Sermon for 18 August 13 Genesis 1:24-31; Psalm 8, Colossians 1:9-20 It could fit with our reading today for me just to tell you about my trip to Alaska, into Denali National Park with its moose and grizzly bears. After all, it’s been a season of getting us to attend to the world around us, to its goodness as God’s creation. And it’s on this 6th day of the Genesis creation story when we finally get to those kinds of big mammals that occupy our attention. But in spite of excitement about those creatures and favorites like them, there’s another creature that finally comes into the picture today who occupies our attention even more: us. Humans. Males and females. Maybe we’ve been waiting for it all along; when I flip through a photo album or look at pictures on Facebook, I know I sort of bide my time, waiting for what really interests me, until when I appear. Perhaps you share my vanity or selfishness in this story, and expected that the creation story was all building, all going to culminate when homo sapiens arrived on the scene. (I’m going to burst that bubble and spoil a bit of your selfish fantasies by reminding you that humans aren’t really the be-all end-all, not the crowning moment of creation. This is only day 6; day 7 is the final glorious triumph.) But still, instead of dwelling on moose or grizzlies today, I expect that we do need to spend some time on humans entering the story and on how we’ve used or misused this passage for ourselves and our desires. You see, I really believe what we’ve been hearing from Genesis 1 in these weeks is emphatic in God’s delighted care and compassion and concern for all of creation. God saw it was good when light began back at day 1, and the sea monsters of day 5 and everything in between. Humans aren’t even the first to receive an explicit blessing from God; God first speaks a blessing for the fish and birds. Yet there’s a part of today’s reading that has come to absorb our awareness and overwhelm the goodness. Despite how broadly gracious the rest of the reading is, sharing God’s favor for waters and atmosphere and plants and animals and across the scope of the universe, we are debilitated by part of what it says about humans. In fact, for the past 50 years or more, rather than living into our legacy as God’s cared-for and caring creatures, the people who have held this story, we Christians and Jewish brothers and sisters, instead we have been justifiably accused of being the main source of damage and harm. You may realize that the dangerous phrase is the charge for humans to have “dominion over” everything. From this one word in Genesis, we’ve developed an ungodly and biblically false notion that has not only infected those of us in churches and synagogues, but likely to some degree has warped our entire human culture and given rise to our self-indulgent-at-any-expense consumer society. This phrase of having dominion is actually used as justification for stripping and abusing the earth’s goodness. It takes the worst of sinful tendencies and unleashes them manifold upon the earth. We claim we’ve been given divine permission to exploit, to extract and clear-cut and mine and drill and kill for anything we want, and just ignore the consequences of our behavior. We tromp with such large footprints, so unsustainable and so un-resilient, that the wake of destruction seems nearly irreparable. Right away, given the evidence around us and the impact we recognize of our own individual lives, it is worth asking ourselves if this is what God could have really meant, whether God put all the delight and intention that occupies the first 5½ days of creation just to make humans to come along and wipe it all out. We could also note that our historical situation is different from primitive nomadic people who often had few resources against wild beasts and disease and starvation and such. We have so much control of our environment, and we have multiplied and filled the earth to such an extent, that we are no longer in the same situation as the people described in these initial words. Either of those may be argument enough for revisiting our notions of dominion, but we have an even more obvious example who should be directly in front of us, confronting our notions in that problematic word. Dominion is the word that has led us destructively to domineer, to dominate. For us it’s well worthwhile to know these similar words are related to "dominus," the Latin word for Lord. Now, we have plenty of examples where lords or masters were those who took advantage of slaves and looked out only for their own benefit. We may picture feudal despots in castles surrounded by starving masses or other fierce tyrants still inflicting harm. But for us, we look to a very different Lord and Master. Our Lord and Master is not one who is over us and in charge and abusive and controlling and punitive and selfish. Our Lord and Master is one who is with us, alongside us. This Lord and Master of ours is one who stoops to wash feet, to care and tend for those who are allegedly