alongside creation, the hills and valleys, the flocks and fields, the wheat and grapes, let us revel with them in God’s abundance. As we acknowledge God’s blessings in our lives, let us shout for joy at the overflowing plenty of God’s goodness, which like the rain that nourishes the soil, gives us food for our growth in the Spirit.
As we hear and receive Scripture and Sacrament in the beauty of holiness in this place, let us marvel at the refreshment of God’s Word, which like the water that softens the earth, can soften even those hard places in our hearts. Thanks be to God.
Father, we thank thee who hast planted
thy holy Name within our hearts.
Knowledge and faith and life immortal
Jesus thy Son to us imparts.
Thou, Lord, didst make all for thy pleasure,
didst give us food for all our days,
giving in Christ the Bread eternal;
thine is the power, be thine the praise.
Watch o’er thy Church, O Lord, in mercy,
save it from evil, guard it still,
perfect it in thy love, unite it,
cleansed and conformed unto thy will.
As grain, once scattered on the hillsides,
was in this broken bread made one,
so from all lands thy Church be gathered
into thy kingdom by thy Son.
Didache, late 1st-early 2nd c., trans. F. Bland Tucker & rev. by The Hymnal 1982 committee
~The Rev. Charles Martin
