Illuminations on the Season of Creation readings for Aug. 31, 2025 (Ocean Sunday)
La Pêche miraculeuse (The Miraculous Draught of Fish, c.1618-20), oil painting on wood by Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678). Musée des Beaux-Arts de Strasbourg, Alsace, France. (Click image to enlarge.)
Ocean Sunday
We worship with the surging seas
“Let the sea roar and all that fills it!” –Psalm 96:11
First Reading: Job 38:1-18
The Mysteries of Creation
In this portrait of God creating the universe, Earth is constructed like a grand edifice, the ocean is born like a baby and restrained with boundaries, while down below lie domains called the deep and the realm of the dead. Earth with its oceans is a complex of profound mysteries designed by the Creator.
Psalm: Psalm 104:24-26
A World Created by Wisdom
The whole world is formed by the Wisdom of God, thereby giving it all its integral parts, laws, design, and purpose. That world even includes domains where God ‘plays’ with wild creatures in the ocean.
Second Reading: Ephesians 1.3-10
The Cosmic Christ
In Jesus the Christ, we not only face the eternal mystery of forgiveness and salvation, but also the truth that, as the cosmic one, Christ gathers all things together and unites the cosmos. The cosmic Christ fills the universe!
Gospel: Luke 5.1-11
Facing the Deep
When Peter and his friends catch no fish, Jesus asks them to take a risk and cast into ‘the deep’, the realm of the unknown. An even greater risk faces the disciples when they one day catch humans with a new message.
The Season of Creation, September 1 through October 4, is celebrated by Christians around the world as a time for renewing, repairing and restoring our relationship to God, one another, and all of creation. The Episcopal Church joins this international effort for prayer and action for climate justice and an end to environmental racism and ecological destruction. The 2025 theme is Peace with Creation. In celebrating the Season, we are invited to consider anew our ecological, economic, and political ways of living.