lower and weaker and poorer. Our Lord and Master, Jesus wants to be known in love and has called you friends. He redefines the whole thing by saying, “You know other rulers lord over the people and tyrannize them, but if you wish to be great, you must be a servant” (Matt20:25). And having this Lord, this "dominus," makes it impossible to imagine that our typical concepts of domination would be acceptable in any relationship, with other humans or with animals or anything else in all creation. That model of ignoring or using up, of exploiting and taking advantage, of self-concern no matter the effect on others, that simply will not stand with the one we know as Lord. But hear now as I proclaim to you the good news. This has been a pretty heavy sermon. But this is not how things stand. Because you have a loving, caring Lord, you are brought into new life. Genesis says that male and female are created in the image of God. The remarkable words from Colossians proclaim that the one who truly bears and best embodies the image of God is Jesus. We know in looking at Jesus that that cannot possibly mean what exemplifies godliness is our power or how much better we are than others or how right or holy or how high and mighty. The appearance of Christ Jesus is not to punish for previous wrongs or to condemn for the ways you fall short or even to insist that you try harder and do better to be more like him. The image of God is in Jesus, who stoops to reconcile and heal, who strives to serve and to share life. Those amazing words proclaim that Jesus holds onto all things, holds all of creation together. This fullness of the cosmic Christ is what your future looks like, and with you the consummation of the whole universe. Through forgiveness and new life, through ongoing blessing and redemption you are restored and brought into his likeness, to live with his life for the world. In the promise of your baptism, just as we witnessed for Noah at the start of worship, is what binds you to this new life in Jesus. That is where the damage of your wrongs finds reconciliation, where we turn for forgiveness. In that, you are already raised as a new creation. Your commitments in this community are, in the words that Dave and Heather accepted as their responsibility with their baptized son, “to care for others and the world God made.” This is what it looks like to grow in the Christian faith and life. This is the mark of being God’s people in the world. And with it is the promise of wholeness and healing, that brokenness will be restored and relationships will find fullness. That’s an amazing promise. And to me, this from Colossians is one of the richest parts of the whole bible because it’s so expansive in the understanding of what God is up to and what our Lord Jesus means not just in a few of our lives, but for all, throughout the world, across the universe. It’s so big, in fact, it’s almost overwhelming. So I’d like to take you back to Denali National Park for a moment, again to encounter the wildlife and wilderness there. A nice phrase from the park brochure summarizes some of this, reminding us that, Nature isn’t a commodity people own, but a community they belong to. There was an evening on my trip where we were sitting out in the brightness of an almost un-setting sun and we were listening to a ranger. He was speaking of some of the history of the area, of some of the special people who labored to make the park what it was and is. The national park, which surrounds North America’s tallest mountain, wasn’t originally set aside for that. The purpose was for Dall sheep, wild animals in high pastures which were being killed off by commercial hunters as food for gold miners and railroad workers. So the park became a protected area for the Dall sheep. Several decades later, a man named Adolph Murie for three years lived in the park to study. Particularly, there were people wanting to get rid of wolves, claiming they caused trouble. But contrary to the typical limited and distorted view, Adolph Murie proved they weren’t harmful or evil, but an important part of the ecosystem. And he had a phrase, which is what I want you to hear. He said, “Let us be guardians, rather than gardeners.” I think he meant we’re not trying to make a well-manicured playground, a paved paradise of climate-controlled environments. God’s work in the world is so much grander than that. At best, we are brought to join in caring for and conserving what is natural, what we recognize as God-given and beloved by God. I suggest to you that phrase about guardians can exemplify what it means to live as a Christian in this world, or even simply as one of the people God created. In the image of God, you have the role of those who delight in these surroundings, who seek to understand what is going on, who serve and steward and bear fruit, who forgiven and reconciled live lives worthy of the Lord. You are called and formed to be God’s guardians.
Posted on: Sun, 18 Aug 2013 17:07:05 +0000
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